Air Temple Island was visibly shaking, causing water to smash against the ships and disturb those docked in the harbor on the mainland. BOTH Beifong women were livid. Suyin because the search for Baatar Jr. had been unsuccessful, and Lin becuase she returned to the island to find Huifan and Jiexue also missing.
"Huifan is the greatest earthbender in the world, and Jiexue is arguably the greatest airbender in the world. They'll be fine. They will come back!" Izumi said trying to comfort Lin.
"And if they don't what then?!" Lin yelled throwing her arms back in frustration as another fissure created in the bay causing a minor tsunami to head towards the shores.
"Maybe it is a good thing we aren't living on the mainland," Kya commented. There was a crash down no the beaches. The three women ran over to see Suyin beating the walls of the cliffs again.
Lin took a few steps backwards, and then took a running jump off of the cliff landing in a crater.
"So... do you want to stop them?" Izumi asked Kya. Kya shrugged.
"Your highness!" a royal guard addressed Izumi. "Master Kya! there's a ship approaching the docks of Air Temple Island!"
"A ship?"
"Not the ferry?"
"A ship, my ladies!"
"Should we bring t hem?" Kya asked glancing down at the two Beifong women destroying the beach below.
"Probably. They'll want to know everything that happens on their island," Izumi replied. Kya looked over the cliff edge and raised a hand towards each of the women below, then she lifted them off the beach and tossed them onto the land above, both of them screaming.
"What the hell?!" Suyin asked startled, creating a crater to soften her own landing. Lin rolled as soon as Kya released her grip on her.
"Did you just bloodbend us?" Lin asked, her eyes looking even greener in her heightened fury.
"Mom said I should be practicing," Kya replied with a smile, folding her arms.
Lin growled.
"There's a ship coming in. We thought you guys might be interested. We don't know whose it is," Izumi explained.
"Fine, we'll come," Suyin said standing up, bending all the dust and sand from her green and black dress.
When the four women arrived at the top of the stairs, they saw Tenzin, Baatar, Iroh, and Bumi already waiting. Lin looked immediately for the flag on the ship for some sort of indicating of the crew's allegiance.
An Earthen Fire Ship? Lin recognized the company logo. "Masaru!" Lin growled marching down to the docks. "I trusted you!" she said bending a boulder at his head as he walked.
"Woah!" Masaru ducked and rolled out of the way. The boulder almost hit Jiexue, but Huifan disintegrated it before it could reach, but Lin didn't see their unharmed bodies in her blinding rage. "Lin, please listen. I can explain!"
"YOU LED MY DAUGHTERS ON A SEARCH MISSION?" Lin screamed sinking him into the ground up to his neck, lifting another boulder above his head, ready to crush the firebending billionaire.
"I was simply retrieving them! Your mother sanctioned the mission! Not me! I would have talked them out of it, but they were already gone by the time I was aware!" Masaru replied closing his eyes.
"My mo- my MOTHER?!" Lin shrieked. "You really expect me to believe that?!" Lin asked raising the boulder higher.
"Linny, he's not lying. You can tell that much. I sent HuiFan and Jiexue to Junior's exact location. They just ended up rescuing more than their original target, and I figured a bison couldn't hold thirty some odd kids, so I sent Masaru with a ship," Toph explained pushing Masaru out of the ground with a slide of her heal.
"They could have gotten killed!" Lin screamed, sending the massive boulder in Toph's direction, but purposefully missing, because she could never truly hurt her mother
"But we weren't, Mom! Relax!" HuiFan said wrapping her arms around her tense mother, Jiexue following.
Lin's chest heaved and her muscles all flexed as she stared at Masaru casually brushing the dirt and dust off his fancy coat.
"So did you find Junior?"
"Yes, but we have some have bad news," Jiexue remembered.
"What?" Suyin asked.
"Junior built another platinum mech like the one Kuvira used to destroy Republic City," Jiexue announced. "And this one has wings."
"No!"
"I stood on it with my own two feet! I could feel the entire thing!" HuiFan exclaimed.
"How did they pay for all that?" Kya asked.
"By robbing all of our refineries, probably," Lin muttered shaking her head in frustration.
"Wait!" Masaru interjected.
"How long has Jr. been allied with Pema and Raiko?" Masaru asked.
"I don't know-"
"Does heave access to the vaults at Zaofu?" Masaru asked.
"FUCK IT ALL!" Suyin yelled running back to the house to make a call.
"How are you holding up?" Baatar asked finding his wife pouring over the most recent batch of paperwork delivered from Ba Sing Se and Zaofu.
"How do think I am holding up?" Suyin sighed sarcastically. "Masaru is right. Junior got into the treasury at Zaofu to help fund the Equalist Revival."
"What's the damage?"
"Six million bahn." Suyin said reviewing the financial records that she usually overlooked, just glossing progress and build summaries.
"Sweet Spirits! Thats nearly twelve billion yuans!" Baatar exclaimed picking up the paper as Suyin sat down in her desk chair running her fingers through her hair.
"Will this bankrupt us?"
"It hurts, but it shouldn't bankrupt us. He only managed to get into the humanitarian account. There should be at least forty million bahn still in there, and the development treasury has an annual spending budget of sixty five billion bahn. We can ask the development sector to lend some to the humanitarian sector and revise the conditions for withdrawing from the humanitarian sector as well as those with the authority to access it..." Suyin sighed.
"We'll recover. I know it!" Baatar said planting a kiss on the top of Suyin's head. She covered her face and looked up at a nondescript place on the plain wooden walls of her office on Air Temple Island.
"It is okay to cry."
"Beifong's can't cry. We were made that way." Suyin replied standing up.
"Where are you going now?"
"To see my son!"
Suyin descended the steps to the temple basement to find Baatar Junior bound from ankles to shoulders in a thick metal cable and HuiFan and Jiexue standing over him.
"He's rather annoying, now that we've actually spent some time together," Jiexue said to Suyin.
"Thanks, Jiexue. That is so kind of you to say," Suyin said narrowing her eyes at the eighteen year old.
"Sorry," Jiexue sighed bowing and backing out of the Temple's basement with her sister.
"Girls, will you go get your parents, my husband, and Princess Izumi? We'll interrogate him together. I will lead." Suyin asked gravely.
They seated Junior in a chair in the vacated classroom on Air Temple Island.
"Explain yourself!" Suyin demanded.
"There is nothing to explain! They're lying! Huifan and Jiexue! And Masaru helped them! The girls just wanted attention! They spent so long imprisoned in Aunt Lin's cage that they wanted an excuse to show off their powers to the world. They just wanted to look like heroes when you returned from an unsuccessful search! I have been here the whole time-" Baatar Junior insisted, tears forming in his eyes.
Beifongs don't cry. Suyin thought to herself as Junior let the first of many forced tears fall from his eyes.
"Liar!" Huifan yelled.
"I am an airbender! What interest do I have in lies and attention? My ancestors lived on mountain peaks where scum like you couldn't reach-" Jiexue added.
"Jiexue! We are not above others and we do not call people scum!" Tenzin scolded. Jiexue folded her arms and frowned.
"All three of you are Beifongs whether you like it or not, so zip it!" Lin added.
"Junior is a pretty terrible liar. Honestly, you guys, do you EVER use the sight I give you?!" Toph asked walking into the room with her hands behind her back.
"Tell them how you made those bombs for Pema. Tell them how when Raiko asked for an armored ship, uyou obliged. Tell them how you betrayed your blood for the SECOND time and gave the Equalists access to Zaofu's treasury!" HuiFan yelled.
"Six million bahn," Suyin growled. She lifted Baatar up with one hand by the collar of his shirt and pressed the other to his chest, to detect his heartbeat more easily since her seismic sense was not as strong as her mother's. "Enough lying."
Baatar Junior stopped crying. His mouth curled into a wicked grin and he started laughing.
"What good could possibly come out of this, Junior?"
"Equality! TRUE equality! You cannot intimidate me any longer, Mother! It is a great thing to share the wealth of Zaofu with the rest of the world, especially the non-benders that make up its backbone!"
"Zaofu's wealth is not yours to share with the world! It belongs to the city and the city belongs to me!"
"Well, then, mother, I am sorry it has to end this way," Junior said gravely. Before anyone could move, Junior gurgled something up from his throat and spat down on his mother's face.
She dropped him and tried to wipe off the sticky substance mixed with her son's saliva. But it wasn't just a liquid. There were tiny bits of some unknown metal in it. Tiny machines swam through the liquid in search for Suyin's skin and invaded.
She dropped her son and backed away.
"Kya! Get Kya!" Suyin whimpered weakly stumbling back as she felt the tiny machines crawling under skin, releasing some sort of poison into her blood stream. She fell to her hands and knees, her whole body shaking. Jiexue bolted with a gust of air.
"What did you do to her!" Huifan yelled jumping into a fighting stance while Baatar Senior dropped by his wife's side.
"Don't try lying!" Lin added wrapping a metal strip around Baatar Junior's neck.
"What we are going to do to all benders if they get in our way on our path towards TRUE global EQUALITY!. You are not heroes but freaks with the unnatural ability tto defy the laws of gravity and nature!" Baatar Junior yelled.
"No, you're the freak with the unnatural ability to attempt to kill the woman who gave life and love to you and feel NOTHING!" Huifan replied punching a dent in the metal cables that wrapped around Baatar Junior's body, knocking the air out of him.
Baatar Junior just recovered quickly and laughed, madly. "Long live the Earth Queen," Junior said with a wicked grin.
Lin stomped her right foot back, kicking up a pebble, while still holding the metal around Baatar's neck with her left hand, then punched with her right hand, sending the pebble straight at Junior's forehead, knocking him clean out, then dropping him again to rush to her sister's side.
"Suyin, don't leave us! Kya is coming."
"Can I at least try to get the mini-mechs out, Mama?" Huifan asked kneeling.
"Be careful, my sweet."
"Grandma Toph, do you know the composition of the bots?" Huifan asked searching her Aunt's body.
"Lead and mercury-" Toph replied.
"Huifan closed her eyes and pulled the mini-mechs out of her aunts bloodstream, trying to bend them into microscopic particles to remove through the skin. Toph made a rock shell to receive the poison as it was extracted. But there was still the gel.
Suyin's temperature spiked and sweat beaded along her hairline.
"That's all of it, Grandma-" Huifan said pulling the last of the lead and mercury from her Aunt's body.
Toph sealed the rock shell and stuck it in her pocket.
"What is the poison?" Kya asked arriving with Katara.
"I don't know. I remember feeling them mix the metals a long time ago when I was living in the swamp, but I couldn't feel the liquids, so I couldn't tell what the gel is made out of," Toph replied. Kya moved the healing water over her friend's body.
"Any suggestions, Ma?" Kya asked.
"The two waterbenders worked while Suyin lay unconsious, shaking violently, with her head in her husband's lap.
"Tenzin, could you go to Zaofu and have the treasury temporarily freeze all transactions. And Lin, could you get Huan and go to Ba Sing Se. Until the Republic is established. It is still a monarchy, and if Su doesn't wake-" Baatar choked.
"She will! It takes more than a little poison to kill a Beifong!" Lin replied. Tenzin put an arm around Lin and squeezed her while she watched as the two master waterbenders and best healers in the world tried to reverse the effects of the poison.
"Aunt Zumi, will you see that Junior is tied up and returned to the Temple's basement and that he won't be able to spit again?" Huifan asked.
"Gladly, Izumi replied grabbing the young man by the collar, dragging him out of the classroom, and dropping him at the feet of the royal Fire Nation guards. They hoisted him up and followed their Princess.
Meanwhile, royal Earth Kingdom Guards brought Lin a radio for her to make a call to Zaofu to freeze the entire treasury and inform them of Baatar Junior's betrayal.
"Hey Dad, you sent for me?" Huan asked arriving in the main house, where Suyin had been moved to a bed.
"Your mother has been poisoned." Baatar informed his next oldest son.
"What?" if Huan were shocked, his face didn't show it.
"And until the Earth Kingdom is a Republic, it is still a kingdom. This means you are-"
"The Earth King," Huan finished. He looked down. The streak of dyed green hair fell in his face, covering the half of his face with the unpierced eyebrow.
"But Dad, I don't know how to be a king,"
"Just listen to the people, and try to make them happy. Ba Sing Se should be pretty stable right now. Zaofu needs help, but Lin will go. Just make sure nobody else takes the throne until your Mother comes to again," Baatar Senior said with a hand on his son's shoulder.
"May I bring someone to help me?" Huan asked.
"I think that is a good idea, Son," Baatar said. Huan turned to Lin and then to Tenzin.
"Sir, Master Tenzin, with your permission, may I request that Ikki accompany me to Ba Sing Se? She is an accomplished airbender and a rather good leader and peacekeeper."
"Wouldn't Jinora be better suited to assist you?"
"Jinora is a better teacher. I think she is more needed here to train the other airbenders in preparation for the battle to come," Huan replied.
"If she agrees, I will allow it." Tenzin replied.
Huan bowed to him and left to find the young airbender.
"Tenzin, she's only eleven," Lin said to him, her tone heavy with concern for the girl.
"And my Father was twelve when he stabilized the world. Surely Ikki can help Huan maintain a stable city," Tenzin said. "And I know Huan won't let her get hurt. He cares about her."
"I guess I just haven't seen them enough to notice," Lin sighed leaning against him. "I should probably go to Zaofu, just to make sure my orders are executed. It would also probably be good to check on Gaoling on my way back to Republic City."
"Please don't go alone," Tenzin asked.
"I'll bring Jinkun and Hungjian with me," Lin said.
"Not Huifan?" Tenzin asked.
"The boys and I can protect ourselves from anything. Huifan can protect the entire Island from anything if needed," Lin replied. "She will do better here."
"Alright, safe, okay? You'll take Oogi?"
Lin nodded and kissed him on the lips before leaving.
