"Copy president, the hospital will have a theatre ready for your arrival."
"Thank you, Repdip One Out," Zhu replied before hanging up. She looked to everyone else on the flight deck.
"What else can you tell us about her?" asked Mako.
"Korra said to let her explain when she's ready," said Renih, "you'll probably understand when she finally comes out, but what happened was bad, like, more than just basic slavery, and that's fairly horrific in and of itself."
"Okay," said Mako.
While everyone was irritated, Desna and Eska looked almost like they were at risk of smiling in anticipation of the details.
"Do you have any clothes I can borrow?" asked the occupant.
"Yes," replied Korra, she went over to the dresser selecting a shirt, some trousers and some socks and said "I'm sorry to stick around as you dress, but I have to … ugh … No way to euphamise this away-"
"I understand, I'm not going to kill myself, but you have to … I appreciate it though," she then stood up, brushing the shreds of paper off herself as Korra handed her a shirt, noting the fading bruises some resembling fists, some resembling boot toes.
Korra said "none of my bras or panties are going to fit you, Zhu's slimmer, she might be able to help you out with that."
She then asked "how am I going to approach dad over this?" as she got the shirt on and Korra handed her the next piece of clothing.
Korra said "Keep things business like at first and then feel your way through, best I can suggest right now. Might be best he be at the hospital next to the stroke ward before we fill him in though."
"Your guard requested asylum, and we granted it," replied Zhu, responding to a call Pi Fahoun had made.
"We don't believe you, you hate us for owning slaves, who knows what twisted shit you might do to service that hatred," came the reply.
Renih held out his hand for the handpiece and Zhu handed it over, Renih said "well believe me then, what you were doing to that girl, what all of the other guards were doing, what you encouraged your trading partners to do, and you wonder where the hatred of slavery comes from? Fucking hell you're useless at reading people, but to summarise, I! FUCKING! QUIT!"
He then handed the handpiece back to Zhu who asked "What exactly do you think you can threaten us with that wouldn't harm your own interests? You will make more money with the present deal than with no deal, and if you free your slaves, you will stand to make an order of magnitude more money than you do with the current deal."
"We still don't trust you, if you attempt to leave our airspace, we will shoot you down, land now."
Zhu hung up. She eventually said "He isn't known for making idle threats is my briefing on him, and yet he is willing to forgo his financial interests and potentially make himself very unpopular to the limited electorate who stand to lose hand over fist if the deal falls through." The limited electorate of course excluding slaves on the basis that they don't control fuck all in their society. There were rules on how most slaves are treated, but apparently there were exceptions, something to do with captured enemies, and that could apply to the girl in the box.
"It's definitely not me he's after, if I were to have left on my own the whole place would have been like 'good riddance.' It has to be cumbuc- … The … girl in the box." Renih cringed as he felt horrified he had used that disgusting slave name to refer to her. Just too used to everyone around him calling her that.
"A degrading slave name to drive home their lowly status and suppress their sense of self," noted Desna, with a creepy smile.
"Subtle, low effort, but effective if consistently maintained," said Eska, also with a creepy smile.
After a moment of everyone glaring at the twin weirdos, Zhu asked "Okay, I know what Korra said about allowing her a sense of control over her situation, I get that it's useful for rebuilding their sense of self, but for our survival, I need to know, just who is this girl?"
Everyone caught sight of Korra and the girl entering the flight deck and fell silent, the clothing Korra had provided was oversized, Korra had bodged some stitches to hold the ankles of the trousers up inside the legs, so there wasn't much of a way to know if there were any more injuries evident over the rest of her, all they could see of her injuries at the moment was a fading bruise on her right cheek, a split surrounded by more fading bruises on her left lip, and some bruises around her forearms that had indicated exceptionally rough handling, and of course the chi blocking devices.
Oh, and the slave tat high on her right cheek: "Slave" "Punitive Example" "67681" "Insurgent."
Addressing Desna and Eska, with an audible sneer of contempt intoned in her voice, the girl said "They called me other things too depending on the immediate act they wished to perform on me. Pissbucket, when they're bursting for a piss and couldn't be arsed to go to the toilet. Well, that's probably not it, it was all about the entertainment value, especially when I couldn't keep up with the volume flow and had to lick the spillage off the floor. Footstall, even if they didn't really need to stand on me to reach a high shelf. Punchbag, you know, for punching. Usually across the face, I had to keep getting up knowing they would do that several times, frequently I'd move onto the next degrading act punch drunk or have to be kicked awake because they knocked me out. Chair, if they wanted to sit on me, Pi usually made sure they were a chair short as an excuse for one of his guests to use me that way. But yes, most of the time it was Cumbucket they called me. For taking cum in three major orifices, without even the common courtesy of a reach around. … And they had me sleep in a dog bed in the hallway. … Available to them all hours for any of the above activities. … There's more, but that's all I can be arsed to recount right now."
Desna and Eska felt the need to lift their outer clothing off themselves as if they needed extra air to carry their sweat away, and Desna looked like he had a boner. They were clearly horny.
"I'm sure everyone will be fine with the two of you retiring to your room to totally not fuck each other cross eyed as far as we know or can prove."
Desna and Eska eventually walked off, Desna commenting "She knows us very well," and Eska adding "That is acceptable."
Everyone else stood awkwardly. There had been a layer of abstraction to the situation that had now been annihilated the fuck away by the obvious identity of the girl that had been going by "Cumbucket" for the last several weeks. With Desna and Eska closing their bedroom door behind them, she nodded in approval at their absence, noting "should keep those two out of my face for a good few days," and turned to the rest of them and said "Now, I know I've been missing the past … however long, weeks, plural, but I have a really good excuse, I promise."
"Tenzin is going to shit a global hurricane," commented Mako, he then added "eleven weeks by the way." Wu legged it, looking like he was about to puke at what he had just heard.
"J … Jinora?" croaked Zhu. Normally calm under all conditions, the fact Cumbucket was Jinora, the missing airbender kid she had gotten to know since … since about the time of the water tribes civil war and then more consistently working with her following the creation of the new portal, this was a capable fighter, a master airbender, she had heard how Jinora had led the rest of the airbender nation to create that tornado to grab Zaheer, earning her the blue arrow tats, how Jinora helped kill Kuviras spirit gun mech …
And now she couldn't wipe from her mind the disgusting degrading acts Jinora had been compelled to do to entertain Pi, Pis people, Pi's trading partners, being made to drink fresh hot piss, that sounded … Zhu was barely able to function. She had signed a lucrative trade deal with the people that had been doing all that to Jinora. The layer of abstraction where Zhu can talk trade as slaves were exploited a little less but still continuing to be exploited was gone. If not for Renihs intervention, right after the airship took off, Pi would probably have fucked Jinora in the mouth while gloating at how physically close they had all been to her and left without a clue she was even there.
"They're desperate to get me back," said Jinora, staying focused on their immediate situation, "he and his trading partners hate the air nation with a passion for suppressing their slaving activities, I don't think that's enough for their myopic pursuit of me." After a moment, Jinora smiled, almost maniacally and said "I can hurt them back. Anyone got a pen and a pad of paper? I don't know if I have anything useful memorised, but I got plenty, some of it ought to arm you all with something."
Izumi pulled a notepad from one of her pockets and pulled the pages containing her own notes, and handed that with a pen to Jinora saying "get scribbling, information bucket," prompting a smirk from Jinora as she accepted the items.
As Jinora sat down and started scribbling down whatever she could remember of all those meetings where the only thing she could distract herself from the abuse with was following the conversations happening around her, Korra noted "if there's something we can use to fuck them up in there, that'll help a lot."
"We still need to escape their airspace," noted Izumi, "we should max out on altitude and speed and be ready to defend ourselves, Mako and I will be on the roof looking for threats, and Korra should do recon flights."
"Sounds like a plan," replied Korra, "We need comms units."
"Zhu, we could also use a fighter escort, could you call ahead and arrange that?" asked Izumi.
Zhu was still stood in a barely responsive state, she didn't respond.
"President?" asked Korra, approaching Zhu.
Zhu eventually looked at Korra asking "Sorry?"
"Fighter escort," said Korra, "We need one."
"Yes. Of course. On it," said Zhu as she picked up the handset and switched to the strategic command channel.
Izumi handed Korra the webbing with the comms gear in a pouch and helped Korra rig up, the rig included a mask to keep windscream from disrupting voice comms since Korra would be flying low trans sonic regime or higher a lot of the time.
With Korra and the two firebenders kitted out, Korra picked up her glider staff, the new one Asami had made for her, and they went to the airships roof.