Paragon of Korra

by Deus Swiftblade

When the new Avatar stepped off the boat in Republic City and as she deals with life as the Avatar, she soon discovers that not everything is what it seems. Especially when the other side of the world, a place the Bending Countries had been in vague contact with for the past 70 years, shows itself again.

36. Starts and entries

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto, the Last Airbender, or the Legend of Korra.

Paragon of Korra

Chapter 36: Starts and entries

"Talking"

"Thinking"

"Bijū/spirit talking"

"Bijū/spirit thinking"

(Location: the Zhu Li)

Kya bent the spiritual water in the tub back and forth, using to keep Jinora's body intact. She dared not stop doing this, not since the ship had left Republic City. She barely ate or drank. If she had to sleep, it was only done in short intervals, twenty minutes max. "Kya," said Yue from the other side of the cabin as she watched her do the action again and again.

"Don't tell me to stop," she told the Paragon.

"You have to. You can't keep this up. You look like you're about to collapse."

She could hear the concern in her friend's voice and she was glad for it. But she couldn't stop. Her niece needed her. "I slept a while ago."

"That was two hours ago and it was for fifteen minutes."

"I'm aware that I slept for too long, alright?" she snapped at the Paragon, her irritation at the conversation getting to her. "Let it go already."

"Too long?" repeated an incredulous Yue. "If anything, it was too short! You need to relax, Kya! You need to sleep!"

"Don't tell me what to do, Yue!"

She walked around the tub and put a restraining hand on the Waterbender's shoulder. "Kya, I'm telling you this as your friend. Stop what you're doing, find a bed, and sleep. You're no good to Jinora if you're all but dead on your feet!"

"Get that hand off."

"I can take over."

She shrugged off the arm. "What can you do? You can't even hold life, what would you know about supporting it?" She was so focused on keeping her niece's body intact that her words did not register in her brain until it had been too late to take them back. But still, she took on a look of horror when she realized what she had said. "Yue, I'm sorry. I didn't—"

"That's it," the Paragon of the Water Tribes declared, grabbing her by the shoulder again and all but dragging her away from the tub. She pulled her to the nearby chair where food laid on a plate, completely cold. "Sit down and eat. You're tired and exhausted. Rest until you get your strength back," she ordered Kya, who looked to protest. "Don't make me keep you in that chair, Kya. You know damn well that I'll be able to do it."

She closed her mouth, knowing full well that despite having no Bending powers, Yue could easily manhandle any Bender into doing what she wanted them to do. That was why in the Water Tribes the story of her beating Chief Unalaq when he had declared himself a Waterbending master took on such significant. Of course, for the people who actually knew her, there was another story that could be the reason for it.

She looked down at the food and began to pick at it. When the first bit of food went down her throat, it was as she had expected. It was cold when it should've warm. She didn't need to look up at Yue to know whose fault that was. She kept on eating each piece of the cold food she put in her mouth. "Yue, I am sorry for my words," she said as she ate. "They were uncalled for and cruel, especially since how it—"

"I have told you and I have told everyone a thousand times to leave that subject alone, Kya," she said in a dark mood. But then she breathed deep and continued, "I know that you didn't mean it. You're tired and hungry, that's a nasty combination. Trust me, I've been there."

Kya did know, since she had seen the Paragon come out of a wilds survival training exercise that had lasted a month with her sifu. "Yeah, you would."

The younger woman flashed a smile at her but sobered quickly. "So tell me, why are you so insistent on keeping Jinora stable?"

She looked at her with an incredulous expression. How could she say something like that? "She's my niece!"

"I know, but that's not just trying to save a family member. There's more desperation in your attempts. What's going on?"

For a moment, she considered not telling her what was going through her head. But she knew very well that Yue would not stop until she had pulled the story out of her. It was best just to tell her now instead of fighting her for it. "I was the one who noticed Jinora had an affinity for the spirits. She went into the Spirit World because of me. What happened to her is on me."

Yue's gaze softened as she looked at the girl in the tub. "No, it's not your fault, Kya. It's Unalaq's fault. He's responsible for what happened to Korra," she told the Waterbender.

"She's just a little girl, Yue. She's a girl who's bright and curious about the world. She wants to see all that it has to offer."

She looked back at the Waterbender and saw the grief in her eyes. "She reminds you of yourself when you were younger," she finally declared.

"…Yes," Kya admitted.

She could see the similarities between the two of them. When Kya had been younger, she had been very curious about what went on in the world and wanted to see it, all of it. Jinora had the same curiosity and earnest want to see the world. "I can see it," she told the Waterbender. "But between you and me, I just hope she doesn't get your arrogance."

She snapped her head up to look at the Paragon. "Excuse me?"

"Don't give me that, Kya. You were the only one of us who had been arrogant enough to try and deceive Naruto in order to go to his homeland. And if I remember correctly when he dragged you back to us, you got zero sympathy."

While she would've loved to argue that point, she also knew it would've been pointless because it was true. She had been arrogant and dumb enough to think that she would've been able to get away with it. Back then, she had thought that the adults were being ridiculous with their rules and all she needed to do was show them how it was ridiculous. Nowadays, since she was more mature and calmer, she could see where she had gone wrong. "Don't worry," she told Yue, looking at Jinora. "She doesn't have that."

---

Up on the deck, Mako watched his would-be-but-not-quite-sure girlfriend bend blast after blast of air at a training dummy. Tenzin watched from behind her, his determined eyes spurring her on silently. Bumi seemed to be the only one who was relaxed out on the deck, leaning against Oogi's side and playing a flute. But then he saw Bolin walk up to his side, wearing a purple raincoat and eating a piece of pie. "What's up with the coat?" he had to ask. "And where did you get that pie?"

"It's a Varrick ship," his brother said like it was the most obvious thing, "you never know what you're gonna find. There's a whole level filled with fun-house mirrors. Of course, there's also the catgator deck." He turned around to show that a piece of the coat and his pants were missing, showing his pink with red paw prints to show. He turned back around and had a slightly sad expression on his face and let out a long sigh. "I miss that guy. He really knew how to make a long trip interesting."

"Are you kidding?" Mako asked silently. They were talking about the man who had tried to spur the war on and who got him thrown in jail. But Bolin was never really one to hold a grudge against anyone.

The brother in question turned to him and asked, "So, have you told Korra yet about how you guys broke up, and you kinda started dating Asami while she was off getting attacked by dark spirits?"

"Will you keep it down?" he snapped instantly before folding his arms and looking down at the deck. "I'm waiting for the right moment."

"Oh Mako," the Earthbender said, clapping a brotherly hand on his shoulder that quickly went around his neck. "You know, a wise man once told me that delivering bad news to a girlfriend was like ripping off a blood-sucking leech: you just have to do it fast and get it over with." It might've sounded supportive, if he didn't have a very smug look on his face.

Mako sighed, knowing full well that he had the right of it "I hate it when you listen to me," he said, his tone declaring that he had given up the brief fight, "Fine!"

He looked back up at the Avatar, still training with Tenzin standing behind her. "Unalaq will be waiting for you," The Airbender all but barked out. "You'll need all of your Avatar power to stop him."

She didn't see anything wrong with what he was saying. In fact, it just spurred her on. "I'm going to close the spirit portals, lock Vaatu in for another ten thousand years, and make Unalaq wish he'd never been born," she declared vehemently, throwing a burst of fire at the dummy. It was so strong that it knocked the dummy's head and sent it flying to the deck, rolling until it stopped at Mako's feet.

He couldn't help but look down at the dummy head in surprised worry. "And Bolin wants me to talk to her now?" he asked himself. That seemed grounds for a death wish!

He noticed that Korra was coming his way and grabbed the head, holding it out for her. "Thanks Mako," she said to him as she took the head and turned back to train more.

He tried to say something, anything, but all that came out of his mouth was "Uh…Um…"

She looked back at him and saw that he had taken a thinking pose that seemed a little forced. "Did you want something?"

"Uh no, no, nothing," he told her with a smile that also seemed a little forced. She walked away and he lost the smile, groaning at his missed chance. Then Bolin slid into his view with that smug smile still on his lips. He groaned silently this time, restraining the urge to punch him.

Korra put the head back on the training dummy. She was so focused on paying attention to Tenzin and getting back to his side that she put the head on backwards. She went back to his side as Kya joined them outside. "What are you doing here?" the Avatar asked her as she closed the door behind her.

"Yue finally made me take an actual break," she said shortly.

"Oh, okay." There was really nothing else she could say to that. She knew quite well that once her Aunty Yue got onto something, she wasn't going to stop unless she had a very good reason.

Tenzin gave his sister a nod of acknowledgement before going straight to the planning. "As soon as we reach the Southern Water Tribe, we'll blast through the blockade at the main portal," he said. "Then we can rendezvous with Tonraq and his troops, crash through the defenses around the portal, and enter the Spirit World."

"Woah!" said a very surprised Kya. "Since when does my little brother wanna crash or blast through anything?" He had always been the pacifist amongst the three of them. Seeing him wanting to take action, she wasn't sure if that was a good thing to see or not.

He faced his sister with a stern look. "I'll do whatever it takes to save my daughter."

Bumi put down the flute he had been playing and stood up. "We all want to save Jinora," he told his brother as he walked up, "but I think your plan might be a tad over-aggressive, seeing as there are only seven of us and one ship." Considering that he was the so-called "wild child" of Aang, that had to have said something about the situation they were about to put themselves in.

"Really?" his little brother asked him. "And what do you suggest?"

He could see that Tenzin was getting on edge about everything happening to them. He decided to take the slightly lighthearted approached, along with a story to further lighten the mood. "An attack like this calls for strategy. I remember when I was surrounded by pirates at the Hurricane Straits. We managed to capture them all, with just a feather, two eggs and a barrel of molasses," he started to say.

Unfortunately for him, his brother was working on a temper that had been drastically shortened. And while he had, in his own words, suffered through his brother's tall tales when he had a longer fuse, he wasn't having it now. "I don't want to hear any of your crazy stories now!" he snapped. "This is serious!"

The door to below decks opened again and Tahno poked his head out. "What's with the yelling?" he asked them all.

Korra looked at him. Every time she saw him, she couldn't help but look at the new scar on his head. It just showed how much things were going badly for the rebels. He didn't get that scar from attacking the northern troops on the front lines but rather from a sneak attack on the camp by dark spirits. But it wasn't just the scar or the buzz of hair that was now growing on his head that made her see him differently. It was his whole attitude. Gone was the flippant, arrogant, cheating Pro-bender and in his place was somebody else, someone she would've liked to meet first. "Tempers running hot, that's all," she told him.

He stepped out and closed the door. "Yeah, saw enough of that to know."

She was almost tempted to ask him just how much he had seen while fighting in the south. But then she heard boots walking around the corner and she turned to see Asami coming towards them all. "Are we almost there?" Bolin asked her as he and Mako joined the rest.

"Almost," she replied, "but…I just picked up a distress signal from the southern troops. There's a problem."

They could see the worried look on her face and promptly became worried themselves. Tahno was the one to ask the question that was on everyone's mind, albeit in a roundabout fashion. "How bad is it?"

"Very bad," she replied.

"Details, woman, we need the details."

That kind of attitude might've gotten the old Tahno punched in the face. But she knew that he wanted to know what had happened. "The rebels have all but collapsed. The entire front line has been wiped out. The only base they have left is Korra's old training compound." And even though she said those words, she knew that it could only be worse to see it than hear it.

(Location: Land of Spring)

Inoji would've loved to say that going on this mission was probably the best thing that could happen to him and his teammates right now, if it wasn't for the fact that a group of Suna Jōnin and the freaking Kazekage were coming along with grim expressions. He had shared looks with his teammates and the other teams about the Suna shinobi throughout the entire train ride. He would've shared the same looks with their senseis and Team Seven but the senseis looked just as grim as the Suna shinobi and Team Seven looked didn't quite as grim but they did look serious.

In fact, the only one who wasn't grim was Karura. She chatted and talked like nothing was wrong. It was something that he had always admired about Shikatsuno's cousin. She was able to make things feel like there was nothing wrong with what was about to happen. Of course, there was also the fact that she had skills they all wished they could have. By the time they were in their second year at the Academy, she had already become a Genin. And now she was a Chūnin. It was kinda hard to see what's Tsukiko's problem with her was.

By the time they got to the Land of Spring, the sun was shining afternoon and started to fall downwards to the horizon. Inoji had thought they would be staying at the palace like the last time Team Seven had been here but instead they were sharing rooms in a hotel that supposedly had two stars (which he felt was rather generous). The rooms themselves were a little cramped and it felt like they had to fight for space. Some of them would share the beds and the beds were small.

When he looked at Team Seven and saw their looks of surprise, he felt relieved that they hadn't expected this either. Feeling encouraged, he almost went up to his sensei to ask him if they couldn't upgrade or something. But as soon as he approached, his sensei turned to look and gave him an eyeful. Whatever protests and suggestions that were coming up out of his throat died and went back down again. "Yes, Inoji?" asked Gin-sensei.

"Um, nothing," he finally said, trying to come up with something that would give him a reason to have come over. "Just wondering if we were going to head out soon," he told his sensei.

"No."

"Oh, okay." He walked back over to his team sat on the farthest bed.

"Wondering if we were going to head out soon?" Chōichi asked him in disbelief, his hand in a bag of chips. "I thought you were going to ask if we were going to get better rooms."

"I was, but when he gave me that look the question kinda felt stupid." He looked around the room. It was painted in a dull boring brown that he was fairly certain was already peeling in places. There was enough room in there for a team and their sensei, maybe two if some of them were forced to sleep on the floor. Considering that the senseis were at the door talking, he assumed that was the topic of conversation. "Man, this wasn't what I thought it would be."

"You're telling me," Shikatsuno agreed.

"Yeah," Chōichi said, looking around. "This place is smaller than my room."

"Same here," Inoji agreed. The only thing that was smaller than this room was his closet for the love of Kami!

They fell silent. The silence dragged on and on as they just sat there on the bed. Finally, Chōichi broke it by asking, "So, what do we do now?"

His teammates looked at each other, wondering the same thing. "I, I don't know," Inoji told him. "I guess we just sit here and relax for now."

"That's it?"

"As far as I know," he replied.

"That's boring."

"Boring is good," Shikatsuno said, falling onto the mattress. At least, he tried. He ended up slouching against the wall. "I can do boring."

"You would. You're a Nara."

He might've been offended, if it wasn't too much of a pain to be offended. So he just shrugged his shoulders and said, "Yep, I am."

Chōichi just rolled his eyes and dipped his hand into the bag again. But he felt nothing inside except for the bag. Frowning, he lifted it up to eye level and looked inside. "Dang it, it's empty."

"Wasn't that your last one?" Inoji asked him.

"Yeah, it was." He crumpled it up and tossed it at the nearby trashcan. It fell short and so he got up from his place on the mattress to put it in properly. When he turned back, Inoji was sitting in his spot. "Hey," he protested.

"You moved," his Yamanaka teammate said. "And besides, you can wait until dinner for more food."

He frowned. "I didn't say anything about wanting more food."

"You were going to," Shikatsuno told him. "He was just stopping you before you could actually say anything."

He grumped and sat down against the foot of the bed, his head leaning against the mattress. "I'm going to be hungry anyway."

Inoji looked across Shikatsuno at him. "You know, you could stand to lose a couple of pounds."

"A couple?" the Nara heir asked with an amused look. If their teammate got any fatter, he could pass as a human bowling ball. Although, considering his clan's jutsus, might not be far off the mark.

But he looked rather insulted at the prospect. "You mean dieting?" he asked Inoji.

"Yeah, you need it."

"I don't need it. I'm an Akimichi for the love of Kami!"

"What's going on over there?" Gin-sensei demanded, turning his head to look back at them.

They looked at him immediately. "Nothing," Inoji said. "Just talking about life, the universe, and Chōichi's eating habits."

"I see." He went back to talking to the other senior shinobi.

The three Genin sat there, trying to figure out what to do with the awkward air about them. They had no real idea on what to do next. "You think we should go talk to the others, at least to pass the time?" the Yamanaka amongst them suggested.

"It's a pain in the ass to do so," Shikatsuno grumbled.

"Everything's a pain in the ass for you."

The Nara clan heir glared at him but acknowledged the truth of it with a shrug of his shoulders. "If you want to do it, I'm not going to stop you."

"Gee thanks," Inoji said with mock sarcasm, knowing full well that his friend was like this pretty much all the time.

Chōichi looked at the door and the senseis standing in the way of it. "I don't think they would let us go and do that," he remarked, turning his head away from them.

"So what are we going to do?"

He shrugged his shoulders. "I don't know."

"Helpful," Shikatsuno remarked drily.

He glared at the lazy boy. "You got a better idea?"

"Not really, no."

"Then you probably shouldn't talk."

"Eh, fair enough," he replied without a care in the world, looking up at the ceiling. "Maybe we should double-check our stuff. We've got nothing else to do."

Inoji agreed with the idea. "It's something to do."

"Fine," Chōichi agreed too, already reaching for his holster. They fell into silence as they checked their stuff. They tried to maintain a serious air but they still had that excited air about them that practically screamed they were on their first mission outside the village. The Jōnin at the door took note of them and shook their heads slightly. They would learn soon enough. It was why they were here.

(Location: South Pole)

Since they couldn't dock at the port (that was essentially suicide), Korra and the rest of her team were forced to dock the Zhu Li along the coastline. It was a rough thing to pull off and it had involved Korra actually leaping off the side of the ship, going into the Avatar State, and bending the ice and snow of the coastline into a rough shape of a dock. It hadn't been pretty but it was able to get the ship in safely, so they took it.

Once they were docked and all, they set out for Korra's old training compound. The Avatar herself took Naga and urged her to run hard while everyone else took Oogi and flew there. When Korra saw the gates of the compound before her, they started to open without any signaling from her. She took it and urged Naga to go faster, crossing the gates in record time.

Naga started slowing down as Oogi landed nearby. Korra's eyes were on the main house and the person coming down the stairs towards them. "Mom!" she shouted in relief, hopping down off Naga and running towards her mother.

Senna received the incoming hug gratefully. Despite all that had happened recently, she was glad to see her baby girl again. "I'm so happy you're here."

Korra was glad to be back but she had to be on point. "Where's Dad?" she asked.

Grief and sorrow appeared on her mother's face. "Unalaq wiped out the entire southern resistance, and captured your father."

"I'll get him back," she promised without hesitation.

"Where is my mother?" Tenzin asked Senna, walking up to her with Jinora in his arms. The rest of his family stood behind him.

"She's in the healing hut," she told him, a sick look passing through her face at the thought of what lay inside. She had been helping but there still too many that needed help and couldn't get quick enough. "So many injured," she said.

Yue came up to the forefront, Tahno a few steps behind her. "How bad is it?" she asked.

"Bad. Very, very bad," she answered.

"Okay." She looked back at her apprentice. "Nurse time, Tahno," she told him.

"Understood," he replied, already reaching for the buttons on his coat. Once it was off, he could roll up his sleeves and help out.

"Nurse time?" Bolin repeated. An image came to his mind at those words: several lovely ladies dressed in fetching nurse outfits. It was such a nice little image that it left him with wondering if he was going to be the patient or the doctor.

Unfortunately for him, everyone could see the look on his face as he daydreamed about it. Mako was especially embarrassed by it, particularly when his brother started drooling. "Bro, snap out of it," he said, shaking the Earthbender roughly by the shoulder.

It got his brother's attention as he came out of it. "Huh? Wait? What?"

"I think what he was trying to ask is that you're a nurse, Tahno?" Asami asked him, clearly just as surprised as Bolin had been. It seemed like every time she talked to her fellow apprentice, there was something about him.

"I've got training," he replied, opening his coat, "And experience since I've been down here fighting."

"Tahno, less talking, more moving," his sifu ordered him.

"You got it, boss. Lead the way." She did just that, walking up the steps at a quick pace. He was about two steps behind her and everyone else brought up the rear. They didn't waste any time getting the door to the hut open and going.

Korra and Tenzin were ready to follow them in but the scene they looked at was such a shock, they had to take a moment to fully realize what it was they were looking at. The normal spacious room with beds at the walls was now awash with cots and each of those cots had a rebel on them. There were bandages wrapped around every limb imaginable and even then they could see the bandages leaking dark red blood. Both Yue and Tahno were already walking amongst the wounded, seeing what could be done to help.

As she watched them tend to the wounded, Korra saw the rebels look relieved at the two of them. It was only then that she realized just how long the two of them had been fighting here in the South Pole. She had been doing nothing while in Republic City, just a lot of running around, and her aunt and someone she had initially considered an arrogant ass of a guy had been fighting. They were comrades to the rebels, what was she? She was just an Avatar who failed to bring reinforcements like they had been hoping.

She heard footsteps walking gently towards them and saw Katara coming to the door. "What happened?" the old Waterbender asked, looking at Jinora being held in Tenzin's arms.

"Her soul is trapped in the Spirit World," her son told her. The rest of the family crowded around him, looking down at Jinora with worried eyes.

"Oh my goodness!" she exclaimed worriedly. "How long has she been away?"

"Almost a week," Kya answered. "I've tried to keep her energy flowing, but I can feel her slipping away. You're the only one who can help her now, Mom."

She looked down at her granddaughter and then at the group. Her eyes found Asami but she noticed that there was someone supposed to be beside her that wasn't. "Where's Naruto?" she asked.

"He's not here," his apprentice said, looking down at the ground with eyes that spoke of her embarrassment.

Katara could see that. She would've thought that with the situation happening here, he would've come. "Why?"

She kept looking down at the ground, not wanting to make eye contact with her. She was someone who had known Naruto far longer than she had been alive. Trying to tell her why he didn't come just seemed to be a bad idea. She felt a sharp nudge in her back and she looked at Bumi. He just leaned his head towards his mother and she forced herself to look at the old healer. "He said, and I quote, 'this is not a matter for the Paragons. When it does, I will gladly help. Until then, I'm not going down to that frozen wasteland.'"

Katara closed her eyes for a moment. "Spirits take you, Naruto," she thought to herself. "We could really use your help down here." But there was nothing she could do about it now. She opened her eyes and looked at her family. "Bring her to the back," she told Tenzin.

Her children and student followed into the back of the hut. There was a pool of water that was Katara's own healing spot. She sat down before it and Tenzin knelt down beside her, laying his daughter into the pool. As soon as she was in, Katara began to bend the water back and forth, healing her and keeping her stable. It responded to her will and pushed and pulled against her, glowing as it went.

Tenzin watched her do this like he had done many times before. But this time calmness did not fill him at the sight. He was still worried about his daughter and not even his mother's healing reassured him. "How much longer can she survive like this?" he asked her.

"I don't know, but she is very strong to have lasted this long."

"Is there anything I can do to help?" Korra asked, feeling that she had to do something.

"Not here," her old teacher replied. "But the men out front could use your aid. The rest of you, please step outside."

They all began to do just that when Korra stopped at the door. As the others left, she stayed there. She turned to look at Katara but her old master spoke first. "Korra, there are people who require your aid."

"I know."

"Then why are you still here?"

It was a good question and honestly, she didn't know if now was the right time to tell her. But she also didn't know if they were going to have another time alone for a bit. So she might as well tell her. "When I was in the Spirit World, I met Grandfather. He asked to pass on his love to you," she said.

Katara didn't reply right away since she was more focused on her granddaughter. But eventually she said, "Thank you." Her former student took it with a nod and walked out of the room, going to the aid of the people who needed it.

---

After a long three hours of tending to the wounded and making sure that they survived, Korra was able to talk to the others outside on the grounds. "I talked to the rebels," she started off as the others looked at her. Yue and Tahno had been finishing up inside and were now coming down the steps. "They said Unalaq's got the southern portal surrounded. Harmonic Convergence is only a few hours away."

"Then we have to break through the enemy lines ourselves and get to the portal now," Tenzin promptly declared.

"There's no use in talking any more. We know what our mission is."

Even though they were going on a roll, which was good and all, Bolin still felt the need to point what was obvious to him. "A suicide mission…" he said loud enough to be heard.

Everyone turned their gaze onto him and Mako restrained the urge to cover his eyes and groaned. "Bolin, the next time you have something dumb to say," Tahno told him bluntly, "don't say it."

Bumi could see that the mood was turning grim and decided to lighten it up a little bit. So he started spinning a tale that was about half-true (not that they would know). "You know, I was in a similar situation once. My platoon had crawled through the desert with no water for a week! But when we finally located the only oasis for a hundred miles, it was surrounded by angry Sandbenders. I realized our only chance to get to the water was to drop in from above. So I fashioned together a catapult, and with the help of a few well-trained hog monkeys…"

As he continued to talk, his little brother got angry, which made his face start to twitch. By the time he got to the hog monkeys part, Tenzin finally cracked, shouting "Enough of your ridiculous lies! Can't you see that the fate of the world and Jinora's life depends on what we do here today?!"

Bumi looked upset at the shouting but didn't protest or argue. Both Kya and Yue saw that and despite the situation, felt a little bad for Bumi. They had long since come to the realization that his tall-telling was his way of trying to reassure people that everything would be fine. Since the last time the two brothers had shared actual quality time with one another was during their childhood, Tenzin didn't know what he had been trying to do.

And while Asami certainly didn't know what he was saying either, she did latch onto something else. "Hold on, maybe Bumi's right. We don't have a catapult and hog monkeys, but we have a flying bison and there's a plane on Varrick's ship," she explained, "Maybe we can attack from above."

"What are you thinking?" Korra asked her.

"Mako, Bolin and I can use the plane to create a distraction, and scatter some of the defenses. You, Yue, Tahno, Tenzin, Bumi and Kya can fly into the spirit portal on Oogi when you see an opening."

"Whoa, whoa, whoa," Tahno said in protest. "When did I agree to go on this?"

"You're saying you're not?" she asked back. There was obvious surprise to her voice but there was also an undercurrent of a challenge.

He heard it and immediately responded. "No, I didn't say that—"

"Then why are you arguing?"

"He's not," Yue said, giving her apprentice a look. "He's just doing it for the sake of it."

"Yeah, what she said," he agreed, knowing full well that was his only safe way out of it.

"Well, stop," Asami told him. She looked over at Korra. "What do you think?"

The Avatar thought that it was a decent plan and frankly the only one they really had to work with. So she gave her agreement with a nod of her head. "Let's get moving."

Together they all gathered aboard Oogi's saddle and the bison took off again for the Zhu Li. But because they were in such a hurry to get this mission going, they had to leave behind Naga and Pabu. The two animals just sat in the compound grounds, watching sadly as the sky bison flew away.

(Location: Southern Portal)

What had once been a forest around the portal leading into the Spirit World had now been severely trimmed down in order to make room for the base. It had formed in a circle with two layers of protection. The first was the outer wall that surrounded the base itself and the second was the wall that surrounded the forest itself. Between the two walls lay the base and it was run like a base.

But even though it was a military base, both Desna and Eska walked through it with absolute no regard. They weren't military people, why should they care about how a base was run or not? Besides, they had something else to worry about, something far more important. They approached their father's tent and entered it without preamble. Chief Unalaq sat at the back of tent, seemingly meditating but they knew that he was watching them. "What are we still doing here, Father?" Eska asked him

"The invasion was completely successful and the southern tribe is under our control," Desna told him, "The spirit portals are open."

"You've restored balance. Now we would like to go home."

Unalaq stood up from where he had been sitting and looked at them with a smile. But it was not a fatherly smile or even a kind smile. It was the kind of smile they knew he had on whenever he thought that victory was all but assured. "You don't understand. Everything I've achieved so far will pale in comparison with what I'm about to accomplish."

His children were confused. "What else is there?" his son asked. "The Water Tribe is united."

"After today there will be no more Water Tribe. No more nations of any kind. The world is about to be transformed into something magnificent, and new. And I will lead this glorious revolution." The twins looked at each other with both concern and slight confusion. This wasn't something he would normally say. It sounded more like preaching than anything else and their father had never been one for preaching. "Now go outside and get the troops ready to defend the spirit portal," he commanded, turning his back on them.

"From whom?" asked Eska. "We've already beaten everyone."

"The Avatar will be here soon. She has no choice…"

The twins shared a look again but this time there was no confusion. That had been something else they had noticed about their father. When he talked about their cousin, it was as if he was talking about two separate people. He only spoke of the Avatar when he was talking about how she was needed to fulfill his goals and plans. That, they could ignore. The Avatar was just a title that was worn by certain people through the ages. It could be an identity in and of itself, something that could provoke fear and awe for the gullible masses.

But it was the other part they couldn't ignore. Whenever their father talked about Korra herself, it was usually when he looked upon what they had done and thought that she could've done it quicker, better, or both. If they had messed up, he would look at them in disappointment and tell them that if Korra had been his child, she wouldn't have made the mess in the first place. It was galling to be compared to someone that they had never really known and no matter how much they did or how hard they did it, they were always compared to her.

"Father," Desna said.

Unalaq didn't even look back at them when he spoke. "I gave you a command. Why aren't you obeying it?"

"We both have a question, something that we wish to hear the answer to." Eska gave him a look that asked him if he was sure about going through with this. He gave a small nod in reply, which she returned. If he was going through with it, she was going with him.

Unalaq gave an annoyed and tired sigh. "What is it then?"

"Would you have preferred having Korra as your child instead of us?" Eska asked, both shortly and bluntly.

To their disappointment, he didn't even hesitate when he answered, "Yes."

"…I see." They left without saying another word. What else was there to say?

(Location: Land of Spring)

They ate in a seedy bar and they knew it was seedy because it actually had the word "seedy" in the name of the bar. They sat a long table that would've been fine on its own four legs, if there wasn't a clear crack down the middle and a thick block of different colored wood shoved underneath the crack to keep it up. The food served was simple and basic but somehow the Genin got the feeling that was all the bar could afford to give out to customers. The Jōnins were drinking sake but their students only had water.

"Remind me again, why we're not eating at the Daimyo's palace alongside the Kazekage?" Tsume asked her sensei while also eyeing the rest of them. Aoimaru was nestled in her laps, more content to snooze than anything else.

"We are trying to maintain a low profile here, Tsume," Hiruzen reminded her. "Going to the Daimyo's palace from the slums of the city would've gotten attention."

"Then why did the Kazekage go?"

"He's the Kazekage," he said, making it sound like the most obvious thing. "If he didn't pay a social visit to the Daimyo while in town, things would have looked very odd."

She couldn't argue that fact. Ever since the last war, the shinobi business itself had become media-worthy with the Kages being at the forefront of it all. The Kazekage was a little infamous in that he didn't buy into it and yet paid attention to it. He was known (some affectionately, a few derogatorily) as the Old Man of the Kages, being the oldest one of the five. Each of the Kage had such an epitaph, earned mostly because of their fighting in the war. Their own Hokage had the title Taka (Hawk).

"You're not missing much, Tsume," Karura told her from where she lounged in her own seat, completely relaxed despite the setting that they were in. "It's just a lot of sitting straight and making sure that you eat right."

"So, manners?" asked Jiro.

She nodded, "Yeah, pretty much."

"Well, that rules out Tsume."

"Hey!" she barked out at him.

"Volume!" their sensei snapped out instantly, eyes watching the rest of the bar. There were a few curious glances but no one really paid attention.

Tsume obeyed the command but still glared at her teammate. "Hey!" she said again in a lower voice. "That was uncalled for!"

"I've seen you eat," he retorted. "Your dog has better manners then you do."

Aoimaru didn't join the conversation but Tsume shifted her legs so he would be more comfortable. "I'm the heir to the Inuzuka clan. I know manners. I have manners."

"Not from what I've seen."

"Yeah, same here," Tsukiko agreed.

Tsume turned her annoyed gaze upon her friend. "Hush, you."

"You're not my mom."

"No, but I can kick your ass."

"Not anymore, you can't."

"Children," Rin said in a voice that fell over the entire table. "Don't even think about starting to fight."

Tsukiko instinctively shivered. She knew that voice well. The last time she had heard it was when they had been following the dogs to the mountains. It was a voice that demanded that they pay attention to what she was saying otherwise it would end badly and hurt even worse. "We weren't going to fight," she said to her sensei while her eyes found Tsume's.

"Really?" she asked, clearly not believing her. She caught the eye motion but kept her focus on her own student for the moment.

"Of course not," she answered. "Right, Tsume?"

"Yeah," the Inuzuka agreed.

Rin looked at both girls and then at her other two students. "And what do you think?"

Both Hiro and Arashi sat next to their teammate but looked at each other first. It was a brief glance and then they looked back at her. "If Iron Claw says she isn't going to fight, she's not going to fight," Arashi finally declared.

Hiro nodded in agreement. "Yeah, her father would've made sure of that."

Their teammate gave the Hyūga a look that would've preceded a demand of what the hell he was talking about, but under the circumstances, she chose to continue with keeping her mouth shut. "I can attest to that," her other teammate agreed.

"What makes you say that?" Karura asked him, turning her attention onto him. They sat on different ends of the table and she looked at him with a very keen eye. The Jōnins took note of her attention but said nothing about it. The last marriage between Konoha and Suna was fruitful for both villages. But that had been a consensual marriage, not a political one. There would be no forcing anyone to marry for the sake of the village (at least not obviously).

"I live there," he said with a shrug of his shoulders.

"Do you know?"

"Yeah, I do."

Tsukiko barely managed to stop herself from groaning out loud. "Don't go down that road, Arashi," she silently begged him. "She'll never let it go if you do."

"Interesting," the pain in the ass from Suna remarked, mostly to herself, "How very interesting."

Arashi gave her a puzzled look. Tsukiko saw it and started to panic a little. "Don't say it! Don't say it!"

"What do you mean by that?"

"And he said it," the Uchiha said to herself, shrugging her shoulders in defeat. She shouldn't be surprised.

Karura kept her gaze on him. "It's interesting that you live in her house and know her well enough to know what kind of manners she has."

He lost the puzzlement as he realized what exactly she was trying to say. "It's called paying attention at the dinner table. Haven't you ever done it?"

She shrugged without caring. "Not really, I'm an only child. It's only me and my parents at the table." She said those words without really thinking about them. They were a part of her life and they weren't going anywhere, why should she have to care about them?

But he heard the way she said those words and his face frowned instantly. Hiro and Tsukiko saw the look and started paying more attention. "You shouldn't talk about your family like they're always going to be there," he told the Kazekage's grandniece. "They're not."

She looked at him, confusion evident on her face. "We're not talking about my family here. We're talking about you living with Tsukiko." The confusion faded away as she got back onto the topic she wanted to talk about.

"What about it?"

"I didn't think that the Hokage would let just anyone into his home." An intrigued look came onto her face. As soon as she saw, Tsukiko didn't like it. She just knew that it would lead to a question that would be bad. "Tell me, are you two sleeping in the same bed?"

While in the back of her mind, she knew that was going to be the kind of question she should've been expecting, Tsukiko still stared at her like she suggested she go on a homicidal killing spree in Konoha before having sex with the Daimyo in front of everyone who could see it. It was a horrifying thing to even think about, let alone consider. She stared at the Suna Chūnin with her jaws agape. She didn't know what Arashi looked like but she assumed that it was along the same line as her expression.

Karura looked at her and then Arashi's slightly horrified look. "What?" she asked.

"How could you even say something like that?" Tsukiko demanded, doing her best to keep her voice down even though it was begging to shout loudly/

"Oh relax, it's not like I'm saying you two are having sex," she said, dismissing it with a wave of her hand. Really, how prudish could a person get?

"We're not sharing a room," Arashi told her.

"Of course you're not."

"They're not," Hiro weighed in, wanting to stop this before it actually erupted into a fight.

The rest of the Genin weighed in too, defending their teammates. "Hiro's right," Tsubasa declared.

"Yeah," Tsume agreed.

"They do have separate rooms," said Jiro.

"Believe us," Chōichi told her.

Inoji nodded. "We've seen his room. We've been in his room."

"So just leave it alone, hm?" Shikatsuno asked her.

She looked at them all with a faint amused look. "Very impressive," she finally said. "Did you guys practice that?"

"No, we didn't."

"Sure seems like it."

He sighed and looked over at Tsukiko. "I can see why you keep calling her that peculiar nickname."

It was meant as a realization and a somewhat apology. But she didn't take it as one. Instead, she said back, "It took you that long to figure it out?"

"What nickname?" Karura asked, looking a little interested and confused too.

"I didn't think that it was that big of a problem and that you were just over-exaggerating," he said in reply.

"And my frequent pleading with my dad to let me stay home every time he announced that a trip to Suna was coming up didn't tip you off?"

"Again, I thought you were over-exaggerating."

"What nickname?" Karura asked, trying to look at them both.

"She calls you the pain in the ass from Suna," Tsume told her.

She looked at Tsukiko with complete surprise on her face. She couldn't believe that she would be called that. "Why would you name me that?" she asked in clear disbelief.

Tsukiko looked at the Suna Chūnin like she had just realized how oblivious she was. "Because you are the pain in the ass from Suna!" she told her, barely able to keep her voice down. Some people at the bar started to look over but she didn't pay them much attention. "You've always been the pain in the ass from Suna! You were the pain in the ass from Suna from the day you first came to the village!"

"I—"

"No, I don't want to hear it. You're just going to give me some lame ass excuse about how you're not a pain in the ass. You are a pain in the ass. That's a fact!"

"Tsukiko, you're done," Rin said to her, looking her right in the eye. Her student stopped before she could say anything else. "Go back to the room and get some sleep. We'll be leaving in three hours."

"The rest of you do the same," Gin told the others, looking at them all to make sure that the point was made and got across. No one argued with the order. They all left the table after taking one last sip of water or bite of food.

As they left the bar, the set of Jōnin looked at the remaining Chūnin. "That means you too, Karura," Rin told her.

She normally would've argued that either A: she wasn't a Genin; she was a Chūnin or B: she wasn't a Konoha shinobi and they couldn't command her to do anything. Instead, she just watched as Tsukiko left the bar with her teammates. "Why would she call me that?" she asked.

The Hatake gave her an even look. "Do you not remember what happened at the train station?"

Of course she knew what happened. She was there. "What was wrong with what happened?

She gave the Chūnin a look again. "See it from her perspective."

"Huh?"

"See it from her perspective," she repeated.

She looked annoyed and gestured with her fingers impatiently. "I'm going to need a little more than that."

She sighed in defeat. "And they made you a Chūnin."

"Hey, I earned that promotion," Karura all but shouted looking very offended at those words. She gripped the edges of the table and looked like she wanted to leap over it to attack Rin.

But the Jōnin kept her in her seat with the continuing look. "Then you would've gained some nuances and know how to see things from different angles."

"Ah, leave her alone, Rin," Hiruzen said from where he leaned against the wall. "She's a teenager. We've all been there."

"We were less thicker than her."

"Would someone just give me a straight answer here?" the Chūnin demanded, getting angrier by the second, banging her fist against the table.

Gin looked at her evenly. "How would you see your relationship with Tsukiko?" he asked.

"We're friends, of course."

"Really?" he asked. "You're friends?"

"Yes." They might not see each other often but she liked to think that she and Tsukiko were friends.

"I don't think that Tsukiko would see it that way?"

"What? She can't take a little ribbing?"

He looked at her and then rolled his eyes. "That's ribbing? We call it harassment in Konoha."

"What? I'm not doing anything that bad to her!" she protested.

"Again, see it from her perspective," Rin told her. "Now go and get some sleep." She looked to protest but the Jōnin stared her down. "Don't make me turn it into an order. You know that I will."

"Fine," she said with an annoyed grumble, all but stomping out of the bar.

(Location: South Pole)

Both sky bison and plane hurtled through the air, going straight for the spirit portal. Since she was the only one really qualified to fly it, Asami was the one manning the plane. She flew it in closer to Oogi and held a thumbs up to Tenzin, signaling that she was ready to go. He nodded and urged his bison upwards, readying his part of the plan.

She turned her attention back to where she was flying. But even though she was trying to keep her mind on the mission, she couldn't help but wish that her sensei was here to help. But he had refused. Not even Yue was able to convince him (although she had a suspicion that the Water Paragon didn't really try). She could feel the whistle he had given her before the Zhu Li had left pressing around her neck.

"When things go south, and trust me it will in this kind of situation, and you find yourself standing in the deep end of shit, blow this and help will come running."

Those had been his last words to her before walking away. She often wondered what he meant by that. Who would come to help, him? She doubted that but a small part of her held onto that kind of hope. Whatever or whoever was supposed to help her, now wasn't the time to worry about it. She checked Mako, who was standing on the wing, and then Bolin, who was standing on the other side. "Are you ready?!" she called out to him since he was the more nervous of the two.

"I'm an Earthbender, strapped to the wing of a plane, hundreds of feet in the air," he called back as he held onto one of the wires like it was his lifeline, "so, no?"

"Don't worry," his brother called out. "There's no way they'll be expecting this."

The light of the portal was the first thing that came out of the clouds, breaking them apart as it were. The second thing that they noticed was the number of dark spirits hovering and orbiting the beam of the portal. The third thing they noticed was the huge military base surrounding the forest holding the portal and the fact that it seemed every soldier and mecha tank there was waiting for the command to attack. "I think they were expecting it!" Bolin shouted out the obvious.

"Okay, this is going to be a little harder than I first thought," Asami thought to herself as the plane flew closer and closer to the base. "But Sensei taught me how to adapt and overcome. So that's what I'm going to have to do."

But when the plane finally passed an unknown line, the soldiers down below attacked by bending icicles up into the air at the plane at a speed that could've sprained someone's neck. And there were a lot of them coming at her. "Shit!" she cursed, throwing the plane off to the side in order to dodge.

Bolin could see the incoming icicles, which were as thick as his own arm but also very pointy, and he could understand why she had to dodge. But that didn't meant he wasn't going to scream in a panic as she dodged. So he did that while also screaming, "Asami!" at the top of his lungs too.

She could feel the entire plane shake and rattle in protest as she fought to fly it sideways out of the way of the missiles. Eventually, the plane's protest began to lessen and she knew that the time to aim was getting close. "Get ready!" she shouted to the boys, dodging more volleys of icicles as she got closer to the base. Once she was there and ready to make the pass, she shouted out, "Fire!"

At that command, Mako began bending fireballs at every tent or structure he could find and aim at. He wouldn't be able to destroy it outright, so he settled for making sure that it went up in flames. He was able to do that easily and carved out a good path of destruction as Asami pulled out of the pass.

She flew high and arched it as more icicles came flying at her. She dodged them but it was close. She would've sworn that the last icicle came an inch away from hitting her tail. She turned in for another pass and noticed the mecha tanks were pointing her way and firing their bolas. They were too far low to actually hit her at the moment but once she got in close, it'd be a different story. Fortunately, they had planned for the tanks. "Bolin!" she called out.

The Earthbender got back some of his confidence, enough to undo a flap on his pack, reach in, pull out a few of the clay-coated mines stuffed in there, and bend them right at the tanks. The clay was coated on and not a fundamental part of the mine, so it was harder to control them. For a novice, it would've been outright impossible. But Bolin was not a novice and he could handle a little difficulty with ease. How else would he have managed to get a career in Pro-bending?

The mines landed on the tanks in places they wouldn't be able to reach with their claws in time. As Asami pulled out of the pass, Bolin whipped out the trigger, primed it, and pressed down the button. He could hear and feel the explosions erupting from the tanks at his back. "Ha-ha!" he cheered.

"You guys ready for round 2?" Asami called out as she pulled into another pass. The brothers didn't reply. They didn't have to. They just got ready for the attack coming up.

While they laid waste to the base below them, Oogi was flying at a higher altitude. Korra was watching the portal's light and the dark spirits being illuminated by it. "There are spirits everywhere," she said. "I don't see an opening."

"Let's circle around and see if we can find a way in from the other side," Tenzin replied, already urging his bison to turn.

Arcs of dark energy suddenly appeared from the portal, smashing into each other. From that collision emerged enormous dark spirits, easily the size of Oogi or bigger. "We've got incoming!" Tahno shouted as he watched the spirits come closer.

"We can see that!" Yue told him.

"How were they able to see us? We were far away!"

"They probably heard him!"

"From that distance?!" he demanded.

Before she could reply to him, Tenzin shouted, "Hold on!" and yanked the reins hard enough for Oogi to turn sharply and dive down. Most of the spirits missed him but the smaller, quicker ones were able to match his turn and follow him down. One of them was able to attach a small part of itself to Oogi's tail and it started spreading across the bison like dark angry veins.

It also made the bison started to slow down, which was seen by the other spirits as an invitation to latch on and bring it down even harder. Korra saw one dark spirit grab hold of the bison's side and immediately bent a hard blast of air at it. It was knocked off and she felt a moment of victory. But then she saw another spirit coming towards the bison and blasted it with more air. Kya joined her with water from her pouch, bending it in a slashing motion at them. Both Yue and Tahno dealt with the spirts close enough to grab Oogi, punching them off.

They weren't as successful as the Benders and it was started to show as the bison couldn't maintain its flight path. "The spirits are weighting Oogi down!" Tenzin shouted at them. "We're losing altitude!"

Bumi turned to the spirit that had landed on the tail and went right for it. "Get off of him you sticky, nasty little blob of goo!" he shouted, slamming his foot down on what could be called its head. It took the blows and then swiped at him, knocking him off balance. He floated in the air for a moment and then fell with a shout. He landed onto the spirit and latched onto it hard. "If I go, you're coming with me!"

He got his feet under him and pushed off from the tail, falling through the air along with the spirit. "Bumi!" shouted Kya in horror as she watched her brother disappear into the snow beneath them.

Asami pulled the plane up into another pass pattern, flying past the icicles bent towards her. One got lucky and struck the tail, causing a small explosion and smoking starting to trail. "Agni take it!" she swore, already started to feel the loss of resistance against the joystick. Still, she brought the plane down low, close to the first set of barricades. He wasn't aiming for the men, as tempting as that was, but instead for the front of the barricade. He bent a wall of fire into being, right in front of the soldiers.

"That should keep them off me for a little bit," Asami thought in relief, pulling up out of the pass. When she came back down for the next pass, she was aiming right for the ice wall surrounding the forest. If a hole could be blown through it, it would make getting to the portal much easier.

Bolin took his cue as the plane got close. He bent the remaining amount of his mines out of the pack and right at a section of the wall. Once they were attached, he pulled out the trigger and pulled it, causing the wall to go up in explosive flames. "I wish Varrick was filming this!" he shouted as Asami flew away. "We could call it 'Nuktuk: Sky Warrior'!"

Asami didn't bother to wonder why he was thinking about Varrick right now. She was too busy diving down for another bombing run. Mako was able to set off the first building into flames but the next one was a little ways off. She leveled out the plane and flew straight for it. But the next thing she knew, there was a brief blinding light along with a loud explosion and the plane was going down. "What hit us?" she thought as she struggled to keep the plane going. She aimed it for crashing down outside of the base. "Brace yourselves!" she shouted to Mako and Bolin as the plane gained speed without her help.

When the plane did finally crash, it hit the snow with an impact that threw all three of them out and into the snow. While they were relatively safe from the plane burning up, they landed hard enough to be knocked out by it. Asami's last conscious thought was "I hope that Korra was able to reach the portal."

But her thought was futile. Oogi finally crashed into the ground close to them and his riders were sent flying, crashing into the snow too and getting knocked out in the process as well. Korra was the last one to go under and the last thing she saw were norther soldiers coming their way.

---

As Korra came to, feeling hurt all over her body, her eyes were able to make out someone tied to a post right in front of her. Her vision cleared and she could make details, seeing that it was her father, very beaten up, before her. "Dad…" she said, struggling to get up. She felt cold iron around her wrists and heard chains rattling, so she didn't need to look down to see that her hands were bound. The right side of her face was particularly throbbing, like she had been cut bad there.

Tonraq saw his daughter come to. While he was relieved that she was still alive, he also wished that she wasn't here. Then again, he wished that he had been able to take down his own brother. "Korra…I'm so sorry," he said in a saddened voice. "I failed you."

"Don't give up. Harmonic Convergence isn't here yet. We still have a chance." She looked around and saw that Tenzin, Yue, Kya, and Tahno were bound beside her too. That gave her hope. The others hadn't been taken yet. Perhaps they could get to the portal or even free them.

But then the tent flap opened and Mako, Bolin, and Asami were tossed in, chains on their hands and feet. Eska and Desna stood behind, clearly their captors. "No," she thought in despair.

Mako lifted his head to meet her gaze. "We tried." Those two words had the sting of defeat attached to them.

Unalaq walked into the tent. "Congratulations, everyone," he said to them all. "You've all got front row seats for the beginning of a new world order."

Beaten and hurt as she was, she was still able to look him in the eyes. "You don't know what you're doing, Unalaq. Freeing Vaatu won't make you powerful, it will only make you a traitor to everything good that's happened over the last ten thousand years."

He looked down his nose at her. "You think what Avatar Wan did was good?" he asked in disdain. "Driving almost all the spirits from this world? The Avatar hasn't brought balance, only chaos. You call yourself the bridge between the two worlds, but there shouldn't be a bridge. We should live together as one."

She supposed his words were meant to be convincing but she knew the price of it would be too steep. "Even if Vaatu escapes, I'll put him right back in his prison, just like Wan did," she declared.

"It's true that when Wan fused with Raava he tipped the scales in her favor, but this time I'll be here to level the playing field. When Harmonic Convergence comes, I will fuse with Vaatu," he declared, ignoring his own children who looked at him in surprise, "and together we will become the new Avatar: a Dark Avatar. Your era is over."

His words were horrifying to even think about. But Tonraq saw more than that. He also saw what he would be giving up in the process. "Think about what you're doing," he pleaded to his little brother. "I know that you've always had a deep connection with the spirits, but you're still a man. You're still my brother. You're Eska and Desna's father. Are you willing to throw your humanity away to become a monster?"

"I'll be no more of a monster than your own daughter," he retorted, curling his lip ever so slightly. "The only difference is that while she can barely recognize her own spiritual power, I will be in complete alignment with mine. Vaatu and I will be as one. No one will be able to stand against us." He looked over at Yue with a look of absolute loathing and disdain. "And once we are one, we will end the Paragons, for good."

Yue didn't look afraid. She smirked. "Brave words, Unalaq," she told him. "But I know the truth about why you're doing this. You're not doing this to unify humans and spirits. You're doing this because you still have to prove that you're better than your brother at everything." She sighed in disappointment. "Such a child you are."

"Aunty Yue, what are you doing?" Korra thought, almost in a panic. It was like she was trying to get Unalaq to kill them.

He looked at her angrily. His fists shook slightly, like he was trying to restrain the urge to strike her. He was successful as he just looked at his daughter. "Keep them locked up," he ordered. "After the Harmonic Convergence, I will come for Korra."

"Yes father," she replied.

He turned around to leave the tent. But before he stepped outside, Yue spoke again. "You know, since we're declaring our intent, opening up our hearts, telling our plans and secrets to everyone here, why don't I reveal a secret to you, Unalaq?"

"What are you on about?" he asked back.

"Well, since I figured this is probably the last time we're going to be seeing each other, you might as well hear the truth."

He turned back around to look at her. "What truth?"

She looked him right in the eye and said with a blinding smile, "You were right all this time."

Her words made no sense but he felt a wave of satisfaction he often got when he knew or was told that he was right. "Oh? And how I was right?" he asked, looking down his nose at her. "Tell me."

Her smile was still there. It began to unnerve him. "Korra was supposed to be your daughter all along."

The silence that followed was so unnervingly quiet that if someone had dropped a coin on the ground, the sound it would've made would have sounded like a complete and utter racket to everyone there, except for one. Korra stared at her aunt figure in abject horror, remembering the day she rebelled against Unalaq and what had been revealed.

He wasn't troubled by her threats or her commands. It showed in how he rebuked her, like he was still her master and still teaching her. "Remember who you are. As the Avatar, you cannot threaten war. You must remain neutral, or our tribes will never find unity."

"You don't want unity. You want power. You've always been jealous of my father, haven't you?"

"He most certainly was," Yue said from where she leaned. "When he was a kid, they called him the spare and anything he did, Tonraq did first and better."

His face tightened in anger at her remark but Korra barreled on before he could even say anything. "You got him banished so you could become chief, and I bet it just killed you to learn he was the Avatar's father. No wonder you kept trying to take me away from him."

"It was more than that."

"Be silent," Unalaq told the Paragon, his anger whispering out of his controlled voice. "This doesn't concern you."

"Oh, what's the matter?" she asked mockingly. "Still upset that your little prophecy never came true? Sokka told me you were always so confident about it until it was proved otherwise."

"I said be silent."

"What are you talking about, Aunty Yue?" Korra asked her, her confusion mixing into her anger.

"I've been told that Unalaq here seems to believe that you, as the Avatar, should've been his daughter rather than Tonraq."

She looked at the Paragon in shock. Was she kidding? It didn't seem like it. The shock quickly disappeared and was replaced by her anger again. She turned her head back to her uncle. "Is this true?" she demanded.

"All I've ever wanted is to help you realize your destiny," he told her. It seemed that as she got angrier, he got calmer.

"Well, I don't want your help anymore." She didn't even want to be anywhere near him!

Now her Aunty Yue was saying that she was supposed to be Unalaq's daughter this time! It couldn't be! It had to be a lie, it had to be! "You're lying," she found herself whispering. "Please tell me you're lying, Aunty Yue."

Yue looked back at her with a sad expression and apologetic smile. "Really wish that I was, Short-stack. Sorry."

"How…?" Tenzin tried asking, unable to finish the question due to the shock he was growing through at the mere thought of her words.

She turned her attention to him and said, "Sokka didn't give me all the details about how Raava moves from Avatar to Avatar, only what I needed to know if the situation ever arises again."

"Situation?" repeated Unalaq, unable to help himself. "What situation?"

She continued on explaining, ignoring the shocked looks she was getting in the tent. "As far as I can tell, as an Avatar dies, Raava imprints on the last person next in the cycle the dying Avatar thinks of or sees and reincarnates through them. Since Unalaq was by Aang's side as he was dying, Raava imprinted on him and tried to travel to through him and create Korra. The whole process takes about ten seconds, or so I've been told."

This was news to both Desna and Eska, who were still trying to get over the fact that Korra was supposed to be their big sister. They were also wondering if it had meant whether they would've existed or not. "Then why didn't it happen?" Desna asked, unable to help himself.

She smiled at him. "As my sifu always said, a lot can happen in ten seconds." She turned her eyes onto Unalaq. "Did you never wonder why Sokka, Naruto, or Suki, some of Aang's closest friends and confidantes, weren't there to say goodbye to him as he died?"

He had wondered that briefly at the time but didn't think too hard on it because he was so close to getting what he had wanted. He had known about the imprinting process from an old scroll he had found in an ancient library. It was why he had gotten so close to Avatar Aang in the first place. But now, it was coming back to him and he realized too many years too late what that implied. "You don't mean—?"

"I sure do," she said cheerfully, that smile still on her face, "Two in the Spirit World to carry out the deed, and two in this world to protect their bodies."

Asami was confused by that wording and asked the Water Paragon, "What does that mean?"

"It means…well, let's just say that as Aang died, the previous Paragons staged an abortion/kidnapping." That had been the exact same words she had heard Sokka use when he told her what they had done and she found it apt.

Korra couldn't believe what she was hearing. It just seemed all too surreal. "That meant that Grandfather and Lord Naruto knew that I was the Avatar before they had even met me," she realized. "That meeting was just a formality!"

Unalaq looked quite shaken about the fact. "That's impossible," he protested. "It can't be done. It shouldn't have been able to have been done."

Yue just laughed at that. "Goodness, you make it sound like this would be the first time the Paragons have done something like this."

She sounded so surprised and innocent when saying those words. But he knew that it was a farce. "Why?" he asked her. "Why would they do this?" They couldn't have known what he had been planning that long, he had been too careful in what he had done. There was no way they could have known.

Her smile turned vicious and predatory. "You really didn't think they would let you get away with banishing your brother and murdering your father to take the chiefdom, did you?"

Again, silence filled the room as that piece of information filled their ears. Tonraq looked at his little brother with horrified eyes, just like his niece and nephew. He had always thought his father had died of natural causes. But now…now he heard this? "You didn't," he said to Unalaq, his voice showing his shock. "Tell me you didn't. Tell me you didn't murder our father." His brother turned his gaze to him and once he saw those eyes, surprised at being revealed, he knew. "How could you? He was our father, damn you! He loved us both! How could you kill him!?" he demanded, wanting an answer but getting none.

Korra knew the answer, having been told it back when her own father had been imprisoned. Only now she could understand the whole truth of it.

"Aunty Yue, you got my message," Korra said with relief, walking up to her.

"What's going on here, Korra?" she asked her, being completely serious.

"Listen to me, Unalaq lied to us all. He got Dad banished from the North Pole." She waited for the reaction, but it never came. "Well?"

"Well what?"

"Why aren't you surprised by that?" she demanded.

"Oh Spirits help me. The Paragons could've told you that, Korra!" she finally said, rolling her eyes in exasperation.

The shock of surprise wasn't just limited to the Avatar. It stretched out to the others in the room like a wave of water crashing down on them. Even Varrick was surprised by it. "You guys knew all this time?" Mako asked her.

"Of course we did. Tonraq's banishment had been a constant fight between Sokka and the previous chief," she replied. "It was bad before he married Senna and simply got more intense after. But after a visit to the South Pole to see his son and his new wife, the chief seemed ready to reconsider his order. Of course, he died before he could and Unalaq ascended the throne, thus making sure that his brother stayed in the south. It was all too coincidental for us and we had our suspicions ever since."

"Sifu, if you had your suspicions, why didn't you act on them and kill him?" Tahno asked her. "I thought we could do that."

"We can only do that to the Avatar and get away with it, Tahno," she told him with a voice that was half reprimanding, half lecturing. "Anyone else and we would be faced with imprisonment or death. And besides," she added with a half-smirk, "we got back at him in a different way."

She just stared at her aunt figure in a whole new light, a light that she didn't really like. She was looking at a Paragon who had no qualms about mocking her opponents by revealing deadly truths that could rattle everyone that heard them. "You…You…" Unalaq tried to say, but the words just wouldn't come out of his mouth.

"What's the matter?" she asked innocently. "Artic hen got your tongue?" He stopped trying to speak and just settled for glaring at her. And she just laughed. "Like that would work now. It hadn't the first time."

"Uh, Yue?" said Asami from where she laid. "I don't think it's a good idea to piss him off."

"Ah, don't worry about it, Asami," she replied flippantly. "Even on his best day, Unalaq couldn't even beat the weakest or the youngest of the Paragons. I should know. I've been there every time he's tried." She kept smiling right at the chief.

"Is that why he wants to get rid of us?"

"No, that's his way of trying to make sure that no one will actually oppose him, in his mind. Of course, he particularly hates me."

"Well, you've made him angry."

"Oh no, it goes further than that."

Tonraq realized where she was going with this. It had been such an inconsequential memory to him at the time that he never gave it much thought. But now that he did think about it, he could only groan to himself "Akela give me mercy," he prayed. "It's because of that?"

It was Mako who asked her, "How much further?"

Unalaq looked like he wanted to drown both him and Yue at the same time and with extreme vengeance. But Yue kept on talking. "You never really forget your first crush, do you?" she asked rhetorically. She just kept dropping bombshell after bombshell on them. "Of course, it's a bit of a turn-off when one manages to be both arrogant and stupid in what he does to charm a girl."

"Shut up!" Unalaq finally snapped, yelling at her.

"Or what?" she asked him, still smiling. "You're going to try and hurt me? We both know that you can't. So what are you going to do?" She waited for his reply. Even though the others didn't know what he would do, she did.

True to form, he didn't disappoint. He turned around with a huff and stomped out of the tent. She couldn't resist one last parting shot. "If you ever want to get your ass kicked, you know where to find us!"

"Would you stop already!?" demanded Korra, looking at her like she had lost her mind.

Once the shock of the revelations passed, Tenzin started to fill with despair. "I failed in every way," he said in defeat. "We've lost Jinora forever." They were never going to get her free now.

"There's still a chance," Kya reminded him, "They didn't get Bumi."

(Location: Land of Spring)

They were climbing through the mountains in the dark of the night, making their way through to the mountains. Karura was at the front, following Rin as she led the way, and walking alongside Tsukiko. The redhead from Suna had thought long and hard about what the Konoha Jōnin had told her but it just didn't make any sense. So she resolved to talk Tsukiko personally to figure out just what was going on. But everyone was just so intent on going up the path that she couldn't find the moment to speak.

After two hours of walking, she finally mustered up her courage and leaned over. "Hey, Tsukiko," she whispered.

The girl flicked her eyes at her but didn't turn to look fully. "What?" she asked as she kept walking.

"Can we talk?"

"We're on a mission right now and you want to talk?"

She huffed a little at that. "It's not like we're going to be stopping any time soon." She didn't hear any kind of mention for a break. Not that she needed one of course. She was just concerned about the other Genin. They looked like they were about to drop dead on the ground but still kept going.

"Fine, whatever," the Uchiha said with a resigned huff. "What do you want to talk about?"

"Well, the Jōnin have told me to look at our friendship from your eyes. I've tried that but I can't since I'm not you. So tell me, what do you think of our friendship?"

That was what she wanted to talk about?! Tsukiko almost boiled over in rage at the question. Her instinct was to shout and yell at her for asking that damn question. But the rational part of her reminded her that she was on a mission that required silence or something close to it. So she went a voice that could've been colder than Hell. "Our friendship?" she started. "Is that what you want to call it?"

"Well, yeah," the redheaded girl replied, like it was the most obvious thing in the world.

"I've got news for you. We don't have a friendship. You're just a bully that seems content to pick on me every time that we're near each other."

"What?" Her voice almost raises but she managed to keep it down. "I am not a bully."

"Yes, you are."

"I…I never thought myself of one. I didn't think you thought of me as one"

"Well, guess what? You were wrong," she mentally snarked as she followed the path around the curve. But aloud she just asked, "What the hell did you think you were?"

Karura looked a little embarrassed. "Gramps always said that I reminded him of Naruto Uzumaki, so when I met you I thought you were like Sasuke and treated you so."

"…Did it ever occur to you that I don't want to be my grandfather?"

"But you acted like him so perfectly!" she protested, barely able to keep her voice low. "You would always scowl, make a snarky comment, and walk away!"

"That was me trying to keep away from you. You never got the point. You were never my friend. You were just the bully that was more horrible then the ones at the Academy. While others thought you were so cool, I just wanted to keep away from you. So if this doesn't get your attention, I don't know what will: after this mission is over, stay the fuck away from me, Karura."

To add the emphasis to her words, she walked a little quicker to put distance between the two of them. The Chūnin from Suna let her, slowing her pace but never taking her eyes off her. The other Konoha teams walked past her and soon she found herself walking by her great-uncle. "Something on your mind, kiddo?" asked Kankurō, moving the strap on his shoulder so the large scroll on his back was in a better position.

"I…I was just told that the friendship I thought that I had wasn't there," she replied, a little shocked by it all.

He shrugged his free shoulder and said, "Finally found out, huh?"

She looked at him in surprise. "You knew?"

"Karura, anyone who had a pair of eyes in their head along with a brain could see what the relationship was."

"Why didn't anyone say anything?" She never considered herself to be a mean or cruel person. She hated people like that with a passion.

"We were going to let you figure it out or wait for Tsukiko finally tell you. We're not going to fix everything for you, you know," he told her a little reprimanding. For all of her brilliance, his grandniece could quite thick sometimes.

She looked a little hurt at his words but she didn't protest them. Instead, she said, "I just that we were Naruto and Sasuke come again."

He winced at the mention of the two. He couldn't help it. It was a reflex for all the old people now, even more so since they had met Naruto's grandson. "Kid, if anything she's Naruto and Arashi is Sasuke." Gaara had remarked that it was almost like the past had come back to haunt them just in different forms and he couldn't disagree with the idea.

"So where does that leave me?"

"You're Karura, she's Tsukiko, and he's Arashi. That's all there is to it."

She was confused. "But you just said—"

He knew what he said, he had said it. "I used the words 'if anything' remember? They are not the other's grandfather. They are their own person and so are you. Instead of bringing up a past friendship, why don't you try making one of your own?"

She thought it over. It was a good idea and it also gave her the chance to apologize to Tsukiko for the unwanted abuse she had heaped onto her. "Yeah, yeah, you're right."

"Thank you, I do have my moments. But let's save until after the mission's done with, hm?" She agreed with his suggestion with a silent nod. They kept on walking up the path to the slave camp deep in the mountains.

(Location: South Pole)

"Oh, what was the name of that air bison that hit me again?" Bumi asked as he kicked his way out of the snow. For a moment, he wondered where the hell he was since all he could see was ice, snow, and even more ice. But then he heard the growling sound and his eyes refocused on the dark spirit hovering in the air in front of him.

He got back up to his feet quickly. The dark spirit hovered closer to him. "Oh, you wanna play some more?" he asked the rhetorical question. "Well, bring it on." He slipped into a strong Earthbender stance and moved his arms around theatrically. It was just a little something that he did to trick people into thinking that he was fooling around. Once the spirit was close enough, he stepped forward and delivered a punch that would've broken a human's jaw.

But the dark spirit just looked down at him. "Oops," he thought to himself, a weak chuckle escaping involuntarily from his mouth. The spirit didn't share in his humor. It preferred to just swat him away like he was some kind of bug. He landed in the snow again, this time face first. "Spirits, why does this seem really familiar?" he asked himself as he pulled his head out of the snow. Even before he finished asking the question, the memories came flooding in hard.

The sun burning bright in the sky.

His mouth tasting like sand, desperately wanting water.

An iron shackle around his wrist, burning his arm from the heat.

Hunger gnawing at his stomach, lost in the pain coating his body.

The shadow of a man covering him as he laid on the ground.

Laughter echoing cruelly in his ears as he struggled to get up again.

"No! No! You're not going down there again, Bumi," he told himself. "Bring yourself back to the present, right now!" He let the coldness of the snow shock him out of the unnecessary trip down memory lane and focus back on the spirit. "Oh, we're playing dirty, huh?" he asked, reaching into his coat. He spun around and threw the emergency knife he carried (another lesson that had been pounded into him by June).

It flew towards the dark spirit and struck, entering through the chest. But then it stopped, turned around, and was fired right back at him. He yelped again in surprise but instinct kicked as he leaned away from the incoming knife. Then he scrambled out of the way when the spirit leapt for him. He got back to his feet and kept his eyes on the spirit as he backed away.

His hands fell to his coat but he remembered that he had only packed the one knife. "Crap, crap, crap! I need a weapon!" he thought in a near panic, hands flying all over but finding nothing that would be useful. But then he felt something solid. He pulled it out and held it threateningly at the spirit, only to realize a half second later that it was his flute. He could just imagine his sifu's voice right then and there mocking him, "Great choice of weapon, Bumi."

But the spirit did the strangest thing he could've though possible: it stopped and looked at him. The markings on what passed for its face lessened somewhat. He was uncertain about what was going on, but he went with it. He started to play a jaunty little tune that he had heard many a time back his early navy years.

The spirit transformed even more as it listened, becoming less darker and edgy and more rounded. "Hmm… looks like we've got a music lover here," Bumi noted. He kept on playing the tune. His feet followed the song and began to march in place as he played. The spirit swayed from side to side too. He wasn't sure if it would turn back once he was done but he wasn't going to stop and see if it would happen. He heard the howling of a large animal that was getting closer as he played. He looked at where the sounds were coming from and saw that Naga was running full force towards him with Pabu on top her head. He stopped playing and laughed in relief. "Reinforcements!" he proclaimed as the polar bear dog came to a stop in front of him while the spirit hovered behind him. He gave her a hug but got down to business quickly. "All right soldiers, looks like it's on us to save the day, luckily I've got a plan."

---

Korra could see through the tent flap that the spirits circling the portal's light were getting more agitated. They must feel that Harmonic Convergence was getting closer. She and the others had to get out of the tent. Her cousins stared at the portal too, watching from the tent flap. "Eska, Desna, listen to me," she said to them both, getting their attention. "You've got to help us stop Unalaq. I know he's your father, but Vaatu has made him completely crazy."

They looked at her with their patented looks of dispassion. "We will never turn on our father," Eska told her.

"Please," she begged. "If you let me out now, I can still stop him from destroying everything. Once he fuses with Vaatu, no one will be safe." While Eska looked firm in her decision, she could see the look of doubt on her brother's face. "Desna, he won't be your father anymore."

The doubt disappeared and was quickly replaced by anger. He stepped towards her, almost like he was about to strike her. "You don't know what you're talking about!" he shouted at her. "Our father is the wisest man in the world. If he says what he is doing is right, I believe him."

"Kid, calling your father the wisest man in the world would be a bit of a stretch," Yue remarked lightly from where she sat. "I mean, besides now, have the two of you ever been out of the North Pole? Have you been to the other countries?" They didn't reply so she kept going. "I thought not. Do that first, and then try thinking of your father as the wisest man in the world. And let's be honest here too. You're not mad at her because of what's she is saying. You're mad because of what she was supposed to be."

Tahno could see that both of the twins were getting angrier as she kept going. "Sifu, I think it's best if you stop talking."

She was still flippant. "Ah, what are they going to do? Hit me with water?"

"The idea is fast becoming appealing," Eska told her.

"You say that but you know that it won't work. It's why you haven't done it yet." She smiled brightly at them. "But if you're willing to try, I'm game. Just don't cry when I kick your butts." They scowled hard at her but said and did nothing. "That's what I thought."

"Why are you doing this?" Tenzin asked her.

She shrugged her shoulders as best she could. "What else am I going to do? Just sit here and be silent? You know me better than that, Tenzin."

---

When he got to the base, Bumi waited outside for one of the guards to do a solitary patrol. He didn't have to wait long and when the guard walked past him, he ambushed the man and knocked him unconscious before he could do anything, stripping him out of his uniform. Once he was properly, he waited the right amount of time before walking back into the base. The soldier on guard duty at the gate gave him a wave of acknowledgement as he past and he returned it briefly. "Alright I'm in," he thought to himself.

The soldiers in the base were either trying to put out the fires caused by Mako and Bolin or standing around giving the dark spirits glances of various levels of anxiety. He heard one man say, "You know, if I wanted some ball of evil lurking over my shoulder all the time, I'd have stayed home with my mother-in-law."

He kept walking until he was sure that he was close enough to the portal and out of sight before he put his plan into action. "All right, spirit army. Your general is here," he proclaimed, pulling out the flute. "Follow me!" He decided to go with a tune that was a little faster-paced, thinking that it would draw them in faster. As he played, the dark spirits started to circling around, clearly interested in what he was playing.

He started to feel elated. "It's working!" He kept on playing and the spirits kept circling him. It was beginning to look like he had the army he needed. But then the spirits lunged at him, jaws agape and their intentions obvious. He hit the ground and stayed there as they tried to fight their way one another to get to him. "It's not working!" he realized, crawling out from underneath them.

Once he was out and back on his feet, the spirits noticed and started going after him. Fearing for his life, he started running through the base. "Why did I think that this was a good plan again?" he asked himself as he ran for his life around the corner. "Oh, right, because one of them liked my music!"

He didn't stop running as he zigged and zagged through the base, earning odd looks from the other soldiers. They were probably wondering why the spirits were chasing him but he too had a question: why weren't they doing anything to help him? He could really use the support!

As he made another turn, he saw spirits in front of him. "How did they get in front of me?" He turned around and started to run back the way he came, only to see spirits coming that way too. They didn't just get in front of him. They split to catch him in the middle of a pincer maneuver. "Crap!"

With nowhere to go, he felt like he was trapped. He saw that he was standing in front of a couple of mecha tanks. Thinking of nowhere else to go, he leapt up to the arms and then into the cockpit. Once again, he was glad for his sifu's teaching methods. He had lost count of how many times that they had saved his ass. The cockpit closed around him and on reflex, he put the harness on.

The spirits looked at him through the glass windows, glaring at him with hate. He thought that he was safe in there but then the spirit leaned their bodies back and went into the tank! The electricity that ran the entire thing began to crackle and hiss and not in a good way. In fact, it was crackling and hissing in a way that made him really concerned.

The next thing he knew, the machine had started up and rushed forward, almost running over a couple of soldiers and knocking down a tent in the process. It wasn't the only one the tank ran over either. One run over tent flapped up around the glass, making his sight a little hindered. "Not good, not good!" he thought in a panic.

As he felt the tank run down tent after tent, he started just grabbing at anything and everything that looked like a control. "Get me out of here!" he shouted into the closeness of the cockpit. He grabbed a lever and pulled it down. Gears outside began to whirl and move and for a moment, he thought that he was getting out. But it turned out just to be the arm rising up and firing off the grappling hook.

The hook flew through the icy air and latched onto the nearby communication tower. While it didn't decapitate any soldiers, the downside of it was that it now gave the tank a counterbalance. So instead of just rampaging through the camp wildly, it rampaged through the camp in a circular method. As it turned out, that was much more effective in terms of destruction to the camp. If the tank didn't knock down the tents, the taut cable would certainly do the trick.

Within second the majority of the base was in wrecks. But Bumi couldn't see that. He couldn't even control the tank. All he could do was just hold on to the controls and pray that it would stop soon. "This wasn't what I had in mind when I came up with this plan!" he mentally bemoaned as he felt the tank swerve. A faint smell began to fill the cockpit and when he sniffed it, he froze instantly. Something was on fire and he was certain that it was the tank itself.

But that wasn't the worst of it. The spirits were finally started to crawl into the cockpit and finally come after him. "Not good, not good!" he thought in a panic. His hands started inching up the back of the cockpit, trying to find something that would fend them off. He grabbed something that felt loose and he pulled, thinking that it would do something.

It did do something, just not what he had been hoping for. He found himself flying through the air as the seat got ejected from the cockpit. He initially screamed for dear life but as the seat landed in the snow and kept going, turning around and around in the process, his screaming turned into shouts of joy. His chair slid across the snow and into one of the tents still standing, knocking down two people standing in the way.

When he finally came to a stop, he saw that everyone was in chains before him. So he said the only thing he could say. "All right guys, rescue time." He heard the people behind get back up but the tent flapped open and he heard two heavy thuds. He tilted his head around so he could see and saw Naga there.

"Right on time, Bumi," Yue told him.

If they had been surprised by his entrance, the others were even more surprised by the level of destruction the base had gotten into. "Bumi, how did you manage to take out this entire encampment on your own?" Tenzin asked his brother in clear and surprised disbelief. The communication tower finally fell to the ground, with the tank attached to its base.

"I did it all with my trusty flute and…" he started to say, holding out the flute, but then stopped and slumped his shoulders. "Ah, never mind, you wouldn't believe it anyway."

"I'd believe you," Yue assured him. "Trust me I've seen the level of destruction you've wrought on a battlefield. There is a reason your men used to call you the Walking Typhoon."

Tenzin looked at Bumi with a new eye but didn't say anything. Bumi didn't say anything about in return. Instead he started walking towards the portal. "Let's get moving."

They marched toward the portal, going through the hole in the inner wall. No one tried stopping them. When they did finally reach the clearing for the portal, Tonraq shrugged his arm off Mako's shoulder. "You run into the portal," he told everyone, "I'll try to hold off anyone who comes after you."

"No, you're too hurt," Korra said instantly. "You need a healer." She walked over to him, seeing that it was all he could do to stand.

"Tahno, take him and Oogi back to Senna," Yue ordered her apprentice before anyone could say anything.

"You got it," Tahno replied, going to the man's side.

Korra gave him a nod of appreciation. She turned her attention back to her father and said to him, "This is my fight now."

He knew that she was right, on both accounts. There was nothing else he could do now, except have faith in her. "Korra, I love you," he told her, pulling her into a hug.

She returned it, now more than ever grateful that he had been the one who was her father. "I love you too, Dad."

Once they were done hugging, Tahno wasted no time in getting him up onto Oogi and flying the bison away from the battlefield. She watched them go until they were completely out of sight. Then she turned her attention to the rest of them. "Once we're inside, you go find Jinora," she said to Tenzin. She tilted her head to look over at her friends. "Mako, Bolin, and Asami will take care of Unalaq, while I close the portal so Vaatu can't escape."

"Wait a second," Bolin said instantly, already looking like he was the verge of a panic attack. "Worst-case scenario: so we're fighting Unalaq, you close the portals and let's just say something happens to you. Are we going to be trapped in there for eternity?"

Everyone stared at him. "Not the time, bro," Mako told him.

"If everything goes as planned, we'll all walk out together after Harmonic Convergence," Korra told the Earthbender. "If not…" She left the words hanging, since they all knew what would happen. What came next was making her feel nervous. She took a deep breath to ready herself and looked at everyone else. "Let's go."

She started running for the portal and everyone else followed. Her steps slowed down as she went through it and stepped out into the Spirit World. As soon as she was there, something in her body started to stir. The air around her skin turned heavy. Her heart started to kick like a Satomobile engine rearing to go. Even her senses seem to become hyper alert. She could see Vaatu's prison off in the distance, surrounded by dark spirits and Vaatu. She could even hear them flying around, snarling and growling at each other.

She could see that Unalaq was facing them. The dark spirits reacted in the next second, flying towards them with him riding one of them. "Tenzin, go find Jinora!" she ordered.

"C'mon!" he said to the other adults. As they raced off, Korra went into the Avatar State for a power surge. She leapt forward at the incoming dark spirit and bent a large wave blast of air at them all. They didn't try to evade or dodge what was coming and so they got struck. The blast sent them far off, even going so far as to dissipate them.

But it didn't get Unalaq. He leapt up into the air and bent water from a river to cushion his landing, freezing it into ice and sliding down it back to solid ground. As soon as he was there, he threw water right at her.

Mako and Bolin came to her defense, stopping the water with fire and earth. They returned salvos of their own, turning it into a pitched battle. Korra turned and ran for the portal, Asami covering her as she ran. As soon as she reached it, she activated the Avatar State and placed her hands on the portal, intent on closing it.

She soon discovered that closing a portal was little harder than opening one. She could feel the portal straining against her, not wanting to be sealed away. But she didn't stop. She had to close it. Even when she faintly heard the sound of the fight turning in Unalaq's favor, she kept her attention on the portal.

The sounds of the fight, as well as Asami's voice, were faint and almost muted. But she could hear Vaatu's voice clearly. "You're running out of time, Raava," it spoke into her ear, almost like a lover. "I know you feel it coming." Her body reacted to his voice in a way she might've felt embarrassed about if it was any other time. But she ignored it as she ignored him. She was almost there. The portal was losing the struggle. If she could keep it going for a couple of more seconds, she could—

Just as the portal was about to close, it burst back open with a shockwave that knocked her out of the Avatar State and onto the ground. From there, she watched in horror while Unalaq watched in satisfied glee as the red and blue portals curved towards one another and met. The fusion of the two sparked off a storm and emitted a blast wave of purple energy as they changed to a golden hue.

But the worst part was when the fused portals began to emit lightening and it was drawn to the tree like a rod in a storm. The tree took in all that wild power, glowing brighter and brighter red with each second. Then, for one terrible second, everything went dark. And the light came back with harsh brightness as the seal on the tree broke and Vaatu was freed from his prison, his joyous laughter erupting and echoing all round him.

End

Author's note: Thank you for all the reviews you've sent me.

I don't Karura would be an intentional bully, just someone who takes it a little too far and can't see it until it's too late. You get those kinds of people all the time, people who say or think that they're your friend but pretty just run roughshod over you.

As for the bombshells that were dropped in the tent, two of them had planned for a while now and the third kinda cropped up as I was writing the scene. I'll let you figure out which one was the spur of the moment. Also, the creators never exactly explain how the reincarnation worked between Avatars. I went with the idea that Raava leaves the body of the predecessor and flies through the Spirit World to the successor in the time between the former's death and the latter's birth.

I'll see you all next chapter!