We landed on the wall of Ba Sing Se. The drill was moving faster than I thought because it was already on the horizon. It would probably arrive in a day or so. One day… That was all I had to figure out my powers before the thing arrived.
"Halt! What are you doing here? Civilians aren't allowed on the wall!" A soldier called out to us.
Aang slid off of Appa and approached the soldier. "I'm the Avatar. Take me to whoever's in charge."
The soldier seemed surprised for a moment but bowed. "Oh… Apologies, Avatar… I suppose the flying bison should have made it obvious… Ehem… Right this way."
A few minutes later we were in some old general's office. "It is an honor to welcome you to the outer wall, young avatar. But we are already well aware of the drill and your help is not needed."
"Not needed?" Aang asked, confused.
"Notneeded. I have the situation under control. I assure you the fire nation cannot penetrate this wall." General Sung got up from his desk and led us out to the edge of the wall. "Many have tried to break through it butnonehave succeeded!"
"What about the Dragon of the West? He got in." Toph pointed out.
Dragon of the West? I hadn't heard of that before. I assumed it was a fancy nickname for some fire nation general. I'd have to try and find out more about that.
"W-well, uh… Technically yes, but he was quickly expunged!" The general stated awkwardly. "Er… Nevertheless, that's why the city is named Ba Sing Se. It's the impenetrable city. They don't call it Na Sing Se! Hahahaha! That means penetrable city."
"Mhm. Yeah, great. Sohowdo you plan on stopping that thing?" I asked.
"I plan to send an elite platoon of Earth Benders called the Terra Team." The General said as he walked over to the edge of the wall and looked out a telescope towards the drill.
"That's a good group name. Very catchy…" Sokka commented.
"And how is the Terra Team going to stop the drill? It would be pretty stupid of the fire nation to sink so much money and resources into building such a large drill if they didn't have plans to counter any Earth Bender who might try and stop them." I asked, crossing my arms.
"That is true… But they are one of the most elite forces of Earth Benders in the Earth Kingdom! I'm quite sure they will have no trouble." The General stated.
I shook my head. "That doesn't answer my question. So you're going to send this platoon to stop it. Great.Howare they going to stop it? Are you going to have them make a giant trench? Another smaller wall to slow the drill down? Are they going to get up close and plant explosives? What's your plan?"
"I…uh…" General Sung couldn't seem to find an answer.
"So your plan is to chuck earth benders at it and hope it goes away…? Not a great plan. Alright, we have about a day. So there's still time. Let's use that time to come up with arealplan." I stated.
The general lowered his head. "I… Okay…"
We went back to his office.
He took out a map of Ba Sing Se and the surrounding area and set it on the desk.
"Alright, the drill's right here." I pointed to the exact location on the map where the drill was currently located. "It has twenty tanks on either side, for a total of forty. Inside the drill is approximately a thousand people. A large chunk of whom I'm going to assume are engineers because there's no way that thing doesn't need constant maintenance. So a relatively small but presumably highly trained invasion force. A quality over quantity approach. Risky, but if they weren't supremely confident they were going to win then this sort of expenditure would be insane. I assume the tanks are there primarily to defend the drill since you could just plug up the hole it makes once it's all the way through. Which means the drill isn't indestructible. Itcan bedestroyed, but we need to be able to get close enough to do it."
"So what do you propose?" General Sung asked.
"Well, the thing moves like a giant caterpillar. It expands and contracts in sections with steam powered pistons to anchor it into the ground. That means it can't exactly turn. It is resistant to falling into holes since it moves that way and it's the size of a damn skyscraper laying on its side. So a simple trench won't stop it… But a few trenches and walls can stop the tanks. So send some Earth Benders to f*ck up the ground all along here. Trenches, pitfalls, walls. Make the terrain as uneven and difficult for them as possible. Even if they don't get stuck, it'll at least slow down the tanks. That leaves the drill mostly exposed for a direct assault." I explained.
The general nodded. "I see… Yes, I suppose we could do something like that."
"But that still leaves the drill itself. Like you said, they're attacking Ba Sing Se so they have to be expecting Earth Benders. So how do we stop it?" Sokka asked.
I shrugged. "Explosives, maybe? The Earth Kingdom has been stocking up on a bunch of black powder with the mass production of guns. So maybe we could fill a trench with barrels of black powder and blow it up as the thing crawls over it? Or we could fly over with Appa and drop the barrels from the sky. They'd need to have the primer compound in them to set off the black powder when they hit the thing, but it should do some damage."
The General shook his head. "We have indeed been stockpiling black powder. However, to use enough barrels to seriously damage this drill would be quite the loss as we are still in the early stages of beginning the mass production of black powder for war rather than fireworks and the like. I'm afraid I cannot agree with such an expense. We need to allocate all the black powder we can get for our guns."
"Damn… Alright. In that case…"
"The Terra Team will be able to handle things once the tanks are no longer a consideration, I assure you. They are skilled enough that I have full confidence in their ability to handle whatever countermeasures the Fire Nation may have in store for them!" The general said with full confidence.
I sighed. "Fine. Let's see what this 'Terra Team' can do, I guess…"
"Excellent! You won't be disappointed in their performance, I assure you."
"Let's hope you're right. Because if you aren't it's going to be a long bloody fight to get the Fire Nation out of Ba Sing Se." I stated.
Then I looked over at Aang. "Alright. We have about a day before that thing gets here. That means we have a day to figure out how the hell my powers work so I can help if the Terra Team doesn't pull through. So… I'll be honest with you, I don't want to do this… I'm terrified that I might start losing myself again if I try meditating with you. But we don't have a choice. So, let's try it."
Aang nodded. "Alright. I'll try to help however I can."
"Um… Excuse me, but what do you mean by 'figure out how your powers work'? Shouldn't you already know how they work? I've read the reports from the North Pole and Omashu. You should already be devastatingly effective… To be honest, I'm quite surprised you didn't already destroy them before coming here." General Sung asked.
"It's a long story and I'm not sure I want anyone else outside of our group knowing it just yet. Suffice it to say, I'm having issues with the spirit I'm working with so I can't do what I did in Omashu right now. Hopefully I'll be able to again in the near future, but I have things I need to work through first." I told him.
"Ah… I see… How unfortunate… Um... Is that perhaps why you have two hands, and one of them is gold? And the gold streak in your hair...?"
I sighed. "Yes to all of it. Everything gold about me are side effects of the issues I'm having... My hand, my hair, my eyes. All of it is because of the spirit I'm working with."
"I see. I'll have to write up a report about this... Are you certain you wouldn't be willing to tell me more about the problems you're having with your spirit?" The general asked.
"No. At least not until I've had a serious talk with the others about it. Which we won't be having untilafterthe drill is dealt with." I stated.
The general sighed. "Very well... I'll have to make due I suppose..."
"Ehem... Speaking of Taylor's problems, do you know a good spot where we can meditate?" Aang asked.
"Hm… I think I know just the place! Ah, does it need to be on the wall…?" The General asked.
"It should be, or it should at least be close by. We're going to be here on standby when that drill arrives." I told him.
"That is a little bit more difficult but I believe I can accommodate you. You simply won't have quite as much privacy as you would with what I originally had in mind." General Sung stated.
I nodded. "That's fine. As long as no one bothers us, unless there's an emergency."
Aang and I were brought to a less heavily trafficked area of the wall, where we both sat down. "So we just do the same thing as last time?" I asked.
"Pretty much." Aang nodded.
I closed my eyes, took a deep breath, and slowly released it. Trying to relax, which was honestly pretty damn hard knowing that drill was on the horizon and I was on a timer.
"Raava told me to remind you what that old water bender in the swamp told me. Everything is connected. All life. From the grass, to the bugs, and even us humans. You're not separate from everything but a part of it. Your powers work through those connections. It's why I had such an easy time finding you. So… try focusing on that?" Aang told me.
I didn't want to. Ireallydidn't want to. But I forced myself to try.
Pushing through my fears I leaned into the connections I sensed. And… nothing happened. I wasn't quite sure what to do at this point. I was meditating and I was connected to everything around me… What was I supposed to do now?
I reached out through the connections and tried to control my beetles. It was still just as hard.
I started getting frustrated and pressed harder and harder until I was pressing my will upon them as hard as I possibly could.
Why wasn't this working? What was I doing wrong?
I tried to "become one with the universe" and got absolutely nowhere.
I kept trying.
I sat there like that for hours, trying and failing to accomplish anything
Eventually Katara came up to us and told us it was time for lunch. Aang went with her but I decided to skip lunch and keep trying. I had adayto figure this out. I wasn't going to stop until I hadresults. Until I could actually beuseful.
More time passed.
Katara came up to me again. "Hey, Taylor. Sorry for interrupting, but it's almost time for dinner."
"I'm busy." I responded.
"You skipped lunch, so I know you have to be hungry. Come on. It's been hours. Taking a few minutes to come eat with us isn't going to be the end of the world." Katara told me.
"No, it won't. You're right. It might be the end of someone's life though if I can't help during the attack. I'll eat tomorrow."
Focusing on her senses I could feel Katara cross her arms. I could vaguely detect her emotions too. She was annoyed and concerned.
"Do you just plan to sit there and meditate all night?"
"If I have to." I stated. "I'm useless right now, Katara. Dead weight. Ineedto figure this out so I can actually do something in a fight otherwise I'm just going to slow everyone. Raava suggested meditation, so I'm damn well going to meditate until I learn just what the f*ck I'm doing wrong." I raised my voice at the end there. I couldn't help it. My frustration was just growing more and more the longer this went on with no results.
Katara shook her head. "Taylor, we have time. So you might not be able to do much when the drill gets here. That's fine. It's just one battle. Aang, Sokka, Toph, and I can all fight. We aren't just helpless kids. And you've fought just fine without your bugs before. Remember the fight with Zuko in the North Pole? You didn't have any bugs to control back then and we beat him, remember?"
"I had bugs to help me aim my pistol and I had the giant crabs to fight the Fire Nation army. Plus it was two on one, and I nearly died. He set me on fire, remember? You had to put me out. If I was by myself I probably would have died, or at least I would've been seriously injured. I have some basic hand to hand fighting I was taught in the wards. Great. That's not going to save me from being burned to a charred corpse by a fire bender. I can use my powers to see through the eyes of other people and creatures, so I can be a good scout. But that's not going to save me or anyone else in a fight. That's not going to let me save a city that's been captured or is being invaded by the Fire Nation. I need to at least be able to fight. So I'm going to keep going until I figure this out. End of story."
Katara sighed. "Alright… Just… At least try to get some rest. It'll be even worse if you're exhausted tomorrow." She then turned and walked off.
She came back a bit later with a bowl of food and set it down next to me, but didn't say a word and left without interrupting me.
I kept meditating. Raavasaidthis would work. She was a spirit that was at least over ten thousand years old and had been with the Avatar through all his incarnations for the past ten thousand years. If anyone knew how this worked, it was probably her. Or Wan Shi Tong. If I couldn't figure this out, I'd head back to the library. That damn owl owed me after the sh*t he pulled, giving the Queen Administrator all it needed to become a spirit which nearly ended with me putting a bullet in my own head or being subsumed and becoming the new Scion.
Bending was spiritual, Aang said. The physical movements are just a way to help channel chi. The spiritual side was what I was having trouble with, he said. Well I was trying my damndest to "channel chi" and approach this as spiritually as I could but itstillwasn't working.
Eventually I ended up dozing off.
When I woke up Momo was laying on my lap and the bowl Katara set out for me was empty.
Grabbing Momo and the empty bowl I went to go find the others.
I hadn't managed to accomplish anything yesterday. There was still time before the drill arrived but at this point I knew I wasn't going to figure it out in time. So if it came to a fight, I was going to have to rely on my gun.
Using my powers it was easy enough to find them. Rather unusually, they were all already awake. Which meant I'd slept in.
When I arrived, I saw Sokka cleaning and maintaining his lever action rifle. Likely preparing to use it, if necessary. He had his bayonet beside him, seemingly freshly sharpened and polished. Toph and Aang were going through the motions for some earth bending techniques. Meanwhile Katara was at the edge of the wall, watching the drill approach.
"Taylor! Any luck with your powers?" Aang asked.
"No. I guess it was too optimistic to assume I could get them back in a single day…" I stated, setting momo down. He bounded off towards Appa.
"Well, hopefully you won't need them. The earth bendersreallytore up the ground out there. So those tanks aren't gonna make it through. That should leave the drill exposed for the Terra Team to take it down." Sokka stated as he finished cleaning the barrel of his rifle and started polishing the intricately carved and designed whale bone stock.
I looked through Katara's eyes to see, since she was looking through a telescope. And sure enough the ground was full of trenches, pitfalls, craters, and random rocks and boulders that would make the terrain hell for the tanks. Less so for the drill, but that's where the Earth Benders came in, I supposed.
"Let's hope…" I muttered.
I hadn't had a chance to do any maintenance on my revolver since I'd tried to kill myself to stop the Queen Administrator from taking over. So I decided to join Sokka in doing some upkeep on my weapon. Just in case I ended up needing to use it later.
I still didn't quite understand the Water Tribe's tendency to make weapons "pretty". Like how my revolver had all sorts of engravings and how Sokka's lever action even had silver inlays on top of engraving and decoration. My revolver and his lever actionhadbeen gifts, but still. They were weapons to be used on a battlefield. Not wall hangers. They were going to see wear and tear. So why bother adding all this design when it could end up being ruined? These guns would have sold for hundreds if not thousands back on Earth Bet as art pieces. So it seemed like a waste to me.
Still I did my best to take care of the revolver and it seemed Sokka was taking even better care of his lever action.
Once brass cartridges became more common, I was going to have to see about getting my revolver converted to take cartridges, if that was even possible. Though I mainly hoped someone would invent smokeless powder soon, so I could use my nine millimeter again. Or get a new semi-automatic.
We all waited around until the Terra Team started their assault. I, of course, kept trying to figure out what I was doing wrong with my powers to no avail.
When the attack finally began, we all went to the edge of the wall and watched. The Earth Benders tried pinning the drill in place with stone pillars. However it just pushed straight through them when it pistoned forwards again. At which point three girls I immediately recognized started sliding down the side of the drill and attacked the Terra Team.
Princess Azula and her friends.
My eyes widened. I hadn't been expecting to seethemhere. I'd been certain Ozai would keep Azula in the fire nation after her prior failure.
Somehow I doubted he would pay to get her back if she was captured asecondtime. Just thinking about it politically, letting his only non-exiled heir get captured not just once buttwice? No. Even if he cared about Azula, which I doubted from my last interaction with her, he could not afford to pay for her return a second time in such quick succession. It would be political suicide. His only option would be to let her stay imprisoned and either make a new heir or try to find Zuko and bring him back. Even then, letting her get captured a second time would still make him lookincrediblybad.
So I didn't understand why the hell he let her come here in the first place. He had to besupremelyconfident in his drill plan which made meveryworried for those earth benders.
And my fears came to fruition as they were quickly taken down by the three girls. The girl in the dress hit them in their vitals with darts and throwing knives thus killing them, and Azula burned them alive or hit them with lightning. The only one who took a non-lethal approach was the acrobatic girl in pink who delivered a series of rapid strikes to the Earth Benders, disabling their bending and completely paralyzing them.
I noticed something when she did. An odd change in the earth benders. A shift in… something inside of them. Their chi, I supposed? Either way, that "chi" ended up being blocked and flowing wrong. It couldn't get to their muscles properly which rendered them paralyzed.
Then I had something of an epiphany. If disrupting that energy flow paralyzed them, maybe redirecting it in other creatures would let me make them move how I wanted them to. I'd tried doing something like this last night but I didn't really understand chi or how it worked. Having this as a point of reference helped me figure out how it could work.
I tried it. It was hard. I had no idea what I was doing. But I ended up causing random seizure-like spasms in the unfortunate birds I was trying to control, and I was able to do it to more of them than I could by trying to force my control directly.
"Guys, I think I figured out how to use my powers." I announced.
"You did? How? What changed?" Aang asked, confused.
"The acrobatic girl in pink. She hit the earth benders in specific spots and disrupted their chi, I guess? It disabled their bending but more importantly, it paralyzed them by disrupting the flow of their chi. I can do something like that to manipulate the bodies of animals. I don't know how to do it properly to actually control them yet, but I can at least cause random involuntary muscle spasms. I just did it on some birds and I'm doing it to some insects right now. It seems that the bigger or more intelligent an animal is the harder it is to do. So I might or might not be able to do it to people. But if I can, I have a way to fight. I might be able to fill a similar role as Regent used to in the Undersiders until I start learning finer control."
It didn't have to be much. If I could just cause spasms like Regent used to do, I could be useful. I wasn't worthless in a fight!
"That's great. Just in time too because I think the Terra Team just lost." Sokka said in a serious tone, gripping the strap of his lever action. His hand was trembling. His emotions were nervous anticipation, anxiety, and a little bit of fear.
I thought back to just before Omashu. His first kill. He was probably expecting to have to kill again and was anxious about it. I wish I could've said something to help him, but I didn't know what I could say that would make this any easier for him.
General Sung came running up to us. "Avatar! Weaver!" He stopped and bowed to us. "I… I take it back… We do need your help after all. Please…"
"You really shoulda expected this. I mean, we told you yesterday this probably wasn't gonna work." Toph commented.
"You're right. I'm sorry… Please help us stop the drill…" The General pleaded.
"Of course we'll help. We won't let that drill get through this wall. You have my word." Aang assured General Sung.
"Thank you, Avatar Aang…" The general muttered, lowering his head humbly.
"The only question is, how are we gonna stop that thing?" Aang asked.
Everyone looked at me. "What? You think I know? I've never had to fight a giant drill before. No tinker had enough resources to make something like that before or if they did they'd get shut down before it could be finished. My best idea was to just bomb the thing and that got shot down because we don't have enough black powder or mercury fulminate to spare. So I've got nothing."
"Okay… Sokka?" Aang asked, looking at Sokka.
"Don't look at me. I don't know either." Sokka shrugged.
"Excuse me, young lady, but you're a water bender, yes? If you wouldn't mind, I'm afraid I'm going to need you in the infirmary to tend to the wounded when they're brought back." The General said to Katara.
Katara nodded. "Of course. We can think about how we're going to stop that thing while I'm healing the soldiers."
We followed the general to the infirmary where we waited until the injured soldiers who had survived were brought in. Which only consisted of the pink acrobat's victims. Everyone else was presumably dead.
Katara started healing one.
"What's wrong with him? He doesn't look injured." The general asked as Katara worked.
"The acrobatic girl in pink hit him in specific spots and it blocked his chi. I guess you can think of it like being hit in your weak points and being taken down from the inside." I commented.
Suddenly a look of realization dawned on Sokka's face. "Ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh!" He exclaimed excitedly.
"What is it, Sokka?" I asked.
"What you just said! That's how we're gonna take down the drill! The same way that girl took down all these big earth benders!" Sokka exclaimed.
"By hitting its pressure points!" Toph added.
"We'll take it down from the inside." Aang stated.
The inside? We were goinginsidethat thing? This seemed incredibly dangerous. But… I didn't exactly have any better ideas. So I couldn't object.
A little while later the four of us were on the ground outside the wall. I was in my costume. My golden right hand was exposed since I hadn't been able to control the spiders to weave a new glove to cover it, but I was just going to have to deal with it until I learned how to have more fine control over the movements of my swarm.
"Once I whip up some cover, you're not gonna be able to see. So stay close to me." Toph told us before jumping up out of the trench we were hiding in. She then stuck out her arms before stomping hard on the ground kicking up a massive dust cloud in a long line towards the drill. "Run!" She shouted, running into the dust cloud. All of us ran in after her.
Once we were near the front of the drill Toph stopped and made a hole in the ground. "Everyone into the hole!" She ordered and we all jumped down into it. As she jumped in with us she sealed the hole behind us.
"It's so dark down here. I can't see a thing!" Sokka complained.
"Oh no! What a nightmare!" Toph retorted sarcastically.
"Sorry…" Sokka apologized.
We made our way through the tunnel Toph had made and emerged directly underneath the drill.
"There!" Sokka exclaimed, pointing to an opening into the drill.
Aang jumped up hooking his legs over a pipe and helped each of us into the drill one after the other. I was glad I had both hands again or that part would've been a lot harder.
When we noticed Toph staying behind Sokka leaned out and said, "Toph, come on!"
"Nowayam I going in that metal monster. I can't bend in there! I'll try to slow it down out here." Toph told him.
"Okay. Good luck." Sokka stated.
I felt the floor shake as Toph made a pillar of stone erupt from the ground to try and slow the drill.
We rushed through the bowels of the drill until we arrived in what appeared to be a maintenance room of sorts. "I need a plan of this machine. Some schematics to show what the insides look like. Then we can find its weak points." Sokka stated.
"Where do you plan on getting that?" I asked before he drew his machete and used it to bust a valve off of a pipe, causing the room to start filling with steam.
"What are you doing?! Someone's gonna hear us!" Aang demanded.
"That's the point. Like Taylor said earlier, a machine like this has to have constant maintenance, which means it needs engineers to fix it when something breaks! Engineers with schematics!"
"Gotta say, that's actually a pretty good plan." I stated.
"I do try…" Sokka said, enjoying the compliment.
We hid in the steam until an engineer came in to fix the valve sokka broke. At that point Katara emerged and bent the steam to freeze him in place.
"Hi." She greeted him.
Sokka ran up to the engineer and grabbed the schematics from his hand, "This'll work. Thanks!"
We all ran off and found a secluded location to look at the map. I directed us away from any soldiers or people in the halls.
Sokka used a particularly large pipe as a table and unfurled the schematics. "It looks like the drill is made up of two main structures. There's the inner mechanism where we are now and the outer shell. The inner part and the outer part are connected by these braces. If we cut through them the entire thing will collapse!"
I drew my nanothorn knife. It wasn't armsmaster's halberd but it seemed it would still come in handy.
We rushed off to get to the outer shell.
"Wow… It looks a lot thicker in person than it does in the plans…" Sokka commented as we reached the support structure.
"No kidding… Holy sh*t… How many thousand of tons of steel did the Fire Nation use to make this thing? How in the hell could they even afford this?" I muttered.
"Yeah… We're gonna have to work pretty hard to cut through that." Sokka nodded.
Katara crossed her arms. "What's this 'we' stuff. Aang and I are gonna have to do all the work."
"Hey. I'll be doing some cutting too." I commented, holding up my nanothorn knife and activating it. The edge blurred.
"Right, sorry. Aang, Taylor, and I." Katara corrected herself.
"Look, I'm the plan guy. You two are the cut stuff up with water bending guys. And Taylor's the weird magic knife guy. Together we're Team Avatar!" Sokka stated.
"Tinker tech, not magic." I said.
Sokka waved a hand. "Same difference. It's just weird alien techno-magic."
I… couldn't really argue with that.
Aang and Katara started cutting through a support beam. I went over to a different support beam and started working on weakening it so Aang and Katara could finish it off. I didn't want to lose my arm or die because I was too close to a giant steel pillar when it inevitably collapsed.
My nanothorn knife cut a lot faster than Aang and Katara were with their water bending, but the pillars were so huge and there weren't exactly scaffoldings in place to get around, so I couldn't get to very good angles. Still I was able to slowly carve away a pretty good portion of it before I started getting worried it might collapse on top of me if I kept going. So I moved to the next while Aang and Katara were still working on the first.
I was just starting on the third when their beam finally gave out with a loud screech. And nothing happened.
Katara sighed, exhausted. "At this rate we won't do enough damage before the drill reaches the wall."
"I don't know how many more of those I have in me…" Aang said, sitting down to rest for a moment.
There was a loud creaking and the entire drill trembled. "Do you hear that? We took it down! We gotta get outta here fast!" Sokka declared.
We all made our way back towards the way we came but paused as a voice came through a tube based intercom of sorts. "Congratulations crew! The drill has made contact with the wall of Ba Sing Se! Start the countdown to victory!"
We all looked at eachother.
Sokka ran back towards the beam Aang and Katara had just cut and started pushing on it as hard as he could. "Errrg! Come on, brace, budge!"
"Sokka, unless you spontaneously trigger with powers that make you as strong as Alexandria, I don't think you're moving that thing." I stated.
"I don't see you coming up with any better ideas!" Sokka snapped back in frustration.
"This is bad… Really bad." Katara muttered.
"We're putting everything we've got into busting these braces but it's taking too long." Sokka said.
Then a look of realization dawned on Aang. "Maybe we don't need to cut all the way through… Toph has been teaching me that you shouldn't give one hundred percent of your energy into any one strike. Sokka, take a fighting stance."
Sokka took the worst fighting stance I had ever seen in my life, which I hoped to god was as a joke.
"You've gotta be quick and accurate. Hit a series of points and break your opponent's stance. And when he's reeling back, you deliver the final blow." Aang explained, demonstrating on Sokka, knocking him to the ground. "His own weight becomes his downfall. Literally!"
"So we just need to weaken the braces like Taylor's been doing instead of cutting all the way through." Katatara stated.
"Then I'll go to the top of this thing and deliver the final blow!" Aang said.
"Thenboom! It all comes crashing down!" Sokka exclaimed.
"Everyone inside that wall, thewhole world, is counting on us."
"The whole world minus the Fire Nation that is." Sokka clarified.
"Yes, Sokka. The whole world, minus the Fire Nation. Thank you for your astute observation." I said somewhat sarcastically.
We proceeded to start cutting part of the way through the beams to weaken them, which meant I continued doing pretty much the same thing as I was before. Carving out sections of the pillars bit by bit with my nanothorn knife. While Aang and Katara only cut about half way through the support beams instead of all the way through.
This went on for several minutes until a decent number of the pillars had been weakened. At which point I sensed some people approaching us. Looking through their eyes I saw it was Azula and her friends.
"We have company. Princess Azula and two others coming fast. This is gonna have to be enough." I announced.
"Wait! Aang, Katara, keep going! Just a little more! This brace is almost weakened enough!" Sokka objected.
"Sokka there's not enough time, they're almost… DUCK!" I shouted. Everyone dropped as a blast of blue fire shot over our heads.
I looked up and saw Azula and her cronies standing there. Azula was glaring directly at me. There were bags under her eyes and she lookedmad.
"Wow, Azula, you were right! Itisthe Avatar and Weaver! Uh… Where are all the bugs? I kinda expected we'd be covered in them by now." The acrobat in pink asked.
Azula didn't respond, rather she started preparing to shoot a bolt of lightning aimed at me. All of us turned and started running but Azula's aim was on point. If I didn't do something, she was going to hit me with that lightning. Focusing hard, I made her muscles twitch at the last moment and the bolt went off course, impacting a wall. It really was alotharder to make a human's muscles twitch than it was for a less intelligent creature. I almost couldn't do it. But I managed, if only barely.
As we disappeared into a hallway, Azula and the other three started chasing us.
As we turned down a hall, Aang stopped and shouted. "Guys, get out of here! I know what I need to do!" He started running down the opposite direction
"Wait! You need this water more than I do!" Katara said, grabbing her water skin and throwing it over to him.
Aang caught it and kept running. We turned and kept running too.
I'd have given him my nanothorn knife, but I hadn't taught him how to use it and I didn't trust him to not cut off a hand or some fingers by mistake.
We ended up in a dead end.
"Slurry pipeline? What does that mean?" Katara asked, reading the sign on the wall above a pipe.
Sokka twisted the wheel and opened the pipe. We looked inside.
"It's rock and water mixed together. Itmeansour way out!"
We jumped into the pipe one after the other, right as the knife girl and pink acrobat showed up.
This wasdefinitelygoing to play hell on our guns and it might clog the intake of the knife, but that was a problem for later.
We ended up being spewed out the back of the drill. Covered in mud.
The acrobat came after us but we all stood up and Katara started bending the water to keep the girl trapped inside the drill.
"Katara, keep that up! The pressure will build up in the drill, then when Aang delivers the final bow it'll be ready to pop!" Sokka exclaimed.
Katara kept holding back the slurry.
"Good technique little sister! Keep it up! Don't forget to breathe!" Sokka tried to encourage her.
"You know, I'm just about sick and tired of you telling me what to do all day! You're like a chattering hog monkey!" Katara retorted.
"Just bend the slurry woman!"
I smacked Sokka on the back of the head. "Knock it off! Let her focus."
"You guys need some help?" Toph asked, emerging from under the drill.
"Toph, help me plug up this drain!" Katara requested.
Standing next to Katara, Toph got into a stance and pushed the rock in the slurry back. Thus the slurry was forced back inside the drill, with the acrobat girl still trapped in it. Fortunately for her, it didn't seem to kill or seriously injure her at all.
I focused on Aang. I could sense he was slowly carving his way into the top of the drill with the water Katara had given him. But Azula was approaching him.
I made sure to cause muscle spasms to trip her up and throw off her aim as she and Aang fought on the top of the drill. Much to her growing frustration. I could only play support right now but it still ended up helping Aang until the drill slurry began to spew out the front, covering the part of the drill where they were fighting and making them slip and slide around on the top.
Azula barely managed to catch herself. And when she did, I made her lose her grip and fall the rest of the way off the drill, whereupon she dislocated a shoulder from the force of the impact.
Momo grabbed Aang and started pulling him up and Aang used his air bending to get the rest of the way back up onto the drill.
A boulder landed near him and he proceeded to carve it into a spike and force it into the section he carved into before running up the wall, running back down, and using his momentum and airbending to force the spike deep into the drill causing the whole thing to effectively pop.
"Woohoo!" Sokka cheered.
"Here it comes!" Toph announced before raising the section of ground we were standing on into a pillar right as the slurry started spewing back out the hole.
The drill started to collapse, completely broken.
Later, after all of us got cleaned up, we stood back on top of the wall, looking out at the sunset.
"I just wanna say, good effort out there team avatar!" Sokka told us.
"Enough with the 'Team Avatar' stuff. No matter how many times you say it, it'snotgonna catch on." Katara told him.
"We aren't some cape team back on Earth Bet. We don't need to have a 'team name'." I commented.
"Come on! Please? The Terra Team sounds so cool! Besides, you were part of a team called 'The Undersiders'. So you really have no room to talk." Sokka stated.
I rolled my eyes. "If anything, that just means I have more experience so I haveplentyof room to talk. So no, we don't need a team name."
"Let's talk about this on our way into the city." Katara suggested.
"The Aang Gang?" Sokka suggested.
"Sokka…" Aang groaned.
"The Fearsome Five!"
"You're crazy." Toph commented.
"What? We're fearsome!" Sokka said as he ran after us.
