It had started out small- what Mako calls ‘fangirls’ are usually fans of pro-bending (or pro-benders) as a whole rather than the Fire ferrets as a team. But the day they get into the championship, Mako and Bolin are surprised on the street by a gaggle of kids holding out programs and collector’s cards.

Mako takes one and looks at it. It’s a little drawing of himself, with stats like what kind of bender he is and when the Fire Ferrets debuted.

“Sign it!” A little girl, probably no older than ten, holds up a pen. “Please?”

Mako frowns, takes the pen and squats to balance the card on his knee. “You’re sure?”

No-one’s asked for his name on anything before. The girl nods. Mako scrawls his name as small as he can so he doesn’t mess up the card too badly and hands it back, pen on top. The kid looks like she’s about to faint.

“Thank you!”

Behind him, Bolin’s having a similar experience. Mako’s about to straighten up when another card is shoved at him, and another. Later, he practices writing his name. Not for himself, but because those kids at least deserve something they can read.

Looking for Bolin, they stumble through a city that Mako barely recognises. Panic transmutes them into endless reflections of the same street, a nightmare of blank faces and unfamiliar buildings.

They pass a park with a statue of a boy wielding hooked swords, an entirely new sight down a street Mako swears he’s known all his life. They ride Naga down dark alleys and crumbling slums, buildings that recall pictures Korra has seen of Ba Sing Se, and early photographs that Mako’s mother kept from the Fire Nation.

In the industrial district, they find the factory that makes the metalbenders’ uniforms, and the great golden prows of the Fire Nation fleet. They have tea at an Earth kingdom stand Bolin would have loved, run by an elderly lady who calls herself Song.

They pass shrines and shops and factories, slums and sprawling houses. Mako calls for Bolin until his throat is raw, and he finds himself a stranger, lost in a city he has known all his life.