Fanfic / Republic City Blues

Art by hana-designs

Republic City Blues is a noir-AU fan fiction of The Legend of Korra, written by Beech27. The plot focuses on detective Korra's efforts to infiltrate the Sato syndicate.

It was completed in 2015 after 57 chapters.

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Republic City Blues contains examples of:

• The Ace: Asami, even more so than in canon. On top of being a great engineer, martial artist, and driver, she's her father's second-in-command in their criminal enterprises, the lead engineer of Future Industries, and an absolutely lethal combatant.
• Affectionate Nickname: Asami calls Korra "Blue" because of her blue eyes.
• Adaptational Achilles Heel: In The Legend of Korra, Asami didn't have her Trauma Button being a certain song like she does here.
• Adaptation Personality Change: This version of Asami is an Ax-Crazy Mafia Princess who is capable of murdering entire rooms of people and feeling no remorse. Korra is also a lot colder here, mostly due to her background as an ex-cop.
• Alternate Universe Fic: This story takes place in the seedy underbelly of Republic City and evokes Film Noir. Korra is just a regular waterbender is this one, not the Avatar. Additionally, pretty much all the main characters are involved in organized crime in some way or another.
• Appropriated Appellation: Asami's moniker of the "Red Raven" has become the name of a jazz club.
• Artistic License – History: After Asami takes Korra out to a restaurant, Korra mentions that their leftovers are in a Styrofoam cup. As the story takes place vaguely around the 1920s, Styrofoam wouldn't be invented yet (it was invented in the 1940s).
• Awesome, but Impractical: Platinum bullets can kill someone and leave no trace for metalbenders to detect. The only thing is that they're really expensive, so Hiroshi prefers to use regular bullets if he can.
• Badass in a Nice Suit: Korra wears a suit to formal events as Asami's bodyguard; and as an ex-cop, waterbender, and sharpshooter, she can kick plenty of ass.
• Berserk Button:
  • Don't you dare mention the Last Dance massacre around Asami if you want to live. She even threatens to shoot Korra if she does so much as mention it.
  Asami: Blue, I’m not going to shoot you. Not this time. But you ask about that again, and I swear I will. No last words, not even another warning. You say those words ever again, and I will kill you.
  • Don't suggest that Hiroshi didn't love his wife. Asami nearly shoots Kuvira over this. Later averted, after the reveal that he shot his wife because she was about to rat him out to the police.
• Bodyguard Crush: Korra starts off as a bodyguard for Asami and they end up falling in love.
• Bodyguarding a Badass: Asami doesn't have any bending abilities, but she's better with a gun and much more ruthless than Korra.
• Calling Parents by Their Name: Asami starts calling Hiroshi by his name after she learns that he killed her mother.
• Can't Tie His Tie: A Rare Female Example. Korra doesn't know how to tie ties, so Asami has to do it for her.
• Cement Shoes: Korra mentions that the gangs in Republic City are fond of disposing of enemies by tying a brick to them and leaving them to drown in the Republic City harbor.
• Clingy Jealous Girl: Downplayed with Korra. When she and Asami visit a restaurant, she admits that she wishes that the Water Tribe girl leading them to their seats was a little less pretty. She even questions if Asami saying that she wanted water was her trying to flirt with the waitress right in front of Korra.
• Colour-Coded for Your Convenience: The Beifong syndicate all wear green.
• Color Motif: The color blue shows up as a recurring motif throughout the story, espcially relating to Asami. Asami's Affectionate Nickname for Korra is "Blue", Asami's Trauma Button is a song named "Almost Blue", the title of the story is "Republic City Blues", and Kuvira used to call Asami "Blue" when Asami was pretending to be half-Water Tribe.
• Combat Medic: According to Korra, all of the waterbending police officers in the Southern Water Tribe were trained on how to use the healing side of waterbending in order to save lives.
• Conflicting Loyalty: Korra must decide whether she is loyal to the Sato syndicate, or to the Republic City police.
• The Confidant: Korra is privy to Asami's aspirations, worst nightmares, and her pet peeves, and she refuses to tell a soul, including Chief Beifong (who she is working for). It shows how much Asami trusts Korra that she still trusts her even after she realizes that Korra is an informant.
• Cruel and Unusual Death: Korra shoots a man four times. Her first shot landed in his eye, her second exploded his skull, and the third and fourth were to finish him off. He apparently was conscious until the fourth and final shot, trying to piece together the fragments of his skull and the mass of viscera that was his eye, before Korra puts him out of his misery. He also apparently pissed himself after her third shot.
• Cycle of Revenge: The ending is basically Korra and Asami talking about who they're too far in to come out of the cycle of violence and revenge they have found themselves in and that the only thing that they can do is kill more people until they die themselves.
• Dances and Balls: The Sato have a dance with the Beifong to mend relations and figure out a way to work together, as it is more profitable than fighting as the two biggest crime syndicates in Republic City.
• Dark Fic: This fic is an examination of the seedy underbelly of Republic City. Here, Korra is a disgruntled ex-police officer (not the Avatar) who ends up joining the Sato syndicate (to snitch on them to Chief Beifong) and Asami is an Ax-Crazy Mafia Princess who is prone to brutally murdering her rivals. It also is a lot gorier than canon and everyone curses much more.
• Defiant to the End: The Triple-Threat firebender that Asami and Kuvira capture spends her last moments cussing them out. Justified, as she was already dying from her bullet wounds, so she might as well insult the woman that killed her parents.
• Distracted by the Sexy: Korra, very frequently, around Asami.
• Doesn't Like Guns: Yasuko, when she was alive, hated guns. Sama remarks that she probably also would've hated the fact that her daughter Asami builds and uses guns with ruthless efficiency.
• Don't Call Me "Sir": Asami would rather Korra call her by her first name instead of Miss Sato. If one must use Asami's full name, she insists on being called "Asami fucking Sato" instead.
• Downer Ending: Asami must pretend to be dead, and both Asami and Korra have to play along with Captain Beifong's demands. If they don't, Korra will be framed for murder and bloodbending, and Asami will go to prison for the rest of her life - or she'll be murdered in prison before she can die of old age, which is more likely. It's not like they can just leave Republic City either; Captain Beifong will make it impossible for Korra to stay in the Southern Water Tribe by making Korra look like a Corrupt Cop taking bribes, and will run her father out with her. If that doesn't work, she'll use her influence to make Korra look like a monster so that she and her parents are run out of the Southern Water Tribe.
• Drives Like Crazy: Asami is known to accelerate at the drop of a hat and take the tightest turns possible, to the point where the only thing stopping Korra from flying out of her seat is the seatbelt.
  Korra: She’s picking out the longest straight stretches of road she can find, and speeding up until the engine’s roar becomes a scream to boil your blood. She’s finding the tightest turns, and taking them like she’s got a deathwish.
• Eerie Pale-Skinned Brunette: Asami has pale skin and long black hair, and she's been termed the "Red Raven" by the media for her looks and her murderous tendencies. She was behind the Last Dance massacre; she snuck into the club where the Agni Kai Triad were having their meeting, and slaughtered them all because they killed her mother.
• Electrified Bathtub: Some of Kuvira's men are shoved into a pool by Korra and Asami electrocutes them with her electrified glove.
• Even Evil Has Loved Ones:
  • Asami is objectively a horrible person, but she does truly love her father, her dead mother, and Korra. She'd kill for any one of them. Averted later on with her father, after she learns that he shot her mother.
  • Hiroshi is The Don but loves his daughter Asami to shreds, and is willing to kill for her.
  • Kuvira is mentioned to have a fiancee, who is one of the only people that she drops her violent facade around.
• Eye Scream: Korra shoots a waterbender directly in the eye during a fight, which turns his eye into a bloody mess.
• Femme Fatale: Asami, in contrast to subverting expectations in the series.
• Film Noir: Detectives, criminals, darkness, etc. Prohibition-era United States is a major inspiration.
• Fish out of Water: Korra quickly becomes aware of how in over her head she is, getting orders, going undercover, and winding up at Asami's side in less than two days.
• Forced into Evil: How Asami justifies her and Korra's actions. She claims that because their actions are just an effect of another action, they didn't have a choice in what they did.
  Asami: A ripple. You didn’t have a choice. No one here did, tonight. They killed my mother, so I killed them. Now, they try to kill me, and… well, I can’t really explain why some traitor saved us. But we’ll find out. Anyway, then this guy tries to kill me, so you kill him.
• Harmful to Minors: Asami apparently saw her mother's blood-ridden corpse with the head crushed, and was a survivor of her home being burnt down, all while she was six years old. No wonder she's so messed up in the present.
• Has a Type: Played for Drama. Captain Beifong tells Korra that Asami has a "weakness" for Water Tribe girls, which leads to Korra questioning whether Asami actually likes her or her tribal association.
• Healing Hands: Korra can use the healing side of waterbending, as in canon.
• The Infiltration: Korra is ordered by Captain Beifong to infiltrate the Beifong syndicate, but ends up falling in love with the Mafia Princess Asami.
• Interrogated for Nothing: Asami realizes while interrogating a dying man that he doesn't know the answer to what she is asking him.
  Korra: Asami, I… you don’t have to do this. He either knows or he doesn’t. You can’t beat knowledge out of him that he doesn’t even have.
• Just in Time: Mako arrived just as the remnants of the Agni Kai Triad were about to kill Korra in front of Asami, and then torture her to death.
• Ma'am Shock: Invoked and subverted when Asami meets a girl apologizing for calling her ma'am. Asami doesn't mind.
  Ma’am. Wait, can I call you that? I’m sorry if that’s wrong. It kind of makes you sound like an older lady, which you’re not. I mean, obviously.
• Mafia Princess: Asami's father Hiroshi is The Don of the Sato syndicate. She somehow proves even more ruthless than her father, massacring all off the Agni Kai for something that their leaders literally spent 15 years in jail for. She describes herself as dead on the inside from all the killing involved.
• Meaningful Name:
  • Opal Beifong literally has opal eyes.
  • Korra's petname, "Blue", is because she has blue eyes and wears primarily blue clothing.
• Mercy Kill: Hiroshi shoots a woman who is dying a slow and painful death through the face to end her suffering, though part of it might have been that she was insulting his daughter. As he says, "We Satos don't torture people. We're above that."
• Minority Police Officer: In a fashion. Korra, a member of the Southern Water Tribe, is kind of like an undercover police officer for the Republic City police, except she doesn't have the legal protections that actual cops have and they don't have any paperwork on her, so they can deny her existence if necessary.
• Morality Chain: Korra and Asami are morality chains for each other.
  • Korra has Asami encouraging her to not kill and stay innocent, because she doesn't want Korra to turn out just like her.
  • Asami uses protecting Korra as a leash to prevent her from turning even more into a killing machine than she already was.
  Korra: I hold on tight to Asami, trusting that she’ll keep me safe. Maybe she thinks the same about me now. I did kill that man. Right or not, it was the only thing to do. I was just riding out a ripple. I wonder where it’s carrying me, where it’s carrying us. We’re still together, after all. Hanging to each other like lone survivors of a shipwreck. We’re each other’s driftwood.
• My God, What Have I Done?: Korra doesn't react well to killing for the first time, though it's more out of guilt for the amount of suffering she had to put the guy through before finally killing him. She even wonders if the name he was screaming was a wife or a daughter's and begins to vomit profusely.
• Mythology Gag:
  • Korra claims that she wasn't the one holed up in a compound, it was Asami. This is the exact opposite of canon.
  • Korra claims that the Avatar is a myth that one tells to children. In canon, she is the Avatar.
  • In this universe, bloodbending is a story that the Southern Water Tribe tells children to scare them into behaving. In canon, it is a very much real and present threat.
• No Full Name Given: As in canon, Korra, Bolin, and Mako have no last names. When Korra is making a joke about how the "Fucking" in "Asami Fucking Sato" has to be earned, she uses her nickname "Blue" as a last name of sorts, making it "Korra Fucking Blue".
• An Offer You Can't Refuse: Asami gives Korra the option between becoming her bodyguard permanently or being killed. Justified, as Korra knows Asami's Achilles' Heel and she doesn't want that becoming public knowledge. Korra is also really good at fighting and detective work, so it would be a waste to kill her.
• Obligatory Swearing: Everyone is incredibly fond of the f-word in this universe compared to canon where nobody curses all that much. Justified, as everyone in this fic is involved in organized crime, and the fic generally takes a more Film Noir approach than canon.
• Papa Bear: Downplayed, Hiroshi shoots a woman who was cussing out his daughter, but she was dying anyways so he justifies it as a Mercy Kill.
• Pistol-Whipping: Asami smashes her pistol into the face of a man that she's interrogating.
• Purple Prose: Most of what Bolin says. When trying to impress women, at least.
• Red and Black and Evil All Over: Asami is known as the "Red Raven" due to her flowing black hair and red clothes, and also the amount of blood she has spilled in her role as a Mafia Princess. She is best known for her massacre of the whole Agni Kai Triad during her Roaring Rampage of Revenge because they killed her mother.
• Red Baron:
  • Asami is referred to as the "Red Raven".
  • Kuvira of the Beifong syndicate is known as "The Butcher of Ba Sing Se".
• Roaring Rampage of Revenge: After her mother was killed by the Agni Kai Triad, Asami sneaks into their meeting at the Last Dance club and massacres all of them. The event came to be known as the Last Dance Massacre and Asami became the "Red Raven".
• Robbing the Dead: During the fight with the Airbenders, Asami steals a machine gun from a dead body.
• Secret Relationship: Asami has to keep her relationship with Korra a secret, due to her father viewing affection as a weakness and barely allowing Korra to be her bodyguard as is. After they spend the night together, Asami leaves early and makes her side of the bed without waking Korra.
• Senseless Violins: Asami used a cello case to sneak a submachine gun into The Last Dance, so that she could everyone present.
• She Is Not My Girlfriend: Korra has to repeatedly deny that she and Asami have become an item.
• Slashed Throat: Asami slashed everyone's throat during the Last Dance massacre.
• Trauma Button: Asami loses her mind and starts bawling her eyes out at the sound of a certain song (Almost Blue) which reminds her of who she was before she lost herself to revenge.
• The Ugly Guy's Hot Daughter: Downplayed and justified. Sama remarks that Asami certainly didn't get her good looks from her father, though Hiroshi certainly isn't ugly, just average.
• Til Murder Do Us Part: Hiroshi murdered his wife because she was about to rat him out to the police for being a crime lord.
• Tiger by the Tail: Korra and Asami realize that they are so far into organized crime and being blackmailed by Captain Beifong, that the only two ways to escape are either death, or prison.
• Undignified Death: The waterbender that Korra kills dies trying to piece his fractured skull together, fix the mess of bloody viscera that was his eye, screaming his loved one's names, and pissing himself.
• Unlimited Wardrobe: Justified. It is considered social suicide amongst the Sato to wear an outfit twice. Considering the fact that they're mafia, it probably is to show off their wealth to outsiders.
• Unreliable Narrator: The entire story is told in first person, and only from Korra's perspective. Unfortunately, she's not very genre savvy.
• Yes-Man: Asami is absolutely surrounded by people who would agree with anything she said because her father is The Don. Asami even admits that one of the reasons she likes Korra is because Korra is the only person with the guts to say no to her.
• You Killed My Mother:
  • Asami massacred most of the Agni Kai Triad because they killed her mother during a break-in. The newspapers termed it The Last Dance Massacre after the club where the killings took place.
  • The Triple-Threat firebender that Asami and Kuvira capture explains that the reason why she hates Asami is because said firebender's parents were Agni-Kai and died in the Last Dance massacre that Asami perpetrated.
• You Wouldn't Shoot Me: When Korra has a gun to Asami's head during the first time that they meet, Asami calls her out on the bluff and rightly states that Korra wouldn't dare to shoot her; Asami has her surrounded with armed guards.

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