I'm a day late with this Ty Luko Week prompt (all of them can be found at TyLuk04Ever dot deviantart dot com), but it wound up twice as long as I planned. What is it with me and the non-bender warriors?


Ty Luko Week - Safety Net

"It's not that I have a problem with it, but... is it really necessary? I have the Royal Firebenders, and I'm known to be pretty good at fighting myself."

"Your dry humor is improving. Anyway, it certainly can't hurt to have a set of Earth Kingdom guards as well, right? This is going to be a very open event, and there's always the possibility of danger."

"Suki's right, Zuko! I mean, Fire Lord! Just think of me as your safety net. I never needed one, but I always felt better when I had it."

"That's a good point. Okay, Ty Lee. My safety is now your responsibility, among others."

Ty Lee liked the Earth Kingdom's penchant for celebrations. Now that they weren't being systematically wiped out and enslaved by a conquering army, its people loved throwing parties. Sure, the festivities were never as bright and flashy as the Fire Nation's, but they happened a lot more often in the Earth Kingdom. Even the visiting Fire Lord got one in his honor. Plus, while the Fire Nation limited their festivals to the night time, when the flames and fireworks would appear their brightest, the Earth Kingdom had no issue with starting things in the daylight and letting the fun last as many days and nights as it could.

Of course, that was a really long time to be on guard duty.

Anyone who didn't know Ty Lee might think her distracted by all the revelry, but those kinds of people wouldn't know Azula, either, and so they really couldn't be expected to have any idea what seemingly pleasant teenage girls were truly capable of. Ty Lee tracked Zuko (Fire Lord Zuko!), his Royal Guard, the other Kyoshi Warriors, and the civilians around them the same way she kept track of all four of her limbs while dancing on a tight-wire and playing with several circus props. In other words, it was so easy as to be almost subconscious, so long as the safety net was there to ease any worries.

Things went well and stayed quiet (well, quiet for a city-wide party, which wasn't very quiet at all but wasn't anywhere as noisy as, say, a giant drill) for almost forty-five minutes. Then the bombs went off.

Earth Kingdom investigators would later explain to Ty Lee and the other warriors that the explosives were actually surplus from the Fire Nation, probably stolen and later sold on the black market. The capsules, similar to the kind launched by the cannons on the War Zeppelins, had been moved underground by terrorist Earthbenders and buried at strategic points in the city. It was impossible to tell, from the leftover bits, whether the bombs had been rigged with timers of some sort, or manually set off when Zuko neared them.

The masked attackers who materialized out of the smoke immediately after the explosions were a good argument for the latter.

With said smoke around, and a possible concussion doing its best to ruin Ty Lee's undefeatable balance, it was hard to figure out the full effects the explosions. People who could have been civilians were screaming, and various figures in varying states of wholeness littered the ground amidst the rubble, a bunch of them wearing red armor or green uniforms. Something niggled at the back of Ty Lee's mind, just as she was considering picking a fight with the masked people rushing at her.

Zuko!

Fire Lord Zuko!

A quick spin on the tip of one foot found the Fire Lord a short distance away, mostly standing upright. His hair and clothes and skin were filthy mess. He was Firebending, and in her current state Ty Lee found the flames a bit too captivating, but before a full second had passed her focus returned and she noticed the additional masked men (and maybe some women?) actually battling the Fire Lord.

Oh. The other guys who were nearly upon her probably wanted to attack Zuko, too. She instantly (Fire Lord Zuko!) decided to go all out on them.

One of the silly masked men actually ran past her, on his way to the Fire Lord. He must not have considered Ty Lee a threat. Granted, she probably looked as bad as Zuko did right now, and even when she was perfectly lucid, people like Mai said she had a "vapid" look to her.

Ty Lee swung a leg out at the man's midsection and knocked the air, food, and maybe a few bones right out of him. He went down, but his momentum twisted him over her leg and deposited his face heavily into the ground.

That worked well.

Normally, Ty Lee didn't like to hurt people. Her style of fighting focused on hitting certain pressure and chi points that everyone's bodies had, with various temporary effects ranging from disorientation to muted bending to complete paralysis in a limb. The spots she hit typically bruised and remained sore for days afterwards, but none of it was particularly painful.

That was when she feeling clear-headed. Right now, everything had a fuzzy look to it, people were likely dead, and Zuko looked both awful and in danger. Being nice might not be in the cards.

Four attackers. Three on her left, one on her right, spread out over a distance of several meters.

No problem.

Ty Lee bent backwards into a handstand, and pushed herself up into the air, the natural motion of the maneuver swinging her feet back downward without any additional effort. The whole movement, including the subsequent flight that brought her a full four meters into the air, took a quarter-second. It was hard to be a hand-to-hand specialist in a world of benders and weapons masters, and only the very fastest could compete. Among them, it was Ty Lee who was the chosen executor of the Fire Princess Azula during the war, and it wasn't out of any sense of sentimentality. Ty Lee simply moved faster than thought itself. Even better, she moved with a precision that allowed her to casually pluck flying arrows out of the air.

That was a neat trick. She and Mai had made a game of it.

That's why the running masked man didn't even notice Ty Lee until her boots connected hard on the top of his head. He didn't notice his skull taking the full brunt of her landing because he was already unconscious.

This left Ty Lee in a crouch, facing in the opposite direction of the other three attackers, but that wasn't a problem. She rose, spun in place, and snapped forward into a cartwheel in a single breath. The ground was covered in too much debris to keep cartwheeling, but that was okay. It would take too much time. Instead, Ty Lee built up just enough momentum for a truly spectacular leap forward. It carried her past all three of the attackers, and without disrupting her flight, she was able to reach out and slam her fists into each of them multiple times. She aimed for their pressure points, but didn't take care to precisely moderate the force of the blows, and did a kind of bad thing and made the extra effort to dig a knuckle in after each punch.

All the masked men knew was that a green blur flew across their vision, and then the nerves at various points in their bodies immediately hopped on the direct line to their brains to scream bloody pain. Also, it seemed that their muscles were no longer interested in keeping their bodies upright.

All three were down. It took exactly one second.

Thankfully, Zuko's situation hadn't deteriorated. Ty Lee was able to trot over to (Fire Lord Zuko!) him without any great haste, and smack his attackers in their chi points almost casually. Almost. Ty Lee was still kind of mad at them. These guys screamed, too.

Zuko took a moment to realize the fighting was over, and then another to focus his eyes on the girl who assisted him. "Ty Lee. Thanks. For saving me."

Even concussed, Ty Lee was pleased. She gently hugged Zuko. "Now aren't you glad you had a safety net?"

END