Republic City Nights » Places

         

It would be a mistake to say that their trials were over. A world in chaos still opened before them, with the Equalists—now led openly by the woman one of their number had once called beloved—weakened but not defeated. Still the conflict between those who could bend and those who could not simmered, festering and growing toxic. Still the people called for justice, in law and government, and better representation for those without the elements at their beck and call. Still, Republic City had its problems, reflective of those in the world at large.

But it was not purely a landscape of despair. Hope existed. There were those from both sides who wished more than anything for a peaceful solution, a way to bring both sides into true equality, without killing or harming the innocent. And it was, perhaps, the courageous actions of one small group of people that reminded others that it could be done, it could be fought for, against both those who would crush the non-benders into submission and those who would take innocent life to break them free of that same oppression. There was a middle way, and as is often but not always the case, that middle way seemed most promising to many.

It was a time of great change and upheaval, but in the lives of Rika, Fang, Haki, and Kiara, the change was personal as well as civil. Brought together as four distinct individuals, each with secrets, flaws, and shortcomings, they banded together with solid ties of friendship and love, and became more together than any of them could ever be alone. The world was moving forward at a frantic pace, but, hand-in-hand, they found that they were able to match it, to walk at the very vanguard of that change. None of them were perfect, none of them had all the answers, but they found that they didn’t need to be, and didn’t need to have them.

Because they had each other.

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