Butterfly(2)

Hiroshi took me back to the house and told the butler to go send me to the others. I bid him goodbye and went on my way.

I arrived at the house's inner pool where the rest of them were.

"Ethan, were where you?"

"I was with your father, I asked him to look at one of my designs and to help me solve a problem with it."

"Oh, and did he help you?"

"Oh... Yes, he did..."

"Than, why are you so absent-minded?"

"He offered me to become his partner..."

"Congrats, dude!"

"That's awesome man!"

"Oh, Ethan, that's amazing! What did you tell him?"

"I asked him for some time, I was too surprised to even think of something else to tell him and I wanted time to consider all my options."

"You say it like it's a bad thing."

"No, not at all, it's just that, all this time, I worked when I wanted to work, with who I wanted to work. I was free to do almost all I wanted and to become a partner of Future Industries... Let's just say it's a big step for me."

"At the end of the day, it's your decision, whatever you decide we are here for you, just don't let dad waiting for too long."

I said my goodbyes and I went to Air Temple Island to train with Korra, she was improving faster than I imagined and I was as well. The fact that I was fighting one of the best benders in the world helped me tremendously, while I knew how to fight benders and even fought some, they were merely street thugs, nothing on the level of actual bending masters. With each fight, I became more versed in countering benders and the more I thought the more upgrades for my suit I had in mind.

Since when I made it, the suit has gotten some qualitative improvements, I made the suit lighter without damaging its integrity, I made the artificial muscles stronger and more elastic, I managed to squeeze in more gear in the suit and the electrical system was getting an upgrade as soon as I got enough time.

The new additions to the suit weren't many, I added new hidden blades right under the already existing ones with a new kind of anesthetic that made people lose their sense of direction. Those blades were considerably smaller than the first pair and they were ejectable. I also added a light system to the suit... what can I say, I got bored and thought it would be cool to go at night with it on. I used the new night look of the suit to scare Nya and by God was she scared. I found it funny at the time but she was a little upset for a day or two.

While I didn't improve the suits too much, I made myself some weapons. Since I played a lot of shooters in my past life, I couldn't stop myself from wanting to make an AWP in this life, I even made myself an M1911. This task was more challenging than I thought at first and it took a lot more than I thought, especially to find a place and a way to make myself enough bullets. In the end, I bought an abandoned warehouse near the edge of the city and I retrofitted two rooms to make one a gun storage and another an assembly line for my bullets.

The hardest part was to learn to shop properly, while at close range thanks to my 'limbo state' I had a 100% accuracy but when I took the sniper in my hands and went to about half a kilometer away I missed most of my shot and I realized that the wind was a bigger problem than I thought so I need to find a way to make my shots accurate. It took quite a few attempts to finally make a device that measures the wind speed and tells me how much I need to correct the trajectory but in the end, I mastered shooting as well. My best shot was from 3 kilometers away, which is impressive if you don't take into consideration that I have 'limbo state'. I still can't believe that a normal person shot from further away than me and actually killed someone, I need to activate 'limbo state' to the max to shot that far.

Back to the warehouse, I had bought under a different name so that even if my properties would be searched they wouldn't know to look for this one. You might think that I'm paranoid but, to be honest, wouldn't you be as well if you had so much illegal ammunition stashed away?

"Hey, are you ok?"

I awoke from my deep thought and I look Korra, she was beaten quite badly, she had a black eye and bruises all over her face.

"What happened?"

"You zoned out that happened, and here I was seeing that it then occurred to me 'Hey, Korra you should take advantage and score a point.', bad move on my part, because you not only dodged but you proceeded to beat the living shit out of me. At first, I tried to tell you to stop but you weren't listening, I tried to use bending to stop you but you came in too close and started to chi block me, then for the next what seemed like an eternity all I could do was defend against your attacks, which I failed, again."

"Oh, you did quite good."

"WHAT DO YOU MEAN? ALL I DID WAS GET MY ASS HANDED TO ME!?"

"Come on don't be so pessimistic, you manage to remain standing after all of that, I think that alone deserves a round of applause."

"HA, HA, very funny, can you at least tell me what you were thinking about?"

"Sure, I was thinking about what I should do about the Equalists."

"Don't you mean me?"

"No, no, but I guess I could use your help with this."

"I'm all ears."

"We've been too passive all this time, it's time we strike."

"I'm all in, what do we do?"