Disclaimer: I don't own Avatar: The Last Airbender. :)
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Chapter 11: Playing With Fire
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Ami grinned wickedly. "Did you really think you'd get off that easy, Earthbender?"
Toph furrowed her brow. So it's just me she wants. Fine. "I thought you were smart enough to have ambushed us a mile ago. I guess not."
"My timing is impeccable, I'll have you know," Ami spat.
Toph's voice was incredulous. "Oh really?"
"If there is a battle -if you put up a decent fight- it'll attract attention. Particularly the attention of Ty Lee and her recruits. She'll be ready to attack in a moment's notice... and with only four against a whole group, well, the odds don't look good for you, do they?"
Aang suddenly considered divulging his identity. He brought his hand to his hood, but Katara touched him lightly on the shoulder. "Not yet," she whispered.
"We've been worse off before," Toph growled.
"Talk is cheap." Ami allowed small flames to dance in her palm.
Toph kicked her foot into the dirt and a fissure broke the ground where Ami had been standing. Without a moment to spare she leapt into the air and spun, flinging fire over the heads of her victims. Katara doused it before it had the chance to touch them.
"Waterbender? Another pleasant surprise," Ami muttered, landing with cat-like grace. "What else have you got for me?"
Katara froze her bending water and shot icicles at Ami. Sokka flung his boomerang, and Aang air-scootered over to attack her from behind. The airbending caught Ami's attention- giving Toph the diversion she needed. She earthbended a boulder out of the ground and did her best to shoot it toward their air target. She missed by mere inches... but Ami deduced a weak point.
"Airbender, waterbender, and what looks to be a blind earthbender- well, you've certainly... airbender?"
Ami caught herself as she came crashing on a rooftop. "The Avatar."
"I guess you've finally realized who you were dealing with," Katara snapped.
Ami took a spit second to size up the boy with arrow tattoos. The airbender- the Avatar! Here! She was fighting the Avatar! A million firebenders would kill to have the opportunity that she was presented with.
She dodged Katara's waterwhip as she studied "boomerang boy." He's not bending. He probably can't. That's a plus...
Aang shot a blast of air in Ami's direction, and Sokka threw his boomerang again. The waterbender's talented, she thought as she danced along the rooftop. Katara was instructing Toph where to fire a boulder.
And the earthbender's blind. Ami jumped from the roof to the ground and fired about ten simultaneous shots in Toph's direction. Toph could sense her now, though, and made a mound of earth erupt and send her spiraling backward into some barrels as Katara drenched the oncoming flames. She can fight better when I'm on the ground...
Ami was quick to leap up from the pile of broken wood. She listened intently for anyone coming, anyone at all...
"What's going on here?" Ty Lee demanded, hurrying on to the scene. It didn't take a second to realize that the Avatar was here to dismantle their operation. "That certainly won't do," she giggled, excited at the prospect of fighting the Avatar and his friends again. "The firebending girl's with us! As for the rest of them-- attack!"
Out of the blackness a hoard of thirty or so men in elite-looking red-and-black uniforms entered the fight. Ty Lee was grinning proudly like she'd accomplished something incredible, and Mai appeared at her side. "Finally," she murmured, her bored tone slightly slurring her words. "I was wondering when we were going to get some action around here."
Mai hurtled toward Aang with her weapons drawn. When she came to a close -but not too close- distance, she started to fling her handheld weapons. He dodged, and she drew something like a knife in both hands. She and Aang continued to fight, she pursuing him with her sharp knives and he evading her with semi-skilled airbending techniques.
Ty Lee gleefully flipped and cartwheeled to Sokka as the troops swarmed around her. "Hey, Cutie." The blush that had once risen to Sokka's cheeks every time she called him something sweet had long since disappeared. He, unlike her, was all business.
He drew his machete. "Let's be serious."
"That's no fun."
"Ty-" Sokka bit his tongue. He wasn't going to play any of her silly games. He raised his weapon, going for something somewhat dramatic, but Ty Lee simply rendered the arm he held it up with useless. He managed with one arm; he blocked her fists, and she dodged his repetitive, furious swipes, the blade of his weapon occasionally tracing across her skin and drawing the slightest of blood.
Katara handled Ami as best she could. Ami was extremely fast, but Katara was pretty accurate... making for an interesting show. Katara drew her long, water-based tentacles across the night sky, connecting faint constellations as Ami eluded the great moving masses; as she expertly executed an impressive acrobatic routine, she skillfully shot blasts of fire at her adversary. She thoroughly enjoyed the exercise; never before had she been in a battle so exhilarating, so challenging... Ami was a little older than Katara, sure, but Katara had so much more freestyle fighting experience. She silently thanked the Spirits that she had so much to fall back on.
Toph was left with the rest of the group of recruits. Ten of them went down like bowling pins, four more were crushed under a slab of rock, another two were surrounded in rock chambers. She buried three, sent four more spiraling into the distance. It was all a game.
Suddenly Toph stumbled. "Ru?" she demanded, spinning on her heel.
One of the few still-standing soldiers shot a flurry of flames at her back, taking advantage of her distraction. Her freshly burned, severely pained figure hurled forward by the strength of the blast.
It clicked. Ru heard about the rebels in Fudo. He wanted to join them and... he used them as a free ticket. He used them. He lied to her. "You're dead," Toph snarled, forcing herself to stand up and causing Ru to take a step back. "I cannot believe you!"
"You can't?" Ru asked, a smirk peppering his expression. He conjured fire from nothingness, brought the flame toward her.
Toph slid back and kicked her heel in the ground while at the same time putting a rock barrier between them. "I believed you! I trusted you! I- I liked you!"
"You never really liked me, did you? Besides, we used each other." Ru jumped up to avoid the stalagmite that popped from the ground and hurtled over the small rock wall. She made the wall slide back into the ground and stumbled back, blinded by fury. She shook her head and this time succeeded in driving him backward with close-range earthbending moves and hands-on fighting. Out of nowhere he did a back flip and got a good ways away from her and, using the extra distance as a headway, shot another blast of fire from his fingertips, this one more powerful than anything that had yet taken place. It came toward her, hurtling, bounding. She expected it, braced herself for it as best she could, and then...
...it never came. She felt the light lick of flames on her face. That was all. Surprised, she brought down her arms and focused.
Sokka. He lay in front of her, had taken the hit for her, had jumped in front of the flames before they could actually scorch their intended victim.
Toph knelt down to him. She encased him in a sturdy shell and searched for Ru, for Ru and only Ru. He wouldn't get away with this, would pay tenfold for what he'd done. She couldn't sense him anymore. She didn't think he'd stayed around for the show to watch her suffer, and so her vengeance would have to wait.
Sokka.
His name pounded in her head. She took him out of his protective chamber and pulled him away from the smell of smoke and the horrible scene. "It'll be okay, Sokka," she whispered. He exhaled slowly, with difficulty. Suddenly she heard a man yell something.
"Survivors- retreat!" She felt the suffocating smoke more or less die, slowly but surely, and laid Sokka down. She felt the vibrations of Katara and Aang reverberate, and Momo landed on her shoulder.
"What's the damage?" Katara asked, kneeling.
Toph put a protective hand over Sokka's chest. She fought back any tears threatening to pour because of his current state. "He was severely burned. Labored breathing, the works." Toph forced herself to redirect her sightless expression. "How about you guys?"
"Aang's arm is a little bent up, and I got a little burned, but we're basically okay." Katara bended a few drops of Spirit Water out of a pouch at her side. "I'll try to heal up some of the burning, but..."
Toph drew her hand back and Katara began trying to heal Sokka as best she could with water that she'd recently collected from the Spirit Oasis. He began breathing a little better, and the burns didn't look as bad as they had been (Toph didn't see anything, however, and didn't think that the Spirit Water was as effective as it actually seemed to be). Katara began trying to stand him up, but Toph -in a gentle, assertive kind of way- took Sokka from Katara's shoulders. "It's okay, I've got him. We're good to go."
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