Iroh went down again and Asami started forward. That was it. She couldn't just stand here and watch this. He was trying progressively bigger and bigger blasts of fire, but it seemed like he had gotten in over his head. She saw him roll to one side, then scramble to his feet again. Asami stopped, glancing back at the gate. No. She had to stay here. Without her to run current through the pipes, they had no plan at all.
When she turned back again, Iroh was down on his knees. She saw one of the taller spirits, the ones shaped like flat stacks of blocks, advancing almost directly behind him. It was clear that he didn't see it.
"Iroh! Behind you!" Asami shouted. But either he was too far away to hear her or he didn't understand. She saw the tall spirit lift one of its three enormous legs and kick Iroh squarely in the back. He flew forward, skidding several feet before landing in a crumpled heap. This time, he didn't get up.
"Cowards!" she screamed, not even caring if anyone could hear. "Leave him alone!"
You know what? Forget the gate. Forget the plan. She wasn't going to watch him die, whatever happened after. Asami started forwards again. Iroh stirred, then struggled to his feet. He pushed his hair out of his eyes and started running, not back towards the gate, but straight towards the middle of the group of dark spirits. He seemed to be limping slightly.
Is he suicidal? What is he—and then Iroh launched himself into the air. Even in the midst of her fear, it was an impressive spectacle. Jets of fire shot from his hands and feet as he jumped, propelling him high above the plain. Iroh cleared the tops of the tallest spirits in a leap that must have been 900 feet clear across the battlefield. He landed in a crouch about ten feet from Katara. Asami saw his right leg go out from under him. He got up again quickly, then started speaking animatedly. He gestured behind him to the hundreds of spirits that were nearly upon them.
Asami cocked her head. She'd been so focused on Iroh that she hadn't noticed the change. The spirits weren't heading for her anymore. Although a few seemed to have peeled off towards where Iroh had been, the bulk of the group had banked slightly left towards where he and Master Katara now stood. Though they were still more than a quarter mile away, the change was distinct. What is going on? she thought. She'd been so sure she was right. The spirits at Unalaq's camp had overwhelmingly gone after Korra and Tenzin, even though she'd been the obvious aggressor. And they'd clearly been heading for their approximate position here, where this time she'd been sure to be the obvious weak link. But now it seemed like they'd changed their minds. They weren't going after her, or the gate, at all.
Asami gasped, suddenly understanding. They weren't going after her because they never went after her. She'd been so out of sorts earlier that she'd seen the pattern but missed the logic behind it entirely. In her pride, she'd assumed she'd somehow scared the spirits off, presented the harder target. But it hadn't been about her at all. They hadn't run away from her. They had simply ignored her. Just like the dark spirit in Fa Re had ignored her. And just like they were ignoring her now. It wasn't about what she was or wasn't doing. It was about who she was. Or wasn't.
The spirits were going after the benders.
Even though she'd had Mako and Bolin with her on her plane, their powers were negligible compared to two bending masters, a sky bison, and the Avatar herself. And Bolin hadn't even been using his bending, instead for the most part relying on Varrick's explosives. Looking back, every time she had encountered dark spirits they had, without exception, gone straight for the biggest group of benders. Even her long walk through the city earlier fell into place. She'd heard that the city was overrun with dark spirits, but she had been out for hours and encountered none.
It seemed like Iroh had figured it out as well. As she watched he pulled Master Katara into an awkward fireman's carry, using his left side instead of his right, presumably to keep as much weight as possible off his injured leg. Then he took off again. At first they almost seemed to pitch forwards—Iroh must not be able to fly as well with only one hand—but he quickly adjusted. They made the several hundred foot jump in a few seconds, landing just in front of the center of the gate. She saw Iroh's face twist in pain, but this time he kept his feet.
He set Katara down carefully. "I'm not that old, Iroh," she said, smoothing out her rumpled clothes. "And you don't need to show off. We could have walked."
His mouth ticked up into a half smile. "But I'm faster." She glared at him and his smile broadened.
"Asami," Iroh said, turning to her. His smile disappeared; he didn't seem to want to meet her eye. "I think we need a slight adjustment in the strategy."
Asami nodded. "The spirits. They don't attack the weakest target at all, do they? You. Korra. Katara just now. The attacks on the Southern Resistance, on Tonraq. I bet most of the ordinary citizens they went after were waterbenders, too. They've just been going after the most powerful benders. They don't see non-benders as much of a threat, I guess."
Iroh nodded. "Which means that they're not very smart. In fact, they're really, really stupid, and perhaps even more predictable than we thought." He glanced sideways at Katara. "We've just been using the wrong bait."
"I swear, you're as bad as Bumi," Katara grumbled. "Didn't I just heal your leg this morning?"
"Is that better or worse than having to heal something new?" Asami asked, curious. She didn't know much about how waterbending healing actually worked.
Katara glanced up at her, then back down at Iroh's right leg. He sat on the ground in front of the gate, his pant leg pulled up over his knee to reveal a massive purple and black bruise on the front of his shin. It was dark and looked slightly swollen, making Asami think that most of what she could see was actually from his earlier injury. He'd been running around on that?
"Worse," said Katara. "It's no different, but it feels wasteful somehow re-doing good work." She bent more water over Iroh's leg, first along his shin and then up over his knee. The bruise seemed to lighten somewhat and the swelling faded. "Iroh, I don't suppose I could convince you to stay off of it for a bit?" she said.
Iroh glanced at the approaching spirits. They were very close now. "No. And I need the field version, Katara. We only have a minute."
Katara sighed. "Okay, get up. This should do for now. Next time you fall on it you probably will break it though, and that's a lot more work to fix, so do try and at least hurt the other one next time." Iroh looked up at her, frowning slightly, as if unsure whether or not she was joking. He pulled his pant leg down and got to his feet, then bounced gingerly up and down on his leg, testing it.
"Thank you," he said.
Katara just shook her head. "You and Bumi," she muttered again, then stowed her bending water in one of the pouches at her side. Then she looked to Asami. "You're still in charge, dear. I'm going to stand on the other side of the gate and try to calm any angry spirits that make it through. If you need something different, just yell." With that, she climbed through one of the large holes in the grid of aluminum piping and started walking. "Iroh, don't make me have to amputate anything!" she called back.
"What do you need from me?" Iroh asked.
"Same plan. Get as many dark spirits as you can to the gate. Keep as many as you can from going over the walls in other ways. Don't die while doing it." She smiled, but Iroh only nodded, then turned and took up a position on the opposite side of the makeshift gate.
They weren't a moment too soon. Asami readied her glove, holding it just above one of the aluminum pipes, and looked out at the plain.
It was an awesome sight. Dark spirits of every size and description rushed towards them in a rough diamond that must have been nearly 500 feet across at its widest. She thought there had to be at least 300 of the things, maybe more. The silence was eerie. So many large creatures would usually make at least some kind of noise, but even at close range the advancing spirits were utterly silent. Their black feet rushed above the surface of the packed ice, sending up little swirls of loose snow as they passed.
As they closed the final few hundred feet the group seemed to lengthen, some spirits speeding up while others dropped back slightly. The effect shifted the group from a loose ball into the pointed tip of a spear. Asami was reminded of something she'd read as a child about hunting dogs. She certainly hoped the dark spirits were as stupid as Iroh seemed to think they were.
Here we go, she thought. Oh help us, here we go.