Chapter 57- And so the Dragons Danced (Complete)

“Congratulations, Korra. I’ve always known you could do it” Her Principal said, preening to be standing next to her at what had to be one of the biggest parties in the Empire this year. She could see all the who’s who of the Empire walking around. There was Shao Lin, the head of the Dai Li, the Emperor’s Secret Police that were basically an open secret. And he wasn’t the only high-ranking person here, there was Lin Beifong, the Emperor’s Granddaughter, and head of the Empire’s Law Enforcement Division. She stood next to her sister, Su Beifong, the Chief Administrator of the Empire’s Affairs. The two of them weren’t next to their mother, but she seemed to tower over them, even from the opposite side of the room.

Toph Beifong, the Emperor’s Daughter who looked like she was in his thirties rather than the nineties she should have been. She was an Immortal, just like the Emperor himself. Speaking of the Emperor, the man stood at the centre of the party. Her first thought on seeing him up close was that he was handsome. Black hair worn in a ponytail, golden brown skin that said he got more sun than most firebenders she’d seen, and then the Black eyes. They seemed to have a flame perpetually smoldering within them. He had two of his children around him. There was Shifu, his son by his first wife, Fire Lady Zhufu, and then there was Shinra, his other son, by his second wife, Fire Lady Maki. Shinra had the marking on his forehead that showed mastery of combustion bending, but beyond that neither the Emperor nor his Children were marked in any way.

Of course, she couldn’t look at them without thinking about how strange it was that they both looked older than their father, who looked to be in his twenties. The Emperor was immortal, and all-powerful. There was a reason he was known as the God-King, after all. And then she realised he was moving. In her direction? What?

“Your royal highness” her principal said, dropping to his knees once it became clear that they were the ones the Emperor was walking towards. She did not need him to look at hr to know that she should be. Mirroring his movements, but she felt frozen. To have those black eyes focused on her the way they were was something else. It took her more time than it should’ve to rip her gaze from his and drop into a deep curtsy just like her mother had taught her.

“Please rise, I came to speak to Miss Skullcrusher here” Now, she had no choice but to blush. That was such a silly name, she thought to herself. Who even let seven-year-olds pick their own last names? A psychopath, that’s who. The Emperor’s eyes narrowed in her direction and she remembered all that she had been told in preparation for if today ever happened. He could read minds, never think a negative thought in his presence. She turned her mind towards other things almost instantly— like how the Emperor’s second wife had passed this year and people insisted that he was on the hunt for a new one.

“Yes, your highness. She is all yours” Her Principal did not even take a second to consider sticking around to try protecting her or anything. Well, it wasn’t like anyone could protect her from Emperor Natsu Wu, of all people. He walked with the aura of a man who was dangerous and knew it— the slayer of the Avatar, the butcher of the Ginseng plains, and a million other titles.

“Walk with me, Korra” He said, stretching is hand towards her, and she felt something in her mind. His voice was familiar in a way it should not have been. Why was it so familiar?

“Yes, your highness” She curtsied again before she put her arm in the crook of his elbow ad allowed him to lead her around the hall, hearing straight to the dance floor. She flushed as she felt stares be directed in her direction. She was no stranger to being whispered about, but this was a different sort of thing. She wasn’t being whispered about by Deska and her cronies or anything, but by the Empire’s Elite. Even Uncle Unalaq, Imperial Advisor on Spiritual Affairs was giving them a look out of the corner of his eyes.

His expression was blank, but that was as much a trick as anything. She still remembered the fury on father’s face and the placid acceptance of his as they argued after he had almost drowned her the first time.

“How do you find the Imperial Palace?” She did a double take when she realised she was the one he was talking to.

“It’s beautiful” She said, lying through her teeth. This was not what beauty looked like to her. Beauty was nature, tall trees, lush gardens, ice caps, that kind of thing. Not this behemoth of stone and steel that acted as a testament to the Empire’s power. It stood in the centre of Natsu’s Rising, the city formerly known as Ba Sing Se but converted into the heart of the Empire— its capital city.

“Now what do you really think?” He asked with a smile that was not unkind. She felt pushed to honesty, like she could tell this man anything, and that was a dangerous position to be in when the person in question was the Emperor of the United Nations.

“I think that you could do with a few internal plants.” She said, and to her shock, he started to laugh. It was not a subtle thing. It was a loud, boisterous laugh that drew attention to them and their position. Anyone else would have shrunk under the weight of so many stares. Her dance partner? He turned and met each pair of eyes himself.

“Blame Toji for that one. He’s insistent that having plants here would be a ready source of water for any prospective waterbending assassins to use.” he said, making the admission with a shrug. What she was quickly beginning to learn was that the Emperor was the sort to say the quiet part out loud and more or less expect you to do the same.

“Well, he’s right. Is that why the air is so dry up here? To deter waterbenders?” She asked.

“To some extent, yes. The truth is. That we just haven’t been able to figure out mechanical air conditioning without water bender utilization to cool the room while retaining its humidity. It gets lost in the bleed, so we take it as the happy coincidence it is.”

“Why specifically without water bender help? You have both the water tribes loyal to you, I can’t imagine there’s any scarcity in that regard.”

“It comes down to a thing of demand, to be honest. If you look at the demographics, you’d find that the water tribes have the lowest ender populations. And then there’s the demand. Everyone and their mother wants, or as they claim, needs a waterbending healer, and it’s not like it’s safe to say no to all of them. Piss enough people off and the Empire stops running. When I was younger, I’d have shortened the lot of them by a head and moved on, but that’s no way to rule”.

“Well, good thing you’re no longer randomly killing people, then”

“Yes. Now I only kill people who deserve it. Now, answer me, Korra— are you in on it?” He asked, smile turning sharp as he spun her around the room.

“In on what?” She felt her throat begin to constrict. Not from anything he was doing— not overtly at least, but from the weight of his stare.

“I believe you” He said instead of answering her question as he smiled.

Then the whole world changed as he pulled her closer to him before executing a perfect backflip with her form pressed agains his chest. He lifted her like she weighed nothing as he jumped over a watery tendril that hardened to ice right as it had been about to hit him.

“What the hell?” She found herself asking, but if she expected a reply, then she did not get one. The Emperor gently placed her on the ground before stepping towards the aggressor, a woman with no physical hands but watery tendrils in their place. There was a movement to the side of the Emperor, and his son stepped in the way faster than she had ever seen anyone move. He braced himself and the air shivered around his combustion bending tattoo. It met something else in the air and the both of them exploded, nearly blinding much of the hall.

“Step off, Shinra. If you ruin this for me, you’ll be grounded for a year”.

“I’m too old for that, Dad” said son replied with a chuckle even as he stepped to the side.

“And Toph, no funny business” He called off to the side, pointing at the most powerful woman in the world like she was an errant child to be disciplined.

“Got ya, Dad” She replied with a tone that was as fond as it was exasperated.

The two assassins were clearly irritated at being taken so casually. The woman who had sent what Korra now understood to be combustion bending at the emperor stepped forward and shoved her head forward in an obviously telegraphed attack. She watched as the distortion in the air seemed to zig and zag through the air while the Emperor, to the shock of everyone else, stood there as if he were waiting for the attack to land. Korra felt her water come to her control as she sought to do her part as a loyal citizen of the Empire and protect her emperor, even if from himself.

Before she could move, though, he jumped right at the distortion in the air, tapping it with his fingers and then stretching his fingers towards the water bender with no arms. The distortion that marked combustion bending disappeared as he touched it, and came out of his other am almost immediately.

The water bender had little chance to bring forth her water to shield herself and even though she tried, the explosion that the combustion bending created when it hit her shield was much larger than that that had proceeded from two attacks of like nature hitting each other.

“Sorry, added a bit extra to your attack if you don’t mind” The emperor smirked at the firebender even as her friend fell to the floor, the top half of her body gone completely. Someone suddenly began to vomit, breaking the lull between both combatants. As the woman realised there were others in the room. She turned to them, even as the ground around the emperor turned to lava, becoming red-hot. The Emperor scarcely even reacted, shifting his stance only to point his finger at a corner of the room’s ceiling. The lava, boiling only a second ago, turned to cool stone and from the emperor’s fingers came a rush of hot air that lanced through the room’s regular air.

It hit the man who had been hidden in the shadow of one of the columns, and the man fell to the ground. He wasn’t even screaming. Korra had never seen burns so severe. The heat had burned through his skin, muscle, and gone down to the bone. The firebending woman screamed in rage and made as if to fire one of her attacks in the crowd.

For the first time, Toph Beifong seemed about to move to intervene, but it proved unnecessary, as the Emperor appeared in front of the woman so quickly it was like a mirage. She stumbled backwards, and he stepped into her space. She tried a roundhouse kick, he shifted his stance into something that looked like what Bolin had favoured in his fight with his brother and blocked the attack with his forearm. He shifted to the side to avoid something that screamed as it soared through the air.

Her eyes calibrated quickly to note that it was a disc made of stone with lava at the core and at the edges, fashioned into the shape of a throwing star. It cut back, clearly under the control of a powerful earth bender— Toph Beifong herself was the only master lava-bender out there and Bolin, the Prodigy of her Academy, was the only other person known to possess the ability. Some theorized that to learn lava bending, then you needed to have a fire bending father and an earth province mother, just like Toph herself did. The Emperor jumped above the star as it came at him again, and he ignored it thereafter in favour of attacking the woman with combustion bending.

The disk sailed into the crowd before coming to a stop in front of a man with tanned skin and long hair that parted at either side of his face along with flowing down his back. He stepped forward, slamming his feet against the ground and turning the ground between him and the Emperor into lava. The Emperor paid little attention to it. Everywhere he stepped, the lava cooled and solidified into stone, and the firebender that engaged him in hand-to-hand combat was quickly proving to be far his lesser. He clocked a straight punch to her face, dodged underneath a return right hook, and sent her to the floor with a straight kick aimed at her knee. Korra heard it shatter. She tried to send another blast of combustion bending, marked by the telltale distortion in the air. This time, the Emperor just reached out and snuffed it out by pinching it between his fingers like he was putting out a candle. He punched in her direction, and instead of fire, it was pure heat that flowed from his fist, burning her straight down to the skull.

The lava bender was the last in the fight, and he could see the odds were not in his favour. He turned around, trying to run, but the Emperor smiled and reminded everyone of the first name he received in his youth. He stood straight and just pointed two fingers at the fleeing man. The world flashed with light, and Korra was blinded for a second. When she could see again, the man had been reduced to ash, the only thing to survive being the boots he had been wearing. The Emperor walked forward in the silent room to look at the boots.

“Dragon scale. Would you look at that?” He said as he picked them up and took a sniff. The room erupted in applause, and Korra herself was one of the loudest. Her father could say whatever he wanted, but the Emperor clearly deserved his position.

—

“Now, ignoring the festivities that occurred early in the evening, I do hope you were able to enjoy the rest of your night after we spoke.”

“It sure was something. I had a lovely time” Korra said, blushing as she remembered all the chaos that had taken place once the drinks had come out in full. The Emperor clearly knew how to throw a party.

“Good. Perfect. That was as good an introduction to the Empire’s high and mighty as any. Now, tell me why you think you’re here today?” He asked, gesturing to the massive office they sat in. If there was any doubt about the Empire’s wealth, then it seemed this office was designed to put those doubts to rest. The floor was a gleaming marble that she knew would take only the most skilled earthbenders to affect, and the giant pillars that dotted the massive space were gilded in gold. The table in front of her that separated the Emperor from her was larger than the bed she slept on at home and was made of polished wood. The chair she sat on had gold along the armrests and the cushions were so plush and comfortable that it felt like she had sunk into it when she had taken her seat. And then behind him was a large aquarium with two fishes swimming within it— one of them black and the other white. There was something about them that drew her attention, but the Emperor’s cough brought her back to him.

“Because I won the tournament?”

“Yes, you did. Now, why do you think I organised such a large tournament?”

“They say you were bored” She replied before her brain caught up to what had left her mouth. She looked up, expecting to see fury on her face, but only being met with amusement.

“Benders from all over the empire have coalesced here at Natsu’s Rising at the Empire’s expense— no small expense, with sending air ships to every nook and cranny of the empire, I assure you. And then a special stadium was designed and built to ensure that every element was equally advantaged before being built in less than two months. It was a pain and a half to get this thing together, so tell me why I did it”.

“You wanted to know who the best bender in the Empire was”

“That’s not a hard question. It’s me” He said, leaning forward and pinning her with his gaze. It sounded so arrogant— the way he just casually claimed to be beyond her and everyone else. But after what she had seen yesterday, she found it difficult to argue. She had never seen fire bending like that. He never even called forth the green flames that the world knew him for, instead being raw heat to deadly effect.

“Besides, if I wanted to find the best bender in the Empire, I wouldn’t have made it under seventeens only. To tell you the truth Korra, I created this tournament because I was looking for an apprentice.”

“An ap-apprentice?”

“Yes. I haven’t personally trained anyone in a long time. My sons already carry out my will in the Fire Provinces, my daughter spreads my intentions across the Earth province and in the Water Provinces, I lack a suitable representative. That is where you will come in, Korra.”

“You want me to rule for you?”

“When your training is complete, yes. But for now, you will be my student in all respects. All your other learning will be terminated. Everything you learn will be at my feet— whether it is bending, mathematics, or politics.”

“B-but I’m a water bender”

“I’ll tell you a secret, Korra. So am I” He said, and the aquarium behind him lifted into the air, all the water rising under his clear control and beginning to spin around the room in circles. The fishes that had drawn her attention earlier remained in the tank, however, suspended in one large bubble of water.

A/N: And so the Dragons Danced. I think this was a suitable epilogue, answering a lot of questions and leaving the rest up to your imaginations. If you do have any outstanding questions, feel free to ask them here, and I’ll do my best to respond.