I have a message from another time... Eyrie Productions, Unlimited presents UNDOCUMENTED FEATURES FUTURE IMPERFECT - SYMPHONY OF THE SWORD No. 5 - SUITE FOR TRINITY AND AVATAR (THE DIQIU SUITE) Étude for Firebenders in A ("Fire Hazards") Benjamin D. Hutchins with Anne Cross Philip Jeremy Moyer (c) 2013 Eyrie Productions, Unlimited FRIDAY, MARCH 19, 2410 REPUBLIC CITY, DIQIU Firetown, Republic City's original "little Fire Nation" district, was one of the city's oldest neighborhoods. Technically speaking, it predated Republic City itself, having been the core of the wartime Fire Nation colony chosen by Avatar Aang and Fire Lord Zuko as the hub of their bold experiment in nationbuilding - the capital of the United Republic of Nations. While they walked the three blocks from the late Fire Lord's eponymous firebending academy to the Firetown street market, Azana - sometime hotel clerk, professional athlete, and newly minted firebending master - explained all this to her student. Any firebender from Republic City or the Fire Nation would know it already, but Anne Cross was from out of town. Way, way out of town. She liked Republic City, though, that much was obvious from the spring in her step and the brightness of her eyes as she took in the view. Though listening attentively, she was looking around at everything, trying to take it all in - the colorful banners hanging from telephone wires above the streets, the shop fronts, the bustling stalls, all the sights and sounds and smells of a cheerful Friday lunchtime in Firetown. She seemed delighted just to be alive and abroad in such a place as this, on the latest in a long string of beautiful spring days. For her part, Anne had a special reason for her especially buoyant mood today. Yes, Firetown was bright and cheerful and boldly drawn, and yes, it was a lovely day; and yes, if she was honest, she'd have been happy walking along any reasonably safe street in any reasonably clean city with this particular person by her side. Today, though, she'd had a thought that colored everything she experienced a special shade of pleasant. That thought, running through her head as they entered the marketplace's first block, had been: A year ago I was up to my shoulders in trouble (and usually in filth). Nobody gave a damn about me except the people who wanted to strip away everything that makes me who I am and use my body as a weapon. I had no idea this amazing world was here, and even if I had, I would never have dared imagine I might come here someday... or that I'd be welcome if I did. And now... eleven months later... ... here I am. That thought, and the sense of wonder that came with it, were not entirely unfamiliar. She'd experienced them often, with various modifications to the count of time, since she'd literally run into the arms of the IPO on Carida last April and found herself abruptly whirled from the (second-)worst of lives to what she was fairly confident was among the best. The feeling was especially powerful on days like this, though, when vistas opened up before her that she'd never even dared to dream of in the bad old days. Azana guided her to a sidewalk cafe at one corner of the market, where they found an empty table under an umbrella at the back. A waiter came and gave them menus, then whisked off into the attached restaurant to tend to some other bit of business. Anne consulted her menu and found that it was in Kokugo, the very-Japanese-like language of the Fire Nation. She could understand a fair bit of spoken Japanese, and speak it a little, but its written form was beyond her. Azana saw the train of thought cross her student's eyes and smiled. "Do you trust me, Juni-chan?" she asked, a little mischievously. "Of course, Azana-sensei," Anne replied at once, blushing ever so slightly. When the waiter reappeared with a pot of hot tea and a couple of little ceramic cups, Azana handed him back the menus and ordered for both of them. When he had gone again, she turned back to Anne and said, "You're in unusually good form today. Not that your form is ever -bad,- but there's a special spark about you today." Anne's blush deepened a little; she glanced away, smiling her crooked little smile, and mumbled thanks. "Are you happy to be getting back home?" Azana wondered. "It's normal to get a little homesick, even in a place like Republic City. I often find myself yearning for Shu Jing at least a little. If only my mother didn't live there," she added with a wry smile. "Not at all," Anne said, and then admitted, "Well, OK, a little. It's not so much that I'm homesick for New Avalon - we just moved there a few months ago, it's not really home to me yet - but I'm looking forward to fourth quarter at school. It'll be nice to see my friends again." She grinned. "And tell them about what an amazing spring break I had! But I know as soon as I'm there I'll be counting the days until I - until I can get back here." Azana regarded her thoughtfully for a moment, then asked, "May I ask you a personal question, Anne?" "Sure, but only if I get to ask you one first," said Anne with a mischievous twinkle of her own. Azana raised an eyebrow. "Dare I even wonder what you want to know? Very well, fair's fair. Ask me anything you like." "Why does Karana call you 'Princess' sometimes?" To Anne's delight, it was Azana's turn to go a little red, as with a faintly embarrassed little smile she replied, "Heh, well, there's a tale attached to that... do you remember when you asked me if I was related to Fire Lord Zuko?" Anne nodded. "Mm-hmm." "Karana is convinced, or claims to be convinced, that I am," said Azana. She paused to take a sip of tea, then went on, "She nearly got us arrested in Caldera City once, for demanding that we be admitted to the Royal Palace in the middle of the night, on the grounds that I was 'the rightful Fire Lord'." She rolled her eyes slightly at the memory. "-That- took some fast talking to get out of... " Anne couldn't help giggling at the image. "How -did- you get out of it?" "I -may- have claimed that she had suffered a head injury," said Azana thoughtfully; then she shook her head. "I don't really remember. I was none too sober myself." She sighed nostalgically. "Ah, those were wilder days. Before we had professional reputations to look out for." Then, after taking another sip, she said, "Zuko had a younger sister named Azula. She's the great enigma of the Fire Nation's royal family, but that's neither here nor there; the point is, Karana thinks I resemble her." Her wry smile returning, she added, "It's the one thing about which she agrees with Mother, in fact. Mother wanted to -name- me Azula when I was born, but Father wouldn't have it." She touched one of her long, center-parted bangs, which hung to her jawline and framed her face attractively, and said, "I do wear my hair similarly most of the time, I admit." With a self-deprecating little smile, she added, "My own little touch of vanity, I suppose. Say what you like about Princess Azula, all the artists of the age agree she was a very beautiful girl - even the ones going out of their way to depict her as a monster, which should tell you something." Anne looked intrigued. "Tell me more about her?" she asked. "There's not a lot to tell, really," Azana replied. "As I said, she's the royal family's great mystery. She's said to have been brilliant but unstable and cruel; she backed their father against Zuko in the brief civil war that ended the Hundred Year War, and it's said that she lost her mind when they were defeated. Not longer after the war, she disappeared. "Some of Zuko's detractors claimed he'd had her killed, or banished her to some spiritsforsaken corner of the world - because she was a threat to his rule, or simply an embarrassment to the family." Azana shook her head. "I doubt that myself. My senior thesis in school was a biography of Zuko. I've... " She reddened slightly again, then admitted, "As a girl I was a bit in love with him. As such, I did a great deal of research, and I came to the conclusion that - in spite of everything - he loved his sister, missed her, and always regretted that they were enemies. That their father's malign influence had poisoned their childhoods and turned them against each other." The waiter arrived with their starters then, forestalling further investigation. When he had gone, Anne asked, "Did anyone ever find out what happened to her?" Azana folded her hands on the table before her and said with a knowing little smile, "I think you're stalling in hopes that I'll forget my question." "Of course not!" Anne protested. "I'm just interested. Go ahead, ask." "How did you come to be with Master Kaitlyn in the first place?" Azana wondered. "She's not related to you, is she? I wouldn't ordinarily pry," she said, "but if we're going to spend the summer together, we should probably get to know one another better, and I get the impression that there's much more to your story than a chance meeting with Avatar Korra." Anne had begun to blush again in the course of that disclaimer; now she hesitated, covered it by sipping her own tea, and then said slowly, "That's... that's fair. Sorry, I... it's just that I don't know quite where to start. Have you heard of the Psi Corps?" She had, as it turned out, but only vaguely - the Corps was a matter for the Big Universe to contend with, and Azana only knew it as one of the things the Ministry for Interstellar Relations maintained a constant vigil against. From that and the fragmentary things she'd heard, she had gathered that dealing with it was not an experience to be sought. She hadn't realized quite how bad it was, though, until Anne explained, in slightly subdued tones, about the policy of universal conscription, her own narrow escape, and the relentless way in which she had been hunted for her rare and powerful talents - and the use to which she had been told, to her face, those talents would be put if and when they caught her. "That's horrible!" Azana said. "It's nothing but - " She hesitated, frowning, and shook her head. "I was going to say 'nothing but slavery', but it's really very much -more- than simple slavery, isn't it? It's... it's a total negation of -selfhood.- It's -revolting.-" Azana reached across the table and placed a cool, gentle hand on Anne's where it lay slack beside her teacup, making the girl glance up from her pensive reverie, startled, and blush slightly once more. "I'm so sorry to have dragged that out of you when you were having such a good day," she said. "I'm afraid I've completely ruined the mood." Anne's crooked smile returned as she said, "It's OK. It's a bad memory... actually it's a LOT of bad memories... but they lead to good ones." So saying, she began the next part of her narrative, outlining her rescue at the hands of the IPO and the brilliant new life she'd found herself thrust into. From there she came to her first Valiant summer, her friendship (first through Kaitlyn, and then in their own right) with Corwin and Utena, and on to her meeting with Korra at their wedding - and Azana knew the rest. "And here we are," said Anne, her good humor fully restored. She ate a bite of the starter Azana had selected for her, eyebrows going up. "This," she declared, "is amazing. I don't know what it is, but it's amazing." "It's - " Azana began, but before she could say what it was, someone abruptly slid into one of the vacant seats at their circular table, to Azana's left and Anne's right. "Good afternoon, ladies," the new arrival said in a smooth, pleasant voice. He was a tall, slim young man, maybe Azana's age, maybe a little bit older, with similar coloring - a Fire National, or a Republican with mostly western ancestors. He was dressed well, but gaudily, in a three-piece suit of slightly-too-bright-red and black satin, with a brick-red shirt and a bolo tie whose clasp was an enameled medallion with a symbol similar to that on the Fire Nation flag. Besides the tie, he had an ostentatious gold watch chain across his waistcoat and a lot of gold-rimmed mother-of-pearl buttons, and wore what looked like snakeskin cowboy boots. He had his hair in a pompadour, slicked up with something shiny and smelling powerfully of musk, and his easy, lazy smile revealed a couple of gold teeth. "Kaiten," said Azana, a porcelain mask of cool civility dropping over her face like a blast shutter. "Curiously, I don't remember inviting you to join us." "Now, Princess, that's no way for you to be," said Kaiten smoothly. Azana's eyes narrowed fractionally, the only outward sign of the resentment that welled up in her, so powerful Anne could feel it from her seat as clearly as she could smell Kaiten's reeking hair goop. "Don't call me that," she said sharply. Kaiten drew back slightly as if in surprise, then grinned insincerely. "Oh, I'm sorry, I forgot. Only your chunky little pal from the South Pole gets to call you that, right?" He spread his hands in a gesture of mocking surrender (Anne noticed that his nails were varnished the same red as his suit), saying in a conciliatory purr, "Won't happen again, baby. Won't happen again." Well-dressed and well-groomed Kaiten might be, but Anne's street-honed instincts instantly caught a whiff of wrongness about him, quite apart from the eye-watering pong of his pomade. He was sharp- featured, just on the right side of what could be called "rat-faced", and somehow the gauntness of his narrow cheeks seemed a bit unnatural. His nose didn't quite look in proportion to his face, like the noses of mummies Anne had seen in books. His eyes were that stereotypical firebender amber, but murky, without the sharp clarity of Azana's, and one was open ever so slightly wider than the other. Anne would have instinctively disliked him anyway, on the basis of his oily manner, his fake smile, his central-casting-gangster clothes, his intrusive rudeness, Azana's obvious distaste, and the fact that he called women who obviously did not like him "baby"; but those little details set her fight-or-fly response to yellow alert. This guy is on something, she thought. Maybe he's not high right this minute, but he's definitely a junkie. He could go off any second. She wished there were some way she could communicate this intelligence to Azana, but her telepathic power was far too weak to convey an understandable message even to another teep, let alone a non- telepath. All she could do was give her sifu a vaguely alarmed look, tilting her eyes meaningfully toward their uninvited lunch guest, and hope she'd get the idea that Anne wasn't just generally freaked out, but wary of him for a very specific reason. Unfortunately, though they had developed quite a good rapport in the short time they had known each other, it was not yet operating on that sort of instinctive level old friends achieve, and so Azana seemed to miss the nuance. She only nodded slightly, as if to tell her student not to worry, she'd handle it, then said coldly to Kaiten, "You will note at this point that I am not asking you whether I can help you." "That's OK, baby, I'm not here looking for help with anything," said Kaiten casually. "Fact of the matter is, I'm here to help -you.-" "I find that extremely unlikely," Azana replied. "Unlikely or not, it's true. In fact, you might think about showing me a little gratitude, or at least a little respect. I stuck my neck way out for you." Drawing himself up with a broad grin, he spread his hands grandly as if pulling off a magic trick and said, "Thanks to my intervention, the boss has decided to give you one last opportunity to join us." Azana gave him a flat, cold look for a moment, then decided not to dignify that remark by even responding to it, instead returning her attention to her starter. "Go ahead, think it over for a minute," said Kaiten magnanimously. "Oh, hey, your lunch is here, even better." He collared the waiter, who had attempted to deliver their dishes and beat a quick retreat, and said, "Hey, don't run off, pal, I haven't ordered yet." "Kaiten will -not- be joining us," Azana contradicted him. "Sure I will," Kaiten said, his tone remaining light and casual. Anne could see - and feel - that the waiter was utterly terrified; the man had broken a sweat, and he flinched outright as Kaiten reached up and patted his cheek. "Just bring me what the kiddie's havin'," Kaiten added, "and put the whole thing on my tab, willya." "That is -not,-" Azana began, but the waiter stammered, "O-o-of course, M-Mr. Kaiten. R-right away." With an apologetic look at Azana, he turned and scurried back to the kitchen. "Kinda rude of you to put that poor sap in such a bad position," Kaiten observed. "I mean, on the one hand, he wants to make every customer happy, but on the other hand, his boss knows better than to cross one of us," he said, flicking a thumb against the medallion of his bolo tie. "'Course," he went on, "we wouldn't be at cross purposes if you'd just relax that stiff neck a little." He leaned back in his chair, hooking one arm carelessly over the high back. "C'mon, baby, you know it's the right thing to do. A person with your background, your talent, your bloodline - you -belong- with us." He grinned at her in what Anne figured he probably thought was a seductive way and went on, "Joining the Agni Kai is your patriotic duty." Anne had heard of the the Agni Kai, and its appearance in this context gave her an added pulse of concern about where the conversation was heading. It was the name of a traditional firebender dueling form, yes, but it was -also- the name of one of Republic City's Triads, the criminal gangs against which the Republic City Police fought a constant low-grade war, often with Korra's assistance. She wasn't sure how many there were - in the course of the week's conversations, mainly with the Fire Ferrets, she had heard the names of three or four - but she had formed the impression that the Agni Kai was among the worst. Azana was unmoved by Kaiten's appeal to her love of country; she sipped her tea, put down the cup, and said simply, "Hah." "Don't you want your countrymen to have a fair chance in this city?" Kaiten inquired. "Or do you -like- seeing us kept down by the dirt merchants and ice babies?" Azana's eyes flicked to his face, just for a moment, then away again. "Those of us who conduct ourselves like decent people are doing just fine, thank you," she said. She ate a bit of her lunch, and Anne had to admire the way she did it: even that simple, mundane act seemed like a dismissal. Something in the way she handled her chopsticks, perhaps, elegant and precise, or the very pointed way in which she barely ever looked at him, and then never for more than a half-second. It was the most poetically administered cold shoulder Anne could remember witnessing. Unfortunately, it was entirely lost on Kaiten, who shook his head, his glib facade beginning to slip just a bit. "Should have known that wouldn't shift you," he said, sounding faintly disgusted. "You're practically an ice baby yourself these days." Then his grin returned and he said, "OK, here's somethin' else to think about. We got a -new thing.- Comin' in from out west. It's gonna give us the upper hand in this town, baby, once and for all, and I'm offerin' you a chance to get in on the ground floor. You don't wanna help your own people, fine, but you're a smart gal. You can at least see the value in bein' on the winning team. Yeah? Oh, and just incidentally?" The grin widened, becoming just a little salacious. "It is one -helluva- rush." Azana unhurriedly finished the culinary operation she was engaged in, put her chopsticks down next to her plate, and turned an icy glare to him. "You're wasting your time, Kaiten," she said. "More importantly, you're wasting -my- time. I have no more intention of discussing this matter with you now than I have had on any of the other occasions when you've seen fit to pester me about it. Now -go away- and -leave me alone.-" When he didn't move, she stood up, dropped a few yuan on the table (having no intention of letting Kaiten buy her lunch, even a lunch he had ruined), and made to leave herself. "Come on, Juniper. We'll go somewhere else. The feng shui in this place is all wrong today." Kaiten's lazy arrogance turned suddenly into something not too removed from fury. Bolting to his feet, he seized her forearm before she could step past him and leaned toward her, his muddy eyes boring into hers. "Now you listen here, little princess, and you listen good," he growled, all the oily charm gone from his voice. "You've gotten away with disrespecting the Triad before now because the boss was afraid of the old man and the Avatar, but that's all over now. We don't need to worry about Ito any more. We don't have to worry about -anybody- any more." "Let go of me, Kaiten," said Azana, meeting his gaze unflinchingly. "Now." "Uh-uh, not this time, Princess," Kaiten replied, leaning so close Azana had to lean back a bit to avoid being touched by his nose. "It's time for you to quit acting like you're better than us and do the right thing. The game's entering a new stage and there ain't room for loose pieces on the board no more. You'll either join us... or we take you outta play. You get me?" Then, glancing to the side, he seemed to notice Anne; a sardonic version of his fake smile stealing onto his face, he turned back to Azana and added, "And the same goes for the kid, if she's any good." Azana's face flushed scarlet. She'd been perfectly willing to let him make remarks about her all day - it wasn't worth even breaking a sweat over - but her student was another matter. Part of her reflected wryly that this was rather ironic behavior, considering that a week ago she hadn't thought she even wanted to be a teacher, but the rest was too furious to find the humor in it. Her free hand flashed to the table, picked up her partly-emptied teacup, and dashed its remaining contents into Kaiten's face. It wasn't particularly hot any longer, having been cooling for the better part of his sales pitch, but the suddenness of it startled him. He recoiled, crying out with expected rather than actual pain, and released her arm. She took a step back, putting the cup down, and told him in a coldly precise voice full of falsely cordial loathing: "Kaiten, you were not invited to join us. You are not welcome at our table. Your manner is offensive, your remarks are inappropriate, and your criminal enterprise does not interest me in the -slightest.-" She waited for him to finish wiping tea out of his eyes, so she could be entirely sure of his undivided attention, and then fixed him with her amber glare and went on, "Now get out of my sight. If ever you choose to approach me again, or if you so much as -think- about my student at any future point, then you will learn what the phrase 'Agni kai' -really means.-" Oh don't do that, thought Anne, but it was far too late. Kaiten's response was to gather himself up with exaggerated dignity, straightening his lapels and brushing droplets of tea from his shirtfront. Then he pulled the item at the end of his watch chain from his waistcoat pocket, revealing that it wasn't a watch, but rather a small silver vial. With a casual ease that spoke of long practice, he held the vial in his left hand, unscrewing it with thumb and forefinger, then tipped a quantity of some bright red powder from it onto his right fist, into the crook at the base of his thumb. Raising his right hand to his nose, he closed his eyes and inhaled violently. Keeping his eyes closed, he screwed the vial carefully shut and replaced it in his waistcoat pocket, then licked the residual powder off his hand. "Ahhhhh," he said, giving a sort of full-body twitch - if a person could shiver only once, Anne figured it would look something like that. Around their table, people began edging away. They'd started drawing attention when Azana had risen and Kaiten had jumped up to confront her, and a couple of people had actually applauded when she'd thrown her tea in his face, but everyone in the vicinity could sense the vibe going bad now. That could have something to do with the giant hit of some obvious drug he just did, Anne remarked wryly to herself. She edged around the table toward Azana, but her teacher - looking more and more alarmed now - waved her back. /* Ministry "Just One Fix" _Psalm 69: The Way to Succeed and the Way to Suck Eggs_ (1992) */ Kaiten opened his eyes. Their pupils had all but disappeared, but Anne was mildly startled to see that the murkiness had gone from the irises; they were now jarringly bright, their color so exaggerated they almost seemed to be glowing orange. "Bad play, Princess," he said, and then he snapped into a fighting stance and launched an enormous gout of fire across the space between them. Azana was stunned, caught almost completely flat-footed, by the size of the blast he'd just produced and the simple fact that he'd done so here. Of all the things she had expected him to do, actually starting a fight in broad daylight in the middle of the Firetown street market hadn't been on the list. Even the Agni Kai were usually subtler than -that.- She backed away, her hands instinctively moving in the circular pattern meant to block and dissipate another firebender's attack, but there was so -much- of it in this case that she was blown backward, scattering tables, chairs, and frightened fellow diners in all directions. Twisting away from the worst of it, she rolled across the sidewalk, then sprang to her feet. Anne had to admire her aplomb as she batted out a small fire on her right shoulder with a casual flick of her left hand, as if her shirt being aflame were only a minor annoyance. "Sensei!" Anne cried, making as it to dart to her side. "Stay back, Juni-chan!" Azana snapped, holding up a hand. "I don't want you anywhere near this. Leave him to me!" "Listen to the Princess, kid," Kaiten agree, his gold teeth glinting as he bared them in a slightly feral grin. "Plenty of time for us to get acquainted later. Better say goodbye if you're gonna, though," he added, tossing their table casually out of his way as he advanced toward Azana. "There ain't gonna be much left to talk to later." He ignored her after that, concentrating all his attention on Azana, and she, in turn, couldn't spare anything for anyone but him. Amped on whatever he had just snorted - presumably this was the "new thing" he'd been talking about - he was -shockingly- powerful, able to produce larger, hotter, more sustained blasts of flame than any other firebender Anne had ever seen. That included Azana. In the Major League Bending arena earlier that week, Anne had seen her generate bolts of fire so hot they seemed to bend the air around them - so concentrated they had charred the fireproof canvas covering of the playing surface - but she might as well have been throwing snowballs for all that her best efforts matched up to Kaiten's prodigious output now. The only reasons Azana was able to survive his onslaught at all were her superb training, her exceptional agility, and her ironclad self-possession. Faced with this terrifyingly powerful berserker of a foe, hemmed in by streams of fire that seemed like they should be coming from giant industrial machinery rather than a human being, she didn't panic. If she had, she would have been undone in moments. She kept her defenses up and tight, all her movements precise and controlled, and put the acrobatic skill she'd learned in the MLB ring to full use. Ducking, dodging, occasionally cleaving his attacks with pinpoint bursts of her own, she showed a physical precision and an understanding of fire itself that were far beyond Kaiten's. Her heart hammering in her chest, Anne tried to think what she could do. Her own pyrokinetic power could occasionally approach something like the intensity Kaiten was wielding here, but only if she all but abandoned any semblance of control over it. If she had attempted to fight his fire with hers on anything like a level field, she could only hope to destroy everything in the vicinity - which, she saw, Kaiten was seriously threatening to do anyway, as he hosed down shopfronts and upper-level windows in his efforts to barbecue his opponent. Telekinesis might do the trick, but could she focus tightly enough on what she was doing with him throwing fire all around like that? She wasn't sure. She'd grown accustomed, over the last couple of years, to being unconcerned about the possibility of getting burned - no normal fire could touch her if she didn't want it to - but this... this was reminding her of what it had felt like to be a child and understand, for the first time, that this strange and beautiful light was -not- to be touched. Her hand went automatically to the grip of her sword, but Kurenaikaze wasn't there. As a journeywoman of the Asagiri Katsujinkenryuu, Anne was obliged to carry steel everywhere it was allowed, but third-century Republic City (outside certain greenspaces designated for martial arts practice) wasn't one of those places, and she and Kaitlyn hadn't bothered investigating the bureaucratic labyrinth to see if there was an exception available. Not when she was only going to be in town a week; it was on their to-do list of preparations for her summer return. Nor had she brought along her bokuto, Tonerikoken, which, even in this situation, would definitely have been a lot better than nothing. Amid her desperate efforts to stay alive, Azana glimpsed her student hovering on the periphery, obviously trying to work out a way in which she could help. Summoning up all her strength, she blocked Kaiten's next attack and counterstruck through it, blasting one of his giant gouts of fire into a diffuse cloud of hot gas and punching her own bolt of yellow-white flame through the middle to take him in the chest. Yelling, he fell back, tearing at the persistent flames as they took hold of his gaudy satin jacket. That won't hold him for long, Azana told herself, and then she turned and shouted to Anne, "Juniper! Stay away from Kaiten!" Spotting the frightened crowd of people back by the cafe entrance, not all of whom had been able to fit into the building, she pointed and went on, "Find a way to get those people out of - damn!" Kaiten had recovered through the simple expedient of ripping off half of his clothes. With his skinny but well-muscled chest bared, dressed only in his baggy zoot trousers and his genie-toed cowboy boots, he looked the part of a -real- Agni Kai duelist now. The next stream of fire, which Azana barely dodged, roared like a freight train as it splashed against the curbstones and across the sidewalk. The thick stench of molten asphalt rose as the pavement bubbled in its wake. Unhesitating, Anne turned and ran toward the onlookers. "Not through there - this way!" she said, pointing up a side alley. Where the hell are the cops? she wondered - not a sentiment she was accustomed to feeling - as she did her best to master people's panic and hustle them out of harm's way. A couple of the other people in the crowd were firebenders - this was Firetown, after all - and she corraled them as the rest of the civilians lit out for the safety of the next street over. "Come with me," she said. "Are you crazy, kid?" demanded one of them, a young man in less gaudy clothes than Kaiten's had been, but still bearing obvious hallmarks of a certain streetwise style. "That guy's on Comet. I'm not goin' anywhere -near- that." "Seriously," said the other, a woman of about 30 who looked like she might be a shopkeeper. "He's an Agni Kai, they're nuts anyway, but, well, -look- at him." "We're not going to go -fight- him," Anne snapped, frustrated. "Look at what he's doing to the street! If someone doesn't do something about the fires he's starting, this whole block is going to burn down!" When that got her only blank so-what-are-we-supposed-to-do-about-it looks, she resisted an urge to facepalm and shouted, "Are you firebenders or aren't you?!" Then, with a fine-the-hell-with-you-then wave, she turned and headed back toward the edge of the battle zone. By this time, several of the buildings' facades had started to catch - with the intensity and volume of fire Kaiten was throwing around, and the abandon with which he was doing it, there was no way it could have been avoided. Anne stopped about halfway to the epicenter, far enough back that she was reasonably sure she was out of direct danger, and centered herself, concentrating. Focus. Breath. Control, she thought, drawing on lessons she'd learned from both Kaitlyn and Azana - and, in her way, from Azalynn dv'Ir Natashkan, who had indirectly taught her the first vestiges of control over her gift's more explosive manifestations, as well. Then, moving to the firebending starting stance Korra had first shown her, she reached out with every metaphysical faculty she had at her disposal to get hold of the stray fires, keep them from spreading, start drawing them down. At first she didn't think it was going to work. Then, when it started to, her first thrill of accomplishment was immediately muted by the return of an old foe she had thought vanquished. Doing it like this, effectively running fire in reverse, she could feel that first ticklish knot of pain start to form, just behind the bridge of her nose. The pain that had always come in the days before she had known how to live with her gift - when it had been more of a curse. In those days, every now and then, the pain would build over the course of a day or three until Anne's whole head was pounding like one of those giant Japanese drums. Until she could think of absolutely nothing else. Until she was literally blind with it. Until eventually her endurance would fail and - with a sharp spike of even -greater- agony - it would all come screaming out, destroying everything around her, and leave her a pale and shuddering wreck. A deep, reflexive terror of ever experiencing that again grabbed her guts and twisted at the first twinge, but she gritted her teeth and pushed it away. You are not my master, she told it sternly, I am yours. We are doing this now. We have to. Behind her, the two firebenders stared in awe at the foreign girl who had shouted at them. She stood in a recognizable firebending stance, but unmoving, and for a few moments it seemed like she wasn't doing anything, but then... incredibly... the wild flames tearing at the storefronts around her began to cool and die down. A few of the spot fires went out altogether. Unfortunately, the raging battle at the other end of the block was always making more, as bolts and streams and sheets of fire burst uncontrollably out, virtually all from Kaiten's increasingly frenzied attacks, and involved new patches of the streetscape. The girl started moving now, using more readily obvious firebending techniques to pull the new fires toward her, break them apart, weaken them any way she could. The punk looked at the shopkeeper, who looked back at him with a virtually identical look of amazement. Then, without exchanging a word, they turned and ran toward the foreigner, taking up positions to either side of her and applying the same methods. At the far end, Azana found her task getting easier and harder at the same time. Easier because Kaiten was clearly losing control of himself: he'd become almost completely unintelligible now, ranting about something to do with firebender superiority and his own invincibility, and how no one was ever going to stop the Agni Kai. His attacks were growing increasingly wild, without anything like finesse or technique about them. On the other hand, he seemed to be getting even more powerful, if such a thing were even conceivable, in direct proportion to his loss of coherence; and she was tiring. Soon they would reach a tipping point, where his sheer power and her fatigue crossed over, and she could no longer rely on her disciplined defenses and superior mobility to hold him at bay. Where are the police? Azana wondered, but she decided it didn't really matter. The metalbenders would be virtually useless in this situation (Karana maintained that they were virtually useless in any situation, but Azana suspected that was a waterbender thing), and any of the few firebenders on the force would be just as outmatched as she was. What she really needed, she decided, was - ironically enough - the Fire Department. A dozen waterbenders with a tanker would sort this out in a hurry. Or one big lad with a fireman's axe, if he were crazy enough... As it happened, the police had arrived by this point - but, like the people Anne had appealed to for help, they had taken one look at the situation and decided there was no way they were getting involved in that action. They concentrated instead on maintaining a cordon so no one would blunder into the middle of the chaos unawares, evacuating the buildings in the area, and generally securing the scene while they waited for reinforcements. Lots of reinforcements. Karana and Pabu emerged from the Firetown North subway station, unaware that anything out of the ordinary was going on. She suspected that Azana and her student would be getting lunch someplace in Firetown Market - Azana had told her the previous evening that they probably would - and she hoped to catch them there. If not, her backup plan was to grab a quick bite herself, then head for the academy and hang around until they were ready for dinner. "Hold it," a metalbender cop told her, blocking her way at the top of the stairs. "This area's off-limits right now. Disturbance in progress." "What kind of disturbance?" Karana asked, interest piqued. "Maybe I can help," she added, showing him her Fire Ferrets challenge coin. Major League Bending teams, of course, had no particular civil defense or law enforcement powers, but everyone in Republic City knew that the Fire Ferrets were the Avatar's team, and that tended to give them a certain quasi-official status at moments like this. The cop was very young, probably younger than Karana herself, and consequently hadn't been on the job very long. He frowned at the coin as if not sure what to make of it, then said, "Uh, I doubt it. We're not sure what's going on over there, but, uh, it's pretty crazy stuff. We're waiting for Special Detail. Or Avatar Korra. You don't happen to know where she is?" "We all have to be together for that to work," Karana said seriously. "Only by all our powers combined can we summon the Avatar." The cop blinked. "Really?" Karana snorted. "No," she said. "Don't be a dope." She came the rest of the way up the stairs and looked around him. "So what's the big emer - ... " She trailed off, peering down the street, trying to make sense of what was going on down there. Two people fighting, that much was clear; both of them firebenders, by the looks of things. But one of them was throwing -way- more fire than any single firebender, apart from maybe Korra on a serious, -serious- tear, should've been able to come up with, and the other... "-Azana!-" Karana cried, her sky-blue eyes going wide with dismay. Shoving the cop out of her way, she bolted down the street toward the fight. He yelled for her to stop, and considered cabling her back, but decided that if he did that, she'd probably clobber him, and besides, she was a Fire Ferret - they had to know what they were doing, right? Halfway there, she came upon Anne and a pair of civilians, doggedly trying to cope with the ever-shifting constellation of collateral fires the furious battle at the end of the block was causing. At the sight of her, Anne cried, "Karana! Am I glad to see you - give us a hand with these fires!" "But - Azana - " Karana sputtered, gesturing to where her best friend was clearly fighting for her life. "Look at this place!" Anne declared. "You'll never even reach her if we don't get these fires out! Please, Karana. I don't think we can do this by ourselves for much longer." Karana hesitated for an agonized moment - but only a moment, becuse she knew the girl was right. Then, her face hardening into a look of determination, she turned and yelled back to the subway station, "Yo! Beifong! Little help here!" The metalbender cop jogged up, looking puzzled. Karana pointed to the hydrant on the corner. "Open 'er up!" "What?" said the cop, confused. Growling in frustration, Karana grabbed him by the breastplate of his armor and shook him, then kept hold of him with one hand and pointed to the hydrant again with the other. "Valve! Metal! Bendy- bendy!" Letting him go, she clonked him on top of the helmet. "NOW, son!" He blinked, then caught on. "Oh! Right! Sure!" he said. Turning, he gestured, and the hydrant opened, gushing water out onto the street. Catching it up, Karana was surprised at how hard it pushed back; she'd never actually worked with water-main pressures before, being more accustomed to handling water that was static until she put it into motion herself. After one false start, she figured out how to harness its momentum to her own end, whirled a great stream of it into the air, and directed it against the hottest of the hotspots Anne and her colleagues had to contend with. After watching for a couple of moments, the metalbender cop had an idea; turning toward a nearby alley, he upended a dumpster, pouring its contents out on the ground, and then dragged it out into the street. Grinning in spite of the situation as she caught his drift, Karana directed water from the hydrant into it, and together (with a discreet boost from Anne's TK, what little of her mental bandwidth she could spare for it) they lifted it into the air and dumped it over the biggest of the collateral fires, summarily snuffing it out. With a rending crash, the facade of the building on the right peeled away from the rest of the structure and fell into the street. The cop slammed the dumpster down beside them for cover, and the rest of the impromptu firefighters jumped behind it as fragments of glass and burning scraps of the shop's awning filled the air around them. Anne nearly lost her concentration as one of the flames licked her cheek, but held grimly on, feeling more and more like she was stuffing a hundred pounds of something springy into a fifty-pound sack. Crouching next to the dumpster, Karana turned and saw the stony look of suppressed pain on Azana's young student's face. Putting a hand on her shoulder, she asked, "Hey, are you OK?" "No," Anne replied, "but I can't let that stop me right now." Karana smiled slightly - she had heard, and said, similar things many times before - and squeezed the girl's shoulder gently. "Right on," she said quietly. Sensing an opportunity to provide a service, Pabu scampered down Karana's arm and around to Anne's other shoulder, licking at the tears tracking her cheek with a concerned little noise. "Good boy, Pabu," Karana added, petting first the ferret and then, almost as a matter of course, the girl; then she raised herself and looked around their makeshift cover. The rubble from the collapsed facade lay strewn across the street, some of it still on fire, all of it forming a jagged barricade between them and the battle still raging at the end of the block. With a frustrated snarl - so much for getting over there and helping Azana now - Karana turned back to the hydrant. "Good thinkin' with the dumpster there, five-oh," she said to the cop as he righted it and got it ready for another load. "What's your name? You guys gotta go back to wearing nametags." "Chuzan," the cop replied, a little breathlessly. "Nice to meet you." On the other side of the wreckage, Azana and Kaiten reached the opposite corners of their respective envelopes at virtually the same moment. Azana felt her guard break. Pushed to the end of its endurance, her body simply failed her, ceasing to obey her commands with sufficient dispatch. Her timing slipped, then fell away entirely. At the same time, Kaiten was reaching such a pitch of fury that he no longer required anything like proper timing in the first place. It was like he was everywhere, his attacks coming from all directions at once, as if the whole -world- were filled with nothing but heat and flame and his hate-fueled malevolence. She staggered, beset from all sides, unable to do anything more than keep from being burned to death outright. Eventually even that ability would desert her, if the shockwaves and pulses of heat didn't finish her off long before he had a chance to burn her flesh. Trying to lunge away from yet another crackling crescent punch, she lost track of where she was and slammed backward into a wall, starbursts of color erupting behind her eyes as the back of her head hit brick. Roaring, Kaiten swept down on her from above, so fully engulfed in his own fire that it was trailing from his very -hair.- He grounded in front of her, reached out with one hand, and seized her by the throat. His face distorted in a hideous sneer, he drew the other hand back and shaped it into a blade, yellow-orange flame crackling all around it, and held it for a moment before her eyes. "You're done, Princess," he said (his voice raspy but almost conversational - a shock after all the guttural screaming he'd been doing), and he hoisted her off the ground by her throat, slamming her back against the wall behind her again. More explosions of color burst in her vision as she clawed at his hand ineffectually with her own, struggling to breathe. At that moment, with her life beginning to slip from her grasp, Azana achieved a new understanding of a truth she had always taken for granted: She wanted very, very much to live. Tunnel vision began to set in, the blackness creeping in around the edges of her field of view. Kaiten shifted his stance slightly, snickering at her efforts, and Azana's eyes were momentarily blinded by the reflection of the early-afternoon sun in an upstairs window across the street. For just a moment, she was bathed in the full light of the sun, its heat on her face so gentle and kind compared with the vicious bite of Kaiten's fire, and darkness warred with light in her eyes. As the dazzle filled her world, she felt warmth flowing through her hands, down her spine, to coil at its base like a serpent ready to strike - The little red dragon hatchling, Corwin's daughter's companion, grinning sleepily at her from her nest amid the child's bedding. "Oh hey, before you leave - you might like this." Color and light, so beautiful, so perfect, so... true. - and the sun rose inside her. In spite of Kaiten's grip, she drew a deep breath, feeling the Fire Within blaze up again like a blast furnace. When she let it out, her eyes snapped open, clear and bright once more - and the fire that suddenly wreathed her hands was a clean incandescent blue, like the flame of an acetylene torch. With one hand, she seized the base of Kaiten's thumb at her throat and squeezed. With the other, she hauled off and punched him full in the face. Kaiten howled in painful dismay and dropped her, reeling away and flailing as the blue flame lashed him from chest to eyebrows. By the time he was able to dispel it, he -had- no eyebrows any longer, and the rest of the area had been roasted a delicate red. Shaking his head and blinking - only by throwing up an arm had he saved his eyes - he stumbled back and tried to regroup. Azana lunged away from the wall, the blue flame crackling around her fists and feet, and surged into a renewed counteroffensive. The raw volume of flames she could produce was still nothing like equal to his, but hers were far hotter now. Without any technique to draw upon, he was helpless to protect himself from them. His defense by overwhelming offense availed him little now. Revived by her sudden insight, Azana was back at the peak of her own defensive powers, and her new cerulean firebolts simply blazed right through his own huge but relatively cool and diffuse streams and gouts of flame. With cool precision and superior control, she began to pick him apart. "This can't - this isn't right!" Kaiten screamed as Azana broke the back of his floodgate-style assault. "Nobody can beat me! I'm invincible! YOU CAN'T DO THIS!" Azana said nothing. She had nothing -to- say. Not to him. Keening with frustration and fear, Kaiten put everything he had left into a single furious stream, a thundering cataract of flame that engulfed Azana completely. Veins bulging, eyes popping, he held it on her for several seconds, pouring all his hatred and disbelief and rage into a torrent of flame that blotted his foe entirely from sight. Seeing the fiery flood approaching, Azana knew she wouldn't be able to avoid it, and that there was far too much of it to counter conventionally. Instead, she reacted by instinct, launching herself into a variation on an airbender's whirlwind kick. This was a maneuver she'd first seen Avatar Korra perform during a demonstration at bending camp, the summer when she (Azana) and Karana had both turned fifteen - when they had first started seriously thinking about taking up sport bending as a professional career. As part of Korra's arsenal, this visually spectacular move combined airbending and firebending to surround her in a spherical shell of hurricane-force wind outside a spinning six-foot circle of compressed flame. The combination rendered her all but invulnerable for a few seconds while it raced around her, the fire incinerating anything that managed to punch through the wind barrier. Azana's version lacked the outer shell, of course, but the ring of fire formed for her just as it did for the Avatar, and its azure brilliance split and threw aside Kaiten's fountain of flames, leaving her unscathed as it roared past all around her and obliterated the bus stop behind. Kaiten couldn't see that happening; he knew only that she had vanished utterly within the torrent of his last-ditch attack. Finally, unable to sustain the assault any longer, he broke it off and sagged backward, smoke rising from his forearms and hands. Blinking away the dazzle of his own firelight, he looked into the column of smoke rising from the charred surface of the street in front of him, expecting to see nothing remaining of his foe but possibly her shoes. An instant later Azana burst out of the smoke, streaking toward him like a meteor. Blue fire trailed from her fists; a tight, seething ring of it whirled around her, then burst outward with a firework crack, shedding the last dull sparks of Kaiten's orange flames. Throwing up his hands to protect his face as the wave rocked him back on his heels, he only had time to make a small, disbelieving noise before she was upon him, plowing through his feeble defenses like a brick through a plate- glass window. When her open right palm struck his chest, it felt as if he'd been hit by an artillery shell. Screaming, he went flying across the street to crash into a lamppost, bending it almost double, and rebounded, somehow managing to stay on his feet. Shaking his head, Kaiten staggered toward her, trying to raise his hands, but now -his- body wouldn't obey, his fuse burned far beyond its limit by the drug and his panic. His eyes clouded again, pupils almost lost in the muddy haze even as they opened wide; he blinked at her, looking utterly confused, and then pitched forward and sprawled face-down in the street. Azana stood over him for a moment, breathing hard. Then, with the finality of a slamming door, she turned her back on him and walked slowly away, up the street, around the fallen facade. She found Karana and Juniper there, along with a couple of civilians and a metalbender cop she'd never seen before. They were all dirty, sweaty, and weary-looking. Anne, in particular, looked like she'd just fought a battle every bit as grueling as the one Azana had faced; she was drawn, her face white and pinched with pain, eyes reduced to narrow slits. On her shoulder, Pabu looked just short of frantic. Sensing someone's approach, Karana looked up from trying to comfort the young girl. At the sight of Azana, her face broke into a look of delight and relief so profound it nearly hurt to see. Then, turning to Anne, the waterbender said, "Look! She's OK!" Azana's apprentice looked up, blinking tears from her narrowed eyes, and smiled wanly. "Sensei... you're all right," she said. "More or less," Azana agreed. "What's wrong, Juni-chan? Are you hurt?" "No... not physically, I... I just... absorbed a little more fire than I probably should've," said Anne. Seeing that Azana was perplexed by that, she tried to explain, though putting words one in front of the other was a monumental challenge right now: "Remember... the tea? Turns out I can do that... the other way around, too. But... it hurts." She put her hands to her head, pressing their heels to her eyes, and said in a voice not far from a whimper, "It -really- hurts." Pabu chirped worriedly and pressed his face to her cheek. "Can we help you?" asked Karana, but Anne shook her head. "No, I just... I need to let it out again. But I can't do that here." With a wry, crooked smile despite the pain she was in, she said, "Not burning down this whole neighborhood was the point of the exercise." Azana considered that for a second, then smiled slightly herself and took a couple of steps back. "All right," she said. "Let it out." Anne's eyes opened slightly wider. "Uh... what?" "Let it out," Azana repeated. "I'll deal with it." "It... doesn't really -work- that way - " "Juni-chan," said Azana gently; then, with a mischievous smile, she added, "Do you trust me?" Certain members of the Republic City Police Department's Special Detail, approaching the site of the reported disturbance in Firetown by airship, were taken aback to see a column of fire shoot into the sky from the approximate location of the incident, like some kind of bizarre signal flare. So large and strange a display was it that most of them assumed it meant the Avatar was on the scene already; but when they arrived, all they found was an unconscious man in the tattered remains of some expensive pants, a number of deeply bewildered civilians, one slightly shell-shocked Patrol Division rookie, and three women (and a fire ferret) having the most tearfully relieved group hug any of them could ever remember witnessing. /* Joe Satriani "Chords of Life" _Strange Beautiful Music_ (2002) */ Eyrie Productions, Unlimited presented UNDOCUMENTED FEATURES FUTURE IMPERFECT - Symphony of the Sword No. 5 - SUITE FOR TRINITY AND AVATAR (THE DIQIU SUITE) Étude for Firebenders in A ("Fire Hazards") The Cast (in order of appearance) Azana Anne Cross Kaiten Firetown Cafe waiter The Punk The Shopkeeper Karana Officer Chuzan (Garnet) Korra Kuva, MD written by Benjamin D. Hutchins assistant fight choreographer Anne Cross historiographer Philip Jeremy Moyer with the suspicious behavior of The EPU Usual Suspects YUGODA MEMORIAL MEDICAL CENTER Korra stood by the window looking into the observation room, watching Kaiten's chest rise and fall in time with the hissing and clicking of the ventilator, a pensive frown on her face. Turning to the white-coated figure next to her, she said, "You're sure? There's nothing to be done?" Doctor Kuva shook his head. "Nothing, Avatar. He's suffered extensive neurological trauma, both chronic and acute. He'd obviously been abusing the drug we found in his system for some time, and the trace levels he showed when he got here indicate that he took a massive dose of the stuff just before his fight with your friend." He closed the chart he held and shook his head. "That young man will never regain consciousness. In layman's terms, the Comet, and the exertions it drove him to commit, burned out his brain. He can't even breathe on his own. By most standards, he's already dead." "Hm," said Korra, not really in reply. She turned and gazed through the window for a few more seconds, her face glum. "What a waste," she murmured, shaking her head sadly. "What a damned, sorry waste of a life. This has to be stopped." "Hnh," the doctor replied. "Natural selection in action, if you ask me. One more ashmaker who thought he could be the next Sozin. His kind get what they deserve." Korra rounded on him, her eyes angry and intense. "That's enough, Doctor!" she snapped. Holding him mesmerized with the fury in her gaze, she raised one arm and pointed to the slumped figure in the bed. "That is a human being in there, a young man in the prime of his life, and maybe he did bring this on himself, but does ANYONE deserve a fate like that?" she demanded. Then, shaking her head in disgust, she shouldered past him, muttering, "You're supposed to be a physician. Show some respect." "I - " he said, raising a hand, but she stormed off down the hall and through the stairwell door at the end, never looking back. Not until she reached the street had she cooled off enough to speak to anyone. Taking out her GearPhone, she pressed a speeddial code and said, "Eitaro. It's Korra. We were wondering what the Monsoons' angle was? Well... I think I know." The rest of the conversation took only a few moments. Then, sighing, Korra put away her phone, swung up into Niri's saddle, and said, "Let's go home, girl. Last thing I want tonight's to be alone." E P U (colour) 2013