Many years before, two people stood in the living room of that very same building. It was new, back then. Raw and unfurnished, but not gnawed on by passage of time and neglect. It was still visibly a cheap, affordable and low-profile place.

The couple who had just entered were fairly young, dressed in simple, Water Tribe travel clothes. They had clearly gone a long way to get there. The man had sharp, angular features, long, braided hair and a grim expression. The woman standing next to him was slightly shorter, with a deceptively slight build. Her skin was darker than her husband's, and her black hair was tied in loops around her ears. She was visibly pregnant.

"Is that the best we could get?" the man asked with a sigh.

"It'll do, Yakone," his wife answered. "It's cheap and there's a dozen other families like ours living here. We'll blend in. We need to keep a low profile for a while more."

"Do you really think we'll be followed here, Aluki?" Yakone asked his wife, sceptically.

"I wouldn't rule it out, but it's not just that," she answered. "Katara is here. Avatar Aang's wife. She learned bloodbending from Hama, and she's responsible for outlawing it in both Water Tribes and Republic City. It's easier to hide here, but she does live here, watching for any signs of it like an owlbear. And if she finds out that not only do we have bloodbending, but it's more powerful than anything she knows, she'll turn this city inside-out looking for us."

Yakone nodded.

"Yes, you're right. Our bloodbending won't save us if half of benders in this city want our heads. Besides… I don't think you should use the special techniques right now."

Aluki smiled and touched her stomach.

"Indeed I shouldn't. We'll just have to bide our time. This city is ripe for the picking, if we're just patient. And if we wait long enough, we'll have another bloodbender to share my family's secret with. Katara is naïve if she thinks that crazy old coot Hama was the first one to discover bloodbending."

They both laughed and went about unpacking their possessions.

Yakone and Aluki stood in front of a window in their house, watching their two sons play. Noatak was running around, while Tarrlok was trying, to hit him with splashes of water. The boys laughed whether he succeeded or failed.

"There's no denying it, Yakone," Aluki said sourly. "Noatak is a non-bender. If Tarrlok manifested his bending by now, his older brother isn't going to."

Yakone leaned his forehead on his wrist, pressed against the glass.

"Rotten luck. We're two powerful waterbenders. Your family has had strong bending for generations, and yet our firstborn is a non-bender? This is going to make things difficult."

"And we're not going to have any more children," his wife reminded him, crossing her hands across her chest. "We'll just have to make sure Tarrlok can master our techniques. Noatak can still be useful to our operation, if that's what he wants. How are the talks going?"

"Not bad. There's a lot of immigrants from both the Water Tribes, and even the swamp, coming in. Many of them are willing to get their hands dirty in order to get rich quickly. Some of them are talented enough that we could teach them bloodbending if we had to… the regular techniques, of course."

Aluki shook her head.

"Only if we have to. Using bloodbending is escalation. It'll make the law crack down on us all the harder, and bring the Avatar's attention."

"Yakone?" Hiroshi blurted out. "The bloodbending crime lord? I'd heard rumours he had a family who had gone into hiding after his capture, but…"

"But you didn't know that one member of said family was Councilman Tarrlok. Yes," Amon said. Amon… or Noatak. It was hard to fit those two names into one person. "Of course, I was no longer part of the family at that point. Not really."

"Still, a non-bender born of two powerful benders," the Lieutenant said. "It happens, of course. No one really knows how it works. Why some people are born with bending. And it works the other way around, too. Both Master Katara and our former Chief of Police were powerful benders whose parents were non-benders."

Hiroshi chuckled, despite the gravity of the atmosphere.

"The latter certainly isn't too keen to remind anyone of that. Master Katara would rather tell people of her mother, who had sacrificed her life for her, than her father, who had fought in the long war."

Amon nodded.

"I've gathered some knowledge on the subject, but I'm far from certainty myself. It'll come in time, however. The story has just begun."

It was a different place. Not their home, but one of their father's other properties, secret and clandestine. The two brothers were older now, and their sparring was no longer a child's play. Their mother watched them from the other side of the room.

Noatak assumed a martial arts stance, as his brother took position between two barrels of water. They stared each other down for a while, neither one moving. Finally, Tarrlok made the first move. With a sudden thrust of his hand a jet of water rose from one of the barrels and lashed out at Noatak's legs. The non-bender jumped nimbly above the attack, and sailed through the air in his brother's direction.

Tarrlok's response to this development was to send two waves of water crashing at his brother, intending to swat him out of the air without giving him room to dodge. Noatak was prepared for it, however, landing gracefully and crouching as the two waves crashed, splashing water everywhere. He slid across the slippery floor and swept his leg in a wide arc, knocking Tarrlok's legs from under him before rising to an upright position. The waterbender fell backwards, but he was hardly helpless. The water that had splashed during the earlier bout rose up to cling to Noatak's legs and solidify itself into ice.

Noatak was not quick enough to protect himself against this threat. One of his feet was trapped in the solidifying ice as his brother's back hit the ground. Before he was able to shatter the ice, Tarrlok was on his feet again, trying to rather straightforwardly smack him in the face with a simple – crude even – jet of water. Despite being off-balance, Noatak dodged the jet and came towards the waterbender with a few hooks and punches. Tarrlok found himself unable to defend against them, and staggered backwards. Noatak laughed.

"Another one for me. You don't do very well once I get close, brother."

Tarrlok rubbed his face.

"I keep practicing against our parents and other waterbenders. Last week father even got some earthbenders to fight me. You're the only non-bender I ever get to spar with."

"Because you need to know how to fight benders," his mother cut in, speaking for the first time in a while. She sounded somewhat irritated. "You'll be facing a lot of them if you want to inherit our empire."

"But I beat him," Noatak said, incredulous. "Doesn't that mean he needs to watch out for non-benders as well?"

"Few non-benders are as talented as you are," Aluki said, dismissively. "It's benders we're going to be up against as your father and I expand our holdings. Both from other gangs and the law enforcement. You know Chief Beifong, don't you? She can bend metal, and she's training an entire force of people who can do the same. Now that's an enemy to be reckoned with."

"But-" Noatak seemed at a loss for words confronted with his mother's casual dismissal.

"That's enough, Noatak." Aluki looked at her pocket watch. "It's time to begin your advanced lessons, Tarrlok. We'll need to leave the city for the evening."

The two waterbenders vacated the room, leaving Noatak fuming.

"Bloodbending is older than most people realize," Aluki said, as Tarrlok stood with his mother in the middle of a small valley, outside Republic City. There was no one else in sight, apart from a few cages containing spider cats and elephant rats. "Katara would have everyone think it was invented by Hama, the woman from the Southern Water Tribe captured by the Fire Nation during the great war. She knows that it's not true, however."

"Bloodbending is periodically discovered by waterbenders who are desperate enough. Cut off from water, facing overwhelming odds… those are the things that drive us to tap into the very source of all life. Not every waterbender can do it, of course. It takes power, talent and hard work."

"Why is blood so much harder to manipulate than normal water?" Tarrlok asked, nervously. "Even bending plants isn't so hard."

"It's because blood is life. It carries in it chi, the spiritual energy that gives us life and allows us to bend," his mother explained. "When we try to invade someone's body this way, their chi rebels and overpowers us. That is why we need the power of the full moon behind us… most of the time."

She looked up at the sky, where the full moon shone brightly. She released some water from a water skin she had at her belt and used it to release a spider cat from its cage. The animal ran away immediately, but Aluki's hands shot forward quickly, in a gripping, jerky motion. The critter stopped abruptly, shaking and twitching. The woman twisted her hands, bringing them closer to her, which dragged the spider rat in her direction. It clearly had no control over its own body. Aluki nodded and lowered her hands. The spider rat fled quickly, still trembling.

"My family is the only one in which the skill has been passed from one generation to another. It never happens, otherwise. Bloodbending is a great taboo whenever it surfaces. My ancestors have kept it secret, only using it if they have to. In the close-knit community of the Water Tribes, it's hard to keep such a power hidden. In the chaotic, shifting mass of the Republic City… it is something different. It's easy to get lost in the crowd here. And that self-righteous Katara can't navigate the city quite as well."

"And you're going to teach me those techniques?" Tarrlok asked, excited. There was something Noatak had no answer to. He always did have all the answers, but what could he do if his blood was bent?

"Yes. Just the basic ones, at first. The rest will come later."

"The rest?"

"Something my grandmother came up with, and my father refined," Aluki explained. "The great weakness of bloodbending is its reliance on the full moon. If the moon isn't full, it can't be done. But… sometimes it can."

"How?"

"Blood is life. When you bloodbend someone, you control the thing that makes them alive. But life resists, so it's very difficult. The technique my grandmother developed is… simultaneous bloodbending, so to speak. When you bend someone's blood, you bend the blood within yourself as well, to pit your chi against theirs. It's very, very dangerous. It killed my grandmother." Aluki's voice was grave. "Not all at once. But the damage it did to her energy made her terminally ill, beyond the ability of healers to fix. We do not use this technique unless there is no other choice."

"Is there any defence against bloodbending?" Tarrlok's voice was excited and eager. That was true power. Something only waterbenders could do, and something only his family knew.

"If you try to use it on another bloodbender, it becomes a contest of skill and willpower," his mother responded. "Those who cannot bloodbend cannot do much to resist. My grandmother, before she died, believed that it might be possible to focus your chi into ignoring the bloodbending, with enough concentration and mastery of self. But no one has ever done it."

"So… Noatak couldn't either," Tarrlok said, trying to sound casual.

"What does your brother have to do with anything?" His mother sounded surprised. The young man's shoulders slumped.

"Nothing. I just… I'd really like to beat him at something. He keeps trying to prove that he's better than me even though he's a non-bender."

"Beat him?" His mother sounded incredulous. "You're a bender. And you're about to learn bending techniques few have an inkling of. You have capabilities he can only dream of. Stop feeling like you should envy him. He wants you to feel that way, because he already does."

Tarrlok took in a deep breath.

"Yeah. You're right. And when I learn bloodbending, he'll finally have to admit it."

"You wanted to see me, father?"

Some years later, Noatak was standing before his father. Yakone was looking at his son with a tired, exasperated expression. They stood in a gloomy office room, where the bloodbending crime lord attended to the administrative duties of running his racket. His knowledge of the forbidden bending arts wasn't as deep as that of his wife, but he had much more patience for the tedious bean-counting that came with running a city-wide crime ring. It wasn't that much different than running something supposedly honest, truthfully. There was just more bodies under more floorboards.

"Yes. I would like to know why you chose to pick a fight with my enforcers," he said, sourly.

"They picked a fight with me, father. Not the other way around. They treat me like I'm a… a servant. I'm your son! And you're in charge!"

Yakone pinched the bridge of his nose and sighed.

"Noatak, you need to control yourself. You can't just beat people up over…"

"Yes, I did beat them up, didn't I? I left them, your benders, sprawled on the ground. They never stood a chance. Why am I being treated as lesser? Why do you keep paying so much attention to Tarrlok? He's a fool who just happened to be born with bending."

Yakone sighed again and sank into a nearby chair.

"Son. You're not… lesser. Regardless of what people say. You're talented, intelligent and strong. If you were a waterbender, like the rest of us, your command over our element would be unmatched, and you might even push our bloodbending techniques further than your mother has. But you're not a bender, and there's no getting around it."

Noatak thrust his hands into his hair.

"Yes, yes! If I was a bender, I might even do something with it! You have all this power and you use it for… bullying. For getting rich quick. And you teach Tarrlok to do the same. Why is it that people with actual vision are always non-benders? Maybe it's because we can't control the elements and throw our weight around. We have to actually use our brains now and then."

"That's enough!" Yakone cut in. "You stand in a city founded by two benders. One of them being the Avatar."

"Yes, on lands that benders had ravaged before. You know, Firelord Ozai? Avatar Aang took his bending away."

"Rubbish." Yakone waved his hand. "Avatar Aang killed Ozai, and the story about taking his bending was made up later to make him look good. Taking away bending is impossible."

"Maybe it is. But if so, it shouldn't," Noatak said, wandering over to the window and staring through it. " Chi-blocking can take it away for a moment. What if…"

"Enough of those idle fantasies." His father's voice broke his contemplation. "You can't change the way the world works. Some people are benders, other aren't. You can't do anything about it. Not even with… chi-blocking, or whatever it is."

"I clearly can't do anything about it while staying here, in your… bending triad," Noatak said, dismissively. "I'm leaving. You won't see me ag-"

He suddenly stopped in the doorway, trembling and struggling against an invisible force. His father had raised his hand, and his face had a pained expression.

"Leave, if you wish. Anyone else I'd kill for it, but you're still my son. If you reveal anything about us to our enemies, or the police, however… I will find you."

He lowered his hand and Noatak turned to him, his face blanched.

"How did you-?"

"That's simply one of the things that are beyond you, a non-bender. Now go. You've made your choice. If you're having second thoughts, it's too late."

Noatak fled.

Tarrlok walked in on his brother as he packed his belongings.

"What-"

"I'm leaving. Father cast me out. Or I decided to leave myself. It's sort of in-between," Noatak said, throwing on his backpack. "Well, good riddance all around, I'm sure. I'm done playing butler and I'm sure you'll appreciate not having me around anymore."

Tarrlok stood there, uncertain. He could not deny it. Over the years, his relationship with his brother had become very strained. The proud, talented non-bender was increasingly frustrated with playing second fiddle to the rest of his family. Tarrlok, on the other hand, found that learning to bloodbend had done little to assuage his insecurity. Noatak's taunts about bending being the only thing to make him special bit deep.

"I want nothing to do with any of you. Don't worry, though, I'll keep my head low. Not only would father kill me, but I don't want people thinking you're my family," Noatak went on. Then he suddenly moved and gripped his brother by the shoulders.

"Father bloodbent me. During the day. And the moon isn't full now, even at night. How did he do it? Do you know? You must know. All those secret training sessions…"

"Yes! Yes, I know! And if you don't let go of me, I'll bloodbend you into submission too!" It was an empty threat. Tarrlok had been unable to master the simultaneous bloodbending techniques at that time yet, much to his mother's disappointment. But he relished the look of panic it brought to Noatak's face. The non-bender let go and stepped back.

"Fine. I want nothing to do with any of you, ever again. You're pathetic, all of you. All this power… and this is what you use it for."

The door slammed behind him.

For the next few years, Noatak hid on the fringes. He mostly employed himself as an inexpensive bodyguard. Non-benders found it hard to find work in that field, but sometimes people needed someone low-profile, or had no money to hire a bender. He got by, staying off his family's radar as Republic City was gripped by an increasing panic. A merciless criminal gang, led by a bloodbender, was terrorizing the populace. They threatened and extorted. People who resisted were brutalized, or worse, and their property destroyed. But one day, it was over.

Noatak stood in the crowd of people, watching Avatar Aang step onto the platform to address the citizens of Republic City. The last of the Air Nomads looked tired and distressed. He waited for the crowd to fall silent before speaking.

"I know what you want to ask me, people of Republic City. Yes, I did take away Yakone's bending after he had displayed the ability to bloodbend in broad daylight. My wife, the esteemed waterbending master Katara, is investigating that power as we speak."

The crowd emitted another wave of noise. The question that broke through was "But how did you take his bending?"

"Prior to my battle with Firelord Ozai at the end of the Hundred Years' War, I did receive the power to bend energy within people. It allows me to take away bending. I did use it to strip Ozai of his firebending. I did not, as some claim, kill him and then create the story."

"Why hadn't you used this power since then?" came the question from the crowd. That question burned inside Noatak's mind as well. He held his breath, waiting for the Avatar's response. Yes, why hadn't he? He had the ability to bring justice. To take bending away from those who didn't deserve it, who used it for their base lusts and greed. It was what his father had dismissed as impossible. And yet there it was, plain as day. Inflicted on him. Beautiful, brutal equality.

"It is not something I do lightly," Aang answered. He sounded firm, but tired. Very tired. He sounded like an older man than he looked. "Taking away bending is a harsh punishment, and I will not risk abusing it. The ability to bend is a fundamental part of a person, and humankind at large. Both with Ozai and with Yakone, I had no other choice. If I start taking away bending too freely, I'll risk upsetting the balance of the world. And that I will not allow."

Noatak stopped listening at that point. Of course. Balance. Fundamental part of humanity. Easy for him to say. He was a bender, and clearly he was no different from all the other ones… not much different from his father. They all clung to the power that elevated them above the masses.

He started to push his way through the crowd. At some point, unconsciously, he became aware he was going to leave Republic City. If the Avatar was too weak to inflict justice on the world, something had to be done. Taking a person's bending away permanently was possible. True, only the Avatar could do it. But once something was done… it could be done again. Once something was discovered… it could be rediscovered. Noatak would do so or die trying.