Chapter 88 – Opening
Azula enters the tight space of the submarine with Aang and Zuko. There’s two Northern Water Tribe waterbender troops who are powering the sub. Aang will have to switch off with them because there’s not enough waterbenders to make the transportation simple. The Northern Water Tribe still didn’t let any of their women join the war effort, which puts a hard limit on the number of subs they can deploy. They had the materials and time to build more, but not the waterbenders. Katara is still furious about that.
The wait that invaders face in their subs is dreary. All they see is metal all around and there’s no light or sun other than what the windows let in. No one is allowed to firebend or else the oxygen in the sub will run out. So the troops have to spend several days in darkness, only occasionally surfacing to refill the oxygen, clean up the commodes, and get some fresh air. In general though, they stick near the surface, so it’s not pitch black.
Aang is the least comfortable with the cramped quarters. It’s against his air nomad way to be caged. Azula figures that they could have planned this better in some ways, but it’s already set in stone. It’ll be a long 10 days until the invasion.
~ ~ ~
Nuwa goes to the other cave where Sokka, Yue, Pakku, and Xai Bau are set to depart. She approaches Yue and says, “You really snuck out, huh? Are you sure you want to fight?”
Yue nods resolutely and replies, “I’ve been learning combat waterbending. There’s not many of us girls who do so, but no one can outright stop us when we have Master Pakku’s support.”
“Great! That’s fine and all, but you can’t be in a submarine. Pregnant ladies have health risks that come with spending too much time in a sub.”
Yue looks worried for a moment before Sokka nudges her and says, “Go with Stella on Appa. You can rejoin us when the invasion begins.”
Nuwa’s eye twitches with the thought that Azula could have done the same thing, but it would have been showing too much favoritism when she wasn’t to be part of the airship strike force. ‘So Yue sneaks onto Appa on a technicality. Hopefully she doesn’t mind watching Dan, Toph, and I have hot sex. Maybe I could use this as an excuse to swap Bumi off of Appa so we can have casual sex up there?’
Nuwa gets her wish. Bumi agrees to stay in the sub that Yue is supposed to be in with Sokka, while Nuwa, Toph, Yue, Dan, and Aiwei take off into the air on Appa. Dan gets ridden like a thoroughbred horse during the trip while Aiwei and Yue kind of sit by and watch while awkwardly fapping and fingering themselves.
[10 days pass]
+220k LEE, Total: 2718k LEE
On the day of the invasion, the subs surface one last time to get some fresh air and do other preparations. Aang jumps out onto the top of the sub and falls to his knees taking deep breaths. He’s suffocating after spending so long down there! Even though they come up to the surface once or twice a day, he still can’t get used to it!
The waterbenders are surprisingly fine despite the time spent in cramped quarters. They pop out of the submarine hatches and work together to generate a fine mist. Unlike mistbenders, they can only manipulate the water and not the air along with the water, so it takes them a lot of chi to be able to pull together enough mist from the water vapor. Aang and Nuwa help out though with airbending to push the mist towards the direction of Capital City.
The mist will mix with the dew of the morning air to thicken the morning fog and maximize the element of surprise on their invasion force, at least enough to unload the tanks and soldiers stored in the submarines. Nuwa swaps Bumi and Yue out at this time. She summons her elemental node and creates an air bubble around Appa’s head, which allows him to dive into the water and bring them towards the airship hangar.
Their first target is the only airship hangar that the Pea family knows of, because they have a chi-blocker unit assigned to it. These are one of the few squads that they couldn’t come up with a reasonable excuse to have reassigned. It’s the Pea family’s only airship squad, so it would be suspicious of Lord Pea to give up his only prestigious spot on an airship for a less powerful role. Nuwa might have to face off against people she grew up with.
It will not be fun. She resolves herself to try to at least not accidentally kill them. They have to start disabling airships well before the invasion fleet arrives in order to smoothly win the battle. Dan helps Appa move quickly through the water and they arrive at the harbor closest to the airship hangar. These airship materials can be very heavy, so when they build the airships, it’s most economical to build them near a harbor in order to receive and assemble materials quickly.
Since it’s around 5 am in the morning, there’s little activity. A few cleaners and guards walk around among the maze of crates on the dock. Farther in is the airship hangar, a nondescript building, which is far too large and lengthy to be a regular storage building.
There’s no ceiling to the building, but it’s tall enough compared to the flat surroundings that it’s impossible to get a good look inside from a high vantage point. Only an aerial view from directly above would let us see what’s inside. That’s impossible because it’d be too eye-catching for Appa to be there. Appa isn’t quick enough to dodge the numerous cannonballs and ballista bolts that the Fire Nation would be able to fire shortly after catching sight of him. That’s why he’s only meant to be used for entry and escape.
Nuwa, Bumi, Toph, Dan, and Aiwei hop off Appa onto the dock out of sight of the patrols. Nuwa caresses Appa’s snout and asks him to hide in the area. Bumi directs a path with his earth sense to avoid patrols. Toph would have to stomp loudly to use her earth sense to the same degree that Bumi’s regular steps can use it. She frowns at the disparity but now is not the time to get angry.
They have to search for a while for suitable targets because Bumi’s body is too big to fit in a regular military issue armor. Finally, they find a bulky guy and sneak up on his guard squad to do the same old trick of knocking them out and stealing their armor and helmet. This time Dan bloodbends them and Nuwa chi-blocks them one by one from behind. No need to get complicated with darts.
It may seem like a waste of time, but the armor is helpful for confusing the enemy even after the fighting begins. The attacking soldiers might forget which is the waterbender and which is the earthbender. Being unable to recognize which is which will disrupt their rhythm.
Now that the team is properly outfitted, they enter the warehouse openly and see several airships and hot air balloons. There’s a bunch of cases of explosives as well, clearly labeled in crates with skulls. The four of them, besides Aiwei, quickly get to work tearing up the fabric of the balloons enough that they cannot be used today with bending. Toph goes up a staircase, climbs a metal scaffolding, and jumps onto the side of a large airship. She claws her way almost vertically up the airship with metalbending, leaving finger-shaped dents in her trail.
At this point, they are still hidden from view behind equipment, but Bumi and Toph’s powerful earthbending alerts the guards and cleaners nearby. Bumi is pulling up spires of rocks to puncture nearby hot air balloons. Toph reaches the top of the first airship and grabs the metal plate she’s standing on. She yanks it violently off the rest of the structure by the weak areas near the screws. It makes a huge screeching sound as the metal comes off and pulls off some nearby plates with it as well. With a sufficient surface area of the ceiling of the airship unsealed, it can no longer fly.
Toph then creatively uses the yanked off section of metal as a springboard to launch herself to the next airship. The alarms sound and guards throughout the docks and hangar begin panicking. They’ve never had an alarm before! Their first thought is that someone might be messing around with the explosives over some bullying grudge. No one wants to go towards explosives in dangerous situations!
Overall, the soldiers drag their feet, giving Toph time to disable two more airships before they get their act together and pour in by the dozens. Bumi is on full defensive, protecting Aiwei and Dan against fire blasts. Nuwa is on the offensive, jumping around and throwing nonfatal air and rock blasts with her wand. The air blasts confuse them and they sensibly believe that they are facing the Avatar.
The chi-blocker squad arrives fashionably late and takes command of the situation. Although many of them are nonbenders, they command more respect than the usual firebender grunt. Nuwa recognizes Kong as the head of the team, the same servant boy she sparred with as a child and ‘accidentally’ made orgasm with her chi-blocking. He’s a polite guy who got married a few years back and even has a few kids. She wonders if she can unmask herself and convince him to stand down in a more private setting.
Dan doesn’t have a lot of water to work with at the moment, so he’s mainly bloodbending others into the way of friendly fire. The armor on these guys can protect them from the burns of the fire blasts, but not the impact, so the chi-blocker troops aren’t necessarily in fatal danger when he does this.
Atop an airship, Toph has to begin to dodge fire blasts thrown at her from soldiers standing on stairways and platforms. There’s one more airship left in commission and Toph is held down by fire blasts. She cannot launch herself to the next one while under fire. Bumi notices this and shouts to Nuwa, “Cover me!”
Nuwa takes over the defense of Aiwei and Dan by raising earth walls and deflecting fire blasts coming from above with air blasts. She sweats at the large amount of firebenders that she’s under attack by. Never has she had to be so hyper-focused with lives on the line outside of E-Nuwa mode.
Bumi wraps himself in rock armor and roars as he charges towards the last airship. Nuwa gets a bit of a break since the soldiers can intuit what Bumi wants to do. Kong orders that they direct all their fire on him. Bumi barrels through various fire blasts like a juggernaut surrounded by rock. As the earth melts, he simply replaces it with fresh, cold earth from the floor. Once he makes it in the vicinity of the airship he jumps up 10m (32 ft) into the air with extra layers of rock covering his right fist. He arcs in the air like a super smash bros character and his right fist pounds the ground underneath the airship HARD.
The soldiers stop throwing fire blasts at him and look upon this scene dumbfounded. They are surprised that nothing happens even one second after Bumi punches the ground. There was such a huge build up and they didn't even hear a sound. Kong is certain that the lack of sound is extremely ominous, and his instincts are right, because 1.5 seconds after Bumi’s earth fist hits the ground, something happens.
A sharp pillar of earth instantly shoots out of the ground in front of where Bumi pounded and skewers the entire airship from top to bottom like a kebab.
“...”
No one says a word or attacks for a few seconds. Even Nuwa drops her jaw at how Bumi can make earth rip through metal. Toph’s eyes light up and she cheers loudly at the power of earthbending! The cheer is the queue for the soldiers to leave. The chi-blocker squad don’t even have time to approach before Kong orders the retreat. Even though this is an important military asset, he knows when it’s time to go. He wonders how he’ll explain this loss to the family and military. It all happened so fast.
First of all, the destruction is done. There’s no more airships or balloons to protect. Whatever explosives that are still intact after the fight are not usable without proper equipment. Secondly, they’re scared as fuck of that monster of an earthbender. Thirdly, they need to call for reinforcements, because Kong suspects even his chi-blockers can do nothing to these guys. None of them are even injured or look tired after being under a fire barrage for 5 minutes.
Nuwa shouts, “Bumi! Engineer!” Bumi uses his earth sense and senses an engineer shivering inside a nearby crate. He picks up the entire crate and they take off amidst fire blasts. Despite the order to retreat, the soldiers are still throwing fire blasts in a disciplined manner to cover the retreat of other soldiers.
The soldiers don’t realize that the intruders have similar plans. Nuwa blocks the fire for Aiwei. Dan can dodge and use his water reserves to block them on his own. Toph jumps down from the airship to join them on their retreat. By the time more soldiers arrive from a nearby garrison and return to the battlefield a short ten minutes later, the strike team is long gone.
The captured engineer who has been frightened into unconsciousness tumbles out of the crate on top of Appa, who is treading water and hiding behind a docked ship. He wakes up from his fall onto the soft fur and looks around in confusion. Dan manhandles him by the back of his neck and demands, “Do not shout for help or else. Now.. tell us where we can find another airship hangar.” The engineer remembers what happened and looks around with fear. He stutters, “I - I- don’t know.”
Aiwei, who has low stamina, had just recovered his breath from the tiresome sprinting. He confidently says, “He’s lying.”
The engineer wants to do at least one brave thing in his life and he does, but unfortunately, his courage runs out after that. Dan lets go of him and bloodbends him into a levitating position with his hands and legs locked like a straitjacket. The engineer is so creeped out by the macabre scenario that he immediately squeals. He shouts, “East district! That’s the only other hangar where there are grounded airships! Please..” He starts crying. “I have a sick mother..”
Aiwei casually says, “Truth.” then “Lie.”
Nuwa terminates the exchange by chi-blocking the engineer into unconsciousness, uses an air blast to lob his levitating body onto the docks, and says, “Let’s go, yip yip!”
Appa gives a low hum and dives into the water with an air bubble provided by Nuwa around them again. They make their way underwater and follow the docks to the other side of the city. The submarines are approaching the docks and are due to strike soon. The timing of the attack is important because if the subs attack too soon, then the airships would have reason to take off. The number of hangars is also important, because the strike team would have to make their way to each one, increasing the time that Capital City has to prepare its defenses and muster its military.
In this case, they lucked out that there are only two hangars, but if they do not get there soon, then the airships will take off when they get word of the submarine invasion force. Appa would have to bring Toph up onto the airships, which is unfavorable, because it will expose him to attack and increase Capital City’s vigilance to its highest state when they witness the aerial battle. For now, there’s only news of a hangar being destroyed by a small group. It’s not enough for the entire city to rouse from its slumber.
(A/N: Aiwei the fap king. Toph and Bumi out here rampaging having the time of their lives!)