-A State of Flux-

I told her…I told her there was still a chance. It felt like a dream, but she answered. Has she run off? Has she abandoned us?

No, I haven't.

Asami was snapped out of her deep thought by this reply. A reply from somewhere, within her? Around her? She looked up at the sky from the hillside, becoming increasingly more polluted with the oncoming darkness from the direction of the nearby desert. The entrails of CHAOS. The sky seemed to flicker quickly, like a burnt out light bulb struggling to illuminate. The physical world weakening under the Spirit World's coming, starting with the sky. The channel dissolving, the cosmic energy flowing back and forth more freely. Soon, the concrete, physical structures of the planet would start to be absorbed into this influx of raw energy.

As she looked upwards toward the oncoming darkness, Asami thought she heard voices. Nothing understandable. The voices seemed to zip by over her head very fast, only for an instant every few seconds did she hear what sounded like a human speaking in the air. Information traveling in the cosmic energy above her. Its strength increasing as it accumulated. In addition to the random voices, the sky emitted a noise resembling thunder. Not any thunder that Asami had ever heard. It almost sounded like the sky was starting to crack, shatter into a million pieces and fall down on her, revealing the infinite abyss of the Spirit World behind it.

While the voices over her head seemed to go out in all different directions, meshing together into an indistinguishable mess, Asami heard one in particuar that was so undeniably clear. She felt it within her, and it soothed her. It held back her fears as she saw what was happening around her. As if the energy that carried this particular voice was meant only for her to receive, to comprehend.

Korra, you are still here. You are still with me, Asami thought, smiling.

Asami made her way back to the pond. The rest of the Team noticing the sounds they heard above them, thinking a storm had found them. Asami hurried, hoping they had not been awake for more than a few minutes and noticing her absence. It was late in the day at this point. "You guys." she said calmly. She stopped before the group. "Korra is gone."

"What?" Mako yelled.

"Since when?" Bolin asked.

"I don't know," Asami said. O-Ren looked at her suspiciously from head to toe as he held the still unconscious Rong in his arms. "I woke up just a little while ago and noticed the sky was like that," Asami lied, pointing upwards at the unstable sky flickering in color, purple streaks of dark clouds running across it. "I ran to find Korra. To see what had happened. But when I got there…she was gone."

O-Ren easily caught Asami's lie. He smiled slightly, remembering that he had seen her sneak up to Korra hours ago and had been there since. Knowing exactly what had really happened. The rest of the Team took no notice. Bolin started to panic more than the others.

"Gah! Why!? Why now? What happened is she okay? Is she dead or the Spirits got her or something!" He grabbed his head and paced around.

"Bolin, calm down. What's the matter with you?" Asami asked.

"What's the matter!? Probably the fact that Korra was our only way out of this whole mess and now she is gone. Just left us and now what do we do? I'm sorry if I'm a little scared at the thought of all of us just dying today!" His words brought tears to Sydney's eyes. Even though they sounded like crazy bantering, Bolin spoke the most probable truth, at least in the opinion of the rest of the group. The weight of what he was saying was larger now that they could actually see this apocalypse beginning above them.

"I don't believe that is true," Asami said, struggling to distinguish her words between truth and lie. Struggling to speak only out of faith and look beyond the facts of their situation. "I don't think we've been abandoned."

"Well, it's the perfect time for her to leave," Mako said. He threw a few stones into the pond, watching wavy reflection of the sky as it was changing colors. "What do we do? Go find her?"

"I know it sounds crazy," Asami said, "But when I went up to that hill this morning and saw she was gone, I sat their for a while, thinking about what to do and…I thought I heard her talk to me." Asami looked up again. She was getting the skeptical stare from most of them. All except Sydney, who just looked to her with interest. "There is more of this…energy around us now. It carries information with it. I'm sure that I heard her speak to me through it. She told me that it was okay."

"Is she dead or something, then?" O-Ren asked.

"No…she's just far away."

"It's true," Sydney said. "There is something about that hill. At the top there are all these carvings and at one point while I was up there I thought I heard them speak to me, too."

Asami smiled and nodded. "I don't know what has happened to her, but I trust her. I trust she knows what she is doing, and she has tried to reach me. To tell us what is happening. To assure us that we can make it. We will make it. I know we will. We don't need Korra for everything, and I'm not going to let anything happen to us. Believe me, or not, we have to go. Bolin, you still have the radio?"

Bolin slowly pulled the radio out of his pocket, giving off the same static as usual. "Yeah, what good is it now?"

"Man up, Bolin. I need you for this one. Keep trying to call someone. Anyone. Send out whatever signals you can over that thing. Every frequency. It's saved us before. As for the rest of us, I think we need to leave."

"And go where?" Mako asked.

Asami hesitated before she spoke to them. Mako was hardly believing her as it was, but there was no other way to explain what she truly believed she heard on that hill.

"Republic City."

"I should've known," Bolin said sadly.

"Republic City? What the hell for? Do you realize how far away from Republic City we are right now? And what's there but Graft's legacy of killing drones? How do you know the Spirits aren't just screwing with you, Asami?"

"I know what I heard, Mako. I know it was her. I know that is what she told me. Whether or not you believe me about Republic City doesn't matter…"

"Look," Mako said. "Maybe you did hear something. That isn't totally outrageous to me or anything. Nothing really is, anymore. But the fact of the matter is we haven't done jack shit to stop this monster. We haven't led a single attack on it or come up with any kind of plan. We just keep moving around, trying to find an answer, following faint traces of something that might be useful to us. We aren't getting anywhere and soon we are all just going to die."

"We'll die even sooner if we at least don't leave this spot. We stand no chance against the beast. Against whatever is being bred in the desert right now by it. Korra, she did contact me. I felt her, and I felt the urgency with which she spoke to me. If you don't want to go to Republic City, then so be it, but I'm not letting you stay here and wait your inevitable slaughter."

Mako sighed and reluctantly agreed.

"Any luck, Bolin?"

"Still got nothing. Sorry, but I'm not quite sure what I am doing this. I'm still not sure what this blinky thing is."

"It's fine. She'll find you," said a voice that no one recognized. An old weak voice. The voice was right next to O-Ren's ear. He looked down at the wounded soldier he had been taking care of the last day. He felt the man move slightly in his arms, and the feeling shocked O-Ren, making him shriek and in reaction to being startled he dropped Rong to the ground.

"O-Ren! Why'd you drop him!" Asami yelled as she the others ran up to the weak man.

"I'm sorry. He was out for so long I never expected him to wake up. It just scared me I guess."

"What did you say?" Mako asked Rong.

"That radio…agh…" he struggled to breath. "I've worked with several of those things…ugh…it's sending an SOS. That blinking light. A geo-location device."

"Geo-what?" Bolin asked.

"Geo-location," O-Ren said. "The radio must transmit a signal that will be picked up by other radios. Geo-location information, in other words, our positions can be triangulated by whoever receives our signal."

"You think someone will pick it up?" Asami asked.

"She will," Rong said, as if he knew exactly what was going to happen. "She's looking for you. She will find you. I know she will. She is…our protector. Our guardian." The man was referring to the old Republic City Police Chief. "Even when we turned on her, she still fought to protect us. An unconditional love. I don't know how she did it. I only helped to try and break her. But I was so ignorant. Breaking something as pure as her is impossible. Too pure to give up on us." Rong began to cough up some blood. O-Ren looked worried at seeing this man as he lied on the ground, dying. "Hell, she even saved me from my death once, even after tried to kill her. I never thought the same since I woke up in that field. I remembered her words. They were like the words of a mother, and I reached for them. She was the only thing that kept me alive that day. I could truly feel the pain in her of seeing me suffer. That is something…that I have never experienced before. She is someone unlike any I ever knew. I couldn't live with myself, knowing how I had treated her, and now, I hope I die after doing at least one thing right. I hope I helped to end this in some way, even if I was the one who helped start it. I know I deserve to die, but I wish I could see her once more. To tell her I am sorry. To tell her what I've told you. That she is beyond the darkness of this world. Please, tell her, when she finds you, that I am sorry, for all that I had done, for the way I treated her. For…everything."

The team saw Rong's life diminish in his eyes. They had a blank, dead stare. His breathing stopped. It seemed like the breathing of everyone watching him stopped as well. The Team's glance shifted over to O-Ren, who was unable to find any words, and was no longer hiding behind his relaxed guise. The sight of this man's death frightened him. The only thing that ever really scared him: it was not death from an outside force, but a power that O-Ren held within himself. Rong's own power was the very thing that ended his life.

O-Ren closed his eyes, pained to see a metalbender die like this. His momentary reflection was disrupted by the wind picking up around them. O-Ren became serious again. "You heard the man. Let's get going."

The darkness above them had become much thicker by the time they reached their Satomobile. It felt like a powerful storm was chasing after them as they sped across the hilly roads of the Earth Kingdom, going back the way they came, this time on the main highways, unafraid now that they had dissolved Qu's regime. Darkness twisted through the skies like tentacles extending from the desert. As the car reached the top of a hill, it came to a stop.

"Dammit. Come on!" Asami yelled.

"What is it?" O-Ren asked.

Asami was scared to say what they all already inferred. "Car's out of gas. It's a long road from Metro."

"Welp," Mako said, opening the door, "I guess we better get out if we don't want that storm to catch us."

"What happens if it does?" Sydney asked. Nobody had a clue. It was obviously not a regular storm, but what it brought for them, they just knew they were not going to stick around and find out. They walked up the road as quickly as possible. From their elevation, they looked behind them and could make out the pond and hill at which they had been camping. O-Ren looked back, wondering if he could see Rong's body still lying there. Or maybe, hopefully, he had revived and was just gone.

As they walked, Bolin spotted a boulder which would make a good vantage point of the storm off the side of the road. He hopped over to it and perched himself on top of the rock. Mako saw him gazing into the dark purple clouds on the horizon.

"Bolin, let's go. Quit playing around." Bolin didn't respond. He just stared, looking beyond the relic by the pond. "Bolin?"

"Mako, what is that?"

"I don't know, man. It's just dark clouds so it can't be…"

"No…look. There is something...moving really fast. Like, a whole swarm of bugs or something."

O-Ren stood in the road as he continued staring at the pond, thinking about Rong's untimely death, when he saw what Bolin was seeing. It was as if the darkness from the sky was now consuming all of the land below it. Not far from their campsite, what looked like a swarm of black insects began tearing through the desert. A black wall from the ground to the sky, white speckles were scattered across this dark cloud moving quickly for the group. As they came closer, the Team heard the loud screeching noise they were emitting.

Millions of creatures made up the swarm. All different sizes, some of them half the size of a human, while others towered. Green Eyes. Green crystal structures extending from their bodies. Their skin the same intangible raw energy just like CHAOS. Melding together as they moved in this pack, forming this wall. Claws on their hands thirsty for Clasma. Ready to disassemble the planet, prepare it for recration. The army was saturated and densely compacted to form what like nothing more than the black sky touching the ground. But the Team knew precisely what they were looking at.

The SPORE.

"They're here. We got to go, right now," Bolin yelled. He jumped down from the boulder and took off running up the road with the rest of the team.

"They are moving so fast. They've already reached the pond," Mako yelled. The relic was completely engulfed in the wave of SPORE lurching across the earth. Just swept away. Hope was diminishing, swallowed up like the light from the sun by the dark sky as the Team desperately ran across the vast landscapes of the Earth Kingdom, looking back to see their doom encroaching upon them, getting closer with each passing, wasted minute. They were completely alone in this wilderness, far from any civilization. The closest ones being Misty Grove and Metro, both of which, they imagined, had been completely evacuated. Or destroyed.

Asami looked around, suddenly more scared than she had ever been. It dawned on her that she might not get away. But Korra somehow knew that she would. She felt that Korra had ensured their safety, somehow. Korra spoke to Asami with such comforting words that she had a difficult time believing that this was the end. But everything in her situation pointed to this outcome. She looked around, disoriented, unsure where to run. The Earth Kingdom just stretched out in all directions. She knew not where she had come from. She had no sense of direction to the sea. And even if she did, would that mean safety at this point?

Korra…where are you?

"Asami!" Mako yelled. "Why'd you stop? Let's go!" Asami just stared at the ground, mystified as to why she felt like stopping. She wasn't tired, she just did not have any desire to run anymore. It felt pointless. They had made it far enough that they could not hear or see the SPORE behind them, but they did not want to think about how quickly the little demons could rear their ugly heads around any corner.

"Korra said we would be okay. Why did she say that? She must have known something."

"There isn't any point in asking that now, is there?"

Asami held her arm tightly, deep in reflection. Turning over a decision in her head, wondering if Korra somehow knew her secret, and was expecting her to save her friends now. Asami's dark secret. She started to roll her sleeve up when she heard the wind around her. Blowing against the trees, carrying whispers of those from far away. Thoughts and words. Distant energy. Some of it looking for her. Speaking words in the same voice as before, compelling Asami to press on, just a little farther. She complied, but not in the same direction that the rest of the Team had been running. The voice drew her slightly of the path toward the horizon established by a small hill nearby, beyond which she could not see.

"I think we have to go this way…" Asami said, just as uncertain as the rest of the Team about what she was saying.

"Why's that?" O-Ren yelled, wondering what the difference was, wondering why Asami looked like she had been stricken by something.

"I can hear her." The thoughts and words flowing through the sky drifted down and surrounded Asami, speaking to her the those things which ensured her that she was going to be safe

Life is filled with this darkness. You may not always see the light through it, but if you keep moving, you will come to a better place.

The wind sounded like it was about to pick up, like a huge gust of it about to blow through the trees, strong enough to blow the whole Team into the mouths of the SPORE.

But there was no force they felt. The air was just as calm. As the sound of wind became louder, Asami recognized it as the sound of motors. Of pistons going up and down. Of propellers spinning in circles extremely fast. The sound of an engine, coming from the sky, getting louder as she approached the horizon.

Asami reached the top of the hill and saw bright lights coming from the dark sky, shining on the trees before her. Spotlights piercing the layer of darkness, searching. The light came closer to her. As it became brighter, the darkness seemed to materialize into a metal airship behind the light, descending on the team. In their frightened state, the Team believed the ship to be threatening, some kind of trick by the SPORE, and they turned to run. All except for Asami, who noticed the insignia of the human on the side of the ship, just before the metal wire wrapped around her body and pulled her and her Team up into the aircraft hovering above them.

As soon as they were off the ground, the airship ascended quickly back into the sky, forcing its way through the thick zone of black. The Team was thrown through the bay doors and were met with the cold metal of the interior paneling.

"Well, good to see the tracker works, but do we have to keep saving you like this?" said an old, familiar voice. The metalbenders quickly retracted their wires, allowing the Team to stand and see that they were no longer in any danger.

A door opened behind them. "Lin, were you able to...," Tenzin said before he noticed the Team there, safe and sound. "Oh thank goodness you are all okay!"

"How did you find us?" Bolin asked, looking at the beeping light on his radio.

"It took a while. These radios have a geo-location tracker. When a signal is received from one of your radios, the static is completely suppressed when you point the radio in the direction the signal is coming from. But as you can imagine, there were several refugees sending out the same signal, so we didn't quite get to you first because we had no idea who was who. But at least we did before it was too late…" Lin looked out the window of the ship, one last glimpse of the surface before the ship plunged into the dark clouds above the earth. Bolin ran and hugged Lin, who was surprised by this show of affection.

"OH Thank you! You've saved us again! I was sure we were going to die!"

"Bolin, we had enough ground on those things. We would have been okay for a little while," Mako said.

"What things?" Tenzin asked. He then looked around. "And where is Korra?"

"She's gone," Asami answered. "She left…to do something important. For us. I know she is still alive, though. I know she will come back to us. And help us fight those things. The SPORE."

"So then it's true," Lin said, sadly. "They've come for us, just like Korra said." Everyone was suddenly silent. "Well, what has happened is done. If it's true, than we have to do something, right? Korra or no, we have people willing to fight." The team almost simultaneously asked what she was talking about. "Why don't we go up to the bridge, shall we? Get to a nicer environment."

They followed Lin through the ship's corridors, the windows they passed still black, indicating they were still in the process of ascending through the clouds. Asami hastily pulled her sleeves down, even thought hey were already over her hand when she was retrieved. She felt secured in her subtle gesture of fright, until she saw that Tenzin had noticed her do this. This scared her on the inside, and the fear was partially on her face too, against her wishes.

"After we escaped Metro," Lin said as they walked, "We sent a warning to the people of Misty Grove to evacuate because we though the beast was going to plow right through it. Tenzin and I were able to meet up with a couple of other ONI members who had helped in the operation. Luckily enough, these people had worked on the new airship designs,. These contraptions have been built and nearly ready for months, they said. Just undergoing lots of testing to ensure it was perfect. Well, as you can imagine, under these drastic circumstances, normal protocol was thrown aside. They decided it was the right time to finally release the ships, and so people were evacuated from the city on them. We took this one, but in the panic, we did not leave together. Many of the ships were scattered, and I don't know where they all went. We keep trying to communicate over the radio…but it seems this darkness is screwing with our transmissions. We've only been able to establish communication across very broken channels and most of the time we can't understand anything. The SOS signal on these radios is simple enough thought that any distortion from the Beast's emissions won't affect it that much. But since it is still so hard to track people using the radios, we first went for people we could retrieve quickly, so we got Tenzin's family. They are safe on this ship. Then we came looking for you."

"You know, I take back that 'thank you'," Bolin said, half-joking, but still pouting. "We were just an afterthought?"

"Look, Bolin. I made a smart decision. Wouldn't be very effective with Tenzin and I looking for you before we got an airship would it? How would that help? And are you saying it wasn't better that we rescued you and Tenzin's family, rather than just you?"

"Yeah, bet you feel bad now, ya jerk," O-Ren said to Bolin as he passed him, punching him on the arm, teasing him.

"Sorry," Bolin said underneath his breath. They walked through a large room where Tenzin's flying bison was lying down, asleep from exhaustion, hay still hanging out of his mouth, moving back and forth with every snore. As they walked up the stairs to the bridge of the ship, O-Ren asked, "Where are we going?"

"Just trying to get above this darkness," Lin replied. As they entered the bridge, light glimmered through the windows. They could once again see the sky, the real sky, the sun, the blue mixing with the red glow from the sun almost like paint swirling all around them. The darkness now belong them, like a virtual surface of the earth, but extending its many arms upward, trying to subdue the remaining beauty of the celestial realm through which the ship was flying.

"Wow," Sydney gasped. "It's so beautiful. We must be so high up. The Sun…it looks so incredible." It did. The sun from that high up did not look the same to the team as it did from the surface. The colors it generated all around them glowed brighter and reached every tint and luminance on the color spectrum. After the sky was blacked out, none of them thought they would see it again. Especially not like this.

"How are we up this high? I didn't think mechanical airships could reach these altitudes?" Asami asked.

"That's ONI for you," Lin said. The bridge contained many screens with maps, radars, and controls for the ship. It looked like a room from the future. Another door toward the front of the ship led to the cockpit with the pilots. The crewmembers working the controls looked like the ones the Team had met in Misty Grove. "Now that all that is out of the way, let's talk about what we are going to do, since our doom is now apparently coming for us."

"You don't know where the others are? Any of the other members of ONI?" Bolin asked.

"We've picked up a few stragglers left behind, but we have lost touch with the masses of the organization."

"I think we should look for Korra, now," Tenzin spoke up. "If she has gone missing it is most definitely for a bad reason. And now with those things finally on the loose…she could be in trouble. We should make her the number one priority."

"I don't think so," Asami said. "Korra is okay. Wherever she is, she is alive, and she is coming back to us, just like she always has."

"How do you know that?" Tenzin asked, truly worried about his former pupil's safety.

"Because things are changing in this world. The Spirit World is moving in, and with that, so is more cosmic energy. I just heard it. I heard her. And she told me she was alright. And she led me to you. To this ship. I know she did. She told me that we had to return."

"Return where?"

Asami took a deep breath. "To Republic City. Whatever is there, that is where we need to go." Many of the people working the controls stopped to listen to Asami's words, confused but also extremely interested.

"Is there anything left of Republic City?" Lin asked, quietly, trying not to feel pain at the thought of Republic City crumbling.

"Can Korra tell you where she is?" Tenzin asked.

"She won't tell me. It isn't important where she is, only that she is okay. She left us, sure, but I know she did it for a reason. She was not taken, she did this by her own choice. But it was for us. She doesn't want us to come looking for her. She will find us. I think we should just listen to her. I think she wants us to focus on what is more important, and that's stopping Solomon and CHAOS from killing everyone."

No one spoke against her. Lin looked around, noticing the crewmembers who controlled the ship. They were lost, eagerly awaiting Lin's command. Restraining from acting until she told them what the plan would be.

"I think she is right, Lin," Tenzin admitted. Lin looked at him with a puzzled face.

"It was you who was so skeptical," Lin responded.

"What she says makes sense, at least to me, in a very weird way. And knowing Korra…well, something that sounds this strange…isn't so strange when it involves her. She is the bridge between the Spirit World and this world. The conduit between us and those who seek to kill us. I think…she knows what is best."

"What could possibly be there?" Lin asked. Asami shrugged. She honestly did not know, even though she was the one trying to convince everyone to make the trip back to the city.

"Ain't no way in hell we goin back there!" The voice came from the cockpit. A man with long hair and goggles around his neck walked up to the group.

"I think I'm the one who is captain here," Lin asserted.

"That may be true, Lin," the man said, "But this ship is my design. My baby. And I will agree to you being captain, I will embrace it, only under the condition that you don't lead it right into death's hands."

"What are you talking about?"

He became frustrated. "Republic City ain't no playground. The rest of the world just got nothing but trees and dirt. But Republic City got them monsters who can shoot lightning and fire and all kinds of elements. They'd tear us apart in a second. And I know this ship is pretty damn sturdy. I built the thing, but then, what is the point of plunging it into a place like that? Where everything wants to kill you? Where'd they'd find and expose the weaknesses of this ship just to bring it down for their own enjoyment?"

"What else do we have? Where else can we go?"

"Well once you give me proof that there is any reason to go to Republic City, then maybe I'll repeal that condition…"

Asami couldn't handle the stress. She wanted to be alone. Try and contact Korra. Get some idea of what to do or why Republic City was the answer. Figure out what awaited them there. Tenzin saw her leave and followed her through the corridors of the ship.

"Asami. A word." She turned around, surprised that she had been followed.

"I'm just going to get some air for a bit. I can't handle it up there."

"I'm not here to talk about that," Tenzin said. It was at this moment that Asami realized she had been involuntarily holding her forearms, massaging the skin under her sleeves as if they were in pain. She noticed and quickly let go. "I've noticed your strange behavior, lately."

"What strange…"

"The way you speak, you don't make eye contact, you shy away from people, and recently, I've seen you groping your arms, like you're hiding something underneath them."

"What is it to you?"

"Asami, please. What is it?" he asked sternly, almost ordering her to show him what was under the sleeves covering her arms.

"Why do you want to know so badly?"

"Because you aren't the only one Korra speaks to. She's told me about you. About how she feels about you. Whether or not I condone it is irrelevant. All I know is that she only asks for the safety of her friends. I want to uphold that as well. I want to make sure you are all okay…for Korra."

Asami listened to him. She slowly raised her sleeves past her forearms. What Tenzin saw baffled him. Underneath the skin on her arm, in between her veins and arteries, there was some object, slightly bulging out, glowing an unmistakable green color. The contraption inside her moved slightly when she jerked her arm back.

"Don't touch it," she yelled.

"What…what is that? Is that…" Tenzin knew the color, but he couldn't believe what he was seeing.

Asami looked at her arm in horror. The substance glowing green was contained in a tube embedded into her forearms. "I didn't do this. I swear. When I got infected…under the influence of Clasma, I became someone else. Someone horrible. A mind that only sought more power even at the cost of my own well-being. The Clasma I had was not enough. I needed more, and I needed it on hand, so that at any time I could get my dosage. I quickly designed these tubes to store the Clasma, and I embedded them in my arms, attached to my veins. With the help of a waterbender, I had these things put inside me and whenever I tense my arms too tight the tube will open and release the Clasma into my body. I promise, I haven't used it once since I was rescued."

"Then we must get rid of them. We must have them removed at once."

Asami backed away. "No."

"That is a power that you don't deserve, Asami. No one does."

"I know that. I don't want this either. But I have it, and it's a part of me. I don't know how to take this out. I don't know what I could lose if I tried and did something wrong. I haven't had a single desire to use it. Not once… but I might in the future. These times are desperate. This world is facing its end and we are the only ones who are trying to stop it. Just us. Alone. Fighting for the survival of the whole human race. If it comes down to it, I'm prepared. I'm prepared to use this if I have to. To save another from the onslaught of SPORE. Hell, I was even prepared to use it today if it meant my friends could live. Prepared to give myself up. Lose my sanity. My memories. My identity. Even my life, in order to hone the power contained in this to fight off anything trying to kill us. I'm prepared, Tenzin. I have very little left in this world. My time on this planet has proven to me that I'm not wanted here. It's taken and taken from me and that is all it has done. I have no place. But that doesn't mean the rest of the world should just die. The very little I have left, I am ready to use this power in my hands to save them, I am ready to give everything up. You can't stop me, and neither can she. I've already made this decision a long time ago."

"I won't stop you. It would be wrong of me to try, Asami. I hope you have clear eyes in this decision. But I want you to realize that you do have a place in this world. I want you to realize that what you have left is more valuable than what most people will have in a lifetime. You are not much different than her. I know this. She is willing to do the same thing for you."

The heat in the bridge reached a maximum. Lin could no longer argue with the pilot. He was stubborn, but it was understandable to her. This was his ship, and how did anyone know what Republic City had waiting for them?

"Captain! We are getting a transmission! It looks like a code," yelled one of the communication engineers.

"A message? Finally, we've been trying for over a day." Lin heard a series of beeps and pauses coming from a box before the engineer. He pressed a few buttons on a console in front of him and letters began appearing at the terminal. Every member in the bridge left their station and gathered around this man as he deciphered the code. Each decoded letter came up onto the screen. Lin was sure she could hear the heartbeats steadily increasing from everyone around her as the process continued for the next ten minutes or so. She then felt these hearts all jump up into their throats at the message's conclusion.

Lin read the screen and looked over to the pilot, who pouted and turned to the cockpit. "Fine," he said. "Full speed ahead to Republic City."

The other crew members could no longer contain their excitement after reading the interpreted message. They jumped up and down, hugged, screamed. The Team returned to read the message as well, then proceeded to join in on the celebrations, while Lin read the words over and over again, trying to convince herself that they were really there:

Commanding all ships to return to the New Republic City

The human race stands united

The fight ends here

-General Iroh