In a few moments, it was over. The agents of the Bald Man were slaughtered as swiftly as their leader had been. Yakone made a soft choking noise. Al realized he was crying.

"Ataata- no. No there's no way he's dead. No, that- that's not possible. NO!"

He reeled to his feet, fingers curved forwards like claws, eyes blank and wide. A wet growling noise rumbled in his chest, and he stalked towards the Airbender, feet stomping against the glass floor. The machine raised its weapon arm. There was a clunk, followed a moment later by a soft spattering sound as an explosive bolt took Yakone's arm off. He tottered, still on his feet. Al felt bile rise in his throat. Yakone was still moving, almost at a run now. He brought his remaining hand around, howling incoherently, and suddenly the Airbender's feet were off the ground, limbs straining, wrenched backwards as if by some invisible force. The air filled with a faint throbbing, rushing noise, like water moving rapidly through pipes. She keened in pain, back bending impossibly far as her body crumpled. There was a pop, and she dropped to the floor, shrieking in pain. Another bolt ended Yakone. The machine stood alone amongst the carnage, apparently contemplating the broken body of the still-screaming Airbender as she writhed limply among the ruined rock garden. Then it spoke.

"Consider your failures repaid, Sangmu Tsenpo," it rumbled, breaking her neck with a delicate stomp of one huge, blade-toed foot. Then it craned its back upwards, peering stiff-backed through the broken ceiling at the night sky above. A brilliant light flickered a few times on one shoulder, and without further ado it strode out of the ruined bar by going straight through one of the walls, its massive bulk tearing the wood and paper to shreds.

There was a moment of silence, and then another large, metallic object punched a second hole in the ceiling, landing in an explosion of gravel and splinters. Al didn't need to see it to know it was a gas bomb- the huge clouds of yellowish smoke pouring out of it were clear indicators of that. He and Ed moved as one, pressing their hands together and holding their palms up to the encroaching smoke. There was a crackle of static, and then a huge bloom of blue-white light, as the entire cloud matched the elemental configuration of the surrounding air. He took a deep, gasping breath. The air smelled faintly of garlic. Ed gave him a worried look.

"Sulphur mustards, maybe?"

Al nodded slowly, thinking hard.

"She did say 'chemical bombardment.' If you wanted to kill a city with gas, a sulphur mustard would be the way to go. It's industrially not too complicated, but who in their right mind would do something like that…?"

Ed shook his head slowly, whistling through his front teeth. His face was hard and expressionless.

"They're willing to murder an entire city because the criminals there tried to learn about the Ember Group? These people are fucking insane. They didn't even use chemical weapons on Iqbal."

Al smiled, but not with feeling.

"Still think that our attitude should be every man for himself?"

Ed glared at him, but the expression was short-lived.

"Look, Al," he sighed ruefully, "Can the discussions about morality wait until we're out of this mess?"

He was right. Al sighed in turn, giving him a tentative thumbs-up.

"Let's go. Back to the house to get our gear, and then out of here. With any luck, they'll just bomb the place and leave. But that still means we have to deal with the gas."

If the muffled detonations and the rapidly-dying screaming coming from outside was any indication, the Ember Group was saturating Quiyan with considerable gusto. Already, thin curtains of yellow-brown smoke were beginning to drift through the holes in the ceiling and wall. Ed picked his way over to the broken corpse of the Airbender, pulling at her armour. He wrenched a torn plate loose with a zap of alchemic power, reshaping it into a wide bracelet inscribed with complicated arrays. He tossed it to Al, who hefted the light sky-iron, casting a seasoned eye over the patterns inscribed thereon. A moderately complex ibn Hayyan structure, designed to automatically convert sulphur mustards to breathable air, and automatically powered by the wearer's body heat.

"Neat," he said, slipping it on one wrist. It fit perfectly, of course. Ed gave him a quick smile.

"The colder it gets, the more concentrated the gas. Clever, if I do say so myself."

Al rolled his eyes.

"Hurry up."

The experience was exactly like walking through extremely heavy mist, albeit foul-smelling mist. Quiyan was eerily silent, all traces of the commotion gone. A dead city, dark air filled with a malignant yellow cloud. The streets were full of bodies, tangled and twisted over one another, their clothing stained with spatters of blood as they coughed their lives away. Criminals and beggars, rich and poor- no one had escaped the cloud. Several times Al had to look away from the horrifying tableau the death of the city had created, tears in his eyes. A homeless man, still clutching a scruffy, careworn mongrel. A mother hugging her child, both in nightclothes. All was still, casting weird shadows by the lights of random torches and lamps that still burnt in windows and on the occasional post. Occasionally, they had to pick their way around empty gas canisters, lying in circles of shattered cobblestones. Faintly, from high above, came the occasionally audible rumble of distant airship engines. Ed was swearing softly to himself in an almost constant stream of profanity, his knuckles white around the grip of his rifle. Al caught his eyes; there was murder in his gaze. He couldn't blame him.

They reached the warehouse without incident; it was a moment's work for Al to punch several huge ibn Hayyan arrays into the walls, making the air breathable if uncomfortably cold. His arm was covered in goosebumps, his fingertips slightly numb from the leeching cold, so he threw on a thick coat. They'd planned for rapid getaways in the past; within a few minutes most of the rifles were statically-charged scrap metal and every other evidence of their presence had been wiped away. With some misgivings, Al accepted a small pistol from his brother, tucking the chunky, ramshackle weapon into his belt. They were both lightly loaded with small packs stuffed full of food, tools, and the various rudiments of an active lifestyle, combined with incredibly illegal forged documents confirming them to be a wide assortment of government officials, military agents, banking representatives, religious officials and, oddly enough, cabbage salesman. The man who'd sold them to him- in gold, all in one lump payment, of course- had claimed that 'out-of-work cabbage merchant' was uninteresting enough to allow safe passage into just about anywhere without inspection. Oddities aside, they were extremely high-quality forgeries. That, plus the huge volume of gold yuans sewn into the linings of their packs would help get them out of any awkward situations. Ed had also constructed several of what appeared to be hand grenades and stashed them none too surreptitiously in an outer pocket of his bag. Al decided to let it go. Honestly, at this stage, explosives might be of use.

"Ready?" he inquired, standing in the doorway. Ed was erasing the last of the wall arrays. They'd already cleared away the arrays holding the massive door in place, leaving it an empty metal frame.

"Ready."

He turned and stepped out into the smoke. There was something… different about the light. An odd reddish haze to it. Not firelight. More steady. And much brighter, too. Something whipped by his head and clattered off the end of the alley. Some kind of dart. A second one bounced off the doorframe, narrowly avoiding his ear. Oh, sheisse.

"Ed, we're being shot at! At least two, in the road!"

He ducked back inside, heading for the road-side wall, his hands crackling with static. He punched the wall, and it shimmered into thousands of black facets as the wood and stone became volcanic glass. He punched it again, siphoning tremendous amounts of heat out of the walls of the building and putting it into the microscopic flaws in the newly-formed glass structure. Thousands of tiny air bubbles instantly superheated, and the entire wall exploded outwards, filling every square centimeter of the road outside with hundreds of tiny, incredibly sharp splinters. It also blew away the smoke, revealing at least thirty figures in distinctive ridged plate armour. About half of them were dead, their bodies sparkling with obsidian dust. The rest were very much alive. They returned fire with great panache, tiny darts hissing through the air and plinking off the inside wall of the warehouse with a sound like falling rain. One of them, wearing a suit of that weird mechanical armour they'd seen in Gaoling, directed a multi-barreled something at them, the weapon letting off a storm of blindingly bright flares with an ear-piercing hoot. Al clapped his hands, releasing an expanding sphere of nitrogen, and their light was extinguished. Ed managed to force one out of cover by virtue of moving the cobblestone he stood on several feet to the left, whereupon he unslung his rifle and fired off several quick shots. Despite his frantic aim and nonexistent stance, all three rounds struck home… and bounced off the soldier's curved sky-iron plate. Ed swore loudly, throwing the gun to the ground.

"I knew lead was a bad idea! Fine then!", he roared, leaning around the ruined wall and clapping his hands. With a hissss, an expanding cone of something liquid and extremely strong-smelling congealed out of the air, spattering over several of the Ember Group soldiers. Who promptly began melting. Ed barked a laugh.

"Ha! It is easy to corrode! I was r-"

The screaming started. He deflated quickly, the laugh turning into a sickened groan.

"Oh, gott."

There was a growing crunch, crunch, crunch, accompanied by the sound of boots on stone. A hulking mechanical figure rounded the block, slowly and deliberately crushing paving stones with each careful, lumbering step. It raised its arms, the vaguely-gun shaped weapons that passed for its hands bleeding off clouds of steam.

"ELRICS," the machine rumbled, "YOU ARE SURROUNDED AND MASSIVELY OUTGUNNED. SURRENDER NOW OR YOU WON'T BE HARMED."

Ed looked at Al. Al looked at Ed.

"Run?"

"Run."

They ran. Al extended a hand, projecting a cone of air in front of them that ate through everything in their path. Instead of going out into the street, he simply walked through the opposite wall of the alley, opening on to another warehouse full of heavy crates. From behind them came the pounding of gigantic mechanical feet. Shit, the machine could move. They sprinted down a long row of crates, punching through the wall and out into the foggy night air. They were in a cross-street, not far from the southwestern Port District.

"Where are we headed?"

"Shit, I dunno! Keep moving!"

With a roar, an airship descended out of the fog, brilliant red fog lights trained on them as they fled through the yellow mists.

"UUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUULLLLLLLLLLL LLLLLLLLLLLLAAAAAAAAAAAAA!"

"Shut the fuck up!"

"Save your breath, brother!"

Several more of the huge machines were dropping off the airship, landing with ground-shaking thuds, their oddly spindly feet striking up sparks as they strode easily down the street, gaining fast. Then Al realized. Oddly small feet. Huge, heavy machines with oddly small feet. He remembered Briggs. Snowshoes. Too much weight on one place and you'd sink in. And these things were really, really heavy.

"Ed!"

"What?!"

"The cobblestones and the ground beneath us! Make it epoxy!"

"What? That's stupid complicated alchemy! Wh-"

"BROTHER!"

Still at a dead run, Al pressed his hands together, concentrating. Epoxy was a synthetic compound, which helped, but it was still fiendishly complicated. A few seconds of TRUTH aaaaaand- there.

"Go go go!"

He leaned down, struggling to keep his balance, and let his hand drag along the ground. He gritted his teeth as energy flowed through him, his hand shaking as sparks ran through it. And the ground- changed. The cobblestone behind them subsumed into a gelatinous pool of clear yellow-white liquid, its depths throwing off odd reflections in the fog. The lead machine stepped straight into the puddle, carried by its momentum. One clawed foot rose, came pistoning down- and kept going, plunging straight into the goo. Its heavy, angular body was catapulted forwards by the sudden deceleration, hip joint exploding into a cloud of metal fragments and steam as it was wrenched around at tremendous speeds. The flat front plate slapped the epoxy hard, throwing up a slow, globbish wave of sticky epoxy, already beginning to set. The second pursuer tried to leap over the puddle, its legs exploding into motion. Unfortunately, Al and Ed were spreading the epoxy further than it could jump. It landed feet-first, sinking slowly. It managed to get its arms free, firing a few desperate shots off before the rising liquid hit the engine on its back and it ground to a halt with a noise like someone with a nose full of glue sneezing. The other pursuers stopped with considerable alacrity, sending bursts of flashing light signals up to the still-oncoming airship.

"You okay, Ed?"

Al grinned at his brother, who grinned back. He was exhausted, terrified, breathing dangerously heavily, and his ankles felt like they were about to explode, but it was freakin' amazing to be alive.

"Ragged as all hell, Al, but good! Nice job! Now what do we do about the fuckin' Zeppelin?"

He glanced up at the airship. It was flying low and steady, searchlights still locked on. The signal blister under its nose was flashing constantly, the narrow-beam lights changing colour and direction with incredible speed. Huh. Maybe they were trying to deploy marksmen or something?

"Get up there and punch the captain until he gives up?"

"That's a really gottdamn stupid plan, Al! I like it! Columns?"

"Columns!"

He skidded to a halt, tapping the ground and bracing himself as the stone shot upwards, propelling him towards the airship above. The cannons- but wait, no one had cannons here, did they?- on its hull swivelled around, firing southwards into the clouds. Odd, that. No one was shooting at them. In fact, they were even swivelling the searchlights around to-

The air resounded with an odd, rising keen, and a burst of tremendous violet light. A line of purple-white fire, pencil-thin, sliced northwards out of the fog, neatly cutting off the top quarter of the airship. Its sides tore outwards like a burst balloon, metallic ribs snapping one by one as the metal of its structure was flash-heated to liquidity. The entire broken vehicle reared backwards, tumbling end over end and smashing into the city several kilometers to the north, where it rapidly set what looked to be an entire block ablaze. Al stood atop his stone pillar, feeling sunburnt and entirely flabbergasted.

"What in the hell…?", he muttered, mind reeling.

Ed was gawping, his eyes slightly unfocussed, fingers grasping convulsively at the air.

"That- how- it's not- but it- guh."

There was a second keening wail, and another beam lanced overhead, bursting an airship hovering over the north end of Quiyan. Al shook himself, forcing his uncomprehending mind back into the present.

"Ed! I think we need to go south!"

His brother frowned at him, entirely unconcerned that they were still balanced atop twin pillars of stone swaying high above the destroyed city.

"You thinking this is an 'enemy of my enemy is my friend' sort of deal?"

Al shrugged, staring hard at the point the- beam weapons? Ray gun? Cutting lance?- had originated from. There was a faint blue-white glow in the sky, like an arc lamp or spotlight. Maybe another airship? Or- damn. More of the huge living machines from Gaoling? Then again, they died when he'd used alchemy. The Ember Group wasn't so easy to deal with.

"Right," he said, wishing he felt as confident as we sounded. "Let's keep moving. Just because they've stopped shooting at us for now doesn't mean they don't know we're still here."

They descended back to earth, the stone pillars collapsing back into the cobbles with a crackle and a hiss. South, then. This time, their voyage through the dead city wasn't so quiet. The sound of airships overhead was almost constant now, as was the regular screech-detonation of the beam. At one point, as they crested a low hill, they saw the beam graze one airship, slicing off several of its engines and a goodly chunk of its gasbag, but leaving the rest intact. It fell out of the sky with surprising grace, heeling with deceptive slowness as the mangled engine pylons on one side spat steam and fire. They didn't see it hit the ground, but there was no characteristic boom- wherever it was, it must have survived the descent. There was also evidence that there'd been troops on the ground, too- the headquarters to several of the large information brokers was in this part of town. They passed several ransacked buildings, places where discarded documents and papers littered the street in weird drifts. Several of the banks and trading companies had been literally torn open, their walls ripped apart to allow someone or something to pull their safes and vaults straight out of the foundations. At one such establishment, its high-beamed ceilings leaning crazily off broken foundations, they saw the huge footprints of the walking machines, most clustered around the gaping pit where the vault had been. Curiously, they'd left behind all the lockboxes and the smaller storage containers.

"Okay, correction on what I said earlier; these bastards would kill everyone in an entire city for a fucking smash-and-grab? They're that greedy?!"

Al put a comforting hand on Ed's shoulder, feeling the tension in his brother's small frame.

"I don't think they were after the money. These people obviously aren't lacking resources. They were after information. Think about it. This is Quiyan. That they raided the brokers is obvious. But in Quiyan, you don't keep your valuable personal documents just lying around- you keep them in places where not even the information brokers are foolhardy enough to poke their noses. You put everything in a safety deposit box inside a bank vault. Obviously the Ember Group just thought-"

"That it's simpler to steal an entire goddam bank building than just break in?"

"Al, these are people who are convinced that eight-foot-tall humanoid robots and armoured airships are the be-all and end-all of military technology."

"Point taken. Let's keep moving."

As they moved south, they began to hear the echoes of combat coming from ahead, distorted and muffled by the buildings in the way. Several times they were forced to huddle in corners or duck into doorways as increasingly large and heavily-armed groups of Ember soldiers passed them, all moving southwards. Occasionally, huge bursts of fire would make themselves visible over the tops of building. Whoever the Ember Group was fighting, they were obviously Firebenders of some kind. Al wasn't entirely sure if that was a good thing or not. Whatever it meant, it also meant that whatever they were fighting was probably human, which was a reassuring thought. The sound of airship engines was diminishing, as they either fled the area or were effortlessly batted out of the sky by the beam.

They rounded a corner, turning on to the Boulevard of Luo, a wide shopping concourse within sight of the water. What met them was not a dead, empty shopping street. It was a warzone. The damaged airship had half-crashed, half-landed inside the upper stories of one of the large seaside brothels, its lozenge-like hull imbedded in the terraced balconies of the huge pleasure house, obscuring the huge, tacky sign which had been violently edited to read 'Ba Sing Se Lady Qualit- ove Hotel'. Amazingly, the airship looked to be still partially airborne, its stern remaining aloft even through the ruined bow was firmly entangled in the trashed building. It was actually quite intact, several of the cannons in the sponsons at the stern firing fitfully out over the ocean. There were also a few of what looked to be rocket launchers, occasionally disgorging screaming projectiles, which, unguided, exploded randomly along the waterfront. The brothel itself, as well as several of the adjoining buildings, were swarming with Ember Group soldiers, all directing fire against a large knot of red-clad figures who were apparently trying to fight their way up from the wharves. Judging from the huge gouts of flame and the barrages of fireballs they were hurling about, there was a good chance that they were Firebenders. Far out over Quiyan Bay, the looming mass of a second airship could be seen, its silhouette much larger and somehow more ornate than the crashed Ember Group vessel. A huge mouthlike opening at its bow glowed white-hot, but the rest of its bulk was obscured by the clouds of mist or smoke that surrounded it. The whole scene was lit by the harsh, actinic glow of flares arcing lazily through the air. Al felt his bracelet cool somewhat- all the Firebending here had obviously cleared the air a great deal. Ed whistled softly between his teeth.

"Wow. They're really going at it. What d'you think those Firebenders are after? Trying to capture the ship?"

Al crouched down, leaning around the stoop of the fishmonger's on the corner.

"I dunno, brother. If they wanted to destroy it they could use that beam device. Take it out in an instant."

Ed frowned.

"Maybe it got damaged? They look to have some pretty heavy weapons on that airship."

There was a mechanical shriek from out over the bay, accompanied by a violent hissing noise, like water being poured over a sheet of hot metal. The noise grew louder and louder, culminating in a tremendous thump as the nose of the distant airship exploded into vivid blue fire, a miniature star that made the water of the ocean below bubble and froth. A line of purple light burst forth from the flame, playing gently over the stern of the crashed vessel. The metal melted, raining down a brilliant storm of orange fluid. There was a tearing noise, and the stern of the airship ripped off, support cables and struts twanging musically as the lifting gas in the stern pulled the structure free. The bow of the airship collapsed further into the fabric of the brothel, tearing teak and pine like uncooked pasta. The stern rose upwards, turning over and over, its broken edge still glowing a cheerful orange. It arced away into the night, before landing somewhere in the center of town with a thunderous boom. For a few seconds the entire building creaked precariously, its paper walls rippling and tearing. Then, slowly, it regained equilibrium. There was an anticipatory silence. There was a thunderous rolling detonation as dozens of rocket launchers along the side of its hull fired simultaneously, all of them directing their projectiles against the beam emitter. Only a few came close to their mark, but they were enough. Moments before impact, the rockets split into dozens of submunitions, the smaller warheads peppering the bow of the airship with dozens of tiny detonations. The fog-shrouded airship heeled sideways, huge chunks of hull splashing into the bay. It remained aloft, however, the cloud of smoke and steam replaced with the acrid smoke of numerous tiny fires, burning through the holes in its hull in a grim parody of the night sky above.

Ed whistled again.

"Son of a bitch. They disguised the amount of firepower they had left! And firing the beam showed them exactly where to aim!"

Al nodded.

"If we wanted to show our intent to the Firebenders, now would be an excellent time for something dramatic. A bold strike against the Ember Group. Something like that."

Someone poked him in the back of the neck. He went limp, almost smacking his head against the ground before rough hands caught him.

"What the fuuuuaaaah-?", Ed yelped. Al made similar incoherent noises. A calm, rough voice somewhere above them chuckled.

"You're clever, Elrics. Those were some nasty tricks you pulled. But you can't run from the Ember Group."

There was another sharp poke, and everything went gray.

Mai gritted her teeth. She was the daughter of Fire Nation nobility, with a family lineage dating back hundreds of years. She was a seasoned field agent of the Fire Army. She was the consort of Fire Lord Zuko, the generally-acknowledged power behind the throne in the Fire Nation. And here she was, up to her wrists in the small intestine of a Royal Guard sergeant who she knew from looking at his record was literally the son of a whore.

"Are you fucking done yet, milady?"

"Almost there, sergeant. Hold on- got it.!"

She found the jagged little lump, plucking the bullet out with fingers trained for flower arranging and tea ceremonies. She grabbed a small tin syrette from a pouch marked with a painted-over Ember insignia on her waist, plunging the needle into the man's stomach. He let out a bark of pain, then a low moan of enjoyment.

"Holy shit those Ember bastards make good drugs. Thanks, ma'am."

Something moved in Mai's peripheral vision. In one motion, she stood, wrenched the approaching Ember Group soldier's gas mask off, and stabbed her in the trachea with the empty syrette. She dropped with a gurgle. Mai returned her gaze to the downed Guardsman.

"Now you can thank me."

"Yyyyesssss maaaaarrrrrghh."

He lolled back, a blissful grin on his face. She bandaged him up, then signalled to several of the stretcher-bearers further down the shore. One of them gave her a thumbs-up. She stood in a half-stood, surveying their little beachhead. The last of the little pocket of Ember Groupers who'd broken through had been disposed of. She scrabbled up the beach to where Suki had made herself a little bunker in a noodle stall. The Kiyoshi Islander had taken a rather alarming liking to Ember Group weaponry. Mai couldn't deny that many of their tools were useful, especially when it came to medicine, but Suki was less interested in drugs and wound-cleansers and more with 'steam projectors' and 'support powered harness', whatever they were. Mai understood they were advanced, sure. But you could still kill a man with a steam projector just as easily as you could a man with a knife. Nonetheless, Suki had spent the past month tinkering with the Ember Group materiel they'd recovered after the Invasion. She'd dislocated various joints numerous times getting the suits of steam-driven mechanical armour working, but after hours of work and numerous visits to the Phoenix Lord Ozai's(The ship's crew were more loyal to the Fire Nation Airborne Corps than to their former 'emperor', and it had been generally agreed that the name was kind of stupid anyways) minimal sickbay her perseverance had paid off.

She sat leaned over a huge Ember Group anti-tank projector, her green armour made oddly skeletal-looking by the machinery she'd built into it, the effect only amplified by the varying brilliance of the flares in the sky. With a hiss of steam, she glanced up as Mai approached, blinking as she pulled away from the long scope. She'd modified her face paint slightly, replacing the porcelain mask with mottled layers of grey and green, a pattern she'd 'borrowed' from the Ember, of course.

"You got the breakthrough group dealt with?"

Mai sat down heavily next to her, allowing herself the luxury of a heavy sigh.

"They've been dealt with. The rest of the Guard filled the gap and they're continuing to push forwards. All of this for a single damned codebook. And we couldn't even save Quiyan."

Suki gave her a piercing look.

"We've gone over this before. There was nothing you could have done. They were ready to hit the city days before we got to the courier at the South Pole."

Mai sighed. She knew the other girl was right, but she still couldn't abandon the guilt. They'd spent a month dashing halfway around the globe, following leads gleaned from scraps of recovered documents and barely-decoded optical telegraph transmissions, trying to determine current Ember Group plans of action against non-White Lotus groups. Frankly, she didn't give a damn about the Lotus, if what she'd heard from reports of their actions was true. But she couldn't allow the Ember's campaign to hurt more civilians. They'd deal with their plans for world domination later. For now, she owed it to Zuko, wherever he was, to do the right thing. Right now, the world needed to know that the nations were all pulling together in uncertain circumstances. And dammit all, she knew her composure was cracking. She was an operative, an infiltrator, not a battlefield grunt. Her place was in the throne rooms and the back alleys, not the battlefields and the beeches. They were all hurting, in some way or another. Suki was burying herself in machinery. Ty Lee's characteristic cheeriness had become somewhat brittle of late.

"You're right. Thanks, Suki."

The other girl gave her an encouraging half-hug, the gesture made slightly uncomfortable by the layers of interwoven steel cable supporting her wrist and forearm.

"Hang in there."

She leaned back over the scope, sweeping the weapon across the entrenched Ember Group. She gave a double-take, reaching forwards and snapping another layer of lenses across the end of the scope.

"Hold on a minute… I don't believe it. They've got prisoners."

Mai pulled an ornate collapsing telescope (not Ember Group make, thankfully) out of her sleeve, flicking it open and doing her best to follow the line of Suki's scope. She was right. They were pulling two limp forms, under the influence of pressure-point paralysis, no doubt, into the brother. They looked almost like children. Small frames, anyways. But something wasn't quite right. The weapons they were carrying looked almost like Ember make, but not quite. And from the smaller of the two- yes, a glint of metal at one ankle. Hold on. Hold on.

"Suki, give me the scope."

She moved aside without a word, letting Mai settle in behind the huge weapon. She peered through the eyepiece, focussing on the face of the larger of the two. The shadows were too deep to see anything- but then someone launched another volley of flares, and the face came into stark clarity. That was a familiar hairstyle- though the colour was wrong. And the skin tone. That, plus the facial shape…

"Oh Agni. It's the Elrics. It's the spirits-damned Elrics."

"Seriously?"

Mai stood up. She interlocked her fingers, stretching her hands out in front of her until her knuckles crackled. She reached down, unstrapping her gas mask (Ember Group surplus, of course) from her waist and tightening it over her head. The inside smelled like rubber and sweat.

"Suki, get Ty Lee please. It's time to end this."

A little over fifteen minutes later, Mai rounded a corner in the long, poorly-lit hallways of the Ba Sing Se Lady Quality Plus Love Hotel just in time to see a man crash through a wall, a large, hideous vase serving to cushion his fall. He staggered to his feet, only to drop his weapon when he saw the two dozen Firebenders and three very dangerous ladies pointing their fists, projectors, fingertips and knives at him. Things had been relatively simple. The captain of the Phoenix had managed one final shot from the Compressed-Plasma Incinerator before the cooling system had failed completely, but that one weak blast had been enough to silence most of the Ember Group's heavy weapons. They'd taken out their commanding officer, wrenching the codebooks out of the hands of the signalmen moments before they could destroy them, and Ty Lee had been 'persuasive' until he told them where the Elrics were being held. Now, only moments away from their destination, people were flying through walls.

The surrendering soldier moved to take a step forwards, sucking a panicked breath through his gas mask, when a small figure leapt through the hole in the wall and smashed him to the floor with a beautifully-executed spinning jump kick. The soldier's attacker spun into a normal standing position as he landed, holding his hands up, palms open. A second figure, much taller than the first- yep, that was Alphonse- stepped gingerly through the hole in the wall. Odd. They were both maskless, apparently unconcerned by the yellow-brown whisps of gas floating through the slightly-askew (the airship had shifted again) halls of the Ba Sing Se Lady Quality Plus. Ed stepped forwards, clearing his throat and speaking in a loud, clear voice.

"I mean you no harm. My name is Edo Laorei. I am an independent merchant trader formerly of Quiyan. I can-"

It was worth risking death by toxic gasses just to see the expressions on their faces when she pulled the mask off.

"Elrics, come on. We leave you alone for a month and you go out whoring? Absolutely appalling."

-~0X0~-

No, your eyes do not deceive you! The story continues! As you may have noticed, I made some updates to chapters 4 and 14, to continue my policy of editing to fix older, discarded versions of the continuity, cut down on some of the extraneous POV characters, and generally make the earlier chapters flow better. I also fixed chapter 14 by re-adding Ed to the final scene. He was there in the early drafts, but I got a bit carried away with the editing and he was unintentionally removed, as several of you pointed out.

This chapter took so long in coming due to NaNoWriMo and my continue involvement with the SCP Foundation (check 'em out! Seriously!), aaaaaaaand I will make no guarantees on when the next one will be done. We'll see what my workload's like.

As always, thanks to everyone who reviewed and followed and subscribed! You're great!

Happy New Year, unless you're in Australia or similar time zones in which case Happy Retroactive New Year!

Also: HtE is now a cool 77, 000 words long. Golly.

Also also; "Energy-the-hedgehog". I read your review with some concern and I'd like to publicly rebut it. First off, I won't deny that I've struggled with pacing, although I do feel that I've fixed most of the continuity errors and trimmed off some or most of the hooks for plot-lines I never developed. This story has been created over an extremely long period of time, often being written when I had no access to the rest of the body of the piece. Continuity glitches happen. At one point I was seriously considering putting a "location/time" stamp at the start of each scene, movie-style.

I'm curious as to how several of my villains are like Naruto characters?I've done my best to remain consistent with the uses of bending and technology present in the television series, with any extensions on those being logical extrapolations of the preexisting framework. An explanation of this point would be nice.

Now, as for super benders- who? I have scaled up the power level of the bending somewhat, but only because we never saw in-show bending being used all that destructively. Airbending, for instance, is a fantastically lethal and dangerous skill. I figured it was necessary to make that clear. Now, as for giant monsters- you mean the tulpa? I'd argue that their existence is a matter of personal taste- there's a lot of stuff in the Avatarverse that was deliberately left unexplained. I'm merely filling some . Steampunk style 'modern' technology. Nothing in this is particularly modern. I mean in-show the Fire Nation has heavier-than-air flying vehicles, jetskis, and plate glass (which is actually kind of more implausible than the previous two). I've tried to keep the technology reasonable by introducing sky-iron. A light, strong, heat-resistant material makes steam technology capable of a great deal more, since it removes the problems of excessive mass and steam failure at high temperatures. I will admit I handwaved where they're getting all the fuel and material from, but that will be explained later. Honest.

As for the atomic technology- that will be explained further, buuut here's my justification. First off, Earthbenders. Intuitive understanding of how natural solid elements (like, say, uranium) work. Second, this isn't a modern atomic bomb. It's what's known as a reactor bomb- a dead-end on the tree of nuclear technology. It's a nuclear device that requires no moving parts, or even electronics. All you need is a shitload of uranium and graphite, both of which are naturally occurring. Reactor bombs are gigantic, cumbersome, expensive to construct and impossible to transport, but above all else they are simple. All you need for a reactor bomb is a basic understanding of atomic theory and a lot of strip-mines.

Lastly, you seem to be arguing that because the heroes are outgunned, outmatched and outmanned, the story isn't fun. My response to that is- how great's it gonna be when they stop running and start actively kicking ass? The bigger they are, the harder they fall, as the proverb goes.

Congratulations. I've never wall-of-texted at someone on the Internet before. Hell, I dunno if you'll even read this. Ah well. Needed to get that off m'chest.