prelude
“Haaa,” Korra muttered. “The one time I’m actually looking for the bathroom, there’s no one around to ask where it is.” She heaved a deep sigh, rolled up her imaginary sleeves, and turned the corner. Finally, finally, she found the doors marked Male and Female, and between them, a long hole in the wall.
“Yikes,” said Korra. The tailor must not nearly be as successful as he was trying to convince Pema he was: it was almost wider than Korra could stretch her arms, and curling away from the wall like an evil grin. It must have been there for a…
long…
did the crack justgrow?
Korra inched closer, being very careful not to touch it; she couldn’t be sure what sort of evil spirit she was dealing with, but she wanted as many facts as she could before she went for advice. It was definitely getting larger, and through the crack she didn’t see the bathroom (thank goodness) but a strange bank of glowing windows and… typewriters? That on the wall looked like a very… streamlined radio, but Korra couldn’t be sure. Maybe it didn’t have anything to do with spirits at all—
“Woah, woah woah woah, AUUUUGH!”
Korra just barely managed to flip from landing on her butt into a roll, but she was still overbalanced and dizzy. She turned to look behind her.
It was a monkey, or a lemur, maybe. Except it was metal, and glowing the same blue-green color inside as the windows (which showed line after line of very poor caligraphy, rather than the outdoors) around them.
“Status updating,” the monkey stated in a strange voice. At first Korra thought it was stressing words wrongly, but she quickly realized it wasn’t stressing words at all. “Diagnosis: Oh, horse pucky.”
Korra couldn’t help but laugh; the monkey had such astrangeway of talking. “Uh, hi there! I’m Korra.”
“Designation accepted,” said the monkey. It looked to be in a state of shock; Korra thought it was kinder to let it say things in a way that made no sense, considering. “Unregistered Passenger Korra does not have security clearance: what is your agenda, and how did you access these facillities?”
Angry monkey. “I was looking for the bathroom! And you’re the one that kicked me anyway.”
“There is no lavatory in the automated transchronolateral research vessel. Vacate the premises immediately.” Rather than answer, Korra gestured for the monkey to turn and look at where the hole they’d fallen through had closed up already. “Status updating. Diagnosis: Oh, horse pucky.” Then it started going on about how it was sending someone a “ping” and how Korra was somehow a danger to time itself and Korra was starting to suspect that the monkey wasn’t actually saying words, it was just really good at pretending.
“Look,” Korra stood up; nothing was getting done at this rate. “I have topee. If you don’t have a bathroom, show me the way to someplace that does.Then, we’re going to talk, and you’re going to explain in words I understand.”
The monkey stared at her for a long moment, and Korra’s bladder about burst. “Strategy accepted. Prepare to reenter the timestream.”
Reentering the timestream, Korra learned, hurt like a bitch.
