If the united defenders of Republic City were the anvil, Korra was the hammer. An Avatar in the Avatar State was a fearsome sight to behold, but an Avatar fueled by the anger at seeing so many friends and mentors teetering on the edge of life and death was downright terrifying.
The hardest part of the battle were the multitude of mecha tanks. The Red Lotus had pulled them back to their last defensible position and for every Red Lotus soldier there were three of the tanks. They provided cover in the form of those special weapons that shredded buildings, and any defender unlucky enough to get in the way.
She remained in control, though, as she smashed through the mecha tanks. Too many people fell in the time it took her to disable four, but a few minutes into the charge, and the tanks started to turn on each other. Relieved that Asami had come through, and with that threat out of the way, she drove the Red Lotus into the waiting human walls of a partisan army. Between Korra, the Red Lotus and Republic City Earthbenders, most of the market ended up leveled but the Siege of Republic City was finally over.
Korra hovered in the air, looking around for any stragglers or attempts to escape. But with the airships down and the Red Lotus army routed, it really looked like it was finally over. It wasn't. Not until Amaya was defeated and the other nations safe, but at least Republic City was free and now they knew how to remove the airships and tanks as a threat. Asami's team must have figured out how to take over whatever signal the Red Lotus were using to control the tanks. There might still be a central location where the controllers had hidden and they'd have to be rooted out, but the bulk of the fighting was over and maybe people could start returning to their homes.
She dropped to the ground, landing gently on a cushion of air, and with the help of a dozen earthbenders erected a temporary prison for most of the captured Red Lotus. The enemy earthbenders were to be loaded onto a ship until a more permanent solution could be implemented.
Someone counted: A little over fifty Red Lotus soldiers had held a city of tens of thousands hostage thanks to superior technology. There were parts of the street drenched in blood and Korra had to count backwards from ten to calm herself down. So much damage, so much death. She was sick of it.
A figure faded into view next to her and she nearly went into an attack stance until she recognized Jinora in her astral form. "Jinora? What's wrong."
"We need you at the Spirit Portal right now."
"I'm on my way!" Traveling by Glider Air, Korra could see something was wrong with the portal as she got closer and closer to it. It was wobbling and wavering, occasionally flickering out of view entirely for seconds at a time. Something was very, very wrong. There was a growing pain in her chest, like someone was stabbing her repeatedly and her limbs felt heavy.
She landed a block away, trying to catch her breath. It was as though the bond between herself and the spirit world was being severed. That, or Naga was sitting on her chest, making it hard to breath. "Raava?" She asked.
The Spirit World is ill, you must hurry.
How could the spirit world get sick? Korra started to run as fast as her legs could carry her, before whipping up a gust of wind to return to the sky. She landed heavily and awkwardly near the portal and steadied herself with her staff. She spied Jinora near the portal and jogged over. "Okay. I'm here."
"Korra, you look terrible."
Korra smiled roughly, and leaned on Jinora's shoulder. "You don't look so hot yourself." The airbender was pale, and her eyes blood shot. "I can feel it. Something's very wrong."
"It's like the Spirit World is pulling away from us."
Anything else Jinora had planned to say faded into the background as the portal started to flicker again. No! Korra suddenly stiffened, and then went into the Avatar State. She rocketed through the portal a split second before it winked out of existence.
Jinora stumbled and fell flat on her rear, staring at where the portal had been just moments before. She reached out for it, closing her eyes and shifting into the lotus position. But she couldn't cross over. The Spirit World, and Korra, were out of reach.
The attack went badly at first. The Red Lotus were entrenched and their airships began to bomb the city, shooting at anything that moved. Whole buildings collapsed under the barrage, and Azula's forces hunkered down in an abandoned temple. The Fire Lord's face was grim as she peered out the corner of one window, trying to get a gauge for the enemy's position and how exposed they were to the airship. There were only a dozen soldiers with her, and Mako. The rest of the army had taken positions to protect people fleeing for safety or been pinned down elsewhere.
"We're lucky they haven't deployed mecha tanks," Mako observed. "Either they didn't bring any or they're waiting to surprise us with them."
"I'd count more on the surprise than them being unprepared."
"Yeah. Except I don't think they were prepared for this level of resistance," he said. "They underestimated the Fire Nation. They underestimated you."
Azula nodded. "You said you had a plan to end this. I think now is the time to voice it."
Mako nodded. "I don't think we can wait for Asami or Korra to contact us again. But if we can get up there we can take the ship over and use its weapons against the others."
One of the soldiers raised her hand. "How do you expect us to get up there?"
He turned to her and smiled.
Ba Sing Se was a mess. Part of the city was on fire, and an entire district had collapsed into some kind of sink hole. Bolin's heart sank as he saw massive camps throughout the farmland
between the two walls.
The number of airships and mecha tanks dwarfed those that attacked Republic City. Ba Sing Se was so large that they'd clearly had to overcompensate. He wondered how Zaofu had fared. He hoped his mother-in-law was okay.
He didn't know what he was going to do if the people of the Earth Republic were held hostage. Alone, he didn't stand a chance, not until they figured out a way to knock out the Red Lotus' technology and even then it wouldn't be easy.
He peered out from his hiding place again. He wasn't alone. Mecha Tanks guarded the camps, and it appeared as though the vast majority of people in Ba Sing Se had been rounded up. Tens of thousands, maybe even hundreds of thousands. There were so many people that Bolin wondered how they were being held.
People might get hurt but they'd easily overwhelm the Red Lotus, no matter how many tanks they had. If he had to guess, there were two million people in those camps, many of them Earthbenders. There was a reason they weren't fighting back. He just needed to find out what it was and then convince everyone to rise up. Easy.
Bolin punched his fist into his palm and grinned. "Okay Ba Sing Se. It's liberation day!"
The world spun around Korra like a whirlwind. She landed on her shoulder and rolled through tall grass. The glow in her eyes faded as she sat up, trying to get her bearings. "Raava, what did you do?!"
The portal was closing, there was no time to warn you.
Korra looked back the way she came, her eyes widening in alarm. The portal was gone, as though it had never been there at all. She was cut off from the material world.
Cautiously, she got to her feet, taking a look around. The sky was a dull grey color with sickly looking green clouds, and the tall grass she'd landed in was dry and rotting. Every step cruched the grass, turning it to dust. The trees resembled ones she'd seen in the winter around Republic City - lifeless and leafless, branches like twisted fingers. She had the uneasy feeling of the trees watching her.
"You were right. The spirit world is sick." Korra rubbed at the shoulder she'd landed on, and started to walk. She couldn't help but think this was related to everything going on in the material world, and she had a tight, nervous feeling in her stomach that Amaya was behind it. She had been missing from the battle. In fact there hadn't been a sign of her since the damn. Korra thought that maybe the battle for Republic City had just been a distraction.
Somehow Amaya had found a way to close the spirit portals. In her own words, to return the world back to the way it was. But that didn't make sense. The only ones with the power to do that were spirits, and the Avatar. Powerful spirits, at that. And Korra had gotten the impression that there was more to it than that, some of what Amaya had said hinted that her goal went beyond that. But if Amaya was in the Spirit World she must have a way out.
The farther she traveled through the Spirit World, the more obvious the sickness was. Everything was deathly green or grey, spirit plants drooping and what spirits she did see barely registered her presence. They weren't corrupted like Dark Spirits, they looked more like people struck down by a pandemic, laying on the ground and occasionally reaching for her. Pale and faded, some of them looked like they were melting. What could this do to Raava?
Raava seemed to pick up on her worry. I can feel their pain, but it is not affecting me.
That relaxed Korra somewhat. "It's been awhile since you talked with me."
You do not always need me. You are strong on your own, and it is always better to rely upon your own inner strength.
"That doesn't mean I don't want to talk to you. Or that you're incapable of being lonely."
A laugh like rippling water flowed through Korra's mind. As long as you are not lonely, neither am I.
A smile ghosted across Korra's face. "Just… I know you're always there, but I wouldn't mind chatting now and again."
She still felt a little sick herself. Her connection to the spirit world meant some of what ailed it was ailing her. But then it occurred to Korra that maybe that could go in the other direction. So as she searched for the source of the sickness, she filled her heart and her mood with all the things that made her feel happy and whole.
Asami's smiling face greeting her in the mornings and the unique smell of leather, oil and shampoo. Lunches with Mako and Bolin that sometimes escalated into food fights. Naga and the puppies bowling her over. Tenzin, Jinora, Ikki and Meelo. Jia. Her parents. Republic City and the people cheering at her as she went by. Her thoughts of them made her more determined than ever to see an end to this crisis, and in the wake of her footsteps, fresh and healthy plants grew.
"I can't raise anyone in the United or Earth Republics." Fei pulled his headset off, looking at the woman sitting beside him. "They've gone silent."
"We're not getting those reinforcements, are we." The woman ran a hand over her bare scalp, then peered out the window to the city below. "The Fire Lord's forces stopped advancing. They're planning something. I can feel it."
"There's no way they can get up here," Fei assured her. He turned, putting the headset back on, then gasped. He stumbled back, falling out of his chair as fourteen people rose through the air in front of the ship.
Azula was at the front of the wedge formation, Mako on her right. They left a trail of fire and smoke behind them as they reached the top of their arc. She cut out her fire first, hitting the deck and cracking a burning whip at the nearest Red Lotus soldier, sending him scrambling away. The whip wrapped around his ankle and she flipped him over the edge. Mako landed besides her, throwing a quick jabs of flame. The rest of her soldiers rushed below decks as she and Mako advanced on the helm and control room. Only one other soldier tried to stop them and Azula mercilessly cut him down, before blowing the door inward.
Fei crawled under his console as his compatriot squared off to fight the Fire Lord. He didn't know how Azula was still alive after all the attempts to kill her, but she was terrifying with a cloth eyepatch and a fiery whip. He tried to push himself deeper towards safety as he heard his fellow soldier get thrown to the deck.
A hand grabbed him by the ankle and yanked him from cover. He twisted around, coming face to face with the Fire Lord's consort and a very intense jet of flame in front of his face.
Mako smirked. "You're going to show us how to operate the weapons on this ship. And just so you know, I'm the nice one."
"Y..yes sir!"
It took a great deal to make Bolin truly, deeply angry. He tried his hardest to be positive and upbeat, to fill a void that he felt was often present in the lives of his friends. Seeing them happy made him happy. Helping people made him happy. He liked happy/.
What the Red Lotus had done to convince Ba Sing Se to surrender was nothing short of disgusting and it enraged him.
There were more than a thousand children under heavy guard. A dozen mecha tanks with their deadly weapons pointed right at the kids. According to some of the people he'd talked to when he'd snuck into the camps, they'd successfully resisted the initial attack, even while suffering heavy casualties. But then the Red Lotus had taken the children hostage and the resistance dried up. No one wanted to risk the kids, and who could blame them? Bolin didn't even stop to think what the Red Lotus hoped to accomplish, or what had happened to the elected council in after the invasion. His whole focus was on the kids. Save the kids and then worry about everything else.
There was an undercurrent of anger throughout the camps and Bolin knew he could tap into that. The fight hadn't really left the people, but as long as the children were in danger there was nothing to do but sit and stew.
Bolin wasn't going to sit and stew. Hours after hatching a plan, he crawled close to the tanks, counting how many there were. Directly across from him were three earthbenders waiting for his signal. His signal was going to be pretty spectacular if he did say so himself. He jumped up and planted his feet. He held out his hands, and the earth beneath each of the mecha tanks began to boil and melt. They started to sink into it and he jerked the lava up, covering them completely. He forced it to cool, trapping the tanks.
As soon as the tanks began to sink, the other earthbenders rushed in, attacking the guards. Somewhere nearby, someone blew a horn as the children were freed. People began to shout, those willing to fight surging through the camps and towards the Red Lotus forces. Like a tsunami, the wave of people picked up speed as more and more joined the rush. The Red Lotus on the ground were overwhelmed and the airships began to turn.
Bolin whistled sharply. Six earthbenders stepped forward, and launched him on a bed of rock straight up to the Red Lotus command ship. He nearly missed, making it only after jumping off the rock and grabbing onto a railing. He climbed on board, surprising two Red Lotus soldiers by dropping the rock right on top of them..
Inside the command room, he knocked out the pilot and then sat at the controls. None of it made any sense to him and that was even after Asami had given him some lessons because he'd wanted to learn to fly an airship. But the Red Lotus layout wasn't familiar and it wasn't as efficient as any Future Industries ship. He supposed he could figure it out eventually, but there wasn't time. He knew Asami had gone back to Republic City to figure out a counter to these ships. He glanced at the radio, then picked it up. It couldn't hurt to try to raise her, he just hoped it wouldn't take long.