Korra's head was in the clouds as she glided past the Spirit Portal on her way to the police station. The thoughts about today's events crowded her mind, a bittersweet taste lingering when she remembered Akemi. She wanted to do right by her, find what was haunting her and make it disappeared in a way she knew surpassed her duties as the Avatar. But it felt personal.

The screaming coming from below ripped her out of her own mind and into a chaotic reality. She looked down to see a full on riot taking place around the portal, protestors barreling down every blockade the police set in an attempt to contain the masses without counterattacking.

But Korra knew better. To the officers down below it may have looked like a protest gone wrong, but from the sky Korra could map out the strategy of an attack. Fire and Waterbenders lead the formation, fighting off the officers, opening the way for the earthbenders that followed. These ran straight to the cylinder surrounding the portal to try and bend it out of existence. Last came the non benders, most of them with electric gloves and black and white paint staining their faces in a pattern now all too familiar to Korra.

They all moved protectively around this one man standing in the core of the formation. He sticked out from the others solely by his way of moving, he didn't appear to be stepping onto anything, almost as if he was floating inches away from the ground. Not only his face was painted, but his entire body, showing off a bare torso, puffed with pride as his army opened the way for him.

They were the triad Akemi had escaped from, there was no doubt in Korra's mind. They had used the protestors as a smokescreen to shield themselves, knowing the police would never attack civilians.

Korra folded the glider mid-air, feeling herself pick up speed as she fell, manipulating the wind currents around her, guiding her exactly where she wanted to land: on top of the shirtless leader. If someone knew about what happened to Akemi, it was him.

She wrapped her legs around the man's neck, the boost of the fall helping her along as she took him down to the ground, face first. But the Leader recovered quickly from the surprise attack and caught himself, throwing Korra off his shoulders.

Korra punched fire at him from the ground, but was forced to duck before the attack could reach the target, an electric lighting scraping her ear, making the hairs on the back of her neck stand on end. She found herself quickly surrounded by the Leaders lackeys, every single one of them more than eager to take her down.

She drained the water from the vines they were standing on, and as one of the lackeys went to fire his electric glove, Korra engulfed the entire arm with a water cuff, the electricity from his own weapon shocking the attacker out of consciousness. She repeated the process as they kept coming faster than she could fight them off. She shackled some of them to the ground with earthbending, trying to get them out of the way to get to the leader that kept getting farther and farther away from her, and towards the portal.

"I NEED SOME BACKUP HERE!" she said, breathing fire as she screamed, fighting off a gloved hand that came towards her chest.

She suddenly felt something wrapping around her waist and before she could untangled herself from its grasp, it janked her upwards, kicking the breath out of her lungs as the wire tightened around her in its way up.

"WHERE THE HELL WERE YOU ALL MORNING?" Lin's yelling thriunfed over the roaring wind in her ears. Korra gasped for air as a response. "QUIT WASTING YOUR TIME WITH THOSE LOSERS, THEY BREACHED THE PORTAL" Lin was hanging by a metal cable from a blimp coursing the air, Korra dangling below her.

"The Leader!" Korra was scanning the ground frantically, searching for the bulky man in the masses below.

"My metalbenders can deal with him" Lin yelled as she swung Korra in the air "The airbenders need you at the portal" Beifong let go of the Avatar, the cable unwrapping from her waist in a single swoop, scratching Korra's skin through her clothes.

Korra shot fire from her feet trying to slow down the fall but landed sloppily on the vines. Before she could recover, a water whip to her shoulder blade made her fall back again to the ground. She turned around on her back just in time to see a waterbender jumping onto her, wielding an icicle. She rolled around out of her reach and with a sweep move of her hand launched a block of earth forwards hitting the waterbender fully on the chest.

Korra stood up and ran to the portal, deflecting the the various attacks flying in her direction, feeling how increasingly difficult stepping forward was getting. She looked up and on top of the earth cylinder, guarding the portal, stood the airbenders, that instead of picking the invaders one by one, were trying to blow then away all at once.

Korra bent the gusts of wind to go around her, avoiding her body, letting her run at full speed. Through the blowing wind, leaves and dust, Korra could see the earthbending members of the triad with their hands sunken in the earth cylinder, grounding themselves despite the hurricane. They were trying to breach the barrier by ripping one chunk of earth at a time, until a gap big enough for them to get through was created, unable to bend more aggressively without being blown away.

Korra screamed as a column of fire exited her fists and traveled to the nearest earthbender, the flames invigorated by the wind. He lost his grounding trying to deflect the attack and was sent flying back, away from the portal. Korra filled in the hole the earthbender had created and moved on to the next.

But as the second triad member was kicked away from the portal, from the corner of her eye Korra saw the Leader. He was standing stoic in the eye of the storm, sheltered from the ciclon revolving around him. The paint was smudged from his chest, except from a jet black stain that covered the entire left side of his torso. Korra smiled when she spotted the electric glove on his hand, that wasn't there before. You didn't plan on getting your hands dirty, huh?

Korra pondered for a second, struggling to choose between keep fighting the earthbenders or go straight to the Leader.

She didn't need too much time to make up her mind. Korra knew the Leader wouldn't be able to see her from inside the eye of the hurricane, so she figured she may as well take the advantage.

She propelled herself into the air with a block of earth that pierce through the vines on its way out. The Leader backed away when he saw her coming foot first. The kick landed on the side of his face, making him tumbled back, almost at the edge of the sheltered spot.

He spat blood and smiled slyly as he said "I hear you have my cub" Korra responded with a fire fist to his chest. He dodged it and made Korra lose her footing by kicking her knee. Korra managed to stabilized herself fast enough, stopping the electric hand going towards her. She grabbed him by the wrist and twisted it back until she heard a pop. The Leader screamed and Korra, taking a liking to bringing his enemy down with their own weapons, placed the charged glove on the Leader's thigh, that glowed blue, electricity coursing through his body.

Korra stood back watching the man convulse, thinking it would be any second now before he collapsed into the ground. But when he looked up at her, she knew the fight wasn't over. His eyes exuded defiance as he moved his glove from his thigh to the black marking on his chest, a wretched laughter pouring from his mouth like black tar, it made Korra shiver.

Instantly she could tell the gusts of wind were losing power around them, but for the love of Raava couldn't figure out why. Until she saw it, exiting the eye of the hurricane, she saw it, open mouthed and frozen in panic. From the holes on the barrier escaped black and purple spirits- evil spirits, like she hadn't seen since Harmonic Conversion.

She looked at the Leader, ravishing in his own seemed to be summoning them.

Korra looked up when a screeching sound called on her attention. A huge spirit that seemed to keep growing in size by the second knocked down a few airbenders from the top of the cylinder in a single swoop. She spotted Jinora falling down to the ground semi unconscious and ran to her rescue, catching her before she touched her ground. She propped her up to her feet, watching her lidded eyes flutter.

"Someone is making them this way, they seem possessed" she looked up at the spirit, its purple markings glowing furious as it screeched again, destroying the top of the cylinder. Korra deflected the earth debris falling over their heads.

Korra looked back at were the Leader was a second ago as she put Jinora down in a safe place, eager to finish what she'd started. But now his whole army was circling him, their bidding now being done by the gigantic spirit that kept destroying the barrier around the portal.

She knew she wouldn't be able to get through all of them before the spirit completely obliterated the barrier, not even in the Avatar state. And if the Leader held so much power with spirits in this world, she didn't want to know what would happen if left to roam in their realm.

Korra climbed up what was left of the earth cylinder, and yelled at the spirit. Without enough water around to spirirbend it back to sanity, talking would have to suffice.

"HEY" It seemed like a good introduction. "OVER HERE!" The spirit actually acknowledged Korra and stopped its destruction for a second "I'm the Avatar, I'm the bridge between our worlds, I created this portal. Whatever it is you need, I can help you" The spirit either didn't understand what Korra was saying or didn't care, cause without a pause it slapped her off the cylinder and towards the ground with his humongous hand, his anger renewed.

Korra landed on the ground feeling dizzy, his vision blurry as she got back to her feet, wobbly. She saw powerless how the spirit kicked what was left of the barrier into oblivion, a battle cry coming from the triad members as they lunged at the portal.

Korra fought against her weakness, standing tall as white light started leaking from her eyes. She felt Raava's power coursing through her veins, feeding her, a sphere of wind picking her up from the ground, until she was eye to eye with the Spirit.

She summoned the water flowing a mile away, and surrounded the spirit with it, glowing with energy as Korra tamed it back to its original form. But her work had just begun. The army stopped on its tracks when beams of fire and dirt started raining down on them like meteorites under Korra's control. She picked up the wind, that started twirling around her once again.

She saw the Leader, now deprived of an army, running towards the exposed portal. Korra roared with the anger of all her past lives, and aimed her wrath at him. She called on the water within the vines, reaping from the ground as they came to her, now at her mercy. Her grasp reached the leader, the vines wrapping around him like a hungry serpent, his electric glove useless. Korra faced the helpless Leader, and found he was smiling.

"Look around, Avatar" and Korra did, some of the members of the triad were mere feet away from entering the portal. Korra screamed a column of fire towards her prisoner before throwing him against a nearby building, hoping someone would capture him. She had more pressing matters to attend to.

She used the vines as tentacles, and slapped away every souls that got too close to the portal before letting herself fall. Her feet created a small quake as they touched the ground, the remaining members of the triad running away from her when she lifted the vines from under their feet and as if with lives of their own, the vessels started contracting around their bodies.

With the portal safe from intrusions, she grounded herself, deep in horse stance, croaking her hands in the crowding bridge position. Korra then single handedly erected a new barrier around the portal, taller than the previous one, feeling the pull as she ripped the earth beneath her feet, and willed it in front of her, drops of sweat coursing her brow.

Korra fell to her knees exhausted, the earth no longer trembling under her, her eyes back to their usual blue. She saw Lin, Jinora, the officers, airbenders and even some bystanders looking at her in awe when she turned around, feeling her muscles turn to putty beneath her skin as she walked back to them.

"Does someone know about an authentic Fire Nation restaurant around here?" She asked with a playful grin.

A/N: This chapter was really fun to write but a pain to revise, so sorry if I made any mistakes, writing action sequences in English was a challenge.
That said, hope you liked it!
-TypingMitten