A/N: Thanks as always to all my lovely reviewers! Sharpe, Guest, SailorPrende, Black Dragon Master, AsahixMe, FireLordAziz, Tertius711, IrishDreamer4, devilfiredog18, Raider, CrazyPhenom, and StevenBdoner - I am so grateful to have all of you actively engaging with this story and my analyses.

There were some lamentations in the reviews that this story is 'almost over'. Y'all do realise that even though I mentioned we're about two-thirds through, given the length of this story, that still means at least 25 more chapters or so, right? And there are no guarantees that the story won't grow even more of its own volition again.

Credit for the idea of Mako teaching Korra lightningbending goes to Black Dragon Master, who suggested it all the way back in December after Chapter 38.

51. I don't wanna lose control

"Lightning is about control."

He steps into a wider stance, knees slightly bent, index and middle fingers of each hand extended. Korra copies him, and he nods his approval of her form.

"Yin and yang energies normally work together; to generate lightning, you have to separate them. This is harder than it sounds," he warns her. "You're disrupting the natural order of the universe, and it takes incredible focus to keep the energies separate until the moment you want them to be released as lightning. You have to be in absolute control of your chi at all times."

"But I thought you don't control lightning, only guide it?" Korra questions.

"You don't control the energy itself; you control the separation and the amount you're separating," he clarifies. "The more energy you disrupt, and the longer you keep the yin and yang separate, the more powerful the lightning will be."

He makes the barest circular motion with one wrist, then shoots a bolt at the metal target across the field; the lightning rod catches his electricity and pings the readout of the voltage.

"So that's a low charge?" Korra surmises. She is already unconsciously mimicking his movements.

"Very," he affirms. "Probably just enough to shock a human, but nothing more than that. Most lightningbenders can separate yin and yang for that long. It takes more control to produce more power."

He moves again, making a larger circle this time, and fires once more; the readout shows Korra how the charge differs.

He has to admit this 'lightning catcher' — created by Fire Nation scientists — is quite useful. He wishes he'd had it when he was learning to bend lightning. Zolt had not been a very patient teacher; the mob boss had usually judged his lightning strikes by the size of the explosions they caused.

This particular target was one Iroh used to practice on; Mai Lee had unearthed it for them when she heard what they were up to. Said Fire Princess is avidly observing them from the sidelines; though not a bender, she'd always loved to watch her brother train his bending. (Iroh is nowhere to be seen, having secluded himself once they returned to Caldera, citing a need to do some thinking.)

"What damage can that one do?" Korra wonders.

He casts around for something to make the comparison. "It'll set that tree branch on fire."

Korra glances at where he's pointing. "Not the whole tree?"

"No, the trunk's too thick."

"What's the highest charge you've ever generated?"

He doesn't even have to think. "The Colossus."

"Oh. Right." She cants her head, her expression hesitantly curious.

He sighs. "Just ask, Korra."

She does, tentatively. "What did it feel like?"

"It was…extreme. There was all this energy flowing through my body — incredibly powerful, but frightening, too. It wasn't like the regular electricity I'd bend. It was just — pure lightning. Strong. White. Like a fire so hot, it was cold." He shakes his head. "I know that doesn't make sense…"

"No, I get it," Korra assures him. "I know how ice can burn, so it doesn't take too much to imagine the opposite." She bites her lip. "Were you…you know, in control — that whole time?"

"I was at first. But it gets harder the longer you do it." He rubs his left arm, unconsciously. "Yin and yang don't want to be separate, Korra. It's an imbalance that you're creating, and they are forces of nature that will find a way to collide again. If you're in the way when that happens, you get lucky, or you die."

He doesn't want to scare her, but this point is absolutely critical. Korra is a lot more levelheaded than she used to be, but her inherent nature is still one of passion and daring. In contrast, his own cautious, calculating personality took to the single-minded focus of a lightningbender like a turtleduck to water. The Korra he first met wouldn't have had a chance in hell of bending lightning; the Korra he knows now is perfectly capable of the control required, but if she pushes too far too fast…

She takes it calmly. "You didn't die, though."

"I got lucky."

"No," she disagrees. "You got skilled. You were able to retain enough control to keep the lightning from a fatal hit. Why do you think I wanted to learn from you?"

He awkwardly rubs the back of his neck. She grins at his characteristic bashfulness, punching him playfully.

"Come on," she says, settling back into her stance. "Show me again."

A/N: This went in a completely different direction than I planned, and as a result the chapter turned out much shorter. Not to worry, I'm still going to write in what I originally intended, but it'll be its own chapter because it now counts as a different moment.

Song is 'Control' by Zoe Wees — I'm really discovering some awesome new music thanks to this fic — and we have now reached a point where the songs are basically background mini-stories of their own. Read the full lyrics for this lovely song and you'll see what I mean — they give more insight of where Mako is during this chapter. I've become so careful at choosing the songs such that the song lyrics also become part of the meta-narrative — but not all of that is necessarily written, or even hinted at, in the actual chapter.

The reason Mako can lightningbend so well, despite (what I see as) his not-so-great mental state throughout most of the latter half of the series, is because he is all about control. His defining trait is his stoicism, his 'cool under fire' style. Despite the mental stresses he was facing and the emotions he buried, he was in control. And that is another reason why, in the earlier chapters of this story, he couldn't lightningbend — not just because of his trauma, but also because his mental state had deteriorated to the point where he was no longer in control.

And that is a nice segue into today's essay excerpt.

Mako's Firebending, Exhibit B: Lightning

It's been established that Lightning Bolt Zolt taught Mako how to lightningbend, but why would a mob boss bother teaching such an elite skill to a teenage street urchin? The fundamental techniques that enable one to bend lightning would have to come from basics — basics that clearly not many people master, or we'd see a lot more lightningbenders — basics that I don't see Zolt being patient enough to teach to an underling. I theorise that Zolt saw Mako already had the fundamental skill and training required to learn lightningbending (which in this story, would have come from Naoki), and that's why he decided to teach him.

Now, as we've seen, the voltage and ferocity of a lighting attack can vary. I therefore make a distinction between 'normal' and 'advanced' lightningbending — or, as I like to call it, electricity vs true lightning. Electricity would hold much lower, non-lethal charges — similar to that of the Equalist weapons — and therefore take less skill and power to generate. Though lightningbending is more prevalent in TLOK than ATLA, I would class the vast majority of it as electricity — quicker and simpler to generate, requiring minimal movements, but not as lethal as the lightning demonstrated by Ozai and Azula. Power plant lightningbending, Iroh's precise shots at the Equalist planes, and Mako's shot at Amon in S1E12 (more on that later) all fall under this category.

True lightning, on the other hand, is raw, unfettered energy, holding extremely high charges that can only be directed, not controlled. Simply because of the sheer power involved, this sort of lightning takes more time and effort to generate, requiring the intricate, sweeping circular motions demonstrated in ATLA — and therefore, requiring greater skill and technique. Simply put, to harness this kind of lightning without blowing oneself up, one needs to have solid basics and immense discipline. Zuko couldn't do it, but Ozai and Azula were frighteningly good at this. Lightning Bolt Zolt's lightning was, I assume, fairly powerful to grant him that moniker — but I somehow doubt that he would have learned the highest-level techniques that enabled the royals to produce such fearsome lightning attacks. The one time we see Zolt bending (S1E3), he uses only his arms to bend fire (note the lack of legwork); and when he shoots lightning, he performs only the barest circular movements — none of which go below his waist, the way Ozai, Azula, and Iroh I always did in ATLA.

Indeed, the only character in TLOK we see bending lightning in the old style is Mako, in the Colossus. Interestingly enough, that is also the only time we see lightningbending as it was shown in ATLA (which makes sense given we never saw the Fire Nation in TLOK). To build up the charge, Mako spends several seconds moving his arms in large, sweeping, circular motions highly reminiscent of Azula's lightning generation. If he didn't learn that from Zolt, the only explanation for Mako knowing how to do that is that he instinctively drew on some former training that incorporated such movements. Pro-bending and triad bending do not; so that leaves traditional bending.

Additionally, Mako can redirect lightning, making him the only non-royal, non-Avatar firebender we've seen on the show who can do that. In fact, in the Colossus, he was generating and redirecting lightning at the same time — something we have not seen anyone else do. And though the charge was low ('electricity' rather than 'lightning'), he was still able to attack Amon while being bloodbent in S1E12. I don't believe Zolt knew how to redirect lightning (Avatar Wiki says he did, but the source is a supplementary Nickelodeon material, and I only consider the show and the comics canon), so he can't have taught Mako this. Aside from the Colossus, the only time we see Mako redirecting lightning is in S1E10 against the Equalist mechasuit — and if you watch that scene closely, he suffers the blow initially and takes a while to redirect it. In contrast, when Iroh I, Zuko, and Aang redirected lightning, they were able to redirect it straightaway without taking any damage beforehand. A possible interpretation is that that scene with the mechasuit is the precise moment Mako learned how to redirect lightning — fuelled by sheer determination not to be beaten, and based on his intuitive understanding of the various techniques he'd learned. All these actions speak to some fantastic internal chi mastery that I honestly don't see regular firebenders being able to do, and I think Mako's able to do it because he was trained in basics the way Fire National nobles are.

Next week's chapter will feature a long-anticipated guest character ;)