Chapter Text
Prologue
An excerpt from Avatar Korra's journals.
It was written in the summer of 177AG, months after Operation Pitfall. The avatar co-piloted the Mark III jaeger, Polar Danger.
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"Alien life was not something people believed possible before K-Day. Hell, people barely believed in spirits. If it wasn't for the likes of the avatar-- well, me-- most probably wouldn't think spirits were real. But they are. And so is other alien life. Though, these aliens...they didn't come from the stars. These giant monsters came from the depths of the Mo Ce Sea...a rift between two dimensions. Not the Spirit World. Another world altogether. This gateway became known as the Breach. I was only six when the first kaiju attacked Ember Island...Trespasser.
Ember Island was so far from the Southern Water Tribe, and I had been safe in the White Lotus compound, training as the avatar, but only six months later, the second kaiju attacked my home. I was too far inland, safe from the carnage the kaiju inflicted on the Southern Water Tribe Capital City. My parents hadn't been so lucky. Master Katara had been the one to tell me what had happened, and if not for her and her daughter, Kya, I don't think I would have had the strength to mourn and learn to live with the loss.
For eight long years, benders were the first line of defense against these monsters, but still, so many lives were lost. Deep down, I knew that even I wouldn't have been enough to stop the kaiju, not alone. Our world needed a new weapon. Leave it to a beautiful engineering prodigy from Republic City-- a non-bender-- to come up with that weapon. She called them Jaegers...giant mechs the size of the skyscrapers that would be piloted by humans. As perfect as my Asami was-- is-- she couldn't have predicted the early setbacks. One pilot couldn't handle the neural load to interface with the jaeger, so a two-pilot system was implemented. Left hemisphere, right hemisphere.
The jaegers stopped kaiju everywhere. Asami's idea saved thousands upon thousands of lives, but I always felt because she had been "some fifteen year old kid" that came up with the idea, she was never given the credit she was owed. She became more well known as a pilot..."the avatar's co-pilot!" as the papers put it. I hated that. If anything, I was her co-pilot. She was the stronger one, my right hemisphere. At the age of fifteen, she invented a new weapon that saved lives. At sixteen, she had designed two generations of jaegers and became the head of the Future Industries Jaeger Division. At seventeen, she enlisted with the Pan Mo Ce Defense Corps. At eighteen, she and I started piloted the best jaeger of the bunch.
Asami Sato was more than a jaeger pilot.
She was the reason for the jaegers' existence.
I thank the spirits everyday we beat the shit out of each other, thus Beifong making us spar in the Kwoon.
I couldn't have asked for a better co-pilot than the woman I found myself loving...even if she did threaten to kick my ass out of the Jaeger Program."
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