At that point Korra had stopped screaming completely. Not that anybody could hear her either way. Her eyes were aglow with now a fierce piercing gold. She'd collapsed to her hands and knees, lungs heaving and burning her throat as her influence expanded miles.

All the while, nothing moved.

She could feel hummingbirds frozen in the park outside Future Industries, the water of the harbour frozen without so much as a lick of ice to be seen, and yet the world held its breath, and Korra exhaled.

The flames had already exhumed Mako's left arm and half his chest, but at this point his oddly shaped eyebrows were as yet un-singed. This expansion of her mind however left her in a complete state of entropy, Jumping was out of the question, but the need to get everyone out before the station was inhumed was the only reason this new ability existed.

Blood was pooling on the tile beneath her, dripping from her nose, past her lips and falling down her chin, but Korra could no longer sense the confines of her own body. Instead she felt herself cutting around the reality of her friend and pulling him close. He broke into her veil, panting, unable to scream from shock and too preoccupied by his fierce burns to understand what was happening.

Feeling helpless and petrified, Mako did the only thing his mind had any instinct to do; and called Bolin. In a stream of white he was yanked from the Beifong's mid sentence and stood between the two bleeding Teleporters.

"-my zipper once-MAKO?" He kneeled hovering his hands over his grunting brother, teetering on the edge of consciousness, as he bled and peeled from lacerations that went as high as his jaw. "Mako What-" he gingerly cradled his head in hands too big to be thought capable of such a gentle act, cut off from his questions by the one word Mako could utter.

"Korra."

Finally he whirled, looking down at her, rigid hands and feet splayed flat to balance as she tried unsuccessfully to yank her colleagues from one place to the next - alive. And he could see them, it wasn't quite a screen or a portal but the way her influence balanced time and space allowed these two places to layer over each other in such a way that Bolin could have walked into the station without having to Teleport.

"Bolin please-" Korra choked out, "Get them."

"But-" Hesitating only because the last of his family was dying at his feet.

"Go!" His familiar barked and spurred him into action.

One by one Bolin dragged the stiff, statues of the RCPD into Varrick's so far top secret facility across town, trying not to imagine how this was happening or what would happen if he kept ignoring his bleeding friends to save these human popsicles.

"Bolin I can't hold it much longer." What Korra had meant as a scream came our breathy and weak.

"Just two more Lin is locked in her office with some woman."

"Get them out now!" Mako yelled his way in and out of consciousness. Bolin jumped, four times back and forth laying Lin and her accompanist on the couches, arms still raised, passing files between them. Safe and sound, Korra collapsed, face smacking ungraciously into the pool of blood and her mother, who had been hovering nearby throughout the entire endeavour caught her shoulders and turned her on her back.

Hot wind flayed from the veil before closing, miles away, the windows of RCPD shattered, the walls became scorched with flame and the sprinkler system went off, dousing a host of inanimate objects and thankfully - no humans.

Bolin returned to his brother, looked out to the fifty odd people he had just saved and shouted.

"Somebody help him!"

"Bolin." Korra extended a hand and a paper thin voice, reaching for Mako's rather than his, Senna and the brother angled them both so she could touch him.

"Are you sure you can do this?" Senna asked.

"No." and with that she latched anyway, eyes blue, hand glowing, the same ethereal light swallowing Mako's wounds.

XXX

Asami felt tiny in the business park that hid Varrick's clandestine facility. The buildings were looming grey and seemingly empty. The roads in-between even more so, hugging herself, feeling rain dust her face and ice bite her lips she marched as her thumb hailed a private car from a discreet respected company on her phone.

Teeth worried her lip to keep her emotions from getting the better of her. Every blink brought her back to moments before, the fear on her mother's face, her screams, and the dejection on Korra's. While she was an excellent sparring partner, for arguing when not at her best she'd fold like a leaf and say the absolute wrong things. The comment that they wouldn't even be together if not for this madness stung the most. Almost as much as reflection on how long and hard she had loved Korra to begin with, despite knowing Korra had loved her too it still felt like a twisted isolated lonely affair of sleepless nights and one sided fantasies.

She had every answer to every question she had ever asked herself, what did her lips taste like, her chest beneath her hand, what she looked like snuggled up between her legs in the mornings, the weight of her fingers, the smell of her neck, she knew the answers like her own muscles, and still she knew she would always want more.

Stepping into her car she acknowledged the driver with a nod and an automatic address. She didn't realise it was the harbour apartment until the last second. She berated herself for a moment, she had stormed away to think and it seemed all her brain was capable of was fixating on Korra. Powerful, beautiful, time bomb Korra.

She collected herself, mopped the tears that had dribbled down her cheeks, charged the car to her personal account with enough of a tip to make it seem like it wasn't an embarrassing mistake to take her here. She hated to admit it but she hated sleeping there alone; it had always been a painful experience.

I love you.

I know.

She let the evening play out in her head as the elevator took her to the penthouse, Korra's face so sure and unrelenting as she watched her go. Asami knew then just how invested she was in this woman, how she would love her forever, and had to make sure that Korra was around to see it. The way she bled and keeled over and broke reality in just a few short moments was incredible, but also completely horrifying.

If the universe was working through her, it certainly paid no heed to how much it damaged her body. Sure enough it could latch onto the next host and destroy them just as easily, the worst part about it was that Korra didn't seem to mind, trusting an outcome that had no real right to happen.

Asami had no tolerance for blind faith, and finally set her mind to the task of piecing together her next move.

The Paladins had to be destroyed.

Accomplishing this Korra would have to be taken away from all this too. Maybe a vacation, somewhere warm, a place to soothe the cockles of her heart and let the spirit heal. She had a hard time putting a place to what she wanted.

She looked out the window, the Sun wouldn't be up for hours yet. She kneeled on the bed, atop the comforter listening to the silence and the ocean in the distance, almost forgetting the teleporting wonderdog and her proclivity for knowing exactly when the heiress needed her. She took Korra's side of the bed and keened sorrowfully, tail wagging, eyes bright. Asami smirked when she thought of how her father would react to what Varrick had created. She cupped her ears and brought her muzzle close.

"Such a sinister evil creation aren't you fluffers?" Naga licked her face in response, "I will shave you for this." She threatened scrubbing her head with her nails. The puppy buried her head into her chest and Asami let her arms take the comfort she had to offer. The Engineer leaned forward and buried her face in her pelt, tensing slightly as Naga snuffled and inspected her betrothal necklace.

It came as a shock to feel this moment merge with the morning, Asami woke with a face full of fur and no memory of even lying down.

She switched her clothes, switching jeans and blouse for chemise and slacks. Clawing her hair into a tighter tail and reapplying her war paint. She looked ready for work even if she didn't feel like it. She huffed when she tried to twist the top button up, realising that Korra had pinged it off a few days before her hiatus. Biting her lip and forcing down the memories of Korra tugging down her bra and biting the mouthful underneath as she changed it for something that hadn't been torn into in a fit of passion.

Yanking open the wardrobe parting the dresses Asami spied something she thought she'd thrown out with the trash months ago. The shoe box of Hiroshi's, the prototype of the first electroshock glove. The papers and letters that nested it. Gingerly she lifted them out, pushing aside the glove and inspecting the pages in the light.

They were old, older than his arrest that was for sure, they looked almost like text book pages. Precise, refined sketches of chemical equations surrounded by perfectly aligned passages.

Spirits. Molecule Manipulation. Familiars. Asami's eyes caught the buzzwords and filtered for anything else that made sense. This was Varrick's research twenty years before Varrick started it.

The Avatar is a completely perfect and impossible strand of their kind. While they can be stopped, they are difficult to incapacitate or even kill. Their line can be traced back throughout recorded history. At least one in each generation, it is believed that they are the only humans that can in all certainty reincarnate. While ending the cycle of reincarnation is possible, it has not been discovered.

Ending their kind is the key to assuring the safety of our physical universe.

This was Paladin paraphernalia, mixed with facts about Jumpers, their different blood, their strong hearts, and bodies that ran five or six degrees hotter than most humans. Avatars could not only travel the world, they could twist it to their will. Still while skating that line between god and man there didn't seem to be much of an example of them abusing their power. No one ever seemed to live long enough to try. Roku, killed aged 38 luring enemy fire from Familiar, their was a picture of a world war two pilot, young looking, long beard, arm around a comrade. Kyoshi, killed aged 45 protecting Familiar, her photo was gorgeous, soft focus cheek balanced on her hand as she smiled through makeup. Asami recognised that mischievous glint in this super stars eyes, she hated that she did.

Kuruk, died, suicide aged 25. Kuruk's Familiar was comatose for three full years before this Avatar took his own life. It was believed that this disconnection from his Familiar caused the six month hiatus between death and rebirth into the next host body. Disposing of the Soul Guardian prior to ending the Avatar may be key in ending the cycle.

If she didn't feel sick before she did now, Korra's kind had been hunted for over a hundred years, as had her own. Familiars were a breed of their own, they weren't just the people Teleporters loved; they needed them to survive. The superheroes would collapse in on themselves.

And Hiroshi had this, hell he'd studied this his notes were all over this scrap of photocopied text book. Photocopied. This was a mass produced obscure thing for anyone to hold let alone to recreate and xerox and give out to its soldiers. His notes. His notes were telling of something else entirely. There was no reading between the lines, these were extras. Notes from something else. Short. Sequenced. Nonsensical numbers and letters. Passwords.

Hiroshi knew Korra was the Avatar, even then. He knew what Asami was to her. In a twisted way Hiroshi tried to save his own daughter, by murdering the target that was on her back. The Paladins had sold him down the river for ruining their chance to end the cycle there and then but at least his heir was safe.

She hurried through the apartment, dressing, collecting anything that remained of Hiroshi's research. When she hit the reception she stopped, keys clenched cold in hand something bright caught the corner of her eye. A glowing screen and rolling bi lines.

When she turned her heart dropped.

BREAKING NEWS Explosion at RCPD. NO BODIES FOUND - DEAD OR ALIVE.

XXX

Leuten hated smoking. His teeth were growing yellower by the minute and inch by inch his crawling skin dulled and pulled towards the sucking motion of his mouth. Still there was no better excuse to spend extended periods of time outside loitering. He could only eat a sandwich so slow. Still he waited for the Sato girl to leave her house. He hadn't seen her since she was nine but was irrefutably Hiroshi's daughter. It was in the way she held herself, the fair skin against the jet black and that strong will in her eyes.

The apartment reception opened at 13:07, and the heiress stepped out. Papers stuffed beneath her arms, keys jangling from her fist. She looked distracted, twitchy as she waited for the concierge to pull her Satomobile around. He adjusted his glasses and watched her glow. She was steeped in Jumper energy. Brighter than any Familiar Leuten had ever seen he almost dropped his cigarette as he watched.

His muscles seized when her head faced her, she was bright in the visors, but he knew right then she was looking right at him. Clever girl. He couldn't help but think it.

The encounter lasted but a second, her car was there, she'd switched with the driver and sped off before Leuten could even think of pretending not to watch. The moment after his own unmarked car pulled in front of him.

"What do we know?" Amon was already in the back, polishing the mask proudly over his lap, concentrating on a particularly stubborn smudge over the clasp.

"It's her." Leuten confirmed watching his boss tug the mask over his head. Amon sat silently for a moment. As if interacting with an interface that his companion couldn't see, yet he swore he spotted a shudder score through him.

"What is it?"

"By tonight Leuten. We bring everything forward."

XXX

Asami parked on the still empty street. She honestly wondered if she left the car in the middle of the street no one one be there to crash into, drive around or leave a passive aggressive note on the windshield.

Still as she got out and rounded the corner to the entrance only she stopped. Bolin was stood there, only it was someone who kind of looked like Bolin. Chin to chest the Jumper looked drained, none of his bubbly aura was shining through. This was a Teleporter hanging on by a thread.

"Mako?"

"He won't wake up."

"Korra?"

"She won't sleep."

She stepped towards him, without thinking she gripped his shoulder and he lifted his head.

"Were they there?" He glared at her, not angry, just exhausted. Now she was closer she could see the blood on his hands.

"Go inside." Was all he could manage. It was crushing to see Bolin like this, other than Korra, Asami had never comforted anyone before. She did the only thing she could think of, whipping up her phone and calling her assistant, she took his hand and slapped the ringing phone before raising his muscular arm so it touched his ear.

"Do not hang up," she ordered. Sure enough Opal's panicked tones filtered through the speaker, incredulous and worried, so full of care that Bolin's mouth couldn't help but twitch. "Opal, you're on with Bolin." She said it loud enough so she could hear.

"H-hey." he swallowed and shrunk as he wrapped his free arm under his chest and clung tightly, "Mako got hurt. Bad. I don't…I can't." Opal cut him off, Asami couldn't tell what she was saying but he blinked and a tear made its way from his eye. Embarrassed he covered them, "You don't have to-" he swallowed thickly, before adding, "Okay." He looked like he was about to hang up when he caught something, both of them silent for a time, before he whispered back, "You too."

His hand went limp and he shrank against the wall, it was only thanks to Asami's master dexterity that she caught her phone before it hit the ground.

"She coming?"

"Five minutes." he choked.

"I'll let you know if anything changes." Asami couldn't wait a second longer, yanking open the door not expecting Bolin to speak again.

"You know I wouldn't have her if not for you 'Sami. Thank you." Asami managed a smile at him and whispered.

"I could say the same to you." He barely nodded as she walked past him, the need to see her fiancé outweighing the want to comfort him. She did what any good CEO would do and delegated the task to her personal assistant.

The officers were surrounding Mako, Lin guarding his head and chewing her nails while a woman in blue touched a comforting hand on her arm. Shirtless Mako had some gruesome scars, which was fascinating in and of itself seeing as he was wounded a little over an hour ago. They seemed to have split, younger half, worrying over their captain and reeling from what had just happened, glued to the news on their phones and wondering who exactly to call for this. The older half Zhu Li had shown them the files, from over twenty years ago. There was no other way to explain what had happened other than the truth, and these officers had been waiting for this story since Aang's mysterious and unexplained death.

"Sato!" Varrick crowed, hair wild, eyes more so, "You won't believe the things!"

"Where's Korra?" She asked, more or less knocking him off of his train of thought he twitched and pointed his nose towards the consoles, Tonraq and Senna were glaring at the screens with a mix of envy and concern. She marched over, looking at them confused until she saw what they were looking at.

"No one can get in." Senna explained. "She's even blocking Zhu Li." Forehead against her knees Korra sat hunched inside the box. Bloody hand prints on the ground either side of her.

"What are they?" Speak of the devil, Zhu Li had slipped the papers from Asami's hands.

"Hiroshi's passwords." Asami meant to say more but she'd already abandoned explaining to run to the structure at the centre of the facility.

"Holy hell." Varrick exclaimed, sprinting on his endless reserves of crazy science energy.

"Can you hear me?" she touched the wall, almost certain she was leaning against the same spot Korra was. Yet still she heard nothing. She turned to see Tonraq nodding from the consoles, Korra had moved. If she was stood with her she would have seen that Korra was now facing the wall.

She heard Senna's gasp before she knew what had happened. Before she felt prodding in her arm, and she flinched, a tan hand protruding from the wall.

She knew it was Korra's from the way it held her arm, gentle warm. She moved and found her hand and yanked her in. Through the wall like it was jelly.

"I can't leave you alone for five minutes can I?" Asami whined crushing her in her arms.

"Then you know what you need to do then don't you?" Korra murmured back her face in her shoulder. "Is Mako okay?"

"Still unconscious but Lin is with him."

"He was right in the middle of it. He picked up a bomb on my desk, it looked like a present for me…They were after me,"

"Didn't you save all those people?" She felt the Officer immediately tense up, she pulled away, ignoring the question and brushing the hair out of Asami's eyes.

"How was your adventure out there?"

"I found out what you are. Why you're special." She traced her knuckles across Korra's jaw, a pattern her fingers had already learned but loved to follow anyway. First the jaw.

"Is it because I can turn my eye lids inside out?" The heiress chuckled as her thumb graced her eyebrow, back down following a dot to dot of her scars, cheek to collar.

"Be serious."

"I don't want to. It got serious while you were gone 'Sami."

"You can go through walls now?"

"Yeah, you know what that means?"

"You're dead and we're all ghosts?"

"We could honeymoon in England and freak out the people at platform 9 and 3/4" The Engineer let the levity take her, laughing and falling into Korra's arms and holding tight. Korra tried and failed to stop the sharp gasp of pain she emitted when Asami squeezed her. She let go by instinct, a wave of concern flooding back.

"What?" Then she saw it, not scars but deep purple bruises protruding by the tiniest of margins from her shirt. "Who did this to you?" Korra looked at up her, swallowing thickly. "I'll cut them." The Water Tribe girl laughed and wasn't swayed by the notion that Asami was serious.

"I stopped time and healed Mako. It did a number on me. I think I broke a rib."

"You have to stop doing this Korra."

"I can't help it. They just happen without me knowing half the time. It's not like I'm trying to beat myself up here."

Asami stood reaching for the camera and yanking the wire out, "Show me."

"What can you do?"

"Show me." she ordered, kneeling beside her.

"You just want me to strip for you again." Korra chagrinned already she was fighting at the buttons, from the bottom, Asami helped from the top, parting her shirt and tracing her fingers over the mottled brown. "Eeeaahhaha," Korra made the odd pain soaked noise as she stretched her arms back for the shirt to fall to the ground, "Everything hurts."

"S'what you get," without skipping a beat Asami pitched down and kissed her bruise on her chest.

"You're going to kiss it better?"

"Ancient Chinese secret." Asami deadpanned, finding a clearer patch of skin beside her stomach scar and blowing a raspberry on it. Korra doubled over with laughter, howling, throwing her head back, it was so surprising she forgot her pain and was thrown into the memory of her flash forward. She felt the cool vinyl soothe the bruises on her back as she looked up at her.

"You're such an idiot I love you." it came out between snickers, Asami sat back on her heels to watch Korra wipe giggle tears away from her eyes with the heel of her hand. Meanwhile she found her own tugging Korra's left, interlacing their fingers and thumbing her engagement ring.

"You too." Her free fingers were running their tips on the plain of that one long scar, soothing and instinctual as she let herself be kissed. Balancing alongside her so she could touch but not put too much weight on her. "Do you want to come out now? Let someone check on you?"

"Not at all." Korra punctuated the statement with a kiss to her throat. Asami couldn't help but comb her fingers through those short locks and enjoy her there.

"Do you want me to tell you what I found out about your reincarnations?"

"Later. I don't want to think about me right now. Let's talk about you." And like that she angled the conversation to where Asami had been avoiding all day, "What you saw this morning, how are you feeling about it?"

"I don't think-"

"Remember I am the vulnerable one here; someone took my shirt off." She disarmed her with humour and soft kisses, tugging her body close. "I know you miss her." Asami stiffened, as long as she had known Korra she was sure, even to herself she barely spoke of her mother. It wasn't until Korra pulled back to look her, she knew she had let it slip somewhere along the way. "You sing like a canary in your sleep Miss Sato. You'd suck as a spy."

"Doesn't help that I'm sleeping with the enemy." Sarcasm was difficult to muster when her walls were falling down, "She wasn't expecting it. I mean who could guess that." She let her forehead fall and lean on Korra's collar, "She didn't deserve it."

"She was leverage." Korra deduced, "The Paladins killed her, framed Jet, gave Hiroshi a reason to join the war."

"The Paladins clearly brainwashed that boy."

"Didn't it seem a little too obvious? It can be explained either way Jumpers framing Paladins, Paladins framing jumpers. The only thing your father could deduce for certain from that was that Jet had impossible power, and our kind was capable of incredible and horrible things. If someone like that took you from me even by accident I don't know what I would do."

"I know you're not condoning what he did to you-"

"I'm understanding why he would. There's being good at dealing with chaos and best way to deal is to prevent it. He thought he was preventing something."

"It still wasn't right."

"Yeah well right and wrong gets blurred when your missing a part of yourself."

"Bolin was right you need sleep." It was almost as if being reminded of it made her even more exhausted. She nestled and stretched against her, making cute grunting sounds as she stretched her many bruised muscles.

"Stay with me this time."

"Coming from you," Asami murmured settling beneath her, ignoring the hard floors and ghosting her thumb from her forehead down the bridge of her nose. Up and down, over and over, as soft and easy as her own breaths.

"What's that? It's nice."

"My mom used to do it to me." She watched Korra's face light up, even with her eyes closed. Sleep already taking her she mumbled,

"I can't wait until we're parents."

Asami's heart skipped around like crazy at that. A part of her had thought Korra would wait a few years and completely fumble around the idea of having kids before working up the courage to embrace the idea.

"Me too."