Everyone was silent upon seeing the Earth Kingdom man, and those who didn't know who he was to the gang figured it out when Toph finally found the strength to speak.
"Boss Man Lao? You never told me that you had a family." Satoru stated and it was only then that Lao seemed to snap out of his shocked state.
"I don't," he said coldly and just about everyone felt his or her heart grow heavy with the words.
"Fa-" Toph was cut off by her now furious looking father.
"You kids are trespassing, I want you off this property within the hour or else security will be called to escort you off!" He practically shouted and Azula noticed Toph's fists, no her whole body, tense as she tried to keep herself from crying.
"Uncle," Satoru said in a pleading voice, begging for his Uncle to maybe try and reason with his partner.
"This is not your business Satoru, now come and help me get those miners back to work before I have them all replaced." He more threatened than ordered, knowing that most of the crystal miners had fled the buildings when the earthquakes hit.
"Yes Uncle," Satoru said with a sigh, hanging his head in defeat.
With that both the older men turned and left, followed by a very unenthusiastic Satoru.
"Are we really leaving?" Sokka questioned but Aang shook his head with a scary determined look.
"No, we're not going anywhere until I talk with Satoru's Uncle about the location of this refinery." He said before he too marched out of the building, his Air Acolyte friends following him.
"What about- Toph?" Sokka asked, noticing that his earthbending friend was already halfway out the door.
"Toph!" Katara called but Azula held out a hand to stop her.
"I'll talk to her," she said, looking the waterbender dead in the eye. Katara nodded in agreement and so Azula followed the blind girl out of the factory.
"Hey," she said gently when she caught up with Toph on the side of the building.
"I don't want to talk!" The younger girl snapped, tears more than evident in her voice.
"Ok, I won't make you." The firebender said calmly, but she didn't slow her pace as she followed her friend. "Do you want to fight?" She asked, knowing that actions are far more in Toph's comfort zone than words.
"No," she sniffled, "Just leave me alone!" She whipped around and screamed, knowing that she was losing control of her tears.
But Azula didn't leave her alone; she didn't even let her turn back around. Instead she reached out and grabbed the girl by the shoulder and pulled her flush against her into a hug. At first Toph was somewhat hesitant to embrace the gesture, but she soon found herself gripping tightly to Azula's shoulders and slowly allowing herself to sob into her chest.
"You don't have to talk," Azula reassured her in a gentle voice, one hardly anyone ever knew the ex-princess was capable of having. "You don't have to tell me anything, but I would like you to listen." She requested and without waiting for an answer she continued. "I know what this feels like, and I know that you want to scoff and tell me I don't but I do. It hurts; it hurts more than anything. It hurts more than an arrow piercing into your heart, and I'm not exaggerating." She half joked but it hardly made a difference. "But you have a chance here Toph, I don't know if you could feel it but I saw the look on his face. He was so surprised to see you and he had mixed emotions about what he said. He's mad at you Toph, he's hurt and out of spite he wants you to feel that too, but he still loves you." She said, now trying to blink away some of her own tears as she took one of Toph's hands and gently placed it just below her collarbone, where her skin was seared over with a faded but still evident scar.
"You're dad?" Toph asked as she sniffled away enough tears to allow her to speak, she remembers very vividly the two separate occasions on which Azula was shot with an arrow under her father's orders but it had slipped her mind that the girl carried a physical scar, a visible reminder, of the attacks.
"Well the assassin he hired to take me out, but his orders." She sighed, "You're father may not see that he was wrong, but he did only want what was best for you. You're lucky to have that, so please, try and talk to him." She asked and Toph sniffled again as she wiped away the last of her tears.
"Where's Toph?" Sokka asked when Azula found Katara and himself out by the sludge slide that Satoru claimed was a river.
"Talking to one of the owners of this place, what are you two up to?" She asked and Sokka briefly considered asking her for more information but he eventually decided against it.
"Satoru's Uncle is insisting that this isn't a result of the refinery," he explained, gesturing to the 'river' in disgust. "Personally I think he's a big fat liar but we're checking it out anyway," he informed,
"Yeah and I keep drawing water out of that spot, more than should be able to slip through the rocks." Katara informed, pointing to a spot on the cliff across the river where the rocks looked suspiciously stacked.
"Hm, let me try something." Azula said and then, without warning, she reached over and took Sokka's boomerang from its sheath on his back. He didn't even have time to protest before she had tossed it at the rocks and hit them in a way that they came crashing down, revealing a rather unstable looking entrance into what could only be an underground mine.
"Whoa," Katara said as boomerang came circling back and Azula caught and placed it back into Sokka's sheath, all with a completely straight face despite the fact that his jaw had long since hit the ground and his eyes were about a mile wide.
"Should we see where it goes?" She asked,
"Probably," Katara answered and so the two of them set off to cross the river.
"She took my boomerang," Sokka finally spluttered out, still stunned by Azula's boldness.
"There doesn't seem to be much down here," Azula commented as the three of them made their way through the underground tunnels, her leading the way as the resident Fire Bender and there for source of light for the time being.
"No but it doesn't look abandoned either," Sokka argued and Azula hummed her agreement.
"Not to mention that this place, according to Aang, was a meadow a hundred years ago. A lot may be able to change in that time but for two mines to come, and for one to have been forgotten, is pretty unlikely." She said and Sokka nodded his own agreement.
"Guys, I hear something up ahead." Katara cut in, and so the other two listened.
They heard it too, the sounds of voices shouting and pick axes hitting solid rock. They kept moving and soon they found themselves out of the tunnel and in a huge underground mine with a huge furnace like machine that emptied out green and brown sludge into the once blue water that ran through the mountain.
"This must be the source of the river's pollution!" Katara gasped as the three stealthily snuck over to the edge of the furnace.
"Hey! You kids! Get away from there!" A booming voice ordered, clearly they hadn't been stealthy enough.
The three whipped around to see two of the infamous Rough Rhinos standing behind them.
"Rough Rhinos!? Why'd it have to be Rough Rhinos?" Sokka questioned in exasperation.
"What, think we can't take 'em?" Azula asked her friend with a teasing smirk, although the fact that the archer Vachir was one of the two they were facing did give her a momentary flashback.
"You're right," Sokka agreed, his confidant smile now on his face.
The battle commenced, beginning with Kahchi swinging his guan dao at Sokka's head, but the Water Tribe boy quickly dodged the attack and knocked his opponent off balance with his own sword. Meanwhile Vachir sent an array of arrows at Azula and Katara but the girls were even faster than Sokka to dodge the flying objects. As they did, however, Katara took note of what happened when the weapons landed in a support beam of the mine.
"Guys stop! This place isn't just the source of the pollution; it's the source of the earthquakes! Those beams are going to give out and we're right beneath the town!" She exclaimed, "We need to stop fighting or we'll only make things worse!"
"Tell them that!" Azula shouted as she sent a blast of fire at Kahchi. Knowing that they didn't have time to deal with the apparent security guards of the mine Katara bent some water from the river and froze both of them. "That works," Azula said with a shrug.
"We need to get these people out of here before the whole place collapses," The waterbender said and Sokka nodded.
"No problem," he said as he climbed up onto a stack of crates.
"Attention everybody! Listen up!" He hollered and the workers turned their heads. "This mine could collapse at any moment, so we need to get everybody out!" He announced but the workers all stayed where they were.
"Well don't all go running at once," Azula said, her usual sarcasm perfectly in place.
"What's wrong with you guys?" Sokka demanded as he hopped down from his crate. "This whole place could come down at any second," He insisted and finally a young worker approached him with a sigh.
"We're as happy about the end of the war as the next guy," She began, although by the tone in her voice she didn't sound too happy. "But when the war ended a lot of military jobs ended with it. We were lucky to have found this place. If we leave, we get fired. If we get fired, we don't eat. So unless the Boss Man orders us out of here we're staying." She said with determination, the other workers seemed to agree.
"Does being crushed to death sound like more fun?" Azula demanded, for a moment slipping back into her old, cold, voice. But the worker merely narrowed her eyes,
"We knew the risk of this job when we took it," she spat before turning away and heading back to return to her work.
Sokka narrowed his eyes, his mind racing with a plan.
"You two stay here and try to talk some sense into them, I'm going to get the Boss Man." He said to Katara and Azula before turning on his heel and rushing out of the mine.
Talking sense into the miners was, of course, useless. The girls tried but they were only met with a mix of silence, insults, and wishful glares. It wasn't until Sokka returned with Lao, Toph, and Satoru in tow that things looked like they might actually go somewhere.
"Mr. Beifong! You've got to evacuate everybody! The mine is what's causing the earthquakes, it's too unstable!" Katara exclaimed as she rushed over to the group, Azula right on her heels.
"But, but this mine shouldn't even exist!" Lao exclaimed, clearly just as surprised to see this place as anyone else who had ventured down today. "Loban and I agreed that it would be far too dangerous to try and excavate the iron ore deposits down here!" He continued.
"You mean you agreed!" A very angry voice came from behind and everyone turned to see Satoru's uncle, looking royally pissed off. "This area has the biggest deposit of iron ore I've ever seen! I was not about to let it slip through my fingers just because you're to much of a coward to try and unearth it!" He all but shouted.
"Uncle," Satoru said in horror, finally getting the picture that his uncle may not be such an angel after all.
"We can talk about this later, right now I can feel the earth and ore shifting all around us, this place is coming down!" Toph interrupted and thankfully her father decided not to argue with her.
"Everybody out, now!" He ordered his workers.
"If you value your jobs you won't go anywhere," Loban threatened
"Ignore him and worry about your lives!" Lao ordered and while the two men argued with each other everyone watched them, so caught up in it that they didn't even notice Kahchi break free of his ice until he threw his sword at Sokka.
Sokka didn't see the attack coming, but out of the corner of her eye Azula did and without thinking she lunged forward.
"Sokka!" She exclaimed on instinct but it didn't matter, she was already pushing him out of the way, soon feeling the sting of Kahchi's blade as it sliced through her unscarred shoulder blade.
"Azula!" Sokka shouted, instantly dropping to help her up. But his gentle hands soon turned desperate with a hard grip as he tried to keep enough balance for both of them when Kahchi's weapon landed in yet another support beam, and the whole mine gave way.
