Chapter 89 – Black Hawk Down

Nuwa reflects on how the previous battle went as Appa heads towards the East District docks underwater. Overall, their objectives were accomplished and no one was injured. The best news was they didn’t have to face off against the chi-blockers. A few of the enemy forces might have realized that they were going easy on the chi-blockers if they had begun battling. Hypothetically, a hotheaded chi-blocker could have taken advantage of this fact to try to capture Aiwei in the chaos, which would have qualified him for a complimentary injury from an angry Nuwa.

She looks at Toph and Dan and places her wand nearer to them. They are lower on chi than the rest of the team. Dan had to levitate lots of bodies and he isn’t used to bloodbending in a large scale brawl. He’s only done it in small-scale covert ops. Nevertheless, he’s been chosen for this raid because immobilization at opportune times is very effective at interrupting bending.

Toph had to expend a lot of chi to tear off the metal on the airships. The airships are designed to be filled with hot air trapped within a metal shell. The shell itself isn’t overly thick, but it’s welded together very tightly to keep air from escaping. Even the screws that attach the plates to the frame are partially soldered in by firebending.

Toph’s face is beaming with happiness, but Dan’s is somber as the time for the invasion draws closer. Aiwei is still tired from the running, so they decide to leave him behind on Appa for the next raid. They’ll have to trust that he can steer Appa to places where they can remain hidden. Appa raises his head out of the water near the East District docks, and the team gets off, leaving Aiwei in Fire Nation gear lying flat on Appa’s back so that he’s mostly buried in the fur.

Dan dries them off with waterbending and they casually walk around as if they’re on guard duty.

That’s when they run into their first problem, they don’t see a hangar nearby. What they do see are several groups of soldiers rushing in the northeast direction. With little other option, they follow the soldiers and walk a full 1.5 miles (2.4 km) to the hangar. It’s far enough out of the way that if an airship takes off, they won’t be able to get back to Appa in a timely manner.

Nuwa observes a large crowd of military troops, commanders, and angry businessmen causing a ruckus within the hangar. ‘That was quick. We did come around to this hangar in a roundabout way, but we didn’t waste any time, and yet they already have news of the other hangar’s destruction. There’s a lot of eyes on these airships.’

Nuwa puts a hand on Toph’s head when she begins to bounce up and down in excitement. There’s absolutely no way they could destroy the airships AND escape uninjured if their cover is blown with the current state of affairs. Nuwa is sure that even Bumi would be overwhelmed. At least 500 hostile personnel stand within the hangar, 300 of which she can guess are firebenders. More swarm in by the minute.

A man with a pointy beard upon a stage retrieves a loudspeaker from a subordinate and talks into it to quiet down the crowd, “Good morning, everyone. It’s quite early, I know, but we’ve received reports that our other airship hangar has been raided by a small group of terrorists. We believe that the Avatar and Toph Beifong are responsible.”

The crowd shouts profanities in rage and fear. Nuwa grits her teeth when she recognizes Lord Zata is the speaker and joins in, “Fucking slimy old coot. Choke on a dick and die!” It’s a good thing no one can hear her under the roar of the crowd, because she wasn’t even modulating her voice.

He continues, “Now, now, quiet down everyone. We will recover our investment in due time. The important thing now is to make sure that we defend this base. With Toph Beifong here, it’s possible that the Earth Kingdom has smuggled in a few reinfor..”

A large series of explosions are heard by everyone in the hangar from the west and they continue nonstop. The Zata Lord’s eyes widen in shock when he realizes that the Earth Kingdom has dared to launch an invasion on Capital City! He screams into the loudspeaker over the roar of the crowd, “GET IN LINE, SOLDIERS! Board the airships! One hundred each, you know the drill! We’re under attack!”

There’s four airships. Approximately 80 soldiers and 20 non-combat troops like engineers and pilots will enter each one. Things look unfavorable for Nuwa’s airship strike force. Their best choice to take down the airships is to join the line of soldiers entering and sneak on.

The Zata Lord speaks with the airship commanders privately, delivering several menacing glares and threats about keeping his remaining airships intact, and then leaves to make sure his businesses and mansion are well-defended. That’s the problem with hiring mercenaries to guard properties. They can handle the usual riff-raff, but when things go to hell, they will look for any chance to run away. He’ll have to continue threatening idiots for the rest of the day just to prevent utter chaos.

Nuwa, Bumi, Toph, and Dan stick together so they don’t lose each other in the crowds. One piece of good news is that the air inside the airships will take a while to be hot enough to provide enough lift for flight. Dozens of firebenders come below each airship and proceed to slowly empty all of their chi into air intake valves on the underside of the airships. The soldiers on the ground have to get it flying as fast as possible and the soldiers on board need their chi to keep it afloat as well as power the air-to-ground weaponry.

Some poor chap runs into the short figure of Toph accidentally and his leg rebounds off of her putting his whole body into a spinning fall. He lands face first on the floor and is momentarily stunned. He turns around and sees the shorty shrug at him and continue to walk forward. Oddly, he notices that of all the soldiers, only this short one he ran into and the huge burly one next to her aren’t wearing shoes. Why would that be? This line of thought is doomed not to last long, because the poor chap then has his balls stepped on by another running soldier and has far greater things to worry about, such as how to survive the pain and whether or not he can still procreate.

Nuwa chuckles at the comical incidents that Toph tends to inadvertently cause and enters the airship with her pals. Throughout this time, various explosions continue to ring from the harbor and sounds of fighting can be heard. The peaceful, prosperous citizens of Capital City had never seen such a barbaric sight. Nor had they expected the defense lines of the Fire Nation military would fail to protect them. It has to be said that the invasion force is a relatively ragtag group of men. Screams of fear and horror ring through the city.

It’s already well past the optimal timing for airship bombing, but the soldiers carry on nonetheless. Even if they have to bomb their own city to drive back the invaders, they will. That’s the ruthless kind of discipline that Ozai encourages his commanders to follow.

Nuwa crinkles her face in displeasure. Their airship takes flight first and is now floating above the hangar where she can more clearly hear the sounds of war. There’s wailing of women, painful screaming of injured men, and yells of profanity-filled encouragement from both sides to press their attack, all behind a chorus of crying children. The air is chaotic, smoky, and suffocating. This is her first experience seeing commoners in a warzone. Before, she’s only been involved in small-scale skirmishes with bandits or soldiers. Watching somberly, she thinks, ‘War is not fun.’

Even Toph’s excitement cools into a deep chill. Bumi pats each of them out of their stupor and back to their work. Nuwa looks around and asks Toph, “Do you think you could get onto the ceiling of the airship somehow?”

Their current location is an open hatch on the bottom side of the first airship to take off. Hot air rises so even with all the hot air trapped inside the blimp portion of the airship, it can still have openings on the bottom, given that heat is continuously applied by the engines. Toph shakes her head, indicating that she can’t make it up. Her sound vision is heavily obstructed by the chaotic airwaves and she’s not accustomed to using earth sense on large metallic structures.

The metal of the airship is particularly lightweight and the vibrations she uses for her earth sense carry extremely fast, making her see too much, which further disorients her. It’s like trying to do 3d geometric math when you’ve only learned 2d math.

Bumi says, “Say, Stella lass. Why don’t you give the little girl your shoes?” Nuwa curiously looks between the two before understanding and taking her shoes off. Toph reluctantly accepts and wears them to dull her earth sense. She lets out a sigh of relief that she can see normally again. Dan warns, “We’ve got company incoming.” Nuwa’s the only one among the four who can’t passively sense the presence of others nearby, so Dan says it for her sake. She has to be deliberately focusing on her daon field to sense sexual thoughts.

Toph awkwardly walks in shoes for the first time in nearly a decade and tries to get used to it. The patrol soldiers walk in and see four awkward looking slackers. “Hey you four! If you haven’t been assigned roles, you’re supposed to head to the central hall!”

Nuwa isn’t looking at the patrollers. She’s looking at the second airship taking off while fiddling with the bison whistle that she summoned from her [Inventory]. Nuwa turns around, nods to the patrolling duo, unsummons the bison whistle, and heads deeper into the airship. The others follow. They still have a 15 minute window to come up with other options before all of the airships are in the air, which she puts as the red line to call Appa.

The airship strike force follows the patrollers to the central hall where they see about 30 soldiers without helmets on and a large stack of crates with explosives that have to be delivered to the weaponry systems. Nuwa panics, ‘Uh oh. Inspections?’ The commander says, “Everyone take off your helmets and receive your station!” Nuwa’s group has two girls and one old man. Bumi takes off his helmet and says, “Hey y’all!”

Nuwa sighs and summons her wand, imbuing the elemental node onto it while the surrounding soldiers stare at the clearly out-of-place buff, ugly, and cheerful old man. This is actually the last place they want to get into a fight in, because there are lots of firebenders and explosives. One stray shot can cause a nasty explosion.

Nuwa knows that the air they use to float the airship isn’t flammable, and the explosives themselves aren’t too powerful, but it won’t bode well for them if they get caught up in fights near explosions. Especially for Toph’s ears. They have a lot of ground to cover today and having to handle stray concussive force of explosions will drain their stamina greatly.

The first thing that Nuwa does is throw air blasts at the explosive crates, which pushes them against the walls away from the hall. The firebenders all throw fire blasts at Bumi and the airbender, recognizing that they probably had the bad luck of encountering the Avatar, which is the reason the commander asked them to remove their helmets in the first place. Turns out the Zata Lord made the commanders remember to require unhelmeting to check for spies before he left. Unfortunately, they do this after they are already up in the air, when it is the place where it is most convenient for them to do so away from the hustle and bustle of the hangar, but also a bad spot for them to be in when it comes to actually finding spies.

Bumi has no earth nearby, so he ducks and dodges in comical poses which seem impossible for an old hunchbacked man of his years. Nuwa smashes and deflects incoming fire blasts with firebending, while Dan and Toph sneak around and stealthily pick off people on the outskirts of the battle. There’s only 30 firebenders so Nuwa is having an easier time than the first hangar, but Bumi is running into trouble without earth. He runs around trying to get out of the hall, but soon senses earth. The explosives are an earth powder and there’s sand around them within the crates!

Bumi goes near the wall and pulls out the sand from the explosive crates and unintentionally lets explosive powder leak from the crates. He continues dodging fire blasts until a stray blast deflected by Nuwa lands near a crate of explosives. By now, Nuwa, Toph, and Dan have thinned down the numbers of firebenders in the hall by 15, but 15 more arrive to reinforce them when they hear the commotion. A fire blast sparks the explosives about 5m (16 ft) away from Bumi and he immediately covers himself entirely in sand, with a dense layer around his feet and ears.

A large explosion rocks the airship. Bumi lands like a cannonball on the adjacent wall. A few seconds later, he says “Urk, that was fun” before pulling himself off the wall, wiping his nosebleed, and shaking himself off. Nuwa’s ears ring, but she’s mostly fine due to her air shield. Toph is dizzy with vertigo and can’t stand straight even though she’s far away from the explosion near Nuwa. Most of the firebenders are also out of commission. Dan is looking in better condition than the others since he bloodbends his body to resist the concussive force and he is on the opposite side of the hall when the explosion happens. A 2m (6 ft) section of the wall of the central hall is blasted open to reveal a hole in the metal shell of the airship.

Dan picks Toph up and hoists her on his back. When she’s not earthbending her body, she weighs less than 50 kg (110 lbs). Nuwa waves Dan and Bumi over to the hole in the airship. There’s a slight vacuum force that’s pulling them out of the airship, so they have to keep their balance. Nuwa points out with her wand out, up, and then at herself while looking at Bumi. He interprets her nonverbal cues with his earth sense and nods. Then he fastens them together tightly with a solidified belt of sand.

Nuwa and Bumi both push off upwards into the air out of the airship with a clueless Dan and Toph being dragged along for the ride. Dan fears for his life at his altitude with the city structures below him. Toph similarly fears the almost total blindness that occurs for her in midair amidst the chaotic air currents far away from the warm embrace of the earth.

Nuwa charges up a full half of her chi and fires a powerful, concentrated air blast downwards with a loud shout to jerk them upwards and above the airship. The air blast mostly fizzles out by the time it reaches the ground but it still flattens a tree onto a house. Nuwa overshoots slightly, causing them to roll over onto the ceiling of the airship with too much momentum.  It looks like they’ll fall off the airship since there’s no handles or grips for Bumi or Dan to grab, and Toph is still out of commission with regards to focusing and using chi.

Nuwa calms down quickly and summons her [Hidden Blade] to slice the metal of the airship and slow their momentum. The vibranium manages to pierce the lightweight, moderately thick metal of the airship and slices through like butter. They come in hot so Nuwa has to tilt her blade so that the slice isn’t so clean that they retain their momentum and fall off. Finally, the friction slows them down and Nuwa pulls her blade out. The sand is undone and they sprawl onto the ceiling of the airship and stare into the sky in silence for a moment. Well, everyone except Bumi, who stands up, adjusts his belt, and shouts, “When can I do that again?!”

Hot air hisses out of the long tear that Nuwa made in the ceiling of the airship several meters away from them. With a tear on the top of the craft, the airship starts to lose altitude slowly. Even without the tear, the airship has no explosives since Bumi and Nuwa blew them all to kingdom come. This airship is not a threat. Seeing that Toph is still out of commission, Nuwa wants to try to take up the task of downing the airships on her own. She’s never considered using her hidden blade to do so on her own, but drastic times call for drastic measures.

Nuwa instructs, “This ship is coasting downwards. Rejoin the allies in the war effort. I’ll take care of the other airships.” Then she does a running start and expands her [E-Vibe] into an airbender glider like Aang’s. It’s a bit reckless of her, but she knows she’ll have a lot of mobility with her airbending. And even though she never practiced her flight, the elemental node should keep her chi reserves high as long as she’s not dragging too much weight like earlier.

Dan shouts, “Mistress!” And tries to follow, but Bumi presses him down like a mountain with one hand on his shoulder while looking at Nuwa gliding away. Then he bluntly says, “You’re dead weight now, kid.”

Dan gets angry, but when he tries to say his instinctual thoughts, that he should be there to help her or serve her, Ty Li’s image comes up in his head along with his dreams of a cozy home. ‘Follow my dreams or follow my Mistress? I thought I could do both, but..’ Dan looks at Nuwa’s majestic flight. ‘She’s flying high above me.’

With what little of her sight had returned, Toph senses Dan’s turmoil still hugging his back. She hugs him tight and says, “You can’t compare yourself with that woman.” Toph has the wrong idea. Dan always believed in Nuwa’s superiority over others, but he thought he could at least follow her for a bit longer. He’s unsure if he’s ready to live his life without her orders. Then, Dan panics when he remembers his baby in Toph’s belly and uses bloodbending to make sure everything’s ok.

Dan turns around, looks at Toph’s belly with worry, and puts his hand under his armor on her bare belly. Toph feels butterflies flutter when she feels his water chi flow through her blood. She’s not a fan of bloodbending, being immobilized, being dominated, or any of the above, but she still gets this strange feeling when Dan does it. For some reason, only Dan can make her feel like she’s a delicate flower in a way she doesn’t hate. Toph hugs him for several minutes in silence, letting him do his checkup. Dan sighs with relief and smiles up at her. Her heart skips a beat at his genuine smile over their baby’s health being fine and she feels a powerful compulsion to kiss him.

However, this would be one of the few times she dares not follow her compulsions, because she’s scared. Toph is also fully aware that she’s scared and has no clue how to overcome her fear. Toph fears that there’s no space in Dan’s heart for her and her odd quirks. She won’t give up on Haru or Gunner for his sake, and neither would he give up on Ty Li. Toph is simply content seeing Dan’s smile like this and carrying his baby. She returns a big smile back at him. Bumi shakes his head and says, “Ahh.. youth. Maybe it’s time I visit those old hags?”

(A/N: Um.. This chapter went longer than I thought. Nuwa spreads her wings and sets off on her own!!)