Spin the Rails

Part 4 - Faith and Pragmatism

Section 15: Spirit Breach, Part IV

"Remake the Worlds"

"Dad?"

Asami stared at him in the darkness, as he was the only thing she could see, clear as day. He appeared as he did, the day he...died. The day he died. Yes. Died. He was wearing his old suit, taken in to accommodate the weight he'd lost. She felt her heart ache, actually ache, and a pool of red glowing water materialized beside her, floating, showing her own memory of Kuvira crushing the hummingbird.

"Yes, sweetheart. I'm here."

Asami swallowed and envisioned a more perfect world. Where she'd sprint over to him, hug him, the darkness would fade away and she'd wake up from this nightmare. No vines. No war profiteering. No Artana. She took a step forward but caught herself. "No. You're not. You died," she said, her voice cracking. "No one comes back from the dead." She tried to cry, but could not.

Hiroshi closed the distance between them, but she backed away before he could touch her. "If you need time to-"

"Dad, I am bleeding out. You're not here. You're just…" A stabbing pain swept through her skull, starting at her forehead, and she winced. The red pool grew brighter. "...a vision. A hallucination. You're not real."

"I'm real enough that you're seeing me, Asami. Hearing me, and listening to the words that I'm speaking. Don't you think that I'd have given anything to see your mother again like this?"

"No." Asami shook her head and held out her palm. "No, you don't get to bring mom into this. I don't care what you are, but her memory is not a tool for you to twist and defile for your own needs! Not anymore." The pool rippled, and she saw herself, hands bound behind her back in the airfield, glaring up at her father in defiance.

Hiroshi was silent for a few moments. He looked away from her, as if he was seeing something in the infinite darkness. "You'd much rather speak with her, wouldn't you?"

"Yes! Of course I would! I can barely remember who she was as it is."

"Then, if I were a hallucination, a vision created from within your own mind, wouldn't she be here, instead of me? Wouldn't anyone else?" He approached her again, and this time she didn't back away. "Why would your subconscious, when you're already in unimaginable physical pain, force you to speak to me, knowing that it would only hurt you more?"

"Because I feel the need to punish myself for failing. For letting everyone down," she said, biting back the pain that surged through lower body. "A thousand reasons!"

"I'm not the person who would shame you for that, Asami. If it were anyone-"

"Don't say her name." The red shifted, showing her and Korra atop the cliff, the waterskin held close to her chest. "Don't you dare say her name." Her heart pounded in time with the writhing of her stomach. "I don't even want to hear the inflexion you'd-he'd use."

"Then I won't." Hiroshi considered her for a moment. "I'm still here, Asami. There must be some reason for that." The pool grew larger and rippled, revealing the endless expanse of the Si Wong Desert. And Korra looking at the Asami that was not truly there with fear. Desperation. Shame. "It's the end of everything. Everything the both of us have worked toward, and instead of working to fix the problem, you're debating whether or not I exist."

"You don't get it. You can't be here. Because if you are..." Asami balled her hands into fists and struggled to stay upright as she felt solid concrete lodge itself within the base of her spine. "Because the second that I indulge myself in this fantasy, I'm going to ask you questions, and I will immediately regret it. I want to go to my grave, never knowing. How you felt. What you might have thought about how I turned out, and what I did. Who loves me, who I chose to love. All of that. Even if you were my father, by some miracle-I can't. I know what you'd say. What he'd say, all but certain." Her heart began palpitating, skipping every third beat. All of the pain was mounting, as if her body was shutting itself down, piece by piece. "And it's that tiny ray of hope, that almost meaningless 'maybe' that lets me remember him as he was. Not what he became. It's what lets me forgive him. Love him. Grieve."

"What are we if not our memories…" he mumbled. Hiroshi sighed and took off his glasses, pocketing them into his jacket. "Fine. I'm not here. If that's what you need me to say, then I will."

"But you are. You're still here."

"Yes, it's a rather curious paradox, isn't it? I'm here, but that's impossible. You're fighting yourself, and at the same time, you're not."

Asami stared blankly at him, and the crown of her head felt numb. "What?" She was bleeding out in the tree. Hallucinating. And the best she could do was a cryptic version of her father that wasn't even trying to fake it. She'd laugh if she still wasn't trying to cry. "Yes, I am. Artana's me. A smarter, faster, stronger and more lethal version of me. I would have thought, of all people, even a false version of you could see that."

"Glass is not a mirror, Asami. You are not reflections of one another."

"Yes, we are-" Asami felt her throat start to close and took a labored breath. She grasped at her neck and fell to her knees. "What-what is happening to me?"

Hiroshi bent down to meet her eyes, and his were pained. "You're dying, but you can stop it. Stop all of this. Stop Artana. End this nightmare."

The red pool split in two, playing more memories, one after the other, faster than she remembered. Her first time in the tree, which seemed so long ago. Her mother's skin. Iroh. It split again, and again, until she and her father were surrounded by bright, flowing red. Her deal with the Triple Threats, with Varrick, the launch of the dirigible, presenting Tenzin with the wingsuits, driving around the city, flying toward the southern portal, late night conversations, her office outburst. Loud mornings at the office, quiet afternoons at home, hour after hour in her workshop, elation at the test track.

All of it. All of her.

"How?" she managed to choke out.

"You already know how, Asami. You just need to focus. Why am I here? Work through the problem, step by step."

Asami couldn't breath. She could barely think. The only thing that entered her mind was the obvious: her father was there because she couldn't let him go. He was holding her back from her own closure. She had forgiven him, but she hadn't fully accepted his death. On the surface, yes.

But not where it mattered.

Her throat opened and Asami inhaled frantically, relieving the burning in her lungs. "No matter how many times I say you're dead, that you're gone, you won't leave," she whispered. "Because a part of me still refuses to believe that it's true."

"Yes. You've forgiven me for what I've done, because you needed to." He put his hands on her shoulders and squeezed. "Now, you need to let me go . Not just for you, but for everyone else. You have to let me die. You have to move forward, and the only way to do that is to leave me behind."

Asami bit her lip. "And what if I can't, Dad?"

Hiroshi gestured to one of the red pools, which expanded in size. Artana, at the lip of the tree with deep gouges along her cheek, and Kuvira, standing resolute atop the overturned truck, glass and metal surrounding her, faced one another.

"Then we leave things to chance."

Asami's eyes widened. Kuvira. She came back. "No. No, she'll win. Artana's tired, and Kuvira's still fresh."

"That's true, but you're forgetting one very important detail."

Asami struggled to her feet, her body still in searing pain, using her father as leverage. "Which is?"

"A cornered wolf is more dangerous than a badgermole."

Artana dove towards Asami's body and pressed her boot against her chest, pulling out both blades. She stole her helmet as well, finding that it was a mostly perfect fit. She had no idea how Kuvira had managed to surpass her like that. To bend glass, truly, but it didn't matter. The yellow glow from the tree may still be growing, and Korra's aura shifting to blue, hundreds of tiny strands flowing into her arms, back and hands, but none of it mattered. Asami's body slumped forward, still bleeding, and Artana's heart skipped a beat as she felt a strong metal whip wrap around her ankle.

She was yanked out of the tree, dropping one of the fan-blades in the confusion, and sliced through the cable before she could lose more ground. Artana slid down the trunk and deflected a volley of glass with her fan. Kuvira leaped off of the truck and flicked metal razors at her head, missing her by inches.

The tears in the barrier were widening. Multiplying. She felt the humidity of the swamp, smelled a snowstorm and heard the loud industrial noises of a factory, and sand poured in from the desert, just as a few others did.

"So you finally found me, Kuvira!" yelled Artana, ripping the truck into thousands of metal shards and bending them at Kuvira. "How long has it been since Ba Sing Se?! Four years? Five?" Kuvira spun and swept the metal around her, redirecting it back at Artana with twice as much force. She launched herself out of harm's way as jagged steel drilled into the bark of the tree.

"And still missing your mark! If you-" She pulled her head back as a giant blade of glass hissed by her neck, and stumbled backward straight into another piece, which she only narrowly managed to deflect with a metal plate. It shattered and Artana covered her eyes, instinctively restarting the sandstorm. "Even now, you can't even get close!"

Dirt, sand, metal and rubble surged around her in a whirlwind, stopping Kuvira's advance. She grounded herself and marched forward, slowly. "You slaughtered my friends," she said, her voice edging on a growl. "Soldiers I'd grown with, trained with. You made that city a living nightmare for me and everyone else!"

Artana brushed off the glass as best she could and intensified the storm, drawing stone from as far around as she could muster. Yet Kuvira kept getting closer, as everything she bent at her was instantly deflected back into the whirlwind. The metal pins on her suit were gone, which only made her more dangerous. "And that makes this personal to you, doesn't it? The indomitable Kuvira, the great uniter, motivated by something so petty as revenge!" She swept up the sand unleashed a brutal, unending stream at Kuvira. What had worked with her comrades would surely end her as well. "How far you've fallen."

Kuvira pushed forward and casually held out her palm, blocking the sand from getting even two feet from her and scattering it constantly away from her. "I spent years believing I had ended the horrors you and your compatriots had wrought. That I had hunted down and executed every last one of you, only to learn that you were the one that got away. Slipped through the cracks of the very walls I was strengthening!" The more power energy Artana forced into her sandblast, the larger Kuvira's safezone grew. And she just kept marching forward, digging her boots out of the ground and increasing her pace. Walking, no longer dragging her feet. "I will not make the same mistake twice."

Artana breathed heavier and backed away, collapsing her fan into a blade. Good, she was focused on her. Concentrating entirely on the sand in front of her. Artana narrowed her eyes and-

Kuvira swept out her arm, bending a metal sword extending from her cuff, and charged forward, breaking through the storm like it was nothing. Artana blocked it with her own blade just before it sliced open her neck, the steel ringing against platinum echoing out. She started to panic as the blades scratched against one another, sparking. She electrified the blade, hoping for a dented piece of metal to allow the current to travel through Kuvira's armor, but the lightning surged over her, harmlessly.

"This is for the fallen." Kuvira slashed at her legs with her cables, and she fell to the ground, just barely deflecting another strike of her blade, at the cost of being disarmed. The sword went wide but still cut through her armor, leaving a long but shallow gash along her chest and arm. "For the innocents you burned to distract."

Artana reacted solely on instinct, concentrating the storm into a single attack. She bent enormous glass, metal and stone shards, the warped light of the torn sun glinting from one to the other, into shape high above them in a dome, all aimed at the epicenter. Them. Kuvira took the bait, taking her attention away for only a moment, and Artana slid out from beneath her, circled around to her back.

As she bent the metal around her into a proper sword, she saw Kuvira, with some effort, neutralize the falling earth by hurling it off into the distance. Then, mere inches from cutting into her back, Kuvira spun and deflected her strike, grabbing the back of her head and smashing it down into her knee, breaking her nose. "For every soldier who died a meaningless death today!" said Kuvira. Artana stumbled backward, blood pouring down her lips, her head swimming, and blocked a flurry of sword strikes with metal panels, each one weaker than the last.

"For the madness you unleashed!" Kuvira commandeered her panels and thrust them forward, denting her armor and sending her flying back towards a large rock wall, a remnant of her previous battle. Artana rolled into the stone and found herself pinned to it by metal cuffs that dug into her, surgically drilling through her defenses and into her flesh.

That time, it was no ploy. Artana was pinned and suffocating. She reached out to the earth as Kuvira advanced on her, sprinting forward with the nearly blinding tree at her back, now wielding Asami's fan-blade. Nothing would slow her down; she'd simply cut or bend her way through everything she'd throw at her faster than she could prepare another strike. But then she felt...an absence. No, not quite that. Something. Blindness.

And Kuvira was moving right on top of it.

Artana lurched forward with what little mobility she had and the ground quaked from the tons of displaced earth she was bending. She roared, and raised the fallen Satohawk out of the ground at a staggering rate, the platinum shell erupting just below Kuvira's boots, scattering dust and dirt in every direction, obscuring her vision.

The dusty air stopped moving and suddenly cleared with a careful curl of Kuvira's free arm and a clenching of her fist. She was unharmed. She'd managed to avoid it, something she couldn't have sensed or seen coming. Artana took a small breath and focused again. On the Satohawk. The designs, the inner workings, the moving parts, until she found what she was looking for.

Artana pulled on the ejection tab and held her breath as the rotor exploded into platinum shrapnel only a few feet from Kuvira. She rolled forward, protecting herself with a wall of earth and took off in a sprint, and right onto her mark. The explosive bolts on the shattered canopy blew, launching the cockpit frame towards Kuvira. She just barely managed to cut her way through the center, pivoting and slicing as she ducked through the opening, as it passed around her harmlessly.

Only for the pilot's seat to smash head first into her spine. Kuvira yelped in pain, and some of the impact was absorbed the parachute that burst open at her back, point blank, knocking her forward to the lip of the northern portal. Before she hit the ground she whipped Asami's fan-blade toward Artana. It cut through the air and stabbed itself into the stone, just beside her head. She met Kuvira's hazy eyes as she reached out, tightening the metal bindings around Artana's neck agonizingly slowly as she slumped over and finally, collapsed.

Dead. Unconscious. Out of the fight.

Artana choked and coughed as she barely managed to remove her bindings, the muscles in her arms burning. She breathed heavily and rubbed her neck, clenching her teeth through the pain as her wounds became more apparent. Nothing life threatening, not yet. But she was slower, tired. Kuvira had seen to that, and once again had come so close. She carefully got to her feet and pulled Asami's blade out of the rock, swinging it to test for damage. All but untouched. She looked up at the tree and checked her watch.

It was broken.

Artana sighed and made her way back to the trunk and began climbing up into the hollow. Slowly, gently, so as not to lose her footing. She pulled herself inside and took a hard look at Korra. Her aura was blue, with Raava's markings burned into her chest and abdomen, heat rising from her back. She was strained, her face showed it, and what muscles she could see were tensing and struggling to continue her efforts.

She stepped forward and was taken aback as Korra rose to one knee, splaying out her arms as if chains made of pure energy were pulling them behind her to the back of the tree. Her face contorted in rage and...nothing happened. Artana raised a brow and attempted to flick a metal strip on to her mouth, lest she try to breath fire or air, only for it to be deflected by a flash of yellow light. She tried again, to the same result, but that time she looked closer.

Korra's barrier was a sphere around her, most likely made of the spiritual energy surrounding her. A last ditch effort to buy time. She frowned and flourished Asami's blade. If anything were to get through it, it'd be platinum. Or enough force. Either one. She-

The inside of the tree hummed and memories began playing all around her. Nothing new, and obviously yet another effort to distract her so that...they… "Nilani," whispered Artana. She didn't even realize she was crying until the tears mixed with her blood and trickled down her chin.

Above her, around her, everything showed their time together. Hours upon hours watching her carve masterpieces unmatched. Late night discussions of the future, how they'd stay out of the Dai Li's sights, the creativity and lively energy she'd imbue with the mundane of their routine, meeting her mother, meeting her own parents, arguments and debates that lasted till morning.

"It may seem wrong to say, but…" She sniffed as she saw herself tearing apart their block as the fires spread through the lower ring, digging through scorched stone and ash. "You have no idea how relieved I am that you didn't live to see this."

Asami watched helplessly, eyes wide with fear, as Kuvira went down. As Artana began to ascend the stone and into the hollow of the three. Her body tensed, and she felt everything within her tighten to the point of snapping. "I need to wake up! I need to stall her, if even for a moment!"

"Then you have to let me go, Asami," said Hiroshi. The rest of the memories vanished, and the red pool of energy expanded, showing only Artana. "Focus on the pain. Where it is, where it's coming from. Where you've felt it before."

Asami took a haggard breath and turned her attention inward. The small of her back spasmed, her lower body burned, her stomach writhed, her heart was gripped in a vice, her throat was clear, her forehead throbbed and the crown of her head was numb as if it were not there at all. Blocked. The twisting in her belly, the fire, that was most familiar. But none of them felt like injuries, at least not physical ones. And if they weren't physical then-

Another memory played beside the larger pool. Flashes of medical texts and research notes flew by. The suit. The flow of chi in the human body perfectly aligned with the rest of their anatomy. And then it just clicked. Chakras. Hers were blocked.

"My throat-it opened when I said…" Asami raised her brows. "That I couldn't let you go, and it closed when I refused to believe that Artana wasn't me, which means…" A deep chill ran down her back. "She's not me. She's never been me if I'd walked a different path. She's…" Asami felt her headache subside, if only a little. "You. She can't be me, because a dark reflection of me is already you."

Hiroshi smiled. "You cannot win against yourself, since you've been fighting the wrong battle from the beginning."

"You really think this will change things out there?"

"You've already beaten me once before."

"But we were on equal footing back then! I'm nowhere near as capable as Artana!"

"Then you rise to her level. "

Asami opened her mouth to counter, but closed it. Rise to her level. It was impossible. She wasn't a bender. She wasn't the Avatar.

But she was still human. She had a spirit. She had a body. She was alive. She couldn't connect to the 'cosmic energy of the universe', but if everything was connected, then at some level she already was, because she was a part of the universe-

It was a paradox.

Asami's headache faded to a dull throb, her mind racing forward. Six chakra, almost. She could connect to the energy within herself. She couldn't bend it, but she could allow it to flow freely if she let him go. Asami took a deep breath. The base of her spine, lower body, stomach and throat stopped assaulting her. First. Second. Third. Fifth. "If everything is connected, and separation is merely an illusion-"

Hiroshi started to glow red, his voice and body warping into her own. "-then you can cheat. Use the sixth to access the seventh. Use the suit to force your way through. The perfect combination-"

"-of the physical-"

"-and spiritual."

Asami smiled sadly. It was time. She hugged what was left of him. "Goodbye." Her heart relaxed, finally, her grief making way for love, and she felt his body shift around her. Four. She pulled back and found that she was staring into her own eyes. The other her was flickering red, the same as her father had been.

Asami furrowed her brow. She had no idea what this was going to do, but at the very least it would slow her down. Artana thinks she can account for one unquantifiable variable? What about two? Asami's headache vanished and her doppelganger stopped flickering, turning into a solid, deep red.

Sixth.

"Remember to breath," said her double.

She fused with her and Asami felt newfound energy flow through her, followed by the same red aura. Asami looked at the red pool, at Artana hammering away at the slowly cracking spirit barrier that Korra had erected, and inhaled, her heart surging with power. Beating louder and louder, stronger and stronger, until the light blinded her.

And then, she opened her eyes.

Artana threw her entire body into every strike of the blade, not allowing Korra's barrier to vanish between hits. No matter how strong she was, her body was still human. She had a breaking point, and judging by the growing cracks in the spherical shield, she was nearing it by the second. She thought she saw something red out of the corner of her eye, but wiped away the blood, which didn't work because there was just more blood. Whatever.

Didn't matter. Nothing did. Few more seconds.

Finally, the barrier shattered, leaving Korra defenseless. She raised her arms and unceremoniously swung at her head-

The sound of metal hitting metal rang out and Artana looked up as she found her grip wavering, and her stance loosening. Asami glared at her with eyes ablaze, holding the sword she'd dropped at her feet, blocking her final blow and pushing forward with rage so thick she could feel it. Her wounds were glowing, somehow rapidly healing themselves. Which was completely and utterly impossible.

Artana's mouth fell open a little and her eyes widened in abject confusion. Baffled. Shocked to the point of being momentarily stunned. "How…"

Asami's entire body flickered with red flames, and she growled, biting down into her upper arm and tearing out second pin with her teeth. An impossible red aura surrounded her, giving her an almost inhuman appearance and glow. She roared, pulled back her fist, lightning arcing off of her palm, and smashed it into Artana's neck. Her metal defenses kicked in automatically, blocking the strike.

At first.

Wind whipped through the air from the force of impact and the steel dented, sending Artana hurtling out of the tree, end over end until she caught herself just before hitting the ground, bending the earth to slide with her for a controlled landing. She looked up at the tree, at Asami standing at the lip of it, still burning brightly, sword in hand.

And Artana had not planned for that.

Asami's heart pounded in her chest, sending power she could barely contain surging through her body. Her arm shook as she tried to steady her breathing, feeling more alert and energized than she had in her entire life, as her fire coursed through her as if she were going to burst. She felt overwhelmed; every sensation, from pain to elation, rushed through her to the point of near overstimulation. She needed time to adjust that she simply didn't have, but still, she could take solace in one simple fact. The one thing she could focus on.

She had hit Artana. She had pushed her back. So she could do it again. And again, and again; as many times and as long as Korra needed her to, she could. She would. At that thought, her breath began to stabilize, and so did the rest of her. Not entirely, but enough to stay in control.

Which was all that she needed.

Asami focused and glared down at Artana, who was still recovering from the shock. She steadied her blade and her eyes flicked around the destroyed battlefield, noting the tears in the barrier and little else. She turned back to Artana-she was gone.

She held her breath, and her energy almost instantly vanished, the extreme shift nearly blacking her out as she fell to her knee, unbearably dizzy and feeling as though she might vomit. Breathe. Remember to breathe. BREATHE. Asami squeezed the hilt of her blade and grunted, her fire slipping away from her each time she neared it like something on the edge of her memory; always there but not, all the same.

Artana exploded out of the ground at the base of the tree, metal, earth and glass circling around her and kicked out in mid-air just as she reached the peak of her jump, bending it all not at Asami, but through her. At Korra.

Asami reached out in her mind and took the fire back, just needing that final push, reigniting not a moment too soon and sliced, deflected and blocked everything, moving faster than she knew she could. A few bits of shrapnel got by her and fell to the floor of the hollow, and Artana rolled, conjuring a platform of stone behind her to propel herself back into the opening.

But Asami had seen that before, so she countered, boosting above to meet her halfway and spun, slashing downward. Artana frantically blocked her strike with her stolen edge, sparks flying as the electrified blades slid against one another, and lost the struggle, forced back to the rocks below. Artana landed and flipped backwards, dragging the earth with her and bent a trident of stone out of the ground, catching Asami head on.

The wind was knocked out of her, and she was sapped of her strength for a moment before regaining control. She would not waste this chance. Asami pulled herself up, red aura enveloping her once again, and over the sharpened rock pillar just before it smashed into the bark and boosted down the angled stone, sliding between volleys of glass and metal. She leaped forward towards Artana, and swung her blade down, missing her head by a hair, but cutting deep into the ground, bits of rock scattering around them.

Before she could do anything else, Asami was assaulted on all sides by a barrage of stone spikes and pillars erupting out of the ground like ravenous weeds, each one shattering as they hit her. She tried to boost forward but her leg got caught in the stone, forcing her to stumble long enough for Artana to wrap her in metal cables, constricting her arms, chest, and slowly her airway. She began flickering red wildly, breath more short by the second and forced herself to let the pain wash over her.

"You bought yourself two minutes." Artana held her there, stance steady and studied her closely. "I don't care what this is, but breath is clearly a major factor. Again, disappointing." She squeezed tighter. "No more surprises."

Asami focused on her stomach. Her diaphragm, her lungs, her breath, and felt the energy spark within her. She fed it, fueled it, breathing as much as she could and the flames grew larger. Stronger. Then, with one final push, she tore herself out of the metal wires, burning aura brighter than ever, and boosted forward and low, ducking underneath Artana's blade and quickly disarming her, sending the weapon flying and stabbing into the ground. She lunged forward, palm arcing with electricity at Artana's unprotected face, only for her to reverse it and throw her over her shoulder.

Asami landed to a rolling stop and grit her teeth. Was she toying with her? Tired? Either way, she needed to get a hang of this, and fast. Lure her out of the spirit world or, more likely, knock her through a tear. "How's that for a surprise?"

"Not much of one," she said, rubble beginning to tremble and spin around her. "Buying time works both ways. Delays the inevitable for you, and allows me to catch my breath." She moved to start the sandstorm but...Asami had seen that too. Several times.

And then it made sense.

Asami pushed off of the ground, taking off into an inhuman sprint and snatched her blade out of the rock, flourishing them both as lightning arced off of them. She caught Artana off-guard and swung at her with a cross slash, only for her to barely block it with two hastily conjured blades of her own, cracking from the effort. The storm raged around them and Asami bided her time, pushing forward and sending more lightening into her blades, fully aware it was nothing more than a fancy light show.

"I just figured you out," she said, not even bothering to look up at what she knew was coming next. "You're not built to go up against someone head on. You just lean on the same old tricks, because you've got nowhere to fall back to. That's all you've ever done."

Artana scowled and her boots sunk further into the earth, imperfect swords cracking further from the pressure. "Oh, how intuitive of you to notice something everyone else already did." Clearly, Asami was taking up her entire attention. Good. "We're in the middle of what is effectively an open quarry. There isn't much else to do."

Asami licked her lips and saw the tiny hint of shadow form above her. Few more seconds to get this just right. She kept her eyes on the storm, waiting for the perfect moment to- now. "For you." Asami expanded her blades into fans and launched Artana back and into her own storm, knocking her against the stone and metal and hurtling into the nearest tear. Asami sprinted away from the center of the tempest as it fell apart and looked back to see spears of glass and metal pierce the very spot she'd been standing in.

Same old tricks.

Asami boosted and flipped through the tear, feeling her equilibrium shift as she passed between worlds, finding herself suddenly twenty feet in the air, a mass of baffled sailors looking away from something else toward her. She flared out her fans to slow her descent and rolled as she hit the ground, cracking the wood. She looked up at the crowd, eyes adjusting to the sunrise peeking out over the horizon.

Earth Empire uniforms, aviator jackets, and a calm sea breeze. An aircraft carrier. And she had to admit it was kind of nice to see that it appeared to be constructed correctly.

Asami rose to her feet and looked around, unable to spot Artana anywhere in the crowd. The fact that she wasn't being attacked instantly was odd, too. She coughed, unable to adapt to the sudden change in air pressure so quickly, and her fire went out. Though she wasn't on the verge of blacking out anymore. Now she was just tired. "Did anyone see a woman about my height, my build, with brown hair and blood on her face? Maybe saw her fly overboard?"

One of the sailors stepped forward, a younger woman, pale in the face. "Yeah, we did. She told us the next person to come out of that thing was part of the team that's ripping the sky apart!"

Asami furrowed her brows. "Yes, well, that's technically true, but I'm not a member of the Red Lotus. I'm trying to stop this!" Ridiculous tactic. Why would she tell her own soldiers-

"That's what she said you'd say!" yelled the woman, drawing a sword. "KILL THE TRAITOR!"

And then the entire crew of the flight deck charged at her.

Asami sheathed her blades and held out her palms. "Wait, wait, I'm not here to hurt you!" They didn't listen. Getting closer. Around a hundred angry sailors wanting her head. Asami turned around, pulling up her original schematics for the carrier and caught a glance of the tear moving further away from the ship, or rather the other way around. "Damnit."

They were going to force her below deck; it would be easier to corner her and overwhelm her that way. Less room to maneuver. And she couldn't just leave through the tear, since Artana could commandeer the ship and fire through it.

Asami shook her head and drew her blades, expanding them into fans. Killing them would be faster. Easier. But then she'd be no better than the woman she was trying to stop. She electrified her fans and took a deep breath, feeling the fire radiate out of her heart and stomach with a powerful glow.

She really hoped none of them had a heart condition.

Baatar pulled off the access panel to the bomb at the edge of the train car, and shielded his eyes as purple light filled his vision. Armed, though thankfully it wasn't a large one. Relatively. Just enough to destroy a cruiser. "Disarming this would be more dangerous than controlled detonation," he said, not looking over at the engineers behind him. "Load this onto a truck and drop it ten miles out."

One of the engineers cleared his throat. "Sir, that's not possible. The only thing that could transport something that large is a train, or an enormous airship."

Baatar raised a brow and turned around. "What are you talking about? It's no bigger than a polar bear dog."

"That's not the whole bomb, sir."

"...say again?"

"That's just the generator car to start the reaction. The rest of the vines are in the nine train cars behind it, and they're all hard-wired together to prevent sabotage."

Baatar's eyes widened and he spun around to look down the length of the track, which had stopped being constructed quite recently, tools and metal beams strewn about Sure enough, nine cars behind him. He did some quick math in this head. Roughly the amount left in the cache hidden in the facility they built the Colossus. Perfect. "...do you people have any idea what this could do if it went off?"

They nodded grimly.

"So you're aware that this would literally crack a faultline?! "

They nodded again.

One of them spoke up. "In all fairness, sir, there's no evidence that the spirit world has faultlines, so there wasn't any real danger until-"

Baatar felt like slamming his head against the wall. "No. Listen to me very carefully. Spirit weapons do not work in the spirit world. If your orders were to detonate this in there then-who designed this?"

"Lieutenant Shieng, sir."

Baatar frowned. "...you already killed him, didn't you?"

"Well, we didn't but-"

"Stop." Baatar pinched the bridge of his nose and turned back around to face the massive bomb. "Fine, here's what we're going to do. I assume you didn't burn the copies of his schematics, we'll have to work backwards from there. I have a feeling there are enough redundancies in here to make sure it goes off than should be possible."

It occurred to Baatar that the most probable purpose of the bomb itself was to distract Asami, rather than himself, keeping her occupied so she couldn't help defend Korra. But, he'd been working with vines longer than she had, so he was simply more qualified to save a continent.

More or less.

Kuvira awoke slowly. The excruciating throb in her spine made the process faster, and within a few seconds she was fully alert. Lying on her side at the edge of the portal, facing the destroyed battlefield. She wasn't dead, which was good.

She struggled to get to her feet, unable to truly find her bearings, and fumbled with the latches on her chest armor, the large piece of metal falling to the floor in a dented heap. Kuvira reached around her back and carefully pulled out several of the booster suit needles, and the shock from the loss of energy nearly made her blackout. She fell on all fours and grunted, forcing herself back up to standing, despite the pain and exhaustion.

Kuvira could see the battered bodies of Mako, Bolin and Opal, but the fact that the tree was still glowing said Korra was still in there, doing what she could. She couldn't spot Asami or Artana, which meant they were up in the tree, most likely. First, medical attention. Second, debriefing.

She slowly made her way through the portal, the shift in temperature causing her to shiver, and dragged her feet over to her jeep, grabbing the radio. "This is Kuvira speaking," she said, keeping her voice level. "I need an emergency medical response team at the Tree of Time. Five severely injured, in possibly life-threatening condition."

" Understood, Kuvira. We're dispatching a team. They'll arrive within the hour."

"Good. Kuvira out." She checked her watch. Broken.

Kuvira made her way back through the portal and raised a brow at what she saw. Mako, Bolin and Opal pulling one another out of their suits. She made her way over to them, her back continuing to spasm, and sat down beside them, against a smooth rock. "I radioed for a medical team."

"Good thinking," said Opal, finally popping a few needles out of Bolin's suit, who then immediately fell on the ground like a ton of bricks. She helped him up, clearly a little dazed herself, and sighed. "Any idea where Asami is?"

"No. She isn't in the tree?"

"She's not," said Mako, wiping flop sweat off of his brow. "Korra's still okay, I think, but Artana's gone, too. It's almost like they vanished."

"Or maybe they fell through one of the holes in the sky?" asked Bolin, his stomach growling. "They're kind of all over the place, so it-you know it could happen. Maybe. Or, maybe, even better, Asami did it on purpose and kicked Artana into one or something to protect Korra!"

A blue, wavy wall of energy materialized in front of them at the base of the tree. It was foggy, but cleared up after a few seconds to reveal...Asami. Glowing bright red in inhuman flames, fending off a mob of Earth Empire sailors through what looked like the lower deck of a very large ship.

Bolin opened his mouth, closed it, then opened his mouth again. "Or that, because it looks like Varrick was right, somehow. That could also be what happened. What's happening." He turned to the rest of them. "...what's happening, exactly?"

And then Asami kicked down a solid steel door, straight off its hinges.

Opal widened her eyes. "Apparently that. "

Asami sprinted through the cramped crew quarters, electrocuting a sailor as he rounded a corner, weapon in hand, and throwing his unconscious body back at the angry mob that had followed her through the upper decks of the carrier. He bowled over a few of them, but the rest just kept coming, and she couldn't blame them. The Red Lotus had used them like expendable tools, and still were, though they weren't aware of it.

She leaped out of the hatch, slammed it shut behind her and gripped the steel handle-wheel, turning it closed and warping the mechanism all but beyond repair. The lack of metal being tossed at her probably meant there weren't any benders chasing her. Which was good, because she needed to make her way to the lifeboats as fast as possible.

Artana could escape and somehow make her way back to the tree that way, but thankfully using a monoplane on the top deck was all but impossible. Artana was capable, but she wasn't an entire crew. Launching a plane was a team effort, even for her.

Asami brushed aside the the sounds of bloodthirsty curses and loud banging against the inner hull as the soldiers tried in vain to smash their way out. They'd find a way out, but later. After it was over.

She rounded a corner and shouldered open another hatch, crushing the metal as it nearly snapped off its hinges. The engines were quieter, so she must be heading towards the bow. On a more positive note, she was getting the hang of all the red. Nowhere near mastery, and she wasn't feeling jittery or overwhelmed anymore, but with each breath it became less of an unknown.

Her metal boots echoed across the hardened floor as she followed the posted signs, not that she necessarily needed them. Then again, though she designed the original, the carrier she was currently in could be...different, in odd ways. She'd already noticed a few discrepancies; there weren't as many access points to the lower decks as she'd envisioned. Or, none that were obvious.

A doorway she boosted past swung open and the captain, judging by her uniform, and several sailors burst out into the hallway, hurling just as many obscenities as they did metal. Asami ducked and spun back around, drifting her Penshe between shards of steel as she quickly drew one of her fans and incapacitated her assailants with a few snap critical strikes, lightning arcing off their bodies as they fell to the floor. She tossed them back into room, broke the door and backpedaled into the hallway.

If they woke up too soon, they'd think twice about leaving that room, metalbenders or not.

Asami sheathed her fan-blade and wiped sweat off of her brow as she finally came upon the access ladder closest to the port lifeboats. She made her way up and out the hatch, once again rendering it unusable behind her and looked up at the series of suspended boats. No single crane was empty, and after checking each individual boat, she found nothing. Asami frowned and launched herself up the nearby piping, bounding up to the flight deck and boosting across to the other side of the carrier, taking a quick count of the planes still present, just in case.

Just as many as were there when she'd arrived. Another good sign, relatively. They were nearing the shore. Asami landed and bent to one knee, quickly drawing both of her blades as she made a scan of the boats. Once again, nothing out of place or missing.

Artana was not hiding in the hopes of escaping. But she was hiding, which seemed strange to Asami. Artana wasn't one to do something without purpose, and her ultimate goal was still to get back to the tree. So she wasn't buying time, because distracting Asami would only hinder her own efforts. Unless, that is, she wasn't so much as hiding as she was keeping Asami occupied so that she could do... something.

Asami huffed and sheathed her blades, focusing on the very real and physical objects around her. How her feet were separated from her boots. How her hair could be cut. Simple, interconnected things that her mind took for granted based on assumption. Slowly, her fire extinguished, leaving her a little winded.

"Inhale, stomach out. Exhale, stomach in," she muttered to herself. It wasn't as much control as she'd have liked, but she wasn't a bender, so having an 'off' switch was more than she'd expected. At least she wouldn't end forcing her body to starve itself without doing so on purpose.

Asami rubbed her eyes and racked her brain, trying to come up with a place Artana could be. She wouldn't be swimming, and there certainly wasn't a secret submarine around. What she needed was transport and...energy? Artana was tired, but she wasn't foolish enough to take a nap. Which mean that-

"The galley!" she said, boosting into a sprint and, with some effort, reignited her fire. Armor as an extension of her body, naturally connected through muscle, bone and steel. Pressure of feet, on her boots, on the floor, all reacting in tandem. Again, simple interconnected things, but recontextualized. She'd known perspective was powerful, but this was magnitudes more than should be possible.

Asami came to a sliding stop as she finally reached the galley, having hopped and bounced her way between decks both from memory and the well-placed directional signs, and carefully approached one of the doors. It wasn't locked, and she could hear the hint of something else besides the hum of the lights and engine beyond it.

She could break down the door, but that would mean attacking first. And it could just as easily be a trap. She could go up one level and maybe tear open the floor, but that wasn't something she felt like depending on. Or testing. But, the longer the waited, the worse it could get. Then again, Artana surely must have heard her jumping around-

The door-wheel spun and the hatch creaked open, as if someone had lightly nudged it. Asami centered herself and focused on what was important. Stalling her. Beating her was not the goal. Killing her was not her mission. Stopping her, was.

Asami used her fan to peek around the corner and into the galley, using the finely polished steel like a mirror. A dozen empty benches, plenty of half finished food on plates strewn about, and completely devoid of anyone except for...Artana, with an alarm clock and her helmet beside her. Eating jerky and steamed vegetables, absently waving at her through the reflection.

"It's not a trap, and so we don't have to repeat our previous conversation: I have never lied to you."

Asami scoffed. "That's not reassuring."

"Neither is the fact that whoever was working the galley left the gas on, but you don't hear me getting hung up on it." She gulped down some water. "Well, perhaps a little. It's unsafe, and left unchecked it could have set this whole room on fire."

Asami widened her eyes. "What kind of shipwright would build a gas powered stove into a naval galley? That's extremely dangerous, not to mention irresponsible."

"The Earth Empire has almost no experience in seafaring, so that is most likely why. I definitely recall your original schematics specifying electric."

"...did you turn off the-"

Artana rolled her eyes. "Yes, I turned off the gas. Like you, I don't have the fondest memories of immolation." She bit down on a piece of jerky. "I take it that the reason you're not showing your face is because it's covered in blood, yes?"

"What?" Asami wrinkled her nose and pivoted into the doorway. "Why would I be covered in blood?" A better question would typically be why they weren't trying to kill one another, but Asami knew better than to ask. Artana was talking casually, treating their encounter as if very little had happened. This was ideal.

"I wasn't entirely sure how you would react." Artana raised her brows. "I had guessed there would be some blood, not much but there all the same, perhaps not even dried as your patience wore thin. But I guess you managed to evade the majority of the crew without drawing blood. Assuming none had a heart condition."

Asami suppressed the urge to point out how she'd already thought of that. "You didn't even lie to them. Why? Why not make it easier on yourself and say I was you?"

"Because, again, I don't lie. At least, not anymore. Do it too much and you lose yourself in them. Extreme, I know, but sometimes that's the only way to fix how you operate." Artana gestured for her to come forward. "Go ahead, sit. I'm not done with my food quite yet."

"I'll stand," she said, taking another step into the room.

Artana shrugged. "Fine."

Asami scowled. "So that's it? You're just going to sit there and eat?"

"And what about you? Somehow, you've been warping steel and you tossed me around like a ragdoll. Why aren't you trying to kill me?" She frowned. "I don't know how, but you've attained abilities that are effectively superhuman, and yet, here you are, not using them. " She took an angry bite out of her food. "You should have bled to death several times over by now, but no, you get up, burst into flames, heal your own wounds and-what are you waiting for?!" she demanded.

"Nothing." Asami shook her head. "Just because I can do something, doesn't mean I'm going to do it."

"I beat your friends half to death. Some may even be dead."

"I know, but killing you won't change that." Asami tightened her grip on her blades. "Killing Kuvira won't bring my dad back. Killing you won't bring back everyone you've slaughtered."

"And you're really willing to risk everything, everyone, on the idea that you can incapacitate me? That you can take me down clean?" She circled her face with her hand.

"If I wasn't, I'd be no better than you."

"You're mistaking wisdom from experience and naivete. Mercy and compassion have their time and place. This isn't it."

"Mercy? No. No, this has nothing to do with mercy. I don't need to kill you, or beat you." Asami gestured to Arana. "I just need to stall you, and you're well aware of that."

"Burning time works both ways, we've been over this. The more I recover, the faster you'll die."

"Dying today doesn't scare me, Artana. It's me outliving everyone else that does. I would rather die than go through that again."

Artana shifted in her seat, settling her hands on the table. "The only person who you know still lives is Korra. I'm not shaming you. I understand where you're coming from. But that doesn't make it any less sickening, does it?" She leaned forward, eyes darkening. "To be faced with the reality that your closest friends, those you call family, may be dead, but you can endure that, because the one you love the most is still with you."

Asami felt a very strong pang of guilt and her fire flickered. No. No, she would not get into her head like that. "...yes. The sad truth is that I'm...expendable, in the grand scheme of things. In her life." Let the guilt flow. Do not linger on it. It exists. It is there. It is not everything. "She'd find someone again, I don't doubt for a moment she'd work through her grief. But it's just not-"

Artana perked up, clearly proud of herself in probing for weaknesses. It wouldn't work. Nothing would work. Not for long. "The same. I know."

"Then don't you want to go out fighting?"

Artana sighed and tucked some loose hair back into her bun. "I'd rather die watching how it ends, if I had a choice. Nothing quite so violent. But I can't accomplish that until Korra is dead, which you have made very, very complicated."

Asami couldn't help but smirk at the hint of anger in her voice. "What's wrong? Not a fan of improvising?"

Artana put her helmet on. "Hm? Oh, no, I'm quite good at it, and if anything the tears make it easier to get back, rather than relying on a portal." She got up from her seat and took her empty dishware over to the sink behind the counter. "Force of habit."

"You didn't answer my question."

"...well, to be honest, I thought the alarm would have gone off while I was speaking. But there's still around thirty more seconds left."

Asami paled. "Thirty seconds until-"

"Not what you're thinking." Artana waved her off. "And no, I'm not going to tell you how much time we have left, since you were foolish enough to forget. Your internal clock must not be very good."

"That still doesn't-"

The alarm clock rang.

Asami was thrown to the ground as she heard, and felt, the carrier's massive hull smash into something even larger. Tables, benches, plates and silverware went flying and the overhead lighting sparked on and off, as the ship continued to quake, ear shattering metal screeching against stone all around her. She rolled to her feet, only to get struck head on with load bearing steel pillar, pinning her against the back wall, dropping her blades which slid back with her. She tried to push it off of her, only to find far more resistance than there should be.

"You should have checked the bridge!" said Artana, one shaking hand stretched toward the steel pillar. She mangled the gas pipes with her free hand and grabbed a lighter. "You've become far more durable than I have time, but no matter how strong you are, if you can't breathe, you'll die." She walked towards the exit, redoubling her efforts at pinning Asami to the wall. "That is, if the flames don't do it first."

The ceiling started to shudder and collapse, metal plates and bits of concrete falling to the floor. Asami pushed forward with all she had, her arms screaming, but couldn't manage to get the pillar to move more than a few inches. She would not die in fire. She would not die in fire.

Asami roared and gave herself just enough room to raise her legs into the steel. She kicked out and the beam bent in half, flying across the room and nearly smashing into Artana as she hopped out of the galley. Asami picked up her blades, boosted through the door just as it was closing, her feet barely touching the ground as she drifted into the archway, when she saw a tiny flicker of light pass over her.

The lighter.

Asami spun around, expanded her fans and made herself small, covering her body like a shield. The gas detonated, blowing the door off its hinges, and pushed her back down the hallway, heating her fans as flames licked across the edges. She sliced into the wall, her blade cutting through several feet as she slowed herself to a stop and heard explosions begin to travel across the ship.

Asami spun around, cutting her sword out of the wall and-Artana was gone. No, not gone. She sprinted down the hall, back towards the access ladders, keeping her head on a swivel, and couldn't hear any footsteps besides her own. Artana beached the carrier on purpose, which meant she had an escape route back to the spirit world planned. Must've seen a tear, maybe with a telescope. Either way, she needed to get off of the ship, and fast. There was no telling how much longer it'd keep together-

A pipe shot out of the wall, knocking her blades out of her hands. Artana's arm burst through the same wall as she turned to face it and pulled her through it, tossing her into the one of the women's shower stalls. Artana swung her own hastily made swords to puncture her heart, and Asami caught them by their edge just before they pierced her chest.

They looked at one another, dumbfounded at the sight. Artana growled and put more of her weight into her strike, the blades getting just a bit closer before Asami squeezed down and warped the metal, turning it back on itself. Asami kicked out Artana's legs, rolled to her feet and tried to boost her way back into the hall, only for Artana grab her in a chokehold from behind.

"No more of this!" she yelled, squeezing harder and twisting her neck.

Asami choked and clawed at Artana's arms, feeling her fire nearly fade. She smashed her elbow into her stomach over and over again until her grip loosened just enough for another full breath. Asami took it in, her energy returning, and struck her again with her elbow, powering through her metal defenses, wind howling from the impact, and knocking her back.

She spun around and struck at Artana's unprotected face with her electrified palm, only for her to deflect the blow and dent the steel wall beside her. Asami ducked under another blade as it was bent into shape and yelped as Artana pulled back on her hair by the wolftail. She yanked her head away and bit her cheek as the blade unevenly cut through her hair, ripping some of it out by the roots, and leaving her bleeding.

Asami backflipped into the hall, snatched up her blades and, as maddening as it was, felt far more violated than she should. "You cut my hair," she seethed, electrifying her blades, only to realize that, again, Artana had vanished. Asami moved back into the showers and caught a brief glimpse of her new...look (it wasn't horrible , if one ignored the blood ) in one of the less shattered mirrors, as she found Artana's method of escape. Hole in the ceiling, only half sealed. She cut it open and started bounding up through what she assumed was a maintenance tunnel, boosting off one wall to the next as she ascended.

She would not escape.

Opal hissed as one of the Earth Empire medics bandaged her side. The response team had burst through the portal, started to tend to them and then almost immediately gotten caught up with the strange live 'mover' that was being displayed on the base of the tree. And she had to admit, it was certainly engaging. Up until the part where Artana had done something she hadn't even realized was unthinkable until it had happened.

She'd cut off Asami's hair.

"Nobody say anything if-when she gets back!" said Opal. "I'm sure we can find a stylist to fix it!"

Asami and Artana traded blows across the flight deck of the beached carrier, gas explosions popping up along the edges and setting the wood ablaze. Airplanes were tossed around like rocks and but Asami somehow managed to dodge or cut her way through all of them.

"Well, yeah, she could just cut it shorter, even it out on the sides…" said Bolin, between giant gulps of water. His face may have been mostly broken, but his spirit wasn't. "Maybe something a little like yours?"

"A little ."

"I think that'd work," said Mako. "I don't think she'd like it very much, but it'd work until it grows back."

Artana leaped through a tear just off the bow of the ship, and Asami followed her through it, tackling her to the ground.

"I fail to understand how any of this is important," said Kuvira.

"It's called levity!" yelled Opal, her face turning red.

Asami let go as Artana kicked her in the face, knocking her out of her hold. She jumped backwards and almost fell into a raging river, narrowly avoiding a large fireball. It took Asami a moment to register that something wasn't quite right with that. Two White Lotus sentries were posted on either side of an enormous ancient stone door, just as it slammed shut.

One of them grabbed a radio as Artana bobbed and weaved around large bursts of flame and lightning, earthbending a four-story wall, and fifty feet wide, out of the ground right in front of Asami's face.

"We've got another tear at the entrance!" she heard one of them say, glowering at the wall and taking a few steps back.

" Another ?" said Artana. "Where's the first one?"

Asami boosted forward into a running jump, making it just barely to the top, and rolled forward, sliding down the wall with her fans expanded to slow her descent. She landed just as the huge doors slammed shut, one sentry already dead, and the other barely alive.

"...Zaheer…" he managed to choke out, and Asami didn't need clarification. She knew exactly where she was, and what she was going to do, should she get the opportunity.

Asami sheathed her swords, ground her teeth and threw herself forward, pitching her Penshe into the red as she glided across the ground. She threw the stone doors open, the massive constructs wedging themselves into the edge of the interior rock wall. and sped past the growing count of dead, stained white robes. The entryway was even larger than the archway itself, and it was lit with eerie green, glowing rocks. The air was stale, and she caught a glimpse of Artana lowering into the floor on an elevator.

Asami cut her way into the shaft and leaped down it, widening her eyes as she realized just how fast that elevator was moving and how deep the tunnel apparently went. She grabbed on to the suspension cable and slowed herself down, sparks flying off of her gloves from the friction. Once she'd slowed down enough, she let herself fall the rest of the way, landing on the roof of the lift, shaking its frame, the tiny platinum cage providing an odd sort of stalemate.

"Go ahead, cut the lines ," said Artana, her voice muffled from within the metal. "Trap me in this platinum box and let gravity decide my fate."

Artana couldn't attack her from in there, and if she cut her way through, she'd only leave herself vulnerable. Asami licked the inside of her lips and looked at the elevator cables around her. It would be so easy. Just a few good slashes and it would all be over. The yellow lighting illuminating the shaft flew past her, level by level, as they descended further into the mountain. She pressed her blade into one of the metal lines, narrowing her eyes as a few tiny strands snapped.

"You can't do it. Any rational person would, but you can't." She paused. "No, not quite that. It stems from something deeper, doesn't it? More than just responsibility and morality."

Asami didn't respond, but pulled her blade away once she started to flicker red. She took a small breath and let her misplaced shame flow through her unobstructed. She wouldn't psyche herself out, that was for certain.

The elevator slowed to a stop and Asami winced as she immediately heard the sounds of hopeless fighting, and then silence. She cut her way into the elevator and hopped down to see Artana messing with the security door's metalbending mechanism, a dozen bodies nailed to the walls, floor and ceiling with steel and stone.

Asami tightened the grip on her blades and scowled as she made eye contact with Artana.

"We have equal claim," said Artana, finally showing some sort of anger.

"No. We really don't."

Zaheer sat in the center of his prison, firmly on the ground. The feeling of cold, hard metal pushing up on him was something he had yet to acclimatize to. In many ways it was torture, as no matter how many times he tried, regardless of the method, every effort in leaving the ground behind resulted only in excruciating migraines.

A dozen White Lotus sentries stood guard around him in a circle, and he grew more attentive as the tear in the back wall grew larger, and the sounds of battle echoed through the platinum door to his cell. Things were silent for a moment, and the White Lotus appeared to lower their guard some.

And then the door exploded inward with a bright red glow, revealing none other than Nilani, or whoever she was, bursting her way into the room with a sly grin, and a woman engulfed in unnatural fire roaring after her. The White Lotus attacked them both with earth and fire, and Zaheer exploited the distraction.

With what limited mobility he had, he airbent four of his guards into the wall and another three up into the air, letting their fall take them out of commission. He countered a chi-blocker, inches before reaching him, by blasting air out of his mouth and sending them tumbling into the quickly deteriorating battlefield.

Giant swaths of stone were being torn out of the walls and slung at the woman on fire, who deftly avoided them with superhuman speed and agility, bounding and leaping between razor sharp metal and jagged rocks, slicing through what she couldn't dodge with blades filled with lightning. The rest of his guards fell around him from the shrapnel the fight around him created, and Zaheer noted something very odd.

Each time the woman on fire got close to Nilani, her blades expanded into to the fans of a Kyoshi Warrior and she struck to incapacitate, not to kill. She lunged at Nilani's face with her electrified palm over and over again, which...looked almost familiar. Finally, she caught Nilani, her palm covering her face, and lighting surged over the sandbender's helmet.

Which did nothing.

The woman on fire tried to pull back but was being held in place by metal that quickly threatened to surround her and tear her to pieces. But, before that could happen, she growled and slammed her palm into Nilani's chest, sending her flying through the tear and ripping her helmet off of of her head in the process, freeing her from danger.

She crushed the helmet in her hands and turned to face Zaheer, eyes burning with even more anger than her entire body. And it was only then that he realized who she was. He twisted his arms, airbending what he could to keep her at a distance, aiming to knock her through the tear as well, but she shrugged off his attacks like they were gentle nudges.

It was possible they were.

Asami kicked Zaheer in the head, cracking his skull and knocking him to the ground, very obviously breaking his wrists and ankles from the sheer force as his bindings held him to the floor. She bent down and dug her knee into his chest, cracking a rib. Then two. Three. Four, letting her rage take over with full consent. Even with the entire prison crumbling around her, ancient stone cracking and shattering around the chamber, nothing else mattered.

Not Artana. Not the world. Not herself. Nothing mattered but him and Korra. There were no words to express the tempest of rage, hatred and disgust she felt towards the man, for all the pain and suffering and death he'd brought on. For what he had forced Korra to do, the ideals she'd had to abandon. But then, she didn't need words.

Actions always spoke louder.

Asami grabbed his throat and collapsed his windpipe without ceremony. She rose to her feet and found that she was crying. She wiped the tears away and turned toward the tear, retaking control of herself and letting her rage flow through her, no longer festering. Asami boosted and leaped through the tear, leaving the collapsing prison, and Zaheer, behind her, once and for all.

Asami landed in a massive pool of mud, rain pouring down in a heavy storm. She looked up as lightning flashed in the sky and her eyes quickly adjusted to the near pitch black darkness.

She was in the swamp, ankle deep in mud.

Asami bit her tongue, and quickly undid the latches on her very loud turbofan, dropping it in the mud with a loud clank. She quickly retied her scabbards to her back and she jumped up the nearest tree, bounding from branch to branch. She heard a wave of mud crash into where she'd been and shivered. Her Penshe was out of the fight, but the armor still worked, and so did the suit, so she could still move. Just...not nearly as well.

She found a wider branch to settle on and steadied her breath, making it silent. Besides the brief bolts of lightning, she could barely see a thing...except for all the red around her. Asami focused and separated herself from her boots. The swamp. The mud, and the rain drowning her fire.

"Clever clever clever!" yelled Artana, to her left and rather far away. Had she really been thrown that far? "This whole glowing red thing you're doing is getting really annoying!" she roared, clearly becoming a little unhinged. "Except now I can't see you, and dammit, did you steal Zaheer from me?! DID YOU?!" For someone so dependent on guerilla warfare, she was only broadcasting where she was. Unless that was the point. Draw her out, drown her in mud.

Asami couldn't fight through mud. She'd get swallowed in moments. She ran a hand through her hair. Which wasn't there. Focus. The goal was to stall her. Distract her. Not to win.

Wait and listen.

There was nothing but the rain, and the lightning had stopped.

Wave after wave swept through the trees at random intervals, with no real sense of pattern or direction. Was she getting tired? Sloppy? Maybe the suit was finally starting to kill her. And soon as she finished that thought, she was thrown out of the tree by mud and stone, falling through vines and landing hard on her side, just at the edge of the muddy lake. She slowly picked herself up and crouched down, shoving a few vines out of her way.

"You know, I've been thinking about why you won't kill me a lot !" yelled Artana, followed by a tree being uprooted and cracking on the ground not quite so far away. "And I think I figured it out, because you I'm pretty fucking sure you killed Zaheer, so you're either an idiot, which you aren't, or something happened to you! " Another tree fell and the vines around her receded. "Something recent! Something that still weighs heavily on your mind!"

Asami kept very still and perfectly quiet. All she had to do was let her talk herself to death.

"Who'd you kill, Asami? How many did you kill? How'd you kill them? Did you slice them to bits with those swords of yours, because I know you used those at the Boiling Rock, and-oh, that's it. That's what this is," she said, chuckling. "You're afraid of losing control! Fight or flight instinct, it must've been. Nothing else would make you snap like that and brutalize enough people for you to act like this." Bark cracked to her right, but no tree fell. "They were going to die anyway, and you're still wary of yourself."

Asami flexed her fingers and everything went silent. No more footsteps through mud, or stones thrown about, trees falling. Yelling, ranting. Nothing. Maybe-

One of her scabbards was torn off of her back and she dove into the mud, drawing her blade and looking around in complete darkness, her heart slamming into her chest. If she ignited her fire, she'd be able to see, but Artana would still have the advantage. She could stand outside the edge of her limited field of view and attack her at range. If she didn't swallow her in mud, first.

Asami bit down on her cheek and drew blood as she was slashed in the arm, cutting through her armor and leaving a shallow gash in her flesh. She stumbled forward and was hit in the leg, to the same result. She fell to one knee, taking every bit of willpower she had not make as little sound as possible and her body shook. She rose up to her feet and readied her blade, only to get sliced across the back.

Asami fell face first into the mud and struggled on all fours, digging her palms into the earth. She'd been here before. She'd been right here dozens of times. Face down in the mud. So, she pulled herself up, once again, and clenched her teeth. She would not lose again. She would not lose everything again. She wasn't even done taking it all back.

And more.

"I can feel where you are in the mud, Asami. Not perfectly, and not very well, but I can," said Artana, just before slicing into her side. "I'll hit something vital soon enough, just need to...get the timing right...fucking…" She muttered something off to her left.

Asami whimpered from the pain and nearly fell into a panic. Her armor was breached, if only slightly, but it would still neutralize electrical fields. Or, should. Without thinking, she stabbed her blade into the ground, and electrified it, throwing lightning through the entire muddy pond and illuminating everything around her. The trees, the vines, the dirt, and Artana, sprinting straight towards her. Asami flipped on the secondary power source in the hilt and furrowed her brow.

She ignited her fire, caught Artana's stolen sword mid-swing, twisted her wrist, and shattered the blade with an open palm strike. She lunged at Artana, once again at her face, but she just kept dodging her, bending little bits of mud to throw her off balance between each attack. Artana caught both of her hands and pushed back, struggling to maintain her footing in the mud.

Asami electrified her hands, lightning sparking between them as they struggled for dominance, and Asami found her strength rapidly sapping away. Her breath became labored, her focus sloppy and soon enough, the flames died out. She hadn't lost the mentality. She was just out of chi to boost.

Artana scoffed in front of her, pushing further back and gaining the advantage. "That's that, then? No more energy to burn? Your wounds haven't healed themselves in a while."

Asami growled and her blade shorted out, leaving them in complete darkness, save for the blue light of her gloves giving off just enough to wash over their faces. "What about you? Finally drained after all of this fighting? You sounded like you were having trouble bending."

"Trouble? Sure. Drained? No, never. Now, tell me, how ever did you manage to get all of that...red on you?"

"The power of love."

Artana stared at her blankly. "...really."

"The power of LOVE," she said, teasingly.

"That is the single stupidest thing I have ever heard you say."

"The. Power. Of. LOVE," she chided, overenunciating the key word.

"Fuck. You."

Asami tried to think of something else besides headbutting, because if she moved, and she collapsed from exhaustion, that would be it. She honestly couldn't tell how much energy she had left, or if non-benders were even in the same danger-

Something tiny and purple flickered out of the corner of her eye and grew brighter. It didn't take her longer than that to realize what it was. A spirit vine, stuck to Artana's back. She shut off her gloves and they fell into darkness. The vine hummed and withered away, rendered inert.

Artana pulled away and stumble backward, scoffing. "Oh, such observational skills you possess, Asami. Electricity in the swamp being a bad thing, who knew?"

Asami slowly backpedaled to where she was pretty sure her sword was. "Shut up." She reached out for it, but found nothing. It must have fallen in the mud, since Artana was still...somewhere around a dozen feet from her, and she wasn't about to bend down and try and find it. "Just shut up."

"You're welcome to make me. Once...well, once either of us can find the other."

The entire swamp lit up in blinding yellow, energy glowing through the vines and rippling the air around it. She met Artana's eyes, who was just as surprised as she was. Was that the end? It wasn't purple, so, they probably wouldn't explode, but then why were they yellow, like the Tree of Time? Had Korra-

Several dozen tears ripped open all around them, which only grew larger and larger, until they swallowed the both of them whole, falling into the void.

Baatar wiped sweat off of his brow and flipped through the bomb schematics, finding the page he was looking for. Disassembling it had been a very real nightmare, as the lunatic who had designed it had installed so many redundancies and anti-tamper fail-safes that it was clearly made with the mindset of 'stall whoever tries to disarm this for as long as humanly possible'.

The engineering team had managed to separate all the important connections and junctions from the rest of the bomb casing, if one could even call ten train cars of vines a casing, so all that was left was the very delicate process of...well, he was doing around twelve different things at once, so calling it 'madness' sounded about right.

"Timer's at twenty minutes, sir"

Baatar nodded and did a double take on the vines. They were no longer purple. They were yellow. "...this was not in the manual."

Asami tumbled out of the unknowable void and into the thankfully soft snow, struggling to her feet and dusting herself off. She breathed heavily and took a look around, taking note of Artana, struggling to stand up on a patch of ice across from her, and the frozen wasteland around them. A few long dead trees poked up out of the ground, but otherwise it was just ice and snow.

And then she saw it. "The southern portal…" she said. They were only a few miles away. Which was the worst possible place for her to be.

Artana whistled. "Hey! Focus! We're not done yet!" she said, pulling a knife out of her boot and flipping it between her hands. "Come on, Asami-"

"Oh, will you just shut up?!" Asami bristled and balled her hands into fists, readying them. "Shut up! Just shut up! I am sick and tired of this! How can you still be so confident, so arrogant after all of this has blown up in your face?!"

Artana narrowed her eyes. "It hasn't quite yet. We're still alive."

"Are you, though? Is this what you call living? Forcing yourself to live in my father's shadow out of some sick, twisted reverence?!"

Artana's hardened face cracked a little. Good. Stall for time. "You really think this is-"

"I do! You're basically trying to be my dad, so let's face it! You're not! You're nothing but a pale copy of the real thing. You're no mastermind; you're just playing at being one because you so badly want to surpass someone you idolized! Well, you wanna know something? It doesn't matter how smart or meticulous you are, Artana. At least my dad fought for something he believed in. You? You're fighting for nothing. Because that's all you really are."

"Does any of that really matter?" Artana scoffed, taking a few steps closer to her. "Asami, we ran out of time around an hour ago."

Asami frowned. Closer, closer. "No, we didn't. We're still alive, just like you said!"

Artana continued stalking toward her. "Well, the end isn't an instant thing. This took around two days to happen, so-"

Asami lunged at her, seeing an opening, her hands arcing with electricity, and overshot thanks to the ice, falling flat on her face. She scrambled back to her feet, slipping along the ground, only to see Artana having suffered the same fate. They stared at one another, exhaustion creeping in faster and faster.

Artana charged at her, and Asami swung her legs around her waist, flipping her on to the ground and landing on her own feet. She moved to tackle but Artana kicked her in the stomach and got back up, swinging and slashing at her with the knife. Asami bobbed and weaved, each time getting more sloppy than the last as she struggled with the ice. Her attempt at disarming backfired, and both of their slow, heavy footwork earned her a gash over her left eye.

Asami stumbled backward, covering her eye and blinking, through the blood, only for Artana cut her again across the chest, but only barely. Asami growled and brutally swung at her ribs, into her stomach, her chest, her shoulders, and finding just enough energy to land a kick to the head, spinning her off balance. She grabbed Artana's free arm, twisted her down to her knees, and broke it.

Artana screamed and kicked out her legs, frantically getting back up, and glared at Asami with one dead arm. Asami stood up slowly and wiped the blood away from her eye. She could still see out of it. Sort of.

"Even if you bring me in alive, Korra will kill me," said Artana, barely, her breath labored. "And if you convince her not to, then Kuvira will. You have to know that."

"I do. I don't care. I'm not going to kill you."

"So you're going to drag my body all the way there."

"Yes."

Artana snorted into a laugh. "I think you hit your head harder than I did!"

Asami blinked and felt her head pound. She needed to end this, now. But the closer she got, the more likely it'd be that she'd be gutted by that knife, and she didn't have nearly enough agility left to disarm her. And the only way to incapacitate Artana with certainty was to electrocute her, which she...had to be close to do. Now matter how she played out the next few moves, she couldn't find a way to win. Even with Artana's bending out of the equation.

So Asami kept staring at that knife. Common, standard issue. Rubber grip and serrated steel blade.

Rubber grip. But then...

Asami almost laughed at the notion. It wouldn't work. It couldn't work. Even as dazed as Artana was, she'd never fall for that. Unless, of course, Asami were also losing her edge and slowly collapsing. Which she was. So there was a chance.

A slim one, but still her best option. And it's not like Artana could even raise her arm all that much, so the risk was...well, big. But relatively minimal compared to a war of attrition.

So Asami took a small breath, taking a moment to remind herself the amount of insanity Korra was struggling through at that very moment. If she could do that, then Asami could risk it. She owed her, owed everyone that much. She reignited her fire, flames surrounding her once again, and sprinted straight into Artana-

She coughed up blood as soon as the knife sunk into her gut, letting her arms fall to her side as her red glow vanished instantly. Piercing her 'big sea of chi' would do that. She whimpered and shut her eyes, forcing herself to stay conscious, despite the agony and to stay alive. Keep breathing.

Artana wheezed into a dry chuckle. "Ironic, isn't it? Mutually assured destruction. The very thing that would have saved us all, will kill us both. If you shock me, you go down, too. And you'll bleed out before you get back up."

"You just don't get it." Asami's lips split into a sly smirk. " Mutually assured destruction ?" she coughed. "No. No, we both saw madness on the horizon, the destruction and fear that could come with it. But you had others face that nightmare for you. You delegated, but I fought. You have so little faith in humanity that you planned for failure. And only failure." She raised her head to face her, eyes boring into her soul. "You gave up. For all your posturing and ideology, you're nothing more than a coward who lost her nerve."

"It-"

"-doesn't matter, right? You blinked, and I didn't. For once, you missed something, and I didn't, " She grabbed Artana by the head. "It's a rubber grip, you fucking idiot."

Asami flashed her teeth and lightning arced off of her fingertips, travelling through through the metal and into Artana's flesh, electrocuting her. She slumped over and fell to the ground.

Unconscious.

Asami stared down at the body before remembering that she had a knife in her gut. She took a few short breaths before biting down and pulling it out with an agonizing scream. She let it fall to the ground, covering up her wound with her hands and made a mental note to thank Baatar for making very good armor. It was deep, but not...not nearly as...deep as it could have been.

"Shit…"

She was going to die if this didn't work. Asami squeezed down on her stomach and focused on her hands. Connected to her gloves, her skin, her abdominal muscles, her stomach lining-she gasped as, for the briefest of moments, her fire came back, closing the wound in her stomach, before almost instantly flickering out. It still hurt like hell, and internally she was still hurt. Probably. But now...now she wouldn't bleed out.

And that was good.

Asami used the knife to cut open the back of Artana's suit, disabling the effect, and used the extra material to fashion a sling for her arm. She started to drag her towards the southern portal as the cold began to catch up to her. Almost done. Almost. Just keep moving forward.

Keep moving forward.

Asami blinked a few times, her eyelid having stopped bleeding, but it still felt odd, and the next thing she knew she was about two hundred feet from the portal. She must have zoned out or...sleepwalked her way there, since she was still dragging Artana.

"...you beat me?"

Asami looked over her shoulder and glared down at Artana. "Yes. And Korra will soon, too."

Artana smiled. Genuinely. "Good."

"Good? How is that good? You failed. "

Artana snorted. "No, no this is actually the 'best case scenario'..."

"You're delusional."

"I'm not. Very concussed, but...more or less lucid," she said, slowly. "And my back is numb. But, anyway, with this outcome, it's not about me winning. It's about everyone else winning."

Asami rolled her eyes. "Uh huh."

"Think about it. Why-why wouldn't I have a way to stop this from happening, all the tears in the sky?"

"Because you're insane?"

"No. I didn't need one. Already had one."

Asami paled. "...Korra."

"Now you're getting it."

Asami furrowed her brow. "You didn't want us to win, but on the off chance that we did, that we beat you, that we proved you... proved you wrong, " she said, remembering the haunting words that had stabbed her through the shoulders. "The world that came after would be…"

"There'd be hope. That we would not be caged. That maybe, just maybe, we won't destroy ourselves. Because if you can all manage to stop something as insane and unstoppable as this, then you can stop spirit weapons from ruling everyone by fear, too."

"And the only way to do that is to bring people closer together. Lowering borders, a greater understanding between peoples-Oh go fuck yourself!"

She could feel Artana shrug.

"You won't live to see it, and you sacrificed the Red Lotus itself to make it happen. No one will carry on your legacy."

"What's there to carry on? The Red Lotus need not exist if everything we tried to achieve becomes reality."

"But none of that matters, right?"

"No. That... that matters."

Asami suppressed the urge to just leave her out in the snow to die, but knowing her, she'd somehow find a way to survive. And they'd made it to the portal anyway, so she may as well. She stepped through it, feeling the warmth of the light wash over as she entered the spirit world and raised her brows at the sight.

Several squads of Earth Empire soldiers, all sporting patches of the universal 'medical' symbol, were gathered around the Tree of Time, with Kuvira, Bolin, Opal and Mako with them, looking badly beaten up, but okay. They were okay.

They were okay.

Mako turned to her first, almost as if he'd known somehow and smiled. Bolin and Opal joined him, and Kuvira just gave her a nod. One of the medics took Artana, who had passed out again, away and another helped her make the rest of the walk to the tree. Mako, Bolin and Opal moved to stand and embrace her, but she motioned them off. Not yet. Wasn't over yet.

The yellow glow was flickering blue, and that had to be a good sign.

Asami held her stomach and gave her friends, and Kuvira, a lazy smile. "Hey."

"YOU WERE AMAZING!" exclaimed Bolin "The way you jumped around like that-oh, and that part with the airplanes was-see, this is why we need mover cameras everywhere! Stuff like that just happens around us!"

"What? How-how did you know about that? And how are you even okay?"

"Morphine," said Kuvira.

Opal gestured to the tree. "Big wavy blue mover screen popped up, so we saw the whole thing."

"...all of it?"

"You should have killed her in the elevator," said Kuvira.

"Nobody asked you," said Mako. He turned back to Asami. "Are you okay?"

Asami shrugged meekly. "I just took a knife to the gut after a globe-trotting sword fight so yeah, I'm okay, all things considered."

"How'd you do the red thing?" asked Bolin.

Asami blushed. "...the power of love."

"You were serious?" Bolin shrugged. "Well, that'd do it."

Asami looked up at hollow of the tree. "Kuvira, I need you to do me a favor."

"What is it?"

"Kill Artana before Korra is done."

Kuvira immediately got up and walked over to the medics, and Asami didn't watch what happened next.

"I think that was more you doing her a favor," said Opal.

"Maybe." Asami shrugged. She knew perfectly well why, even in her current state. If Korra were to rise out of the tree, and see Artana alive, she'd do something she'd regret for the rest of her life. Well, that, and Artana didn't deserve to see what happened next. "What's important is that Korra-"

The tree glowed a brilliant blue and lightning shot out of it and into the two main portals, arcing them unnaturally. Everything pulsed, and a massive blast of energy exploded out of the tree and washed over everything, closing the tears instantaneously and stabilizing the color of the spirit world sky to it's natural orange.

Baatar covered his eyes as a blue wave of energy passed over him and looked to the northern portal as the rips between worlds vanished, the dawning sky returned to a dark navy. He turned back to the bomb and watched the vines, once glowing and terrifying, wither away and die. He checked the spirit energy detector attached to the side of the control panel, and it was registering zero. No twitching needle or clicks. Just nothing.

He smiled. "We're done here. Burn them."

"...as for law enforcement…" Lin rolled out a map of Jingdao over Raiko's desk and pointed to the few locations she'd already circled in red ink. "If we set up precincts here, here and here, we'd have the most effective coverage. Recruiting and training from their own population would probably make things a smoother transition, too." She blinked as blue light went flying past her out the window and through City Hall itself. And then half of her problems were fixed in a few seconds. "Right. Anyway, if the city gets any bigger, we'll probably need a commissioner instead of just one Chief of Police."

"You may be right." Raiko nodded and continued to look out the window, clearly more interested in something they'd both seen before than something that was actually his responsibility. He widened his eyes as the giant vine in his office withered away lost all color. Huh. Raiko turned back to her and cleared his throat. "I'll mention construction options at my next cabinet meeting and try to fast track this."

"Good. The city didn't blow itself up this time, so I'd like to keep it that way."

Varrick perused his wardrobe, searching for just the right suit for the day ahead in his walk-in closet. That one was too dark. Too red. Too green, too purple, too... vomity, ugh. Must've gotten that one as a gift. "Zhu Li, I need help choosing the right kind of blue!" he whimpered.

Zhu Li appeared beside him and turned him around to face the window, colored pencils and paper held by her side. He stared outside, and saw something spark in the distance, only for it to surge forward and tint everything a very specific shade of blue for a few seconds.

He whistled. "Yes! That's absolutely perfect! I just hope a tailor saw that, or we're out of luck."

Zhu Li quickly scribbled a wavy block of color on to her paper with a few shades of blue. "That won't be necessary," she said, smiling and handing him the exact shade he'd just seen. "But we still need a tailor. None of your suits are quite right."

Varrick laughed and kissed her on the lips. "To the tailor!"

"After breakfast, dear."

"After breakfast!"

Tenzin opened an eye as he heard Jinora shift in her meditative posture, which was most uncommon. She almost never lost focus during morning meditation. And then he saw why as energy that was unmistakably Korra washed over him and dashed into the horizon, healing the wounds above as if they were never there to begin with.

Meelo whooped and jumped into the air, gliding around the gazebo and performing loop-de-loops. Ikki reached leaped across the space between the two masters and the other airbenders, hugging her sister tight. The rest of the air nation slowly turned and wandered out from under the roof, looking above at the unscarred sky.

Except for Bumi who lifted Tenzin up to his feet with a big grin.

Tenzin smiled. "Let's take a five minute break."

Bumi wrapped his arm around his little brother's neck. "That has got to be some crazy story!"

"I'm sure that it is."

Suyin leafed through her newspaper and the pages fluttered in her grasp as a blue tint phased through the dining room for a few seconds. She looked up at her husband, who just shrugged, and then to Wing, Wei and Huan, who had already ran to the windows. "Is the sky still broken?" she asked, taking a sip of her midday tea.

"Looks good to me!" said Wing.

"Yeah, but the portals are still there!" countered Wei.

Huan continued to gape and closed his mouth into a big smile. "Inspiration has struck me like never before, rivaling even Harmonic Convergence!" He wiggled his fingers. "I must create these transcendent feelings and images!"

"Let's not get ahead of ourselves, son," said Baatar. "We'll love whatever you come up with."

"Yes! Because it's going to take the world by storm and redefine the very meaning of the word art," he said, sweeping out his arms and sprinting out of the room.

Suyin chuckled. "You're only encouraging him."

"I was trying to," said Baatar. "I just don't know how he's going to beat the masterpiece he made after the last lightshow in the sky."

Suyin smiled and covered his hand with hers. "He'll find a way."

Asami watched in awe as the tree's gnarled branches bloomed with life, thick green leaves materializing in a matter of seconds in what should have taken decades, if not eons. Flowers of a thousand colors, stripes of blues, greens, greys, reds, violets and many she didn't have names for burst out of the ground, starting from the tree and traveling out into the horizon.

Korra had done it. They'd done it.

They'd won.

Korra rose out of the hollow of the tree, her entire body glowing blue, elegant gold markings adorning her chest and abdomen, for a moment before fading away. She slid down the tree immediately pulled Asami in for a hug. "Remember when I said I wasn't convinced you had any limits?" She chuckled breathlessly. "Not exactly what I had in mind." She rested her hand on Asami's stomach with a warm glow of water, healing the worst of the internal damage in a matter of seconds. "It's over. You can rest."

Asami smiled and let sleep take her, finally confident that, when she woke up, everything would be all right.

Asami slowly blinked her eyes open and the sound of distant traffic filled her ears. The hospital room was small, but adequate, and the design was distinctly Republic City. The shades were closed, but a little bit of light bled through the cracks. She heard people milling and running about outside in the hallway and slowly sat up, finding it more difficult than she'd imagined. She groaned, and Naga licked her face with a small whine. The polar bear dog rubbed Asami's cheek and with her nose and Asami rested her head there for a moment.

"Hey Naga," she whispered.

Korra gasped and flew into her field of view. She squeezed her hand and sat up on the side of the bed beside her. "Hey, hey, hey, don't get up so fast," she soothed. "Take it easy. There's no rush to do anything right now."

"Okay." Asami smiled lazily and nodded, scratching Naga's chin. "Hi."

Korra smiled back. "Hey."

"How long was I out?"

"A few days. You woke up a few times, but you weren't really alert. I...couldn't heal you." She frowned. "I still can't, nobody can. Just too risky. You burned through so much energy that it'd only hurt you more, or worse, so for now…" Korra squeezed her hand again. "Modern medical science."

"I think I can live with that."

"Yes . Yes, you can."

Naga wagged her tail.

Asami swallowed. "Everyone else okay?"

"Yeah. Pretty bad concussions all around, which are very difficult to heal. Sprains, broken bones, but they're fine. Kuvira got the worst of it, though. Spinal trauma. That called for spirit water, so she's already up and about."

"Good. That's good." Asami winced and tried to sit up again, but this time Korra helped her, settling more pillows behind her to prop her up. "How am I doing? Besides the fact that you can't heal me."

"You were...pretty banged up, to say the least, the knife being the worst of it. So. Don't charge into sharp objects again, please. Ever."

"It...made sense at the time."

Korra chuckled and shrugged. "Hey, I know, I saw the whole thing. Well, I saw everything everywhere, all at once, so that was an interesting experience, but you were part of that." She bowed her head. "It just really scared me that you used yourself as bait."

"I'm sorry. I didn't mean to scare you."

Korra shook her head. "No, no, you have nothing to apologize for. In fact, I don't think the words 'thank you'-I don't know what to say about...what you did."

Asami gave her hand a weak squeeze. "Of course."

"I'm not talking about Artana."

Oh.

Asami looked down at her stomach, which was very heavily bandaged. "No one would let you end him, and after what he made you do…" she bit her lip. "I couldn't live with myself if I left without finishing it for you."

"I know," she whispered. "I know, I know, I know, believe me I know, and I've already cried my eyes out over that-I just never thought…" She sighed.

"That you'd get closure like that?"

"Yeah." She smiled a little. "It's better this way, I think. He's gone, but I don't feel empty."

"I'm glad," said Asami, smiling. They sat there for a few moments in silence, and she processing it all as best she could. She was alive. Korra was alive. Her friends, her family, they were alive, and they were going to be okay. "I'm...okay, right?" she asked with some hesitation.

"Yeah," said Korra, starting to cry. "Yeah, you're okay. You're gonna be fine. Everything's gonna be fine." She laughed through her tears. "You know, after all of that worrying that I was gonna die-" She leaned in and gave her a desperate kiss. "I love you."

Asami's eyes burned. "I love you, too."

Kuvira flipped through the contract again and again, reading every word under intense scrutiny. That arrogant lawyer had dropped it, along with a second document she had yet to open, off at her apartment with a massive grin on his face, spewing a few thousand words of irritating jargon, as if he'd just won the case of the century. It was possible that he had, but that wasn't her concern. What interested her far more was that she was...done.

"...in light of your recent acts of heroism, the office of the President of the United Republic has decreed that your previous position of 'employment', heretofore to be known as 'voluntary consultation', to be unbefitting of an individual possessing your knowledge, skills and abilities…" she read aloud.

Baatar sat down on the bed beside her. "He's covering."

"Clearly, as he still wants my help." She frowned. "...services previously rendered will be retroactively paid in full at a flat rate…"

Baatar carefully flipped over the next few pages, to what she'd, at first, been so sure was a simple trick of the eye. "Kuvira, he's backed into a corner. He's giving you what we want. Take it."

"It's almost identical to the position they put me in after Ba Sing Se, but with significant oversight. And very explicit end goals. Splitting up the states under self-governance, with a smaller central government, dividing the military under local leadership and populations..." She furrowed her brow. "Wu effectively got what he wanted."

"That's an improvement."

Kuvira nodded. "It is, most likely for everyone involved. And the all but unwritten threat of sending Korra after me should I repeat the same mistakes makes it much more believable." She sighed. "But that doesn't address the threat of the vines. None of this does. What good is it to help our people if, the moment they're safe, they're attacked with something they cannot defend against?"

"We'll figure something out…" Baatar opened the second document and started reading through it, his brows slowly raising. "Or maybe someone already has."

Kuvira grabbed the second document and quickly read through it. The Flashfire Initiative. Pre-emptive strikes against possible, and known, terrorist cells. Intelligence gathering. A team of elite soldiers, with the best equipment available, from a united coalition of nations with a single goal: Stop the madness before it starts. For many intents and purposes, an off-the-books 'Avatar', as the world should be able to protect itself, and not rely solely on miracles. Several dozen soldiers were listed, benders and non-benders alike, as potential candidates for the task force.

Raiko's plan had not changed. Promote safety in the public, enforce it in the shadows.

"They want you in charge," said Baatar.

"No. They want me to prove that I can be trusted." She put the two documents side by side and tapped the first. "And that is how."

"But there's no one else qualified."

Kuvira smiled and pulled him in for a kiss. Starting over. "Which is exactly what I'm going to show them."

Asami blinked and ran her thumb over her left eye and what was left of her hair. "Can I get a mirror?"

"Sure." Korra handed her one.

Asami inspected herself closely. The cut on her left eye had been pretty deep, save for what was actually important, so it had left a decent scar. She winked into the mirror and tried to tousle her hair, which failed miserably. It was a mess of uneven locks and she was pretty sure there were bald patches being hidden behind the black. But it'd grow back. "Not bad. The scar should certainly make meetings with less than agreeable investors, anyone really, much more interesting."

Korra smirked. "I'll bet."

Asami set the mirror aside. "Guessing I don't have a concussion?"

"Nope. Not sure how that happened, but you're fine up there." She tapped her own head. "Whatever made you red must've helped with that." Korra settled further on to the bed and leaned in to whisper. "How'd you do that, by the way?"

Asami blushed intensely. "The power of love."

Naga panted with a large grin and barked.

Korra grinned and giggled. "I already knew that. I just wanted to hear you say it." She ran her hand through her hair. "Hey…"

"Hm?"

"Marry me."

Asami raised her brows. "I-what?"

"Marry me," she repeated, just as confident.

"Just like that?"

"Just like that."

Asami chewed on her lip and smirked. "Okay." She leaned forward a little bit, eyeing her curiously. "...and that's all there is to it? Don't we have tax forms to sign? A ring? A necklace? A ceremony? Anything?"

Korra smiled and shook her head. "Nope. Not back home. That's all there is to it. Then you just start telling people, but we can still have a ceremony, if you want one, and the necklace is a northern thing, so…" She made a face. "I don't wanna do that. It's gross for a lot of reasons."

Asami blinked several times, still shocked, despite her almost entire lack of hesitation. "Well, alright, but, whatever we do, there are things we have to fill out in the United Republic, for census and legal purposes..." She blushed. "Do you want to take my last name?"

"I don't know, how does 'Avatar Korra Sato' sound to you? Because it sounds perfect to me. I mean, I think you broke enough glass to keep things great for us for a very, very long time."

"It did seem to work for Bolin and Opal. Maybe there's really something to that."

"It's Varrick, so yeah, maybe." Korra shrugged. "Look, whatever we need to do, we'll do, but…" She blushed. "I wanted to do it like my parents did first. That was important to me...even though you just woke up. Besides, power of love, right? What's a better opportunity than that ?"

Asami looked away. "Well, it was...more about my love for my father than anything else…"

"Ohhhh, fourth chakra-no, that's fine. That's okay," she said, chuckling. "I mean, I was in there somewhere."

"Of course!" She shifted in the bed. "I...don't feel any different."

"I think that's sorta the point."

Asami snickered. She couldn't argue with that. And she made a mental note to burn the suits and all the schematics. Some things just needed to be destroyed. "Can you open the blinds? I want to see the city."

Korra nodded and smiled, hopping off of the bed. "I think you'll be pleasantly surprised." She threw open the curtains to reveal...Republic City. Unharmed and whole, just as they'd left it. The vines looked a little paler, though. "And no, there's no damaged part of the city that you can't see from here. Few scorched street corners, but other than that, it was business as usual while we were out. Tends to happen when there isn't a giant spirit or mecha attacking."

Asami felt her heart swell with pride. They didn't have to rebuild it all over again. Then, she blinked as she noticed something odd. "The portals, the extra ones, they're still there. I thought we won."

Korra scratched the back of her head. "Well, we, uh, did win. Worlds aren't ending, but I wasn't able to put everything back together before the damage was done, or close the portals in time, so I had to settle for stabilizing them, and now I can't undo it. Sky's still fine, and the barrier is healed, but it's thinner now." She tapped her lip. "Think the solstice, but a little more spirit-y," she said, making a so-so gesture. "And forever."

"What about the vines?"

"They don't work anymore, but..."

Asami sighed. "It's not permanent."

"Probably not. They always grow back."

Asami rubbed her eyes. "We can deal with that later."

"Yeah, and, it's gonna be a massive pain to go and close each portal, one by one, because I'm not doing that in the tree again. And I'm guessing you're not up for hopping through them again and zooming around every corner of the planet…" said Korra, as she continued talking about what her probable schedule was going to be as she travelled.

Asami furrowed her brows, half listening, but feeling an idea form in her mind. They'd managed to traverse the entire planet by using the spirit world as a shortcut, cutting travel times down to mere fractions of what they once were. Everything was stable. The worlds were closer together than ever before. Raava had raised a spirit army to fight alongside humans and everyone Asami had gone into battle with…and Asami had...

Combined it all. Technology, spirituality, humans and spirits, the worlds themselves tying everything together to form a plan to save everyone.

And then it just clicked.

Iroh put the cup of noodles on the floor of the tree. "The noodles, without the water, are dry and separate. They break easily, just like the bonds between many different kinds of people. They are brittle and stubborn. They do not have the desire to change. But, once you add the water..." He poured hot water into the cup from his teapot. Asami looked into it through the rising steam. "You have to let it settle, because even though change can happen much faster these days, that does not mean it is truly instant. Just like the noodles. Then, you watch, you listen, you prepare." He grabbed a pair of chopsticks and started stirring the noodles.

Korra furrowed her brow. "...and, once the noodles are ready, they want to stick together. Stirring them around makes big clumps of them so you can eat more at once."

Asami looked to Korra. "Which means that more and more people will find trust in one another." She turned to Iroh, mesmerized. "A greater understanding. A stronger sense of community."

Iroh held up his chopsticks, displaying a large tangle of noodles. "Exactly. The water gives the world life and meaning. It can guide us all toward peace and understanding, but that can only happen if the noodles, and the people, are willing to listen. It has to be fresh, or you will lose your only chance at the making the world whole."

"...which means that I'll be gone for about two months, at the most," continued Korra. "Hey, are you okay? You look like-"

Asami tried to force herself out of bed, but Korra stopped her from straining herself. "I need a map of the portals, an atlas, pencils and a lot of paper! Right now!"

"What? Why-"

"I just figured out the noodles!"

Korra didn't need to be told twice. She sprinted out the door, but then almost immediately poked her head back inside. "Who has the map of the portals?"

"Zhu Li!"

"Got it!"

Asami snickered into a loud laugh once Korra left, but stopped once it pained her stomach. All of that time, focusing on aircraft, when she should have been looking just a little bit closer at that submersible train idea. Oh, who was she kidding. She'd do both.

But first, trains.

Three years later…

Asami wiped the smudges off of her glasses with a fine cloth and put them back on, blinking as she noted the improved clarity in which she could see Korra. "I don't know how I keep failing to notice when these get so dirty," she said, smoothing her dark vest over her pink blouse.

Korra shrugged and straightened Asami's tie, smiling. "You probably just forget they're there."

"That must be it," she said with a chuckle. "All right, so we get in at around five, which should give us enough time to wander around the lower ring before dinner. Oh, and our reservation at the Jasmine Dragon is-"

"At seven, I know, Asami." Korra rubbed her arm. "You've gone over this at least a dozen times by now. We're gonna get there in one piece. Everything will turn out great."

"Okay, okay. I'm just a little nervous."

Korra tossed her the car keys and walked out of their penthouse, and into the elevator, holding the doors open with her foot. "There's nothing to be nervous about. There aren't any more tests to run, you said it yourself."

Asami nodded and joined her in the lift, pressing the button for 'lobby'. "Yes, but not with this many people. Well, that's not entirely true, since we had all those volunteers. But, still, something could go wrong."

The elevator descended and Korra tilted her head. "Or, everything could go right. Do you have your speech?"

Asami checked her pockets. "I have the speech."

"And you've memorized it."

"Yes, I've memorized it."

"And it's a good speech?"

"It's a good speech, yes."

"Then what are you worried about?"

Asami chuckled and shrugged with a smile. "I...don't even know anymore."

"Exactly," Korra kissed her on the cheek as the doors slid open.

Asami stood before a huge crowd, composed of both humans and spirits, in front of the once-again overhauled Central City Station, covered in a large tarp displaying the logos of both Future Industries and Varrick Industries International. The tail end of the building's smaller spirit portal (it looked more like a well-made, stable tear, but portal sounded safer) peaked out from behind it, and the vines were just as thick as they always had been, creeping into the buildings around the square. Flash bulbs went off in rapid succession as she ascended the podium, Raiko handing it off to her as he went back to his seat.

"Thank you for that wonderful introduction, Mister President," she said, adding a mental note to look into enforcing term limits for elected officials. "As I'm sure all of you remember, three years ago our world was blindsided by a disaster unlike anything seen before. But, as a result, the wall between planes was weakened, and we, humanity as a whole, became closer to the spirits in every way possible. We're not quite the mysteries we once were to one another anymore. We're all individuals, with our own thoughts and aspirations. And day by day, we all learn a little more about each other, and move towards what I'm confident can only be a brighter future," she said, smiling. "Now, it's not just Republic City where spirits and humans are able to live together peacefully, but almost every other major city in the world. As great as that accomplishment is, I believe we can always strive to do better. To be better. And so, with that ideal in mind…" She gestured to the world leaders seated off to the side of the stage. "...thanks to the continued efforts of Fire Lord Izumi, our own President Raiko, Chief Eska and Desna of the Northern Water Tribe, Chief Tonraq of the Southern Water Tribe, the diplomatic representative of the…" She spotted Opal in the crowd, another baby on the way, who hadn't been told of the official naming yet, "...Earth Federation-"

Opal whooped far too loudly before Mako and Bolin pulled her back into her seat.

"-Wu of the Hou-Ting Dynasty, and of course, Avatar Korra Sato, we, all of us, are finally prepared to take the next step forward in peaceful cohabitation. The loosening of borders, and barriers, between us." She turned halfway back to the tarp and raised her arm. "Future Industries, in partnership with Varrick Industries International, is proud to finally present the next generation of commercial transportation…"

The tarp fell to the ground, revealing a completely remodeled and ornate train station, a perfect blend of steel, wood and built around the vines, allowing them room to grow. Most had seen it before, since it was in smack dab in the center of downtown, but presentation always counted for something.

Asami raised her voice. "...the first in our soon to be long line of Inter-Plane railways: The Hiroshi! Non-stop service from Republic City to Ba Sing Se in three hours!"

The crowd cheered and the applause washed over her. They'd known about it already, so really the whole thing was just ceremony. But it was still nice, validating, especially considering how hard she'd had to fight for that name.

"Thank you, and enjoy the commute!" Asami stepped away from the podium and the crowd began to disperse into the station, many of them already having bought tickets in advance, or just wanting to see the inaugural voyage first-hand.

"Come on, let's go!" Korra grabbed her hand and ran into the station, pulling them both ahead of the crowd and toward the majestically designed train.

"Korra! What-" Asami laughed as she followed along. "We're not going to miss it! And what's the rush, we've done this before, remember?"

"Yeah, but not, y'know, officially. "

They ran down the stairs and Asami looked at the locomotive. Mag-lev, thanks to Varrick, and all-but-non-existent spirit world disturbance sans the tracks themselves. Exhaust designed only to vent in the material world, and filled to the brim with creature comforts. After all, it was a Future Industries product.

"You just don't want to get stuck in line, do you?" asked Asami.

"Okay, maybe that's part of it." Korra didn't wait for the conductor to take their tickets, not they needed to, and dragged them onboard, her boots sliding across the fine red carpet. She pushed Asami towards where she knew their reserved car was, incredibly giddy. "But that doesn't make this any less important!"

"Oh, of course not," snickered Asami, running through the lush dining car and narrowly avoiding one of the attendants carrying a large dolley of luggage aboard. She passed through the gourmet kitchen, the mini-mover car (Varrick's idea, and it tested well), the bar, the regular cars, the sleeping cars, the quiet cars and, finally, made it to the caboose.

The Sato Suite. And friends, (and associates, if Kuvira was present) if she were being honest, but that wouldn't look very good on the hand crafted placard.

Asami slowed down as she entered and laughed, catching her breath. The room was regal, yet functional, which should serve as no surprise. Though, unfortunately, there simply wasn't room for Naga. And Asami had tried some... very unconventional designs to make that happen. It didn't work in the penthouse, and it didn't work on the train either. Still, something to work towards.

"Where'd all that energy come from?" said Asami.

"What can I say?" Korra plopped down on the couch and shrugged. "I'm excited to see how the general public reacts."

Asami raised a brow, smirking. "And so you want to be the first on the train, so you don't miss a thing? Even though you can't really see anyone from the caboose."

"Never said it was a perfect plan."

Mako, Harumi, Bolin, with Pabu perched on his shoulder, and Opal made their way into the caboose, with Opal cackling up a storm.

"Pay up!" she said, grinning from ear to ear. "How long have you guys known?"

"I just found out today, because apparently, I can't keep a secret," said Bolin.

Pabu chittered and ran down his leg, up Asami's, circled her neck, and hopped onto Korra's head. She snickered as Opal clicked her tongue and he scampered up to her shoulder.

"Bo. You can't," said Mako. "You told us not to tell you in advance for that exact reason, remember?"

Bolin rubbed his chin. "Ohhhhhhh, yup, yeah, I do remember that now. Well, on the plus side, I didn't actually lose any money, so…" He smiled.

Mako huffed. "Yeah, yeah. Anyway, I've known for about a month."

"Two months, I think?" said Harumi. Mako gave her a confused look. "What? I didn't know about the betting pool!" she defended.

"About a year for me," said Korra. "Same as Asami."

Asami took her wallet out of her bag, which had already been loaded beforehand, and gave Korra a teasing sidelong glance. "Let's see, I think we ended up with, together, around four thousand?"

"You knew I was competitive when you married me. You keep raising the stakes and I'll keep meeting them."

Asami chuckled and gave Opal her winnings. "There you go, Mrs. Beifong."

Opal huffed and stuffed the wad of cash into her bag. "Ugh, that makes me sound so old. No one even calls my mom 'Mrs. Beifong'."

"You know…" said Korra. "I've never noticed that."

Bolin and Opal settled on the couch and Korra scooched over to give the pregnant woman more room, which she noticed and smacked her on the arm for. Korra just laughed. Mako and Harumi chose to stand and investigate the amenities of the caboose.

"Baatar and Kuvira couldn't make it?" asked Asami, looking back through the door and catching an eyeful of Varrick flailing with a dozen suitcases into his state room. Zhu Li followed soon after, with even more suitcases. Were they moving to Ba Sing Se? "Or…"

Opal shook her head. "Kuvira couldn't. She's... working. Stopping bad guys before they become bad guys. Vine stuff."

Asami settled down next to Korra. "Still? I'd have thought they'd be done with...well, that particular trip by now."

"I guess it got more complicated," said Korra.

Opal nodded. "It must be that. Anyway, you know my brother. He'd rather wait so they can both experience it for the first time together."

"It never stops surprising me that he's a bit of a romantic," said Mako.

"Yeah, I don't know what he is sometimes."

The train whistle sounded for the last time and Asami smiled as it began to move forward. She snuggled in closer to Korra and rested her head on her shoulder, watching the sky move faster and faster through the glass roof of the car. Korra gave her a look and pulled the both of them up to standing, guiding them over to the back of the suite, straight to the back door. She unlocked it, and quickly slipped the both of them before closing it behind her.

Asami smiled and rested her hands on the railing wind whipped through her hair and clothes, the station moving further and further away from them as the train circled the portal. "Quite the view you've picked out."

"Well, we're watching the world being changed, so I thought we'd need a good one," said Korra, leaning over beside her. "Once we're on the other side…" she shrugged.

"Yeah. Yeah, I guess you're right. I never thought you could pin down one single moment like that, but, I suppose you can," said Asami. She smiled wider.

The train picked up speed and Korra pulled her into her chest, pulling her in for a deep, passionate kiss just as they passed through the light. Asami pulled back, her cheeks starting to hurt from the smiling, and noticed something different about the tracks.

There were flowers everywhere.

Asami snickered into a loud laugh and kissed Korra again. And again, and again and again, unable to contain her laughter and adoration. Her devotion, and her impossible curiosity to see just how many flowers they could make.

She pulled back and bit her lip, snickering again. "I forgot about that."

"I didn't." Korra smiled and some of Asami's hair behind her ear. "You want to go back inside?"

"No, not yet," said Asami slipping her fingers between Korra's, looking out over the edge of the train as the endless, stunning landscape stretched out before them. The spirit world had always been more beautiful than Asami could have ever imagined. Impossible flowers, valleys bending and folding into one another, mountains stretching on for eons, and thousands upon thousands of spirits. "I've got everything I need right here."

"And more, right?"

"Yeah." She sighed, content, and a few tears fell down her cheeks. "And more."

劇終

A/N: Helluva ride, huh? Never thought I'd finish it, honestly. But I did. Just under 1.5 years of work, through lots of LIFE THINGS and all that other great stuff, I did it. And it's an odd feeling, not having this story swirling in my head anymore. A good one, but odd all the same. Not like something's missing, but...more like contentment, but not quite that either. But it's something.

Something good. :)

I'm really gonna miss writing Artana. I'm still floored by how well people responded to her, considering she's an OC, but it's more that she really just grew on me. Wanted to make a villain that fit into TLOK's pattern (ideology taken too far, plan's failure leading to unexpected positive change) and didn't rehash any bending subsets for her abilities. With ATLA and TLOK combined we had Earth, Metal, Lava, Fire, Lightning, Combustion, Air, Water, Blood, and Spirit-based villains.

Thus, Sand/Glass.

Oh, and, one more thing before we get into "final thoughts" territory: Read it again. If you have the time/motivation/whatever, read it again. I can all but guarantee it'll be a much more interesting story now that you can pick up on all the details along the way.

But that's enough of that, I think.

I want to personally thank each and every one of you from the bottom of my heart for reading this. Some from the beginning, some joined in later, others waited until it was finished to indulge, but all of you still stuck through it, enduring all the highs and lows and the stupid mistakes I made along the way. Wrote this for me, because I did not believe for a second that Asami actually forgave her father in the series finale, let alone let him go (or in this case, accept his death), among many other reasons, but it puts a stupid grin on my face that you folks enjoyed it too. More than a little rough around the edges, but I think it all works, on the whole.

For the most part.

But, it'd be pure crap if not for those who helped me along the way. So thank you thejmpr, for punching the stupid out of everything I sent you and discussing almost everything about this story ad nauseam often a moment's notice. Thank you to iviscrit, for going above and beyond with helping me with the Beifong/Kuvira content, among other things like letting me borrow Keisai. Thank you to beech27, for doing technical editing and...other stuff? Probably? Few RCB references in there. Not sure why either of you went along with my varying levels of nonsense for so long, but you did, so again, thank you.

Even so, with all of them, that's not the entire puzzle. Or pie. Whichever.

Thank you to 425599167 for building and maintaining the absurdly comprehensive TVTropes page. Vannymore and sherbies, for being probably the most entertainingly enthusiastic readers (excluding itsrevydutch, obvs) one could ever get, and a major source of motivation. I'm not sorry for all the heart attacks I've struck vannymore with. Eegahisms, for making that comic based on Ch9, and how meticulous they were with all the tiny details. Art-heap, for the fanart and possessing both prophetic abilities (multiple times!) and an artstyle that is weirdly effective at keeping me on task. Willoghby, for perfectly capturing the 'water skin' moment, as well as Artana, and for debating vannymore regarding moments in this story which is something I'll never not find hilarious. 2dshepard, for being one of the few people who I think honestly adores the whole "noodles" thing. Lokgifsandmusings, for letting me borrow Ginni and...I dunno lore conversations? We've had so many I forget what we talked about aside from Asami living in the Spirit Wilds. Traeger, for letting me test out the chakra/red thing on you before anyone else (BECAUSE LITERALLY NOBODY WANTED TO GET SPOILED AND I HAD NO IDEA IF IT WORKED OR NOT) and for writing a fanfic of my fanfic where there's a mover version of "Republic City Blues" and it's filmed entirely in RED.

To everyone who fav'd, follow'd, reviewed, etc: Double Thank You. To everyone who actually reads all of these often long-winded author's notes, Triple Thank You. And yes, these do stack.

Now, I could ramble on about stuff that I cut (IT WAS A LOT OH MY GOD) or variations on important beats (SO MANY HOLY JEEZ), or over-explaining things that I can just answer in comments (the proposal, Zaheer, how Artana actually won, etc), or justifying things which (Asami and the chakras has a 50/50 shot of blowing up in my face), again, could be addressed in comments, but, just this once...

I'm gonna let the story speak for itself. :)