--CHAPTER TWO: TROUBLES --
Steve’s heart was still racing slightly as Chris led him and Jean away from the main cabin to the video conference room. They passed through a short corridor lined entirely in gleaming chrome and mahogany, with three unlabeled doors along the wall to one side and sleek blinders drawn over the windows on the other. Each door was perfectly blank, except for a palm print panel where a knob would have been. With the lush carpet under their feet, it was a bit difficult to believe they were still on a plane.
“What are all the rooms for?” Steve asked curiously. He carried a book bound in brown, worn leather.
“Training, bad room, meeting room,” Chris replied, pointing them off.
“Training?”
“Yup. My old man doesn’t joke with his workout and bending training. And since he spends a lot of time of the plane...” he shrugged.
“Isn’t that dangerous?”
“The room is built with special fireproof and vibration-absorbent materials designed by McGregor Tech. It’s perfectly safe.”
Steve was amazed. Talk about dedication! But then Sir Robert had not built his Fortune-500 company by slacking.
Chris placed his palm on the door to the meeting room and led them in. The meeting room was smaller than the main cabin, with what Steve assumed to be the meeting table set in the center, with six chairs around it. On the wall at the end of the table hung a huge screen. Steve held his breath as Chris turned it on. A news channel filled the screen. A pretty, blonde newscaster sat, speculating about terrorism and violence above a caption that read: ‘Incident at Ohio Country—Gang violence or Terrorism?’
Steve thought, Uh oh.
Then the feed changed to the channel’s reporter on site, standing in front of Grandma’s Lily’s devastated house where they had fought the Solution’s elite earthbending team. The scene looked even worse on video. It was hard to believe they had actually been there amidst all the destruction. Cops, paramedics and firefighters were milling about, along with a good number of watchers though they stayed beyond the yellow police line wrapped around the entire property. There was no sign of the earthbenders they had left sprawled on the lawn and no one had mentioned anything about arrests, so Steve assumed they had gotten away in time.
“Oh, well,” he said. “It could be worse.”
Chris threw him a glance. “It is.”
Just then, the feed changed again.
The picture was grainy, obviously shot by an amateur with a low-resolution camera. The persons on screen were slightly blurred, especially as they moved so fast. They were clearly fighting, but they seemed to be doing so in the middle of an earthquake: rocks, earth and soil kept shooting up, crushing the lawn and the driveway and the cars on it while the fighters danced out of their way. Flashes of fire burned bright again and again around one of the fighters, distinguished by his normal-looking clothing—all the rest were dressed as ninjas—though no apparent source of the flames could be seen except the boy himself. And nothing could explain the gushes of water that twisted up and about two others a little distance away from the rest. As they watched, five of the ninjas were knocked down, the fighting stopped, and someone new crawled out from the black car to join the last persons standing—the normal dressed boy and one other in ninja garb that could be a female. Then the feed froze and zoomed in on the three.
Steve, Chris and Jean glanced at each other. They were still in the exact same clothes as shown on the screen.
Jean turned away, muttering something in angry French. It was the first time she’d spoken since they had boarded the plane. Contrarily, though, the scowl she’d been wearing had been replaced by an expression of deep thinking.
Steve, however, felt slightly relieved. The image of the three of them, now placed in a small square at the top right of the screen was quite blurred. Except for their clothes, none of them were recognizable. Besides, they were already out of the country. It was bad, but not too bad. He had expected an investigation—they had fought a public battle, hadn’t they?
“Is that it?” He said. “That’s not too bad.”
Jean whipped around. “Not too bad?” She repeated, her tone biting. “Are you really as stupid as you look?”
Chris shook his head. “Steve, we just revealed the existence of bending to the world and put ourselves in the spotlight. It is bad. The councils and the masters are pretty spiffed.”
“But they shouldn’t be!” Steve said. The Bending Alliance was made up of colonies, and each colony run by a group of bending masters. “That video proves nothing—it could very easily be a hoax for all anyone knows, created with special effects. Our faces are so blurred, we’re unrecognizable. And look, we’re out of the country, so we’re safe.”
Jean huffed in disbelief. “Safe? Safe? Haven’t you ever heard of the C.I.A? F.B.I.? Homeland Security? Any intelligence agency could extract our faces from that in about 2 seconds! They probably have already. How long do you think it will take them to identify Christopher McGregor, son of Sir Robert McGregor, discover the fact that his plane took off from an airport in Ohio less than an hour after the incident, and find out exactly where it’s headed? Interpol will be waiting for us once we touchdown at Beijing!”
“And they’ll probably go for dad too,” Chris added. “You know, to find out what he knows. If there’s new tech at play and his son is involved, it’s likely his company invented it. They’ll track his movements, find those he’s been in contact with and track them too. They might find out about the Alliance.”
Steve paused. “Oh.”
“Yes, ‘oh’.” Jean said scathingly. She shook her head again and paced to the other side of the table. “What are we going to do?”
Chris fell into one of the meeting chairs. “The old man was spiffed, but he and Director Strongman said they would take of it.” He looked up at Steve. “Still, I don’t think they’ll appreciate any more disappointments.”
“The temple,” Steve said, understanding.
Chris nodded. “We have to find it. You’re up, Avatar.”
Steve pressed his lips together and nodded once. Then he joined Chris at the table, placing the leather-bound book on the gleaming mahogany surface. Jean joined them, taking a seat on the other side. The book lay between them. There was a moment of expectant silence as they both waited for Steve.
Steve took in a deep breath, suddenly more troubled than he was before. He was startled by the intensity of the feeling. He was a bit nervous about not being able to locate the temple, but not that nervous. This was different.
Suddenly, he knew. This wasn’t him. This was the totem.
“Steve?”
Steve shook his head, trying to clear it. Unconsciously, he brought his hand up and touched the strange rock and wood item where it hung around his neck. “Sorry…” he muttered. “The…uh… it’s the totem. It’s troubled.”
Chris rolled his eyes. “We know the totem is troubled,” he said. “Your Grandma told us, remember? And we know why, too. The event is coming—the one your old man saw. Which is why we have to find the temple… it’s the only lead we have.”
Steve nodded again, but he didn’t think that was it. Still he said, “Okay. Let’s get started.”
They were 13 hours from Beijing.
Watch Here for Chapter 3: Powers of Deduction
The Lost Legend series is fan fiction based off Nickelodeon's Avatar franchise.
Find more of my original works as Peter M. Ogwara on Amazon!
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