"What do you mean?"
"I mean that Hiroshi Sato is in town, right now, with the people who attacked the compound in tow," Katara said gravely.
Azula and Lin's eyes widened in shock.
"Where's Korra?" the metalbender demanded, her throat tightening in fear.
"She's in her room," Katara said as she and the others walked down the hall. "She's practicing healing on a dummy last time I checked."
They continued to walk until they found Korra's room. Jiggling the knob, Azula opened the door to find...nothing. The trio hesitantly walked in the room, and then started tearing it apart. Sheets were torn off the bed and clothes thrown out of the dresser. Panicked, Lin darted out of the room.
"And what do you think you're doing?" Katara asked.
"I'm going outside to find my daughter. Give me one good reason that I can't get her!"
"I can give you two. One, you're 32 weeks pregnant, and two, you're 32 weeks pregnant with the world's last airbenders."
The chief metalbender snorted disdainfully and waddled outdoors.
She made it not two steps outside before she was sucked into the earth.
Lin had always hated the darkness.
Toph had found that fear especially amusing. Her own daughters would run to her at night when they were scared, completely forgetting that their mother was completely blind. Even as a child though, Lin knew that only bad things happened in the dark.
"Ah Chief, so good of you to join us," a voice echoed. "Dearie me, where are my manners? Let me turn on a light."
A small flick was heard, and within seconds a large floodlamp glowed above Lin's head. Not five feet in front of her was a casually leaning Hiroshi Sato. Niang, who was bound to a chair, served as an armrest.
"Lin, Lin, Lin, Lin, Lin," he tutted. "My, the problems you have caused me. I'd thought you'd learned your place by now, but it doesn't look like it."
Lin tried to lunge at him only to find that she herself was bound in thick chains of platinum.
"Oh yes, your bindings. We couldn't have you up and bend yourself and my daughter out of here, could you?"
"What?!" Lin and Niang sputtered simultaneously.
"That's right," he purred. "And isn't she a gem?"
"Get away from me! You're not my father!" the teenager snarled after he tried to caress her face. Lin discreetly used her seismic sense to see if Hiroshi or Niang was lying and knit her brows together when she found that they were both telling the truth. How is this possible? She mused. Has Hiroshi been brainwashed? Or has Azula taught Niang how to fool seismic sense?
"But she can be a pain at times too," he said unfazed. "So Lin, now the tables have turned. So tell me, what's it like to have the rug, or should I say earth, taken from under your feet?"
"Is this the chapter where everyone screams 'Don't say anything?'" Niang quipped.
"No, I think it's the one where the killer confesses everything to us," Lin replied.
"YOU'RE DAMN RIGHT IT'S THAT CHAPTER!" Hiroshi yelled, his face turning crimson with rage. Calming down, he arranged himself to speak.
"Those Red Monsoons killed my father and left behind a mother who might as well have died too. I was eight years old, and I lost everything. So I dropped out of school and hitchhiked to the grand city of Ba Sing Se. There, I worked as a shoe shiner when I met Aznah. She was the daughter of a merchant, she was beautiful, and I fell in love with her. We wed soon after we met, and Niang and her dear brother Sovan were born not long after. I thought I had the perfect life until—until I discovered that my wife and daughter were blasted waterbenders!"
Niang's eyes narrowed to slits, but said nothing.
"When I confronted her she broke down crying. She knew how vehemently I hated waterbenders, so she hid her bending from me so that I would marry her. I was so angry I couldn't see straight. I pushed her into the dresser, but I misjudged my own strength. She hit the dresser the wrong way and never woke up. I pulled a few strings, and before I knew it I had a new face and a new identity. I had planned on dedicating my life to that of running a business when I fell in love with Yasuko. I felt as if the world was starting again-and when Asami was born, why, I was the happiest fellow alive!
"This is around the time I met, or should I say re-met, my children's crazy godmother Xin Li. Oh she was a nut all right - always had been. At that time she was hell-bent on revenge against me, and so I promised her that we'd be able to find me. So we teamed up."
"That must have gone so well," Lin replied sarcastically.
Hiroshi glared at her. "She soon realized that I was leading her on a wild swangoose chase, so she left to go train at the compound I invested in outside of Ba Sing Se. I thought I had gotten off scot-free until these four freaks came after me, thinking I had destroyed the Avatar's compound."
"You didn't?" Niang and Lin said, slightly disbelievingly.
"No!" Hiroshi yelled. "I don't even know where the compound is-or is it was? It was crazy Xin Li, she wanted to take down 'the queen of benders.' I didn't know that at the time of course, but these benders did, and they thought I had a hand in it! They were furious that I had gone after the Avatar, said I had no idea what the repercussions of that action were. I figured they were White Lotus, but they didn't wear that absurd uniform."
Curiosity got the better of Lin. "What did they look like, if they weren't White Lotus?"
"Like regular people? The guys seemed unassuming enough, but one girl had an eye tattooed on her forehead and the other girl had arms made out of water."
Lin broke out in a cold sweat. Didn't Zahira's superior officer say that there had been a missing swamp bender born without arms, and didn't Bumi say that one of them was a combustion bender…?
Niang looked over to the master metal bender to see her wearing a mask of cool detachment. She only looks like that when she's about to cut a deal—oh I don't like where this is going one bit…
"Hiroshi, what if we were to cut a deal?"
Hiroshi chuckled. "You are in no position to negotiate, Chief Beifong."
"Perhaps not, but you are. Outstanding warrants for manslaughter, fleeing the scene of a crime—that's already 15 years of jail we're looking at here, more if that manslaughter charge gets bumped up to murder. And I would hate to see Future Industries go down because of unfinished legal business…"
Hiroshi glared murderously at Lin as he sat down across from her.
"That's what I thought. Now I can talk to the officers in Ba Sing Se and see if they'll be willing to commute your crimes, but only if you share what you know about the anti-bending camp outside of Ba Sing Se and any other relevant information, in addition to letting me and Niang out of here unharmed."
The elder Sato scoffed. "Absolutely not!"
"Hmm, Niang, Hiroshi left you and your brother to fend for yourselves right? That's child abandonment right there. Now we're looking at a 20 year sentence at the minimum. Asami would be 25 before you ever got to see her again, and that's assuming Yasuko would ever let you in her presence."
Hiroshi banged his fists against the table. "You can't do this!"
"I can and I will. Unless, of course, you give me the information you give me the information I want."
He sighed and acquiesced.
After all, what else could he do?
