Chapter Text
The twelfth floor of the newest Future Industries tower was everything the owner of said company had been looking for in a building; this was a good thing, since she had been the one who designed the building. It was open, except for a large corner room, which was the owner’s office. The office had one solid interior wall; the other interior wall was glass. The open area had multiple workbenches, welding gear, and a variety of other tools. A partially assembled hummingbird VTOL flying craft took up much of one corner; various other projects took up other workbenches.
In the office, Asami Sato rubbed her eyes and wished it was the weekend. She was going over documents, facing away from the windows, which were presently shuttered closed, to conserve energy, with the exception of one, which strangely could be opened from both the inside and the outside. Asami loved her company and the challenges it presented, but some weeks were all about design and new creations, whereas others, like the one she was presently enduring, were all about meetings, finances, and paperwork.
She was really sick of paperwork.
With an exasperated sigh, she took a bite of the sandwich her assistant had brought up to her from the cafeteria in the first floor of the building, and re-interned herself in the dusty confines of financial forecasts, industry reports, and government regulations.
New safety regulations for passenger vehicles – still weaker than Future Industry standard.
Market forecast – a new Earth Kingdom line was making inroads, but mainly impacting Cabbage Corp sales numbers. Something to keep a tab on, but nothing urgent yet.
An industry report scoffing at concern for the impact of mass adaptation of Satomobiles and other personal transportation – pollution, infrastructure deficit, and congestion were three major potential impacts mentioned, but apparently there were more.
Asami frowned. She was working on something that would (hopefully!) mitigate at least one of those concerns, which were important to her even if they meant nothing to whoever had written the report. She moved the report into a different pile, to be considered in the future, and not just by her. Someone, she couldn’t remember who, had once said that great power and great responsibility went hand-in-hand. Or something like that. The older she got, the more important that saying became to her. She had seen too many times the consequences of power without responsibility.
A bang against the window behind her interrupted her thoughts. The window opened behind her and she smiled. There were a few people it could possibly be, but only one was likely. She didn’t turn, but instead asked “Did you make an appointment? There’s a whole system for that, you know.”
A slight chuckle, and warm arms and hands reached around her from behind and wrapped themselves around her. “I’m afraid I forgot to do that. Should I come back later, Mrs Sato? At an appointed time, perhaps?”
Asami leaned her head back and looked up at the blue eyes staring down at her. “For you, I think we can make an exception, Mrs Sato. I must extract a price, however.” She reached up, and pulled her wife’s face down towards hers. They kissed, and Asami sighed contentedly. Negotiation successful, and far better than more paperwork.
“So,” Asami said, straightening herself up and tying her hair back as the kiss ended far too soon, “what’s the occasion? I wasn’t expecting to see you until I got home.”
Korra frowned, and didn’t say anything for a moment. The fact that she hadn’t made a comment about not needing an occasion to see her wife was not lost on Asami.
“Come on,” Asami continued, “let’s walk around my workshop floor. The office feels a bit warm.” She winked at Korra. “Probably something to do with the smoking hot Avatar who just flew in.”
Korra looked around in fake confusion. “Smoking hot?! Where? I want to meet her!”
“Jerk,” Asami laughed. “I guess I need a mirror in my office for when you want to check yourself out.”
“Nah,” Korra responded, smirking and... flexing, Asami noticed. “Why check myself out when I can watch you checking me out.” Asami flushed. “Busted!” Korra leaned in and gave her another kiss. “Besides,” she continued, with a blush of her own, “you’re not the only one who likes checking out her wife.”
Asami shivered all over. “Right,” she said, grabbing Korra by the hand. “Forget the workshop. I know there’s something, but I’m sure whatever it is can wait just a little while.” She reached into one of her desk drawers, grabbed a remote, and passed it to Korra. “Press the big green button.”
Korra looked down at the remote suspiciously. “Are you sure? I’m not really a tech sort of gal.”
Asami ran the fingers of one hand over Korra’s bare left arm. “Press the button, love.”
“Okay,” Korra responded, slightly shaky in her tone.
Korra pressed the button, and blinds started descending the interior office glass wall. From the one solid wall, a hidden panel opened and a bed descended onto the floor, the base stopping almost right at Korra’s feet. She looked at it, wide-eyed.
Asami was just happy it had worked as it was supposed to – this was the first time she had the opportunity to make use of it.
“Did you design this for if you need to sleep at the office?” Korra asked. Asami could hear confusion in her voice.
Without warning, Asami gave Korra a slight shove, causing her to collapse backwards onto the bed. Hiking her skirt slightly, she climbed on top of Korra and straddled her.
Asami looked down at Korra, and lightly brushed Korra’s cheek with her fingers.
“No, my love. No I did not.”
-------
“Sooooo,” Asami said to the top of Korra’s head, which was presently resting against Asami’s chest. “Ready to tell me what’s going on?”
“Sleepy,” was all the response she got.
“No!” She responded sharply. “You’ll never get any sleep tonight if you do that.”
“Mean.”
“Aw, poor little Avatar. Has the meanest wife ever.” She ran her fingers over Korra’s bare arm. “Must have been why you were screaming my name a few minutes ago. Because of how mean I am.”
“Mhmm- wait, what, no!” Korra raised her head and blew hair out of her eyes. She pouted. “I just didn’t want to move, that’s all. You’re very comfortable.” Asami giggled.
“Mean but comfortable, huh?”
“Whatever!” Korra responded, rolling her eyes. She pushed herself upright and sat facing Asami. “You’re right, though, there is something. Potentially a big something- hey! My eyes are up here!”
Asami, who had been unabashedly staring at Korra’s bare chest, looked up, winked, and then lowered her gaze again. “I made my choice.”
Korra turning a bright shade of pink was exactly the response Asami had hoped for. Another half hour wouldn’t make that much difference, would it? She asked herself as she grabbed Korra and dragged her close again.
-------
After getting outside and going for a walk, the pair were now sitting on a bench in Avatar Korra park; the cool autumn morning had shifted into a warm afternoon. It was interesting, Asami thought, how Korra always managed to angle herself so that she didn’t have to look at her own statue, no matter where in the park they were sitting.
“Okay, we are out of your office, sitting in the sunshine, with food, in public. No more distractions,” Korra said.
Asami thought about teasing her some more but decided against it. She nodded for Korra to continue as she slurped some noodles.
“You see that?” Korra asked, pointing at the column of light that dominated inner Republic City. Asami just raised one eyebrow and continued eating. It had to be a rhetorical question.
“There’s been a discovery. It’s not another spirit portal.” Korra sighed. “But it is like a spirit portal. A... regular portal? Or a window. If that makes sense.”
Asami cocked her head and thought for a moment.
“A closed window? Or an open one?”
“There’s evidence animals have gone through.”
“Open, then. Who discovered it?”
“Hikers. When they got back to the city, they told the police. Lin told Tenzin. Tenzin told me. There should be air benders guarding it by now, with police on the way.”
Asami nodded. “Okay, that’s good.” She stood up, her food forgotten. “Let’s get back to the apartment. We have to plan and pack for a trip. Also, I need to let the office know I won’t be in tomorrow, and possibly longer than that.” Korra nodded in agreement and stood up, as well. She grabbed Asami’s takeout container as well as her own, causing Asami to blush slightly.
“Thanks love.”
“No worries.” Korra winked. “Avatar Waste Removal, at your service.” Asami laughed.
“Oh,” Asami said, as they started to head back home. “I know we should have probably gotten onto this portal thing earlier, but I’m really glad we didn’t.” She smiled at Korra, who smiled back.
“That makes two of us.”
-------
“I thought we were going to the mansion,” Korra said, as Asami took a sharp right onto a road with a sign that said “Private. Authorized Personnel Only.”
“To the estate, I said,” Asami responded. “How many times have you been here again?”
Korra shrugged. “I usually fly.”
“Fair point.” Asami eased off the gas as she rolled her light blue roadster up to a security gate. It was a sunny morning, but once again there was a chill in the autumn air. Asami had the car’s top down regardless.
She lowered her sunglasses and smiled at the security guard in his booth. “Good morning...” She squinted at the guard’s name tag. “...Wan, is it?”
“Good morning, Mrs. Sato.” He nodded as he pushed the button to open the gate. “Yes, ma’am, that’s me.”
“New here?” she asked.
“Yes, ma’am,” he repeated. “Just finished training last week.”
“That’s great.” The gate finished opening, and Asami pushed her sunglasses back over her eyes. “Well, nice to meet you, and if you need anything, don’t hesitate to ask. I hope you enjoy working here!”
“Um, thank you, ma’am!” With that, Asami drove forward, her shifting as precise as everything else she did. Korra waved at the guard as they went by, and it almost looked like his eyes were about to pop out of his head. Korra laughed.
“What is it, babe?”
“He was so focused on you, he only just now realized who your passenger is.” They both laughed together.
“Well,” Asami said, “you may be the Avatar, but I’m the boss.”
“Did you mean it?” Korra asked. “When you said not to hesitate to ask.”
“Of course!” Asami responded. “Not that I let any random employee barge into my office, but many of the things that make Future Industries a highly rated place to work for came about because I actually listen to my employees.” She paused a moment to organize her thoughts, as she parked the roadster in front of one the Future Industry aircraft hangars. Turning off the engine, she turned to face Korra.
“No one person has all the ideas. Or all the answers. I set priorities for my company. When things are going well, other people are making sure those priorities are realized, and I get to design and build, or do Team Avatar stuff.” She sighed. “Or take meetings and do paperwork.”
“Sometimes, however,” she continued, “there are issues that come up, that cannot or do not get resolved by people below me in the company hierarchy. Then I have to get involved. We don’t have many of those, or at least not as many as we have had in the past.”
She got out of the car, as did Korra. Korra grabbed her glider, which had been sticking out of the back seat. Asami gestured for Korra to follow her to the hangar.
“There actually is a big issue,” Asami said, “but it’s a long term one. I’ll want to have your input on it, after we get through this newest crisis.”
“Happy to help,” Korra said, then paused. “We’re calling it a crisis already?”
Asami put her hand on Korra’s shoulder. “An open window to... where, exactly? To what, exactly? To whom, exactly? We have no idea. Yes, I’d say that’s a crisis.” She grabbed Korra’s hand and led her into the gigantic hangar. “Let’s just hope it is not already a catastrophe.”
Asami took off her sunglasses and waited for their eyes to adjust to the dimmer light in the hangar. She gestured towards a large machine, sitting on its own. “And this is the major project I’ve been working on, since things have been going well.”
Korra just stopped and stared, mouth slightly open in awe. “What the heck is that?”
-------
Korra followed Asami as she walked around the aircraft, checking off items on a clipboard as she examined the machine. It was sleek, but strange, she thought. Only one wing, propellers pointing upwards. Much bigger than previous aircraft she had seen.
“It’s a VTOL aircraft. Vertical Take Off and Landing,” Asami explained. “Good for carrying people and cargo quickly. Not as economical as a train, of course, but it can get where they cannot.”
“What’s it called?” Korra asked.
Asami frowned. “Not sure yet. This is the prototype. So far it just has a project code name, but that’s just a couple of random words strung together.” She looked up from her checklist and noticed Korra’s confused look. “Industrial sabotage and theft are real things. We give code names to every project, no matter what they are, so that there’s nothing to differentiate the significance of one project from another.”
“Huh,” Korra said. “Weird.”
Asami snorted as she finished up her checklist. “Yes, it is weird. A lot of business practices are. Alright, everything looks good. Let’s get onboard and give this thing a proper field test.” She led them both to the rear of the aircraft and up the lowered ramp. Inside were a variety of boxes, some sort of small wheeled vehicle, and other things, almost none of which Korra could identify.
“We’ve got camping gear, survival equipment, food and potable water, an all terrain vehicle, and a new type of camera. Plus extra parts and tools for the aircraft, of course,” Asami said.
“Well, of course!” Korra grinned as she said it. If it had been up to her, they would have just ridden Naga up to the site. She didn’t get a chance to see up close and personal how Asami was moving the world forward as often as she would like. She was looking forward to being a passenger.
Asami pointed towards a rack along one side of the aircraft’s fuselage. “You can lock your glider into place there, that way it’s secure for the flight.”
“Yes, ma’am!” Korra responded, doing as instructed.
Rolling her eyes at her wife, Asami hit a button to raise the ramp behind them. She then led them forward into the cockpit, where instead of one seat or a pair of seats in tandem, as Korra had seen in the past, there were two seats, side-by-side. “Pilot’s seat on the left, copilot’s on the right.”
“Copilot?” Korra gulped. “If you want me to pilot, you shouldn’t have had me lock up my glider.”
“Relax, love,” Asami responded, smiling and taking Korra’s hand. “The aircraft flies just fine with only one pilot. You’re just a passenger on this flight. In fact,” she said, looking a little more serious now, “I need you to promise me you won’t touch any of the controls unless I say otherwise. All of the controls, buttons, dials, levers, everything you see, are fully active.”
“I absolutely, completely, totally promise to touch nothing!” Korra responded fervently as she sat down. There were a lot of controls, buttons, dials, levers and whatever else things. How does she keep track of them all?
Asami took a headset down from the ceiling of the aircraft and put it over Korra’s head; she did the same with the headset above the pilot’s seat. “Once we have power, your headset will talk to me. It will be loud. I’ll be talking to you and the tower.”
“The tower?” Korra asked.
“I’ll explain on the way,” Asami responded. She flicked a toggle and many of the buttons lit up. After checking one gauge, she flicked another toggle. “Tower, this is Future Industries One. Please open Hangar One and clear our airspace. Priority A.” She paused. “That is correct. Thank you tower.”
The giant hangar doors opened ahead of them as Asami powered up the aircraft. “Check out the propellers.” Korra looked out the window and gasped. The propellers, which had been horizontal, were now tilting downwards. They stopped and locked into place when they were vertical, more like a normal airplane.
“Okay, that’s cool.”
“When the engines are horizontal, like they are now, the aircraft is configured for normal flight,” Asami explained as she taxied out of the hangar, towards the main runway. “When they are vertical, the aircraft can hover in place, or takeoff and land vertically. We’re going to do a normal takeoff today. It’s more fuel efficient.”
“Damn,” Korra said softly. Every time I think I get a handle on what she’s accomplished... “Wait, what was that other stuff you said? Future Industries One and Priority A? This isn’t the first Future Industries aircraft, that’s for sure.” Korra peered at Asami. Is she blushing?
“Give me a moment.” She flipped a toggle. “Tower, F.I. One is ready for takeoff. Any changes to the weather report?” She paused, listening. “Roger that. Thank you, tower. Have a great day.” With that, Asami pushed a lever forward, and the aircraft started to accelerate down the runway. Korra was really glad for her headphones, as it was really loud. After a brief time Asami pulled back on the wheel in front of her, and the aircraft took off. Korra watched enthralled as the ground receded underneath her. There was a clunking sound, but when Korra turned to ask Asami about it, she could see her wife was unconcerned.
“Alright, lady, talk,” Korra demanded.
Asami laughed, startled.
“And what was the clunking sound?” she asked.
“The clunking sound was the landing gear retracting. It’s still there, the aircraft is just more efficient when there are less things breaking the airflow. As for your other questions, Future Industries One isn’t a particular aircraft, it’s whatever aircraft that I’m in.”
“Ooohhh,” Korra responded with a wink, “I think we need an ego check here. And the other? Priority Asami?” she said, chuckling.
“A is for Avatar,” Asami responded, trying to keep a straight face.
“Should be Priority TA, then” Korra responded, “for Team Avatar.” Again, Asami blushed.
“It was, originally,” she said.
“And?”
“Some wag said it should be Priority T and A, instead.”
“Huh?” Korra said “I don’t get... wait, no way! They said that? About their own boss?”
Asami nodded. “Needless to say, he is no longer employed with the company. And it wouldn’t have mattered who he said it about.”
“No shit,” Korra said. “What an idiot.” She paused to look her wife up and down. “Not wrong, though.”
“Korra!”