The morgue of the Zaofu Security Force was not normally a particularly busy place. The dead would still be dead tomorrow, after all. The death of Yuma would not prove to be such a case.
"Officer Mako!" Doctor Fang, the mortician said as the Captain in question entered the room, a half second after Chief Beifong. "Good to see you. Both of you I mean."
"Thanks Doctor." Mako answered politely. "What do you have for us this time?"
"Well this one didn't take too long, your poor dope died of mercury in his system." Fang said with a brisk sigh.
"Just like Korra." Bolin gasped.
"Hold on." Lin said with a sceptical wave of her hand. "Korra was able to fight for minutes, with mercury poisoning Yuma didn't even look like he got off the chair."
"He didn't "Doctor Fang said direly as she handed them the reports. "And I didn't say mercury poisoning. Based on the sheer amount of mercury in Foreman Yuma's system and its concentration in the muscles, heart and lungs and the immense damage to those areas…. I would say that whoever killed him metalbent the mercury in his body to simultaneously paralyze him and crush his cardiovascular system."
Mako had been stood in a room full of embalmed organs for a few minutes now but it was that news that sucked the colour out of his skin.
"Korra is not going to take this well." Lin said as she collected the papers.
The guest house Korra and Asami had been living in for the past week loomed before them now. What should have been just another meeting with his friends instead filled Bolin with a nervous lump in the pits of his stomach.
"How are we going to break this to her?" Bolin asked nervously.
"Korra's a big girl, she can handle it." Lin answered as she knocked on the door.
"Oh hey guys." Asami answered as she appeared in the doorway. She was dressed in her preferred combat outfit, or at least most of it. She had forgone her shoes and left her hair down and her jacket open. Her smile bounced off the worried frown the brothers wore and the little pout Lin had as she averted eyes. "What's going on?" She asked pensively.
"We need to talk to Korra." Lin said quickly. With a sombre nod Asami led them through to the living room.
"What's the matter guys." Korra asked as she ran through the corridor to meet them. "Did your case turn up something that needs some Avatar muscle." She said with a proud flex of her bare arms.
"Not exactly." Mako said nervously.
"What's wrong?" She asked, an answer was not forthcoming. "Guys, whatever it is just tell me."
"Someone we took in for interrogation was killed in the Zaofu Security Building." Lin explained direly.
"I'll get my glider." She said easily as she moved towards the staff propped up by the coat racks.
"Someone used mercury to kill him." Lin finished.
Korra froze in her tracks, nearly every muscle in her body pulled itself as tight as iron as she stood there paused. Her mouth was slightly open as if to gasp but her breath failed her for a moment.
"Korra, honey." Asami said as she rushed over to her. "It's okay, you got past this once." She said tenderly.
Slowly Korra unwound herself, though not fully, her fists remained clenched tight and trembling at her sides with small wicks of flame flaring through her fingers. Asami could feel her heating up under her hands until her shoulder was almost scorching to the touch. She moved again for the staff and grasped it tightly. "I'm going to see Su, I can't just sit back whilst your murderer is on the loose."
"Korra, there's no reason to think the person who did this was the same person who poisoned you." Asami said as she followed after the irate Avatar.
"It doesn't matter." Korra growled back, though beneath her anger Asami could still hear the slightest quiver of fear that she couldn't quite force down. "I'm not going to let anyone else suffer what I suffered." She said boldly. For once Lin didn't even attempt to stand her ground and instead moved out of the way as quickly as she could.
"I say we should take up Bolin's suggestion and start preparing lava fields outside the city." Kuvira suggested as she traced her fingers over the perimeter of Zaofu in map form across the table of Su's office. "There's no way Rhee can maintain an air fleet, he won't be able to touch us."
"No, that land is being used to grow new crops for the refugees." Su explained.
"We'll all be refugees if Rhee makes it into the city, we can sort out a food shortage afterwards." Kuvira answered in response.
"Perhaps roof gardens, or hydroponic stations could be set up?" Bataar suggested meekly from the sidelines.
Whatever Su was about to say had been cut short by the almighty clang of her doors being knocked open. In the freshly opened doorway Korra appeared and the short walk into the Beifong Mansion had done nothing to calm her down.
"Korra, what's the matter?" Su asked as the Avatar tromped through her office.
"Someone in Zaofu is using mercury to murder innocent people." She stated direly. She threw the report onto the table, upsetting the precisely laid pins on her strategy map. Su Yin and Kuvira both grew more and more visibly disgusted as they quickly glanced over the report.
"Well Korra, there's not much else we can do." Kuvira said almost gently. "Zaofu was built on metalbending, half the people in this city could be the killer."
"Besides, mercury has been a controlled substance ever since your encounter with the Red Lotus." Su Yin remarked. "If they managed to get this much mercury without the guard knowing I doubt we could track them any time soon, with the state the city's in."
"Not so mother." Bataar said as he peered at the report. "That much mercury would be too dangerous and too conspicuous to fly into the city it would have to come from somewhere within Zaofu, and the only place with enough of the stuff is the liquid mirror telescope in the Zaofu Observatory.
"And why would an astronomer be in the Security Building." Asami asked pointedly.
"Well, there's Professor Hamone." Kuvira interceded. "He designed and built the observatory's main telescope but he was also scientific advisor for the security force's laboratories."
"We can't just arrest a man for that!" Mako protested.
In return Korra gave him a withering glare and then looked back to Su Yin. "This is your city, Su. What do you think?"
Su Yin paused for a moment. "He's been bending mercury for years and he has the clearance." She said a bit hesitantly.
"And he's been a loyal supporter of Zaofu for years mother!" Bataar protested. "He taught me physics and he worked on the radio network with dad and me."
There was an uneasy silence in the office as Su Yin thought of an answer. "I'm sorry Bataar but he's the only person we know who fits the bill." She paused for a moment and then turned to face her son. "Go with them, if Hamone is innocent you can help prove it."
Bataar and Kuvira shared a stunned look for a moment before he answered. "Thank you, mother. I'll….I'll do my best."
"If he's guilty he's going down, it's that simple." Korra fumed and then left for the exit. Bataar and Kuvira exchanged a quick kiss before the young engineer ran out after them.
The doors closed again and this time it was only Kuvira and Su Yin in the room for the first time since she came home to Zaofu. Kuvira brushed past the older woman and tried to look as if she was deep in thought about the potential lava field she had set up in bright orange pins around Zaofu on the war table, taking a pin out of the map, moving it a half a centimetre and then putting it back down.
Su let out a long, slow sigh before she turned vaguely towards Kuvira's direction. "First Aiwei, then the Earth Empire and now Hamone, Zaofu must look like some sort of…..mother of monsters to the rest of the world." She said sadly as her eyes turned to the spotless model of her proud city and its long lost domes. As the sun streamed in through the windows behind her Kuvira could finally study all of the new worry lines to the side of her forehead and the new splashes of white at the roots of her hair. She hadn't found the time to treat her hair, leaving it limp and lifeless over one half of her face.
Kuvira could have guessed that if Su was talking to anyone else she would have been named directly in that list. She looked towards Su for a moment and her lips parted as if she went to speak before she pursed them closed. Kuvira repeated that a few times and then finally she spoke. "I remember the Aiwei case. You and the Avatar must have personally questioned everyone on the force." She said slowly, gently, before she turned to face Su Yin head on. "Except me."
Su Yin chuckled half-heartedly "I knew you wouldn't do anything to hurt me." She said emptily. "I knew you wouldn't do anything to hurt me." She repeated quieter, under her breath.
"I just….." Kuvira looked away for a moment, she pulled her whole body tense before she could finally muster up the energy to say what she need to say. "I never thought to say thank you for that and I just-."
A single raised hand was enough to silence the former Great Uniter. "What's done is done Kuvira." Su Yin said, tiredly.
The Hamone estate sat at the far end of a Cul-de-sac of opulent houses on one of Zaofu's outer platforms. Team Avatar along with Bolin's cadets approached Hamone's rather unusual house, a single large dome with each panel a slightly different shade of stained green glass in the centre of a circular garden decorated with topiaries shaped into different periodic elements. As their group approached Bolin ordered his men into a circle around
"Korra, please, let me talk to him first." Bataar pleaded again as they ducked into cover behind a well sculpted piece of shrubbery.
Korra scowled at him for five incredibly intimidating seconds before she answered him. "Fine, you've got one shot to talk it out and then we're going in." She said with a huff.
Bolin muttered something into the radio box at his hip and then turned to face the rest of the group. "The cadets are all over the perimeter, nothings getting in or out."
"Thanks Bolin." Korra said more gently.
"Don't worry kid, I'll be right next to you." Lin said as she hurdled over the topiary to stand beside her nephew. It was a short walk across the estate's modest garden only made longer by Lin's insistence on keeping Bataar near a piece of cover, even if it was just the cover of potted plants.
Built into the curve of the dome was a single circular door of emerald stained glass which slide out of the way with a slight pneumatic hiss.
Lin had entered a great many homes in her time on the force, from hovels in Dragon Flats to mansions in the Republic Old Quarter and none of them were anything like Hamone's home. In an unbroken circle around the perimeter of the dome were low metal benches, and small bonsai trees and low little book cases. In the centre was a bizarre super structure about three floors high. It was made up of a load of small platforms arranged in a square and on each platform was a kitchen or a bedroom or a study or anything else that might go into a house and all of it arranged around the apparatus of his own private liquid mirror telescope, including a huge glass orb filled with liquid mercury. And sat in the shadow of the superstructure was Hamone.
He wore a black cloak over his steel grey robes with the hood all the way up and his face hidden in shadows.
"Professor!" Bataar yelled. He went to run over to his old mentor. A quick hand from Lin stopped him in his tracks.
"Professor Hamone, we have reason to believe you're guilty of murder and conspiracy to commit murder." Lin declared, loudly but calmly.
"They just want to ask a few questions." Bataar interjected.
Slowly and stiffly Hamone stood up, he was still half hidden in the shadow of his hood but he had Hamone's slim build and his stooped shoulders, and his fire nation yellow eyes were just about visible as well as a long catfish moustache.
"So ask them." He said quietly, and with a soft coughing that carried across the wide open floor of his home. "Excuse the cough, just feeling my age."
"Are you alright professor?" Bataar asked.
"Fine, like I said I'm just getting old, you know."
Bataar's eyes narrowed behind his glasses. "That is not Hamone's voice." He whispered sharply.
"Go get the Avatar, kid." Lin said as she balled her hands into tightly wound fists. The blades in the gauntlets of her armour began to descend.
"Chief Beifong." The impersonator announced with a mocking sort of tone as he stood up straighter. "I think you're overstepping your jurisdiction a bit aren't you?"
"Su authorised me to get to the bottom of things by any means necessary." She answered as she assumed a fighting stance. "And that's what I intend to do."
The last thing Bataar saw before he ran out of the dome was Hamone's impersonator shattering the globe of mercury and bringing it down on Lin like a tidal wave.
"Avatar!" Bataar yelled as he ran across the garden and back to the rest of the group.
"Where's Lin?" Asami asked as she stood up out of their foxhole.
"There was this guy pretending to be Hamone, Lin was going to fight him." Bataar answered frantically. "But he had this great big globe of mercury I-"
"Let's go." Korra said simply as she stood up. Her hands were trembling and there was the slightest glimmer of a tear in her eye before she rode over to the door on gouts of flame and jets of air. Mako picked Asami up and bounded after the Avatar with his own jets of fire.
"Qua-Mei, Toma I want that perimeter tight, we're going in." Bolin commanded into his radio before he stood up and looked over to the perimeter. "Bataar, stay here and keep your head down." He commanded before he hopped onto a stone platform and rode it over to the door.
Korra kicked the glass door down to shards of glass and then bounded through the breech. Korra froze as she saw Lin desperately fighting back a tidal wave of silvery metal. She could barely breath for a moment before a tendril of silver sliced through the air towards her.
"Stay back!" Korra screamed and punched back with a blast of fire.
"Careful!" Lin yelled as she diverted a wave of metal. "This guy's untouchable." She said as she launched shards of metal at the professor standing inside a hydra of shining liquid metal. He rapidly ducked and dived out of the way of each blade, in the process he contorted his limbs into unnatural angles, emphasised by a sick crunch with every movement.
"You should listen to your friend Avatar." The imposter declared "I doubt the world can take another three years without The Avatar." He cackled hoarsely.
"Dodge this!" Mako said as he wound through the motions and shot a bolt of lightning towards the man. Ribbons of mercury absorbed the lightning bolt and conducted it out of the way in a single fluid moment almost reminiscent of northern waterbending.
"Sorry, but some has-been pro-bender isn't going to cut it." He answered and then launched a powerful wave of mercury towards the police captain.
Mako gasped as the silver tide ruched towards him. At the exact right moment Bolin rolled into the way and raised a slab of earth. "Got your back bro." Bolin said as he melted the slab into a lave and began whirling it towards the mercurybender.
"I'll show him has-been." Mako said as he grit his teeth and released a rapid flurry of fire punches.
Between Mako and Bolin assaulting him from the flanks and Korra and Lin attacking him head on Asami was able to sneak around the back of the superstructure and leapt at him with her shock-glove crackling. His body spasmed for a moment and there was a high, inhuman screech that rang in their ears. But he didn't fall over.
"Oh your toys aren't going to cut it." He answered in a weak, distorted voice before he prepared a glaive of liquid mercury and levelled it at her face."
"Asami, No!" Korra yelled as she jumped between them and shot a lump of metal at him. There was a sick crunch and his head jerked back father than anyone's head could ever hope to and survive. Korra's stomach wrenched as she looked at his horribly twisted neck. And then it slowly clicked back into place. There was a low acoustic whining coming out from under his mask before he spoke.
"Well, I suppose there's no point bothering with this whole routine." He said in a crackling voice as he released the clasp of his cape. As the cloth fluttered to the floor the entire group was struck silent. Metal braces and walking frames all over his body just about held him rigid. Attached to a cracked neck brace was a speaker connected to a radio box. His face had been smashed in by Korra's last attack but he did not bleed, simply drooled as his broken jaw hung open. His skin was pallid, waxy and shrivelled aside from a pink dusting of burnt blood vessels at his extremities. His eyes were bloodshot and glassy and all over his body bulging veins sat heavily under his wax-paper skin.
"Hamone!" Bataar yelled as he ran into the room.
"Stay out of here kid!" Lin yelled.
"No." Hamone's speaker said. "It is time you learnt what is to come." He said as the corpse twisted with obviously inhuman movements now that he had abandoned even the pretence of life.
"What did you do to Hamone?" Asami asked from side lines.
"Hamone looked at what he did to you, Avatar and he couldn't take it. He abandoned the Red Lotus, just like Zaheer." The voice grew more incensed even as Hamone's head listed to the side. "But we found a way for Hamone to contribute to the cause once again."
"Why would you do this to him?" Bataar demanded.
"Yuma was a trusty hireling, good loyal, gave you the slip in the interrogation but eventually he would falter. We needed someone with access to the security building and my old master fit the bill." The corpse said. "Besides we needed somewhere to keep the mercury."
"What do you mean?" Korra asked.
"Oh spirits, no!" Asami exclaimed as the veins beneath Hamone's skin began to pop up under his skin. Sharp, mocking laughter rang out from the speaker as he reached critical mass. Hamone's body exploded into wet and ragged tatters of dead flesh and bloody mercury.
"Get down!" Lin commanded as she tackled Bataar to the ground. A moment too late, a blob of mercury had collided with the side of his face. He was already groaning on the floor, shocked by the impact. He had come out in a cold sweat before he turned to splutter out a loose slick of vomit and his right eye had been filled with burst blood vessels.
Lin pulled the mercury off of his face with her metalbending and pulled him up. "Come on kid, Su 'll kill me if you don't come back in one piece." Lin said, her voice rich with worry as she tried to pull his shaking body up to standing.
Su and Kuvira were sat quietly in her office when the downwash of an airship coming in for a medical landing. The two of them looked out of the back window to see a craft painted in the white and blue medical livery of an air ambulance come down for an emergency landing on the Beifong estate.
Kuvira and Su ran out to the landing site as the ramp at the back of the ship opened up. Out piled Korra and Asami followed by Mako and Bolin. Su's heart clenched as she waited to see whether it was her sister or her first son. At last Lin came out of the back of the airship and kept a pace with Bataar groaning on a gurney.
"What happened!?" Su screamed as she ran over to meet them.
"Red Lotus jumped us, Lin pulled the metal off him and I tried healing him." Korra reported.
"Ku-Ku" Bataar groaned as his fiancé barged her way to his side.
"I'm here Bataar." She said tenderly as she took hold of his hand. His grip was weak, barely able to cling onto her hand.
"I'm sorry." He just about managed to say before he slipped into unconsciousness.