THUD...Guess that answers that question...

"Korra!" Mako and Asami instantly dropped to the ground. Mako snapped his fingers near her ear while Asami waved her hand near the eyes. 'Behold, the mighty avatar', Lin thought as she rolled her eyes at the scene. They were doing their best, but she knew a much faster, much more effective way to bring the girl to her senses.

SLAP

"Pull yourself together!" She'd been wanting to do that since she met the girl, it's a shame that the situation completely drained all the satisfaction out of it. The teenager glared as she sat up and rubbed her cheek.

"But how are you his mom?! He's so nice!" The avatar wondered aloud. There is no way that Lin could possibly explain why that offended her. It shouldn't, she knew that 'Beifong' and 'nice' never went in the same sentence until Bolin came along...but that little avatar just grated her nerves.

"How are you Aang's reincarnation?! He had common sense!" Lin shot back quickly. Tears filled Korra's eyes as she made a fist. Lin sneered as she followed suit. They could finally answer the famous question 'which is better, raw power or experience?'.

"We can discuss family ties later." Asami stepped in between the two before a fight broke out, "Right now we have more important things to focus on."

"She's right." And Lin was mentally kicking herself for letting that distract her.

"We need to look for Bolin." Mako grunted, "But where do we start?"

"Let's-" Lin was interrupted by a gasp from Korra, "What now?"

"I have an idea."

…

"The day I first got into town, I ran into an equalist protester over there." Korra sat on the fountain next to Asami as Mako leaned back against the side,

"And you think they'll know where Bolin is?" It seemed like a long shot to him.

"It's our only lead right now."

"Let's just hope that he's here again today." Asami's main concern with the lead was more about consistency.

"He'll be here," Lin crossed her arms as she stood straight as an arrow, "he's been here every day for the past month."

"Then why didn't you do something about it?" Korra had hard time understanding why Beifong, being the police chief and a bender, would allow these guys to roam around.

"It's not illegal to protest." Even if she did want to arrest him. Him and the others around the city who were protesting. Their actions were stirring up trouble, but they were only an annoyance. Now, they'd turned into a threat and maybe the council would untie her hands.

"But he's trying to convince people to hate benders!"

"Take your protesting issues up with Tenzin. I don't make the law, I just enforce it." For now, Korra let the issue go. Lin used the new silence to replay the events in her head again and again in hopes of finding a clue she'd missed. Then suddenly, it dawned on her, "Did any of you see Lightning Bolt Zolt or his men?"

"Who?"

"No, why?"

"Wait a minute," Mako just remembered, "there were other people with Bolin in that truck. It could've been them, but I didn't get a good look at them. Do the Triple Threats have something to do with this?"

"Bolin called me for help; said Zolt and his goons were after him." At least Zolt hadn't gotten hold of him. Lin would keep telling herself that...wherever Bolin was, at least he was still alive.

"Then maybe this is all a big misunderstanding." Asami said with new found hope, "Maybe they were after the Triple Threats and got Bolin too, by mistake."

"Who would mistake that boy for a Triple Threat?" Her mother could see that he's too gentle to be in a triad if she had just met him this morning while standing on six inches of ice in the middle of the ocean...during a storm.

"Yeah, I guess you're right."

None of them could be sure how much time went by, all they knew was that they'd been fighting sleep just long enough for the morning fog to clear before they heard wood scraping against stone. Two protesters were setting up their table for another rally.

"You again!" One of the men pulled out a megaphone upon seeing Korra, "You will not silence me, Avatar!" A cable lashed out, circling around the device and pulling it away.

"We want you to talk." And he would talk...talk or scream, or both, depending how well he answered her questions.

"Help! Now the police are trying to crush us nonbenders!" he shouted frantically, waving his arms.

"Who are you yelling to?" Mako gestured to the empty park. He looked around before turning red.

"And she's not trying to crush nonbenders," the fellow nonbender broke in, "she's just trying to get her son back."

"He was taken by chi blockers, where is he?" Lin asked forcefully.

"I have no idea what you're talking about."

"I think you do." Korra stomped, sending the table and the flyers on it into the air. The protesters glared at her before bending down to pick up the mess. Mako caught one of them and read it aloud.

"Witness the revelation tonight, nine o'clock. What's this revelation?"

"Nothing that concerns the likes of you guys!"

"You better believe it concerns us!" Korra grabbed him by the shirt, "Spill it." Lin had to grab his partner before he could run off. They were officially breaking the law now, and frankly she didn't care.

"No one knows what the revelation is." he turned to Lin, "And I have no idea what happened to your son. But if he's a bender, then my guess is he's going to get what's coming to him." Ooh...that was the wrong thing to say.

"Not before you do." Lin tied both protesters up with her cables and set them down on the ground, "Here's what's going to happen. You're either going to tell me where to find my son or," smacking her hand against the ground she created two deep, rectangle shaped holes.

"Oh, you're going to bury us?" the megaphone man asked with dripping sarcasm. Lin ignored them, turning her hand over and lifting it up with a flex of her fingers, a dozen five-inch spikes came up from from the bottom of each hole. A stomp of her foot and two matching slabs rose from the ground to serve as lids for their coffins,

"I'm going to impale you."

"Better tell her." Mako wisely advised.

"You're bluffing." In response, Lin encased their hands and feet in the slabs and turned them upside down about fifteen feet over the spikes. This is why they called her the 'iron maiden'. Though usually it was a crook that would enter his cell to find a bed of nails underneath his mattress.

"She's crazy enough to do it." The firebender insisted.

"You have three seconds. Three!"

"We don't know!" The man with the megaphone shouted desperately.

"You know someone who does." she wasn't buying that, "Two!"

"I can't watch." And strangely enough, Asami didn't know if she was just playing along with a scam or if she was really turning away from a gruesome scene.

"Please don't kill us!" The second man pleaded.

"One." she drop them.

"Harue!" they stopped eight inches above their deaths, "I know a guy named Harue, he's a chi blocker for Amon!" So the second man actually had something that resembled brains.

"Where?" She'd throw these two in jail so they couldn't give Amon a heads up and then she'd pay Harue a visit.

….

"Man, when Mom finds me, I'm gonna be in deep trouble for sure." Bolin sat in his cell wondering just how mad his mom was going to be. Yelling... yeah that was a given. Altering the local landscape...there was a good chance. Throwing him in jail for whatever charges she can think of on the way to his cell...maybe. Who knows, she'd been threatening to do that after every dumb stunt since the day they met...this may be the crack that made the statue crumble.

"Yeah, yeah. What makes you think that your mommy can even find you?" One of Zolt's thugs, 'stinky' as Bolin mentally called him, asked from the opposite bunk.

"She always does." He answered simply before going back to thinking of ways to avoid his mom's wrath. And Mako! Oh, Mako would never let him hear the end of it 'how do you keep getting into these stupid situations, Bo', 'when are you going to wise up'...on and on. It almost made him wish that they would wait another day or two before coming to save him...almost. Doing time just for being an earthbender wasn't any fun either.

"What was that?" Shady Shin asked anxiously as they heard a booming and low screech. Soon after, their guards went flying past the cell. 'Hm, looks like it's time to blow this noddle stand'.

"That would be my mom. Oh, hey Mom. Mako!" What a surprise, "Asami, Korra. The gang's all here, huh?"

"Are you hurt?" She asked as she created a gap in the cage.

"No." He answered as he stepped through the hole. Zolt tried to follow only to be pushed back in by his mom. She closed the bars and pushed her son to get him moving. The kids looked at her curiously, as if they were wondering whether or not this was just a bluff to scare the criminals.

"Hey, you're a cop, you can't just leave us!" They called from their cell.

"I'm off duty." Lin said over her shoulder. Zolt had no one to blame by himself. She'd warned him, in no uncertain terms, that if he touched her boy again she was going to kill him... and by all rights she should go open the bars and crush them all right now. But on the other hand, she did want to know what Amon was planning to do with the benders of the city and she'd much rather use those lowlifes to find out than some innocent bystander like Bolin.

They walked calmly on, doing everything they could to not cause any trouble. Even Bolin had suddenly learned to keep his mouth, of course that was partially because he didn't want to drawl his family members' focus to him just yet. But alas...no escape attempts were without a problem or two. This came in the form of a siren sounding and a red flashing light.

"I think it's time to go!" Bolin shouted as they all took off. Down one hall, they turned to go up a ramp which would lead them to the surface...and they stopped dead in their tracks. Anyone would, considering the response time of the equalists. The two opposing sides stared at each other for only a second, but it felt like a lifetime.

The equalists came running. Lin looked up, just one thin layer of metal with a layer of earth on top of it separated them from the surface, so getting through would be easy enough. But would there be enough time? She created a hole above them right before narrowly missing a kali stick, an electrified kali stick. Luckily Asami was there to pull her back before that thing could hit her.

"Brace yourselves!" She uprooted the floor they stood on and lifted them out, effectively sealing most of their enemies below for the moment. Now it was five against eight, but those eight were chi blockers. Bolin lost his bending in a matter of seconds, quickly followed by Korra. Lin got electrocuted as Asami lost feeling in her left hand, "Run!" She ordered, lifting Bolin off the ground as Mako helped Korra up and Asami jumped into the driver's seat, "Go!" She turned to stomp the ground and send the equalist team leader and his people backwards, "I'll hold them off!"

"No, Mom we're not leaving you!" That earned the earthbender points for loyalty, but the sound of oncoming motorcycles didn't leave his mother much of a choice.

"Whatever happens to me, don't turn back!" And without any actions from the driver, Asami's satomobile turned on and sped forward with a polarbear dog chasing after it. Asami was forced to take the wheel, something very hard to do with only the use of one hand, and make a turn before hitting a shop. They were safe, that was all that mattered to Lin as she turned to face off the equalists. 'Those motorcycles will have to go'. Crunch!

….

"Turn back! She needs our help!" Bolin shouted to Asami from the back seat, "Why aren't you listening?! Stop!" He stood up and attempted to take the wheel only to have Mako jump in the back and help Korra hold him down.

"We can't turn back, Bro! We just can't!"

….

They forced her to her knees, and she looked up to find none other than Amon staring down at her from behind his mask.

"I had not planned to deal with you yet, Chief Beifong. But if you're so eager to be equalized, I will grant your wish."

"Save the speech and be done with it!" She didn't have the strength to fight, and even if she did, she was still tied up and outnumbered.

"Very well." At least it would be over quickly, or so it sounded. She closed her eyes and counted her blessings, it wouldn't be a surprise arrow in the back, it wouldn't be for some man's revenge and it wouldn't be for nothing. Her death would make sure that Bolin was safe and that was enough.

There was no sword, no ax or rope. But when his thumb touched her forehead, her body froze painfully. Her eyes shot open and she fell to the ground, "Welcome to the brotherhood of nonbenders, Chief Beifong."