Breaking the Wheel

Chapter 14

Bataar sat by the girl's healing tank, reviewing his notes. He was glad that Kuvira had allowed him to take up the White Lotus' offer to call the girl's aunt in as a healer- he might have prided himself on his scientific skill, but he had no stomach for simply observing as a young girl withered away, not if he had another option. Kuvira had pointed out that the girl was the granddaughter of the previous Avatar, and they would do well not to aggravate the Lotus more than they absolutely had to, but Bataar knew she felt for the girl's plight too. The girl's mother was asleep in the chair nearest the tank, one hand on the edge of the tub.

The healer stared at Bataar with angry eyes she worked, the water around her niece swirling a dull yellow-green. She'd been working flat-out for two days, and the strain of it showed in the dark shadows under her eyes and the peeling skin on her hands. He'd asked about the colour change in the water, but she hadn't had a good answer for him when they started, except that the girl's spirit had returned to her body after a long absence. He'd ordered spirit water in for her, from the oasis near Omashu, and that seemed to work better than regular water, but it still changed colour, from blue to yellow to green and finally to black, when it came into contact with the young airbender's body. It was like the spirit vines. Bataar opened his notebook, taking a quick sketch, but there was no new information to be had.

The spirit vines were dying. It wasn't noticeable in the main city yet, but some of the bigger boughs were already losing their structural integrity, sliding down buildings and blocking roads.

They had no idea what was happening with the girl, but three days ago he had helped her mother pull her from a spirit vine nexus in the middle of the city, along with a dozen less fortunate victims.

The closer you got to the nexus, the worse the rot in the spirit vines was. It had to be related somehow. Bataar took off his glasses and wiped them down, for what felt like the hundredth time that day.

The girl gave a soft cough, and her mother startled awake.

"Jinora?" Pema's voice was cautious, daring to hope.

"Mom." The girl's voice was weak.

Pema gave a strangled cry and fell to her knees, clutching at her daughter. "Oh, sweetie."

The girl seemed to have retained her memories at least. Bataar watched the scene with interest as Kya glared at him. He was pretty sure that the only thing stopping the healer from attacking him was the metalbending guard behind him and her fear for her niece's well-being, but those were both sustainable factors.

---

Hiroshi's loft had become busier in the days since their raid on Future Industries platinum stockpile. Takumi had barely been there at all, spending his time coordinating their intelligence efforts as Hiroshi helped with their production line. On such a short timescale, there wasn't much they could do, so his first focus had been on items which would have immediate benefit. He could have made a shock glove or shock baton in his sleep, and the makeshift assembly line was already churning them out, but mechs were another proposition entirely. Activity slackened as it drew deeper into the night, the waning moon supplementing the cheap sodium lamps their workspace used, and the engineers slipped away with a quiet sir, one by one, tidying their workspaces or leaving items half finished for the morning, until only Hiroshi remained.

Hiroshi sat cross-legged in front of the mecha torso, turning his screwdriver over in one hand. With the first generation of mecha, he'd had development time and tooling, but now he lacked both, and he was sure that the technology would have advanced in the years he had spent in prison. Heck, Gan Lau Gan and Varrick were probably making the damn things too now.

"Sato," Takumi padded up to him, a paper cup of jasmine tea in hand. His footsteps barely made a noise on the hard floors of the makeshift factory. He peered down, his grey-blue eyes curious. "Doing something incomprehensible again, I see."