Disclaimer: I do not own Legend of Korra and its characters

Beta: Michelle Tran

Book Air

Premise: To regain her bending, Korra must make a choice, go back to the past and either kill a teenage Noatak, or save him. But things are never as simple as they appear to be.

Chapter 6: The Disconnect

'This is all so... weird!' Thought Korra as she trudged through the snow and followed the infernal hellspawn that dared copy her hairdo through the village path. Around her, Emeq buzzed and bustled the tune of daily life in its own sleepy way. Children chased each other in zig zags around camps. Women worked the skinning bench and the drying perch, laying out strips of wet sealgoat meat to dry. They passed by an old dame washing newly skinned leathers by a small creek.

'So, so weird' She thought again, watching everything and everyone around her with wide eyes. This looked like it came straight out of her childhood, this quaint little picture of a small, no-name Water Tribe village with its small, no-name Water Tribe people. It felt as though Korra hadn't gone twenty-six years into the past, but only around thirteen or so years, back to the time when she was still living with her parents in the midst of a small settlement in the frontier of the South Pole.

Everything was the same, or at least, the same as the hazy images stored in her mind from the time when she was four and could barely remember the first three syllables of the Water Tribe alphabet. The people, the landscapes, the clothings and houses. Her mother was Southern, but her father was pure Northern... and of royal blood. He built their igloo from good ol' Northern stocks, and her mother, in a bid to soothe her husband's prevalent homesickness, sewed all their clothes in Northern vogue. It felt as though, if she blinked, they would appear right in front of her, right now, wearing their good old homemade parka and completely at home in this far-flung Northern village.

A child ran past her on the village path, screaming giddily as his playmates pelted him with snowballs the size of rice bowl.

Snowballs!? Korra shooked her head. Whoever played snowballs anymore? She couldn't remember the last time she had played that good ol' Water Tribe children pastime. Four? Five? Past her fourth birthday, she had been forced to move into the Lotus compound. A whole fortress built for the purpose of protecting the child Avatar. There was a whole lot of ice and snow in that fortress, but no snowballs for as long as she could remember. She was the only child there, and as much as the Lotus guards and servants wanted to please a homesick four years old, it seemed they were only willing to go as far as their duties told them to. So no snowball games for lil' Korra.

She felt something fill her chest, warm, but uncomfortable, like burning coal. Somehow, she could still recall the feeling of a snowball in her hand. Cold, and wet, and melting, its solid weight on her palm, and a childish joy like feathers on her face and in her belly. Throw the ball! It said to her. Throw it!

"Hey! Don't lag behind." The voice snapped her out of her thoughts. She jerked away from the playing children. Mini-Amon was standing maybe ten paces away, looking at her with hands in pockets and mild impatience painted on his face. It occurred to her that this was about the second time he had spoken to her since that 'disastrous first meeting'.

"Right... I'm coming." She mumbled, picking up her pace. She was too startled to actually object to anything he might say to her. Besides, this was his home village, his turf. She was already on shaky enough ground. She didn't want to start more trouble over stuffs like this.

The very notion that she was now backing away from a... potential fight... with mini-Amon of all people, put a wry smile in her head. It was testament to how much things had changed... and how Korra was effected by it.

Wouldn't Tenzin be proud? She had a feeling he wouldn't... ahh, but what would she pay just to hear his disgruntled scolding in her ears right now.

As they cleared the way to the village gate, Korra wrestled with her chaotic emotions. Deja vu was the name of the game here. She felt... like she had gone back to a home she had forgotten long ago, but at the same time, strangely out of place. The first four years of her life was spent on a tiny settlement on the ass-end of nowhere, just like this. The next twelve and a half year was dry as bone monastery life. And then the last half year, Republic City, like a brightly burning light in her mind.

Emeq was nothing like Republic City. While the big R was all razzle-dazzle, Emeq touched something deep in her, something she hadn't remembered for a long time. It was like... like going back home after thirteen years... and realizing that home hadn't changed one bit. That everything was the same, and the only thing that changed... was her. Korra wasn't sure what she felt about that.

Past the village gate, which was marked by twin inukshuk rock formations, she followed Mini-Amon wordlessly, running after him in the dirt path leading out. They left the hubbub of the village behind in about ten paces or so, the noises of daily life fading with each step.

Ahead, all was white and blue. The beaten dirt path drew a zig-zagging line around several snow hills before disappearing into the murky line separating the snow and the skies. They walked with the light of the Hazing Sun at their back, chasing their shadows on the road.

Korra watched Mini-Amon from his back, eyes going up and down on his bobbing ponytail. She gritted her teeth. Her feet hurt something badly. The new skin chafed against the linen bindings. She thought she might be bleeding from her ice-burned soles and the tender parts in between her toes, but she wasn't sure. Behind the pain, there was a numbness that suggested the ice had burned away parts of the nerves.

I can walk my ass! She thought glumly to herself. That was what she said to Kaya a mere half hour ago, trying to prove that she was well enough to go gallivanting to the outside world... but it turned out a lot of that was just plain old blustering. Her feet might be on their way to completely healed, but they still weren't in any shape to go snow stomping, much less taking on a several mile long trek from one village to another.

But she couldn't turn back now. The thought of mini-Amon buying the things that would sit next to her skin for the next few days burned. The fact that he wouldn't know about it made her feel no better. So she gritted her teeth, and pushed on, walking faster and faster, until she matched mini-Amon pace for pace, until she was walking side-by-side with him. She wanted to get this done and over as fast as she could.

They walked on in silence, two tiny blue dots in the encompassing white and off blue of the landscape. Then she saw him glancing at her from the corner of her eyes, his gaze going from her face to her feet. A crease appeared between his eyes.

"Stubborn..." He said under his breath, but she heard it anyway. Out here in the tundra, there was no noisy crowd to drown out the things that came from their mouths. She could hear his breath in the silence, the rustling of his clothes.

"What's that?" She snapped.

In the first second, mini-Amon was silent. He kept on walking without so much as a pause, not acknowledging her. Then the next second he stopped suddenly and turned to face her in full. Korra stopped too, her breath coming out wet and ragged from her mouth and her nostrils. She had sweat running down her face and a damp patch hanging at the small of her back. The pain from her feet hang around her head like an invisible shroud. Her body tensed, poising for a fight.

It looked like it couldn't be avoided after all. Too bad for not wanting to start trouble in his turf. But in that case, bring it on! Korra could as well do with a good fisticuff now anyway. Anything to stop the throbbing pain in her feet, anything to stop the burning headache in her skull.

But what followed was absolutely out of her imagination. Mini-Amon stared at her, not saying a word. He looked at her face, then down at her feet, then back up again. There was a funny expression in his face, like he was trying to swallow something bad.

"What are you looking at?" She snapped again, irritated. The crease in between Mini-Amon's eyes deepened. Then he took his hands out of his pocket, holding them spread-fingered and open in front of him. It was a gesture meant for her to see, like he was saying 'look, I got nothing to hide' to her with his hands. He took one small step forward, closer to Korra, slow and deliberate, like how a tamer would move around a wild buffalo-yak.

"What are..." She started, but before she could finish that, he was already moving forward again, and down. She jerked, caught by surprise. Then the next thing she knew, she was standing, looking down to a kneeling Mini-Amon at her feet.

And her feet...

... oh...

He moved his hands a little. Immediately, she felt the working of healing Waterbending. There was nothing to do about the blood that had soaked and damped its way to the outer skin of her fur boots, but the burning sensation was slowly but steadily receding.

It felt... it felt... good.

She stood there, gobsmacked as Mini-Amon worked his healing magic over her bleeding feet. There was a disconnect in her mind... Amon? Healing? Her feet?! It didn't compute. The Amon in her head was a monster and a blood bender, not a healer.

"Sit down." She heard his voice as though over a veil, then she felt hands pulling and pushing until she was sitting down on the ground, with pockets of free floating water supporting her back.

Water Bending, and he didn't even move a finger to make them float. Korra was so dazed she didn't even have the mind to feel jealous. Instead, she watched disbelievingly as he worked his way around her feet.

Three-fourths of her boots were soaked in her own blood. He pulled the strings holding them to her shins, then pulled them off her. They made a wet splash on the ground. There was blood coming... sloshing... out of the fur shafts, she saw. The bandages Kaya put on her this morning were a bloody mess.

He gave her a look that said something like 'do you see what you did there?'.

"So what..." She bit out, more out of reflex than any real intention to pick a fight. Her words lacked their usual barbs. In reply, he raised an eyebrow.

Really?

Before she could think of a comeback to that, he had already turned away and back to her legs. In the next few minutes, there was nothing but the sound of Arctic wind and the distant beating of the waves going by them, that and the quiet rustling of bandages coming off. Mini-Amon didn't say a word, and she, Korra, was too busy trying to keep her mouth closed and not let out even a whimper of pain. When the bandages finally came off, it became clear that she had been a fool.

Mini-Amon picked up one leg, holding it from the shin as he studied the swollen, purplish toes.

"Inflammation." He said simply. "Untreated, it will grow gangrenous." Another look at her, a repeat of his earlier 'do you see what you did there?' look. Its similarity with the exasperated look Katara used to give her made her nauseous. In response to his silent question, she kept her mouth shut this time, her face white from the pain. Then he started healing her, and with the first lick of healing waterbending, the pain and the pressure receded.

It took a scant five minutes. Shocking. If she hadn't been there to watch him work, she wouldn't have believed Mini-Amon, the precursor to the terror he'd become in the future, possessed such degree of healing skill. But she was there, and she saw it all. She didn't think she had ever seen anyone that good with healing except for Katara and her disciples before. Her feet, bleeding and swollen mere minutes before, were now healed, not completely, but they were in far better shape than they had ever been since Korra crash landed in this time period. She wiggled her toes, watching the baby pink skin stretch and give. Then she looked back at Mini-Amon, speechless.

The feeling in her chest right now was of a person pushed further and further out of her comfort zone. It was like Kyoshi had drop-kicked her to twilight zone and not to the past. This was not how she had imagined her first outing with Amon the Kid would be like. This was not how she had imagined her interaction with Amon of any time period would be like. This was not how she imagined he would be, period. The pain she had endured for the past several days had almost gone away, and her head clear, but despite this, it seemed her confusion could only grow larger and larger with every day she stayed here. And she didn't know how to deal with that. It wasn't like she could firebend... or punch... confusion in the face until it quit bugging her.

Unknowing of Korra's inner confusion, the source of her problem carried on without a thought as to what was going on in her head. Mini-Amon picked up the dirty bandages and did a waterbending trick with them.

Here in his village, it was called stingy healer's bandages. He suffused them in salt water, taking care to push the sodium content up above what was normal for sea water, then held them there until he was sure they were sterilized off any germs. When he pulled the water back out, every drop of it, the blood, clot, and dead skin cells were taken along as it went. Within minutes, he had transformed a wad of used and dirty rags into brand new bandages.

Waste not want not was the motto of life for his people. And out here, where they couldn't grow their own cotton field, a simple string of cotton bandage was a small fortune.

He set to rebandaging the girl's wounds. Foolish, was the word he had for her, though he was too polite to say that to her face. Or maybe touched in the head. That wouldn't be impossible with the way she was tearing herself up with injuries after injuries since the day he fished her out from the sea. If this kept up, he suspected she may become a permanent fixture in Kaya's temple... that or buried herself in impossible hospital debts to the village healer. Oh well, at least this one he did for her would be on the house.

He worked quick and clean, winding the bandages and tieing them tight. Once he was done, he turned up and said.

"Go back."

"What...?"

"Go back." He repeated. "We haven't gone that far. You can make it back to Kaya on your own. I'll go to the market alone and get whatever it is that you want."

"I... what... No! No! I'm coming with you!"

He felt the first lick of irritation. This girl... "Stop being stubborn." He said slowly, keeping a tight rein over his voice. He had a feeling he would need a lot of patience when dealing with this brat of a girl. "You obviously can't make the trip. I may have stopped the bleeding but you are a far way away from walking four miles from here to the market." He pointed at her bloody boots for emphasis. "What are you going to do? Crawl?"

That stopped Korra dead in her tracks. He was right. She hadn't thought about that, and that was the entire reason as to why she was sitting on her butt out here in the middle of the North Pole tundra field, with her feet out and bare in the cold Arctic air, listening to the the teenage self of her worst enemy berating her for her thoughtlessness.

Unbidden, she thought of what she could do if she still had her bending with her. With waterbending, she could have easily healed herself back to tip top shape in the last few days. With firebending, she could have kept herself warm and cozy even in the harshest part of the pole and not shivering and snivelling like a wet crow-rat wrapped in layers of coats. With earthbending, she could have gone from here to that bedamned market in two seconds flat. If she still had her bending, she wouldn't be here, here as in twenty six years into the past in this freakish land with this freakish water tribe village, to begin with.

What she could do if she had her bending back. But she didn't. She was a nonbender, a weak, helpless fleshbag like the countless one she had thrown around in her raids into the Equalist base.

It stung.

"I don't know..." She bit out finally, feeling the frustration at her own helplessness bubble and simmer right under the surface, threatening to overflow her. She hated it! She hated being the helpless girl everyone had to take care of. "... but you're not going without me."

"Stop acting like a child. How old are you?" She heard the first hint of annoyance in his voice, and despite herself, it made her smile a little in her head.

"Seventeen. How old are you?" She pointed a finger in his face, his clean baby face. She could still see a hint of baby fat in his cheeks and along his jawline, softening up his feature. He couldn't be more than fifteen. He was a frigging kid! She bet he hadn't even had his first pimple yet. Hah! Wouldn't that be a sight? Amon with puberty pimples. She almost wished she had given in to Tarrlok and his truckload of gifts right then and there. She still remembered seeing one of those paparazzi point-and-snap thing that made pictures in that one load he had sent to the Air monastery. What would she give to have a picture of teenager Amon with pimples on his face? She'd hang it above her bed and go to sleep looking at it. She bet she would never have another Amon-related nightmare for as long as it stayed there above her bed.

"Fourteen." Mini-Amon almost spat out. "And acting way more mature than you." He had stood up straight in the middle of their spontaneous verbal throw down and was now towering over her in all his fourteen years old height. Not to be outdone herself, Korra stood up too, wobbling a little bit on her newly healed feet. They smarted a little, but were otherwise fine... for now.

"Oh yeah? Good for you." She was in his face now, their noses inches away from each other. Typical Water Tribe stocks had her seventeen years old height at around the same as his fourteen years old. Another year and it would be Korra who had to look up. "But you are not going anywhere without me. End of discussion." Just for kick, she added in. "What are ya gonna do? Drag me kicking and screaming back to the village? Wouldn't that be a sight hmm?"

Now it was his turn to stop dead. There was an incredulous look on his face, like he couldn't believe what she was saying.

Oh, you better believe it bitch. She thought to herself. Cause that's what I want and you gotta deal with it!

"So what's it gonna be huh, Mister I'm way more mature than you?" She added after a full minute of staring into Mini-Amon's face and not hearing a word in answer. "Tick tock, buddy." She said, smiling, sneering. She got him in a bind and she knew it. "My feet ain't getting any better. What would Kaya say when we limp back to her place huh? The perfect no-fault Mister Mature-Fourteen-Years-Old not being able to take care of one sickly and confused girl she entrusted him with. And just so you know, the moment you think you can leave me here and go off snow surfing outta this place, I'll be on your tail, and I won't quit until either my feet drop off or you come back and do as I say."

She watched his face lose that first incredulous look, calm down, quickly come to grip with what he was hearing. She can see the clocks and gears turning in that head of his, hear him quietly consider his options. Korra may not understand what went on in that fruity brain of the big Amon, freak that he was, but this mini version she can read, if only a little. She knew his type. He was a male version of Jinora, all prim and proper, except the prim in his case was rigid as rock. Proper little Jinora hated being shown her shortcomings. Korra'd bet her ass this fourteen years old brat liked it no better than Tenzin's perfect little lady. So she just needed to put down her feet and stick to it, and he'd cave. She just knew it.

Then she saw something coming onto Mini-Amon's face, a look of intention, pointed at her. And then suddenly she wasn't so sure anymore.

'How did it come to this?' Korra thought as they came sliding down a snow hill, ice and melting water spraying everywhere around them. 'Just how in the hell did I let him put me in a corner?' They cleared the last hill in a matter of minutes. The whole trip, from that one spot where they last stopped to the clearing where the four-village market was held took thirty minutes, tops. She knew. She had had plenty experience playing at snow surfing before. What kind of waterbender would she be if she hadn't known that? But in all her life, this would be the first time her entire ride was spent clinging onto someone else's back.

Mini-Amon made a smooth, graceful stop, holding the slide until it petered down to an end right at the foot of the hill. Immediately, Korra shot off of his back, then scooted three more steps away just for good measure. She eyed him warily, flushing. It took all her will not to shiver uncontrollably or beat her hands against the front of her coat in an attempt to chase away the warmth still lingering there. She could hear him on her, a distinct mixture of sun light, sea salt, cedar wood, and fish oil. That was what Mini-Amon smelt like. A piece of knowledge she neither wanted nor needed, but it was lodged firmly there in the back of her mind either way. Korra's look turned into a glare at the thought. The flush on her face deepened angrily.

He returned her look in kind.

"You were the one who wanted to come no matter what." He said, patting down his coat.

"But... piggybacking?" She mumbled.

"I didn't hear any better idea coming from you, did I?" True. She hadn't thought that through when she was trying to get that condescending look off his face earlier. In retrospect, it was she who pushed herself into a corner. Twilight land, she thought again, this whole village... time period... whatever... was doing funny things to her head. She turned away and towards the market, unwilling to pursue that line of thoughts.

The market—that was how people around here called it, simply market or occasionally the four-village market, 'cause there was no other market but it within a hundred mile wide diameter so there was no need to distinguish it from any other - resided in a patch of land between a range of snow hills and the sea, right smack dab in between four villages. A simple square of flat land with dirt, patches of bone-white prairie and a whole lot of snow. The sea carved a curve into the earth, creating a mini crescent shape bay. There was a small port in the bay, with kayak boats going in and out, bearing things to trade. The main market sat on the coast next to the port, with wood panels trawling out from the beach into the water. There were maybe a dozen stalls on the land market, and around half a dozen more floating on the waves in double-loaded kayaks. The market gave off a cacophony of noises over the background sound of the constant ebb and flow of the sea and the wind, noises of people talking, walking, running, eating, their lips smacking and throats swallowing. The click-clacking of things being held up, then put down. The bleating of ox-goats. The cracking of a burning fire.

From far away, she saw columns of white smoke rising up from a corner of the market. The wind came in from the sea, carrying with it the scent of the smoke and of breakfast cooking over bonfire. It smelt like barbecue, and steaks. Good old Northern Style steak with the sauce. Well maybe not the sauce. The sauce was imported, from Earth kingdom, but steak by itself was already a little piece of heaven. Korra's stomach rumbled. It occurred to her that the entire time she was at Kaya, she had been surviving on a diet of soups and gruels and some more juices. Her stomach literally churned for some of that good old juicy red meat.

"All yours." Said Mini-Amon as he dangled a coin pouch in her face, cutting her gourmand day dream in the middle. She snatched it up, throwing him a dirty look. Then before he could say another word to ruin her day, she headed to the market. Her newly healed feet felt tight and tender and probably couldn't yet take another trek back home, but she knew she was good as long as she kept a slow and careful pace. The throngs of people swallowed her in seconds, and she thought she might have left Mini-Amon behind... or maybe he didn't follow. Well either was fine by her. Before long she was standing right in front the place where they dish out the steaks in wooden plates. She stood there in front of a small queue, looking at the sign. It said...

2 coppers... no return, no exchange

She held the coin pouch tight in her hand, feeling the coins inside through a layer of thin hemp cloth. She counted... two, three, four... four coins. She opened the pouch, looked inside. They were copper coins. There went her hope of four shiny silver coins in her pouch. She closed and tied the pouch with a huff.

"Stingy old crone..." She mumbled to herself.

"Ey... you gonna buy or not?" The stall owner pointed a grill poke at her, then at the line of people waiting behind her. She looked at the sizzling grill, swallowed.

"Uh.. no thanks."

"Then get the hell out of here and let me customers through."

She slunk off like a mouse, the pouch clutched in her hands. The coins jingled and jangled as she walked.

Money.

Money.

Money was turning out to be the newest and biggest thing she was having to swallow these days. She needed money to eat. She needed money for clothes. She needed money for her healing. She owed Kaya apparently a whole bunch of money. They asked her money just to stay a few more weeks at the village. Money was how people communicated, like these folks shopping around her. The put out the coins and the deal was made. No words required but just a few numbers.

Money was like a power in its own... like a bending power that stood apart from the great four, except she didn't ever see anybody trying to moneybend before. For such an important thing, one would think the Lotus should have prepared her for its influence, but no. It was international politics instead, and history of the world. And now she was left here on her own, trying to learn the ropes of a game in which she was introduced to seventeen years later than everyone else by trial and failure.

Well, a fat lot of good history and politics were to her now.

To be honest, she wanted nothing more than to go back to that street grills and ordered as much as she could stuff into her throats and left the consequences for other people to deal with.. cause she was the Avatar and always somebody else picked up her mess. Just like that one time with the barbecue lady when she first came to Republic City, and then that other time when she tore up the streets with her earthbending. But then she had to remind herself that there was nobody here to pick up after her no more. No Tenzin, no disgruntled Lotus Guards. It was just her... and the consequences waiting to happen. It would be so easy to fall back into her old patterns, throw up her hands and not care. But during the last few weeks she was starting to learn that without her bending powers, the world operated on a different rule set. And the consequences... it wasn't like she could bend consequences outta the window.

So... no steaks. Clothes it was.

She found the clothing stalls bobbing up and down on the waves, and stood by almost exclusively middle age ladies. She circled the wood panels going out into the water, eyeing the floating stalls until one of them waved her over. she hesitated for a second, before deciding to leave it all to hell and went in.

"Shopping for the new season?" Said the shop lady, a plump, happy looking forty-something with a fur pelt and bird feathers on her head. "What are you looking for?"

"Uh..." Said Korra very eloquently, eyeing birdy lady's merchandise. The entire shop took up the whole front of the double-loaded kayak, with all kinds of clothes and furs sitting pell-mell on the driftwood nose of the boat and filling the deck hatch; the whole thing bobbing up and down every time the waves came in. She took in a deep breath. The smell of damp clothes and epoxy resin filled her nose. It figured, these things probably had been sitting out here in the open since morning.

She tried again and all that came out was: "Umm..."

Now this wasn't exactly a secret, because Korra had better things to keep as secrets than something that silly, but the truth was... she didn't know how to shop for clothes. What she wore had always been chosen for her by the Lotus elders. Sure she 'demanded' things now and then, her tank tops for example, but for the major parts, what went on in her closet was mostly out of her hand, and had been since she was four years old. It wasn't like there was a fashion shop open for business in the Lotus Compound in the deep South Pole. Same thing with the Air Monastery. So as it turned out, this would be the first time ever that Korra shopped for her own clothes.

She gave a third try, pointing a finger vaguely at the pile. "Can I..." She started. Sensing her inexperience, Birdy Lady cut right in.

"How about this one? This is your size." She held up a dress, powder blue with a boat neck. No complaints here except Korra would really like some pants. She was growing sick of running around in old dresses. She shook her head, kneeling down on both legs so that she was on almost the same level with birdy lady and her bouncing boat. She tried to make sense out of the pile of clothings in front of her. It couldn't be that hard. She just needed something comfortable. The end. She didn't need the fancy things like the ones in Asami's closet.

But then it started to get weird.

"No? How about this one? The boys love it. How about you try it on?"

"What? What do boys have..." She looked at the new dress in birdy lady's hand. She couldn't see how it was any different than the first dress.

"Oh I saw you coming in with that young man. How very cute you were, clinging to him like that. Ahh, youths these day. Now if it was a decade ago, you can be sure that was not how it went around here." There was a half scandalous undertone to birdy lady's voice as she twittered. "So... is he your..." She held up her pinky.

"What... No! No, he's not! He's..." Korra jerked back, burned and horrified. "He's my... uh... my..." She stuttered, momentarily unsure of what to give as a safe answer.

"Her guide. I'm her guide." A voice cut in from behind her. She turned, and there was the pain in her backside given human form. "You!" She screeched. "You followed me! You... sicko!"

"You were taking too long. I've got stuff to do, and it didn't look like you knew where you were going," Mini-Amon replied, nonchalantly. He wasn't even looking at her, but at birdy lady's stuffs. "How are your feet?"

If Korra didn't know better, she would have thought the question was for somebody else and not her, the way it was put out so casually and directed anywhere but at her. Birdy lady, however, had absolutely zero difficulty in pinpointing who the question was for.

"Ooh, he cares!" Said Birdy Lady, cheeks flushed pink with amusement and her eyes snapping back and forth between Korra and the bane of her existence. "Guide, huh? Is that what you youngsters call it these days?"

"No!" Said Korra, eyes wide and nearly shaking with horror.

"I just don't want to have to heal her again on the way back. She's a handful." Said Mini-Amon, not missing a beat. "She lost all her clothes when she passed by my village. Bandits. She needs some new ones." He carried on before any can interject, getting right to the point.

"Oh, you poor dear."

"She just need something comfortable. A good coat, clothes for day work and something she can sleep in. If she needs anything else we can get them later on."

"Hey, back off pal! It's my clothes. I'm the one who should do the talking." Korra jumped right in. Like hell she'd let this brat be the one who chose what she wore.

"Of course..." He drawled. His face wore a long-suffering expression that said he wasn't surprised in the least. "In that case, please tell us what you want."

"Uhh... something comfortable..."

"I just said that."

"Yeah? Well I want to be the one who say that. What I wear is none of your business. When your mother does her shopping do you stick to her butt and nag like that too? Now get out of my face and go away. Shoo!"

Mini-Amon rolled his eyes, and, apparently having already decided that he didn't want to deal with her big mouth and the scene they were causing, walked away without another word.

With the source of her annoyance finally gone, she turned back to Birdy lady, who was grinning all the way. "Anyway, pants. No dresses. I don't like dresses. They are so hard to run in. And tunics. Do you have something easy to move in?" She leaned forward, pulling at the pile. She found lots of fur and cured leather and some wool. The fabric felt coarse and thick to her hands, not the silky lightness of her old clothes. Secretly, she had been hoping something similar to her old getup would be here, lying before naked eyes in one of these stalls and up for grasps in seconds. That would make her job so much easier.

"We do have some cotton and linen." Said Birdy Lady. "But they are imported. They are going to cost you."

Oh, right. Things didn't come for free. She had forgotten it again. The smile on her face died. She fingered the coin pouch, hesitated for a second before offering it on two hands to Birdy Lady. "This is all I have with me now. Is it enough?" Birdy Lady took the pouch from her, untied it then upended it on her hand. Four copper coins rolled out. She looked at them for a second then made a clucking sound.

"Well, we do have some cotton secondhands. They are a bit worn around the edges but fine otherwise. They will see you for at least several more winters that I can guarantee."

"That's totally fine with me."

With that decided, Birdy Lady pulled from within the pile the promised secondhand cotton pants and tunics and they settled down to a comfortable routine of picking out the ones that might fit Korra then whittled down that selection with the ones she liked.

"I also need some...um..." She pulled at the neck of her coat and dress until it became clear to Birdy Lady that she didn't have a bra on her. "I lost those too. Uh... bandits, right. Thieves, the lot of them!"

"Ohh..." An expression came over on the shop keeper's face, revelation and amusement. She had a hand over her mouth as she said the next line, like she was sharing juicy gossip with Korra "Is that why you chased him away? You wanted it to be a surprise didn't you?"

"What the hell is wrong with you?!" For a moment there, Korra thought blood might have busted out from her ears. Her face was burning up like a kettle in the firebender practice yard.

"Now, now, dear, no need to shout. Let an old woman have her fun, will you? It's so rare to see young people around this place nowadays. And what was I supposed to think when you came in all cozy and snuggly on his back?"

She had a point, but that point was something Korra didn't want to consider. Not in a million years.

"Well... well... that's none of your business. And we're not... we're not... eww" Korra tried to think of Mako. Yes, her dear Mako with the chiseled face, not that pansy little brat who plagiarised her hairdo. It looked like crap on him anyway. Too girly!

"Fine, fine." Birdy Lady concurred as she pulled a plastic bag the size of a Satomobile wheel from the deck hatch. She untied it and pushed it at Korra. "Have your pick. They are new" She dug in, wincing at the course materials. If it were going to sit on her skin, then she wanted something soft and nice at least, and she was willing to pay a little more for that too.

But... urgh... just look at this stuff. So coarse and... non-stretchy. Was this what the women of this time period had to deal with? If that was so then she was so glad she was born years later. Or maybe it was just this one backwater settlement. They had the look about them. For a full five minutes she searched with her hands, feeling the rough fabric scratching her fingers, trying to find that same silky softness she had grown used to. It couldn't be that hard. As far as she knew, the stuffs they used to make her old clothes were nothing special. She lived in a monastery, not a frigging high-society palace or something. There had gotta be something in there.

Then she hit the bottom of the bag, and there she felt something brushed against the tip of her fingers. It felt soft and cool to the touch. She fished it up out of fifty inches of women panties and bras. Her face lightened up the moment she saw it, held it in her hands. It wasn't anywhere nearly as good as what she had, but it was already a whole lot better than what she had seen coming from this place so far.

"That's silk, imported from Fire Nation." Said Birdy Lady. "That's going to cost you a whole lot, girl. I don't think you have the money for that."

"I do have something else." Replied Korra as she clutched the silk slip and panties tight in one hand. Her other hand went inside her coat, pulled out the only intact thing left from her old outfit. The decorative rock sewn to the collar of her old parka. She figured she had no use for it left. It looked real shiny though, so maybe it was worth a little. "Can I trade this with you instead?"

The moment she held the rock out in the open, it caught light, and glinted a soft blue under the Hazing Sun. Birdy Lady's eyes suddenly grew wide, and her mouth formed an O.

Korra perked up. So maybe it was worth a lot. Maybe she can get more nice stuff with it.

"Hey, can I get..."

Before she can finish that line though, somebody clutched her by the hand and yanked it down. Then a voice came out cold and angry from her left.

"What do you think you are doing?" Mini-Amon's face was inches away from her, and for the first time, she thought she saw something like anger, real anger, in it. She jerked away from him.

"You again? Would you quit bothering me? What's it to you anyway huh? This is mine. I can do whatever I the hell want with it. It's just a shiny rock anyway."

If it was possible, the expression on Mini-Amon's face grew even colder. He was dead quiet for maybe a second, and when he finally spoke, it sounded like he'd just made a revelation he didn't like in the least.

"You really are just a spoilt rich brat, aren't you?" As he said this, he let go of Korra's hand. The gesture felt like he was letting go entirely. Something in his voice stopped her from firing off in retaliation. He sounded... disappointed?

"That rock as you put it, can feed my entire village for a year." He made a pointing gesture at the bauble. "It's also the last link you have to your past and the only thing you have of value right now, and you are just going to throw it away like that? Did you think about what you're going to do once you've spent it all? How are you going to feed yourself? You barely know how to work. Or are you just going to live off of Kaya? She's not rich you know. None of us are."

Korra reared back, stunned. She had no reply to the questions Mini-Amon was throwing at her. Before she could think of something to say though, he had already carried on.

"But then again, that's none of my business, isn't it?" He stood up , dusted his hands. "Do what you want." He said, then turned his back and in mere seconds he was gone, swallowed up in the throngs of people, leaving her shocked to speechlessness on the wood panel ground.

"He's right you know." Birdy Lady's voice pulled her back. She turned to look at the shop keeper and saw that she had none of the happy-go-lucky look she had worn for the entirety of their conversation. "You should listen to your boy." She took the empty coin pouch, and took Korra gently by the hand. She covered the decorative rock with the pouch, then closed Korra's hand around it. "Don't show this at places like this. You'll only attract troubles to yourself. You never know for sure what kind of no-good people are looking at you."

No-good people? Korra looked around and caught several people turning away. But they could have just as easily been attracted by the ruckus she and Mini-Amon was making. She looked back at Birdy Lady, confused and at a loss for words.

It was just a rock! She thought to herself. A shiny one. The Lotus elders gave her one every year, and so did some of the Lotus Guards. She had a trunk full of them in her room back in the Lotus Compound. She played rock skipping in the backyard pond with them!

"Tell you what..." Birdy Lady said as she picked up the stuffs Korra chose, the clothes, the fur hat for particularly cold days, the scarves and the good coat, even the imported silk underwears. "You can have all these for four coppers. It's on me." She added on when she saw Korra about to protest. There was a look of pity on her face. "Don't think about it. See it as a good luck charm. I have a feeling you are going to need it kid." Then she wrapped the clothes all up in a bundle and pushed them into Korra's hands.

.

.

.

Mini-Amon waited for her on the outskirt of the market, passed the lines of market goers. He didn't say a word when he gave her his hand and pulled her on his back. He didn't say anything else either on their way back. Korra too stayed silent. All the way, all she could think about was:

Feed an entire village? For a year?

That feeling when she first discovered the gravity of money and other things they never taught her in the Lotus monastery surfaced again. For a moment back there, she genuinely thought she was finally getting the hang of it, but in the end, it seemed like she was just starting to realize how out of depth she was.

End Chapter 6

1. Lots of teenager headbutting in this chapter. What do you think of Korra and Noatak's interaction? And yes, Korra will keep referring to him in her head as Mini-Amon or Amon the Kid until she saw him as a person and realized that he wasn't yet the same as the Amon in her head, that he was a kid, and very much like her. That will be in the next chapter I think.

2. Brought up by my beta. On Korra's playin rock skipping in the backyard pond. It's a big pond, it opens to an inland bay.

3. I really, seriously enjoy building up Korra's character. I feel that she was done a disservice in the show. On first look, she's a very hard to root for protagonist, a selfish brat who just wants everything her way and never actually conquers her fear. But I feel she is a far more complex character than that, and I want to explore that hidden, wasted depth of her in this story. I hope you are with me in this.

4. The first hint of the promised romance in this chapter. I'm betting some of you really like it. Still, my motto is always characters and story before romance.

5. This part is written on the behalf of Rosetta at Home. It has nothing to do with my stories or my writings or even myself. It is simply a plea for anyone who's willing to pay a little attention to the welfare of the community, a little cyber volunteer work, if you will (So you don't have to read it if you're not interested. But please, it only takes five minutes, and I'm pretty sure you've already spent hours reading what I write so what's five more minutes?).

Donate your computer processing power to Rosetta at Home!

Rosetta at Home: is a distributed computing project to solve the mystery of how the human protein strings fold, and from there discover the key to curing all diseases, including AIDS, cancer, flu, autoimmune disorders.

In layman's terms, no supercomputer is up to the task of calculating all the possible ways a human protein strings can fold into itself (like the ways a shoestring dropping into a carton box would look like, the possibilities are endless), so this project has to be done communally by a large group of computers. Rosetta at Home is a software that only works when your computer is idle or is using a very small percentage of the processing power (e.g. when you go to class and forget to turn down your laptop, when you fall asleep while writing your midterm essays, while you are reading the news from your office computer, etc...) to compute protein folding and find the 'golden folds'.

This project has gone on for some years now, organized by Baker Laboratory of the University of Washington. I got into it when a friend introduced it to me partly because I felt this was a very small thing I could do (I figure if my laptop can run Mass Effect 3 on high quality then Rosetta should be no big deal) that would help a lot of people, and partly because someone dear to me was hanging on to her life. My little sister who has a severe case of Lupus, an autoimmune disorder. I've been crunching the program for some months now and though I didn't let myself hope that I would see the day when my sister benefits from the fruits of Rosetta, only that perhaps other people later on could benefit from it (Fyi, one out of ten Americans run the risk of having lupus).

But it actually happened. A few days ago, the team started on the designing process of proteins that are meant as cures for a number of diseases, autoimmune disorders among them.

So there, that's the reason as to why I'm writing this to you now. If you have a loved one afflicted with diseases with no cure, if you yourself are afflicted, if you have seen other afflicted people and are touched, donate your computer processing power to Rosetta.

They don't ask you to do anything great. They don't ask you for your time. They don't ask you for your money. They simply ask for the time that you would have thrown away anyway on your computer. That's all. It is a very simple act that would save a lot of people.

The program is small, with no bugs nor trojans, no advertising, no phishing, no unwanted proposition for sibling programs, no credit card number required, no hidden deal. The only problem I've ever had with it is that sometimes it becomes a little overzealous and cause my laptop to slow down. A bit of tweaking around, limiting the amount of CPU usage it can access should solve this problem.

Currently, there are around 350,000 computers with Rosetta installed. Honestly speaking, I've seen indie shops with more followers on facebook and twitter than that (fyi, there are more people reading my writings than that too). The reason for its unpopularity is that the people who run Rosetta...

…. are complete dumbasses when it comes to PR. (If you are a member of the Rosetta team reading this, I mean it, guys!)

They may be brilliants doctors and scientists whose IQ probably doubles mine, but when it came to putting together an explanation or a presentation for their brain baby, they …

…. epic failed...

Yes, they are your typical socially hopeless people of science. Reading their explanations about the project is like reading a legal treaty written in Sur'keshian (if you don't know what Sur'keshian is, it's the language of the planet Sur'kesh, Pranas System, Annos Basin, Milky way, home to the Salarians, a species of amphibian aliens who are too smart for their own good but unfortunately only lives up to 40 years).

Their latest presentation clip is even worse. I think I fell asleep in the first minute. I'm not sure. My brain was a bit hazy at the time.

Anyway, my point is: please go check them out, and give them a chance. I'm throwing them some free PR, and they sure can use it.

And if you, the one reading this, are a member of the Rosetta team, tell your fellow Salarians disguised as humans to hire a human PR major to help out, maybe even hoodwink them into working for you for free. I'm sure your colossus IQ point can think of something. But get professional help...

…. seriously!