AN: Way different kind of chapter than the rest, let me know if it's any good. I can confirm that I will be doing a Treasure Planet fic of this style as soon as this is completed (hopefully people will be mildly excited about that). Thanks for the support and stuff, keep letting me know if you're enjoying this because it always means so much, on this and my other fics :)
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The Lost City of the South
Chapter 5: Into the Abyss, Part 2
Opal leapt from her station the moment the emergency lighting kicked in and the alert siren began blasting in her ear from the impact. Half of her engineering team were on the floor, some with head injuries and others with just a faint dizziness from begin lobed about the compartment. They were littering the small corridor now, in her way as she charged ahead in her dungarees that were a little too big for her legs and the gloves that looked and acted like medieval gauntlet on her rather small hands. "Out of the way!" She yelled at the top of her lungs to be heard over the continuous lapping of the emergency siren. A few moved but not many. She eventually made it through the corridor and into a large section of the engineering compartment with a few smaller boilers and other systems, dials and such littering what she could see of the walls.
To her dismay the room was on a tilt, gravity pulling at her from the side wall almost with the men and women working in the room on their bellies on the floor or nursing more injuries to the sides; it was a colossal crash from whatever they hit. What made the situation truly bad was the oncoming wave of gradual water seeping in from an unknown source or multiple. The Sub was taking it on by the bucket load with each passing second. She bit her lip before shaking her bob of hair and moving onto the next section of the compartment. She needed to contact the bridge as soon as she could.
Zaheer and Kuvira come to their senses faster than Asami did, the mysterious woman sucking up the blood from her bottom lip and Zaheer driving back an oncoming headache with simply his iron will. The rest of the bridge crew stumbled in standing positions too, moving to their stations once more while Asami moved back onto the deck while staring the creature in the eye the entire time. A Spirit? Impossible. But it was hardly impossible when the colossal beast outside was staring at her back. In truth she could hardly believe she was so preoccupied or otherwise to not think the Leviathan could be a spirit after all. It made perfect sense in theory but to get there one had to believe the spirits were real and inhabited the world to begin with. She rubbed the back of her head, the swelling no doubt around the back making her mildly dizzy while she turned around to face the commander and his lieutenant.
"Tell Bumi to melt the butter and bring out the bibs," he ordered Kuvira, something meaning something else that they had built up on years of serving together. It was now that Asami knew for sure some if not all of them had military experience. If she had to make an educated guess she put Zaheer with the Earth Government, high up for a few years and probably decorated at least a little. Bumi would be a United Republic man with his slack jaw and common tongue while P'Li and probably Kuvira suited the Fire Nations but she could not be sure with the tumour sized swell building up in her head. "I want this lobster served up on a silver platter" Zaheer completed, Kuvira nodding and moving to a telephone line close by. Again Sato rubbed her head, the room beginning to spin in a diluted maelstrom.
Kuvira eyed up the closest batch of crewmen. "Load the torpedo bays, sub pod crews to battle stations!" She yelled quickly to the men to tell to the rest of the fighter crews around the sub rapidly in her manly voice before shaking yet again as the Leviathan tightened it's grip on the sub.
All over the submarine crews of two rallied to their checkpoints before proceeding to the smaller hangar bays for smaller, two manned submarines with excellent maneuverability and attacking tools, missiles and small torpedoes mostly accompanied by small machine guns tipped with specialist ammunition for deep sea combat. Like clockwork they leapt into seating, a pilot and gunner in each sub pod with Zaheer over the scrambling intercom. "Steady boys. Don't panic" he consoled them through his smaller radio from the bridge. P'Li even took to a sub pod, piling in with Bolin, losing his puffy parka coat and getting comfortable in just a pleated tank top, a single curvy strand of matte black hair coming from the combed back clump. He may have looked hunched over and unkempt when dealing with Asami but now he was a roughly unshaven yet beefed up rogue with an itch to do some damage to their attacker. His copilot remained in her black turtleneck and her breastplate, strapping in quickly and firmly and then taking to the controls while Bolin would stick with the weapons systems.
Once all of the subpod crews reported battle ready status and another large shake throughout the sub Zaheer pointed at the deck officer while Kuvira propped up Asami to a desk with a damp cloth to the back of her head, the swelling intensifying. "Launch the sub pods!" the commander ordered at the top of his lungs in ergency.
The full wing of tiny pods flurried from the launch bays scattered throughout the sub. Fourteen in all with jets of bubbling bribe shooting from behind them from the quadrotors. They hardly looked like they could fight or even operate with the shape of them, simple and like the tips of conventional ballistics. With a synchronised twirl and flip they were then hurtling towards the Leviathan at full speed with all the gunners setting their crosshairs on the face of the spectral beast. There was no way to know if their warheads would deal any damage at all to the beast but they fired anyway; Bolin calling for action and launching the first torpedo himself towards it.
With a full barrage taken to the face of the spirit the mighty beast took his sights from the submarine and looked to the wave of smaller, pesky fighters. He released the submarine and diverted his attacks to them, swatting two from their flow with a whips of his colossal secondary claws. The sketch Asami had shown on the command deck had been correct in assuming the beast was lobster resembling in the front with the rear of a scorpion but the sheer size of the creature was much out of proportion. It was a smaller lobster looking beast in the front, with the head and small spinal column coming out of a much larger body. Instead of just one set of claws the huge spectre had two, a moderately sized set in front large enough to have gripped the sub and a huge set in the back where the scorpion resembling body began. It was truly an abomination of a spirit.
The submarine jerked, relieved to be free of the Leviathan's grip. With a click of his neck Zaheer turned to the helmsman. "We're free, all ahead full" he ordered short and snappy, to be free and clear of the thing in case it decided to seize them again with his mighty claws. As the sub maneuvered slowly to the side, away from the Leviathan's eyes and claws the rest of the sub pods continued to engage the beast, firing smaller missiles and firing the specially tipped ammunition from the machine gun mounted at the bottom of their bows.
The spirit began to jerk and flail about erratically, snapping both sets of claws left and right and exerting a stream of red and black energy from his wicked jaws, completely shredding through the chassis of sub pod after sub pod, exterminating another five of the twelve remaining combatants while they launched more counterattacks in a vain effort to destroy the beast.
Seeing the damage being wrought outside of the dome Zaheer turned to his weapons correspondents, Kuvira still tending to Asami with her fading vision. "Fire torpedoes!" Zaheer yelled across the bridge while another sub pod detonated outside in a flurry of bright white and blue explosion mixed with the evil crimson energy from the Leviathan. The scattered main batteries atop the submarine turned steadily, the men inside turning their wheels arduously to aim the outdated things. One by one they launched another barrage of torpedoes from the mothership, larger and much more deadly then the smaller explosives from the sub pods peppering the monster with no effect. Collisions exploded all over the black, blue and yellow Leviathan and again to no effect, much to Zaheer's determination to bring the beast back as a trophy. However with the barrage from the sub the beast took notice, spotting their position and launching a precise beam of black red energy towards the hull, right at the middle and tearing right through like a nail through paper.
The corridor Opal was currently in popped like a cork, something somewhere detonating and causing all of the bolts in the bulkheads to pop out like a machine gun firing relentlessly upon her. She took one to the arm instantly, surging straight through the skin and out the other side, blood oozing from the wound and making her wince. It was time she moved. She ran quickly from her position, through the barrage of the rest of the bolts as the corridor collapsed around her. She reached a ladder quickly and with her breath leaving her fleetingly as she climbed with her one good arm; the pain burning up to her should like a hot poker was being pierced through her bicep.
Two men helped her up once she reached their hands, pulling her from the corridor and closing the vertical hatch after her to seal in the water that was bound to ensue the flurry of flying bolts. "Get me the bridge!" She called to another engineer once she got to her feet again. A fourth crewmate offered her a bandage but she refused in her hurry to report.
"Sir, it's engineering on four" Mrs Beifong called to Zaheer from her station, another cigarette in her hand no doubt nearly finished and looking as if nothing was wrong, then again she could hardly see it to begin with.
Zaheer switched his radio to channel four, hearing the whirling siren and chaos going down in engineering. "Zaheer!" It was Opal already with the hot tip of pain on the tip of her tongue as she frantically talked. The volume of her shout nearly deafened him. "We took a big hit down here and we're taking on water fast," she reported, more running and some mild screaming in the background as she begged the open air for oxygen. "I wouldn't want to be around when it hits the boilers" she finished sarcastically.
Asami was finally beginning to come to her full senses when Kuvira left her for Zaheer's side to hear the other end of his conversation. Asami's satchel was littered all over the deck with her papers scattered and her solid equipment in tatters. still she maintained her sturdy grip over the Fisherman's Account, not letting it go for even Armageddon.
"How much time do we have?" Zaheer asked down his end, almost biting his lip as he finished.
"Twenty minutes if the bulkheads hold." Zaheer and Kuvira heard another, more larger bang from Opal's line, meaning no doubt that the very bulkheads had failed to hold and had collapsed on themselves. Asami swore she heard both Zaheer and Kuvira curse the same vulgar syllables as they heard the bang echo. "Better make that five." Such a rapid reduction of time in what was less than five seconds. They had launched merely hours ago and now the sub would explode in a spectacular flurry of the pale blue chassis. Good thing Varrick was a millionaire.
The commander moved back to face his crew, Asami daring to stand on her feet with the book in one hand and a cloth in the other pressed up against her injured head.
"You heard the lady, let's move" he instructed the crew, again quickly.
Asami was caught like a fish out of water, nowhere to go that she knew. She was gawking again as the men rushed past her to somewhere she didn't know yet again. "Where? Move where?" She asked anyone and no one incredulously. Zaheer rolled his eyes and took her arm quickly, hoisting her still frail body on his back and carrying her to the evacuation trucks. Kuvira stayed on the deck a moment longer.
She was attempting to grab Mrs Beifong's attention. She was on the telephone again. "Beifong sound the alarm and get to an escape pod!" She called out to the deck below.
"He took a suitcase?" She was saying over the line, taking a brief drag of her almost completed cigarette. "Katara honey, I don't think he's coming back" she continued, in no way paying attention to Kuvira or anything else transpiring in the now empty bridge.
"Beifong!"
She took the least, short puff of cancerous smoke from her pathetic cigarette and then blew out the solution. "I have to call you back" she said down the line in a rather croaky voice, more hazardous than before due to the smoke travelling down her throat. "No, no honey, I'll call you" she finished her call and stubbed the butt of her cigarette on the table before switching the channel of her radio device and triggering the command sub wide.
"All hands, abandon ship." The line was cold and final and almost all without hope in the hectic and relentless attack of the monstrous Leviathan. With Asami hoisted on his back and Kuvira, Bumi and Mrs Beifong soon catching up behind him, Zaheer trudged through the gradually emptying corridors of the sub, through chaotic compartments of scrambling crewmates and slowly flooding corridors towards the bay of larger more stable submarine pods, like a lorry equivalent. Kuvira moved ahead with a large series of lunges until she reached the hatch; Suyin and Opal waiting inside for them already.
She grabbed the hatch ready with her strong arm, making sure that the path was clear for Zaheer to leap in almost and slam the Phd in her seat with the Doctor an Engineer. "Move it people, sometime today would be nice!" Kuvira yelled to the rest as Zaheer dropped in and basically flung Asami into the nearest empty seat. Despite the fact that she was drifting between an injury sleep and mild consciousness she clutched the book close to her breast, not daring to let it leave her orbit. It would be their least hope she thought of finding the way to the South. She tied her harness quickly, tucking the book into her waistcoat and folding her arms around it so it could in no way leave her, like a small child. Zaheer and Kuvira flew into the pilot and copilot's seats in seconds with Kuvira flipping switches and pulling levers and dials to get the sub ready for launch from the main sub's rear launch bay with the rest of them; a total of ten in all ready to launch as soon as Kuvira hit the main release lever in her pod.
She was pushing and pushing with both arms and all of her strength as Zaheer sat their modifying the rest of the sub for launch but the lever failed to flip. "Lieutenant!" He yelled hard and coarse at her ineffectiveness. If Zaheer had an intolerance for anything, as Asami was noticing around him, it was for futile ineffectiveness at times where he needed action. It was hardly misogynistic, simply demanding and the way he operated with an iron fist, and plus, they were about to explode and the expedition with them.
"I'm working on it!" Kuvira yelled back, equal in her bile and spite for the grumpy commander with the square chin. She was trying her best.
Outside with the last seven sub pods desperately fleeing the Leviathan's still flailing claws and energy bursts the beast diverted its attention towards the main sub, which was aimlessly floating through the deep to somewhere else, no one at the helm. With another puff of his immense strength the Leviathan launched a final blast of blood red energy towards the hull, ripping right through it, the main boilers and then out the other side again.
In the final moment Kuvira kicked the lever hard with her right booted foot, almost breaking the thing completely. The rear bay doors exploded open and the seven transport subs flew out at desperate speeds. They kept tight, not too much to worry about room butt enough as to not be blasted from existence by a snap of the Leviathan's mighty claws. A second after they cleared the sub's orbit it detonated in three places in a flurry of fizzy blue and white in the middle of the abyss where it would join the wrecks of countless ships that attempted the journey before them. In the shroud the explosion had caused the Leviathan showed his eyes again, then his claws and zoomed through, chasing the fleeing crewmates wherever they may fly. He snapped at another sub pod, then a transport and with another blast of his energy he eviscerated another in seconds.
Zaheer turned back to Asami and the rest of the team getting rattled in the back. Suyin was wrapping a bandage hastily around her daughter's arm where the bolt had pierced right through. Again Opal winced and pulled a face. "Where to Miss Sato?" the commander asked more calm and retained than in the sub. Remarkable too considering there was a huge spectral guardian with practically a laser chasing them, hell bent on killing each and every single one of them left.
She scoured the pages of the Fisherman's Account, searching frantically for a section on the gateway to the path. She knew where it was, she had perused the very four page sequence that told of their predicament and now all of the symbols and glyphs just burred and became gibberish again. Sato. Focus or we'll all die. Death. Rotating in her head while the time in the metal box seemed to slow down. She remembered the words, slowly in her mind and carefully, as to not mistranslate a single letter or syllable. Crevasse. She opened her eyes. "We're looking for a crevasse of some kind" she yelled to the front, keeping the book opened but close by, not knowing if she'd need it again. The image of the grease trap came straight to mind and how if she thought the carrots hours earlier were bad, this would completely empty her stomach.
Ahead was the very crevasse, a short little slit to the naked eye but one that would lead to a tunnel, the grease trap and then onto the air pocket, and hopefully safety. Zaheer pointed ahead to the location and pulled the radio microphone to his almost non-existent lips. "All craft make your mark twenty degrees down angle" he ordered the remaining transports and sub pods.
P'Li and Bolin maneuvers their craft and formed up alongside the rest of the main team, the rest flailing and soaring about in all directions to dodge and weave away from the onslaught that the Leviathan was still frenzied to release upon them, as if he were growing tired and frustrated that they were not dying. He snapped his claws a killed another pair in a subpod. "I'm right behind you!" Bolin yelled over the radio to Zaheer.
They hit the crevasse in seconds, the beast pursuing them the entire way with blasts from his mouth and snapping at his claws becoming more annoyed at the in tact submarines. He ploughed through the crevasse opening, refusing to allow it to stop him from killing them. In his killing fury he gripped up another sub pod, destroying it and the men inside. The following blast from his jaws hit the stabilisers of a transport, causing it to swerve out of control in front of Kuvira and Zaheer in the cockpit of their own. Now it was on to the grease trap and Asami was growing more and more nervous, hoping the cavern leading up hadn't collapsed already.
She clenched the book tightly to her chest, almost stopping the airflow and compressing her upper bust. "It's just like a grease trap, like a sink" she muttered, freaking out and closing her eyes yet again. The spectacles on the bridge of her nose were almost leaping from her face again while she was looking like she was about to blow a gasket. "It's like a grease trap like a sink!" She exclaimed at the top of her lungs.
Kuvira peddled the levers up and down with the steering wheel staying straight and true in her gloved hands. She was close to freaking out too once she saw the narrowness of the true tunnel; all the while the Leviathan threw blast after blast down the tunnel after them, being caught in the crevasse himself. Some rebounded off of the rocks to hit more, causing insufferable damage and breaking the tunnel apart behind them. P'Li struggled to keep her sub pod steady under the pressure and the transports behind her, trying to steady her hands to no avail as the blasts of red shot past her cockpit window. She jerked the wheel, forcing the pod right into the back rotor of the commanding transport sub. A rather large and worrisome crack formed instantly as the surface of the blue came into view. The air pocket. It existed after all.
They surfaced finally, five remaining transports and more or less in sub pods. A crew of about four hundred reduced to almost a quarter in several minutes. Kuvira and Zaheer both let out huge sighs of relief, the latter almost slamming his bear like hand on Kuvira's shoulder. "That was some damn nice driving there Kuvira."
It was the first time Asami ever truly saw her smile. A genuine smile that looked like it came from her heart. Thanks to her there was hope yet of finding the city, and thanks to her, at least one hundred crewmates drew breath. "Don't mention it Sir."
An hour later they were all standing at the shore. The transports and sub pods lay to the sides abandoned; everyone was gathered together with a fleet of specialist vehicles ready to move out. It was a humble and solitary oasis, like a bathing pool for absolutely no one with a large doorway open to the road to the South behind it. Asami found it comforting. Serene and collected as she stood with the book in both hands by her thighs. Suyin had lit a candle and was setting it in the pool contained in one of the infantry's helmets So much death she thought, for a single chance to see a sight that hadn't been seen in thousands of years. Was her childhood dream really worth three hundred or more lives? Not remotely. Was it worth her own? Almost certainly to her at least. Having set the candle representing three hundred souls on it's course to remain in the middle of the pool for all eternity Suyin returned to the mourning mass.
Zaheer stepped forwards, his ranger hat in his hands at his thighs. "Seven hours ago, we started this expedition, with almost four hundred of the bravest men and women I've ever known. Earth Government, Fire Nations, Water Tribe and even from the United Republic," he raised his hands to display the hundred remaining souls behind him. "We're all that's left," he said, glumly as if there was no hope of coming back alive. "I won't sugar coat it people, we have a crisis on our hands.
"But we've been up this neck of the woods before and we've always come through," he contradicted, sparking individual flames of courage and such in each and all of them. But not Asami, she was too busy seeing the blood she had bathed her hands in already. The way she saw it, it was her fault. She thought the Leviathan was nothing more than a simple carving or a statue and she was wrong. So wrong. Now it was doubtful if the rest of them would even reach the City.
Suyin, from nowhere, placed her slender finger along Asami's shoulder. She whispered in her ear in her sweet tone of understanding. "They all signed on because they knew this could be a one way trip. Because finding the South is a belief, not an expedition." Asami couldn't help her eyes gradually open, a small smile forming but when she looked to find Suyin, the doctor was gone.
"From here on in, everyone pulls double duty," Zaheer was saying, doing what he did best, which was rally and delegate and rally again. Despite his brash and gruff demeanor and hard exterior Asami couldn't help but think he was a true leader, a good leader and the leader the people needed if they wanted the goal as much as she did still. "Everyone drives, everyone works." He was walking up the steps to where the vehicles were rallied. He turned to Asami at the back, his expression almost dire.
"Looks like all our chances for survival rest with you Miss Sato, you and that little book." So no pressure then. She looked almost scared of the thought that she was.
Mrs Beifong took another least drag, tossing the cigarette away like a bad penny. "We're all gunna die" she stated flatly. Zaheer yelled at people to ready up, to take to the vehicles before he himself did the same, leaving Kuvira to complete the delegation and be on with it.
"Bolin you're in point." He took to the massive digger near the front. "No P'Li, Opal's taking the oiler, you know the rules I want you behind that thing at all times. Beifong, put that damn cigarette out." Asami was already near a truck, the small manual horn taking her curiosity. She'd never really had a car to call her own back home and the fat that there was a random truck just littered in the open area, and the horn was slightly funny allowing her mood to pick up.
The commander soon found her playing with the horn and wasting time. He gritted his teeth while he walked over, the rest of the hundred people getting on with work and mounting up to move onto the path. The next time she pressed the rubber ball of the horn Zaheer gripped the full horn, ripping it from its shackle and tossing it to the ground.
"Are you checked out on this class of vehicle?" She stared at him blankly. "Can you drive a truck?" He asked again, more irritatedly and feeling the blood boil in his skin. This was a slight waste of his time. She shrugged casually, prepared to school him on her extensive knowledge of vehicles.
"Of course I can drive a truck." Two minutes later he was stroking his palm rather violently down his face as she pulled off and drove in perfect formation. A better driver than most men.