Rules

"Electricity and wires dictating everything you do..."

Part Four

Mako flexed the electric glove around his fist uncomfortably. He rarely used these kinds of weapons, preferring to fight with his hands and feet, but the glove was more outwardly intimidating. He sat atop the roof of a house, waiting. It had gotten dark, and the markets had closed for the day. Any moment now, he would come...

There.

He slipped his mask on before he somersaulted off of the roof and landed in a crouch on the balls of his feet, placing a hand to the ground to steady himself. He stood with ease, and the man before him jumped back, eyes wide.

"Who—"

"You saw something today that you weren't supposed to see," Mako said evenly.

"What—what are you talking about?"

"You know what I'm talking about." Mako made several steps towards the burly street vendor, who, despite the advantage he held over Mako in size, cowered backward.

"No, I don't!" the man shouted, and he looked around the deserted streets. "Help—someone help!"

"You didn't seem so helpless when you chased two kids around the city with a knife today."

The man's eyes grew wider, and he stumbled backward and landed on his hands. "You—you saw? The waterbending girl?"

So he didn't realize she was the Avatar. Mako nearly snorted. What an idiot.

Still, he could never be too careful. His brief contact with the Avatar was an inconvenience, something that would only complicate his job and his life if anyone—including Amon—found out. After all, he had not captured her; there was no point, then, in anyone knowing.

"I can't have you running around and telling people what you saw. It'd only make trouble for me, you see..." Mako charged the glove on his right hand. The electric current crackled through it, illuminating the fear on the man's face.

"Please!" the man shouted, on his knees now with his hands raised. "Don't hurt me! I won't tell anyone, I swear! I swear!"

Mako held the glove precariously over the man's head, electricity still running. "If you tell a soul, I'll find out, and I will come after you."

"I won't—I won't!"

Satisfied, Mako relaxed his hand, silencing the glove, and he began to walk away. The man fell over in relief behind him.

He paused, sensing the man's eyes on him. He turned his head slightly to the side. "I'm always watching."

And as quickly as he'd come, he was gone.

"Mako, you're late."

"I'm sorry. I got sidetracked on the way here," Mako said, dipping his head low into a bow.

"Oh?"

"Personal business," Mako responded simply. His eyes remained trained on the floor.

Amon turned toward him, hands clasped behind his back and his head cocked to the side. With the mask concealing his face, it was the only gesture that indicated curiosity. There was a long pause. "Don't do it again."

"Yes, sir." Mako was relieved, but he had suspected that Amon wouldn't pry; after all that Mako had contributed to Amon's cause, he had earned a certain degree of trust that allowed him privacy not granted to lower subordinates.

"The Avatar and her team will make an appearance tonight."

Mako raised his head, eyeing the mask. Although he thought immediately about having seen the Avatar today, his face betrayed no emotion; years under Amon's guidance had trained him well.

"I believe they are planning to break into one of Sato's hidden warehouses to destroy equipment. The Lieutenant will brief you shortly. Stop them at all costs. If you subdue any, bring them back alive."

"Yes, sir."

Amon turned his back to Mako once more, eyeing the map of the nations tacked onto his wall. "Your brother will be going with you."

Mako tensed. He was happy to have Bolin under his watch, but fighting the Avatar's team head on had been no joke, especially with an experienced airbender and the former chief of the metalbending police on their side. Sato's daughter had also proven herself to be a formidable fighter when she managed to knock out two of his teammates and escape with a hostage the previous evening. And of course, there was the Avatar herself. She had been the most challenging opponent he'd ever faced, and that was saying something.

Bolin was a skilled and tough fighter by all means, but growing up with him in this environment had taught Mako that his younger brother often did not have it in him to finish the job. To him, mercy often overtook justice, and his opponents got away with more than most. As a brother, Mako saw this as a virtue; as an Equalist, he saw this as a weakness.

"Your silence tells me that you're troubled by this," Amon said without turning around.

Mako hesitated before speaking, but he steeled himself. "Sir... I would like if Bolin could sit this one out."

"He's a talented soldier, Mako."

"Yes, but—"

"The hardest battles teach the most important lessons. He needs more experience. And then, one day soon, he will become like you."

Mako knew there was no arguing. He furrowed his brow, but he lowered his head. "Sir."

"That will be all. Report back in two hours with your brother for the briefing. The Lieutenant is assembling a team now."

"Yes, sir."

"Bolin?"

"Hey! You're home kinda late," Bolin said, rising off the couch. Pabu skittered over to Mako, who bent low to the ground and held out an arm so the fire ferret could climb onto his shoulder.

"Yeah, sorry about that. I had some business to take care of." Mako held up the white bag that held the dumplings he'd bought hours ago. For some reason, it felt like days. He had decided not to tell Bolin, either; this was a secret that was easier to handle when fewer people knew of it. "Bought you some dumplings. They're kind of cold, though."

"Thanks!" Bolin took the bag and promptly stuffed a dumpling in his mouth. "You know, these are pretty good cold, too," he said, food crumbs flying out of his mouth.

"Amon has a mission for us tonight."

"Us?" Bolin said, swallowing. His surprise was quite clear; Mako was regularly assigned to dangerous missions, and as a lower-ranking soldier, Bolin rarely got to go on one with his brother.

"Yeah. The Avatar's on the move again. We're going to stop her. We need to be back at headquarters in two hours for the briefing, so rest up while you can," Mako said as he headed to his room.

Bolin grinned. "I get to go on a mission with you?"

Mako paused. "Bo... Be careful. I mean it."

Bolin caught Mako's glance, and his brow furrowed as a look of shame spread across his face. "I will."

Mako trudged up the stairs to the bedroom of the loft he had come to call home. Prior to the Equalist movement, he and Bolin had lived above the attic of the pro-bending arena, but that became far too risky and inappropriate once they had joined Amon's forces. Fortunately, by this point, Mako had seen enough of the streets to know of several abandoned warehouses and factories around the city—remnants of the overzealous wave of the Industrial Revolution that had overtaken Republic City decades prior—and it had not been too difficult to relocate to one.

Mako lay back on his bed, raising a hand above his head and staring at it against the dim light. Like the rest of the city, the brothers had had to face many difficult changes since the Equalist revolution began. Being on Amon's side had meant being on the winning side, but it had not necessarily always meant profit; in fact, many times, they'd had to sustain big losses to further the movement as a whole. Sacrifices were necessary, they had learned, especially in the beginning.

But that had been okay, Mako thought, because he was used to loss and sacrifice. He had lost his parents when he was eight, and after that, his life had never been the same, for he had become Bolin's parent as well as his brother, and he'd also had to raise himself in the process. Loss and sacrifice were so familiar to him that he sometimes thought of them as companions.

Besides, being an Equalist, especially one so close to Amon, had been rewarding overall. When Mako had signed on, Amon had promised them better lives, and for the most part, he had delivered. Although Mako did not know where Amon got the funds to pay any of his subordinates, the Equalist leader provided the brothers with a decent stipend—one that paid far more than the thankless job he'd had at a factory before the movement. And although the mask and Amon's mysterious and impersonal demeanor often caused Mako to forget that the man was even a human being, Amon had occasionally stepped in to be a protective, nearly fatherly figure for the two of them.

But there were times when he was ruthless as well, and the loss and sacrifice came to be too much. Amon believed in sacrificing anything for the movement; he had once said that, so long as he had loyal believers to follow him and complete his job, he would even sacrifice himself for the cause. But there was one thing that Mako would never be willing to lose—not for the movement or even for his own life.

Just two months ago, Bolin had sustained a heavy injury in a fight with one of the few remaining bending gangs in the city, the only other high-ranking mission on which Bolin had ever accompanied Mako. The horror that Mako had experienced as he'd tried to suppress the free-flowing blood from the wound was something he never wanted to experience again.

"Bo," Mako said desperately as he tore off his mask and kneeled over his brother. "Bolin, hang on!"

Bolin looked up at Mako with fearful eyes, coughing and twitching slightly as he pressed a hand to the gaping wound over his left ribcage.

"Bo, the medics are on their way," Mako said. He tore the neck of his Equalist uniform off and pressed it to the wound. He tried not to let the panic show in his voice. Bolin had to hang on. If he lost Bolin—

"Those damned Agni Kais are going to pay," Mako growled. As soon as the medics arrived and took care of his brother, he was going to hunt them down one by one and make them regret the moment they'd ever laid a hand on Bolin. Bringing them to Amon to have their bending removed would not be enough. Mako wanted to take them down himself.

"Mako." Bolin's voice shook. "Not worth it."

For the first time in years, Mako felt tears rise to his eyes as he looked down at his brother. Images from the day he had lost his parents—a day he had not allowed himself to recall in quite some time—flooded his brain. He tried to find words, but his throat was constricted. "I—"

"What happened?" an Equalist medic boomed as he rushed down beside Mako to assess the damage.

Mako cleared his throat. "Agni Kais. Bolin had them, and then one got him from behind and lightningbended him."

The medic took the makeshift compress off of Bolin's wound and winced. "It looks bad."

"Will he—will he..." Mako couldn't finish; he was too terrified to ask.

"Don't worry. It'll take some time, but I think he'll be fine. We got here just in time."

Mako had never felt more hope than he had in that one moment. It rapidly turned into anger as he stood. "Please take care of him. I'm going after them."

The medic nodded.

"Thank you." With that, he ran as fast as he could to find the men who had hurt his brother.

Had the medic not come when he had, Bolin would have died from blood loss. Mako had never felt such blind rage in his life as he had in that moment. He tracked down the three Agni Kais and killed them all within the hour. When he reported back to Amon, he had expected punishment for not bringing them back alive as Bolin had been told to do. Surprisingly, Amon did not admonish him for his actions at all, calling Mako's reaction "understandable." Mako also withheld details of the mission from Amon: Bolin had really sustained that injury because, in the last few moments of the fight, he had seen the fear in his enemy's eyes. He had put down his weapon and moved only to subdue the gangster, who took advantage and quickly reversed the situation. Somehow, though, Mako felt that Amon had known. And when he let Mako go home for the evening, he had left him with a warning that had disturbed Mako to his core.

"It is loss that propels the movement, Mako. A true Equalist accepts this. Never forget it."

"You okay, Bo?" Mako asked as they sat in the back of a Satomobile headed towards one of Hiroshi Sato's secret compounds. An Equalist operative had just confirmed that the Avatar had arrived, and that her team was making quick work of the equipment inside.

"Yeah," Bolin murmured softly. "Are you?"

The car stopped, and two Equalists hopped out and opened the back door of the car.

"I'm fine." Mako hopped out, Bolin following suit. He turned toward his brother. "Look. If you need help for any reason, just holler—these guys are really tough."

Bolin nodded. "I'll be careful. And I'm sorry about last time."

Mako swallowed, and then he rubbed Bolin's hair, a gesture he used to do often when they were children. "It's okay. Just don't let me lose you."

"You, too."

They slipped on their masks and kicked open the door to the compound, and as the team of Equalists and Bolin swarmed the building, Mako strode in through the quickly developing chaos and headed towards the airbender and Sato's daughter, who had teamed up to fend off several soldiers.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a flash of fire headed his way, and in the last moment, he ducked and spun around.

The Avatar stood before him, glaring at him with those same icy blue eyes he'd seen earlier in the day. "Leave them alone," she gritted out. "Pick on someone your own size."

Since Bolin's injury and Amon's warning, Mako was left with many questions to which he could not seem to find an answer. Mercy over justice—that was Bolin's way. Although Mako had raised Bolin, he had always admired his brother's morals. Bolin had only agreed to join the Equalist movement because they believed that Amon had a point and a plan. The recent, more violent developments had shaken Bolin, Mako saw, and although he thought Bolin foolish for letting it affect him so, when Bolin had been hurt, Mako had finally come to see from his brother's perspective. At what point did it become too much? Were they going too far?

The Avatar—Korra—had seemed like a good person. Her integrity had reminded him so much of Bolin that it had shocked him into inaction. As an Equalist, Mako should have captured her immediately and brought her to Amon. He had told her that he was not an Equalist, but he had also told her that he was not a bender. But she had saved him—and then, when he had tried to provoke her, to test her, she had passed. You have a brother, she'd said. Bender or not, she had approached him as a human and honored his priorities. At the risk of being found out, she had let him go.

Mako watched as she wielded fire in both of her hands and came at him, and he clenched his jaw, blinked once, and forced himself to erase the thoughts.

He flexed his hands wordlessly, and he charged at the Avatar without another question.

So, this story is turning out to be quite a bit longer than I had originally planned. The plot just keeps getting bigger and bigger because I find myself constantly wanting to add more dimension to it. Still, it's not going to be a thirty-chapter thing, I don't think, so there's that.

Anyway, this part is told from Mako's perspective, because there is a lot I'd like to cover—his motives and his character are probably a bit more complicated than Korra's more straightforward storyline, so the whole story can't be told from her side. On occasion, I think we'll be switching back and forth between the two.

I kind of struggled with adding the detail about Mako killing the Agni Kais, but I honestly think anyone in his situation with his personality would. Because Korrais ultimately a kids' cartoon, I can see why the creators are reluctant to add the issue of killing the enemy in the story. But realistically, I do think that both sides would probably sustain heavy losses if an all-out war broke out. Thoughts on that?

Thank you to everyone who's been following this, favoriting and subscribing and reviewing. Some of the things you guys say to me in your reviews are honestly the nicest things I've ever heard, because my writing is really important to me and I tend to value compliments on my writing as the highest kind of compliment. XD And an extra thank you to those of you who like/reblog/read this on tumblr and still come here to review this story-you are awesome.

Love,

boreum dal