Cadence Chapter Seven: Coercion
Mako surveyed the training ground that was now scattered with fallen Equalists and chi-blockers, feeling a sense of grim satisfaction take root in his chest.
"You didn't kill any of them," Amon mused. "You're too soft."
"They aren't the one I want to kill," he said bluntly.
And it was true. Why kill someone in a training exercise? All his attackers were unconscious; he could kill them at his leisure if he chose, so at this point the killing blow meant nothing. It would be pointless.
"If you don't become merciless, you'll never win against Zolt," Amon commented.
Mako said nothing, sheathing his kali sticks and making his way towards the entrance of the underground base. It was bewildering to think that Amon saw no difference between killing lackeys in some training exercise and cutting down the murderer of his family.
The base they were staying at was much smaller than any of the others, and as such, training had to take place above ground. Mako passed the Lieutenant on the way in, ignoring the unpleasant smirk on the man's face.
"You spend less time training than you used to," the man snickered. "But then, I suppose I would, too, if I had Avatar Korra waiting for me."
Mako stiffened, and wrestled with the impulse to turn back and impress upon the Lieutenant why he shouldn't make such an insinuation.
But deep down he knew it was true. His training had suffered ever since Korra had come along with her new, sarcastic attitude that could get under his skin quicker than a parasite. This was why he'd left. Korra, and Bolin too, could make him forget his vengeance, could make him think of nothing else but their safety and happiness and that, he simply couldn't afford.
"It's me!" he barked at the solid wood door to his room, and was rewarded with the sound of a turning key before Korra threw the door open.
"You know, I've got to be honest, I'm not entirely sure this structure is stable," she informed him, glancing pointedly at the walls braced with huge posts of wood.
"It's fine," Mako told her as he began to place his kali sticks back on their rack.
The ground here was rather unstable, one reason why this was the smallest of Amon's bases, and so the walls had to be braced so they wouldn't crumble. Many rooms were actually made entirely of wood, their walls used to brace the ceiling.
Korra was tapping the walls, looking them over dubiously, when Mako spoke, his voice low as though he didn't want to be overheard.
"I'm going to kill Amon."
Korra whipped around, an expression of utter disbelief plastered upon her face.
"What?" she hissed, her voice barely audible. If anyone outside heard what they were saying...
"I'm going to kill Amon," Mako repeated, picking up a set of double edged swords that Korra hadn't seen before and testing the edge of the blades. "So do not venture outside this room. Do not open the door to anyone under any circumstances, until I return."
With that, he left the room, snatching the key from the bedside table as he did so. He shut the door on Korra's outraged cry and locked it securely, pocketing the key.
Mako felt a flicker of guilt at the fact that Korra was now unable to unlock the door, but soon squashed it. He was confident he would return. There was no need for a failsafe.
He was stronger than Amon. And he probably couldn't have picked a better time to strike; Amon's body was slowly wearing out, and at the moment all that kept him anywhere approaching healthy was his dependence on various medications. But in a battle, the masked man would be far below his usual level of skill.
He came to a halt just outside Amon's door, measuring the distance between himself and the presence he could sense inside, before directing his lightning straight through the wood.
A flare of energy and the feeling of impact reverberating through the pulse of lightning to his hands told him he'd hit.
"Who's there?" came Amon's guttural snarl from inside the room, and Mako smirked.
It was the work of a moment to blast the door to pieces.
There was no real surprise in the masked man's eyes when he stepped through the wreckage, and Mako suspected Amon had always known he would never have tamely submitted to having his will.
He smirked, feeling his sense beginning to buzz all throughout his body. He would win; he knew he would!
He was stronger than Amon.
Korra muttered darkly under her breath about 'arrogant, domineering idiots' as she twisted the dagger within the lock.
She was not staying locked up in this room while Mako went off and tried to kill Amon. He was attacking Amon, for Spirit's sake; had that not crossed his mind? It was hardly a battle to be taken as lightly as he had made out.
The gears clicked, and Korra pushed the door open with a triumphant grin.
But now, she was presented with a hallway, stretching off in two directions and she had no idea which direction Mako had gone.
'One day, I'm going to learn to think these things through,' Korra admitted. 'He's probably already attacking Amon by now...'
Choosing not to examine exactly why she was so keen to stop Mako from rushing headlong into what was probably certain death, Korra simply picked a direction and ran down the corridor, not in the slightest bit bothered by the prospect of running into the Lieutenant or any number of Equalist lackeys.
Adrenaline had a tendency to make pesky things like 'logic' and 'forethought' fly right out the window.
Mako eyed the spiral of water that coiled above him, the spiral slowly solidifying to ice. He'd made to electrocute Amon and put an end to the masked man in a matter of moments but had failed to take into account the immediate access to water that Amon had in his quarters.
After a few moments, Mako came to conclusion that Amon had somehow managed to nullify Mako's lightning bending, and while he hated to admit it, Mako was more than impressed at him having done so.
Mako was snapped out of his thoughts when Amon manipulated the spiral of water above him, aiming the sharp edge directly towards Mako's skull.
Mako leapt into the air to avoid Amon's lunge, but the water suddenly elongated, splitting into two and twisting through the air towards him.
Mako had drawn his kali sticks from their sheath and sent electric pulses ripping through the water before he'd even hit the ground.
The masked made a spitting noise, and at once manipulated more water into the form that Mako could only describe as an octopus; Amon now wielded eight separate arms of water, sinuous with razor sharp tips dove towards him. Mako sheathed his kali sticks and pulled his arms through his shirtsleeves, discarding his shirt and therefore creating a diversion.
The water cocooned him like lassos however it was quicky evaporated when thick, orange flames engulfed Mako's body.
Slowed by surprise, Amon had no time to react before Mako had cleaved his body neatly into the three pieces, dark blood splattering across the floor. The man choked, convulsed and fell, lying limp in the pools of crimson fluid.
Mako blinked down at the body as the flames receded. That was it? Amon must have been at the very end of his endurance, to have been defeated so quickly.
Mako took a deep breath and then felt his muscles spasm as though an electrical current had been run through his body. He coughed, dropping to one knee as his muscles continued to jump and quiver like a host of creepy-crawlies were writhing under his skin.
And worse still, he was slowly losing sensation in his fingers and toes.
The supposedly-dead man rose from the ground, making his way over to loom over him once more. "Surely, you didn't think that I could be defeated so easily, Mako."
"I cannot be destroyed," Amon lulled. "Your bending means nothing against me. I wonder, will your sweet little Korra be able to save you before it's too late?"
Mako set his jaw, staring the man down. Strangely, he didn't even feel so much as a prickle of fear; he knew he was safe. If this was to be a mental battle, then Amon had no hope. Whatever tricks he tried to use to consume him, Mako's mental strength would overcome.
Korra swore when she reached an intersection of hallways. Three tunnels loomed before her and she didn't have the foggiest idea which one she should take. With a deep breath, she closed her eyes and spun around in a circle several times, hoping she wouldn't smack into one of the walls, before taking one step forward and opening her eyes.
Her foot was pointing down the left corridor, so that was the one Korra took.
Wherever Mako was, it was very dark. He couldn't see more than few feet in front of him, and the ground was cold, almost ice cold.
It was, he realised, rather like he had been tossed into a giant freezer.
What the hell was this place?
"This is a cooler. It's specifically designed to put a stop to fire benders ability to bend." came Amon's voice from behind him.
Mako whirled around as Amon began to emerge from the shadows, his face still veiled by his trademark mask.
"This is where I will destroy you," he snarled, his voice full of malcontent.
Instantly, Mako found the same icy coils the masked man had formed earlier wrapping about his own body, and he understood that they, in some way, represented Amon's cold-hearted demeanor.
And therein laid his weakness; he was simply cold and calculating, unable to formulate a plan in the heat of the moment. He was, in every way imaginable, the polar opposite of Mako: Mako, who was hot-headed, passionate and fiercely protective of those whom he cared for.
And no amount of force, neither physical nor emotional, would bring about Mako's downfall.
As the mass that was Amon's ince bending lumbered towards him, Mako worked his own will on the element of lightning, warping and twisting the raw energy between his fingers so that the cooler had become not a haven for Amon, but a weapon against him. He saw realisation widen the Equalist's eyes as the coils that were meant to engulf the Amon began to engulf him instead.
And Mako knew that he'd won.
Fortunately, it seemed that Korra had gone in the right direction, because as she continued down the twisting, turning corridor she could feel the air become heavy, a slight tang of electricity in the air, as though two individual energy sources had recently been in outright contest.
Was she too late?
Korra saw the bloodstains smeared across the floor, and homed in on the room they seemed to have come from.
"Mako, you're-hey!" Korra stopped mid-sentence as she caught sight of the fire bender collapsed in a heap on the cold, hard ground. "Mako!"
Mako lifted his head; his face lined with exhaustion "I thought I told you not to leave the room…"
"Yeah, and my grandmother told me not to be the Avatar," she tossed back automatically. "Ignoring that; what happened here?"
Upon closer inspection, she saw that Mako's left forearm was covered in what Korra could only guess was lightenberg figures; fractal scarring from having fired a continuous bolt of lightning and redirected the feedback at the same time.
If Korra wasn't so concerned over Mako's dwindling condition she would have admitted that she was beyond impressed; Mako had displayed a level of fire-bending mastery she'd never witnessed. He'd made himself a human circuit. Something no other fire-bender had ever done before.
She made her way over to him, kneeling down beside him, taking his hand in hers as he gripped it for support. "Mako?"
Instead of answering, Mako took her arm and practically dragged her from the room.
"Hey, what do you-"
"We'll freeze if we stay here any longer," he said wearily.
"Oh."
As they exited the cooler room, Mako leaning heavily against Korra for support, she was startled when they rounded corner and found the Lieutenant was directly outside the room. Had he only just arrived, or had she not noticed him before?
The lieutenant was staring at Mako as though he had never seen him before. Korra slowed in puzzlement as they passed him, but Mako's hand on her upper arm compelled her to pick up her pace again.
"What did you do?" she heard the Lieutenant ask.
Mako stopped, half-turning towards the older man. Korra, too, went still. She was unaware of the proceedings of Mako and Amon's battle.
"What do you think?" Mako said, the faintest hint of triumph evident in his voice.
The Lieutenant went stiff for a moment, and Korra tensed.
"Amon is dead..." The Lieutenant said faintly, blinking hard and looking pale enough for Korra to wonder if he were going to pass out. "But…how…?"
"I turned his own element against him," Mako stated matter-of-factly.
Then he stumbled on, pulling Korra after him and apparently dismissing the Lieutenant.
"You did?" Korra gaped. "So that...the scars on your arms, that is fractal scarring?"
"Yes," Mako nodded, not caring to go into further explanation.
"So...Amon isn't a problem anymore?"
Another nod.
Korra sensed that this was her moment.
"So...you'll be coming back to Republic City, then?"
Mako's eyes were nothing like the liquid amber orbs that Korra associated with the fire-bender when he turned back to her. "No."
Korra gritted her teeth in order to suppress the urge to slap some sense into him. She had to be calm and rational about this. 'Make nice, Korra, make nice...'
"Why not?"
"I would have thought that was obvious. We are on different paths, Korra. We have nothing to do with each other now."
'And yet, who's the one dragging your sorry ass down the corridor?' she thought mutinously.
"Mako, looking at this logically, you have a better chance of finding, and thereby, eliminating, Zolt if you come back to Republic City. Zolt is out there somewhere; we're bound to encounter him again sooner or later."
"No."
"...are you that pig-headed, or just that stupid?"
'That degenerated quickly,' she mused. 'What happened to making nice?'
Mako glared at her, but Korra wasn't deterred in the slightest.
"You may think you've broken your bonds or whatever crap you keep telling yourself, but Bolin and I are not going to give up on you," she hissed, low, savage and determined.
"I have to do this!" Mako snarled, spinning around and pinning her against the wall, his hands pressing her arms back against the rough stone. "No one else but me!"
"Really?" Korra spat. "I suppose that makes sense...you never did like letting anyone else in. When will you realise you're not alone?!"
"Korra!" Mako hissed, some part of him wondering why Korra could rile him like no one else. If anyone else had said something like that, he would have ignored them. But with Korra, he could practically feel his apathetic mask cracking, giving way to fury.
"Why? Why do you feel you have to play the part of the hell-bent vengeful teenager? What can you possibly hope to achieve by killing him?!" Korra shrieked.
The 'making nice' plan seemed to have left in the dust. But truthfully, Korra didn't feel like making nice anymore because it was feeling so good to finally air these wounds.
"Nothing," she went on, lowering her volume a touch so she could be sure he heard every word. "Killing Zolt will not provide you with any sense of relief. Forget about revenge. The fate of those who seek revenge is grim. It's tragic, you will end up suffering and hurting yourself even more. Even if you do succeed in getting revenge, the only thing that remains is emptiness. I don't get it Mako, why can't you be more like Bolin? Bolin, he fights for the people he loves and doesn't hide behind a stupid, hate filled goal or use his childhood trauma as an excuse!"
Mako experienced such an extreme bout of fury that his vision actually went white, the whole world obscured by the force of his rage. When he could see again, his fingers were gripping Korra's arms so tightly he'd lifted her off the floor.
But Korra didn't seem intimidated in the least by his display. Her face was twisted into a snarl like that of a vengeful tigress, and her own hands were wrapped around his biceps, her blunt nails digging into his skin.
Mako had the feeling she was only strangling his arms because she hadn't been able to reach his neck.
With a small thrill of horror, Mako realised he had come dangerously close to losing all control. Of letting his emotions get the better of him. Even though from the age of eight when his parents had been killed he had spent every waking moment repressing and harnessing them, trying to ensure they would not intrude on his mind and cloud his thoughts it had taken barely two minutes of conversation with Korra for him to regress back to the hot-headed blindness he had worked so hard to stamp out.
He lowered her back to the floor abruptly, his grip on her relaxing but he did not release her entirely.
Korra could almost see a shutter slide over Mako's face, locking himself away from her once again.
Korra watched, and some part of her despaired. When his face had twisted and he'd lifted her off the ground like that, she'd seen it as encouragement, proof that she was actually getting through to him.
But now there was nothing.
Korra ground her teeth together until her jaw ached. Her eyes stung sharply, but she refused to cry. She had shed enough tears over Mako.
He wasn't going to listen to her; nothing she said would work. For now, at least, Mako was too focused on killing Zolt to even consider returning to Republic City.
Better to leave him now, quit her captivity and return home. Bolin, Tenzin, Asami and her parents had to be out of their minds with worry by now. She hate to think how the Air bender kids were coping with her disappearance.
"So, that being said, I'll go back to my duties as the Avatar now," she muttered, trying to move past him, expecting his hands to slip off her arms...
But his grip simply tightened once more. "No…"
Korra stared at him. Of all the responses she had expected, Mako's blatant refusal to let her go hadn't been among them.
Mako himself didn't like what he was doing. The little display barely a minute ago had proved that having Korra around damaged his prized self-control. But there was no other course of action.
While the collar remained on, Korra remained vulnerable. Perhaps she would remain safe and unmolested as she journeyed back to Republic City but there was always the possibility that perhaps she wouldn't.
He knew nothing about the mechanisms involved in the collar, so he couldn't remove it himself. On another note he probably should have forced the Lieutenant to remove it before he had scampered off to wherever it was he had run to. The needle was positioned dangerously close to the spinal column; if he attempted to remove it without knowing exactly what he was doing, he ran the risk of crippling or killing her.
He couldn't leave her, and he couldn't return to Republic City, not while Zolt was still alive...
That left only one option.
"You're coming with me," he said shortly, and resumed hauling her down the corridor.
"What?!" Mako winced as Korra's voice reached uncomfortable decibels. "You have got to be kidding me!"
He paid no attention to her protests and simply continued down the corridor; couldn't she see this was for her own good?
He'd gotten perhaps ten meters before he began to feel the strain. Dragging Korra wasn't as easy as he'd anticipated; muscle was heavier than fat, which meant Korra had more weight to her frame than her slender build would suggest. And of course, seeing as she was a bender, the muscles in question were toned and well-used, and could put a lot of force into resisting him.
"Korra," he said eventually, swinging her around to stand in front of him. "You are coming with me, like it or not. I would prefer not to have to knock you out and carry you around as a dead weight, but I will do it if you continue to resist me."
Korra gave him a glare that he could almost feel scorching the hems of his clothing. But she relaxed in his grip, muttering a grudging assent. 'I'd like to see you try the state you're in.'
Mako nodded once in approval, and made for the lower levels, Korra trailing behind him.
His ears were sharp enough to catch her hiss of, "What happened to being on different paths and having nothing to do with each other?"
Mako could hear the bitterness in Korra's voice, but dismissed it. Eventually, she would realise this was for her own good. He may not feel much companionship for her, but he had no choice; he couldn't let her wander helpless in the wilderness, at the mercy of any halfway-talented enemy who stumbled across her.
And yet, while Mako justified his decision to himself, he never once thought about the dozen elites Korra had felled while collared.
Korra stared at the tall wooden cages surrounding her and Mako, confused and not quite sure what to make of them. She of course had no idea what lay behind the doors of the wooden crates, only noting that each and every one were of different sizes.
More importantly, she wondered, what did Mako want with them?
Korra shook her head, some part of her mind still dazed and reeling from Mako's abrupt declaration that she would be coming with him. She still had no idea why he'd done it. Just when she had decided to leave him be, he had suddenly said she would be attached to his side for the remainder foreseeable future.
Korra was convinced that she had either inherited her mentor's abysmal luck, or that the whole karma and reincarnation thing was true and she was making up for having been some sort of evil, sadistic mastermind in her past life. 'It'd make sense if it were true, Kiyoshi was the Avatar after all…'
She hung back, walking a little behind Mako as he strode through the crates, finally stopping in front of one. Korra couldn't see any distinguishing marks on it, but Mako seemed to know what he was doing.
"So, it's you," came a foreign, male voice. A voice resonated from within the wooden crate. "You defeated Amon, then..."
"Yeah," Mako deadpanned, the slightest touch of arrogance in his voice. "More importantly, I'm going to get you out of there."
His double-edged daggers flashed, slicing the wood, causing splinters to scatter onto the floor. Korra watched silently, wondering whom it was that would emerge from behind the wooden crate.
She noted that the room began to become exceedingly warm and moment later her eyes darted to the floor where she noted a pool of lava spilling out from the center of the crate. The edges of the enormous pool pulsed, ripples spreading through the molten liquid as a man's head and shoulders emerged from the crate.
"Ghazan, you're the first," Mako said. "Come with me."
"Me first?" the man questioned. "So there'll be others...?"
Korra stared with utter fascination as she watched the well-built figure of a man slowly solidify the ground once more.
"There's something you don't see every day," she muttered to herself.
The onyx-haired man glanced at her, his attention obviously arrested when she spoke. "Who's the hot chick; your girlfriend?"
Korra snorted derisively as she scratched at her collar.
"Ah, got one of those collars on, eh?" Ghazan noted, looking her up and down avidly. "Pleasure slave, then?"
Mako found himself irritated by Ghazan's blatant appraisal of Korra. "She's not your concern."
"Just finding out who I'm traveling with," Ghazan shrugged.
"Yeah, well, if it was up to me, I wouldn't be traveling with you at all," Korra grumbled, eyeing the wooden crates. Were there more Lava benders being kept here?
"Ooh, she's feisty!" Ghazan grinned. "If you don't want to do her, Mako, I'll take her!"
It might have been Korra's imagination, but she thought Mako's expression became a little more severe at that remark.
"There are two others. I'll be taking Zaheer from the Northern headquarters and Ming Hua from the Southern headquarters," the fire bender continued, ignoring Ghazan's comment.
Korra was a little confused at the mention of others, but she didn't want to ask. The sooner she got back to Republic City the better, and the less she knew about Mako's plans, the more likely he would be to let her go.
Of course, considering how insistent he'd been, having threatened to knock her out to bring her with him, Korra didn't hold out much hope of that happening.
"Your choice of teammates is crazy, Mako," Ghazan said bluntly. Then his eyes wandered to Korra once more, and he amended, "Well...maybe not that crazy..."
Korra's eyes narrowed as he reached toward her, his fingers curving as though to stroke her cheek. She was far from full strength, but she knew a few moves that could certainly break a bone or two...
"Ghazan!" Mako snapped, his indifferent demeanor turning harsh and commanding. "Any hand that touches her I will remove at the wrist."
Both Korra and Ghazan turned to him, Korra startled at his intervention and Ghazan looking annoyed. But Mako didn't allow so much as a flicker to cross his face. He had never heard of Ghazan raping anyone, but with the collar on, Korra was in a very vulnerable position. He had to make sure Ghazan understood that she wasn't to be touched.
"You're acting rather high and mighty," the onyx-haired man drawled.
"When isn't he?" Korra muttered.
Korra didn't even see Ghazan move. One moment, he was directly in front of her, and the next, he was right behind Mako, his index finger pressing against the fire bender's head in a blatant threat.
Korra tensed automatically. While she wasn't particularly fond of Mako at this point in time, she had no desire to see him killed!
"Let's get a few things straight, okay?" Ghazan drawled. "You're not in charge just because you took Amon down. Everyone was after him; someone was bound to kill him eventually, you just had more chances than the rest of us."
"What's your point?" Mako asked, sounding uninterested.
"That I've got the upper hand now," Ghazan grinned. "I can sense your little chickadee is tougher than your usual brand of slaves, but with that collar on, she's not going to be able to do anything to help you."
The tableau dragged on for long, charged moments as Korra wondered if there was anything she should do, anything she could do. She mentally cursed the inanimate chunk of metal and leather around her throat to eternal damnation.
But then the tension was broken as Ghazan lifted his finger away from Mako's temple. "Just kidding!"
Korra relaxed, but only by a fraction.
"I've heard rumours about your strength from way back," Gazhan continued. "Your probending team was the one who defeated the three time Champtions 'The White Falls Wolfbats', right? In fact-" he suddenly swung to face Korra again, "If memory serves me correctly, the Avatar played for the team…Avatar Korra, right?"
"Congratulations," Korra deadpanned. "You show the associative abilities of a chimpanzee."
Ghazan laughed, his gaze running over her once again. "You're a real firecracker, aren't you? Enough spirit for someone three times your size."
He pouted at Mako. "Sure you won't share her?"
Mako's expression shifted to a glare more savage than any Korra had ever seen before.
"Okay, okay..." Ghazan held up his hands in a mollifying position. "I get it, I get it – she's off-limits!"
"'She' is right here!" Korra growled. "And 'she' does not appreciate being discussed like a piece of meat!"
Ghazan chuckled, but apparently decided to drop the line of conversation, because he turned back to Mako. "I'll go with you. But before we get the others, can we take a quick detour? There's somewhere I need to go."
Mako shrugged, and Korra took that to mean that he didn't care.
"Well, considering that you now have a new companion, Mako…" Korra began slowly, edging towards the exit. "I'll just be on my way, now..."
Mako was in front of her so quickly she didn't even see him move.
"I hate it when you do that," she hissed.
"Don't make me force you, Korra," Mako said, his voice level.
Ghazan watched with interest. When Korra had begun to move towards the exit, he had expected Mako to at least knock her to the floor to impress his authority upon her. But he hadn't, choosing instead to block her route in a way that was certainly domineering, though hardly what Ghazan would call 'threatening'. And when he told her not to make him force her, Ghazan was startled to realise that Mako seemed to truly mean it. He honestly didn't want to hurt the woman in front of him.
Ghazan had no idea who she was, but one thing was very clear; in Mako's world, this woman had been given a different set of rules than the rest of them.
Turquoise eyes flashed, Korra's fists clenched, and she spun on her heel, her expression brimming with anger and frustration.
"You really are being held against your will, aren't you?" Ghazan mused.
"Yeah," she spat, glaring at him. "Took you that long to catch on?"
He looked at her, noting the complete lack of any sort of discomfiture. "I can understand Mako's non-reaction, but you seem pretty unconcerned about having a half-naked man in front of you. You're not even blushing."
"Master Katara trained me in the art of healing" she explained shortly. "Naked male bodies are hardly new to me."
Mako's amber eyes narrowed, and he felt a flash of something close to jealousy.
"If you say so, Princess," Ghazan smirked.
One chocolate brown eyebrow rose slowly. "Princess?"
Ghazan's smirk deepened, and he went looking for his clothes without further comment.
He chose not to point out that the title of 'princess' did seem to fit. The exotic mocha complexion, the fiery spirit, and the fact that Mako was treating her with more care than he'd ever believed the fire bender capable of showing made her seem like some sort of goddess.
Not that he'd be telling her or Mako that.
Yay for a new chapter! As always, review and let me know what you think!