-Exodus—
The waters surrounding Republic City became violent. Waves crashed into the ports, crumbling the docks and overflowing into the streets, bringing with it debris from the boatyards. Some kind of raging tempest seemed to be approaching. The skies blackened and swirled around the city as if it was an eye of a hurricane.
Solomon stood at the top of Graft's tower. He looked out to the where the storm seemed to be coming from. He smiled. He was expecting something. The wind picked up. Lightning shot through the sky.
"It's nearly time, CHAOS. Time for me to lead you to the memorial."
At that instant, Solomon heard the screech of hundreds of drones. Their cries echoed through the streets off the buildings. Their eyes left a trail of red as they crawled out of windows and searched through the streets for their target.
"What is that?" Asami said, looking behind her.
"Drones. Disoriented ones now that Graft is dead," Korra said. The swift walking pace the two had been maintaining turned into a run. They headed for the police station, hoping to find the way to the tunnels underneath the surface which Qu had used as an exit. "Maybe Qu controls them now and has set them to kill all of us."
Asami had informed Korra that the rest of the Team was using some underground tunnel system as an escape route for survivors. The team had actually been successful in getting many non-infected survivors out.
"I remember it being underneath the police station," Asami said.
The two ran down the abandoned roads, fiends cowering in fear from the sight of Asami, still thinking that she was the merciless Queen of the East. I guess getting infected wasn't all that bad, Asami thought.
Korra stopped in the middle of the road. Not because she was tired. She thought she felt something.
"What is it? Come on, they are going to find us. I'm pretty sure the drones won't listen to me like these fiends still do," Asami pleaded.
Korra was experiencing a mixture of things. She was confused over how to process them and make a decision. Around her, fiends had backed away in fear of Asami. They trembled at the sight of her, and they waited for the two to pass. Korra initially stopped because she felt something underneath her. She felt strong cosmic energy, strong because it was very familiar energy. She looked into it and saw a memory of her about to kiss Mako. She quickly snapped herself out of it.
Dammit, of all the memories to see.
She shook her head. "I think they are under us. Right now. I think those tunnels are right beneath our feet. I just felt them."
"There is a manhole a few feet away. Let's hurry up and go down. What's the problem?"
"It's just," Korra looked around at all the fiends looking at the two. They were innocent people whose lives had become ravaged by Graft and Qu's hands. It was not fair. But Korra could do something about it. "I could help them. I could save all of them from the Clasma. Just like I saved you." She walked over to a fiend, but he backed away and ran off.
"Korra you can't get to all of them before the drones come. I know you could handle a drone, but who knows how many are after us. It could be an army. I can still hear them." The screech of the drones was a constant high-pitch tone all around the city. "We have to think practically. Many survivors have gotten out. The fiends are quarantined. They will be okay here until we find a way to save them. But we should get out before it is too late for us, so that we can actually be alive to find such a remedy."
Korra could not decide. It was true that so many people had gotten infected. She would never be able to save all of them right now, and if she was successful in stopping Daya, maybe that would suppress all the adverse effects of Clasma since there would be no connection between a human's cosmic energy in the physical world to the entities in the Spirit World. Maybe they would be cured. But that wasn't all that bothered Korra. She was not sure if these fiends would survive here. Not because of Qu. Not because of the Clasma. But because there was an enormous monster coming right for the city as they stood there. A monster carrying all of the Spirit World within it. A monster carrying Daya. A monster known as CHAOS.
Korra felt it. She felt Solomon, somewhere in the city, his massive quantity of cosmic energy spreading, and when she looked to where it spread to, she found an even larger emission of cosmic energy, larger than she could even understand, coming from something in the waters and completely masking any detection of cosmic energy anywhere else.
If I am the only one that can stop this, I guess I have no choice…
The drones were closing in. Korra knew it. Their Clasma levels seemed so miniscule now compared to Solomon's. They needed to go before the vessel arrived. She didn't know what would happen, but Korra knew being in the city wouldn't be safe if she waited for Chaos's entrance.
"But I can't abandon them…"
"Korra," Asami said, but just then the earth began to shake. It felt like a quake, and the ground beneath Korra and Asami cracked. They fell through the street and into a tunnel.
"Was that a drone?" Asami asked, getting up and orienting herself.
"No," Korra said. She knew what it was. CHAOS had arrived. It's first step onto land had shocked the structure of the entire city.
Korra looked up and the street above her, several of the buildings dismantled. She couldn't go back now. It was too late. It was stupid of her to try and save everyone at this moment. She knew she did not stand a chance against the monster, the vessel. At least not now. She needed help. A plan. She would be back for the monster. For Daya. She would face it head-on. But she would only do it when she knew she could beat it.
"Let's get out of here."
A loud screech sounded in the tunnels.
"I definitely heard that one, Mako," Sydney said.
"It's probably just some fiends knocking around some cars." Mako said. He heard it too, but the last thing he wanted was for the group to panic, which was difficult given the state of everything. He tried to keep things under control by settling everyone's paranoia.
"No that sounded like a drone. And did you feel the earth shake a little? That must be a powerful earth bending drone." Bolin asked. The screech sounded again. It was clearly audible.
"That is them," Sydney said. One of the maintenance doors flew open and two drones came sprinting out. They were facing the opposite way, but once they turned to look at the group, their target suddenly switched and they drew their blades to attack. Sydney raised some water from nearby puddles and sliced the drones' blades off of their arms. Bolin strafed two rocks at both their feet and head, flipping them over.
Two more drones appeared from the dark tunnel, jumping over the fallen drones' bodies. They stood up irregularly and spread their extra limbs, ready to attack the group.
Korra and Asami soon appeared out of the darkness. Korra drew her new katana and sliced one of the drones' legs off while Asami held off the other one. Soon Korra's hands were on both of them, and a few seconds later they fell to the floor, completely drained.
Die in peace, now. I'm sorry, Korra thought.
The team looked at Korra in confusion. She brushed passed them, trying to waive the shock of the situation. She had to get used to this kind of thing. She didn't have time right now. "Evening fellas. I know this seems a bit abrupt, me returning and all, again, but I wouldn't suppose you know of the quickest way out of the city? We need to leave this place if we want to live." She tried to dissolve the confusion so they could leave, prompting the group to continue moving but in the opposite direction. Asami assured the group of the urgency of the situation. Korra had only said something awful was coming for the city.
They walked through a series of tunnels, feeling the quaking periodically. Korra tried to keep them moving. Lights through the tunnels flickered. Mako lit a flame and the group held on the walls and each other so they wouldn't get separated. The vibrations from the surface traveled through the walls and into their hands.
"This is the fastest way out? It sure is taking a while…" Korra said, frustrated. She walked much faster than the group and was sweating profusely. She thought any minute the ceiling would cave in on them. That it would fall and crush her or any one of her friends and it could all be over just like that. She just needed to escape the city, then she could think calmly.
"This tunnel is the longest one. This road goes to The Kiyoshi Bridge. That's the East-West highway which goes pretty far into the continent, " Mako said, "I chose this tunnel because just up here there are some abandoned cars for us."
They found themselves in an open area. Mako was correct, cars were crudely parked and upturned all around them. An old satomobile still had doors and a functioning engine, as per Asami's inspection. She smashed out the window, setting of the alarm, and hotwired the car on instantly as well as pulling the wires triggering the alarm. This all took her about ten seconds it seemed. The remaining members followed the unspoken rule that Asami always drives.
Another quake erupted, and pieces of cinderblock fro the ceiling fell on the car, denting it. Korra felt the impending doom as she got in the front seat. Mako pointed to the tunnel through which they would be exiting. As they sped through the tunnel, he kept his eyes peeled on the road, hoping he would not find any bodies belonging to a survivor he had helped lead out.
"I'm tired of being out of the loop like this," Bolin said as he tightly held his radio spewing the usual static, waiting for some kind of news report to come on about what was happening. "Why do we suddenly have to leave? Why do you just come back and herd us out? We were doing something important."
"Because if we stayed, Solomon would have found us, and we would have been rubble, just like the city is going to be."
The end of the tunnel grew larger as they sped toward The Kiyoshi Bridge. The bridge was two layered. The top level led directly into the city on the surface, and the bottom level into the Roku tunnel, the exact tunnel through which the team was escaping. They shot out of the tunnel and through the second level. Bolin looked behind him, trying to see what was happening in the city. The upper level occluded his view. He noticed debris blowing in the wind, all going toward one place. Even the water began to rise out of the bay as if it was being waterbended by something. Something extremely powerful.
"What is that?" Sydney said quietly. Even O-Ren's constant bored face turned to one of confusion and fear as he saw the water rising. The sky was a dark purple color. It revolved around Republic City.
"Let me get on the upper level," Asami said as she maneuvered the car to a ramp up to the first level.
Prepare yourself, Korra thought.
The drove up to the surface, but it seemed as if there was still a ceiling above them. The sky was black until the end of the bridge. The team turned to look back. Before they could register what they were seeing, it looked like it was a giant black hole with no shape. Shards of skyscrapers, lit on fire, as well as the water revolved around the black hole. When they looked at it longer, they saw it take a concrete shape.
The beast took the form of some kind of massive, four-legged animal. It floated through the city and perched like a cat, but looked more like a panther more like a panther, in the center by Solomon Solutions. Its tail whirled around behind it, smashing and burning everything it touched. Everything about the creature's body was cat-like except for its head. Long strands hung from its head and it had a more defined face. More defined like a human's face. The entire head looked like that of a Sphinx. The creature looked as if it had purple fur, but a closer examination revealed that its skin was similar to the surface of a sun. Purple cosmic energy burned like fire, and flares occasionally erupted. Its eyes were green, and within the heat of the cosmic energy, there was the green glow of the Clasma within the creature. From the Spirit World. It stood frozen in front of Solomon Solutions, the wreckage and water of the city moving at its immediate command like moons around a planet.
"What is that?" Bolin asked.
"CHAOS."
From the peak of the Headquarters, Solomon climbed aboard CHAOS into a chamber protecting him from the flares. The beast broke its pause and continued to move through Republic City, making the bridge shake from the beast unreal power. CHAOS created its own path through the city by plowing through buildings, and sunk into the waters of Yue Bay, and was gone, slowly off to its destination in the Si Wong Desert. Republic City was left a wasteland. The team looked in horror at the place they had made their home completely leveled. At least most of them had spent their entire lives in that city, and now it was gone. They truly had nothing left but each other. They sat in silence, coming to terms with the situation and attempting to let go of the things that tied them to the once standing Republic City.
Asami continued across the bridge, through the mountains and onto the East-West Interstate Highway.