Comet was sat in a tiny metal cell with her hands chained to the table. If Mari could see her now she might just have keeled over. Every day she told Comet to stay out of trouble and every day she tried not to. And here she was, in a cell. The handcuffs cut into her wrists, chaffing them awfully and the cold, washed out light of a glowstone kept her from returning to sleep as the clock ticked over to 5:00 am.
The whiskered police captain came in wiping a thick yellow fluid from the tip of his catfish moustache.
"Sorry for the delay ma'am the Touched woman spat bile at me." He said groaning. He wasn't exactly a young man and it was just past the end of his shift. "I'm Captain Ren, United Forces Military Police."
A short nebbish looking old fire nation man with wild white hair sprouting from the sides of his head barged past the police chief. He was dressed in a crooked and crumpled set of White Lotus vestments, put on in a hurry, aside from a pair of dingy slippers. He was kindly looking with a genuine smile that made him look like some little girl's favourite grandfather somewhere.
"I'm Lotus Brother Lifa." He said, sliding into the chair besides Comet. "I'm your assigned legal counsel."
"Am I being charged?" Comet asked, terrified. She instinctively pulled against her chains until it felt as if either the cuffs or her wrists were about to break.
"Not likely." The captain said as he took a seat, groaning wearily. "But we have to call in a lawyer just in case. Now why don't you just walk us through the events as they occurred to you." Ren pulled out a small notepad and looked at her over the top of it with green beady little eyes half hooded by tired looking eyelids.
"I was woken up by a loud slam. Then my wall broke apart. The earthbending one leapt through. Asami, miss Sato shocked him and then the bird woman. Then that other guy threw a table at her. I tricked him into stabbing a power cord and then you walked in." Comet blurted, by the end she was so out of breath the edges of her vision had begun to fade.
"Well, we'll have to wait for Miss Sato to get out of the Healer's to corroborate you." Ren explained. "Until then we have to hold you as a suspect."
"Suspect, what do you think I'm a table-bender or something." Comet retorted.
"The young lady is right, you can't hold her without at least evidence of guilt." Lifa protested.
"We found a hairpin stiletto in that coral guy's side." The captain pointed to her hair, held up by only the one pin. "Yours."
"Yes and I lodged it into the guy trying to kill Asami Sato." Comet shouted defensively. She stood up sharply, nearly nocking the chair away. "I nearly died saving her, and where were you."
"That weapon seems like it might come in very handy for an assassin, and the man you stabbed was a legally empowered bounty hunter. Meanwhile you have an unregistered weapon and a large amount of money for an unemployed woman your age." Ren explained.
"You can't seriously think she did this." Lifa protested again.
"No, I don't." Ren huffed, pinching the bridge of his nose to ward off a headache. "But Miss Sato is one of the most powerful citizens we have left. Commissioner Hanza has made it quite clear that I can look forward to an early retirement if I don't do this properly." Ren explained.
"You can't honestly think those freaks are real bounty hunters." Comet protested.
Ren's eyes narrowed and he clenched his hands into white-knuckled fists. "My daughter was Touched, I'd appreciate it if you not call them freaks." Ren said. His voice was cold and harsh and gravelly. Comet immediately sensed her misstep. What had been an impersonal duty for Ren she had now made fiercely personal, more than that she felt ashamed, embarrassed to have resorted to stereotypes so quickly.
"I'm sorry I-"
"Enough, I'm going to take you to the lockup and then I'm going to go home."
Comet had missed the midday light when she was woken up in her cell. The cot was as hard as stone as the many tender spots all along her back attested. To one side of her was a haggard looking drunken business woman with her hair askew. She smelt of sugar wine and she had a vomit stain down her front. Her nose was broken and bruised. To the other side was a particularly muscular woman with eagles tattooed up her arms. The noise that woke her was Asami, knocking a cane against the bars, the metal clanging against metal. She had a massive bruise across the left side of her face, even after the best efforts of the healer , her left arm was broken and she was obviously leaning on the surgical steel cane very heavily. An MP was stood next to her with a set of keys in hand.
"You're the one who saved me. I remember you fought off that coral girl. Release them Officer." The officer nodded and opened the jail cell doors.
"Sorry about the confusion, my name's Asami." The tycoon said. "What's yours?" Asami asked as she walked extended a hand to Comet.
"As if you had to tell me your name Miss Sato ma'am, I read everything I can about you." She said as she snatched up Asami's hand and shook it eagerly. "My name's Comet, of Kyoshi Island."
"Well Comet, thank you for saving me. What are you going to do now."
"Well I wanted to go to the Eastern Air Temple, it sounds so glamourous." Comet answered starry eyed.
"I'm going there, I don't suppose you'd enjoy a lift, would you, Comet?" Asami asked playfully.
"Yes!" Comet's answer came out as a high pitched squeal. "I'll just get my stuff and I can go with you, just wait a sec, please."
The Future Industries flagship soared gracefully above the clouds and over the ancient canyon known as the Great Divide. Despite the war its bright white hull was still as clean as it was the day it first floated off on a maiden voyage long forgotten. These days the Airship housed a full fifth of the Future Industries workforce in relative comfort, though at the cost of some of its luxury. The bridge now had a typing pool and receptionist for instance.
The cavernous bridge was full of green glass windows. Even with the thick metal slats over them the glimpses of fluffy peaceful clouds wafting by was one of the most beautiful things Comet had seen in quite a while.
Asami was hunched over the coffee table in the bridge's lounge area handling a stack of paper work. Her brow furrowed in concentration as she quickly scribbled down some sort of equation next to a schematic for some piece of machinery or another. Despite her injuries and the obvious discomfort in the way she was sat Asami carried on, judging by the workload she didn't seem to have much of a choice. Comet, meanwhile was just kind of sat around gawping at the architecture.
"I thought that after an hour of air time you would have stopped being so amazed." Asami said, looking up over her stack of papers.
"You know I got to the Western Air Temple in the back of a rusty cargo blimp." She said. "I must say this is a big step up." Comet responded, a little bit embarrassed.
"So what are you going to do when we get to the Eastern Air Temple?"
"By the time we get there I'll be entitled to a small fortune. My aunt said to become a researcher or something safe like that."
Before Asami could answer the proximity alarms in the ceiling went off bathing the bridge in red light whilst a claxon sounded.
"Miss Sato we've got Spirits inbound." The helmsman yelled from his pilot's perch. "I'm gonna put her down in the Divide, and turn off the engines."
"Do it." Asami said, springing up. She immediately regretted that and clutched for her cane. The entire bridge tipped wildly as the helmsman through the craft straight down into the valley. The desks began to slide along the deck and most people ended up falling over or clinging to the railings. Glasses fell from tipping tables and shattered. The gently synchronised hum of the lifting engines slowed and sputtered out as the helmsman cut the power. They fell through layers and layers of cloud. In the windows the ground was rearing up on them worryingly quickly.
At the last moment the helmsman reignited the lift engines and pulled the craft level. The groan of tortured metal sounded throughout the bridge. Out of nowhere a jagged shaft of earth sprouted out of the ground. The airship's hull tore open like wet paper aside from the screech of metal being rent asunder. The glass shattered into millions of pieces and caved in the front of the bridge. The helmsman and his perch disappeared into the rubble in a scream and splash of blood. The gas envelope ripped open and the airship went from a graceful lighter than air cruiser to a thousand ton hunk of twisted metal and flaming aviation fuel. The ship's carcass crashed into the ground violently. The whole ship shuddered and shook as the craft tipped starboard. Gouts of fire exploded into the bridge as the banks of engines on the airship's side were torn apart and detonated against the hull. Flaming pools of fuel-alcohol spewed across the control deck, dousing unfortunate crewmen and typists in fire.
Comet was thrown against her padded chair and stress vomited as she saw a woman on fire flail screaming on the floor. She could see the flesh crumple and fall off her body like tallow, hear a scream of greater agony than she thought imaginable and smell the pork-like odour of a person cooked alive, and feel the heat of the fire get closer and closer to her.
Comet was huddled up, knees clutched to her chest on the uneven floor as she hyperventilated. Not five minutes ago she was making polite conversation with a titan of industry and now all she could look at was the blackened husk of a woman who served her tea. Out beyond was a massive gaping hole in the hull exposing the dark, sandy canyon.
"Holy hog-monkeys!" A young, pallid man with a thin frame and a small smattering of patchy stuble said with a high pitched not quite broken voice. His uniform's hat was slightly crooked and his right sleeve had a scorch mark on it. According to his name tag he was Serviceman Third Class Romu He staggered through the nearly sideways bulkhead leading into the other compartments of the ship. Smoke billowed out behind him.
Catching sight of the fires raging through the bridge he bent the water in the coolant pipes he knew were nestled in the hull of the ship. They disgorged themselves onto the fire, splashing it but also extinguishing most of the fire.
"Ma'am, uh ma'ams are you okay?" He said with a strange twang.
"Yeah, I think I am." Asami said as she pulled herself up. "But Comet's pretty shaken up." She said putting a hand on the trembling young woman.
"Ma'am, there are fires all over the ship. I just came from engineerin' in the stern and I haven't seen any one livin' on the way." He said quickly and nervously. "I bled the primary fuel tank but the pumps on the secondary one's jammed, if the fire reaches it we'll explode…. Well explode more than we already have."
"We have to get to the cargo hold, we always keep some emergency gear there." Asami said. Her stance was faltering but her cane kept her standing, just about. She tottered over to the bulkhead and awkwardly tried to squeeze her even more broken arm through the opening.
"Ms Sato, I'm sorry ma'am but you should really get to safety, me an' Comet here can get the equipment, you just get outside." Romu answered, jovially.
"Will you know what to get?" Asami asked as she hobbled for the hole in the ship.
"Anything that isn't broken." Comet yelled as she jumped through the nearly sideways bulkhead.
"We'll be back soon." Romu shouted over the sound of a crackling fire.
The main corridor was a crumpled mess. Upended tables littered the twisted hall and warped panels hung from the ceiling by thin wires. The heat and smoke of oily fires raged in over compartments, so hot that the rubber seals around the doors had melted shut. Strewn about were bent and broken bodies, their limbs twisted at unnatural angles. Comet tried to look away from their faces, every one of them pulled back into a frightened rictus.
"It's a wreck in here." Comet gasped as she tried to avoid acrid clouds of smoke.
They reached the cargo hold, mounted in the rear near the engineering department. The bulkhead was bent open and inside the mangled bodies of other engineers hung out. "I knew those guys, when we started diving they clung to their posts. Don't know how I survived"
"How did you?" Comet asked as she saw a limb hanging out of the hatch above her.
"How did I what?" Romu asked, not turning around.
They lumbered into the hold. It was a mess. Crates were smashed to tinder and a jeep had been torn out of the straps that held it down. In the tumble it had been thrown about, snapping an axel off and absolutely demolishing a crate of pickled cabbage corp cabbages. There were still a few boxes here and there that were still functional.
"How did you survive the crash? Asami and I only survived because we had cushions to crash into; you were stuck in the engine room." Comet asserted as she tried to find an emergency kit amongst the strewn about cans and miscellaneous tools.
"A quick application of waterbending, I made a bubble of water to cushion my landing." Romu answered.
"Really, you aren't wet?" Comet asked. Her eyes went wide and she made for the bulkhead. Comet sprinted as best she could over the lopsided, corpse-strewn terrain. She threw herself through the open bulkhead as a scythe of water nearly cut the hatch off its hinges. She stopped dead in her tracks when a bright spotlight poured in through the holes in the ship. The sound of footsteps clanging against the deckplates forced her onwards.
"Asami! Miss Sato! Romu's the saboteur!" She yelled, running out of the gash in the side of the ship. The most bizarre sensation seized her. It was like a full body cramp digging into her body until she couldn't move a muscle. She could hear her heartbeat thrumming in her head and it felt as if she were being choked.
She tried to force herself forwards but instead she fell to her hands and knees. Tears of pain dripped into the cold, dry dirt of the canyon. Asami was stood there bound and gagged. An elderly man with shards of onyx growing out of his skin held a pointed shard of stone up to her neck with his bending. Behind them was an ugly kit bashed airship built primarily from a dinged up old CC-39 airship, obviously stolen from the airship graveyards outside of Ba Sing Se. Cabbage Corp airships were often….economical in construction and it showed in the parts of the craft that were still original. The paint had long since flaked away and rust was beginning to show. The low power motor had been replaced with a pair of old engines in the back and two more stuck out from the sides, attached by welded on biplane wings with large fuel tanks made from old propane canisters stowed in between the wings. Rigging and netting around the faded green envelope held down large metal crates of outboard storage. There were metal bars welded to the outside of the viewports and shutter curtains mounted on the inside.
"You were supposed to kill her in the hold." He rasped. "I only just had enough time to get this one when she started screaming."
"She saw through the disguise. Twenty yuans for the jumpsuit and nothin' to show for it" 'Romu' sulked.
"Unalaq will reward us with more than twenty yuans when we return Sato." The stone-skinned man said.
"Take the girl to the hold whilst you've got her." The old man declared. "Unalaq might want a slave, or he can throw her to the spirits."
Romu lifted Comet up by the scruff of her jacket and set her walking towards the airship. "You can walk yourself or I'll bend you there if I have to." He hissed into her ear when she tried to resist. He pulled the pins from her hair and shoved his hands down her pockets.
"Put your hands out." Romu commanded. Nervously Comet complied, presenting him her balled up fists. Romu tied the rope around her wrists and then tipped her backwards into the hold. She fell over and bruised her back on the metal deck. Next the old man threw Asami in. The hold was nothing but bare metal aside from a tarp in the centre of the room. There were yellowish brown stains on the floor and walls and in one disturbing case the ceiling. Large crates pirated from other airships and looted from wanderer convoys were strapped to the floor as well as a few miscellaneous cans stacked on top of them. They could hear the airship's many engines begin to sputter into life. Unlike the smooth running, state of the art engines on Asami's airship these worn down, oversized and poorly assembled engines shook and shuddered, causing the whole airship to buck and wobble as the unbalanced propellers threatened to throw the airship off course.
Asami managed to pull her gag loose with her good hand and spat out a bit of blood and a fragment of a tooth. "We have to get free, the North Pole's not so inviting these days."
"Don't worry, my Aunt taught me this." Comet said eagerly. "When that guy tied me up I kept my hands horizontal, it makes your wrists just wide enough to slip your hands through." Comet explained as her hands just about slipped through.
Even above the constant clatter of the engines an unearthly screech sounded through the canyon. It was the spirit that had forced the airship down in the first place. It seemed to be growing more and more affronted by the noisy little airship in its midst.
"Yeah we really need a way out of here." Asami protested direly as she tried to sit up.
The hazy radar screen showed the blurry, mass of the spirit closing in on them. "Get back there and calm that spirit." The elderly man said from his captain's chair.
"Whatever you say old man." Romu huffed. He headed back into the rear of the ship.
"Footsteps!" Asami hissed.
Comet was standing with her hands freed when Romu walked into the hold. She charged him, reaching the tarp in the middle of the room. But before she could close the distance between them Romu was doing the stiff, straight armed motions of his unique Foggy Swamp style bloodbending. Comet contorted groaned before Romu made her slam herself into the ground. The pain was intolerable; tears filled her vision as she was left crying on the rough cloth sheet.
"You know I put this tarp down so that when I burst open ignorant fools like you your mess doesn't go too far." Romu said in a low sadistic tone, though he never quite lost the squeakiness in his voice nor his accent. "But I'm definitely gonna cover your friend in every last bit of you." He said as he slowly edged towards her.
Comet snarled defiantly and yanked the tarp. On the smooth metal floor it slid far enough to take Romu off his feet. He managed a yelp of surprise as he fell and whacked his head against the corner of a metallic first aid kit on the table next to him. He was still dazed with a bloody gash on the side of his head. Comet didn't think, not really, the primal part of her brain that was still a desperate cave dweller fending off a moose-lion took over. She sprung up off the floor and the med kit. She dove on top of him. Screaming wildly, with tears in her eyes she bashed the steel can against his head again and again until case was dented in and half busted and parts of Romu's skull and brains were stuck to the lid. He twitched and bled his last onto the tarp. Some of his life blood overflowed the sheet and poured out onto the floor. Another bloodstain for the collection.
Comet rolled off of him and kicked herself away crying. Asami picked herself up and crawled over to the sobbing girl as best she could.
"Comet, I'm so sorry that happened." She said, putting a hand on the young girl's shoulder. "I know it hurts, no one can do what you did easily." Asami steeled herself as she pushed Comet up until she was more or less sitting up. "But we need to get control of this airship and I can't do this alone." She added, even then there was a tenderness to her voice.
"I-I know." Comet said as she pulled herself up. She stared at Romu's body for a long while. Her face was just blank, not even she knew what she was feeling. A part of her didn't even believe it was happening, like she was just a consciousness watching through someone else's eyes. "I want to get out of here."
"Wait." Asami said sharply. "We need to throw him out." She said, her head lowered almost ashamed.
"I'm not doing that. Normal people don't do that." Comet balked, she backed away from Asami and the corpse until she was almost against the wall of the compartment.
"No normal people don't, but if we don't give that spirit something it'll come after us." Asami retorted desperately. She used her good hand to haul Romu up. For a moment his eyes lolled down from his eye sockets. His green eyed gaze met Comet's for a moment. She felt cold and empty as if someone had walked over her grave.
Numbly she picked up the other side. They carried him over to the end of the cargo hold, to the trap door on the belly of the ship. Asami limped over to a bottle of lighter fluid and liberally applied doused Romu in it.
"What are you doing?" Comet yelled, confused.
"The fire will help get the creature's attention. Don't ask me how I know that just find me a few matches." Asami answered, even more desperately.
Comet's hands shook hard enough to rattle the box as she handed it off. Romu lit up like a candle. With the pull of a lever he tumbled out the back of the craft. In the dim light of the moon they saw the luminous beast break away from its pursuit and dive after the flaming body.
Asami was finally able to cut her hands free. Her left arm missed its sling, even hanging limply by her side it hurt. She could tell the bone wouldn't set right without a healer.
They walked onto the bridge. Whilst very few airships could profess to be as prim and proper as they had been before Harmonic Convergence this bridge was a testament to decay. Pipes and wires hung loosely in bundles from the ceiling, thick curtains were fitted around the view ports. The control consoles were a hodge podge of various ill-fitting components in varying states of disrepair. The room was over all grubby aside from a scrap metal shrine to Unalaq.
The Old man heard footsteps on the metal floor as he jockeyed to keep the ship under control. "What took you so long, I thought that spirit was gonna swallow us whole." He said with a hoarse chuckle as he turned his chair around. He stood up with surprising spryness for a man of at least sixty. There wasn't so much as a single rock to bend.
"Please." Comet begged with a weary note of exhaustion. "Just give up."
"You killed him didn't you?" The old man asked in his cold gravelly voice. Asami and Comet exchanged a momentary glance. The old man knew what that meant. "Then I can't surrender."
He rolled back his sleeves, revealing growths of glossy black stone. Grimacing he whirled through the motions of a two fisted punch and shot them out at Comet and Asami. They tore out of him with the awful sound of flesh ripping. They left bloody holes straight down to the muscle up and down his arms. Comet and Asami both dove for the floor as the obsidian lumps thumped huge dents into the back wall.
Grimacing the old man pulled the rocks loose. They flew at the intruders again. Comet and Asami rolled out of the way. His stance was beginning falter and the blood pouring from his wounds would not abate. Asami forced herself up and tackled him back into his chair. He struggled and strained but eventually he fell back into his chair all the same.
Comet grabbed the first bit of rope they could find and tied him to the chair as well as binding his hands.
"Do you have any bandages?" Asami asked breathily as she grappled with the controls to keep the Airship from tipping too much. The old man merely spat in her face.
"I've got holes in my damn arms you think it makes a difference if we got bandages?" He shouted back. There was a sort of finality in his voice as he felt the blood dripping off his clothes. He could feel himself weakening. He felt a fool, cementing his own death with a move he never should have pulled. The kid would have known better, he thought.
"Why did you crash the blimp?" Comet asked over his shoulder.
"Our master told us too. He said he wanted you captured or killed before you reached the Eastern Air Temple" he said to Asami.
"Why?"
"Same way the Republic's got your daddy designing stuff from his cell, Unalaq wanted your know how, or he wanted you gone."
"How do you know about my father." Asami's cool demeanour was entirely shattered as the shadow of Hiroshi's memory loomed large in her mind. "The news said he was never evacuated."
"We have loyal eyes in every one of your 'safe havens' and they're all going to be looking for you." The old man managed before he passed out.
The old man opened his eyes in the spirit world. In here he was still a young man with golden hair and soft tan skin. It was a dark and barren hellscape besides a massive flame lighting up the world. Countless spirits roosted near it, huddled around its intangible warmth. He wandered towards it, heedless of the spirits that watched him like predators monitoring their prey. In the centre stood before the fire was Unalaq, wreathed in black with blood red energy arcing off of him.
"Report." He commanded simply, though when he spoke the thunderous tremor of Vaatu spoke with him.
"Sato survived the crash but she overpowerd us, she took our airship." The old man said weakly. He could still feel the blood dripping down his arms, even in the spirit world. "I was wounded, they have my body restrained but I only told them what you instructed me." He said weakly, though with a rising note of pride.
"Thank you for your sacrifice, Brother." Unalaq said before he disappeared and took the flame with him. Without the soothing light of the fire the Spirits returned to their maddened, hateful state. They tore the Old man's projection apart in seconds. Back on the airship his body shook and shuddered before his faded hazel eyes rolled back up into his head.
"What's happening to him?!" Comet yelled as she saw him thrash against his restraints before he went completely limp and lifeless like a jellyfish plucked out of the water.
Asami checked his pulse, it was faint and infrequent, growing weaker and more feeble as she monitored it. "I don't know but I think he's dying." Sure enough a few minutes later his breathing slowed to a complete stop. "He's….he's dead."
"I'm….I'm going to go find our quarters or something." Comet said, hurrying off the bridge.
Comet had found the quarters, cramped though they may be. They were extremely lived in, almost everything reminded her of the men who had lived and died on it. Romu's normal clothes, a tattered leather jacket and a pair of thick wool trousers were flung haphazardly over his bunk like he had changed in a hurry. There was blood, vomit and tears stained into her jacket which smelt of smoke and trapped sweat. It was only after the shock had worn off that she yanked it away, disgusted. Immediately she regretted the idea, of all the things Unalaq's disciples had done to get the ship airworthy the heating system had not been one of them. She huddled under the thick, scratchy bed sheets to hold on to her warmth.
Asami walked back in. She had found her sling and her cane. She had a mass of green cloth over her shoulder. "I figured you might not want to wear that jacket anymore." She said as she put the long emerald coat down next to her. "It's a captain's coat, I found it in a locker back in the cargo hold." Asami explained.
"Thanks." Comet answered glumly as she pulled the slightly oversized coat on.
"Oh and I found these in Romu's pocket's before we dumped him overboard." Asami said, handing back Mari's hair pins. Comet squealed and pulled her in for an ill-advised hug. For a moment, floating around in a flying scrapheap, everything felt like it was going to be alright.
