That thing about measure twice and cut once? And the story writing equivalent of re-read a trillion times, publish once? ... I ended up re-writing bits of chapter 6, but it's only a few bits with Jinora after Jinora gets recaptured, so I hope I've kept things tolerable on the having to re-read stuff part, but I'm going for a specific effect with this. Sorry about that.
Tenzin entered the dining area to see Jinora, dressed in a teeshirt and pair of shorts she found in one of the sleeping areas, Kia and Meelo sat at one end with Ikki reading a completed page of Jinoras after action report slightly further along, Jinora was working on another page while also directing Meelo to sketch out a face, as several other sketches had piled up.
"Who are those?" asked Tenzin pointing at the sketches.
"The slavers that captured me in the first place," said Jinora, "everything that happened to me started with them."
"We did encounter these guys before, Me and Opal about ten weeks ago, Meelo and Ikki eight weeks ago, we thought they were just there to rob places, had they not been interrupted and arrested, they would have probably stolen people too," said Kai, "we weren't able to follow up because we're flying around whack-a-moling incidents."
"I was trafficked hundreds of kilometres and I didn't even notice we had crossed any borders, so no one's checking anything leaving the Earth Kingdom," said Jinora.
"Were you able to see anything outside of the vehicle?" asked Tenzin.
"The road through the toilet hole we were all using on the move, I could see about two day cycles of ambient light variation through that," said Jinora. "Anyone notice a trail of turds along any of the roads?"
"How are we meant to know those were human turds and not ostrich horse turds?" asked Tenzin.
"Okay, what about fuel tankers waiting around for no discernible reason? We pulled over three times, I hear a sloshing noise, no pump noises, Driver shouts 'stop', we drive off, we also receive a bag of food and water through the curtain at the back as we're taking on fuel, meant they weren't using shops or fuel stations."
"No stationary tankers," said Kai, "there'd be no need for them to just wait, there would be numerous ways they could remain in motion and declare their identity to their friends within time windows that would ensure they link up, replenish, and get back in motion in minutes, we'd need an extraordinary amount of luck to happen across such a meeting and even then without the context of this report, we might not think anything of it."
"This could have been happening to me if those Earth Empire soldier weren't so friendly and crap at bondage," said Ikki.
Tenzin looked at Ikki asking "What?"
Ikki explained "when the three of us were looking for Korra things weren't going very well and after Meelo chucked all our food into a river we had landed next to, I needed some space from Jinora who seemed obsessed with meditating the whole time and acting aloof and superior and Meelo who was trying to prove his scavenging skills into existing somehow so I broke off venting my frustration at the mentally retarded character traits of my siblings and then I bent air into the undergrowth in front of me and I accidentally scared this sugar glider into dropping its food I then chased it with its food hoping to return its food to it I then crash land in this clearing accidentally squishing the fruit I was trying to return to the suger glider against my face and then the sugar glider landed on me and licked the squished food off of my face so I asked it if we were friends now and then two earth bending Earth Empire troops captured me accusing me of trespassing and took me back to their base were we got talking and apparently they had found our food that Meelo had chucked away and they complained about having been left out of the Zaofu invasion speculating that there was going to be a big party and I commiserated with them about the being left out of things thing and then we got talking about Korras probably location and they spread out this map on the table and they helped me work out Korras location and they were about to release me when Jinora and Meelo burst into the room and knocked them out and I berated Meelo and Jinora for their aggressive actions when I hadn't appreciated the scope of what they had to consider could have been happening to me for all they knew, apologising to the two troops on Jinora and Meelos behalf and leaving them a couple of steam buns to help smooth things over on our way out." She then turned to Jinora and Meelo saying "Sorry about that."
Tenzin was able to pick up on the story where Ikki was captured and understand the story from that point on, having initially wondered if he would understand where this was going at all.
"About time you apologised," said Meelo.
"Erm, I shouldn't have tried to take on that whole gang alone," said Jinora, "that's the point where I really fucked up. They looked like they were ready to fuck off out of it with their captives, if I left to gather reinforcements, we would have had a cunt of a time reacquiring them. … I didn't consider the force ratio, that I could lose, that they could kill or capture me, and the result of that was no information got back to you at all."
"Well now we got these extra small radios, rigged into our wingsuits, we can call in reinforcements anywhere any time," said Meelo, his tone proud and boastful, "All thanks to you."
Jinora let out a silent chuckle. "Yeah. … That makes being the office rape toy of Granitopolices city hall so worth it."
"Glad you agree," said Meelo. He then asked "Now what else can you tell me about this particular slaver?"
Kai gave Meelo the hairy eyeball, but without Jinora rebuking Meelo, nobody seemed to want to start shit about Meelo's incredible insensitivity that … … … was SO Meelo, so … …
Ikki set down the page she had been reading and Tenzin turned it around to read it himself.
The report included Jinoras commentary on where she felt she had added to her own failure, which on the one hand, if you think you fucked up, yes you want to learn how not to fuck up the same way again or in a similar way, but that can also become pathological where you start demanding impossible feats of yourself, Tenzin would look out for this as he read on.
Apparently she had lost consciousness as she had been raped by … "Err, … Big Barbowa?"
"Yes, he exists, he really is that big and really is that hung," said Jinora, her tone slightly weary. She sounded like she had been queried on this numerous times before, or was anticipating being asked this for so long.
"He was among the group we had arrested," said Kai.
"Same here," said Ikki.
"Although me and Opal didn't see him naked," added Kai.
"Yeah, ditto," said Ikki.
Tenzin nodded and read on, Jinora woke up on the floor of the truck as it was in motion, arms bound folded up across her back, a rope leach around her neck, smelling and feeling like she had been urinated on, the remains of her wingsuit having been removed while she was unconscious, and made to give a round of blowjobs several times, then …
Well, that's plenty of detail to help prosecute these fuckers should cops with any integrity arrest them anyway …
Arrived, led off the truck, strapped to a chair with a special face restraint, tattooed on the face, led past a load of cells to a room for punitive example slaves and stood over a …
Tenzin felt like he needed to storm out somewhere and start punching something, anything, he probably wouldn't care if he broke his fingers in the process, the image of his daughter stuck on one of those-
"Dad?" Jinora said, calling Tenzins attention to her, she then went on to say "perhaps you should hold off reading this until you either consume a shit ton of blood pressure meds or are sat outside a fully equipped stroke ward?"
Tenzin irritably asked "Why does everybody keep thinking I am about to have a stroke?" as his eye twitched and the upper half of his head vasodilated.
"Because when you get into an agitated state, you eye twitches and the upper half of your head massively vasodilates," replied Jinora.
Tenzin looked at everyone else who nodded in confirmation. Tenzin sighted, commented "Fuck," and then asked "half the page is empty, what's that about?"
"Workflow management, thinking about what Pi did when he got me back to his place kind of … … I'm going to want to deal with that last so that I can at least get the rest of this done by the time we get to Republic City hospital, when I write it, I'm going to recall it, and … well … I don't know what just reading it will be like for you, all I know is it's this … … well … … I mean … … "
The fact this rendered Jinora, normally erudite and articulate as fuck, barely able to string a coherent sentence together said enough to stop Tenzin enquiring further for the time being, he simply said "Okay, I … well, dread reading it … " and left them to it.
The stuff she had written up to that point was bad enough, Tenzin wondered if it would be such a terrible thing for him to go down to the cells and give the intended use of the Punitive Example Slave class a go on Pi Fahoun? Would that be such a bad thing? Really?
"So, we'll be tying off all the tubes that used to connect to a right kidney, there's a couple of holes in her small intestine to sew up, we'll need a fuckload of screws to fix her hip, remove the shell and hand it over to EOD for removal and a controlled explosion, and-"
"What?" asked Asami, interrupting the surgeons flow as she, Korras parents and the surgical leader conversed outside the changing room next to the operating room.
The surgeon fished the X-ray from the folder he was holding saying "this hollow looking space here, that's a high explosive composition, there's a thin walled can that's the detonator, and this other thin walled metal can is a percussion cap, the firing pin didn't quite break through the restraining ridge, anyway, I'll let you know how it goes, if you hear a bang and a load of foul language, erm … … Hopefully you won't, we're very good at what we do, so … "
The surgeon then put the X-ray back in the folder and walked off to prepare to operate leaving Asami, Tonraq and Senna to contemplate the possibility Korra could have had her arse literally blown off.
Kai, Tenzin and Pema met them having come from consulting with the team that was to operate on Jinora to remove the chi blocking bands.
An air acolyte then approached with a loaded shopping bag saying "Tenzin?"
Tenzin accepted the bag saying "Thank you."
"I hope things go well for Jinora," said the Acolyte before he left.
Tenzin asked Asami, Tonraq and Senna "Korra getting into surgery?"
"Yeah, and EOD's there too, the shell in her arse is an unexploded high explosive shell," said Asami, "what's Jinora's prognosis?"
"Physically there's a risk of nerve damage when they remove the chi blocking devices, mentally … … I think Jinoras own mind is an unexploded ordnance," said Tenzin as he led them to a family waiting room and handed the rest of them bottles from the shopping bag, all cheap spirits (as in spirit strength alcoholic beverages), and opened one, taking a swig.
To their looks Tenzin said "three of us have a daughter or girlfriend who just got back from literally 11 weeks of solid torture and might find her airbending ability impaired or entirely absent even when the cuffs are removed and is probably pregnant and disease ridden from the included rapes, another three of us has a daughter or girlfriend who is down one kidney, up one high explosive shell, and is going to be back in a wheelchair for several months. With that in mind, I propose that sobriety is epically overrated, would any of you like to challenge that proposal?"
"Eh, fuck it," said Tonraq as he opened his bottle and took three gulps of its contents.
Kai, Pema, Senna and Asami followed suit to varying degrees as they all landed on the sofas in the room.
Bumi landed Oppa and Kya, Ikki and Meelo got off, not saying much. Bumi caught up with them and asked "What's wrong? You've been like zombies all the way back," addressing Ikki and Meelo.
Ikki said "It's that rock hug Jinora described, and I'm not surprised she had to come back to that, she was barely able to keep her head up as she wrote it, and Meelo and me and Kia also had to lie down, we've never had that happen before."
Meelo said "I can't process it, and I normally laugh at sick shit."
Bumi sighed and said "Yeah, but this is war sick shit, where it's people you know and care about losing limbs and getting their head squashed or their face burned off while you have to just carry on fighting leaving your injured friends bleeding and screaming where they lay because the fight is still on and the enemy won't just stop to give you a few minutes to help your friends and resume later," his tone unusually serious. "What actually did Jinora describe this rock hug as consisting of?"
"Welcome home honey, we did good today, didn't we do good today?" said Varrik as Zhu entered the presidential residence they both lived in.
"Yes, we did wonderfully," said Zhu, weirdly impassively from Varriks perspective as she set her briefcase on the dining room table and stood like her old dimunitive self from years ago.
"Sooooooo … … … yay?" asked Varrik.
"It's complicated," said Zhu, "on the one hand in spite of being outgunned and outnumbered, everyone on our side got home alive, and we could be in a position to end slavery in that alliance in the coming months, so that's good, but the things involving Jinora, Tenzins kid, she was continuously horrifically abused for eleven weeks straight, and I was haggling a deal with her abuser, knowing on paper stuff like that was happening, and on our way home along comes Jinora to haunt me with the reality on the ground of it basically."
"Did she have a go at you?" asked Varrik.
"No. In fact she tried to cheer me up," said Zhu.
"So all this is coming from you?"
Zhu sighs and says "There's something else. … There's how Jinora ended up back in captivity as we were waiting out that fire mission."
"How do you mean? You can't possibly think that's your fault can you?"
There was an awkward silence.
"Zhu Li?"
Zhu Li eventually said "Jinora insisted we allow her to bait their forces into employing unsuitable tactics, so before I became aware of Korra and Asamis plan, what we were going to do was have Jinora and our benders draw their troops east, try to spread them as thin as practical before peeling north east, had that plan continued Jinoras exposure to recapture would have been even greater. … It wasn't just Jinora we were looking after, I also had the other heads of state and the airship crew to try to protect, well, of those not fighting I only in practice had Desna and Eska with me owing to lack of available water, Izumi was participating in the fire and manoeuvre tactics."
"But think of what would have happened if you had told her no when she insisted and insisted, she would have done something wild and gotten herself in an even worse situation would she not?" replied Varrik.
"I honestly don't know," said Zhu, "I'm just trying to work out how to discuss this with Tenzin. His daughter almost disappeared again while with me."
There was a knock at the door, and Zhu went to answer.
It was an express logistics driver saying "Delivery for President Zhu Li, you'll need to sign for it."
Zhu signed the relevant part of the document and accepted the envelope. Opening it as she returned to the living room, she saw a package of documents consisting of Jinoras after action report and sketches of the slaver gang that had abducted her.
Zhu read through it getting angrier by the syllable, and then hit a part that made her have to lean against a wall commenting "no wonder she complied with … … oh spirits … "
Kai was awoken by Pema and his attention was directed to a doctor talking to Tenzin.
He started to catch the conversation at the doctor saying "-successfully removed the bands, but we don't know what effect we might have had on her nervous system, we don't know for example if her hands will feel normal, will be numb, or be in unbearable pain, so we'll leave cannulas in the arteries feeding her hands so we can rapidly get local anaesthetics in quickly if we have to."
"Will she be able to bend again?" asked Kai.
"That's something we'll find out as she recovers," said the doctor, "about the only person to map the physiology of this out was Noatok, and, well, even if he were alive, I wouldn't want to be dependant on a syllable out of his mouth."
Tonraq, Asami and Senna were starting to awake and Asami asked "What about Korra, how's she doing?"
"Still in theatre, urine duct and blood vessels are trimmed and tied off, shell's out of here, they're still bolting her hip back together last I checked, using platinum bolts to keep any enemy metalbenders from bending her arse. In any case both will be unconscious for hours after the operations, and they'll need to watch what they do around the incision sites for a week, but waterbender healing can help accelerate the repairs and could help with any nerve damage Jinora has."
Jinora entered the dining room and sat at her place at it as everyone talked among themselves.
The bowl before her was full of dry dog cereal, and Jinora lowered her face and started lapping it up with her tongue, chewing and swallowing as everyone continued their conversations.
And then pairs of hands grabbed her hands and feet and suddenly four of the slaver gang had her pinned on the table where her family continued their conversation unconcerned.
Jinora begged the slavers "please don't."
She then looked at the wall her cunt was facing where Big Barbowa stood naked, who said "We fuck now," as his already erect dick stretched even longer than it was towards her cunt, causing her to shout "NO, DON'T, PLEASE," only for the slavers holding her down to turn to granite and spread all over her body, encasing her in cold, hard, crushing rock that started to squeeze her painfully, causing her to emit long screams with every exhale.
Then suddenly she could move.
She got her shit together and realised she was on the floor, with her surgical gown being pulled up, along with her blanket.
She was on the floor? Shouldn't she be on a bed made for humans these days?
Where even was she? The floor was bare except for the smoke detector and the ceiling roses from which the fluorescent batons were hanging up.
"Erm … Jinora?"
Jinora looked up to the bed she should actually be in, next to the ECG cart that was whining about the fact it was no longer feeling her, Kai stood in front of his chair staring up at her, as did Tenzin and Pema from their chairs on the opposite side of the bed next to the window.
Fuming at the ridiculous situation Jinora had been presented with, she growled "Okay, … I'm probably rested enough, for fucks sake, can I please, WAKE UP NOW?"
"Jinora, you … actually are up … and up," said Kai.
"Kai, I'm the dad here, shitawful jokes are my job," said Tenzin.
"Right, sorry," replied Kai.
About now a pair of doctors burst into the room with a crash trolley in tow, noting the empty bed and looking around before Kai said "I think she's fine," while pointing up at her.
After looking up, one of the doctors asked Tenzin "you guys can do that?"
"Only-" started Tenzin. He stopped, only thinking of one airbender that had levitated in recent memory.
"Zaheer," concluded Jinora, thinking back, "he started doing it as far as we were able to observe when he took off with Korra with a view to ending the Avatar cycle." Jinora then asked "Now how the fuck am I doing this?"
"More importantly, can you stop?" asked one of the doctors, she continued "otherwise we can't hook you back up and that alarm's really really annoying, and additionally, we can see your cunt from here, it's kinda awkward."
"Oh, right," replied Jinora and willed herself back down to her bed.
"I believe he was obsessed with Laghima, an ancient airbender guru who mastered levitation," said Tenzin, "let's see, what was he known to say on the matter?"
"Instinct is a lie, told by a fearful body, hoping to be wrong?" replied Jinora as the doctors plugged the sensors stuck on her body back into the ECG.
"New growth cannot exist without the destruction of the old," added Tenzin.
"But what is wisdom? Is it poems written on a page? Is it actions done in my name? Is it words spoken on the wind? Wisdom is formless, for only the wind remains when all else is gone," added Tenzin.
"Hmm … " mused Jinora. She then said "Let go your earthly tether, step into the void, empty like the wind."
"That one sounds like he was ideating suicide," noted Tenzin.
"Which I was," replied Jinora, getting everyone staring at her, including the two doctors that had been hooking her back up to the machine. She clarified "Pi Fahoun had just recaptured me, he claimed the explosions from those missiles were his attack and that it had fragged the rest of the group I was with, didn't even occur to me his information was hippobullshit for some reason, I thought I was responsible for those deaths, and … … The only way I thought I could retaliate was to provoke a killing move out of Pi, I stopped caring about survival and wanted to troll him."
"That's something you didn't mention in your report," noted Tenzin.
"I tend not to mention emotions in after action reports, my perception is events, outcomes, lessons to be drawn, practical nuts and bolts of doing our job is what should go into those things, and if I were to try to describe the terror Pis Rock Hug created in me, I don't know what I would put down beyond physical symptoms such as tachycardia, pain, muscle cramps, physical exhaustion, I mean … "
"But it was your emotional state when Pi lied to you about those explosions that's important to how you acquired your levitation ability," said Tenzin.
"Yeah," said Jinora, "it's a cool ability, but I would still rather have not had that torture happen. … " Jinora looked at the dressing around her wrists and the cannulas in her forearms and asked "what's with the cannulas?"
"In case the surgery left permanent pain in your hands, that way local anaesthetics can be rapidly administered," said Tenzin. At this point the two doctors left, having finished what they were doing, taking the crash trolley with them.
Jinora nodded and noticed a box of tissues on the cart with the ECG, she grabbed a tissue, laid it flat on the palm of her hand and tried to bend air through it.
After several seconds she noted "can't bend air at the moment."
"It might take some work to get it back," said Kai, "don't lose hope just yet."
"It's more I need to lose the fear I might not be able to bend again," said Jinora. She then realised there was addressing on her face and asked "slave tat's gone, right?"
"Yes, apparently the skin will be irritated for a while, but that should heal just fine," said Tenzin.
Korra woke up tachycardic and hyperventilating (according to the ECG) and realised where she was fairly quickly.
"Bad dream?" asked Tonraq, he, Asami and Senna having been sat around Korras bed as Korra came out of anaesthesia.
"Yeah, kept rescuing Jinora for her to be pulled out of my arms again and again and again, real fucking annoying. How've you been?"
"Oh, we were dreaming our daughter did an insane stunt baiting an entire enemy airforce into flying through a kill zone and got shot in the process with a high explosive shell, you wouldn't believe how scary that was- Oh wait … "
"High explosive?" asked Korra. "That bullet that hit me was meant to explode?"
"Yes, and if we were to hear a bang and some foul language from the operating theatre, we were to take it as a sign you no longer had an arse," replied Tonraq.
Korra laughed.
"You actually think that's funny?" asked Tonraq.
"I know, right?" replied Korra, as she kept laughing.
"You're insane, legitimately insane," said Tonraq.
"Yep. Certi-fucking-fiable." She then finished laughing and asked "Do we still have it?"
Tonraq and Senna looked at each other and then Tonraq answered "No, we do not still have the high explosive shell that damn near killed you, EOD probably blew it up by now."
"Aww, that would have made an awesome souvenir that would." She then asked "How's Jinora doing?"
"Jinora, she's … floating around," said Tonraq.
"Eh?" asked Korra.
"She can float now," said Senna.
Eventually Korra said "Oh, that thing Zaheer can do. … I should figure out how to do that."
"Apparantly you need to get suicidally nihilistic, like well above normal suicidal ideation and normal nihilism, or something, I don't understand the whole thing," said Tonraq.
"Like thinking she was about to go back into yet more of the torture she thought she was done experiencing?" asked Korra.
"That would probably do it," said Tonraq.
Korra sighed and asked "Man, I'm an airbender that's been through some proper rough shit, why don't I get to levitate?"
"You clearly need to be through even rougher shit," said Tonraq.
"Hmm. … yeah, know what? Fuck that," said Korra.
"There actually is an ability I would like you do develop Korra," said Asami.
"Yeah? What's that?" asked Korra.
Asami lifted the misfolded glidestaff into view and said "LEARN TO FUCKING SEW, like seriously, what the fuck do you call this Korra? I go through all the trouble of making this top of the line glidestaff for you, and this is what you think a respectful effort looks like?"
Korra cringed as she nodded, knowing this was coming at some point, and that point was apparently now.
As Asami and Korra 'conversed', Tonraq whispered to Senna "Well, she's not mopey and depressed this time, that's an improvement, right?"
Senna whispered back "I hope so, we only have the two times of almost seeing our daughter dead to compare."