Bolin walked into the office cabin and gave Kuvira the scroll he had in his hand. "It's official!" He announced, "This is the 12th region to rejoin the new unitfied earth kingdom!"

"And not a moment too soon," she replied, taking it from him, "we're on the border of the United Republic now." She shivered as she felt the energy shift. After spending so much time with her feet on the ground and helping people across the country, the energy in Republic City was stifling. Gerel was right, there was something off about this place.

Baatar asked, "Do you think we'll make it on time this time around?"

"We better," Kuvira said, looking away from him.


The Iron Maiden rolled to a stop at Fanrong Station in the middle of Republic City. Bolin asked, "Wow, has the air always smelled this bad here?" He coughed a couple of times but couldn't get the taste out of his mouth.

"It did the last time we were here," Miski replied, covering her nose.

Kuvira marched herself up to the capital building, and this time made her way around the maze of hallways up to Raiko's office. However, instead of being invited in immediately, her, Baatar, and Miski were ushered to sit and wait in the hallway outside his office. After nearly an hour, when Raiko was ready, he finally opened the doors.

"Who's late now?" Kuvira asked, standing up to greet him angrily.

"I'm sorry, the meeting went a bit longer than expected," he said, "come inside." He motioned for them to enter.

Inside stood a young man with hair permed on top of his head. He was skinny and stood shorter than Kuvira but taller than Miski. "Hello there," he said, stepped forward coyly, "you must be who they call 'The Iron Maiden.' The name's Prince Wu." He looked Kuvira over carefully. "I hope I'm not out of line for saying this but you're mighty fine for military type."

Kuvira glanced at Raiko, and then back at Wu. "Hi."

"This is Crown Prince Wu of the earth kingdom," Raiko said, gesturing to him, "he's now first in line for the throne once you finish stabilizing the kingdom for him."

Kuvira hesitated, "You're going to be the next king?" She stopped herself, knowing how harshly people judged her for being young and relatively naive about how the world worked, and now she had a dozen regions united.

"That's right, gumdrop," he replied happily, "soon I'll be King Wu at your service!" He bowed dramatically, hair flopping over his face. "Originally I was 8th in line for my own throne but Raiko here helped everyone else see that I'm the best there is to be the next king so here I am!"

Baatar asked, "What do you mean by 8th in line? If that's the case, how can you be the crown prince now?" He turned his attention to Raiko.

Raiko said, "I can assure you it's not as sketchy as it sounds." Kuvira narrowed her eyes at him.

Wu explained, "Oh I have another great-aunt...Queen Hou Ting's younger sister, her health isn't doing so great, and it doesn't look like it's ever going to get better. And my grandpa died a while ago-naturally, not-" he made choking noises, "you know, like that. I have an aunt who married fire nation and in some old lawbook somewhere it says she can't get the throne, but she kept her title, so we still consider her 3rd in line even though she's not really. That also includes my cousin, her son, we say he's 4th in line but that line is illegitimate, he can't take the throne ether. My own father who had a divorce so scandalous no one wants him in charge of anything, let alone a whole country. My older sister completely denounced the throne after our great-aunt was a...I feel the phrase 'raging bitch' works best...to her she wants nothing to do with it. My older brother ran away and joined the circus, so you're left with me, Prince Wu, originally 8th in line, now 1st." He pointed at himself happily.

"Well..." Baatar said awkwardly, "that's all sounded much sketchier than I expected."

President Raiko stepped in and said, "Now Kuvira, I can't wait to hear about all the progress you've made so far."

"We officially have 12 regions signed under the reunification of the earth kingdom act," she explained, bringing out the paperwork, "just as we agreed the last time we were here."

He said, looking over the papers, "Doing the bare minimum I see."

Kuvira's face fell. "Bare minimum? It's taken this long to make sure these regions aren't attacked by bandits and to help restock their supply from food shortages and thieves!"

"I was actually secretly hoping you'd have over two dozen regions helped by now," he confessed as he walked behind his desk.

Baatar explained, "Now that these regions are safer, I helped design landing pads for airships to come through and engineered more passenger steam engines and train stations. We now have more tourism than ever before. Businessmen are building hotels in places people never thought to visit before. We're already making more money through the railroad than through previous charity donations. This entire endevour is paying for itself in no time. That's great news!"

Raiko asked, "How many orphanages have you built?"

"According to Bolin we've had 21 orphanages built across the nation so far," Kuvira answered.

"Most of those are in Ba Sing Se," Raiko added, "what about jails and prisons to house the criminals who created those orphans?"

"3 in total," Baatar answered.

Kuvira interjected, "But we're focusing our efforts on rehabilitating them instead of locking them away forever. Don't you think that's a noble cause?"

"I don't know too much about that," Raiko said nervously, "I've heard about your re-education camps, Kuvira, and I'm concerned those aren't the best way to help the nation."

"What exactly are you insinuating?" she demanded.

"I'm worried more than 'education' is happening," he said, "I'd like to see one in action. What about you, Wu?"

He shifted back into the conversation and asked, "What about me what?"

Kuvira asked, "Aren't you interested in hearing about all the work I've been doing? You're going to inherit everything I've done to make sure our nation stands strong and is at peace." She raised an eyebrow at his stance.

"I haven't been paying attention at all," he replied happily, not a care in the world, "I've just been hearing numbers and nonsense about camping and who cares about that stuff? Actually, I'm about to miss my steam bath appointment across the city if we don't wrap up here soon."

In order not to lose it right there in front of everyone, Kuvira locked her jaw shut. Her teeth ripped into her toung. She winced. She had to control herself. She couldn't break everything in sight and cause a cave-in, then Raiko would have a real reason to appoint someone else as the uniter of the kingdom.

Raiko said, "Go ahead and go to your appointment, Wu."

"Thanks pal," he replied, stepping out, "and Kuvira, can't wait to see you again. Maybe next time we'll take a night on the town together." He winked at her and left before she could retort.

Miski said, "He seems a bit..." she struggled to come up with something that wasn't insulting.

"...young," Baatar hesitated.

"Childish," Kuvira said hastily.

"Over the next six months or so I'm going to try and work with him and get him used to the idea of becoming king of an entire nation," Raiko replied.

Kuvira asked, "Why is that your job? What happened to the advisors back in Ba Sing Se?"

"They'll be helping too," he assured her, "and I've helped appoint my own over there so Wu fully understands his responsibilities before taking office. For now, let's set up a time for me to see one of these camps of yours."


After they stepped out of the building, Baatar said, "I thought for sure you were going to bring down his entire office on that one, Kuvira, and rip that Wu guy a new one. I'm surprised you held back."

"I bit my toung actually," she confessed, showing him.

"Oo," Miski said, cringing, "want some ice?" She used waterbending to create an ice cube in the air and handed it to her.

"Thanks," she replied, chewing it quickly. As it melted in her mouth, she explained, "we can't make ourselves look petty in front of the president." She sighed as they walked back to the train. "Maybe we shouldn't be so quick to judge. No one took us seriously in the beginning either, remember?"

Baatar replied, "Yeah you had to literally fight your way through Ba Sing Se, I remember."

"In another six months I want to see how he behaves," Kuvira said, "in the meantime, we told Raiko to meet us at Camp 14 in one week. Let's go see how they're doing first."


Camp 14 was located in the far south of the earth kingdom. While there were closer ones to Republic City, Raiko insisted since he was about to go on vacation down there anyway. It normally would have taken the train 4 days to get down there, but with so many delays and engine problems it took The Iron Maiden 6 days instead. When they arrived, all eyes were on Kuvira.

"Madam Kuvira," a guard said, stepping up to her, "we had no idea you were coming." He struggled to keep up with her pace.

"I don't have much time to explain myself," she said, "I have to speak to Commander Guan immediately. Where is he?" As she looked around, each guard quickly stood to attention.

The guard said, "Inside the camp's office. He's busy with-wait!"

She walked up to the camp and saw massive stone walls erected in a massive circle. Baatar asked, "What are all these walls doing here?"

"To keep people from escaping," the guard answered, "open the gate!"

"Escaping?" Bolin asked, "Escaping from what?"

The guards used earthbending to open the gate and revealed exactly what was behind those walls. There must have been more than 100 firebenders in metal chains, working together, building different metal instruments in different stages. All clearly being worked to near death conditions.

Kuvira demanded in horror, "What is this?"

"The re-education camp guidelines Commander Guan put into place," the guard answered meekly, "I'll guide you to his office."

They walked through the enslaved people's work. They all turned and looked. Cracks of whips sounded in the distance. A kid cried for his mother. Kuvira turned and saw a little boy no older than 7 or 8 crying in the distance. She saw a waterbender carefully healing his burn and getting told by an angry guard to get back to work. She was too stunned to speak.

Inside the office, Guan stood over his desk, his back facing them. He stood tall and was muscular in build. The guard said, "Commander Guan, you have an esteemed guest-"

"I don't care who it is," Guan said hastily without turning around, "I'm too busy to entertain anyone."

"Commander Guan," Kuvira said angrily, "what is the meaning of this?"

"Madam Kuvira!" he said, turning around, nearly knocking the table over, "You didn't send a messenger hawk, otherwise I would have announced your arrival and had everything set up for you."

She stepped forward and demanded, "What do you think you're doing with these people?"

"We've been building the trains you and Baatar ordered," he explained, calmly, "we've been purging every state of all non-earth kingdom origin. We already deported the non-benders but we use the fire and waterbenders to make the trains and the tracks."

"What?" Kuvira whispered, utterly speechless by what she just heard.

Bolin asked, "What do you mean by 'purging states?'"

Kuvira explained, "Commander, you were supposed to be rounding up volunteers of reunited states to come help build the railroad."

"That's what I've been doing," he explained, "but no one understands what the railroad is and what it means for the modern era. All they see is ugly tracks and all they hear is noise. No one's been volunteering to help rebuild this nation, so I took everyone who doesn't belong and now I'm getting them to do our dirty work. It's the least they can do after their ancestors nearly killed our ancestors, or have you forgotten your history?"

Miski demanded, "What do you mean everyone who doesn't belong here?"

"Yeah?!" Jae said, letting fire escape his hands.

"This isn't right," Kuvira said, "this isn't what the camps were supposed to be." She stormed outside.

Guan followed her and asked, "And what you doing to do about it? Throw a tantrum? I've heard stories about your little destructive habits, little miss Iron Maiden."

Kuvira glared at him, then turned and stomped her foot. A huge crack appeared and reached the far earth wall. In her horse stance, she knocked the front down, and then spun around and the remaining earth walls shook and fell apart, knocking everything down in its path. The enslaved stopped, and then cheered as they realized what was happening.

She stood back up and said, "You're all free to go."

"Not so fast," Guan said, "you're not going to destroy everything I've accomplished in the last 6 months of building this place." He used metalbending to take weapons out of his office.

The guards were divided as the fighting started. Some took Kuvira's side, others ran for their lives, and some sided with Guan. Jae used as much firebending as he could muster to hold them back. Miski struggled to collect enough water to make a meaningful impact. Bolin stepped up and buried the buildings in as much lava as he could, melting all evidence of such racism.

Between Kuvira and Guan, metal flew. Kuvira blocked every attack, and had it hit the ground around her, with her own uniform she took out her metal blades and quickly tacked Guan against an earth wall.

He stopped, "Alright! I yield! I yield to The Iron Maiden!"

She marched up to him, still unrelenting and ready to go for the kill. "Stop!" Baatar warned her as he grabbed her arm. "It's over. Look around."

Everyone was getting freed from their shackles and danced and hugged each other, happy they were now free from their bounds.

Kuvira dropped her metal and said, "No, this is just the beginning. What are we going to do? All these people need to go back to their homes and reunite with their families and President Raiko is supposed to show up here tomorrow to see what our camps look like. We can't show him this!"

"We could tell the truth at what happened here?" Bolin suggest shakily.

"And lose our credibility with him?" Kuvira asked, "We're already on the razor's edge with his nonsense, bare minimum." Her eye twitched in anger as she remembered his harsh words. If he didn't think she was doing a good enough job, why wasn't he being of more help?

"We can cover the evidence," Baatar explained, "we can get these people home, bury everything that was here, and then send Raiko to a different camp under the guide we gave him the wrong coordinates for camp 14."

Kuvira asked, "Do you think he'll buy that it was an honest mistake?"

Miski said, "I have a better idea. We tell him that renovations are happening here that you weren't aware of and send him to a different camp, like camp 8 further east. Crisis averted."

"That's not a bad idea," Kuvira replied, "thank you Miski."

She beamed.


After packing up Guan and the rest of the guards who sided with him and sending them to jail, Kuvira and the rest of her crew walked back to The Iron Maiden together.

Baatar confessed, "I didn't know people had beliefs like that."

"I didn't either," replied Kuvira.

"Really?" he asked, "You never encountered it when you were traveling the earth kingdom before?"

"No," she said quickly, "I didn't notice the sociopolitical and economic climate of this nation back when I was 7, Baatar."

Bolin asked, "Do you think they would have put me in a place like that since I'm half fire nation? I know they would have thrown Mako in there!" He shook all over at the thought of it.

"Oh, they definitely would have put me in one of those slave camps," Miski said, "I'm fire nation and a waterbender. I never really thought about it before, but I guess I don't really belong here." She frowned and bowed her head.

Jae said, "Miski, you can't let people like that dictate how you live your life."

Kuvira assured her, "No one decides where they're born, who they're born to, or what bending abilities they have. You weren't in the wrong, Guan and anyone who followed him was."


Thankfully, the people at camp 8 were living exactly how Kuvira had envisioned the camps. They were places to help people learn about the modern technology she was bringing to different regions and how to rebuild their own towns. They learned more modern earthbending techniques, had metalbending training, and learned how to work on and maintain the railroad. It was exactly how it was intended, and President Raiko was impressed.

"This is better than I thought," he said, "although I don't appreciate the last-minute detour. Keep up the good work, Kuvira. At our next six month update I would like you to be much further along in your endeavors."

"I understand," she answered, bowing to him respectfully.