Kuvira's Assistant

Chapter 15

Sorry for taking an extra few days to post this, more juicy chapters to come! Stay tuned 👀

TRIGGER WARNING: Threats/physical assault

"TELL me." Bataar's fist clenched onto Akemi's collar as she was pressed into the wall.

"Bataar. Back OFF, I told you." Instead of listening to the firebender, his hand clutched her tighter. It was late at night, and Kuvira was in her office working on a couple of tasks; in a matter of hours, the Empire was to march into Republic City. Meanwhile, her assistant and fiance were in the spirit cannon workshop, supposedly working on its final refinements.

"It was Ju."

"LIES. Your time has only been centered around Kuvira for the past few weeks!!" The scientist seethed.

Bataar leaned his head closer onto Akemi's, almost pressing his forehead onto hers, and squinted as he gritted his teeth, "WHERE are those marks on your body from? I'm only going to ask you this ONE. LAST. TIME. Before I INCINERATE YOU WITH THIS CANNON!!! IS IT KUVIRA??"

Akemi didn't want to hurt him in practice, but in theory, OH would she... Seeing how close he was, she formed an 'o' with her lips and began to puff out little orange flames to get him to squirm away a little.

"Move back." She sternly warned him, but his grip only got tighter, virtually choking her. Unable to control himself in the moment, he let out a blow to her stomach that he'd been waiting weeks to punch. Akemi painfully screamed and let her entire body heat up and shoved him meters back... But the man was resilient. He got back up on his feet and charged at her, throwing a wrench that he had in his pocket at her. By chance it hit her on the left half of her lip and chin, causing her lip to burst open and bleed. She was stunned for a moment, but managed to catch a glimpse of him before he grabbed her arms and tried to drag her towards the spirit vine cannon to threaten her a little more intensely. She had no idea if he was serious or not, but she was NOT going to risk it, especially after seeing the power in that cannon in the first and last test run.

The firebender took it easy on him so far; but enough was enough. He thought he had her under his control since she only resisted by squirming...

"You're going to TELL me if you've been having an AFFAIR WITH MY FIANCEE."

"Bataar, you're acting MAD. This is NEVER how you should speak to a person to ask for any kind of information... Especially NOT ME." Her last three words boomed, rattling the body of the man who was grappling onto her. "Let go, or I'll firebend at you." Insistent, he didn't let go... "Let GO." Once again, she heated her body up even more and held the arms that were holding onto her with very hot palms, causing him to flinch away slightly.

That's IT, she thought. The bender started to slowly rise on flames of white, almost transparent, fire beneath her feet. She was FURIOUS. "BATAAR. I SAID. DO NOT EVER LOOK, SPEAK TO OR BREATHE NEXT TO ME..." blazes of blue fire puffed out of her mouth between her words, "AGAIN!!!!" She leaned back and, with her mouth and hands, took a moment to melt a hole into the metal roof of the workshop as he watched, and blazed off on her feet. For the first time, she'd bent a non-luminous fire; it felt three times as hot and her chi felt like it was rattling every bone in her body to exert this power.

Akemi could barely fly far; within a minute her fire popped and fizzled away and she slid to the side of the workshop's external walls, away from Bataar, light-headed and out of breath. It took a LOT of her chi to blaze a temperature that high. The blood from her lip had trailed its way from the inside to the outside of the long workshop's body, and continued to stain her own green uniform as she sat on the cold mud, leaning back on the icy metal wall.