Ba Sing Se welcomed me back the way it always did—calm on the surface, obedient beneath.
The city moved when I willed it to.
I didn't issue grand proclamations or public orders. I sent whispers instead.
A sealed directive went out through the Dai Li—coded, precise, unquestionable.
Destination: Northern Air TempleObjectives:
Recover all surviving airbender scrolls and teachings
Secure any texts referencing spirits, chi pathways, or energy manipulation
Make contact with the Mechanist
Bring everything back—knowledge, designs, minds if necessary
No unnecessary force. No destruction.
The Dai Li moved like ghosts.
I already knew what waited at the Northern Air Temple.
Ruins of a lost culture, yes—but more importantly, a living anomaly: a non-bender who had nearly dragged the world into an industrial age ahead of its time with scraps, desperation, and brilliance.
The Mechanist wasn't just an inventor.
He was a multiplier.
And I needed multipliers.
While my agents traveled, I reviewed what Ba Sing Se now quietly provided me.
Foundries.Earth Kingdom trade guilds.Metalworks disguised as civic infrastructure projects.
Officially, I was reorganizing defenses.
Unofficially?
I was laying the foundations of a private military-industrial network, one that answered to no throne—only to me.
Metalbending was still rare. Lava bending rarer.
But talent could be cultivated.
With the Dai Li, I began separating the exceptional from the obedient. Those with precision. Those with intuition. Those whose chi flowed differently—more aggressively, more adaptively.
I didn't need thousands.
I needed hundreds who could outperform armies.
Days later, the first reports arrived.
The Northern Air Temple had not resisted.
The scrolls were intact—many damaged, some fragmentary, but enough to reconstruct lost Air Nomad philosophy. Not just airbending forms, but spiritual theory: detachment, breath, balance between body and soul.
More importantly—
References to energy.
Crude. Incomplete. Symbolic.
But energybending was mentioned.
Not as a technique—but as a principle.
That alone made the operation worth it.
Then came the real prize.
The Mechanist.
Alive. Cooperative. Curious.
He hadn't been threatened. He hadn't been coerced. Instead, my Dai Li had done something far more effective:
They told him the truth.
That the Earth Kingdom had resources again.That his inventions would no longer be used as bargaining chips.That he could build without fear of abandonment.
And that his work could change the world.
He agreed to come willingly.
By the time his designs reached my hands—gliders modified into reconnaissance platforms, drill schematics refined beyond Fire Nation models, early combustion systems—I knew I'd made the correct move.
The Earth Kingdom would never realize how close it was to becoming obsolete.
Because it wouldn't belong to itself anymore.
I stood atop the walls of Ba Sing Se that night, black flames flickering silently in my palm—jet-black, devouring even the memory of light.
Energy.Spirit.Industry.Control.
I wasn't repeating history.
I was outpacing it.
And when the Avatar finally arrived…
He wouldn't be stepping into a world frozen in imbalance.
He would be stepping into a world that had already evolved past him.