Toph starts destroying the cages a little faster, panting with the effort of bending so much metal. Her new suit of armor feels like it weighs a million pounds, but she doesn't regret it: she would have been paralyzed by shirshus several times over without it.
"I'm coming over there!" Toph shouts back to Ty Lee. She's a little incredulous, but as she inches further over towards Ty Lee's side of the room, she can clearly make out the shape of a sky bison in one of the cages: the low, rumbling breathing, the six legs, the huge crush of weight.
The current atmosphere of the room could be described as nothing other than pure chaos. While many of the animals have gotten the memo to leave through the tunnel that Ty Lee and Toph had used to get here, many of them were still here, wandering around or fighting or laying on the ground, having caught the wrong end of a shirshu's tongue.
Toph reaches Ty Lee eventually, having released every single animal except for the sky bison. "I'll let it go after the others," she explains, shouting over the din. "I don't want it to get hurt." Ty Lee nods, watching the huge mass of animals slowly file through the tunnel that leads to the outside world.
Now all they have to do is wait.
Toph examines the bison more closely: There is a shackle on each of its legs that connects it to the cage, and although it's terrible for the sky bison, it gives Toph some hope. If whoever did this felt the need to secure the animal so well, it's probably still able to airbend, unlike that poor badgermole.
There's a sudden crash that sounds like the crumbling of rocks, and Ty Lee gasps. "Toph!"
"Please tell me one of the animals did that."
"Nope. I think the people that did this are coming."
Toph curses loudly. "Okay, change of plans." She wrenches open the bars of the cage that Ty Lee's in. She hops out of the cage, turning her back to the wall, and clenching her hands into chi-blocking position.
"We're gonna fight them?"
"We're gonna fight them."
As Ty Lee advances forward, weaving in and out of the rows of warped cages, Toph opens a hole in the wall just big enough to fit her body into and closes it behind her.
She can sense the people coming toward them now, shouting angrily. She can tell that one of them's a firebender by the way that their attacks push their weight backwards.
Toph reaches the end of the room undetected and bursts out of the wall with a battle cry that is not strictly necessary, but is pretty fun. She has the first smuggler trapped immediately, sinking him waist-deep into the floor and moving on to the next one.
The next one is light on her feet, and Toph growls in annoyance as the smuggler leaps up onto one of the broken cages and begins climbing. Toph can still sense her there, but she hasn't had all her life to perfect seeing through metal.
She can bend it, though.
In the blink of an eye, the cage repairs itself around the rapidly-ascending woman. Toph can feel force from her legs as she tries to jump out of it, but she's unsuccessful. The cage has already closed around her. Serves her right.
"What the hell was that?" the woman shouts as Toph strides towards Ty Lee.
"Never heard of metalbending?" Toph fights the urge to make a rude hand gesture as she grins up at the smuggler.
She doesn't catch the woman's response, though, because the next thing she hears is a loud yelp from Ty Lee. Toph is pretty sure that Ty Lee just managed to chi-block the firebender, but now he's gotten up off the ground and pulled out a sword.
"A little help, Toph?" she shouts.
Toph almost feels sorry for the smuggler as his sword melts down into nothing, the metal twisting around his wrists and dragging him to the ground.
She interrupts him as he tries to speak. "We'll send a messenger hawk up to the royal palace as soon as we get out of here. They'll come for you soon enough."
Toph hears the ripping of fabric next to her. Ty Lee is winding a portion of fabric from her skirt around her upper arm.
"What happened?"
"He got me on the arm with his sword." Ty Lee sucks air in through her teeth as the makeshift bandage compresses her arm.
Toph fixes the firebending swordsman with a look that could literally melt metal. "You know, I'd repay you with a nice earth spike to the back, but I think spending some time with the shirshus before the army gets here is payment enough, right?"
The man shouts out behind her, but Toph has already turned her back. Still ensconced in her metal suit, she reaches up to the ceiling of the great, cavernous room and rips a gaping hole in it. Earth crumbles to the ground, piling up around the new opening until the dwindling daylight can finally be seen. Though not by Toph.
"Wow, we're really far down!" Ty Lee exclaims. She's in front of the sky bison's cage now, the fabric around her arm tied in a neat bow.
"Yeah," Toph agrees. She steps out of her armor, walks over to the cage and pulls the bars open, wrenching the shackles off the bison's feet. She's quickly out of breath. Toph may be the greatest earthbender in the world, but that doesn't mean she can't get tired. "Do you think the bison can fly us up to the surface?"
Ty Lee fixes the sky bison with an inquisitive look for a moment.
"She says yes," she announces.
Toph rolls her eyes. "Oh, don't pretend you you have some magical animal-understanding power. I got my fill of that when I was traveling with Aang."
Ty Lee huffs. "It's not magic. It's not like she's telepathically putting words in my mind. You just have to look at her face and see what she's trying to tell you. It's not that hard."
Toph shrugs. "Well, I've never been a master of reading facial expressions." She grabs onto the sky bison's stomach fur, climbing up onto her back.
"Right." Ty Lee laughs nervously, bending her knees to leap onto the smallish sky bison.
"Yip, yip!"
Toph shouts.
The sky bison doesn't move. Toph's eyebrows furrow in confusion.
"But that's what you're supposed to say to make a sky bison go!"
"Hmm..." Ty Lee responds, scooting forward onto the front of the sky bison's head, fixing the creature's brown eyes with an inquisitive stare. "Hup, hup!"
With a whoosh of its tail, the creature is flying up and out of the smugglers' room, towards freedom.
"You got that from a facial expression?"
"Uh-huh."
"What's her name, then?" Toph smiles with a smug gotcha expression on her face.
"Shacha."
"You're making that up."
Ty Lee shrugs. "You don't need to believe me for me to be right."
Toph is quiet for a moment before she speaks up again.
"Wait, Shacha like the sauce?"