A crew member flew across the room and bounced harshly off of the engine, shaking Wan awake from his debilitating concussion. Rubbing his head painfully, the sound of yet another pressure leak erupting from the God of Steel sped his recovery, as his irritation propelled him upright to clamp his spanner around the exploded valve, screwing it shut with an almighty tug, cursing "c'mon, My Lady! Don'tcha dare forsake me now!"

Getting his bearings was hard to do, since his entire vision seemed clouded with steam. The Engine Room had been transformed into a rumbling, spitting, fuming, dying furnace in itself. He kept his feet planted just above the water that still flooded the Room, and he readied his spanner to face whatever horrors would emerge from the mist. And emerge they did, as white, cracked masks, staring through eyes of infinite sadness and rage, drifted slowly into focus, one at a time. With the steam masking everything, they looked like they were suspended in the air, peering impassively at the Chief Engineer.

The spanner vibrated from Wan's incessant shaking, but he still stood firm. Nothing was going to topple his god. Especially not these freaks, he thought. The Shachihoko paused before him, and did nothing except look, their empty eyes staring at him incessantly. The situation was so bizarre that Wan found himself chuckling. The Shachihoko didn't budge.

You killed our children.

"I wish I did! I'd've done a damned better job at finishing y'off if I was in charge!" Wan challenged, his abject terror somehow feeding a fool's bravery in the Chief Engineer. He could have faced down armies in this state, but it was volatile, unstable, "don'tcha see!? It ain't yer time no more! Yer time's over! It's finished! It's her time now! An' nuthin' y'can do will stop it!"

Wan pointed behind him at the God of Steel. The Shachihoko's gaze never moved.

Why did you kill our children?

"'cuz that's jus' progress, ye freaks! Progress an' a better tomorrow fer My Lady! That extra few minutes of travellin' time sliced off? Y'think ye deserve even that? Ye're worthless!" Wan was shaking like a leaf and still going, "ye can't accept yer days're done! We don't need ya no more! We never did! We found sumthin' better, an' we forged her with our own hands! We don't need th' old gods! We don't need nuthin'! Ye were extinct th' moment we humans came along! We're bigger than ya! An' there ain't nuthin' y'can do ta stop it!"

The Shachihoko didn't do anything to interrupt Wan's little spiel, and the Chief Engineer erupted into laughter, raising his spanner high above him, "yeah! That's right! Y'ere scared! Y'ere scared'a what we can do! Ye should be scared! Nuthin' can stop her! Nuthin' can stop th' God of Steel!"

Two blue streaks seared the air horizontally in front of him, but nothing seemed to change. Confused, he stared at the spanner distantly as it separated into three parts, splashing into the puddle ineffectually. The spanner that he'd carried around for decades, that had lasted being dropped into acid, crushed in-between cogs and once even had a cargo container dropped on it was chopped into non-existence by a slice of water.

The Chief Engineer stopped laughing. Cradling the remains of the spanner, fear finally overtook him. He stared back at the Shachihoko's faces, eyes filling with tears, trying to say something that might have made everything better. His god had deserted him...all she did was fume behind him, unable to do anything to the mask-faces that stared indifferently back. He lost himself in their eyes, senses flooded with their loss and their sadness, and their endless fury. They could not forgive, they could not even imagine forgiveness. It was a foreign concept to them. Wan's knees buckled in the face of the infinite, unable to grasp it. The infinite condemned him.

YOU KILLED OUR CHILDREN.

Wan's teeth chattered, his throat gurgled, and the stump that remained of his spanner fell from his hands. He broke down and fell to his knees, fists held to his chest clenched tightly. His old eyes bulged with complete terror. All he believed in, all he put his trust in, collapsed like a house of cards. No matter what humanity did, the things it achieved, the strides it made, the gods it made, it was nothing compared to the awesome power of nature's anger. It gave life and took it, with impunity, and he dared to think that he could stand up to it and win. His hubris imploded, and all that was left was a shell of his former self.

"I'm sorry!" Wan pleaded, bawling his eyes out like a child, "I'm sorry! Forgive me, please! I didn't...I'm sorry! I'm sorry!"

The Shachihoko paid no heed. Dozens of tendrils slowly raised from the water, aiming at Wan and the engine, sentencing the murderer and his god to execution. Wan wept in the face of nature, in the face of the eternal and endless grief of the world he dared to think he had dominion over, and slaughtered with impunity.


Aang stared at his hands. He was meant to protect all living things, wasn't he? More than that, it was what he was...or was the message different? What was he meant to do? Whenever he was this angry, he had felt the urge to destroy the world, and now without the Avatar State he had apparently found a new means of doing this. This was what fire represented, after all...it consumed all living things.

"C'mon, Aang! When I say 'dead-weight' I'm not talking to someone else!" Toph dragged Aang off his feet by his shoulders, and singularly failed to drag him out of his self-imposed funk as well, "if you go into Avatar-go-bye-bye-land one more time, then that does it. I'm leaving you here."

"You're...wait, we're going?" Aang shook himself out of his self-doubt to focus, steadying himself after another bulkhead-rippling rumble, "where are we going?"

"The ship's falling apart! We need to evacuate and stuff!" Toph argued, "this whole thing's gonna blow sky-high!"

"Toph!" Katara shouted in strained tones. He was pushing her arms hard either side of herself. The holes either side of the hull were bulging with water being pushed back by Katara's bending, but they in turn were being pushed inward by something outside. Katara had her teeth gritted in effort trying to keep the creatures back, "...if I let go...they're gonna rush in...and I can't stop them this time. I don't know...how long...I can last..."

Toph placed a hand on Momo, perched on her shoulder, as she paused. She hadn't given much serious thought to the possibility of dying. It had just never occurred to her, even with a dead boy standing right next to her. ...like heck was she going to start now, "how many more can there be!?"

"Try hundreds..." Katara grunted, "all pressed up...against...the hull..."

"All pressed up..." something popped inside Toph's head, and she excitedly dropped to her knees and spread her palms across the floor, buried underneath the puddle, "that's it! The keel! They're pressing up against something I can use!"

She held an arm up and flicked her fingers into the shape of a claw. The armband on the raised arm mimicked the pattern, forming a sharp blade. Digging into the bottom of the hull, she raised up her other arm to do the same, puncturing the hull as hard as she could and trying to peel back the inner, pure-metal layer a piece at a time. She told the others, "I'll need my hands and my feet for this! If I can plant them on the outer keel, I can bend it!"

"And then what?" Aang asked warily.

"Whaddya think!?" Toph snarled, busily peeling back bits and chunks of the inner keel, hindered by the water she had to work under, "they're gonna get it now. No one messes with me and gets away with it. Not even gods."

Aang's stomach fell. There was something about all this that hit too close to home. The entire Shachihoko race was there, clustered around the hull...the last of their kind.


"Punch it!" Shui screamed, leaping down next to Sokka to tug viciously on her half of the pump control cylinder. Sokka tugged the other half, spinning it around as fast as possible. It was heavy and needed inhuman amounts of effort to twist round, but with their adrenaline bursting through the roof of the Engine Room, they had it twisting around so hard that the pump mechanisms were finding it hard to keep up.

The rumbling increased in intensity. The entire floor was beginning to buckle. But, gradually and then rapidly, the water level in the Engine Room dropped. Out of the corner of his eye, Sokka could see the Shachihoko towering over a weeping, crumpled Wan, at first ready to strike but soon pulling against the great pull of the drainage pumps, fitted into the corners of the Engine Room. They tried hard to remain, but the engine was vibrating off its hinges as it pushed the pumps to their limit.

"C'mon! C'mon! C'mon! Faster! Faster! Faster! Faster!" Shui chanted desperately, as the both of them kept tugging hard on the pump control to push it harder and harder to expel the river spirits. They were just about succeeding, as the creatures strained, pulled on their pillars of water, but still one by one were dragged into the holes. Wan might not have been wrong about one thing...human invention was capable of some awesome and terrible things. The two of them kept twisting the pump well past the point where it was safe to assume the Shachihoko were gone, until Shui stopped and flopped over onto the top of the cylinder, gasping to get her energy back, "that...that should do it. Th' pumps'll push them things inta th' sea."

"Great...where all the others are," Sokka gasped, lying back against the wall to catch his breath. He didn't have any time to relax, though, as the panel he was resting on burst outward, knocking him forwards into the side of the engine. Peeling his face off, he looked irritably into Shui's face, which in turn looked terror-stricken. She had realised something bad. Very bad.

Their eyes shot up to the bursting valves and pipes that shot out of the engine, billowing steam everywhere. The floor shook and the gas lights that lined the sides of the Engine Room flared and burst all at once. Sokka lost his footing and had to grab onto Shui's hand to keep him spiralling head-first into the instrument panel. An ear-splitting whining sound shot out from the God of Steel, and the Gang Shen groaned along her entire length. Sokka peered to Shui for answers.

"We pushed her too hard!" Shui gasped, "she needs ta cool down, slowly! If anythin' stops...th' whole ship'll explode!"

"But..." Sokka realised, "they have the Bridge! They'd have an emergency stop switch, right!? If they do that..."

Shui squeezed Sokka's hands and looked at him in despair, "...there's nothing we can do..."


The mother and daughter huddled close. So did the lady assistants. So did most of the passengers and crew of the FLS Gang Shen. If they were going to die, they didn't want to die alone.


Katara's knees fell into the puddle. The effort was exhausting her. Sweat rolled down her cheek as the holes in the side of the ship bulged further and further into the ship. She called out, "hurry up!"

Aang rubbed his hands together nervously. It was all happening again. It was all happening again in front of him...and he could stop it. Of course he could...but he had no choice.

Toph tore off another piece of metal. There was enough room now, she realised, but in planting her hands down she discovered a problem...the water was too high. To kneel down enough, she needed to be completely underwater. The one thing that sometimes woke her up at nights, and she had to suffer it for them all to live. Ah well...she decided...no time like the present to rid herself of a phobia or two. The blind girl breathed in deep and held her breath before disappearing under the surface.

She hated water, with a passion that few could possibly fathom. She'd have enough of it, and gratefully spread her fingers along the impure metal beneath her. She could feel the earth inside...the faint echo of solid ground. At long last...after a journey such as this...she had reached it. Solid ground...or at least something like it. Her feet stepped onto it, and, preparing herself, she thumped the metal hard with her palms.

Toph was overloaded with sense. She'd been denied it for such a while that she drunk the sensation hungrily. No one could ever feel like this. Only she could do it, and that was what made her the greatest Earthbender in the world...no one could disagree now. She felt it all...the water making its motions around the keel...its shape and structure...its rivets and bolts...and clutching onto it were...were...

Toph could feel them...huddling up against the hull. Hundreds of them. The entire species really was there, clamouring close for the demise of the Avatar, or for getting their children back or whatever insane thought processes went on behind those masks. She could pick out each one individually, feel each and every single one of them, all over the keel, moving and watching and waiting. Feeling down...one was staring straight through the keel, right below her fingers. It felt like it was staring right at her, and underneath the water all they had to separate them was a thin layer of metal. She held the fate of an entire species in her hands, and she was staring right into the face of the species she was about to make extinct.

Toph hesitated, as much from the audacity of what she was about to do as its morality. Never mind if she should do it...could she? This trip had fed her doubts, and now those doubts were coming back to haunt her.


Xuan could see it through the maze of giggling faces. The tiny hand reaching up to the emergency stop switch. That switch with the label underneath explicitly telling anyone thinking of using it to never use it in any circumstances whatsoever.

The administrator drew his arms over his chest. The giggling reached a crescendo, and whatever trace of Nandi was left was vanished. All that was left was a puppet. A giggling, convulsing, jerking, leaking, puppet. All of the children were transforming into the same thing, their giggling rising into hysteria, no longer smiling at anything, just grinning inanely in complete rapture, their final task close to done.

The tiny hand rested on the emergency stop switch, clawed its fingers around it, and began to pull.


Sokka and Shui, the Engine Room falling all around them, clutched each other tightly. They didn't want to die alone either.


The Shachihoko gathered. It was so close. Their vengeance against everyone, even the Avatar, was deliriously close. Nature didn't need to fall back against man. It could fight back. And win. And take back from the humans what was taken from them. They watched as they always watched, emptily.


Katara sagged. Her arms dropped slowly, overwhelmed. She cried in exhaustion, "...I...can't..."

Toph, gripping the keel, could feel the presence of the Shachihoko closely. They closed in. It wasn't a question of whether she could or not. She had to.

Aang felt a tear fall down his cheek. There was no other way, but he still couldn't accept it. Unable to reconcile, he simply murmured, "...no..."

Toph pressed her palms down and twisted her feet, squeezing down on the keel.


Across the entire surface of the keel, the metal twisted and pierced. Spike after spike erupted from its surface, thrusting straight into the Shachihoko. The spikes pierced through between their infinite eyes and out the other side, leading the mask-faces to split into two, one after another. The pieces clung onto the Gang Shen for a brief moment before falling away, down into the blue abyss. In a split second, the last of the Shachihoko ceased to be.


The tiny hand fell away from the switch. The giggling gurgled into a strangled gasp, and Nandi flopped to the ground, the grin disappearing from his young face. The other children fell lifeless around Xuan, as the force that acted upon them disappeared. They were just children now. Or...at least they were.

Xuan, at first frightened by dead children flopping down all around him, laughed in relief as he realised he was going to get through this alive after all. He'd shown them! He had faced the soldiers of the damned and yet he still lived! He wiped his brow with relief. There was nothing that could stop him now...he'd be famous! The one who got away! That's what he'll be...the one who controlled the only ship who survived the Mo Ce Sea attacks! His relief was palpable, still subsisting even after something clunked behind the locked door to the bridge.

Looking up, light flooded into the darkened bridge, and in the doorway, at the head of a distressed mob of parents, Kyo was shuddering in grief-stricken anger. She stared tearfully, silently and piercingly at Xuan. He was wondering distantly why she was so angry, until it dawned on him that here he was, the only living soul on the bridge, with the bodies of their dead children at his feet. He gulped.

"It wasn't me..." Xuan shook his head panickly, shrinking back from the distressed mother, "It wasn't me! Oh...no...no...no sweet spirit to Agni! It wasn't me!"

There is nothing in the world that could stand against a mother's grief.


Sokka and Shui remained locked in each others' arms, afraid to let each other go. They didn't notice the violent shuddering was dying down, even if it was slight. It took Captain Mayu peering around the edge of the pumping alcove to knock them out of their seclusion.

"I'm sure I'm interrupting something, but if you don't mind, can you help clear up this mess?" Mayu barged in, forcing Sokka and Shui to step apart from each other and cover up their mutual embarrassment.

"S...sorry ma'am!" Shui squealed, "s..so...is it over?"

"Looks like...we just got word back from the bridge. Those missing kids have been found..." Mayu stopped herself from saying something, believing there were things that were better left unsaid, concentrating on Shui in particular, "and Chief Wan is no longer in any position to run things, so I suppose that makes you Acting Chief Engineer for now. See that the engine is brought back into working order as soon as possible."

"Yes ma'am!" Shui nodded. Mayu ran quickly away to sort out the rest of the ship, leaving the two of them to share a deeply awkward moment. Shui breathed in deeply, "well...might as well make ourselves handy..."

"Yeah..." Sokka chimed in distantly. His attention was distracted by Chief Engineer Wan, who was crouched in front of the God of Steel cradling the stump of his spanner in both hands, rocking back and forth with a wide, distant look in his eyes, completely cut off from the rest of the world.

He mumbled under his breath in a constant loop, "...I'm sorry...I'm sorry...I'm sorry..."


Toph drew her palms back, pulling the spikes back into the hull of the Gang Shen. Once done, she burst through the surface of the water and spluttered, breathing deeply from holding her breath for so long. Toph's sudden re-appearance shocked Katara momentarily, still heavily tired and lying on her back from pushing against the water so hard.

Momo flew down to land on Toph's shoulder, but the Earthbender shooed the winged lemur away, standing tall with hands on hips and looking positively imperial. She stomped the hull and demanded to know, "whose ship is this!?"

Katara groaned in tiredness, rubbing the side of her head irritably, "I guess it has to be yours..."

"Damn right, it's mine!" Toph grinned manically, before slyly extending a hand upwards, "and as the greatest Earthbender ever to walk on solid ground, I will kindly allow this lemur to grace his feet with my shoulder."

Momo wearily glided overhead before finally settling down on her hand, patting his way to perch on her shoulder and sagging in disappointment. Katara rubbed her eyes and peered around...noticing Aang sitting by himself with his back to the others. Concerned, she stood up and walked over, laying a hand on his shoulder, "...you okay?"

Aang hesitated before answering, "...yeah. I'm okay."

"Aang, you really don't need to beat yourself up over this," Toph interrupted and chimed in herself, "I saw these things...well, 'saw' them...you know what I mean. They were nothing. They were shells. They didn't deserve saving."

"They were going to kill everyone, Aang," Katara reasoned, "we didn't have a choice."

"I know..." Aang looked up at the cathedral of iron above him, "we did what we had to do. Maybe it was meant to be this way. If something threatens life, no matter what it is, human or spirit, needs to be dealt with..." He cradled himself sullenly, "...but that doesn't make me feel any better."

"That's why you're going to learn Firebending, so you can be the Avatar again," Katara soothed, "so that you can make everything better."

"Yes..." Aang stood up on his two feet, facing them with a renewed sense of purpose and resolve, "it's what I have to do, and this is why I need to do it. The world needs me, and I can't run away from it any longer. I will do whatever it takes, and more than that, I will restore balance to this world. It's what I'm meant to do. It's what I am. And nothing is going to change that!"

Surprised by the forcefulness of Aang's determination, Katara and Toph both nodded in resolve. Even Momo felt obliged to join in. In the depths, where the old and the new clashed tragically, they renewed their pledge to save the world from itself.

To Be Continued…

Avatar: The Last Airbender Concept and Characters © Nickelodeon 2005-06


Author's Note: How did I do it? This story that has been moving slower than the Somme Offensive, and then I go and write three parts in only two days. I'm done! The story is all done! ...how!? I...do not...understand!

I've been really struggling with this, but now, just as I decided to take a lengthy hiatus, all of a sudden I'm enjoying it again. It doesn't affect my decision though. My fan-ficcing has been interfering with my schoolwork, and now I've completed the story over the weekend I won't have to write it during the working week. I can concentrate. But there's one more Rough Rhinos bit coming up in the final section that I had so much fun with that it's really got me hyped up about working on more...but it will have to come later. Dissertation on Karl Popper awaits!

The next part will be posted tomorrow evening, since staggered releases are apparently better read. Enjoy!