Hello everyone! I just wanted to take a moment to say thank-you to those of you who have read this story and have supported it thus far. I am so grateful for you. *heart*
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Asami shut the door to her apartment with excitement. She had been waiting months for this moment, and she wasn't about to let anything stand in her way.
She walked up to her Satomobile with a smile, spinning the key ring around her finger as she did so. She took a deep breath, enjoying the warming smell of spring. The air was fresh and comfortable, the snow on the sidewalks was reaching its last leg of life, but more importantly, the streets were finally clear of ice.
Finally, she thought as she slid into her Satomobile. Her hands caressed the steering wheel with yearning. While she did drive to work every day, she had been stuck under the incorrigibly slow speed of winter traffic and dangerous icy roads.
And being the speed demon she was, Asami was itching to get back on the street and put her Satomobile to the test.
She had been working on upgrades for all of winter in a small garage at her Estate, where her father lived. She went there more and more as the days grew darker and the nights grew drearier. While she had been tending to the roses Korra had sent her – nursing the small seeds to life – she soon found that she needed more. The winter weather was trapping her inside, and there wasn't all that much to do in her apartment other than surf the web or read a book or play with Naga. Which she still did extensively. But she needed something else.
It was when she had broken down on the side of the road and managed to fix her Satomobile with just a bit of duct tape from her trunk that she remembered how much she missed tinkering around.
So, the trips back to her home had begun. She would journey through the cold, icy roads with Naga in the passenger seat, panting excitedly at the opportunity to run around in a more open, less crowded space. Naga, of course, loved the cold, being from the Southern Water Tribe, and each time she saw Naga jump into a snow bank and roll around in absolute delight, it would remind her of when she and Korra had done much of the same last winter when they were together.
Though it was more of Korra doing the diving and Asami doing the laughing until Korra tackled her or pulled her right into the snow.
They would return to Korra's apartment on those nights cold but satisfied. Korra would make the both of them tea and start the fire place while Asami snuggled up in Korra's loose blue sweatpants, her Water Tribe parka, and the pelt that she kept on her bed during the winter months.
Asami always remembered the smells on those nights. The scent of the fur around her shoulders. Korra's aroma that was embedded into her parka and lounging pants. The wonderful fragrance of the jasmine tea mixed with the burning wood of the fire.
And the odor of wet dog, which she didn't care for all that much.
Asami inhaled deep to clear her nose of Naga's stench, as if she were still there in the room with the animal and the woman she missed so much. The heat of those moments warmed her chest.
Korra, she sighed inside, resting her wrists on the steering wheel. She hadn't heard from her in months; not a single time since the last letter in the fall. It was the beginning of spring now, and Korra had been at war for almost a year.
Asami took another breath, helping her calm down from the threat of the sad thoughts in the corner of her mind. She breathed again, the smell of her Satomobile filling her nose instead of the wet dog she was expecting from the memories that played in her head.
Just as it should be, she added.
She pushed the key in the ignition and brought the car to life. It purred under her touch. This brought a smile to her face as she remembered Korra's words from the letter:
"Just please take care of yourself. Try to do some things that make you happy. And try not to worry about me too much, okay?"
A mischievous fire lit up in her eyes. She cracked her knuckles and adjusted her rearview mirror, catching a glimpse of herself in the process.
Her grin widened. She revved the engine and flipped a panel over on the front console. She pushed a small black button.
The roof of her Satomobile rolled backwards, switching it from covered to completely open.
Asami closed her eyes and inhaled, the sweet scent of spring and warmth filling her. The sun felt wonderful on her skin.
She put the windows down and placed her hand on the gear shifter.
At this moment, Asami Sato could not think of a single thing that would make her happier than to speed off in her Satomobile.
And so she did.
She started off slow, trying to make her way to one edge of the City. Once she was on the outskirts, she gunned it. Faster and faster and faster, until the wind was whipping her hair in a frenzy. She danced around any other cars in the road and slowed down for no one.
There was a genuine grin on her face. Her Satomobile was performing like no other vehicle that she had driven before – not even one of her father's customized cars could compete with this. She shifted gears with ease, the transition smooth like cutting through butter with a warm knife.
The speed made her feel alive, just as it always did. She tightened her grip on the wheel, almost halfway across the perimeter of the outskirts of Republic City.
That's when she heard a faint noise behind her.
Asami glanced in her rearview mirror.
"Fuck!"
Police lights flashed into view. The siren grew louder. Never before had the cops managed to catch her on her speeding joyrides, and this certainly wasn't the first one she had gone on in her life. She had managed to avoid detection, being as sly and sneaky as she was fast.
Until now.
Asami had two options; she could gun it and push her Satomobile to the absolute limits, just to see how well it could perform and if it could out speed the cop car, or she could do the right thing and pull over.
Part of her hesitated, that adventurous side that she had been giving little to no attention to since Korra left for the war poking through, egging her on to 'keep going, just a little more'.
She eyed the car behind her in her side mirror. Could she out speed him? She wasn't entirely sure. He was gaining ground on her, but she wasn't at full capacity yet, and with all of the modifications she had made...
Asami paused for another moment. After some contemplation, she sighed and lifted her foot off of the accelerator. She slowed to a stop at a curb several blocks away from her initial release of the gas. When she parked on the side of the road, her Satomobile was almost silent, the thrum of the engine minute. This made her smile, until the slam of the door of the cop car behind her pushed it away.
"Is there a problem, officer?" Asami glanced up at the man and met his amber eyes with certain look in her peridots; she was well aware of her beauty and how to use it at times. She was hoping that this time, of all times, she could use it to her advantage and get out of a ticket.
While the officer tried to keep a stern tone and expression on his dark, furrowed brows, he couldn't help the minor blush that popped up on his cheeks.
She's beautiful.
He shook it off inside and focused. "Do you have any idea how fast you were going?"
Asami raised an innocent brow. "Not entirely, no."
It wasn't a lie per se; she hadn't been paying attention to her speedometer.
But she was well aware that she was going way over the speed limit.
Was she about to admit it to him, though?
Absolutely not.
"Maybe you should pay more attention when you drive." He glanced down at his pad and flipped the cover open. He started scribbling on the sheet. "License and registration."
"But how fast was I going?" Asami asked as a means to toy, stall, and through general curiosity of her gun speed.
"I pegged you at 110," he replied, continuing to write in his booklet. "License and registration," he repeated.
Asami frowned, though her insides smiled at the feat. "I had no idea I was going that fast, officer."
"You couldn't feel or see the difference when you were going almost double in a six –" He glanced up from his writing and found himself stuck in the middle of his sentence.
He didn't know who this woman was, but he just couldn't get past her beauty. She looked familiar to him, though he wasn't sure how, and the sun was hitting her skin at just the right angle to make her purple shadowed eyes pop and her ruby lips glow.
He fought the blush on his cheeks and went back to his work. "License and registration," he repeated, a bit lighter in his tone.
Asami sighed. She wasn't sure she was going to get out of this one. She fished for her registration in her glove compartment painfully slow, trying to stall for as long as she could. "I've never gotten a ticket before," she mumbled, "searching" for her registration.
It was right in front of her, of course. But he couldn't see that.
"A ticket should be the least of your worries, with how fast you were going." He lowered his hands and watched her lean over her center console to look for her registration.
When Asami finally drew out that process for as long as she could, she retrieved her paperwork and handed it to him.
Their eyes met once more.
He stood still, taken aback just a bit by the energy radiating off of her. He reached out with the same look on his face and pulled the registration from her hand. He glanced down at his pad and started filling in the form based on the information from the paperwork.
"What about your license," he muttered, trying not to look at her anymore.
"Oh, right!" Asami played dumb and felt around her pants pockets.
Wait a minute.
She patted herself down once more.
Shit. Where is my license?
She searched for a third time, even scavenged the pockets of her jacket, her cool, calm, and collected persona fading fast into panic.
He raised his brow and glanced up at her during her frantic search. "Is there a problem?"
"No, no," Asami replied quickly. She left it at that and bent over the console once more to search the glove compartment for her wallet. When it turned up wallet-less, she slammed the door shut with gusto.
He crossed his arms and shifted his weight. "Can't find your license," he asked with a bit of smugness in his tone.
"Let me check the trunk," she mumbled, shutting the Satomobile off as she did so. Asami motioned to open the door and waited for the officer to step back before proceeding; the last thing she wanted was to piss him off or give him a reason to arrest her. She spun the key ring around her finger out of habit and unlocked the trunk.
He followed her and watched as she bent over into the trunk, searching the mostly empty space for a wallet or a purse that wasn't there.
With a frustrated sigh, she slammed the trunk door shut.
"Not there?"
Asami ignored him and pulled the back door open. She inspected the backseats and even crawled through the area under all of the seats.
Nothing.
She growled in frustration and crawled out of her Satomobile.
Of all the days I don't have my license, it's the day I get pulled over for the first time.
Asami turned to him but avoided his eyes. "It appears I've left my license at home."
"Left your license at home?" He repeated with that same smugness as before.
She nodded and stared at the ground, embarrassment in her eyes.
He sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. "You do know that's illegal, right? Just like how fast you were going."
"I'm well aware," she replied, crossing her arms and shifting her weight as she did so.
"Well, I can go look you up in the computer and see if you're there. Stay here," he instructed, taking both the registration and the booklet with him.
Asami watched him out of her peripherals and leaned her back against the side of her Satomobile. Her arms remained folded but her eyes and expression shifted from frazzled to frustrated.
How could I be so stupid? Forgetting my license and getting caught!
She glanced over at the officer for just a moment to get a better look at his face.
It looked familiar to her, though she couldn't figure out where she had seen it before. He wore the standard grey and blue uniform issued to the members of the Republic City Police Department. His hair was somewhat spiky in the front and his amber eyes were framed with thick brows.
Brows that were scrunched as he searched the database.
Asami brought her attention back to the wall that she had been staring at prior when he stepped out of the vehicle.
"Miss Asami Sato," he started, finishing up the ticket that he was writing on his paper booklet. "Related to Hiroshi Sato, I presume?"
She nodded and took back the registration that he was handing her.
"You of all people should know the rules of the road." He ripped the ticket off of the pad and handed it to her, still not looking directly at her face. "You have two weeks to pay this fine for speeding. If I catch you without a license again, I'm not going to let you off with just a ticket, got it?"
Asami bobbed her head and looked over the paper between her fingers.
Wait, this guy's name is Mako? Isn't that –
He turned to leave when Asami spoke up.
"Are you Bolin's brother?"
He froze and faced her, suspicion in his ambers. "You know Bolin?"
Asami smiled. "I do!"
Mako narrowed his eyes and crossed his arms. "How?"
"I met him at a party last year," she leaned against the Satomobile as she spoke. "We go to the same university in Republic City."
A light bulb went off in his head, and he remembered why she had looked familiar to him when he first laid eyes on her.
"Now I remember! Bolin has mentioned you to me a few times before."
"Hopefully, they were good things," she half-stated, half-questioned with a smile and a flip of her hair.
This took Mako off guard. He buried another blush. "They were good things. He said you were one of the smartest people he ever met."
Asami giggled behind her hand, mostly to hide her reddening cheeks.
Mako smiled and shifted his weight, visibly easing in his tension. He seemed more like a person now instead of an officer.
"That's very nice of him to say that," Asami responded after ceasing her laugh.
"It is. Though, that doesn't excuse you going 110 in a 60. Doesn't seem very smart of you."
Asami looked away and put her hair behind her ear. "Sorry about that."
"You could have gotten someone hurt. Or you could have been hurt yourself." He stepped forward and lowered his hands. "Just, try to be more careful next time? And don't speed anymore."
She met his eyes and smiled. "I won't, no worries."
"And keep your license on you, Asami."
Asami's smirk grew. "I will, I will."
He gave her a quick grin and a nod before turning away. He watched Asami climb into her vehicle with wide eyes. He saw her cram the ticket into her pocket and sink into her seat. Her hands gripped the wheel, but she didn't start her engine yet. Mako decided to be the first to move. But when he turned the key in the ignition, nothing happened.
He furrowed his brow and turned the key again. Faint sounds muffled their way from under the hood to the interior. When he glanced up, there was a bit of smoke coming out of the front of his police car.
Shit.
Mako jumped out of his car and ran to the front. He lifted the hood after having popped it before exiting. Smoke rose up into his face, forcing him to cough and move away.
Asami was in the motion of putting her key in the ignition when she heard the commotion. She glanced up and saw the sight before her in the rearview mirror.
There was much less contemplation between her doing the right thing and her leaving than there was before.
"What happened," she called as she rushed over to him, guiding him away from the smoke.
He bent over and coughed until his lungs filled with fresher air. "I don't know. I tried to restart the car and it started smoking." Mako walked back over to the hood and waved the smoke away. He motioned to touch one of the hoses when Asami pulled him away.
"Are you crazy?! The engine is way too warm; you'll burn yourself." She guided him several feet away and returned to the smoking automobile solo. She waved some of the smoke away and glanced at the machinery under the hood.
It's way too hard to see everything.
Perhaps, I can …
"Where are you going," Mako questioned as Asami made her way to the driver's side of his vehicle.
She crawled inside and searched for the ignition.
The engine stopped making muffled noises, the smoke too thick for Mako to see her in his car.
Asami reemerged with the keys and tossed them to Mako. "Don't touch it," she asserted. "It's too warm. You need to let it cool down first." She leaned back over the hood and waved some of the smoke away.
"How do you know anything about cars?"
Asami glanced over her shoulder and met his eyes with a smile. "Who do you think made all those modifications to my Satomobile to make it go so fast?" She brought her focus back to the steaming rubber pipes and noticed a bubbling liquid on the hot surface of the engine.
Mako crossed his arms and narrowed his eyes at Asami's back. "Wait, I thought you said you didn't know how fast you were going."
She ignored this and kept inspecting the equipment. She traced the issue to a broken coolant line, which looked to have blown rather recently. "Your coolant line is broken," she hollered, angling her face around the shredded tubing. "That's why your engine got so hot. And that's why it's smoking now; the coolant is all over the metal of the engine." Asami blew some air on it to try and see the damage better. "You're going to have to wait a while for this to cool down before you can do anything to fix i–"
Just then, the boiling liquid burst into flames.
"Fuck!" Asami straightened and faced him in a flurry. "When was the last time you got this serviced?"
He scratched his head. "I'm not sure, to be honest."
Asami shook hers as she sprinted past him, scolding along the way. "You need to get this stuff checked out so that this type of damage doesn't happen." She dug her keys from her pocket and ran to her trunk.
Mako watched with an intrigued and worried look on his face.
She spun back around with a fire extinguisher in her hands, which she always kept in her trunk in case of emergencies such as these. Asami grabbed the hose and pulled the pin. She aimed at the base of the fire and squeezed the handle.
Foaming chemicals shot out from the nozzle and smothered the fire in Mako's hood.
When the smoking stopped, Asami lowered her arms and took a breath, thankful that the fire hadn't burned her in the process when she was so close to the engine earlier on. She set the extinguisher on the ground and walked back to her trunk, running her hands through her hair as she did so.
Mako's astonished eyes followed her, the rest of his body frozen in place.
Asami pulled a roll of duct tape from her trunk and a large, black cloth. She approached the hood and began wiping away the chemicals from both the extinguisher and the coolant. "Do you have any spare parts in your trunk," she asked over her shoulder.
It took him a moment to find words. "I – uh, yeah, I think I might? I'm not sure. Let me check." He fumbled with the keys as he walked by Asami. He pulled the trunk open to find it void of anything but jumper cables. "I'm assuming jumper cables won't work, right?"
Asami shook her head, though he couldn't see it due to the hood. "No," she replied loud enough for him to hear. She blew on the warm engine again, trying to get it to cool further.
That was when she noticed the nitrous hose.
Bingo.
"Go in my trunk and hand me my knife," she called to him, making quick work of removing the damaged coolant line from its connections. "It's in the small toolbox, top drawer."
She has an entire toolbox in here?
Mako scurried over to her trunk and pushed the opening more. There was a small, two tier toolbox in the back corner of her trunk. He slid it closer and retrieved the knife. "What do you need this for," he asked as he handed it to her. He watched her work, now that the smoke was lighter, if not almost gone.
"I'm cutting the hose off of your nitrous to use for your coolant," she described while slicing through the nitrous tubing. "You won't be able to use your nitrous boost for your engine oxygen combustion until you get this fixed, but I can seal this off with the duct tape for now so that you don't lose any gas from your nitrous tank."
Why does he have nitrous in the first place?
Because he's a cop, Asami? Remember? The one that was catching up to you when you were zipping down the road?
Oh, right. Well, that explains why he was able to go so fast…
She exchanged the blade in her hand for the duct tape beside her. She bent a small amount of the tubing that she left on the nitrous line over and wrapped it up tight in several layers of duct tape. Once she determined it was gas-tight, she moved on to the coolant line.
Asami was able to make the connections to the coolant line with minimal amounts of improvisation and large amounts of screw tightening and, yes, duct tape. It was one of an engineer's two best friends, after all.
"Now this is definitely not a permanent fix," she started, finishing up her work and making sure the connection was strong, "but it should be enough to get you to the nearest mechanic without paying for a tow truck to come in." Asami straightened and wiped her dirty gloves on her dark brown pants. She gathered her tools and trudged over to her trunk. She tossed them inside and fumbled through the small containers of chemicals she had kept in her Satomobile, specifically for this test run of her speed and power modifications.
He doesn't have to know about that, though.
Luckily, she had a very small bottle of coolant that she had packed last minute in case her own coolant lines burst. She turned to him with a smile and added a small amount of coolant to his machinery.
Asami leaned close and inspected the hose.
No leaks. Perfect.
She added a bit more and popped the cap back on.
"Wow, Asami. Bolin was right," he mentioned – a bit agape – as she walked past him to get to her trunk. "You really are smart."
Asami couldn't help but smile to the compliment. "I am an engineer, after all." She slammed the trunk shut and faced him. "You should be all set to go now. Just take it easy on the riding and take it in to get serviced."
He grinned and nodded to her. "Thank-you so much, Asami. If there's anything I can do to repay you, let me know."
She put a hand on her hip and smirked. "You could always rip my ticket up, you know."
Mako furrowed his brow. "Doing nice things for officers won't get you out of breaking the law, Asami."
She pouted in a way that reminded her of Korra. Her heart twisted a moment, but she hid it well. "Damn. Well, it was worth a shot."
He chuckled and adjusted a loose button on his uniform. "Well, thanks again, Asami. I appreciate you helping me out."
Asami grinned. "You're welcome. Thanks for giving me a ticket," she replied sarcastically, which got another laugh out of Mako.
He paused, something urging him into action.
He went with it.
"Well, maybe I'll get to seeing you around sometime. I'm sure if you're friends with Bolin, we'll see each other again. Maybe we could – uh – get together and hang out sometime?"
To this, Asami smiled. It had been a while since she had seen Bolin – maybe a bit too long. Perhaps a get-together was in order for them. "Sure, Mako. That sounds nice."
He smirked and watched from a few feet away as Asami walked to the front of her car. She crawled inside and started her engine, hers running smooth, quiet, and not-on-fire. He almost waved but thought against it. Instead, his amber eyes followed Asami while she pulled off into the road and sped away – over the speed limit already, from what he could tell.
Mako shook his head and pinched the bridge of his nose. A deep sigh escaped him as the feeling that this would not be the last time that he'd cross paths with the law-breaking side of Asami welled up inside of him.
As long as she's careful, I guess.
He stared out into the now-empty road, wondering just when he'd get to see Asami Sato again – law-breaking side or not.