There was a little room in the Beifong estate, one that wasn't often visited anymore, the medical room. Long ago, when Zaofu was just five towers on the edge of the Si Wong desert Bataar had been born here. And now he was laying in that same bed, surrounded by the latest and best in medical gear as it beeped and hummed and wheezed to keep him alive. Kuvira was sat on one side of his bed and Su sat on the other waiting for something to change.
Lin slowly creaked open the door of the medical room and was immediately met by two pairs of rather stony looking eyes. Kuvira sat more rigidly as she caught sight of the Chief but she knew better than to start an argument with the only Beifong in the family who had any sort of sympathy for her. None the less Lin could see the look in her eyes sharpen and harden until it was the glare of the Great Uniter. Su meanwhile stood up as quickly as she could and took on a stance that was all too much like a fighting pose as she stomped across the long room towards her sister.
"How is he?" Lin finally managed.
"The doctors say the left half of his face is paralyzed and he's probably going to be blind in that eye." Su Yin said a tad bitterly as she looked back to her son and his fiancé.
"Su I'm sorry, I tried to keep him out of there but he thought there was still a chance to save Hamone."
"The healers say that if you hadn't pulled it out on the spot it might have crossed his blood/brain barrier." Kuvira said slowly, even as she spoke she could feel her stomach knot at the thought of Bataar's death. "So thanks, I guess." She added as an afterthought as she leant over to Bataar and absently stroked a hand through his hair, for once her hands were bare, with her gloves tucked into the sash of her robe.
Lin attempted to cross the room towards her nephew, to try and navigate her way through the touchy-feely nonsense that she still couldn't quite get a handle of before she was stopped in her tracks.
"So what's our next move?" Su asked as she stepped up to her sister.
"Whoever was using Hamone's body had to have been nearby, Bolin's people are watching the entire neighbourhood." Lin answered.
Su Yin's eyes narrowed down to angry slits and then hissed the words "Not good enough."
"What do you want from me Su?! That mission was a house of cards and you know it!" Lin finally snapped. "We went in blind with civilians and a dozen cadets as backup, what did you think was going to happen?"
"You didn't have any problems with it going in." Su said coldly. "Just trying to cover your back same as always." She said bitterly under her breath.
"Hey!" Kuvira yelled, hoarsely as she stood up off of her seat. "What are we going to do about the Red Lotus!"
Su Yin whirled around and looked ready to slap Kuvira clean across the face. Until she saw the worried tears streaming down her face and relented. "We know how the killer got in, the security force isn't under suspicion anymore." She answered. "We'll turn the whole city upside down if we have to."
The warlord Rhee's army had followed the faltering monorail system to its hub in Zaofu until it was only a few hundred miles from the borders of Zaofu's official territory. Village after village, towns and cities and fortresses alike had been picked clean along the way and now it was halted. A field of tents and earthen shelters beyond counting sat around the resort village of Suyoon. Right in the middle of a sea of drunken brawlers and malcontent warriors was the Warlord's new base of operations, a war-torn day spa of all things.
The evening chill of a late winter night shivered over his half naked body as he reclined in a traditional onsen whilst a spa girl kneaded his shoulders. His mechasuit sat in front of the wall it had burst through. The suit was hunched behind him, kneeling like a loyal servant with its dome open and ready to receive him if need be.
Rhee heard the flutter of the tarp covering the hole his suit had burst through and immediately pulled a gold-hilted blade as long as his arm from the murky bath pit. He whirled around ready to attack with the soapy blade. The figure before him was nearly seven foot of corded muscle wrapped in layers and layers of hard wearing leathers and her fair share of looted jewellery.
"General Mari, I take it something is bothering you." He said casually as he sat back into the pool, facing her. "Something always is." He muttered under his breath.
Mari huffed and crouched over the much smaller, much more jovial man. Her hard wearing "We could have taken Zaofu days ago, the longer we sit here the longer we give the Beifongs to prepare."
Rhee cackled, he always cackled at everything any of his generals ever told him but he seemed to take considerable pleasure in laughing at Mari's advice. "Zaofu is a broken city, all we give them time to do is crumble a little bit more." He said, running a finger over the rim of his chalice and then licking his finger.
"They have the avatar…my lord." Mari chaffed a little as she forced out Rhee's self-proclaimed title.
"I get that you Kyoshi Islanders are kinda like avatar-groupies or whatever." Rhee said dismissively. "But according to my sources they have an Avatar that is quite preoccupied with chasing down some Red Lotus remnant." Rhee chuckled more warmly now. "They're tearing the city apart for us as we speak."
"Rhee, I don't think that-" Mari was interrupted by a single hand raised out of the water.
"Lord Rhee." He corrected her.
Mari rolled her eyes as hard as anyone ever had. "My Lord Rhee, your warriors are growing stir crazy and the other generals are beginning to squabble amongst themselves, I am sure they will attempt something eventually."
Rhee leaned over to reach his drink and took a deep sip of century old wine. "When we get to Zaofu we can stop being warriors and generals." The warlord said almost hopefully. "I figure we should get used to that idea first."
Bolin's office had not changed since the last time Opal saw it, yet it seemed gloomier somehow as Bolin sat heavily, almost ensconced in the rumples of his chair. As soon as he recognised the dull grey of her boots on the floor he presented a happier look but the damage had been done.
"Hey Bolin." She said, cocking her head to the side. "Where is everyone?" She asked. Out of his window the training floors were all perfectly prepared and perfectly abandoned.
"Your mom didn't need us for the case." Bolin said sadly. "I figured I should give everyone a break until after Kimwei's funeral, I'm just filing some paperwork."
"Well that dosen't sound so bad. Why don't you blow it off for an hour, we can go ride Juicy up to the mountains…" She said with a little grin as she hopped over to Bolin's side of the desk and slowly mussed up his finely gelled hair until it was tussled to her liking. The smile she wore soon dropped as she saw the paperwork. The paper was black trimmed and it sat on top of a pile of similar letters, each of them tightly crumpled into a small pyramid until it nearly eclipsed the photograph of himself and Opal.
"Yeah, I've been putting it off and putting it off but Kimwei's family needs an official letter of condolence from me." He said bleakly before he gestured to a stack of triplicate forms further along the desk. "And now I've got resignations to deal with. Toma's going back to the aerodrome and Sunni's asked for a transfer to the patrol unit." He explained.
"Still sounds like you could do with an hour outside." She said tenderly as she tried to lift him up out of his chair. Eventually he relented and walked out into the training square where Juicy was stood, wheezing and huffing as he always did. As the wind turned his musky odour hit both of them full in the face. "I'll even let you steer this time."
"You know what, Opal" Bolin said, his optimism rising despite the rising odour of the sky-bison in front of him. "I could really go for a drive."
Opal just about managed to lift herself and Bolin up onto the bison's head with a small gust of wind and then handed him the reigns.
"So I just say Yip-Yip?" Bolin asked.
"Ye-" Before Opal could finish her response they had rocketed into the sky.
They were rapidly floating out above the city of Zaofu. The main platforms were expanding now. All around them tent cities had popped up filled with refugees from all across the continent. Some were earthen shelters but a great many were just faded old cloth tents clustered around small fire pits.
A slight crackle from the radio mounted onto Juicy's saddle announced an incoming announcement over the radio.
"This is Abbot Shung to all Zaofu sector Rangers." A soft, even voiced monk announced over the radio, no matter how many of these dispatches the Abbot issued he had still never managed to avoid sounding like a nervous schoolboy. "The ZSF is requesting our assistance with a riot in refugee camp thirty two." As the abbot spoke a grass green flare burst a half a click to Juicy's left flank. At the bottom of the flare's smoke trail was a beleaguered squad in cover behind a crude series of earthbent barriers, just a bit to the left of a monorail track.
"I'll take us down." Bolin offered as he tilted the rains and began an almost dangerously deep dive for the ground. Soon enough they were low enough over the camps that the refugees were not drab dots on the ground they were people now. They smelt of dirt and trapped sweat, and their smoky black fires stunk of cheap meat cooked poorly. As they flew overhead a few looked up at the first of the mythic sky-bison that they had ever seen in their lives. And they did not care, nothing seemed particularly wonderful on an empty stomach.
"Back, back, you damned fox-rats." A guardsman yelled as a blast of fire splashed against a wall he had erected, just barely in time.
Juicy came in for a landing inside the clearing the guards had managed to take shelter behind.
"What can we do to help?" Opal asked with a practiced confidence.
"We were supposed to question this sector about the Red Lotus but we're having trouble with the outsiders, er, refugees." The guard corrected himself as he saw a quizzical look coming off of Bolin. "We could sure do with an airbender to knock 'em back without hurting them, you know."
"Beifong!" One of the crowd yelled at Opal and then hurled the rotten peel of a banana at her. In time she was joined by a chanting, frothing crowd who chanted her name as an insult and pelted her with whatever was to hand.
"Hey Beifong!" a rather sizeable and rather irate earthbender yelled as he elevated himself on a platform to peer over the barriers at her. "Why don't you run home to mommy dearest and tell her we're tired of her looking down on us." He said, overshadowed by the monolithic foundations of one of Zaofu's platforms and the gentle arc of a monorail.
Opal hopped onto the fortifications to look the protestor in the eyes. They were weary eyes, sat in a hard featured face decorated with a great many scars both old and fresh. "My mother is doing her best to give you all a home." She said, passionately. "And if you all just comply with these officers I'm sure it will all work out for you."
"What a load!" The dissident shot back. "The Beifongs do nothing but send their tin soldiers to push us around, just 'cause we're not high-society folk like you." He yelled. A chorus of ranting and screaming followed after him.
"We ran from Rhee to escape people like you!" One refugee yelled in the tatters of an old Yi-State Sherriff's uniform. "You won't let us into the city and we can't go anywhere else." She yelled.
"Why can't you just leave us alone!" an old man with matted locks of filthy grey hair hanging off the sides of his balding head.
"I promise you, we'll try to find a way to help you people, but we have a lot to deal with in Zaofu and-" She was cut short by a loosely coiled water-whip, its wielder struck quickly and without warning, though Opal was merely startled the message was clear, if they had meant to hurt her they could have. The officers immediately levitated blocks of rock, ready to retaliate.
"And we don't matter as much, do we!?" The wielder of the water whip said as he pulled the grubby liquid back into a patched water skin.
Opal endeavoured to evade the resulting onslaught thrown garbage until the stench of a mould eaten hunk of papaya collided with her face. The next hunk of rubbish was blown away with a blast of wind, along with the person who threw it and five over people around him. Opal had only enough time to regret what she had done before rocks started levitating joined by slithering limbs of water and wicks of flame.
A firebender's unskilled flame-jabs bounced off of a barrier of rock as Bolin leapt from the battlements to defend his girlfriend. He pelted them with small pebbles and loose clumps of dirt to try and disperse them, in the end however the crowd refused to back down.
Opal ducked and weaved through airborne rocks and balls of fire and countered with precisely timed blasts of air which would knock one or two rioters back and perhaps it would be enough to cow them into submission but more often than not they would rise and be joined by yet more from the rapidly angered crowd.
The Zaofu guards joined in the battle, or at least attempted to. The first officer took a rock to the ribs as he leapt the battlements and flew back into Juicy's flank. He didn't get up. The second leapt forwards with his cables extended and ready to fight. He succeeded in binding a handful of fighters with lengths of steel thread before he was locked up in a solid wedge of ice.
"And you too!" The Sherrif yelled as she launched a bolder at Bolin. "You see how they treat foreigners, why do you put up with this?" She followed up her boulder attack with a rapid fire series of rock flechettes.
Bolin flipped up a slab of rock to deflect the shrapnel storm and then followed it up by melting the slab into a fluid mass of lava that welled up and rolled upon itself like a living beast. The sparse dry ground beneath their boots began to catch fire around the upwelling of liquid rock and soon enough small fires were beginning to catch.
Almost immediately the refugees began to scatter as they tried to get away from the wildfires that had started to spring up. Waterbenders were forced to use their meagre drinking ration to try and smother them out and the firebenders were forced to try and keep the fire from spreading in the meanwhile. And then he saw it, a little boy with mattered black hair stuck to half his face and one big green eye as wide as an eye could go. Bolin saw himself in that eye, behind a gulf of fire and boiling rock, a monster attacking the villagers.
"Are you insane!?" The Sherriff yelled. "We have kids here." She positioned herself between Bolin's lava and the boy.
"They're all the same, they only care about their precious city." Said an earthbender as he barged towards the monorail's support. In a single gasp Bolin realised what he was about to do. "Well let's give them something to worry about." He growled as he dug his feet into the earth and began rocking the foundations of the monorail.
"Stop!" Bolin yelled. But he went unheeded and unheard as more earthbenders joined in. The tortured groan of warping metal wrung out over the camp as bit by bit the support beam came down and the entire track began to slump and deform.
And even over all of the commotion on the ground heard it. The low hum of a tram inbound. The breaks screeched and so did the tram's passengers. At a little bit past one in the afternoon a single tram, packed full with office workers back from their lunch break broke off of the tracks and tumbled into the sparse scrubland around Zaofu.
"Oh spirits, no." Bolin whispered. On instinct he ran towards the wreck, joined by a great many of the refugees but even the optimist in him could not believe that anyone would survive the plunge. And no one did.
Su Yin adjusted the trim of her robe and stood in front of the massive main doors of the Beifong estate with a sense of trepidation. She could hear their furore even from the other side of the great steel doors.
"Good luck honey." The elder Bataar said to his wife and punctuated it with a quick kiss, gently planted on her cheek lest he mar her makeup.
If Su Yin had said anything as a response she didn't register it. Instead she walked towards the doors and pushed them open to meet a firing line of camera men backed by a chattering chorus of reporters each braying for attention.
She marched up to her pre-prepared podium at the top of her steps, in front of two dozen assembled representatives. "I'm sure you have already heard it unofficially but here is the official declaration; at noon today a riot in the refugee camps resulted in a derailment which killed two people on the ground and twenty seven Zaofu citizens." Su Yin announced slowly but brusquely. "I will now a few of your questions."
As if on cue the reporters began yelling their questions until Su settled for a young reporter with a pair of ridiculously oversized wireframe glasses, small of frame and swallowed by his oversized robes Su Yin hoped to start with a softball question. She would have no such luck. "Tama-Lao, Platform 7 news; what do you say to claims that the riot was caused by overzealous efforts to root out the Red Lotus."
"Thank you for your question Tama-Lao." Su said in the best approximation of a light and breezy tone that she could manage at the moment. "What people need to remember is that we are in a state of war and this Red Lotus cell presents a tangible threat to Zaofu."
"Are you saying that Warlord Rhee is connected to the Red Lotus?" Another reporter asked.
"We have no evidence pointing to that." Su answered bluntly.
"Then what is being done to stop Rhee?" Asked yet another reporter.
"Team Avatar have agreed to remain in Zaofu for the time being, my son Bataar is helping us to devise new defence mechanisms and…." Su hesitated and for an awful second thought of lying to them but instead she dipped her head and reported. "As a part of her custody Kuvira is providing my war-council with tactical advice." She answered. Almost immediately the crowd erupted into an outpouring of questions. It was only around sunset that questioning had abated.
Kuvira had yet to leave the medical room so far. Judging by the preparations she had made to the sofa in the corner it seemed she had hoped to remain there for the night. In the corner a radio played softly to itself.
"News is just breaking that the former dictator, Kuvira is a part of our matriarch's war council. We haven't had a chance to take a poll yet listeners, but let me tell you our newsroom is livid. More on this story as it develops." The radio announced.
"I guess the viper-cat's out of the bag." Kuvira announced glibly from her perch over Bataar's bed. "What do we do now?"
"I don't know, right now we have half the Zaofu press association demanding to see you." Su Yin grumbled as she took up a seat beside her.
"Well then I should talk to some of them." Kuvira answered uncertainly. "If we hide from this they'll just reach their own conclusions."
Su turned to her with a completely neutral face and said "Good, because you're seeing the Platform Seven News tomorrow." She answered and then left.