Responses to Reviews:
Phieillydinyia: Toph losing her bending is going to hit her hard, as we shall no doubt see.
Matheus Bezerra de Lima: The fact that Team Avatar lived on that island wouldn't be a secret, they knew they were in the city, and because Katara left in the middle of the night they would have no reason to assume they had gone.
Toph does seem like she would be the most affected of any of them by losing her bending, indeed.
I don't know if you're using the app or not, but I have noticed that on the app the document manager has a habit of occasionally removing the space between two words when you save, leave, and come back to a document. It seems that happens with reviews too.
RonaldM40196867: In a show where characters can throw mountains at each other, realism may be a tad out of reach. Besides, realism and grit aren't necessarily the same thing.
As Always, Please Review, and we pick up our story as Team Avatar suddenly finds itself under attack, and Toph's bending is gone...
The moment that his thumb lingered on her forehead felt like a lifetime, but eventually she felt the bloodbender's hold on her release. She collapsed onto the surf.
The first thing she noticed was that her seismic sense wasn't working. She had no idea what was going on around her, and that idea terrified her. She had known what she was doing, what she was risking, when she sent Aang away and decided to take on the bad guys by herself. She just hoped she wouldn't come to regret that decision.
"So, what now?" A voice somewhere to her left said. The voice of the younger bloodbender, Yakone was it?
"Well, we do what we came here to do, don't we?" Tulimaq's voice boomed. From the sounds of it, he was standing right over her. Involuntarily she began to scrabble backwards away from him.
"Not yet," Sarnai's voice responded.
"What do you mean not yet? She's right here, at our mercy! She's helpless and terrified!"
"I mean not yet," Sarnai insisted. "The Avatar is probably watching, and you didn't take away his access to the Avatar state did you? Do you want to try to fight the Great Yangchen?"
There was silence for a moment.
"Then in order to avoid that, I suggest, we kill the Avatar first. Her turn will come, don't worry."
Only now did Toph have the chilling realization that she was now entirely at the mercy of these people- and that they intended to kill her, if not now, later. They wanted to kill Twinkletoes first, apparently.
Suddenly, a shout was heard off down the beach. Toph heard Sokka's voice shout something very insulting about Tulimaq's merits as a warrior and as a human being, and a dull thud was followed by the sound of something falling onto the sand. Immediately the beach was ringing with the sounds of battle.
She tried to shout, to warn her friends of the imminent danger to their lives, to tell them to run, but before she could she felt a sudden hand on her shoulder. She jumped out of her skin and yelled in surprise and panic.
"Toph! Toph, it's me, it's Sokka! We've got you!" Sokka's voice came from about two feet in front of her.
"Sokka! You have to run, they want to kill you!" She spoke quickly, even forgetting to call him Snoozles.
"Don't worry, we intend to," Sokka's hands picked her up. "We just didn't want to leave you here."
Toph was again lifted off the ground, but this time instead of the terror of bloodbending it was the warmth of her friend. Toph found it oddly comforting.
Sokka turned to the others.
"I've got her, we should probably run now!"
Team Avatar ran the way they had come, taking the steps two at a time and pursued by several of Tulimaq's lackeys. Tulimaq and Yakone had each taken a surprise boomerang to the back of their skulls at the beginning of their attack, and that was the only reason why they weren't dead already, Suki supposed.
"Why did you do that?" Zuko yelled at Toph as they ran. "Do you know how dangerous that was?"
Toph said nothing.
Suki risked a glance over her shoulder, and was alarmed to see several of their faster pursuers catching them, slowly but surely.
She looked over towards Sokka, who had his hands full.
"Give me that," she said, reaching to the holster on his back and pulling out his boomerang.
"I hope you know what you're doing!"
Suki peered over her shoulder, lined up on the fly, and released the boomerang. It spun away to the side, and Sokka watched it anxiously.
"You missed!" Zuko said in disbelief.
"No, she didn't."
There was a thud as the boomerang collided with the back of the lead thug's head, and he collapsed, his inert form tripping two other thugs over, but the boomerang hit the rock wall that they were running past and clattered to the floor.
"My boomerang!" Sokka shouted in horror.
Suki internally celebrated hitting the man, but looked at Sokka's face and knew she would have to apologise for sacrificing the boomerang to do it.
"Hurry up!" She urged. They rushed up the last few steps to the top off the cliff and just made it into the house. Sokka lay Toph down on one of the settees as the rest locked every door they could find.
Suki made her way over to a window and peered out of it just as Sarnai made it up the steps.
She took a couple of steps forward, and surveyed the surrounding terrain. Once she was satisfied, she turned back to the house, walked right up to them, and began to speak as her men fanned out to surround them.
"Avatar!" She said, almost jovially, Suki thought.
"I think you know why I'm here!"
Aang just sighed. "Here we go..."
"I didn't see your girlfriend around!" Sarnai called. "It seems she's not here. If so, she's lucky, but that means you now have no benders among you. There are only five of you in any fit state to fight, you have no way off this island, and you are outnumbered five to one at least!"
Suki closed her eyes. She knew that Sarnai was right; it was going to take a miracle for them to even survive this.
"So, Aang, I offer you a choice. Do the right thing. Come out here and make it easy for me, and we shall allow your friends to live. If we have to fight our way in though, there will be no survivors."
Aang bowed his head.
"She is right," he said after a while.
"What?" Sokka sounded like he couldn't believe what he had just heard. "You can't possibly be thinking of just letting her do it?"
"What choice do I have? At least this way you get to live."
He sighed.
"And maybe a reset of the Avatar cycle won't be such a bad thing..."
"No," Suki made sure to position herself between him and the door.
"Come on, do you want to live?" Aang pleaded.
"Do you?" Sokka replied. "I don't know if you remember, but I have a sister, her name is Katara, you might remember. She would be devastated if you do this!"
"At least she would only lose me, and not all of you as well!"
"I know you want to be all heroic and sacrifice yourself for your friends," Mai drawled, "and that is admirable, but none of your friends want you to do it. You are not stepping outside that door and that is final."
"But-"
"Do we have to pin you to the wall?" a knife appeared in Mai's hand. "Because I'll do it."
"Trust me, she will," Zuko told Aang.
Suddenly, Toph spoke.
"Don't.. go," she said. "They won't honour the deal."
"What?" Aang stared at her. "How do you know?"
"After they took my," Toph grimaced for a second, "my bending, they said how they wanted to kill you first. They said something about the Avatar State. After that, they said they would kill me."
Outside, Sarnai had clearly become impatient. She had been joined by the two bloodbenders, who were rubbing their heads and looked more angry than Suki had ever seen them.
"Alright," she shouted. "Scorched earth it is, then."
She stomped the ground, and a Boulder erupted from it; she shaped it until it was a cylinder with a large flat head, and turned it towards the door.
Then, with a yell, she thrust her arms forward and it raced towards them. There was a terrible crash as it slammed into the door, but it held. Suki looked out of the window again, at Sarnai preparing her battering ram and all her cronies, and then looked at Sokka. He was standing near the door with his Space Sword drawn.
A second loud crash reverberated around the room, and Suki made her decision. She walked over to Sokka.
"Can I have a word?" She asked, putting her hand on his shoulder.
Sokka raised an eyebrow. "Is now really the best- you know what, yeah, let's go."
"If they break in, call us!" Suki shouted, dragging Sokka away down the hall. She found an empty room not too far away and entered it.
"Alright, what's this about, Suki?" Sokka asked in confusion. "You know we'll be alright, don't you? Is this about boomerang?"
Suki sighed. "I was going to do this after this was over, but now it looks like that's not going to be possible."
"Do what?" Sokka now looked worried. "Suki, what's going on?"
Despite the situation, she almost laughed at how badly he seemed to have misinterpreted her intentions.
"Don't look at me like that, I'm not dumping you," she told him.
"Then what are you doing?"
This was it then. She would rather do it when they weren't all about to die but she would have to work with what she had. She took a deep breath.
"Sokka," she began, "Will you marry me?"
Sokka looked at her with an expression of such shock that she feared he might keel over.
"What? I mean, is now really the time?"
"Sokka, there may not be any more time."
At that, Sokka's expression softened. He reached out and took her hand.
"Suki, of course I will marry you."
He leaned in to kiss her, but suddenly pulled away.
"Speaking of which," he said, "I've been making this."
He pulled out of his pocket a bundle of rags, and carefully unwrapped it so that its contents fell into Suki's hand. She turned it over to reveal a half-finished betrothal necklace. She could make out the design, a sword crossed with a fan.
"Look, I'm sorry it's not finished," he began, but before he could finish the sentence he was being kissed.
"It's perfect," Suki said, as she made to put it on.
She had just finished, and was about to ask Sokka what he thought, when a third enormous bang signalled another battering ram attack, and this time it was followed by a savage war cry coming from outside.
The door had been broken.