Sokka waved the pamphlets in his hand.
"We'll split up to cover more ground," he instructed.
The gang were currently standing in a busy central area of the inner rings, very close to the marketplace. A bridge suspended over a pond lie behind them, adjacent to a wall they stood ahead of while an intersection lay before them, plenty of passerby ambling by. The day was still clear, the Sun just shy of reaching its zenith. Sokka looked at each of them. "Toph, you're coming with me, I guess-"
"Why?! Is it because you think I can't put up posters on my own?" Toph snatched the paintbrush and a poster out of Sokka's hands. She flung glue at the wall and slammed the poster onto it. "There!"
Several seconds of silence followed. "It's upside down, isn't it..?" She sighed. "I'll go with Sokka," she deflated, handing the paintbrush back to him.
"Anyway..." Sokka pushed on, "Aang and Katara, you guys go that way," he ordered, pointing towards the bridge.
Katara and Aang went to do so and Korra made to follow, but was intercepted by Sokka.
"Hold on!" he exclaimed. "You're coming with us," he insisted.
"Huh?" Korra frowned. "Do I have to?" Sokka shook his head.
"I don't completely trust you with Aang yet. We're going this way."
"I get it, but there's still something important I have to tell him," she deflected, moving to follow Aang again. Sokka breathed out, annoyed, jumping to intercept.
"I have no problem with that," he offered. "But it can wait until we regroup." Sokka's tone was neutral, but it held no room for argument. Sokka may not dissaprove of her, but he still didn't quite trust her alone with Aang.
Korra rolled her eyes, but nonetheless acquiesced. It was daunting having to delay, but the logic was sound. She still wanted to endear herself to them. She still needed to tell Aang what the stranger had said to her, but antagonizing the group wouldn't help her case.
Sokka handed her several of the Appa posters and she followed Sokka and Toph along their route. This went on for several minutes, Korra and Sokka gluing the posters to any vertical surfaces they could find. Toph would occasionally help, trying and sometimes failing to place the posters right-side up. When Toph wasn't paying attention, he'd try his best to rotate the image properly as he passed.
"We sure this gonna work?" Korra finally questioned. "It's a big city and everyone willing to say more than 'Hello' are pretty standoffish." She put her hands on her hips, stretching the kinks out of her back.
"I'm with tomboy here," Toph surprisingly agreed.
"Tomboy?" Korra parroted, glaring at the small Earthbender. Toph only smiled from where she stood.
"Think of it as a compliment," she said, raising a finger. "As you can probably tell, I'm not exactly oozing femininity myself."
"Maybe a backhanded compliment," Korra retorted.
"Sue me," the younger bender challenged in good humor.
A loud crashing sound gripped all three's attention, and they all snapped their heads in the direction the bridge they'd left earlier was.
"That sounded like water...Katara!" Sokka waved Korra and Toph over as he sprinted in the other direction. "Come on!" he cried, closely tailed by the other two.
They arrived just ahead of the bridge, rushing past placed posters and surprised pedestrians. Sokka looked towards the pond, seeing a large trail of water leading knto an alley.
"There!" he announced, turning a corner after passing a couple of buildings. At this point, the crowd had already thinned out, and Sokka turned in to an alley.
Toph, Katara, and Sokka arrived to see Katara with her arms outstretched, and a person trapped in a block of ice against a wall.
Aang just turned the corner from the opposite end of the alleyway, just as surprised as the rest of the gang.
"What's going on?" Sokka queried, spotting the hapless young man. There were a pair of hookswords discarded on the ground between Katara and their owner.
"Jet's back," Katara ground out, animosity clear in her voice. "We can't trust anything he says."
Korra didn't think she'd ever heard Katara's kind old voice she remembered ever sounding like that.
Note to self. Don't get on her bad side.
"But we don't even know why he's here!" Sokka argued. Ba Sing Se was literally the last place he'd expect to run into Jet.
"I don't care! Whatever reason it is, it can't be good!"
"I-"
Before Jet could defend himself, he was interrupted by a crackling noise directly above them.
"What was that?" Sokka asked aloud, everyone looking upwards.
While it looked like an electrical storm, the actual 'lightning' looked an angry purple rather than the blue usually associated with it. What could only be described as portals opened lower to the ground, barely noticeable except as a film-like substance that separated it from its surroundings.
The electrical storm suddenly stopped, but the portals remained.
Everyone was suddenly on guard. Korra was the most concerned. This didndidn't seem like something that would happen in history. She was sure she'd have heard about random electrical storms and portals.
That's when people started filing out of the portals.
Their clothing and attire was very alien to the gang. They all wore strange masks that doubled as goggles, along with pants and jackets that were strangely woven. Some of them even wore gaunlets on a single hand that sparked with electrical discharge.
While they looked alien to the gang, Korra knew exactly who they were.
"Equalists!" Korra exclaimed, kicking out jn a wide angle. A wall of flame materialized in front of her in a swiping motion, large and thick enough to distract the invaders.
"Over here!" she urged, waving the gang to another corner. The group complied without another word, all of them now out of sight. As an afterthought, Korra made a yanking motion with her hand, slingshotting the bound Jet to them. The ice shattered on impact, and he slowly sat up with a pained groan.
"T-thanks," Jet stuttered, massaging a bruise on his arm.
"Don't mention it," Korra dismissed with a wave.
Katara glared at Jet, before looking at the Earthbender. "Toph?"
Toph made a mock salute and softly stomped the ground. Earth in the shape of crude cuffs clamped around Jet's ankles in one big bar. He sighed, defeated.
Katara peeked around the corner, watching the strangely dressed group of warriors who were now searching for them. They numbered about seven or eight and by this time, the weird looking portals dissapeared. She remembered Korra's yell from earlier.
"You know who they are?" Katara asked, looking at the other waterbender. "Where'd they come from?"
"Yeah, they don't look like they're from any of the nations..." Aang observed, his head appearing above Katara's.
"Don't look like any military uniforms i'm familiar with," Sokka chimed in, his head above Aang's.
Silently, Korra pulled Aang and Katara from the wall before they could be spotted, while Sokka seemed to slide back behind cover without moving, thanks to Toph.
"They're equalizers. Bad guys from where I come from. They believe benders should lose their powers," Korra gave the abridged story. "Those guys are chi-blockers."
Sokka shook his head. "Maybe i'm jealous of benders sometimes," Sokka admitted. "But to believe they shouldn't have them at all? That's a little much." He pulled his bone sword out from it's holster.
"That's putting it lightly," Korra agreed. She sighed. "This means that Hundun's acting sooner here than I thought."
Aang blinked. "Hundun? I've heard of him. He was a tyrant Earth King. But that was like, centuries ago."
Sokka peeked quickly around the corner to see if the mysterious equalists were gone. They were still there. He faced Korra and Aang. "We can talk history class skme other time," Sokka whispered harshly. "We need to take care of them!" he continued, jerking his head in the direction of the warriors.
"So what's our plan?" Katara asked, all ears.
Sokka regarded Korra and Aang. He seen her firebend just moments ago, even though all her features down to her physical characteristics screamed water tribe.
"Korra, can you earthbend?" he decided to ask. The woman nodded, and Sokka found that he wasn't really surprised at this point.
"Okay." Sokka closed his eyes momentarily, before opening them, his mind abuzz with plans and ideas. "Katara, you do what you can to distract them. Whenever possible, disable them with your water whips. We can use those thunder gloves to our advantage." Katara nodded and stood by at the wall to wait for the word.
"Aang and Korra, you guys are going to do an upfront assault. Take down as many as possible and try to funnel them to Katara." Without a word, they took position. He then looked over to the youngest of the group. "And Toph, try to remain unseen and bind them up somehow."
The girl grinned widely, rubbing her hands in anticipation. "This is going to be fun," she said, her tone coming off as extremely ominous.
"What about me, I can help!" Jet whispered aloud, reminding the group of his presence.
"Jet stays there," Katara said deliberately, allowing no room for debate.
"Sorry," Sokka shrugged. "Don't worry, we won't leave you there." With that, Sokka ambled over to the wall the rest of the group were in waiting at.
Sokka raised a finger, then swung down with a chopping motion towards the unaware enemies.
Working together seamlessly, Korra and Aang burst from the corner. Aang ran across the wall, making a dragging motion with his arms while Korra ran directly below him, mirroring his arm movements. A giant rockalanche trailed behind the two Avatars, startling the chi-blockers.
Two of them were caught unawares as tendrils of water snatched them into the air. One had enough situational awareness to dodge both the water tendrils, and evade the rain of rocks amd stone.
Sokka engaged a fourth chi-blocker, ramming into his side. The three chi-blockers yet to engage any of them regrouped, approaching the two Avatars. One would use his gaunlet to shatter any large rocks and the occasional flame Korra threw their way.
Noticing this, Sokka made a sweep at his oponnent, momentarily stunning him, and threw his boomerang at the three fighters. The one leading the group, with the gaunlet was hit dead on at the back of his head, crumpling to the ground, like a puppet whose strings had been cut. The other two turned around, only to be pelted by the larger chunks of bent earth dislodging from a nearby wall, one of them getting floored by a rather large boulder.
Sokka's first opponent got back up, pulling away Sokka's attention. Including Sokka's enemy combatant, that made three of the conscious chi-blockers remaining.
The whole fight was still far enough away from the main square to draw any attention, but that would change very quickly if the remainkng fighters weren't taken care of.
Luckily, Toph was on the job.
The stone floor shifted below them as if a badger-mole was tunneling beneath them. One of the chi-blockers was forcefully sunk into the earth waist-deep, before being ejected, a bar of stone wrapped around him.
The remaining Equalist managed to avoid getting sunken into the earth, cartwheeling to Toph's side. He threw a jab aimed at her neck, which the Earthbender gracefully avoided by tilting her head just so. She punched upward, and pillar of earth shot up from the ground, impacting the fighter in the chest, knocking the wind out of him. He was then bound much the same way.
Sokka ducked to the left avoiding a jab from the equalist. They went back and forth narrowly hitting each other with sword and limb respectively.
Thinking quickly, sucked ducked and slid under the man, kicking out as he did so. The equalist fell on his side and while he was disoriented, a boomerang crashed into the back of his head, knocking him out.
He turned to see Katara finishing rounding up several of the mercenaries and Toph binding the rest of them.
Sokka swiped some sweat from his forehead, reholstering his boomerang and sword.
Silently, they grouped all of the unconscious equalists together into the alley the gang were hidden in earlier.
"Alright, Korra, you've got some explaining to do," Sokka said.
"Who's Hundun and what do these 'equalists' want?"