(See the end of the chapter for notes .)

Chapter Text

Mako

Nothing. Four days of investigating and nothing. Well, that wasn’t exactly true. They had three fewer crackhouses in the city, courtesy of their friend in the mask. In every one, they found pretty much the same thing. Bodies piled up, blood everywhere. A message written on the walls: “Amon is the solution.”

Good news was, they were now a hundred percent sure that the man in the mask was this “Amon”, for all the good it did them. that little tidbit came from their friends down in holding. Mako showed them a picture taken from the traffic cam and they had confirmed the man’s identity.

“Hey,” Jia said from behind him, breaking Mako out of his brooding. “Ready for another hour of getting sullenly stared at?”

Mako groaned. Every twelve hours for the past four days, they’d taken the three gangsters he and the Avatar apprehended into an interrogation room. What followed was some of the most unproductive police work he’d ever done. The three just quietly glared at him and Jia all the way through, until the allotted time was up and they had to be returned to their cells. “Yeah, let’s go.”

Paperwork in hand, Mako and Jia walked over to the holding cells, but before they could speak to the sergeant they were stopped by a middle-aged, balding man. “Identify yourselves,” he barked.

“Detectives Shih and Zhang, here to interrogate the prisoners in cell four,” Mako said, as he and Jia pulled out their badges.

“Not anymore. From now on, anything to do with Amon and his gang is under my jurisdiction.”

“By whose orders?” Jia asked.

“That’s need-to-know only, Detective,” the man replied.

“Saikhan! What are you doing in my building?” Mako turned to see a very pissed-off Lin Beifong storming into the room.

“I’m just preparing some prisoners for transfer to the 7th, Chief. I’ll be out in a minute,” Saikhan said, his previous haughtiness gone.

“Which prisoners? And why the hell wasn’t I informed of this?”

“The ones in cell four,” Jia said.

“Sorry Chief, but the orders come from high up. A task-force is being formed to deal with this new threat to the city, so all resources to that end are under my control.”

Beifong stared down Saikhan, who was now visibly sweating. “Fine,” she said, backing down. “Take them.”

Mako was taken aback. “Chief, we can’t just--”

“I don’t remember asking for your opinion, Detective! In fact, you two, my office, now!”

Leaving a very self-satisfied Saikhan behind, Mako and Jia were marched into Beifong’s office. Once inside, Mako started up once again. “What the hell, Chief? Those three were the biggest lead we had, and you’re just going to let them walk out of here?”

“Shih, shut up for a second,” Beifong said, rubbing her temples. “Listen. Saikhan is a worm. Always has been. And he’s always in someone’s pocket. If that person was able to go over my head, then they’re pretty fucking high up the food chain.”

“So what, we should just drop the entire investigation?” Jia asked.

“Did you hear me say that? Of course we’re not dropping it, we’re just going to have to be more careful about it.”

Mako smiled. “Understood.”

“Now that that’s over with, give me a progress report.”

Jia looked at the file in her hands with a degree of reluctance. “You’re not going to like it,” she said.

Beifong said nothing, she stood there with her arms crossed, waiting for Jia to continue. “The coroner thinks… that Amon’s victims were bloodbended.”

Mako could understand Jia’s hesitation to tell the Chief that information. It was ridiculous. Bloodbending was a campfire story, told to scare people shitless. It didn’t actually exist! Beifong, however, seemed to take this theory in stride. “He’s certain of that?”

“It would make sense,” Mako cut in. “The victims all died from massive hemorrhaging, yet none of them have visible wounds. They could’ve been slowly bled out with a needle, but…”

“According to the traffic video, Amon was inside the house for less than two minutes,” Beifong finished. “This means that Amon is a waterbender. How many do we have in the city?”

“About thirty with any significant amount of power,” Jia said, flipping to another page on her report. “A dozen or so work for hospitals as healers. Then you have your masseuses and therapists and a few of the higher-ups of the Red Monsoon Triad. Oh, and the Wolfbat and the Avatar.”

“Can you narrow that down any?” the Chief asked.

“We can probably cross out the Red Monsoons,” Mako said. “Two of the crackhouses that were hit were in their territory. They wouldn’t kill their own customers.”

“The civilians will have to provide alibis,” Jia added. “But that should be relatively simple to get. That just leaves the Supers, although we can probably cross the Avatar off the list. According to Wildfire, she was helping his team the night the first murders happened.”

“So the only guarantee that one psycho in a mask isn’t also another, different psycho in a mask is the word of a third psycho in a mask,” Beifong said, chuckling. “Great. What about the Wolfbat?”

“The guy’s a complete glory hound,” Mako replied. “He can do some fancy stuff with water, so he decided to put on a mask and get famous. It wouldn’t make sense for him to suddenly go on a killing spree. It’s a lot more probable that Amon is someone who is not on our list.”

“I agree,” Jia said.

“Fine. But I still want those alibis, and I want you to keep a close eye on those two.” She pointed at the images of the two waterbending superheroes. “But for now, you both go home.”

Mako looked at his watch. It was barely five. “Seriously, Chief?”

“Seriously. You both look like shit. When was the last time you got more than four hours of sleep?”

“Sometime last week?” Jia muttered.

“Okay. So, go home, rest up, and be here tomorrow bright and early.”

Mako and Jia returned to their desks and began packing up their stuff. Jia called her boyfriend to let him know that, for once, she’d be coming home early. “So, that new dumpling place you wanted to try, you wanna go there? Alright. Love you too. Bye.”

“So how’s Ken doing?” Mako asked.

“Pretty good. He finally found another job. Although now our schedules are all over the place. It actually kind of sucks, especially when we want to have a date night or something.”

“I’m sure you’ll work it out,” Mako said, with a reassuring smile. “Hey, you know what the deal is with Beifong and Supers?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean… okay, every time Wildfire calls one of us and we go to Beifong with a lead, she trusts it, because yeah, it usually pays off. But then, every time one of them even seems to step a toe out of line she seems to try her hardest to make them answer for it. Almost like she’s hoping they’re guilty. I just don’t get it.”

“Oh my god, you don’t know,” Jia said, trying to hold in her laughter. “You see? This is what you get for never going out for drinks with us.”

Mako sighed. “I know, I know, I’m an antisocial asshole and I’m lucky you even give me the time of day. Can you just fill me in?”

“You remember Icestorm?”

“Yeah. Waterbending super, retired about a decade back, right?”

“Right. Well, scuttlebutt around the station is her and the Chief used to have a thing. And it apparently did not end well.”

Mako could not contain his laughter. “Holy shit, seriously? So, do you think the Chief knows Icestorm’s identity?”

“Probably. Unless she kept her mask on in bed.”

“Kinky,” Mako muttered. He looked up to see Jia staring at him, wide-eyed. “What?”

“You… actually made a joke!” She punched his arm. “I knew you had it in you!”

“Okay, first off, ow!” Mako said rubbing his arm. “And second, I can make jokes. I do it all the time!”

“Bad one-liners and puns don’t count, Mako,” Jia replied, punching Mako again in the exact same spot. “Hey, can you give me a ride back to my apartment? My car’s still at the shop.”

“Sure,” Mako said. He fished his keys out of his pocket and lobbed them at Jia. “I’ll meet you outside, I just have to use the bathroom real quick.”

Once in the men’s room Mako made sure all the stalls were empty before locking the door. He then took out his communicator from the hidden pocket inside his jacket and pulled up Tempest. Asami said she was going to be with the Avatar today, right? He shrugged to himself and dialed. Worst-case scenario, he wasted a phone call.

After several rings, he heard Asami on the other end fumbling with her communicator before putting it to her ear. “Yo,” she said. Immediately, he knew something was off.

“Tempest?”

“Heeey, Wildfire! What’s up?” Mako frowned. Asami was definitely acting weird. He already had a sneaking suspicion as to the reason why.

“Are you with the Avatar right now?”

“Yup, she’s right here. Hang on, let me put you on speaker.”

“Can you do that? Are you in a safe location?”

“Yeah, I’m in my house and the Avatar and I are alone. Calm down, Grumpypants.”

Okay, that settled it. “Tempest, are you high right now?”

Silence. Then; “Maybe?”

Mako pinched the bridge of his nose. “You do remember what my day job is, right?” He could hear stifled giggles in the background, presumably from the Avatar.

“To be fair, this time I had a perfectly legitimate reason for smoking.”

This oughta be good. “And that would be?”

“We’re trying to commune with the Avatar Spirit.”

“The fuck’s an ‘Avatar Spirit’?” the Avatar asked.

“You know, Raava. She’s bonded with you and is the source of your powers and all… Avatar Spirit.”

“Ooh, I like that.”

“Can we get back on track here?” Mako interjected.

“Yeah, sure. Go ahead, Captain Buzzkill.”

“We’re investigating the gang we ran into this past weekend. We’ve got a lead, but it’s kind of tenuous. It has to do with waterbending so I thought maybe you could give us some information, Avatar.”

“Yeah, no problem,” the Avatar replied. “Lemme just ask you something first. Do you use a lot of lube?”

“What for?” Mako asked and immediately kicked himself for falling for the all-too-obvious set-up.

“Getting that stick up your ass every morning.” Mako had to hold the communicator away from his ear as Asami’s extremely loud cackling blared through the speaker. After a solid minute, the laughter finally died down and Mako spoke again.

“Could you just take me off speaker, please?”

“Yeah, let me just--” Asami’s voice came through as she wrestled with the communicator’s settings.

“So why does he call you Tempest?” he heard the Avatar ask. “We both know who you are. What’s the point?”

“It’s a rule we came up with. Code names only over the communicator.” The sound muted, which meant Asami was done fiddling with the settings. “Here,” Mako heard faintly, as Asami handed the phone to the Avatar.

“So what’s this about?” she asked.

Mako proceeded to explain the situation with Amon and his attacks. “We have a theory that Amon used bloodbending to do these things. Problem is, noone’s ever actually witnessed bloodbending before. Basically I’m asking if you know anything about it.”

The Avatar was silent for a long moment. After a while she spoke. “This stays between us, right?”

“Of course,” Mako said.

Mako heard as the Avatar took a deep breath. “Bloodbending is real.”

“Can you do it?” he asked.

“I guess in theory?” the Avatar replied, hesitantly. “I’m supposed to have command over all forms of bending. Never actually tried it though.”

“But you know someone who does.” It wasn’t a question.

“Yeah. But before you get too excited, she’s ancient and she lives like a thousand miles away, so she’s not your man.”

Mako sighed, slightly disappointed, but the Avatar actually knowing Amon was about the longest of longshots anyway. “Can you tell me anything about it?”

“Only what I heard from her. She only ever used it a couple of times when she was young. She said it felt awful, that she never wanted to do it again. And she could only do it during a full moon.”

Mako frowned. If the part about the full moon was true, that meant Amon was in a different league altogether. There had barely been a sliver of a moon in the sky for the past few days. “Alright, thanks for the information,” he said. “I’ll see you around.”

“Yeah, later.” She disconnected the call.

Mako placed his communicator back in its place and made his way down to the parking garage to meet Jia. She was sitting in the passenger seat of his car, blaring music and idly bending what she referred to as her lucky coin between her fingers. This isn’t good.

He got into the car, turned the radio’s volume down and and put it in reverse pulling out of the parking garage and heading down the road. “What is it?” he asked.

“What is what?”

“You only ever pull out that coin when you’re thinking of doing something really stupid. So spill.”

Jia hesitated for a second, then said, “I’m thinking of petitioning to join the Task Force.”

Mako slammed on the brakes, earning a hink from the driver behind him. “You can’t be serious.”

“I’m going to run it past Beifong first, but yes, I am serious. This is some shady black-ops shit Mako, and I don’t like it. We’re going to need someone on the inside.”

“And that should be you?”

“Do you have someone better in mind?”

“Well, no, but--”

“You need to relax. I’m just thinking about it at this point. Besides, Beifong will probably shoot me down as soon as I mention it.”

Mako couldn’t really argue with that. “Just be careful. And tell Ken before you decide anything. He deserves to know what you’re getting into.”

Jia nodded. “Fair enough.”

Mako put the car back into gear. He drove the rest of the way in silence.