Sorry about the wait, I had this other story that had a lot more reviewers, and that encouraged me to write more chapters instead of writing for this story. If you review, I might be able to write FASTER!
18
Hoshiko and the others, along with Tahn and Ying, walked closer to the wall. Although, a certain flying form caught their attention and they looked to see Aang flying towards them.
"Aang!" Katara exclaimed, surprised, "What are you doing here? I thought you were looking for Appa."
"I was." Aang said, "But something stopped me. Something big." They followed him to the wall and once there, he and Toph began bending the earth they stood on to bring them up higher and higher along the wall.
"Now, what's so big that Appa has to wait?" Sokka asked, genuinely curious about what would cause Aang to stop looking for his beloved bison.
"That." Aang said, nodding at something in the distance. Everyone looked over and saw a huge drill, along with a huge deployment of Fire Nation tanks, coming towards the city. Everyone stepped off the earth that they had used to climb the wall so they could better see it.
"We made it to Ba-Sing-Se, and we're still not safe." Ying lamented, "No one is!" Tahn gently put his arms around her and their daughter to try and comfort her.
"What are you people doing here?" A voice asked, everyone turned to see a soldier had addressed them. "Civilians aren't allowed on the wall." Aang stepped towards him.
"I'm the avatar." He said, "Take me to whoever's in charge."
Once again, Hoshiko was amazed at what the name 'avatar' could do. They went straight to the man in charge without any questions or fuss.
The man in charge was rather aged, with a thin moustache and goatee, dressed in an Earth Kingdom general uniform. His name was General Sung.
"It is an honor to welcome you to the outer wall, young avatar." He said with a friendly smile, "But your help is not needed."
"Not needed?" Aang repeated in surprise.
"Not needed." General Sung confirmed. He got up from his desk, "I have the situation under control." He walked around his desk and began to lead them to another part of the wall that looked over the more rural part of Ba-Sing-Se, "I assure you, the Fire Nation cannot penetrate this wall! Many have tried to break through it, but none have succeeded." He smiled as he looked out over the many fields.
"What about when The Dragon of the West attacked the wall?" Hoshiko asked, remembering that little piece from her schooling in Fire Nation history, "He got through."
"W-Well, technically, yes." General Sung said, obviously not expecting the comment, "But…! He was quickly expunged!" Hoshiko raised an eyebrow doubtingly, the general cleared his throat, "Nevertheless, that's why the city is named 'Ba-Sing-Se', It's the impenetrable city. They don't call it 'Na-Sing-Se'!" He laughed a little at his own joke. No one else did, so he explained it, "That means penetrable city."
"Yeah, thanks for the tour," Toph said as the general walked past them, "But we still got the drill problem."
"Not for long!" General Sung said with a triumphant grin as he walked over to a telescope, "To stop it, I've sent an elite platoon of earth benders called the Terra Team." He said the name in a gruff voice, as to make them sound more intimidating.
"That's a good group name." Sokka complimented, "Very catchy." Hoshiko rolled her eyes. She walked next to the general as he looked out of the telescope at his earth bending platoon.
"You do realize that drill is made of metal, don't you?" Hoshiko began, "It doesn't matter how 'elite' the earth benders are, metal is metal, and earth can't beat metal no matter how hard you try." She looked out to the Terra Team, and saw that their earth bending attacks had absolutely no effect on the giant drill. "Told you." She was surprised when she saw two forms sliding down the drill and jumping in the middle of the huge group. They fought against the earth benders, and took them down, one by one, with ease. In minutes, the 'elite platoon' was down and destroyed.
General Sung looked up from his telescope with wide eyes, after a moment, he cried, "WE'RE DOOMED!" Sokka reached over and slapped him.
"Get ahold of yourself, man!" He said. General Sung nodded numbly.
"You're right." He said, rubbing the spot Sokka had slapped, "I'm sorry."
"Maybe you'd like the avatar's help now?" Hoshiko asked with a grin.
General Sung walked over to Aang, with his head hung low as he whimpered, "Yes, please…"
Everyone looked out over the wall as the drill came closer to the wall.
"So, the question is," Aang began, "How are we gonna stop that thing?" Everybody looked over at Sokka.
"Why are you all looking at me?" He asked.
"You're the idea guy." Aang said.
"So I'm the only one who can ever come up with a plan?" Sokka asked, he pouted childishly, "That's a lot of pressure!"
"And also the complaining guy." Hoshiko said with a wry smirk.
"That part I don't mind." Sokka said. Hoshiko rolled her eyes.
"Um, excuse me…" A soldier came up to them, bowing nervously, "Our soldiers just returned from the drill, and… Well…"
"Well what?" Toph asked him, "Spit it out."
"We're not sure what's wrong with them." He said, "We'd like the avatar's wisdom to help us know what to do." Everyone looked over at Aang, who shrugged.
"Uh, Katara," He looked over at his water bending teacher, "Why don't you heal them?"
"I'll give it a shot." She said.
Katara moved the water around one of the earth bender's arm, checking it for injuries.
"What's wrong with him?" General Sung asked, "He doesn't look injured." In truth, he was right. The soldier looked perfectly fine, there was no blood, fresh bruises or new scars of any kind on his body that hadn't been there before.
"His chi is blocked." Katara said, she moved the water into his arm to help it move again.
"Who did this to you?" Hoshiko asked the man as she came over to him, having Katara help him sit up so she could help move his muscles again.
"Two girls ambushed us," The soldier explained as Hoshiko took hold of his arm and began twisting it painfully until a loud crack! was heard, "Argh! One of them hit me with a bunch of quick jabs- Urgh!" Hoshiko moved her hands away from his now moving leg, and walked over to his other one, "And suddenly I couldn't earth bend, and I could barely move- Augh!" Hoshiko got up and walked over to check his back to fix his spinal cord, "And then she cartwheeled away. Ow!" He wiggled his toes and fingers around, then he turned back to Hoshiko, "You're very good." Hoshiko nodded once in thanks.
"Quick jabs and cartwheels…" Hoshiko muttered, looking over at Katara, "Sound familiar?"
"Ty Lee." Katara said, "She doesn't look dangerous, but she knows the human body and its weak points." She explained this to General Sung, "It's like she takes you down from the inside."
Sokka gasped, suddenly shouting, "Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh!" And he looked like a child who was excited about knowing an answer in school.
"Yes?" Katara asked him, standing.
"What you just said!" Sokka said, pointing to his sister, "That's how we're gonna take down the drill! The same way Ty Lee took down all these big earth benders!"
"By hitting its pressure points!" Toph said.
"Sokka, that's brilliant!" Hoshiko exclaimed.
Aang walked over to the window in the nursing station and looked at the drill, "We'll take it down from the inside."
The five of them waited outside in the trenches the Terra Team had made in preparation of the drill before their futile attack. Toph turned to everyone.
"Once I whip up some cover, you're not gonna be able to see." Toph explained, "So stay close to me." She jumped out in front of the trench and held out her hands, they shook for a moment, then she used her earth bending to create a gigantic dust cloud. "Run!" She shouted, heading straight into it. Everyone quickly followed her into the cloud. Hoshiko could see why they needed to stay close, without Toph's being able to see by vibrations in the earth, they would be completely lost. They kept running until they came to the side of the gigantic drill. Toph used her earth bending to create a hole in the ground. "Everyone into the hole!" She commanded, Aang and Sokka were the first ones in, followed by Katara and Hoshiko, then Toph, who closed the hole behind them.
"It's so dark down here." Sokka said, commenting on the now pitch-blackness of the hole, "I can't see a thing!"
"Oh no, what a nightmare!" Toph said sarcastically as she earth bended a tunnel for them to travel in.
"Sorry." Sokka said quickly. Toph quickly bended their escape and they climbed out of the ground, seeing that they were directly under the drill. They looked for a way inside, and Sokka was the first to find it.
"There!" He pointed to a small, square opening a few feet away from them. Aang was the first one up, and he used his air bending to make sure he got there. He grabbed onto a low-hanging pipe and held onto it with his knees. He held his hands out for Katara and helped her in, then Hoshiko, then Sokka. Toph didn't move at all. Sokka stuck his head out of the hole and looked at her, "Toph, come on!"
"No way am I going in that metal monster." Toph said, "I can't bend in there! I'll try to slow it down out here."
"Okay, good luck." Sokka said, Aang hopped up into the drill and they snuck down the hall to an engine room with different pipes all over the room. "I need a plan of this machine." Sokka looked all around the room, "Some schematics that show what the inside looks like, then we can find its weak points."
"And just where are we going to get something like that, oh great genius?" Hoshiko asked sarcastically. Sokka pulled out his machete and sliced away at one of the pipes, making steam shoot out of it.
"What are you doing?! Someone's gonna hear us!" Aang said, searching the room for anyone who might be coming.
"That's the point!" Sokka said, "I figure a ship this big needs engineers to run it! And when something breaks…"
"They come to fix it!" Katara said.
"Then we'd better hide fast." Hoshiko said, the four of them went behind a corner, listening as heavy footsteps got closer and closer, until a very heavy-set engineer walked past them towards the broken pipe. Katara stepped out from her hiding spot, the man turned around when he heard her footsteps, and she quickly froze the steam around him and the broken pipe.
"Hi." She greeted. Sokka ran up to the man and grabbed the rolled up sheet of paper in his hands.
"This'll work, thanks!" He said over his shoulder as he ran off. Before she ran off, Hoshiko made a face at the man and followed the others up the stairs to an empty room filled with more pipes. Sokka unrolled the paper, which showed a schematic of the drill's inner workings. He looked it over for a moment, analyzing it, "It looks like the drill is made of two main structures." He pointed to the picture of a machine in the middle of the drill, "There's the inner mechanism, where we are now," He pointed to the outside of the drill, "And the outer shell. The inner part and the outer part are connected by these braces. If we cut through them, the entire thing will collapse." Everyone nodded in agreement to the plan and ran off to find the braces.
It took them a moment to get to the braces without being seen, but they made it. Hoshiko gaped at the size of the braces, seeing as how each one was thick enough for four people to walk on. She knew she shouldn't have expected anything less from the Fire Nation's ingenuity in mechanics, but she was still shocked at the size of the over 100 foot pieces of metal they were going to cut.
"Wow, it looks a lot bigger in person than it does in the plans." Sokka said, "We're gonna have to work pretty hard to cut through that."
"What's with the 'we' stuff?" Hoshiko asked, "Aang, Me, and Katara are going to be doing all the work."
"Look, I'm the plan guy, you three are the cut-stuff-up-with-bending guys." Sokka explained before striking a ridiculous pose, "Together, we're Team Avatar!" Hoshiko sent Katara a dry look, as if to ask 'is he serious?'
"Come on, we better get started." Katara said, the others nodded and walked over to the pipe, "We'll do this side, and Hoshiko, you can do that side." Hoshiko nodded in agreement.
"Okay." She lifted her hands up and the shadows around her came up in inky black blobs, while Katara bended some water out of her pouch, quickly bending it to Aang on the other side, making a very large cut in the metal brace, Hoshiko did the same with her shadows, making a cut that was just as large as Katara's and Aang's. The two water benders went back and forth with the liquid as quickly as they could, and Hoshiko kept shooting shadows through the metal. After five minutes of straight bending, the three of them stopped to take a break, even though they were almost finished.
"Come on, team, don't quit now!" Sokka cheered, "We're-" Tired of hearing the 'we' when he wasn't doing any work, Hoshiko snarled and brought up her shadows in a threatening way, glaring at him and baring her fangs. Sokka flinched, "I mean, you're almost there." Hoshiko turned back to the brace and she and the others began again. After a few more slices, they broke through the brace completely. They waited for their work to take effect, and they saw the brace only slide a few inches. Katara sighed exhaustedly.
"At this rate, we won't do enough damage before the drill reaches the wall." She lamented, catching her breath.
"I don't know how many more of those I have in me." Aang said, collapsing on his behind in exhaustion. They all looked around them when they heard a loud rumbling that shook the entire drill.
"Do you hear that?" Sokka asked excitedly, "We took it down! We better get out of here fast!" Hoshiko looked around her in shock as she ran with the others, there was no way a machine this big could be so affected by the destruction of a single brace!
"Congratulations, crew!" A voice said, Hoshiko looked at the pipes that surrounded the door they were about to go through, hearing the voice come from there, "The drill has made contact with the wall of Ba-Sing-Se! Start the countdown to victory!" The four of them looked to each other sadly. Sokka's sad look suddenly turned to a determined one and he ran towards the cut brace.
"Sokka?" Hoshiko exclaimed in shock, watching as he began to try and push the brace, putting all of his weight on it.
"Come on, brace!" He shouted as he pushed it, "Budge!" Hoshiko sighed and walked over to him, pulling him away from the brace by the back of his collar.
"This is bad." Katara said worriedly, "Really bad."
"We're putting everything we got into busting these braces!" Sokka said, "But it's taking too long!"
"…Maybe we don't need to cut all the way through." Aang said.
"What?" Hoshiko asked.
"Toph has been teaching me that you shouldn't put 100% of your energy into any one strike." Aang explained, "Sokka, take a fighting stance." Sokka took a very poor karate stance, "You've gotta be quick," Aang hooked his foot behind Sokka's ankle, breaking his stance, "and accurate. Hit a series of points," He jabbed different points on Sokka's body, making his arms start to wheel back, "And break your opponent's stance. And when he's reeling back, you deliver the final blow." He hit Sokka's head and sent him down, "His own weight becomes his downfall. Literally."
"So, we just need to weaken the braces instead of cutting all the way through." Katara said.
"Then Aang can go to the top of this thing and deliver the final blow!" Hoshiko said, pointing to the drill's ceiling.
"And boom! It all comes crashing down!" Sokka said excitedly.
"Everyone inside that wall," Aang said, "The whole world is counting on us."
"The whole world minus the Fire Nation, that is." Sokka said. Hoshiko rolled her eyes.
They went to another brace, slicing through it, but leaving enough metal for it to still stand without having its own weight bring it down. Then they did it to another brace, and another, and another, and another until they had covered about ten braces on each side of the drill. They were on the final one when Sokka spoke.
"Good work, Team Avatar!" He said, "Now, Aang just needs to- DUCK!" Everyone ducked down as a wave of blue fire soared over their heads. Hoshiko looked up and glared at the sight of Princess Azula and her little posse.
"Wow, Azula, you were right!" Ty Lee said, "It is the avatar!" She smirked at Sokka, purring, "And friends."
"Hey." Sokka said, waving at her. Katara grabbed his shirt collar and dragged him to the exit, Hoshiko following as Aang managed to divert the three girls' attentions. He ran after the group once Azula and her friends had run to try and catch them. They ran down the hallway, and when they reached a fork, Hoshiko, Katara and Sokka went one way, while Aang stopped.
"Guys, get out of here!" He told them, "I know what I need to do." He turned and began running the opposite direction.
"Wait!" Katara called, she took off her pouch and tossed it to him, "You need this water more than I do." They kept running until they reached a wall where a very large pipe that had an opening big enough for them to fit through. Hoshiko read the writing beside it on the wall.
"'Slurry Pipe Line'?" She read, "What the heck does that mean?" Sokka grunted as he twisted open the door. When he lifted it up, they saw a river of light brown guck.
"It's rock and water mixed together." Sokka said, "It means our way out!" Hoshiko grimaced.
"Well, if it's our only way…" She mumbled, Katara stepped up to go in first, and looked very reluctant to do so. Hoshiko looked down the hall and saw Ty Lee and Mai running towards them. "Go!" Hoshiko pushed Katara down and jumped in after her, and Sokka after them. Hoshiko tried to keep her head above the mud as she was swept away with the current. They swam with the mud until they reached the end of the pipe's flow, landing in a very large puddle behind the drill. Hoshiko grimaced at her mud-covered body and tried to shake it off like a wet dog, making Sokka groan in disgust.
"Hoshiko!" He whined, Hoshiko rolled her eyes at him.
"You baby." She said, she looked up when she noticed something pink coming down from the slurry pipe line and saw it was Ty Lee. Katara saw her as well, and stood up, bending the slurry back so that it wouldn't fall, effectively trapping Ty Lee.
"Why don't you try blocking my chi now, circus freak?" She taunted.
"Katara, keep that up!" Sokka said, "The pressure will build up in the drill, then when Aang delivers the final blow, it'll be ready to pop!" Hoshiko stood up and grinned.
"Very nice." She complimented, she looked over at Sokka, "I'll be right back." She ran across the slurry puddle and under the drill, over to where she found Toph still trying to stop the drill with a large rock she had pulled out from the ground. She ran over to her, "Toph, you know as well as I do that if it didn't work then, it won't work now." Toph sighed.
"So what?" She asked, "I can still try."
"I've got a better job for you." Hoshiko said, "It's easier, and it'll help destroy the drill." Toph gripped the rock she had bent up and crushed it. Hoshiko looked at the rubble in mild surprise, and then she looked over at Toph, who was smirking at her.
"I'm in." She said, Hoshiko smirked back.
"Alright, follow me." She said, leading her to the back of the drill. On the way over, they heard Sokka's voice coaching Katara.
"Good technique, little sister!" He said, praising her as if she were five years old, "Keep it up! Don't forget to breathe!"
"You know," Katara began angrily, "I am just about sick and tired of you telling me what to do all day! You're like a chattering hog monkey!"
"Just bend the slurry woman!" Sokka shouted, Katara rolled her eyes and bent the slurry so Sokka would fall over.
"I brought help!" Hoshiko said, ending their argument.
"Toph, help me plug up this drain!" Katara said, Toph nodded and planted her feet firmly on the ground through the slurry, taking an earth bending stance and bending the earth half of the slurry back into the drill, completely plugging up the pipes.
"Great, now we just need to wait for Aang to turn the drill into a giant, popped pimple." Hoshiko said, Katara scrunched her nose up in disgust.
"Hoshiko, ew! That's disgusting!" Katara said.
"Well, can you think of anything else that pops that spits stuff out when it does?" Hoshiko asked.
"A water balloon?" Sokka suggested.
"Thank you, Sokka." Katara said.
"Yeah, but water balloons are filled with water, not icky muck." Hoshiko pointed out.
"Well, that's true." Sokka agreed. They looked up when they noticed something going up the wall of Ba-Sing-Se. Hoshiko assumed it was Aang, preparing to deliver the final blow. She watched as he shot back down, and a loud creaking sound was heard. A second later, slurry began to shoot up from the front of the drill, then another part of it, then another, and another, until almost every part of the drill was covered in slurry.
"Woo-hoo!" Sokka cheered, seeing it.
"Here it comes!" Toph said, lifting all of them up on an earth tower to avoid the slurry as it came bursting out of the drill.
"See? Like a big zit." Hoshiko said, watching all the muck pour out. She saw Ty Lee come out with the mud and crash into the tower they stood on. Hoshiko smirked at it before looking back at the others, "We better get out of here while we can."
"I couldn't agree more." Sokka said.
Hoshiko leaned over the wall as she, Katara, Aang, Sokka, and Toph watched the sunset over the former warzone they had just been in.
"I just wanna say good effort out there today, Team Avatar!" Sokka said, breaking their comfortable silence.
"Enough with the Team Avatar stuff." Katara said, "No matter how many times you say it, it's not gonna catch on."
"How about…" Sokka reached back and pulled out his boomerang, "The Boomerang Squad!" Momo, who had been sitting on Aang's shoulder, jumped off in shock from the sudden scare, "See, it's good, 'cause it's got Aang in it. Boomer-Aang."
"I kinda like that one." Aang said.
"Let's talk about this on our way into the city." Katara said, everyone agreed and began to walk away.
"The Aang Gang?" Sokka suggested.
"Sokka, no." Hoshiko said.
"The Fearsome Five some!" Sokka said.
"You're crazy." Toph said.
"Why? We're fearsome!" Sokka said.
"Yeah, we are." Hoshiko said, "You? Not so much."
"Hey!" Sokka whined when the others laughed at her joke.