BOOK 1: WHISPERS, CHAPTER 5: Trouble in the City

Asami sat in her office filling out some expense reports from their latest line of Satomobiles being shipped out across the Earth Kingdom, the raven-haired woman trying to focus on her work without worrying about the recent dissappearence of her co-worker from Varrick Global Industries, Lei Chun.

It had been about three days since Lei had vanished out of thin air, and although the Republic City Police Department put out a missing persons report for the young Water Tribe woman, no sign of her had been found yet. Not only was this a terrible thing in itself, but it also dampened the relationship Future Industries had with Varrick. She didn't know if he was ever going to trust her or work with her again.

She sighed heavily and rubbed her forehead, the splitting headache that came from the stress of the last couple of days starting to get to her. She would be better if she had any idea of what had happened to the girl. Although, she had her own suspicions; the last person to see her before she dissappeared was her own employee, Yan.

The police had talked to him about what had happened to her, but he played it dumb and had a decent alibi, something about her being telling him that she was going to a meeting when she dissapeared, the man himself not even knowing where she had gone to. After that explanation the police had dropped him as a suspect, but that wasn't good enough for Asami. Something was off.

She was considering starting her own investigation on the man, even if it meant she had to confront him herself. But how would she do it?

...

Contemplating her actions, she decided to give Korra a call. She picked the candlestick phone from beneath her desk and pressed the button to turn it on, hopefully alerting Korra that she was going to call her. The other end was silent for a moment, until Asami heard the soothing voice of her girlfriend over the phone.

"Hey, Asami! What's up?"

Asami giggled at Korra's enthusiasm. "I just wanted to talk to you about something going on at work."

"Uhhh, yeah, sure. Sorry, I just got home. What do ya need to talk about?"

She shrugged off her lover's strange explanation that wasn't needed and started talking again. "So one of our employees has recently gone missing, and the last person to see her was another employee. I was just wondering if you had any advice on what I should do."

The line on the other end was silent for a moment, wondering what the Avatar was going to say.

“Was he a guy?”

“Huh?” Asami responded back in a confused manner.

”The employee she was last seen with. Was he a man?”

Asami tried processing her question. “Well, yeah, but I don’t see how-“

”You should fire him.”

The businesswoman was taken aback by her partner‘s sudden bluntness. “Korra, I-“

“I can’t really explain it right now, but there’s something weird going on. I think some new threat is coming and I don’t know what it could be. Did the police already talk to him?”

”Yes, they did. They cleared him of any wrongdoing.”

”That’s bullshit and you know it, Asami. Just from hearing that he was the last one to see her, he’s bad news. Dump him. Please, for me.”

Thinking for a few moments, Asami talked over the almost dead phone line. “I’m sorry, Korra. But unless there’s legitimate evidence of his wrongdoing, I can’t take any corrective action. I wanna believe you, I do, but I have to think of my position too.”

Korra sighed over the phone. “I understand. Just… be careful around him, okay?”

Asami smiled. ”I will.”

The pair quietly understood one another, having a moment of silence before Asami tried to lighten the mood.

”Oh, Korra, I forgot to tell you, did you hear about that Water Tribe girl driving with her breasts out? How can anyone be that slu-“

”Gotta go!”

The other line ended, and Asami sat there confused as to why Korra had cut their call short. She shrugged and hung up the phone, putting it back under her desk as she thought about what to do with Yan.

Yan knocked on the door to the office of his boss, the voice on the other side telling him to come in. Asami was sitting at her desk, examining some documents while almost paying no mind to the man who had just walked into her bigger and more extravagant office space.

Asami glanced up at the middle-aged man in front of her. “Please, take a seat, Yan.”

Yan obeyed and sat down on the wooden chair in front of her, the woman still looking at the sheets of paper on her desk as Yan twiddled his thumbs and looked around the room. Asami put down the papers and looked at the man.

”I just wanted to talk to you to make sure you don‘t know anything about Lei Chun’s dissapearence.”

An annoyed expression was put on Yan’s face. “Ms. Asami, the police already-“

”I know what the police did. They cleared you of wrongdoing. Not me. I’d like to do a thorough investigation of your workshop.”

”What?” exclaimed Yan in anger.

Asami shuffled her papers and stared into the eyes of Yan. “I want to cover all bases with this, and a base we haven’t covered is you. If you have nothing to hide, you’ll have nothing to fear.“

Yan’s face scrunched up in rage as Asami analyzed his body. He was about to do something…

His fists were clenched, but slowly he began to relax, his posture changing to indictate that his temper was subsiding. Asami was confused, wondering what this sudden mood change was the result of.

”If you don’t mind me asking, Ms. Sato, but when would this inspection be?”

Asami went back to looking at her documents. “Tomorrow, more then likely. I’ll need to ready a team to do a thourough analysis on your workspace. You won’t mind staying late tonight and tomorrow and helping them access your equipment, would you?“

Yan still had a neutral poker face on, Asami not being able to read what he was thinking. “Of course, Ms. Sato.”

”Good. You may leave now.”

Yan got up from the chair and started walking out of the office before Asami called for him one last time. The woman looked up from work and stared at the man who turned his head back.

”Remember that you’re being watched. Carefully.”

Yan didn’t respond as he turned back around and walked out.

"MS. SATO! MS. SATO! PLEASE WAKE UP!"

Asami sat up from her chair groggily, the woman only now being woken up by the incessant knocking of her secretary. The young Earth Kingdom girl banged on the door as Asami tried to wake up, the sounds of the wooden door being hit banging in her mind. Then, it hit her; she had fallen asleep at her desk, sleeping through the night in her office.

She jumped out of her chair and ran to the door, opening it up to reveal her secretary flailing back in surprise. Asami looked frazzled, her hair messed up and massive bags under her eyes.

"Yan. Where is Yan?"

The secretary gulped. "Ms. Asami… he's gone."

A look of frustration and fear stuck on her face as she ran past the young girl down the hall leading to her office. The secretary turned around to yell back at the woman.

"Wait, Ms. Asami! What should we-"

Asami turned her head and yelled back. "Call the RCPD and get as many of our men out there looking for him as possible. I want him arrested and brought to me."

Nodding in understanding, the girl went inside her office as the Future Industries CEO stormed down the stairs on her way to where Yan's lab was.

The entire room was empty. Everything was gone. Any speck of incriminating evidence or material that could implicate Yan in the dissapearence of the Varrick Global employee had completely vanished. They had nothing.

Some of Asami's employees were looking at the barren laboratory with lanterns, trying to see if they could find even one little tiny detail that they might have missed that would lead them to Yan.

As they searched, Asami stared angrily at her security captain, the man in red looking scared as the CEO looked down on him.

"What happened to your security detail? They were supposed to be watching him."

The captain shook in fear as he responded. "I-I don't know… I told them to stand guard outside of his lab!"

Asami groaned and walked away from the man, trying to figure out where to look for him. She picked up a nearby phone that one of her other employees got for her and dialed the number to the Republic City Police Department.

"RCPD, how may we-"

"Get me Lin Beifong, now."

Yan stared out at the sea from the front of the ship, the cool fresh air of the ocean reminding him that there were some things fighting for in this confusing messed up world he lived on. He heard beer glasses clink against each other, the security guards that were supposed to keep him from leaving easily letting their guard down to allow Vaatu to corrupt them into the same woman-hating sexists that Yan himself was. They were now apart of his team, a crew that he could have perform operations for him to further their goals of placing the world back into the capable hands of the male gender.

"I guess I've gotta thank you for brainwashing those guards."

The human visage of Vaatu appeared behind Yan, the celebrating guards still not being able to see the spirit that had popped up in front of them.

"I did not brainwash them, human. I simply brought out their inner deepest desires that exist in the bodies and souls of all men, to crush the female vermin beneath their feet."

Yan smirked and turned back towards his ally. "Well, whatever you did, if you hadn't I never would've been able to get out of there with all of my equipment."

"And the ship."

"Right. And the ship. So, once we find a new place for the lab, what's our next move?"

Vaatu crossed his arms. "In order to perform the ritual needed to rid bending away from the women of the world, I must grow in power. But to do that, I need powerful females. Ones that don't exist in this timeline."

"What do you mean?"

"This timeline lacks female warriors and benders with enough energy for me to feed off of. I need hatred, ****, chaos, despair. In order to do that, I need to find the strongest females in the timeframe, and you and I will violate them so I may grow in power."

Yan smirked, never knowing a spirit could be as lustful as Vaatu was. Or maybe he was just rubbing off on the immortal deity.

"So what's your plan?"

"When we find a new base of operations, I will use timebending to suck powerful women out of their current place in time into our own. After we violate and break their wills, I will get stronger, and we may influence the world to further our plans. Once my power has been fully restored, we may confront the Avatar and Raava, and subjugate them and the rest of the women of the world."

An evil grin grew on the former Equalists face. "I like the sound of that."

The steamboat floated off into the fog, away from Republic City. The horns of the ship blared through the sky, almost like an alarm at what was to come.