The Lost City of the South

Chapter 8 - Welcome to the Southern Water Tribe

Asami stumbled a little as she stood from her tent, being carelessly careful not to wake Opal who was so closely opposite to her. The engineer slept as she woke, cutely and like a child Asami thought. She grabbed a flashlight and the trowel with the roll of toilet paper on the handle. Duty called in the middle of the night and she knew it was the dastardly cooking of their anarchist chef. Zaheer had designated a small area off to the south of camp, close to the bridge near a mound of rock where one would take care of business so she was headed there.

Firstly she stumbled over to her desk to grab her glasses, still clutching the Fisherman's Account in her left hand, she would most probably read the pages over again while she was near the mound. She completely failed to spot the scattered books and pages and scraps of paper that the tribal girl had littered all around the desk and the floor. Asami was still half asleep which was why she didn't spot the woman crouched under the desk in the first place.

She was skittish herself, trying not be noticed under the plank of crude wood and yet worrying about where her party had scattered off to. She looked around to spot them but only saw her large body mask a few feet from the desk. If Asami hadn't noticed her hiding rather loud and obviously she would certain not notice the mask just laying in the pitch black. The tribal woman clutched at the blue glowing crystal around her neck to hide its tiny light source from Asami. The archaeologist yawned loudly as the tribal girl shuffled a little, retreating back further into the alcove. The glasses were picked up and placed sluggishly onto Asami's nose while she turned and moved to the mound with her flashlight failing to spot the tanned and toned skin of the intruder under the desk. She yawned again while she walked as a sloth would to her destination.

Asami passed all the sleep bodies on her way; Opal laying on her belly with her arms folded under her face to act as a pillow. Her mother was on her side in almost a ball shape with her faint sheet covering her body. P'Li was still on her back almost like a vampire with her arms draped almost anywhere. Mrs Beifong was invisible to Asami's relief although she wouldn't have noticed anyway the sand was layered on so thick in her eyes. The tents of Kuvira and Zaheer were both closed and Bumi was snoring like a repeating whistle. By the time she reached the mound she was nearly wide awake.

A small hole was dug with the trowel and she stuck it in the earth like a sword in battle. She then pointed the flashlight on the rocky mound, allowing it to face upward to the chandelier hung high above the bridge. Now was the woman's chance to escape the camp site and escape she did. In one fluid motion like a stream of water she slid from under the desk with a large stride of her slender and muscular legs, leaving from the back of the fire pit and away from the camp entirely, meeting with her party a few yards away.

In their hushed electric whispers they were speaking a foreign language, the very same that was written inside the decaying pages of the Fisherman's Account. In her ear the woman heard a tribesman say her name. She understood the word he was saying. Princess, Princess. She was too fixated on the woman at the rocky mount who was digging her small hole for some unknown purpose. She was locked in on the eyes. Those sweet and beautiful emerald eyes that stood like stars in the darkness across the chasm as the tribal princess moved along the far wall, miles away from Asami's field of good vision even if she was wide awake by now.

Still the male tribal pestered her as she was perched along the rock formation with her body mask held up so her sapphire eyes could see the beautiful emeralds. The light blue face paint below her left eye stood just as prominently as the blue all over her. She had a cloth sling out of blue and almost pinkish to cover her bust, with the same to cover her waist and cuffs at her bare feet and strong hands. Her chest was ripped, a strong and built body that indicated she was a warrior, if not she certainly was not ladylike. She gazed upon Asami still even as the archaeologist untied the string of her slacks to finally get to work with the flashlight shining up at the rocky chandelier.

Princess Korra! The tribal woman heard in her ear in her native tongue from the men at the beginning of the rocky indention of the cliff face. Now she saw the light shining to chandelier and bolted her her perch. She knew what was about to come.

A single wisp of white light floated down from the chandelier to where the flashlight was sitting. Asami swatted at the light once she saw it, not wanting to be disturbed by anything really and if the light stayed there she would surely not fall back to sleep for the few hours remaining to her. The thing buzzed around when she swatted. What are you? She asked herself upon a second flail of her arms. It looked like a wisp or something from a dandelion once it was blown only made of light. Still it annoyed her as she wanted to be alone.

Asami Sato grabbed the toilet paper trowel by the spade and with her tongue pursed between her lips, her glasses teetering on the tip of her nose again. With a swift thrust she swung the trowel down upon the light hard. It flew around to her other side to escape her thundering crash with the trowel. She'd had enough of whatever it was and thusly flailing both arms around, trying to hit anything and failing again.

Once she tossed the trowel back onto the rock mount it instantly set aflame, startled Asami straight away. More than that it sparked a chain reaction. She looked to the single wisp of light finally realising what it was; a firefly. Crap. A host of hundreds of the little arsonists came fluidly from the holes of the chandelier.

"Fire" she said to herself as they came from the rocks, heading straight for the camp site. Before she knew it she was charging back to the campsite full throttle barely managing to pull up her slacks and tie them by the string, yelling as she went. "Fire! Fire! Fire!"

Zaheer was awoken, his teeth grinding and his chin square still If he had any hair it would be unkempt and frizzy from his lack of sleep. He had a ticking analog alarm clock in his bear like hand looking frustrated and furious. "I'm gunna kill her" he muttered to himself through his gritted teeth. In a huff he got up from his mat and pushed away the curtain of his tent expecting to see Asami creating a fuss over nothing. "Sato go back to bed-" he was about to finish but was cut short as soon as he saw the orange and yellow blaze coming from the collection tents.

Suyin and her daughter, P'Li, Bolin and Bumi were all up with buckets of the drinking water in their hands, lobbing it onto the burning cloth and such. More and more of the unmet sign-ons were rushing to put it out too with the rest buckling up the supplies and munitions onto the trucks and wagons. Kuvira grabbed a man with a bucket in has hands, throwing him in front of her to lob his load onto the blaze. "Get some water on that fire!" She yelled exceptionally louder than she ever had done.

Zaheer rubbed the sand from his eyes and pointed to the bridge and the caves beyond. "No time," he yelled over the crackling and burning wood and such, the ash and flares rising with the smoke with the tribals watching no doubt from somewhere safe. The main members of the team looked to him. "Into those caves, move it, move it, move it" he ordered them. Bumi was first to mount up on the nutrition wagon loaded with the food, water an other nutritional supplies, snapping at the clutch and releasing the brake to move across the slim and long bridge. Bolin jumped into the drilling rig and quickly got it up and running to charge on after the cook. The rest of the convoy got quickly into formation and Kuvira soon picked up her commander in her wagon.

Opal and Suyin were in the back of a munitions truck with Asami running frantically in the background with the flames beginning to engulf the entire camp in a smoldering blaze. There was the oiler behind Asami with a man at the wheel. The fireflies decided to land on one of the can, melting through the crude wood and setting alight the contents.

"Asami jump!" Opal yelled, grabbing her hand and pulling her in just as the oiler exploded in a flurry of boiling shrapnel and debris.

The bridge began to crumbling after the exploding oiler, the foundations turning to dust and cracking the way along the start. After another explosion from the camp the already weak bridge finally gave up, the final straw on its back destroying the little foundation at last. It crumbled into the air, the entire convoy slipping down and down with it into the abyss. Asami was thrown from the truck when Opal was grabbed by her mother and the truck flailed about down the pitch black cave. Bolin tried to keep his rig on the bridge long enough to plough up and into the caves but it was no use.

"No, no no no no!" He yelled trying the clutch and the gear stick in all directions fifteen times with his foot hammering on the pedals in a cluster of desperation. He was terrified looking back as the rest of the smaller trucks slipped down into the chasm of darkness.

Zaheer saw another truck coming at him in the face and swerved the wheel, sending his truck to nowhere with a gasp. It was a colossal crash for everyone.

Mere minutes later the commander lit a match, such a small flame and source of miniscule light between his fingertips on an invisible stick that he must had retrieved from P'Li. He looked around to see nothing still. "Alright sound off" he ordered whoever might be there, not knowing for sure who was alive or who was dead or if there was anyone around him at all. "Who's not dead?" He asked straight after, needing a response as soon as they could give him one.

Opal was the first to let a moan, followed by her mother and grandmother Then P'Li let loose a manly groan and then Bolin did the same. Bumi let it lie for a second then came out with one of his crazy ramblings.

"Damn fire bugs went and bit me! They bit me!" He let rip across the empty dark space that was nowhere and yet everywhere.

Opal lit her own flashlight, followed by Zaheer doing the same to see the destruction and wreckage that the convoy had become. It was such a mess. An amalgamation of metal, rubber and cloth from all of the wagons. Most of the vehicles were just scrapped, done for, never to be used again. Some more were in decent shape but by the look of their radiators and engines, they would lay in the chasm forever. The engineer looked around with her flashlight as her mother Suyin looked over the team, checking if anything was broken or not. To her own surprise everyone was in good shape physical, no broken bones or dislocations.

"Opal give me a status report" Zaheer called out to his engineer who was rubbing her backside to rid the flat pain from her tailbone.

She popped up from her looking. "It's not as bad as it could have been boss," she reported in a rather harsh voice, winded most probably by the fall from how many feet above. She checked the convoy over again. At least two trucks were unsalvageable and the rest were in very poor condition by her overlooking inspections. "We totaled rigs two and seven," she looked to Bolin's precious driller. "The digger looked like it will still run, lucky for us we landed in something soft" she referred to the mild swelling along her rear as she rubbed it again.

The geologist had a piece of the ground between his tweezers, looking through a magnifying glass with his tongue out, figuring out what substance or variation of his beloved dirt this was. "Pumice Ash" he proclaimed before dropping the speck and putting away his tools in his trouser pockets. He had lost his parka jacket in the rush so he was sitting in his tank top and his cargo pants beside P'Li. He then looked up and deduced how tall the cavern was. "We are standing in the base of a dormant volcano" he announced with a small sigh following.

Kuvira fired her flare gun, sending a ball of flame and red light high into the upper levels of the cavern, proving Bolin to be correct when it took several seconds for the flare to reach a suitable height. "It just keeps going" she said.

"Maybe that's our ticket out of here" P'Li stated flatly. The flare exploded instantly after she piped up, revealing a flat dead end at the top of the shaft.

"Maybe not" Kuvira countered.

Bolin pointed to the top of the shaft. "The magma has solidified in the bowels of the volcano, effectively blocking the exit" he reported rather astutely. This was really why he was here, demonstrating his expertise in the behaviour of the earth and ground in order to decide how the team should proceed. Opal smiled a little smile at him in thanks for his repertoire.

Suyin was a little uneasy at the whole thing, no really knowing the science or behaviour behind what Bolin was telling. "Wait," she ordered, stepping back with her soft hands out in front of her. In truth she was a little frightened. The thought of being active in a volcano, no matter how dormant it was was unsettling. Being a native of the Earth Government she wasn't so comfortable around the volcanoes of the Fire Nation. How one had been left near the South Pole was a mystery to her.

Somehow, near about the time that the Southern Tribe was submerged under the earth the heat from the mantle or deeper must have formed the explosive mountain in a freak anomaly of nature. she was doctor though, she couldn't have the theory or answer even close to the truth. It hardly mattered anyway. They were in the pit of it now and that was it.

Still she held up her hands in front of her chest. Her hair was rather a mess in their escape from the flame and she had a small smudge of soot on her forehead. "So you're saying this thing could blow at anytime?" She asked rather incredulously, hoping she wasn't about to be proven correct in her feared assumption.

Bolin was shaking his head. "No no, that would take an explosive force of great magnitude." It was at least reassuring when he said it but it was short lived as soon as there came a winding and creaking sound from next to him. It was P'Li with a clock in her hands. She was manipulating a timed explosive with more dynamite worked into the back.

She stopped in her winding with the screwdriver, looking awkwardly as the rest of the team looked at her with stern eyes. She threw the screwdriver away and hid the bomb behind her back. "Maybe I do that later" she instructed herself. She was a lot more human than the night previous, calm considering their predicament. Still no one looked to where Asami had been thrown to. Opal had looked for her at first but once she saw nothing and Zaheer had demanded her to report she thought the archaeologist found the team herself. Now she was looking for her again around the circle they had formed. More men and women were waking from concussions from the fall, retrieving themselves from the heaping wreckage.

Zaheer looked to the top of the shaft again, judging how far it was real. It may have looked closer or farther from where they were standing but his sense of sight even in the semi darkness was still good enough to make a statement at least. "If we could blow the top off of that thing," he started, thinking of the massive cannon he had made sure they had packed from the sub two weeks ago, "we'd have a straight shot to the surface" he judged, now thinking of the hot air balloon they had also saved. It was a surefire plan and as it was formulating in his tactile mind he could see it working perfectly, so long as they found the city in the first place.

He turned around to look for Asami, who hadn't said a work thus far. "What do you think Miss Sato?" There was no reply. He yelled again. "Sato?" Again nothing. Asami was simply not there at all.

She was in another section of the cavern, laying on her back against a rock with her shoulder leaking with the painful crimson of blood. Her glasses were amazing still intact and still on her face. She was alone, in the dark and knocked out with the tribals crowding around her. They were mumbling the foreign tongue again and the tribal princess was looming over the unconscious archaeologist. The men were muttering to her, pleading with the strong, tanned beauty in their language when Asami came round.

She was terrified once she saw them all.

The Princess quickly removed her mask, allowing Asami to see the tanned skin and the sapphire eyes and the face paint under them. They were glowing, so delightfully and putting the sincere and serine gorgeousness of the Southern Princess to the still skittish Republic City Archaeologist. The burning pain from her shoulder was instantly numbed at the sight of the tribal girl. In a hushed whisper Asami said instinctively, "You're beautiful." She didn't know who the hell the tribal girl was, if she could understand the common language or if she could even hear Asami but by the way that the men behind her still in the intimidating masks laughed she guessed they could indeed understand some of what Asami had let slip. And if the men behind could hear, the Southern beauty leaning on her certainly could. The Princess smiled at Asami, running her index finger over her face from the forehead to the tip of her nose, as if she was checking if Asami was real or just a spirit or apparition.

She then found the running red from Asami's shoulder, directing her mesmerising eyes to it. Asami found it herself and winced at it, as if the pain suddenly came running back to her. She suddenly scrambled to get away from the beautiful girl but the princess firmly planted her hands on Asami's shoulder, pinning her to the ground. She looked to her party, whispering in her native tongue. It was one that Asami understood. They're talking Southern! It was the dead language being spoken before her and she was sat there with a bleeding shoulder. But where is the City? It had to be near.

The men presented a skin filled with water to the princess and with a fluid arm motion the bright blue of the liquid seeped out of the skin of its own accord, or her accord. She was bending it, she was actually waterbending before Asami, a technique that had been dead for thousands of years old on the surface. But not here, not underground where the Southerners had certainly survived.

Asami Sato was overwhelmed. Still the princess manipulated the water over to Asami's shoulder where she placed it over the open wound and clamped down on it with her hand. Asami breathed heavily, feeling a strange and soothing sensation along her left side where the wound was. A second later the princess removed her lovely smooth hand to reveal the wound completely healed and perfectly clean, only damp with the remaining water.

The Princess leaned in more forward for some reason, grinning a little goofily. For a split second it was as if she was about to greet Asami with a soft kiss but just before she could the ground began to shake mildly. It was enough to force the Southerners to flee. The leaped and strided deeper into the cave with great speed. Asami looked to the horizon to see the lights from the digger creeping over the cliff.

She gave chase, pursuing her Southern beauty, refusing to let the woman escape without another word. She stumbled over the rocks and through the cave's formations, not looking back as the digger closed the gap between it and her. Still she did not see the tussles or the blue of the party given off by their Water Tribe crystals and jewelry.

"Who are you?" She yelled into the darkness with the impending dooming noise of the digger just behind her. The cave seemed to continue forever as she ran, not made for a sprint of this length. She could hear the faint footsteps and rapid dislodging of small rocks but they were nowhere to be seen. "Where are you going?" She yelled again but no answer came to her. Asami Sato came to a small, compact opening to daylight. Daylight? It was small and compressed her as she charged through. It opened up to a different world. A cliff surrounded by a mist. "Who are you?!" She repeated a second time, the tones of her voice being carried off by the open echo.

The view was stupefying and she was hardly phased by the crushing and crunching sound of the digger ripping through the earth wall behind her.

It was there, right before her eyes. It was there and it was real. It was a real live marvel of splendor and just actual physicalness.

There, out beyond the cliff after a lake of molten lava that, mixed in with the water from another source and a thousand of the little lights elsewhere as well as some other light source that none of the could see. Out there with a small wooden bridge connecting it to the rest of the world. Out there after a month of searching for it and her entire life dreaming about actually seeing it with her determined emerald eyes was the thing they were looking for. Suyin had to rub her eyes to make sure she wasn't simply dreaming and out there as everyone else, even Kuvira and Zaheer stood with their jaws slacked open and refusing to close. Out beyond the cliff where they were standing was the City of the Southern Water Tribe. The Southern Water Tribe, living, breathing, completely and utterly alive. Asami was brought to tears in seconds as images of her father flooded her mind at that sight.

She took a mental photograph. This one's for you dad.

There was hardly anytime to take it in fully as from behind them dropped in the party that had seen to her wound. Zaheer quickly pulled out his pistol and aimed it straight at the princess in the front.

"Holy cats, who are these guys?" He asked rather flustered and frantic.

Asami forced his gun down. "They have to be Southerners!" She exclaimed, thankful that the beauty behind the mask had returned to find her. Asami hoped she would remove the mask so she could see the face again.

Kuvira was hardly convinced, keeping her pistol low and ready to shoot should she need to. "That's not possible!"

"I've seen this in the Swamp in the Earth Government," Bumi began rambling from the back of the group. "They can smell fear just by looking at you, so keep quiet." His commentary made absolutely no sense. Then again none of this made any. The South had been submerged thousands of years ago but yet there was a group of five or so tribals there looking at the fearless explorers with sickle weapons ready to fillet them alive should they need to.

The Princess in front began speaking in her native Southern tongue, excessively fast that Asami nearly didn't catch. She plucked up enough courage to answer the Princess to the best of her ability. The tribal was dumbstruck. She hardly expected the surface dweller to answer her in her own tongue.

The mask was sheepishly removed to fully reveal just how beautiful she really was. A short bob of brunette hair that fell just to her jawline. Her eyes were still dominant over her tanned skin but she was gorgeous to Asami regardless. You really are beautiful. She began to speak again, a slight deviation on the basic Southern language that was used thousands of years ago. Again Asami matched her language and spoke to her again. They repeated the process again in some form of ancient Fire Nation speak and then again in some form of old Earth Kingdom. Bolin yelled from the back. "They speak my language!" He ran to the princess, whispering something in her ear. She punched him hard enough that he almost flew backwards.

Suyin was clapping at the punch, a solid hit to the man's face that would certainly give him a black eye for the rest of the trip back. Opal was smiling fairly too. "I like her" Suyin commented. Opal grunted in approval.

Zaheer was next to step forward, over his geologist leaving him to his pain. He stood almost regally, a diplomat for the United Republic and for the rest of the human race above ground. "We are explorers from the surface world," he proclaimed, mostly to the woman who was standing in front of her party, she was smiling mostly. "We come in peace" he finished rather boldly.

The Princess pointed to the Tribe off in the distance and beyond the mist of the burning water flowing from somewhere unseen. "Welcome to the Southern Water tribe" she greeted them in common tongue to Asami's delight. She had figured out a while ago that their language as based on a root dialect much like the rest of the evolved languages throughout the world, even common. The barrier she had thought would be a problem had dissolved and now she was looking at the princess who was still as beautiful as ever. If there was such a thing as instant attraction that was as genuine as love, Asami was certainly feeling it now. Opal could tell too as she nudged Asami Sato in the ribs gently to send her a wink.

Kuvira side stepped closer to Zaheer, whispering almost as the rest of the team interacted with the rest of the tribals. The commander took his partner over to the digger rather suspiciously.

"Commander, there were not supposed to be people down here," Kuvira reminded him. He grunted rather annoyed by the sound of it. "This changes everything" she finished, as if they had a plan if there was not a society down there.

Zaheer turned to her rather menacingly, anger and fear all molded in his eyes. "This changes nothing."