The first of the spirits hit the makeshift gate. It looked like some kind of huge black cat, all long and lean, with six legs and enormous, dagger-tipped paws. It started to climb through one of the wide grates, ignoring both Asami and Iroh entirely. Asami triggered her glove against the metal. Bright white light flashed beneath her palm.
Nothing happened.
The spirit passed right through.
"Asami, now!" Iroh shouted. She saw fire flare out of the corner of her eye.
Other dark spirits followed, one after another, and though Asami kept up a steady flow of electricity into the metal grid it didn't seem to even slow them. Another blast of flame fired off to her left; Iroh, seeing the spirits pass the gate, must be doing what he could to weaken them. She saw a faint golden glow from the other side that must be Katara's waterbending.
Desperate, Asami stepped forward and plunged her gloved hand into the side of a huge ape-like creature attempting to squeeze through the grates. Electricity shot out from her palm, tearing a fist-sized hole in the creature's side and, surprisingly, completely dissolving the midsection of the triangle-headed spirit behind it. Good, at least electricity could hurt them. That narrowed the list of problems.
The ape spirit turned its huge flat head to her, orange-rimmed eyes staring, then casually knocked her aside with one broad hand. Asami stumbled backwards. She doubled up in pain, eyes wide, barely keeping her feet. Her stomach felt like ice where the spirit had hit her. Iroh had never said how much it hurt.
She heard Iroh yelling and looked up. He'd started over to her, but she gave him a firm shake of her head and flashed him an okay sign with her ungloved hand. He needed to stay where he was.
Asami thought fast as she caught her breath. This should have worked. She knew that the gate had been electrified; she could see pools of water beginning to develop at the base where the heated metal pipes were melting the ice that coated the ground.
The ground… of course!
"Asami, you idiot," she growled. She wanted to hit herself, it was so basic. Electricity was only dangerous if it could pass through an object. The spirits, floating several inches above the ground, weren't connected to anything. Any current hitting them was inert.
"Iroh!" she yelled. "We have to ground them!"
"What does that mean?" Iroh called back. Right. Not an engineer.
"Make them touch the ground when they get to the gate!" Iroh gave her a curt nod and stopped firing on the spirits. He ran over to the wall by his side of the entrance and jumped, hands at his sides. Twin jets of fire burst from his balled fists and he cleared the 15-foot jump easily to land on the top of the wall in a crouch.
Asami took a deep breath, straightened, and trotted back to the side of the gate. Five dark spirits were piled up against the piping now, attempting to crawl over one another and through the holes. She grabbed the closest pipe with her glove and triggered the current. A blast of fire from the top of the wall caught the spirit closest to Iroh in one hunching shoulder. An area the size of a dinner plate disintegrated into a puff of darkness. At the same time the force of the blow, now coming from almost directly above it, knocked the floating spirit down to the ground.
This time, the effect was instantaneous. Blue-white electricity arced through the packed-in spirits. They jerked wildly, dissolving into clouds of churning, purple-black smoke. Then they shimmered and blurred, pulling back in on themselves, and were gone.
Asami whooped and pumped her ungloved fist in the air. She instinctively looked up at Iroh and he flashed her a fierce grin. A second wave of spirits approached the gate, apparently undeterred, and started climbing through the wide openings in the gate. Asami tightened her grip on the edge of the pipes and sent a jolt of current into it as Iroh's fire forced the one closest to him to the ground.
They worked together like that, waiting for the spirits to get close together before Iroh would push one to the ground as she triggered the current. A few got through, especially the smaller ones, but for the most part they jammed against the gate. It looked a lot like when the spirits had piled on to Oogi to drag him down; it seemed like once they got an idea in their heads, they all went for it.
Yet after a minute it was clear that they would soon be overwhelmed. There were far, far more spirits than could fit through the comparatively narrow opening in the walls. Soon, Iroh was spending as much time firing on dark spirits attempting to climb or fly over the walls as he was continuing to push those at the gate into the ground. Asami, with only her glove, was no help here at all.
A ball of fire whizzed past Asami's face. She turned just in time to see one of the dark spirits knocked back in a cloud of smoke. It had apparently crept up behind her while she was focused elsewhere. She punched out with her glove, catching it directly in its odd rectangular face, and sent a jolt of electricity through its head. It spun and disappeared. She glanced up at Iroh.
"Thanks!"
"There are too many, Asami!" he called back. Then he leapt from his side of the wall, using his firebending to clear the spirits at the gate. He landed on the ice above her with a heavy thud. He looked exhausted. Sweat poured down his face, his hair was plastered to his forehead. "There's too many," Iroh said again. "I can't keep up. We've done what we can. You need to get out of here."
Asami thought hard. There had to be something else they could do. Electrocuting the spirits through the gate had turned out to be a good idea, but the gate just wasn't large enough. Iroh was right—if they didn't find a way to do a lot more damage, and fast, in another minute they'd be overrun.
"Iroh," she said, "I need a cloud of steam out here. A big one. You and Katara can do it together. Tell her to use as much of the water coming out of the cut pipes as possible. It'll have the most metal in it. We need to get as many dark spirits as possible inside the cloud of steam without any of us touching it. Okay?"
"Are you—"
"Go." Iroh nodded once, then disappeared over the wall.
A minute passed. Asami dodged and ducked, trying to hit as many spirits with her gloved hand as possible without being knocked flat. She was briefly grateful that Iroh had helped her keep up with her kickboxing. She didn't dare shock the gate itself any more. Slowly, she saw faint puffs of steam begin to float through the openings. It came thicker and thicker, until it billowed out from the gate in a steady stream, blanketing the attacking spirits in a soft white cloud.
"Okay!" she yelled as loudly as she could. "Clear!" She counted to five, praying Iroh and Katara had heard her. Then she sent a bolt of electricity at the steam cloud. Blue-white lightning forked across nearly 200 feet of steamy night, briefly illuminating the dozens of spirits inside. Asami covered her eyes. There was a brilliant flash and a sound like a thunderclap. Her nostrils filled with the smell of ozone. When she opened her eyes again, the spirits in the cloud were gone. All of them.
For a moment, everything was silent.
"Holy shit," said a quiet voice from the other side of the gate.
"Okay!" she called over the wall. "Again!"
She turned just in time to see something black and sickly purple slam into her. Her whole body went numb with cold.
Asami didn't remember sitting. What was she doing down here? She felt cold. Her head hurt. She reached her ungloved hand up into her hair. Her fingers came away wet.
That's interesting, she thought.