AUTHOR'S NOTES: It's still the 15th somewhere! Lateness of the update aside, this is where the truth comes out. Tensions have risen, and Korra's not going to like it, but on the other hand, with how powerful she is, she stands much more of a chance. As for Korra and Asami's relationship... like any good relationship, they have their bad or unpleasant moments where they're angry at each other or not exactly friendly, but they'll get over it. they always do.
Happy Reading!
BOOK TWO: CHANGE
CHAPTER SIXTY-TWO: EIL S'OTAS IMASA
Korra, Lin, and Tenzin made their way to Kwan's Collision Repair later that evening and found Kwan waiting for them. She invited them inside, turning on a single dim light before reaching behind the front counter and pulling out the box that she had carried all day yesterday.
"So, I did a bit of snooping and may or may not have impersonated a Future Industries worker for a bit of it," Kwan began, "and barring that there are employees who are Equalists… this in particular came to my attention."
She opened the box and revealed a pair of electroshock gloves, as well as an envelope.
"I ain't sure what it says, but that's got Mr. Sato's name on it too, and these gloves are definitely made at Future Industries." Kwan added, "Make of it what you will."
Lin snatched it and read the letter, her eyebrows raising about halfway through it.
"It's definitely Hiroshi's," she muttered, as Korra grabbed her hair and sunk against the walls in a silent sort of despair. "Although I have to ask where you got this."
"They don't do a very good job at screening workers at Future Industries," Kwan quipped, "well, that and I was a Red Lotus sleeper agent for over a decade, and was part of one of the Triad groups for at least 6 years before that. Staying hidden in plain sight is kind of what I do."
"Watch your step," Lin warned, although it seemed friendlier than her previous warning, "too much snooping around and breaking in could earn you a place back in the slammer."
"So could what I'm about to tell you," Kwan added, "word from one of the other workers is that the factory is under the Sato Estate. As someone who may or may not have broken in there before, I did actually uncover a place like that, but that was over a decade ago and at the time was little more than a standard storage facility. If he's turned it into a secret Equalist factory since then, I wouldn't be surprised—especially if those rumours of a new secret weapon also turn out to be true. If not I'll need a word with my leads."
"Raiding the Sato Mansion is a risky move with Tarrlok breathing down your back." Tenzin warned, turning to Lin, "If we're wrong…"
"I know; I can kiss my job goodbye," Lin sighed, "And someone's going back to prison."
"You wanna know how confident I am about this?" Kwan raised a finger, "I'm confident enough that I'll turn myself in willingly if I'm wrong. It's one of those things that just adds up. I ain't proud of admitting it and wish it wasn't true either—the kid ain't taking it well at all."
Korra was in a ball in the corner with her hands grabbing her hair and muttering something about how she couldn't trust anyone anymore. She seemed to have tuned out everyone in the room and it was all she could do to keep from screaming.
"At this point, protecting Republic City is all I care about," Lin's face went stoic again, "We can't let Amon get his hands on that new weapon."
Despite Korra's near meltdown, she, Lin, and Tenzin mobilized a police force immediately and made their move to Sato Estate. Several officers moved to secure it while Lin, Tenzin, Korra and a few police officers burst into the living room, surprising Asami, Mako, and Bolin, who were all present there.
"What are you doing back here with the police, Korra?" Asami glared daggers at Korra, making her enmity quite clear. "Were you not satisfied with tearing apart my father's factories and warehouses on your last paranoid whim? Is this about you thinking you can't trust anyone?"
Korra did not reply, but the heavy, devastated frown said a lot about how terrible she felt right now; and so with a glance towards Lin, she deferred to the older woman.
"We have reason to believe there is a factory hidden below the mansion." Lin wasted no time getting straight to the point, noticing the young Avatar's vivid distress.
"Seriously?" Asami scoffed and rolled her eyes, "I'm pretty sure I would have noticed a secret factory below my house. The lies you people come up with just to persecute my father. Korra, I've put up with a great deal of your instability over the years, but this is taking it WAY too far. You've completely thrown reason to the wind. What's next? Are you going to start pointing fingers and saying that I'm an Equalist?"
Korra did not reply, but hung her head in shame. It was an idea she didn't even want to consider, but there was no telling what kind of secrets Hiroshi and Asami confided with one another; and while Korra would be in objective denial if Asami turned out to be an Equalist, she couldn't rule that out as a possibility just yet.
"Where is your father then, Miss Sato?" Lin turned to Asami, who cast a glance at her and then to Tenzin, where her eyes narrowed as if accusing him of something regarding Korra.
"He's in his workshop behind the house," Asami spoke with a certain confidence. "I'll prove it."
Everyone present headed back to Hiroshi's workshop as some of the officers dispersed to secure the perimeter. As the police kicked the door in, they were all surprised to see an empty workshop with no sign of Hiroshi.
"Dad?" Korra's heart ached as she saw Asami's face sink, "Hello?"
"Do you think we missed him?" Bolin raised a finger.
"My officers secured the estate," Lin replied, "No one has left since we arrived."
"Perhaps we couldn't see him leaving…?" Mako mused aloud as Lin stepped into the middle of the room. With a touch of metalbending, her boot slipped off and her foot hit the ground as she triggered her seismic sense. She was no Toph (none could truly match the legend herself) but she was keen enough to spot a noticeable gap in the ground below them.
"There's a tunnel beneath the workshop running deep into the mountainside," Lin declared.
"What?" Asami looked flabbergasted, "there's no tunnel down th—"
Before she could even finish, however, Lin metalbent a huge sheet of metal off the floor to reveal a tunnel complete with stairs and an elevator heading downwards and into the mountainside just as Lin had claimed. Kwan's lead was right.
"Do you think your dad knows about this tunnel?" Bolin raised his eyebrow as he turned to Asami. Korra remained silent, as if her telling the truth made her guilty of something.
"I-I don't understand…" Asami stammered, the distress on her face matching Korra's, "there must be an explanation for all of this."
"It seems he fooled us both, Asami," Korra frowned, "I had hoped so badly that this was all a big lie too, and I just… I'm so sorry."
"Everything I knew…" Asami didn't even seem to bet talking to anyone in particular, but she had the same blank, shaken face that Korra had the day Asami had screamed in her face about getting a grip on things. "All this time, and he… why dad; why?"
"Officers," Lin ordered, "into the tunnels. Tenzin; Korra, you should come too."
"I'm not sure I'm ready to," Korra shook her head, "I just…"
"That was me being nice at saying you're coming with us," Lin admitted, "and with Mr. Sato making powerful weapons for the Equalists, odds are he's going to use some of them himself, which in turn means we need all the help we can get. A Fully-Realized Avatar should help even the odds, I would say."
"Right then," Korra was actually shocked that Lin of all people would call her fully-realized. She knew she was incredibly powerful, but with how many problems she had that couldn't be solved with bending or even the Avatar State, it was easy for her to feel weak and vulnerable as if she still had a lot of training to go.
"Watch her while I'm gone," Korra turned to the brothers before following Tenzin, Lin, and the police into the tunnel, "I recognize that type of reaction from my own misdeeds. Just… trust me."
"Why don't we just go with—" Bolin began before Lin interrupted them.
"Nuh-uh," she shook her head, "you three stay up here. Officer Song; keep an eye on them."
Korraa exchanged a melancholic look with Asami as she and the others disappeared down the elevator. It took them deep into the mountainside, before stopping and leading to an opening that revealed a massive chamber lined with large mecha tanks and posters of Amon.
"Looks like Kwan wasn't lying," Korra raised her eyebrows as she and the others looked around.
"I'm impressed," Lin mused, "this is definitely not your average backyard workshop. It seems Kwan really wasn't kidding about wanting to turn over a new leaf."
"Those definitely look like the new weapons too," Korra indicated the mecha tanks.
"Hiroshi was definitely lying about his supposed lack of association with the Equalists," Tenzin pointed out, "but where is he now?"
Almost as if this had triggered a trap, a huge metal wall came up behind the group, ending with a loud clang that was heard all the way up from the workshop where Mako, Bolin, and Asami were waiting—where naturally they were curious and concerned.
"What was that?" Bolin turned to the others.
"We need to get down there and see what's going on," Mako asserted, but Song moved in front of them to deny them entry.
"Absolutely not," He held his arms out on either side, "you're staying put until the Chief returns."
"This is my father we're talking about," Asami stepped forward, "and on my property no less. I think I have the right to decide who goes where."
"Not under criminal investigations you don't," Song corrected her, "We're staying right here."
Asami lowered her head and stepped back for only a moment before springing forward and connecting a roundhouse kick to the officer's head, knocking him clean out.
"I know you were just doing your job," Asami dragged him off to the side a moment later (with Bolin's help), "but I need to learn the truth about my dad and about Korra's claims for myself."
Much like Korra, Asami's focus was limited due to her conflicted feelings. On one hand, it seemed that her father was very well an Equalist, which would turn her life upside-down and backwards if it was true. On the other hand, if it was true, then it also meant that Korra's desperate claims were founded in truth, which meant she owed the Avatar an apology.
Despite this assertion, she let the brothers go first, but then followed them with a hesitant and unsure expression on her face, unaware of just how closely her current thoughts matched those of Korra as they descended into the abyss.
Korra, Lin, and her officers had both initially tried metalbending the wall, but to no avail. Korra had even gotten everyone to stand back as she attempted to use her combustion to blow the door apart, but her attacks barely nicked it, and after one ricocheted off the metal and blew a chunk of the ceiling out (without showing any signs of an escape, however), even Tenzin told her to stand down.
"I take it lavabending is out of the question?" Korra raised a fist.
"Absolutely," Lin narrowed her eyes, "the last thing we need is enough heat to cook those of us wearing metal suits."
"I figured as much," Korra frowned, "It was just a thought—I'm not as stupid as you think, Lin."
"The incident with the lemurs says otherwise," Lin quipped.
"Oh for crying out loud, you're really dredging that up again?" Korra groaned, although they were interrupted by a voice from a loudspeaker.
"I'm afraid that metalbending that wall is a futile effort, Chief BeiFong—as is attempting to destroy it without taking your friends with you, Avatar Korra." The voice clearly belonged to Hiroshi Sato, "It's solid platinum, just like the mecha-tanks. Not even the revered Toph BeiFong or any of the Interregnum Avatars could bend a metal so pure."
Korra's expression twisted in an awkward fashion as she heard Hiroshi mention the Interregnums. She wondered who or what had spread the knowledge of these millennia-old Avatar incarnations out into the world to be so public, but now was not the time to guess.
"After everything..." Korra threw her hands in the air, "get over here so I can blow your smug face right outta that stupid machine!"
Korra didn't even wait before firing off a combustion blast aimed directly at the cockpit of Hiroshi's mecha tank. He pulled a lever that brought a thick metal plate in front of the glass for just long enough to absorb the blow. It pushed the tank back a few inches, but other than a barely noticeable dent, it was unharmed and Hiroshi's cockpit was untouched.
"And that is precisely why I'm staying in here," He asserted, "I'd rather go toe-to-toe with the Avatar in a circumstance where my odds are much more… equal."
"You set up Kwan!" Lin pointed at him accusingly.
"It was a win-win, what with all the accusations that wild lavabender had floating around her," Hiroshi replied, "either she gets incriminated and arrested by your men for her ties with the Equalists, or she unwittingly leads you right to me. Do you think that I would forget the face of Ikiza—the woman who allowed my wife's killer and her compatriots to run free? Why do that when I can lure three of my most formidable enemies down into my lair all at once?"
"So the goal was always the same then," Korra threw her arms up and out, "and all of those honeyed words over the last three years meant nothing?"
"Guilty as charged." Hiroshi smirked as a legion of other tanks surrounded the benders and the police. A moment later a grappling hook from one of the mechs hit Korra, who prevented herself from being slammed against the far wall by skillfully blasting the cable apart with a concentrated blast from her forehead, and then wrenching the claws off of her waist. She sprang over to the severed cable, seized it and began using the claw as a flail as she moved in on the nearest mech. Lin and Tenzin were busy holding off Hiroshi and three more Equalists, while the remaining police took care of the others, having to rely on their strength and agility rather than their metalbending in order to prevent the mechs from getting the best of them.
At this point Korra couldn't help but heat up the room as she slammed her feet down and trapped two of the mechs in a pool of lava, effectively disabling their movement. However, their grapplers shot out and hooked two of the police, following up by channelling electricity through the cables, and shocking them into submission. Korra used a mixture of waterbending (from the steam in the room) and earthbending to remove her lava pool, thus preventing the disabled tanks from dragging the now also disabled officers into what would have been a fiery death.
While Lin had managed to disable a mecha tank by metalbending two enormous daggers and smashing through the cockpit, a second one came up and seized her from behind, slamming her against a wall. She got back up and managed to knock one of the remaining mechs over with a slab of stone, but the tank corrected itself as Lin was seized a 2nd time and thrown against the wall. The second concussion finally put her out of commission for the time being, leaving only Korra and Tenzin against Hiroshi and four other Equalists.
Tenzin was doing a remarkable job at crowd controlling Hiroshi and forcing him into a corner with powerful airbending techniques, zigzagging around his enemies on a fast and powerful air wheel while Korra's blinding agility kept the other three Equalists in hot pursuit of her as she ducked and backflipped repeatedly to avoid getting hit, snagged, or shocked. Her bending had little effect on the powerful mechs—clearly an intended aspect of their design—and while it would only take one good shot of catching them off-guard for her combustion attacks to smash through the thick glass of the cockpits, their reaction times were too swift, and there was too much of a risk of dangerous collateral damage. As much as Korra enjoyed smashing or demolishing things, she didn't want to hurt what few friends she had.
She barrelled forward in a wheel of dangerous blue fire—one of her few call-outs to Nakkoa from the time they sparred and trained together. She was mere inches away from smashing through Hiroshi's cockpit before one of the remaining tanks hit her with a grappling hook and slammed her against the far wall. As durable as Korra was, the concussion wasn't exactly going to keep her conscious, and so she fell. Tenzin took a moment to use a burst of airbending to cushion Korra's fall and prevent her head from cracking open, but in this moment of distraction, he was electrocuted into unconsciousness by one of the Equalists and thus knocked out of commission.
It was right around this time that Mako and Bolin showed up, with Asami in the shadows behind them. Hiroshi triumphantly stepped out of his mecha tank as he looked around.
"Well," He took a deeper breath than normal, a little frazzled from all the fighting, "I'd say that was a near-flawless test run, even against the Avatar. Load everyone into the trucks and deliver them to Amon, stat."
"I'm afraid we can't let ya do that!" Bolin had jumped up, bending a slab of earth underneath Korra to prevent a pair of Equalists from taking her and threw her up onto his back. Mako darted over and seized Tenzin, who was the other nearest target, doing the same thing for him.
"Not so fast, boys," Hiroshi interrupted them.
"Oh, hello, Mr. Sato," Bolin moved Korra's arms as if to make gestures of his own, "this is a real swell scary Equalist factory you've got down here under your giant mansion. I assume this was supposed to be off-limits or something?"
"Sheltering the Avatar for nearly three years was bad enough," Hiroshi growled, "but then my daughter drags in a pair of literal homeless vagrants in as well."
"Dad, stop!" Asami jumped into the scene and interrupted them all, "What is the meaning of all this? Why are you doing this?"
Despite her confident plunge into the fray, Asami's entire person suddenly looked mortified as the horrific reality of the situation finally caught up to her. Despite Korra's paranoia, the scene around Asami was undeniable proof that Korra had been right about Hiroshi the entire time.
AFTERTHOUGHTS: Asami's theory about Korra being guilty and Hiroshi being innocent was not only a lie, but was also backwards. Hence the name of this chapter.