They all stood awkwardly in the large sitting room of the Bainbrydge estate. "Everyone knows exactly what they're doing?" Tenzin broke the silence.
There were mumbled responses of the affirmative. Kai looked at everyone that stood around her individually. Starting on her right, Azule stood with her feet hips' width apart, a determined glare aimed at the ground. Troy's fists were clenched, and one had ice slowly crawling up it. Dimitri was acting serious for once, and had a hard glare on his face that was directed at the ground.
Tenzin stood on Dimitri's right, the older man visibly nervous and worried, but also determined to get the Avatar's friend back. The Avatar herself stood to his right, determined and impatient looking. Korra's hand was grasped tightly in her boyfriend's, Mako just as determined as she was. Mako's other hand was on his younger brother's shoulder, gripping it tightly as if he were to let go, Bolin would disappear. Bolin had his eyes aimed at Kai's feet, which had her wondering what about her feet had him so angry he was glaring at them.
To Bolin's right, her arms crossed over her chest, feet hips' width apart, and an anger fuelled determination radiating off her stood both Kai and Chief Bei Fong. No one realized the similar pose shared by the two, not even the two themselves. Everyone was too worried about what might go wrong in what they were about to enter.
Kai noticed Korra was about to speak, but the girl was cut off by Kai's Uncle Destan walking into the room. "It's time," He told them somberly. Everyone nodded and went to head out the door to their designated attack areas.
Upon arriving to the fork in the path that led into a circular path around the old, halfway burnt down training facility, Kai was stopped by a familiar hand on her shoulder. The young girl turned to face Bolin confused.
"I may not get up enough courage to ask you this ever again, but oncethisisalloverdoyouthinkyou'dliketomaybegooutwithmesometime?" Bolin blurted so fast the question's words slurred together.
"What?" Kai asked, not understanding.
"Once this is all over do you think you'd like to maybe go out with me sometime?" Bolin repeated, this time slower and more intelligible.
Kai stood there in shock for a few moments, and was about to reply when Bei Fong called after her, "Now is not the time to be flirting, Kao, we need to move."
"I- I-" Kai stuttered out, gesturing to the path she had to take.
"You can get back to me," Bolin replied, "Good luck." He then quickly placed a kiss on her forehead and then took off in the opposite direction before she could say anything.
Kai then took off down the path she had to take. The girl quickly caught up with Bei Fong, whom, upon arrival, raised an eyebrow at her, obviously questioning what her interaction with Bolin was. She just shook her head in response, implying that it wasn't important, and the two continued to run until they made it to the West Entrance.
Kai and Bei Fong hid behind a pair of trees, and glanced around the trunks to see how many men were guarding the door. There were only two men in front of the door, both wearing a uniform that had Fire Lord Ozai's insignia on it.
One of the men, the one on the left of the door, was much larger than the other. He was taller by a good three inches, with buffer arms. "I'll handle the one on the left," Bei Fong told her. Kai nodded and with deep breaths they ran head first for their targets.
The two men began firebending at them, shooting long, blistering hot bursts of flames at them with their hands and feet. Kai and Bei Fong immediately used seismic sense to sense their opponents' movements on the earth, and soon fell into a dance of sorts. For every flame fired at them, they blocked with a wall of earth brought up from the ground. For every attack they made, the firebenders were surprised at how powerful the hits were.
Not long after they had begun to fight the two men, they had defeated them. Bei Fong leaned down and pulled a key from the neck of the one she had been fighting. Bei Fong slid the key into the door's lock as Kai braced herself for the guards in the hallway.
The doors came open and they were immediately assaulted by nearly three dozen firebenders. As soon as the first ball of fire skimmed past Kai's face, she sent a rock right into the man's nose and then earthbent a wall up behind him. His head shot back from the force of the rock breaking his nose, and as it did, the back of his head made contact with the wall.
Yet, what Kai hadn't noticed were the two men approaching her until it was too late. The only reason she had noticed was that a shot of fire nailed the metal gauntlet that was on her upper arm. "Agh!" she cried out when she felt it start to burn, and metalbent the piece of jewelry off her arm and into the air.
With a movement not unlike twisting a doorknob, Kai metalbent the gauntlet into a thin fan that she proceeded to metalbend towards the man that had shot the flames at her arm. It went spiraling towards his arm, but he was too quick. He dove out of the way and it impaled itself into the wall. Kai growled in anger before turning to fight the next guard.
"Kao behi–" Kai didn't hear the rest of what Bei Fong said, because a white hot painful burning sensation bloomed like a flower on her back. She couldn't even cry out it was so painful. She fell to her knees and was kicked forward and face first into the rock wall she had made the dumb decision to not earthbend back down.
Everything went black around the edges and fuzzy everywhere else. "Nice to see you again," A cruel voice that was all too familiar to Kai filled her ears.
"Min Chang," Kai coughed, feeling a liquid too thick to be saliva paint her lips, but before she could register what it was, everything went black.