Author's Note: Hey! Guess who has ditched the S. S. Makorra!

I may be testing the waters here for Borra with my horrible, spur-of-the-moment idea. Enjoy anyways.

prologue

into the dark

Her name was Korra...wasn't it?

That's all she remembers. Korra. The rest of her mind is a black hole of vast emptiness.

Hell, she doesn't even know what she looks like.

The room is dimly lit, the only light provided being a single, old and flickering bare lightbulb hanging from the cracked plaster ceiling.

The room she is currently trapped in is bland, old, and smells of mildew and rot. There is a small metal cot pushed to the corner of the area, its center sagging; it is presumably where she has been passed out on for the past...the past...

...

Dammit, she doesn't even know how long she's been in this place.

Her lips curve downwards slightly into a small frown as she raises her hand to examine her digits in what little light there is. Dark, long, flexible fingers. Quick and supple—albeit thin and bony from lack of nutrients—capable of doing many things, she is sure. Faint calluses, although when she nervously rubs her hands against each other in a pitiful attempt to warm them up, they feel perfectly smooth.

She blearily looks at her arms and winces involuntarily. They bear the sign of having been somewhat muscular and brawny, but a long period of inactivity and malnourishment only causes the flesh to sag around the sinew and bone, creating a blotchy effect.

Was she in the middle of trying to starve herself or something? Her half-skeletal arms scare her.

Her hands surreptitiously, almost unconsciously, drift up to probe at her face next.

Dull blue eyes snap wide open as they stare, very dumbly, at her reflection.

Oh, spirits above, her face.

A gaunt being peers back at her from the mirror, its hair greasy and unkempt, tied back into a sloppy high tail. Dark shadows bruise the underside of its owlish eyes. The being before her truly begs the question of what the hell she was doing before she woke up in this god-forsaken room. And, really, why in the name of Agni is that figure with a brown mask and luminous green goggles dressed in a dark uniform staring at her...?

Holy shit. She starts violently, her hands shaking uncontrollably like dry leaves in a wind as she nearly trips over her feet in her eagerness to whirl around.

There's a short figure with a brown mask and luminous green goggles dressed in a dark uniform staring at her.

"Finally awake, huh?" the figure chirpily asks, rocking up and down on the balls of his or her feet.

One of Korra's eyebrows escapes to disappear under her greasy hairline as she silently observes the guard, as the name she has settled with to call the figure. She does not respond, partly in defiance, and partly in fear that her voice will sound absolutely horrendous when she does speak up. And yet, she has the strangest feeling that she has seen this uniform before, if not the actual human behind the mask...

The guard doesn't seem to be perturbed by her muteness at all. "Are you hungry? Amon said to bring you food after you woke up. Because, you're bound to be hungry, aren't you? You've been unconscious for a week!" It extends a hand for Korra to grasp.

Korra can't keep the twisted sound from tumbling out past her lips. What she meant to say was, "A week?!" but instead, the thing that came out of her mouth was very different.

The image of a man in a creamy white mask, a large red circle branded in the center of its forehead, materializes in his thoughts. A low, cold, harsh voice fills her mind, slowly eating at her soul from the inside.

Amon.

"I will take your bending away, and then, you will be nothing."

A strangled scream bursts out from her inner being as she instinctively lurches back from the guard's extended hand. She convulses, vomiting nothing but clear liquid that makes her throat burn. After the first heave has passed, leaving her gasping for breath and tears in her eyes, her stomach rebels again. More liquid. The burning sensation intensifies.

A soothing hand is rubbing small circles onto her back, its hold gentle but firm.

"Come on, kid," the guard murmurs, "take it easy. We've got to get some food into you."

Korra responds with another set of wracking convulsions that don't stop until her lungs are screaming for air; sharp and ragged bursts of pain snake their way through her body, and she's choking up nothing but foul air and excess saliva. Her stomach feels like it's being twisted, squeezed of all the liquid it contains. When she sucks in a breath of air, it sounds like the last wheeze of a dying old man.

"Where—where am I?" she rasps quietly, her voice cracked. "Who are you? How did I end up here?"

"You're in our headquarters," the guard explains. "The Equalists' headquarters."

Korra is sure that her already sickly face is turning a nasty shade of green, because she recognizes the word "Equalist", and it sets alarm bells ringing in her head. She doesn't know why, but it feels so wrong...

"Um, I'm Teo." Korra decides that he's a guy, and the Equalist scratches the back of his neck sheepishly, taking off his mask to reveal a youthful and sincere face. "Um, the Lieutenant found you passed out by the docks. You had a small but nasty burn on the back of your right shoulder, but you're all healed now." Teo's tone darkens a shade as he utters his next words. "But no doubt the burn was caused by a firebender."

"A firebender?" Korra skeptically asks. "Why would they do that?"

Teo's lips thin into a straight white line. "Because the benders think that they're all so high and mighty above us non-benders. They think that, since they were born with a gift"—he spits the word out as if it is a curse—"they're so much better than we are. And they extort us, bully us, maim us for the fun of it."

Korra slowly nods. "All right." The words are thick in her mouth, but she shakes it off firmly. If benders were truly this nasty and immoral towards their non-bending contemporaries...

"And, I am a non-bender?" she questions, her eyebrows slowly furrowing together into a confused line.

Teo waves the question off. "'Course you are. You wouldn't be here otherwise." He cracks a grin at her. "So, if you're up for walking a little ways, how about that food?"

Korra holds her stomach, feeling rather squeamish, but she has to eat. The gaunt features she saw in the mirror proved that much.

"All right," Korra says again, slowly following Teo out of the dreary room. But even as she does so, the thought of that masked man's voice haunts her thoughts once again.

"I will take your bending away...and you will be nothing."

Funny how she was scared of that single line. Teo had said she was a non-bender, so...really, what did she have to fear?