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They call her the best pilot in the Equalists.
Sometimes the praise makes her uncomfortable; getting singled out for being so uniquely talented strikes her as somehow against the equality they strive for. She thinks the other troops agree, since they never include her in the easy camaraderie of their units. But they respect her, and listen when she trains them in the best way to maneuver the jeeps or the mecha-tanks or the biplanes, and she never experiments with mechanics or maneuvers for the purpose of gaining attention. She just wants everything to be the best it can be. A good race is its own reward.
The one selfish joy she allows herself is to meet her father’s eyes whenever she’s accomplished something notable. They rarely acknowledge their relationship; her father wants to avoid discontent from whispers of favoritism, and she's content to work her way up just like he had. But when the Lieutenant or even Amon himself thanks her for her efforts, she’ll spare a glance for her father and bask in the pride in his eyes.
They are all fighting for a better world. The benders nearly destroyed it once, and despite their promises of peace, it seems they're on track to do it again. Benders run the governments; benders run the gangs. Even Republic City can't protect its citizens, as she knows all too well.
There is an Avatar – or so the Order of the White Lotus claimed, before they turned against each other and destroyed themselves. If so, then the imbalance of this world and the spirit world apparently means nothing to them. The Avatar doesn't care that a dangerous criminal could murder an innocent woman, leaving her family behind to sort through the burned wreckage of their happiness.
Mostly, she assumes the Avatar is dead. It is Amon who will bring balance. Why else would so many people flock to their cause? And now he claims he has been given a gift by the spirits, something that will stop the benders once and for all, something that will restore order to the world.
If they need her to be the best pilot in the Equalists until that happens, then that’s what she'll be.
It's only at Fort Bosco that she realizes it will never be enough.
~*~*~*~
"Can you still firebend?"
The Resistance firebender blinks at her in incomprehension. He’s shivering and dripping from the immersion holding tank, and didn’t look in that great shape to begin with. She pulls off her mask so she can speak more clearly. "This is a rescue. I’m helping you escape. Can you still firebend?" she repeats, shaking out her hair.
"Are you with the Resistance?" he asks instead of replying.
“What? No!” she says. “Can you still—”
“Of course,” he says. He holds out both hands, still bound together. A little jet of flame flares up between them; he flexes his fingers around its warmth before dismissing the fire. “Why are you doing this?”
She remembers the ranks of mecha-tanks towering over disabled benders. Unarmed civilians. Frightened children. “I’m trying to restore balance to the world,” she says.
He furrows his impressive eyebrows at her, then grins. “You need help escaping, too,” he says.
“I do,” she admits. “This airship's over the middle of the Si Wong Desert, and I won’t have enough fuel to make it out if I get caught in a running polar-dogfight. Ever fought in the bomber’s seat of a biplane before?”
“I can fight anywhere,” he says. “Let’s go.”
She pulls her mask back on and marches him down the hall, faceless guard with power glove held at the ready in case the prisoner tries anything. It's only partially for show.
"Wait!"
She nearly shocks his eyebrows off when he darts into the open door across the hall, barely making it inside before a patrol comes around the corner. She snaps to attention, as if she's guarding the room behind her; the patrol passes without giving her a single glance.
As soon as they're gone, the firebender pokes his head back out. "Okay, got it," he says. "Let's go."
The only thing different she notices as she grabs his arm is that he's now wearing a red scarf. She holds her power glove a little closer to his head than necessary and hisses, "What were you doing?"
"Besides my brother Bolin, this scarf is all that I have left of my parents," he replies. "I already left him behind. I'm not leaving this if I can help it."
She remains silent as they pass another pair of guards, then asks, "What happened to your parents?"
"They were murdered by a firebender," he says.
She hesitates, then says, "So was my mother."
He glances at her before she gives him a shake to remind him to keep his eyes forward like a prisoner. "I guess I can see why you'd want to join the Equalists."
"What about your brother?" she asks.
"He'll be trying to get back to the Resistance with the map to Master Katara."
"What?"
"That was our mission. I have to find him – he'll need help."
None of this makes any sense. Master Katara was a companion to the last Avatar and a waterbending legend – more legend than waterbender, according to Amon. And— "Why are you telling me this?"
"The Equalists already know what we were after," says the firebender. "We need to find Master Katara – only she can bring hope to the Resistance. If something happens to me—"
"We're here," she says. This end of the hangar is empty, thank the spirits. She lets go of his arm and unlocks his shackles. "Get in the rear seat. If anyone fires at us, fire back."
She runs over and pulls the lever to open the hangar doors. Alarms immediately begin to ring.
"Hey, what's your name?" calls the firebender as she starts the propellers. "Mine's Mako."
She buckles into the cockpit. "We don't use names in the Equalists," she shouts back.
"You're saving my life! I have to call you something."
The hangar doors open onto empty night sky and, far below, endless desert. She's only flown a plane from a near-dead drop a few times.
It's still more times than anyone else. She taxies towards the doors.
She pulls off her mask and trades it for the goggles in the cockpit. "My name's Asami," she says. She throws the mask away as they plunge into the night.
~*~*~*~
Her first thought is that the engines must be overheating, it's so hot. Why did no one wake her? The second engineer on the night shift knew he had to keep a close eye on the heat exchangers in the radiator systems. And – is that sand? If it gets into the fuel filters it's going to ruin the engine—
Her eyes snap open and start to water from the glare of the sun. She climbs awkwardly to her feet, struggling to untangle herself from her parachute. There’s sand everywhere.
The Si Wong Desert is so unlike the broad boulevards of the cities, or the tall ceilings of the factories, or the cool metal hallways of the Equalists’ headquarters, that for a moment all she can do is gape. Just miles and miles of empty sand dunes. No sign of anything else, not even the biplane or—
“Mako!” she shouts. He had to be all right – she’d given him a parachute. But her own parachute is riddled with holes from the exploding engine, and he had ejected after her, firing one last blast at the final biplane closing in on them… Couldn’t firebenders burn fast enough to achieve lift? A crude form of propulsion, her father had always said, but – she shoves away the thought of her father.
“Mako!”
The wind shifts, and she catches the faint smell of smoke.
She finds the empty cockpit half a mile away, still smoldering. The wings have been torn off completely.
There’s a flash of red out of the corner of her eye, and she turns just in time to see the detached tail section sinking into the sand.
“No!” she cries. She dives for the wreckage, fingers closing around cloth, but it pulls free with too little resistance. The sand tries to suck her down, too, and she’s forced to claw her way out. “Mako!”
A moment later there’s no sign of the tail section. The ground rumbles; as she scrambles for higher ground, the cockpit too disappears into the sand. It’s like the desert is trying to erase that anyone had even tried to escape the Equalists.
She looks down at the cloth in her hand. It’s Mako’s scarf.
He asked her name.
The sun beats down on her as she stands in the middle of the desert, completely alone for the first time in her life. Except for the exhilaration of her last wild flight, defended by a firebender she barely knew, it matches how she’s felt since Fort Bosco.
Asami pulls off her armor and ties back her hair. For shade she wraps the scarf over her head, but not over her face; she’s not covering that anymore if she can help it.
She walks away from the wreckage and doesn’t look back. There’s nothing left for her anyway.
~*~*~*~
It’s not a long fight.
The Resistance firebender has been captured and disabled. So have the villagers that tried to fight back. Resistance sympathizers or not, she feels a little bad for them: they were just trying to defend their home. Many of them aren’t even benders. Hopefully they’ll see the technological superiority of the Equalists and realize that they should either join them or lay down their arms permanently.
“Put him on board,” says Amon. The Lieutenant shocks the firebender into unconsciousness and drags him to the airship.
Her father is standing besides his mecha-tank. “What about the villagers?” he asks.
“Kill them all,” says Amon.
Something must be wrong with her communications. There are children there, and non-benders. Surely he wouldn’t—
“On my command,” says her father.
She stares at him in shock. As if sensing her gaze, he looks right at her windscreen, then away. His eyes are full of shame.
“Attack,” he says.
The mecha-tanks around her light up. Her hands are frozen around her controls. Her father is here, and her colleagues, but all she can think of is her mother dying.
~*~*~*~
The transportation in the Misty Palms Oasis is abominable. Asami would steal a vehicle just to get away from this place if there was anything worth stealing. There are Cabbage Cars everywhere, barely modified to deal with the sand. The airships are great wallowing things designed for tourists and beginners; there’s even one in the junkyard that probably dates from the War of the Phoenix King.
She’s eying a group of tourists, wondering if she can give their Cabbage Car a badly-needed tune-up in return for some money, or at least some water, when she hears the sound of breaking earth and cracking ice.
She spins and drops into a fighting stance. Sandbenders, brawling in the street. The crowd backs away quickly, then returns to whatever they were doing, clearly unfazed by the benders slinging around enormously destructive power just a few feet away.
It’s not exactly a fair fight – five against two, one of whom is stumbling around with a bag over his head. But he’s not totally defenseless: she watches as he spins and kicks out, sending two chunks of earth into the stomachs of the closest sandbenders. They stumble back and drop the ropes they had been trying to use to secure him. A kidnapping? Asami frowns and moves closer – if this isn’t just an ordinary fight between two rival groups—
The other three sandbenders are all attacking the same girl. She evades the sweeps of sand with an easy grace, then punches her arm forward. An enormous jet of water sends all three attackers flying back, followed by a barrage of icicles for good measure.
A waterbender, obviously, though apart from her hair loops she’s dressed like she lives in the desert. One last sandbender tries to lasso her. There’s a flash, so quick Asami almost misses it, and the rope burns to cinders.
Asami’s jaw drops.
The girl kicks the surprised lasso-er in the chest, sending him flying. She resets her fighting stance and shouts, “Beat it, losers!” with a fierce grin lighting up her face. The sandbenders break and run.
The earthbender finally pulls the bag off his head and shouts after them, “Yeah, that’s what you get for messing with us!”
Asami tears her eyes away from the girl – maybe they're a triad gang, with their firebender nearby? – when she realizes the earthbender is dressed like he’s from Republic City. She drifts a little closer.
"You're really good," says the earthbender. "We are an awesome team. Are you sure you don't want to come with me?"
"I shouldn't..." says the girl, though she sounds torn. "I promised to stay here."
"Whoever left you alone here sure wasn't doing you any—" The earthbender glances at Asami, then does a double-take. A stricken expression crosses his face and he points right at her. “That scarf belongs to my brother!”
The girl’s head snaps around. Her eyes are a bright, icy blue.
Asami realizes, a little late, that they are also blazing with indignation.
Asami yelps as she ducks a snap of water. Clearly these benders are more interested in a fight than in trading information. She takes off through the marketplace, cutting sharply as she passes a row of open-air stalls.
There's a man arguing with a stall owner, holding his idling motorbike – intake-over-exhaust four cylinder engine, shaft drive transmission – with one hand.
Asami shoves him out of the way, shouts, "Sorry!" and leaps into the seat.
There's a chorus of "Stop!" from behind her – not just the bike's owner, but the waterbender girl too. Asami swerves around some startled tourists and shifts into a higher gear, trying to put more distance between her and pursuit.
A mound of earth bursts from the road in front of her. No room to swerve, not enough distance to stop—
She guns the engine, compresses the suspension, and takes the jump. For a second she hangs there, surrounded by the thrilling and wistful peace of flight.
Then she comes down hard on the back wheel and bottoms out. This bike was clearly not built for acrobatics. But it's still running, so she cuts down an alley and takes several quick turns in succession.
She ends up on a quiet residential street. She checks her mirrors and lets out a sigh of relief: she's lost her pursuit. Now, if only she could find—
Something crashes into her from the side with the force of mecha-tank.
Instead of splattering across the pavement, something wrenches her around and takes the brunt of the fall, and they go tumbling across the street. She barely registers the strong arms wrapping around her before they raise her up and dump her on her feet.
It's the waterbender. Asami lashes out, dodging a water whip and hitting the chi points on her shoulders. The waterbender lets out a surprised grunt.
Then she kicks out and delivers a concussive fireball right into Asami's gut.
It's the shock more than the heat which sends her sprawling.
"Korra!" The earthbender runs up to them, wheezing a little. "Good, you stopped her."
"You," says Asami, staring at her in shock. "You're – you're—"
"Yeah, that's right," says Korra. "I'm the Avatar, and you gotta deal with it!"
The Avatar is alive. The Avatar is alive. The Avatar is alive, and assaulting motor vehiclists in a tourist trap. "I have a bad feeling about this," says Asami, mostly to herself.
"You're a bad feeling," says the earthbender. "Where did you get that scarf?"
"Scarf?" says Asami. It's come off her hair, lying tangled over her shoulders. "Oh..."
Now that she can see the earthbender more clearly, there is a little family resemblance. "You're Bolin," she says.
He startles. "How—"
"This belonged to Mako," she says, and his eyes widen. "That was his name, right? He was captured by the Equalists. I helped him escape, but our ship crashed, and..." She swallows. Bolin looks away. "He didn't make it. I'm sor—"
"Did you see him?" Bolin interrupts.
"What?"
"Did you see him in the crash?"
"No, but—"
"Then he's probably still alive," says Bolin. He crosses his arms and nods firmly, as if trying to convince himself. He must do a pretty good job, because he sounds much more confident as he continues, "Mako promised to come back, and it'll take a lot more than an airship crash to stop him. When we need him the most, he'll show up and be like, 'These are my hammers of justice!' and POW! BAM! Fwooooosssshhhhh—" Bolin punches out, making what Asami assumes are supposed to be firebending sound effects.
"Yeah!" says Korra – the Avatar. "Don't worry, we'll find him." After a few tries, she gives Bolin an encouraging fistbump; Asami's never seen someone recover from a chi strike so fast. She looks back to Asami and asks, "So... you're with the Resistance, too?"
Asami barely hesitates before saying, "Yes."
The Avatar smiles at her. "Now that you've got me, we're gonna make sure everyone finishes their mission." She offers Asami a hand up.
Asami pretends not to see it, and busies herself with brushing off her jacket so she doesn't have to meet the Avatar's eyes.
It's not that she cares about lying. But there's a difference between concealing her origins and... and making people think she's something she's not for no reason. Korra – the Avatar – is staring at her with fascination and no little admiration, and it's both like the looks she got when she pulled off another successful test flight, and... not.
Asami tries to think to herself, They're benders; you don't owe them anything, but the voice sounds too much like her father.
She unwinds the scarf from her neck. "Here," she says to Bolin. "You should take this back."
"No, you can hang onto it until we find Mako," says Bolin. "He'll want to thank you."
She forces herself to smile. "Of course," she says, and puts it back on.
"So you guys escaped from an Equalist airship, huh?" says Ko– the Avatar. "Must have been one hell of a fight."
"Not on the airship," says Asami. "But when I stole one of their biplanes, they sent—"
The Avatar's eyes widen. "You can fly?"
"I can fly anything," says Asami. Then she feels ridiculous. She doesn't need to defend her reputation to the Avatar, of all people.
The Avatar grabs her by the arms and exclaims, "This is great! We can all get out of here together!"
"What?" says Asami.
"You're coming with us?" asks Bolin excitedly.
"Yeah," says the Avatar. "Yeah, I am! The world needs me and I'm tired of waiting. If they wanted me to stay in the desert my whole life, then they should have—"
Asami lets her words fade into the background as she stares up into the sky. There it is, a familiar hum in the air: faint, probably not even noticeable unless you've spent all your free time repairing those engines.
The Equalists are coming.
Treason is the ultimate crime. When they find her, it won't matter that she's their best pilot and engineer. They'll either kill her or lock her away in a cell for the rest of her life, making her design weapons she'll never use. Cars she'll never race. Planes she'll never fly.
Unless...
The Avatar is still talking to Bolin. She's so trusting; her back is to Asami, because what does she have to fear from the Resistance? One blow to a central chi point, and even the Avatar will drop unconscious. A few more strikes with surprise on her side, and Bolin will be out too. Amon has been searching for the map to Master Katara longer than the Resistance; that alone would earn her some clemency. There's even a chance she could convince them that was her plan in escaping all along.
And delivering the Avatar? The embodiment of everything they're fighting against? She'll have fought half the war by herself.
No one will want to stand up to the Equalists after that.
"Sorry, I didn't get a chance to introduce myself before I, uh, tackled you," says the Avatar sheepishly. She rubs a hand over the back of her neck and – is she blushing? "Bolin you know, but I'm Korra."
"I'm—"
She’s not an Equalist anymore. She's someone who saved a firebender, even if only for a little, and she's someone who felt sorry for his earthbending brother, and she's someone who's been awkwardly flirted with by the Avatar herself. She's someone who wants to know if Master Katara is as legendary as her reputation. She's someone who hopes there is a way to restore balance to the world without destroying families and shattering lives.
She's someone who is never going to hurt innocent people no matter how important anyone says the cause is.
"I'm Asami," she says, over the rising drone of airship engines. "And we have to go. Follow me!"
She takes Korra's hand and runs.