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GRAYSCALE

by

Popcornbay

CHAPTER 1: TESTING WATERS

"Heroes are made by the path they choose. Not the powers they are graced with"
-Iron Man

Every hero has a story. Even you. A beginning, a middle and an end. Sometimes you don't know where the story starts until you're halfway into your own story, unknowingly becoming someone else's hero. It doesn't matter that you don't know where it started. The point is, that you have made a difference. You are a difference to someone else's life.

This story doesn't have one beginning. You can't start this story with one 'It all started when' because, there are several heroes and several villains that needs a story of their own. It's like a road; a journey with several beginnings but has only one destination. But don't you worry. Every story would be an adventure. Everything is connected. You'll get to know each of these heroes.

Now that we know that we can't start at a beginning, let's just start with a story of a simple guy with simple needs, during a point where almost everything changed in his life.

Sokka didn't know how everything could turn into a disaster in such a short time. It wasn't his fault this time. At least, spirits, he hoped it wasn't his fault. He vaguely remembered the last time he called her, and that was only about thirty minutes ago. He should have texted her, but he wanted to hear her voice again.

"Yue! I'm at the site, where are you at?"

"Oh good! I'll meet you in a few minutes, a few things came up and I've got to fix it before anything starts. Keep a seat for me would you?"

"Anything for you, dear Moon. I'll buy you some cotton candy. They're starting in a few minutes"

Sokka heard a melodious laugh from her end.

"I know Sokka, I work here"

He let out a laugh. "Alright then, don't be late, it's our first date"

"I'll find you at the entrance dear"

The conversation was awkward if Sokka was being honest, but that was the end of it. There was an uncomfortable tug at his stomach, a feeling that something would go wrong, but he pushed it to the back of his mind, claiming it to be his usual pessimi- realistic thoughts. But when Yue failed to show up, his eyes wandered around the crowd, frantically searching for the brown haired beauty that he was sure he was in love with, to no avail. A woman was speaking at the podium, her voice echoing from the speakers, but Sokka paid no attention to that.

He picked up his phone to give another call to Yue, but there was no answer. The pit in his stomach and his detective instincts screamed in alarm, because the Sozin Laboratories were going to launch and activate their biggest product for the year, a fifty foot tall elemental turbine, and his Yue was still inside the building.

His throat went dry, and a hand went up to tug his wolftail. The Sozin Laboratories Chairman was speaking this time, and those words went right over his head as he frantically tried to catch a glimpse of Yue among the sea of people sitting around him. None. No sign of her. Worst of all she was not picking up her phone. Normally, he would have stayed back and waited until she came back, but not now when his instincts were warning him that something would actually go wrong. Getting up from his seat at the audience, Sokka found his way to the front of the large, white hemispherical building which stood proud behind the temporary platform that was raised for the occasion.

The Dai Li Body guards and security officers were swarming around the area, and if he wasn't in such a hurry, Sokka would wonder why President Kuei's Secret Service were doing at the turbine launch, but for once, he didn't care. Yue was in there somewhere, and if anything goes wrong – he didn't know what he would do.

He knew a little bit of the layout of the building with his occasional visits to see Yue at work, even before they started dating a week ago. It was also under constant watch of Ba Sing Se Police Department, and well, Sokka knew -at least for some extent- on how to navigate through the the building.

The main obstacle was to get inside the building without raising any suspicion. If he got caught, he would be in more trouble than it was worth. He needed to be stealthy. That, he could do. Suki and the Kyoshi Worriers had made sure to drill the importance of stealth, and his life's work as being a detective of solving crimes and being in constant danger reminded Sokka of how important it was to finish this mission alive, in secret and with Yue.

Getting in was easier than he thought. His dark blue jacket above his white t-shirt and his dark jeans did a good job of shrouding his silhouette in the shadows as he found his way in to the white building through a side door. The interior that met his gaze was so white that for a moment Sokka wondered if he was back at home in the South pole for a half a second. Warm white lights were embedded in ceiling of a hallway of white washed walls, with soft blue lights emitting through the wall lights. The uncomfortable pit in his stomach suddenly ten folded as he eyed the slightly hypnotic looking hallway. He needed to find Yue and soon.

Sokka knew that she was working somewhere in the laboratories near the twenty foot tall elemental turbine, but how to get there? The hemispherical building was five stores high, and he needed to get to the topmost floor. The best way up were the elevators. Sokka tried to map out the floor plan in his mind with only using the memories of the few times he had been in the building, and it wasn't working in the least.

Sokka took a deep breath. He should stop panicking. Logic is the only way out. He made a mental list.

1. Get out of this hallway.

Okay, there should be an exit to this never ending hallway right? Sokka took fast steady steps away from the door that he walked in, and towards the opposite end where he had to take a turn to the right, only to find himself in another blue filtered white washed hallway. Sokka bit back a groan of frustration. Why didn't he take the front door again? Right. Security.

After about another half a minute of walking, and another sharp left turn, Sokka finally found another side door which thankfully led to an open space in the ground floor with lots of men and women in white lab coats were hurrying around with files in their hands.

Scientists then. And the turbine would activate soon.

Sokka eyed them with interest and hope, thinking that one of them could be his girlfriend(?) but he knew it was a lost cause. he made another frantic call to Yue hoping she would pick up, but he only reached her voicemail. If Yue wasn't here, then she should be at the laboratories in the fifth floor, and he needed to get to her before they launch the turbine.

Sokka eyed around, his gaze finally falling on the elevators. Bingo. Another point ticked off from his list. Now he only needed to find Yue and get her away from the building.

See, Sokka wasn't stupid despite what Katara said. Seriously, don't listen to what she says. He always has a plan, and when he does't he does come up with pretty good ones on the spot. Except that one involving a twelve foot tall bronze statue, a baseball bat and a pigeon, and the one involving fire crackers, fire flakes, and a whole gallon of jasmine tea. Oh, and the one with the- well, never mind. The point is, Sokka's plans might go south some of the times, but hay, he was a professional detective, so sometimes his plans do actually work in some twisted sort of way. But for some strange unknown reason, this time, he doesn't actually have a plan. His mind couldn't come up with a plausible plan. At least Sokka had his list with him, that should count. Right?

The elevator pinged, and Sokka slowly stepped out, finding himself in the familiar corridors of the fifth floor in Sozin Labs. He mentally mapped out the whole floor plan, and listed off the places where Yue could possibly be. He wasn't exactly welcome here at this moment, no one was if his instincts were correct, so if someone catches him sneaking around, he would probably be escorted back to the ground floor, forcefully. It was time to be stealthy.

Sokka checked in two lab rooms where he thought Yue could be, only to find out they were both empty of people, but filled with experiments of different chemicals. He desperately wanted to have a look at some of those, but no, he couldn't afford to get distracted. He needed to hustle.

Massive metal double doors that reached up to the ceiling stood at the end of the hallway. There was a golden insignia in the shape of a flame embossed in the middle, and it didn't take long for Sokka to realize that this was the room where they held the biggest project of the year, or perhaps in the years to come.

They called it The Comet.

Sokka slowly approached the doors, his heart pounding with a strange sense of excitement and worry. Not many people were blessed with the opportunity to see that scientific masterpiece with their own eyes. But here he was, opening the doors to the area where they held the elemental turbine. Was it wrong to feel this excited despite the fact that he still couldn't find Yue?

Sokka pushed the metal doors, parting them open. He felt as if he were getting through the front doors of a palace and there would be people waiting to cheer for him.

But, it was quiet.

And then the world around him, began to shake.

"Can you check this one out dear?" Professor Ankuk looked at her with pleading blue eyes behind his spectacles, and Yue couldn't help but smile and accept the folders in his hand. "These are the blueprints. Only spirits knows why we got these at the last moment, but what can we do other than to pass it through?"

"This is the first time I'm seeing these," the dark haired woman remarked, as she cleared her desk out to roll out the map from the folder. "But we cant pass it through without knowing the risks Professor, you know that"

The Professor, a cheerful, but a bit scatterbrained man with peppered hair in his late fifties, just tutted, a frown forming in the place of his usual smile. "Director Zhao's orders, Yue, we have to pass it through"

Th young woman frowned, her brow furrowing as she checked out the prints. There was something off about this whole affair,there was something wrong with the whole Sozin Cooperation really.

"Alright then," Ankuk said, picking up his coat which was draped around a nearby chair. "I'm off. Be sure to give those up to the control room will you Yue? There's nothing much to check. Just get out of here before the launch!" With that, the man stumbled out of the laboratory, leaving the dark haired woman with the blueprints of The Comet.

Yue liked her work as a scientist. It was exiting to come up with new ideas, new calculations on how make life easier, to help the world in the best way she could. She loved working with people who knew what they were doing, or to teach those who knew that they needed help with. But she couldn't say the same for her superiors. Specifically the people she was supposed to report to.

Zhao Kyoufu, her superior, the General Manager of the Sozin Laboratories company was a tall man with sideburns and a wicked glint in his cold amber eyes. He always ticked her off with the way how he treated his staff and to those around him. Calling him cruel would be an understatement.

Yue generally doesn't hate people. But Zhao was the one man that was the exception, within good reason. She had seen his satisfied smirk every time when he informs her colleagues who gets cut off from their salaries due to failed experiments, the way his eyes linger on the women working under him, practically undressing them. His every action always brought her to a fury that would rival stories of the great spirit La's rage when his beloved Tui was killed by the human hands.

The morning of The Comet's launch, a day Yue had been looking forward to But was still nervous ,- not only because she had given her tooth and nail to make it a success, but also it was her first official date with Sokka-, she had been busy with all the last minute adjustments, clearing out all doubts and making sure that nothing goes awry. If this project were a success, The Comet would be able to power up not just Ba Sing Se, but the whole Earth Kingdom, the Air Fields and the bordering Fire Nation with electricity. Although, the project was still dangerous. Despite the amount of warnings all her coworkers had given to the Board of Directors about the uncalculated risks relating to the launching of The Comet, they still wanted to proceed with it, with the idea of it being the biggest product of the year.

There was nothing Yue could do other than to hope for the best. That the spirits would be with them.

She was still checking on the blueprints when her phone rang with Sokka's name glowing on her screen, and the dark haired woman picked it up, her heart fluttering at the thought of talking to him. Yue had been pining Sokka for months until he asked her out, in a most ridiculous way, claiming they'll be doing an activity together. She laughed to herself at the memory, and answered the phone, letting him know that she would of course meet him as soon as possible.

Yue once again scanned the sheets that were on the table in front of her as she got off from the call, only glancing up when one or two of her colleagues bid her good night and exited the laboratory, to attend the massive ceremony that was happening in the ground floor. They were all advised against staying on the fifth floor during the activation of the turbine, to avoid risks. The control room on the first floor would be activating The Comet, and Yue knew that it was time for her to leave the room.

But her eyes fell on the blueprints of the room where the turbine was held, and noted there was something she hadn't noticed before. The circular room was to be a plain wall with one safe entrance, and a large pool of water at the end of a platform where the turbine was fixed. But, these didn't resemble what was supposed to be. The small grid-like structures the blueprint showed along what was supposed to be a plain wall made her realize that there was something wrong with this. Several things were wrong, the first one being why no one had brought this to anyone's attention.

The young woman looked around the laboratory, only to find out that she was the only one in the room. Her heart was beating furiously. Why had no one seen this before? The structure was made carefully to avoid any of the risks, and with every alteration something might go wrong with the activation. Hadn't anyone been into the room of The Comet before? Yue had been in there only once, in the earliest days of their projects, but she wasn't an engineer but a scientist, so she was needed elsewhere rather than checking out faults in the structure.

Yue got up from her chair, gathering the rolls of blueprints on her desk. She needed to check it out. If it doesn't add up, they need to shut down the launching. The uncalculated risks were endless.

Hurried footsteps brought her to the massive doors embossed with a golden flame insignia, and the young woman pushed them open, to find herself facing the masterpiece that was fixed on a rocky island in the middle of the pool of water and the platform she was standing on was cut out of sandstone. Fifty feet tall The Comet would be fueled by the hot air that was brought forth by the burning embers from the hearth it was fixed on, as well as the kinetic energy that swilling water would ensure when the turbine was activated.

The chamber was open roofed, where a glass dome was mechanically operated so that the weather wouldn't cause damage to the machine inside. Yue looked around hoping to find out what she had seen on the blueprints were just a mistake, but as her eyes fell on the opposite end of the chamber, beyond the pool of water and the massive elemental turbine, there was what seemed to be a door to another exit to somewhere beyond she could see.

More importantly, in front of the said door, there was a man dressed in dark red suit, standing straight and looking directly at her. A man whose name was Zhao Koyufu.

Oh this was long. Three thousand words, and it took me so long to write. This idea was torturing my mind for so long, and here I am, writing it.

Thank you for all of you for staying so far.

Welcome to Grayscale. A Superhero AU of all our favorite characters.

If you enjoyed the story so far, can you guess professions of the other members of the GAang?

See you next week!

-Mel-