On Freedom

The job was weak tea, stealing some coin off a Blue Sun outpost on Lilac, but since Jet had Aang on board, he had to step lightly, and hungry as his crew was, he couldn't afford to turn down a job just 'cause it didn't pay enough. It had taken a bit of fast talking to convince Fanty and Mingo that it wasn't his ship the Alliance was itching to catch for being involved in the Water Tribe's Independent Uprising (he winced when he heard it called that) so they would agree to deal.

Lucky for everyone, all the Alliance knew for sure was that a Firefly had been involved, and there were enough of those still flying around that he could play dumb and probably get away with it.

Jet didn't expect trouble on such an easy job, but jobs had a habit of going sideways at random and Lilac was close to Reaver territory, so it paid to be prepared. He was forcing Toph to come with them even though she didn't want to, because he'd need her range of "vision" to make sure that no one was coming their way. She'd saved them on more than one occasion by giving them early warning, but she never liked doing it when the possibility of Reavers entered anywhere into the equation; it seemed they were the only thing that really scared her, and even more than they scared the rest of the crew — which was saying something.

"Grenades?" Pipsqueak asked from the hall, and Jet heard the Duke mutter something in response. "We don't need grenades."

"No," the Duke replied sourly, "you don't need grenades. This close to Reaver space, I go in fully armed, or not at all."

"Cap'n," Pipsqueak said, walking into the dining room, "tell this idiot he don't need grenades."

Jet shrugged. "S'long as they don't go off and kill us all, I don't ca — okay, you don't need that many grenades." The Duke looked like a missile in the process of blowing up, dressed head-to-toe in fragments of old armor, dripping with spare magazines, three whole belts of ammunition (one for a weapon that Jet was pretty sure he didn't have), and at least a dozen grenades strapped all over his body. He scowled.

"Says you," he replied, trying to cross his arms but failing because his piecemeal armor and bullets were in the way. Jet rolled his eyes.

"Lose some o' that — lots o' that," he said, waving his rifle carelessly. "You gotta be able to move."

"You and Toph might not even need us, right?" Pipsqueak asked, joining him at the table and loading up his weapons, both of them ignoring the Duke's surly grumbles as he dislodged himself from the nest of ammo and kevlar. "It ain't like we're stealing a dragon's horde here." Jet waved him off.

"Safety in numbers, Pipsqueak," he said sagely, filling a fourth magazine for his pistol and considering a fifth. "I'd take Bee and Longshot, but we gotta have someone guarding the ship and manning the helm in case something goes south, and — now don't be broken up over this — but I don't exactly trust the Duke with runnin' my ship while I ain't on it."

"Ah, come on," Pipsqueak said, in mock offense. "A monkey could handle the ship easy, it'd be a nice challenge for the Duke."

It was hard to tell under the clunks of metal hitting the floor, but Jet was pretty sure he heard the younger gun-hand mutter I hate you all. He smirked.

"Nah," he replied, shaking his head. "Let Bee and Longshot take care of it. 'Sides, I think the Duke'd be terribly disappointed if he got all dressed up and had nowhere to go."

The Duke's grousing raised in pitch and got more articulate. "I can hear you, assholes," he snapped, and Jet gasped theatrically.

"Ah, damn, I'm sorry. I figured your teenage angst was cloggin' up your ears." Before the Duke could come up with a response, Jet went on. "We're about to be dockin'. Where's our little blind maniac?"

"Right here," Toph grumbled, shuffling in from the direction of the engine room, hair askew. "How long till we land?" she asked hoarsely, stifling a yawn, right before the ship touched down. "Oh," she said. "Well, then, I'll get ready."

"Hurry up," Jet shouted as she shuffled back out of the room. "We only got a short window to do this in!"

"Yeah, yeah," she replied, with a dismissing wave of her hand. Only a minute later, she returned, tugging an oversized t-shirt on over her usual top (that itself barely cvered her), a knife between her teeth and one of Jet's pistols in her hand. "Ready," she mumbled, stuffing the knife into her belt. It was longer than the shorts she had on.

(The Duke's constant mutters ground to a halt.)

"Uh, Toph?" Jet asked, raising an eyebrow.

"What?" she replied, strapping a gunbelt to her thigh and putting several magazines in. "This was the first thing I grabbed and you said it was summer on this planet, so I don't care. How far away is this station?" she asked, breezing away from the topic. "I can't feel it."

"A good mile east of here," Jet replied, deciding not to push Toph on the clothing issue. "They got plenty of surveillance set up, and we don't want 'em finding the ship too easy."

"No," Toph countered, crossing her arms. "Longshot's gotta keep the ship in a half-mile of me or I can't watch out for it."

"A mile's as close as we get," he replied, "and that's final. C'mon."

"I don't like this, Cap'n," she said fervently.

"None of us like this," he replied, and went on, cutting off the Duke's comment that he liked everything about this job all of a sudden, "but we do the jobs we can get, dong ma?"

Sokka had graciously taken the helm to allow Longshot and Bee to have some time to themselves. He hadn't especially wanted to, but he was the only person with any piloting experience other than Longshot, so it fell to him to warm the pilot seat and keep an eye out in case something went horribly wrong and Jet needed to be saved. Suki was sitting with him, and they were playing a completely non-rousing game of pai sho on the counterspace.

He was losing, and badly.

In the recesses of the ship, someone let out a shout, followed closely by a semi-masculine shriek, and then Aang flew onto the bridge, eyes wide. "I forgot to knock," he said, steadily turning redder and redder. "Mai was taking a sponge bath."

"Awesome," Sokka replied, twirling his lotus tile. "You see anything?"

Suki kicked him lightly, rolling her eyes. "You'll have to apologize to her," she said, and Sokka held up a hand.

"Suki, Suki, look," he countered, placing a hand on her thigh, which she glanced at before shooting him a warning look. He ignored it and went on. "You were never a teenage boy, so I forgive you for not knowing this. See, our young Avatar has just had his first experience with a naked woman. You mustn't rush things, this is an important development in his life. Now, Aang," he continued, turning to the now-bright red twelve-year-old, "how much did you see? This is a big moment, so you should try to — ow!" He turned to see where the protein bar that had just belted him across the temple had come from. Mai was standing on the stairs, wrapped in a bathrobe, scowling.

"How many times have I told you that you aren't allowed in my shuttle?" she asked dangerously, arms crossed, and Aang turned his one-two punch of puppy-dog eyes and a sheepish grin onto her, like either would actually work on Mai.

"We were playing hide-and-seek," he mumbled. "I thought no one would look for me there."

While Suki was busy laughing, he surreptitiously switched a few of the tiles around, so he wasn't losing quite so badly. Unfortunately, she saw him. "Hey!" she cried overdramatically. "Cheater! Aang, Sokka's trying to cheat!"

"Oh, no, whatever will you do," Mai droned, still scowling at Aang, who looked relieved that the subject was changing.

"Sokka!" Aang admonished, rushing away from the still-dripping Mai, but the grin fell off his face suddenly. "What is that?" he asked, pointing at the screen.

"Oh, it's a — " Sokka started to explain, and then froze at the shape on the radar, "that's a ship," he said dumbly. "Coming for — " he muttered, staring blankly as it took clearer form. "That's a ship — a — oh cào," he hissed. "That's a Reaver ship."

At Blue Sun Outpost 6519 on Lilac

Toph's communicator let out a loud burst of garbled static that made them all jump. She cursed under her breath and hit the off button hastily, tapping her foot against the ground to see if anyone was coming, and then her communicator to see if it was broken. It wasn't — then why had it just buzzed her? Sokka knew he wasn't supposed to contact them on this job... unless it was something bad enough that he thought it was worth getting caught over, a narrow window that left her heart dropping heavily into her stomach.

"What the ruttin' hell is going on?" Jet hissed, and Toph shook her head, shaking in her fingers.

"It's not broken," she said. "Jet, something's wrong."

"Damn right something's wrong," he snapped. "Your fèi wù communicator is what's wrong!"

"If I say it isn't broken," she replied in a low voice, teeth clenched, "it isn't broken. So something's wrong on Sokka's end, and I was up to my elbows in the helm not three days ago and everything was shiny. Something's wrong," she repeated, slamming her communicator into Jet's hand. A tense silence fell, lasting for around three seconds, before Jet growled and turned it back on.

"Freedom, this is Jet, what the hell is going on?" he hissed shortly. Not a second later, static again burst through it, followed by Sokka's strained voice, broken by grainy white noise — an interrupted signal, she thought distantly. Something was messing with the transmission.

"Reavers," he gasped, and she was the only one who didn't react, "we're — air alre — y, they — hind us."

Jet didn't say anything else, but tossed the communicator at her and let out a burst of fire on full-auto at the ground. Toph yelped and jumped backward at the impact, as several people came running and yells echoed through the concrete walls; the sensory overload reverberated through her ears and bones, leaving her a little further disconnected from the situation. "You got Reavers incoming," Jet was shouting, "so you best find a place to hide. Crew, outside, now!" he barked, and took off running as the confused Blue Sun men let out yells, some running away from them and others following them, disbelieving.

Her perception slid back into focus and she began to move, at something greater than a run, propelled by animal fear pounding in her blood and in her head. A crawling prophecy began to form as the numbers worked themselves out without stopping to from full words: over a mile from the ship, only vehicle a hovercraft sixty feet away, could only push 30 miles an hour tops, take two minutes to get to the ship if you ignore acceleration, can't ignore acceleration or time to get to the mule or time to get onto the mule, so give it more like ten or fifteen minutes to get to the ship, Reaver gunships clear five hundred miles an hour.

The knowledge burrowed into her bones and coiled into a spring in her stomach: they wouldn't make it to the ship before the Reavers made it to them.

They hit the doors at dead run and sprinted for the mule, crashing inside and scrabbling over each other as they all tried to turn it on and get it moving, which wasted a precious ten seconds before Jet took over and began pushing her toward the ship — right before Freedom passed overhead, engines screaming, followed immediately by the high-frequency whine and low, pounding bass of the Reavers' gunship. Toph counted the seconds as they moved, as the noises shifted and distorted; the gunship had spotted them, and was leaving Freedom to chase them: the smaller, slower, and easier target.

Jet cursed violently and whipped the mule around to follow Freedom, even as the spring wound into Toph's body said it was useless. Static crackled over her communicator, lost in a strange, loud, ominous hum. "EMP!" she shouted, and he jerked the mule aside violently as the pulse split the air where they had been seconds before.

Longshot's voice, broken in the crackle of white noise in her communicator: " — off the — ains," he said, "take her — ills, we're — rn swal —"

"Okay," she replied, feeling both completely removed from the mule and completely aware of everything else around her. She tried to re-center herself, mentally putting together the fragments of the message. "Jet, hills, barn swallow," she translated as the next EMP shot struck so close that she felt it thrum through the air beside them, changing the pressure so that her perception shuddered.

Reaver ships had a special sound to them, a special taste they left in the air, the way they rattled and shook and roared like a monster shaking its cage, about to come out of its skin. The monster growled behind them, too close, and Jet turned the mule sharply so that they skimmed a cliff face; rock shuddered to her left as the Reavers skimmed the cliff much closer than they did.

Freedom sang to them from above, coming around to pick them up as they rocketed haphazardly through the hills. Too late, Toph thought. It was too late. The Reavers were too close: even if they got onto Freedom, she'd never be able to get away from the gunship.

But it seemed like she was the only one who realized it; the Duke and Pipsqueak were steadily, uselessly, shooting at the Reaver ship, trying to keep them from getting a lock on them, Jet was flying like a maniac, and she was still sitting half-frozen in the passenger seat. She jolted at the sudden realization, and shook her head hard to clear the catatonic fear out of it — they might be dead in the water, but she was Toph Bei Fong, and she didn't take anything lying down. Not anything, she told herself. Not even Reavers.

She snatched Jet's machine gun and checked its magazine — three-quarters full — then turned and unloaded it at the gunship. Under the roar of engines and guns and wind, she focused on the sound of bullets striking metal, and used it to gauge the size of the ship — a large one, about a half-step smaller than Freedom. Raiding party. Heavy frontward artillery, multiple exits: they'd do better to get under it than try to outrun it.

Toph opened her mouth to yell this, got halfway through the sentence ("Jet, it can't hit — ") and then it hit her, the focus she'd been forcing onto the mule blinding her to the surroundings.

The harpoon went in smooth just by her spine and opened once it had gone all the way through her abdomen; a scream louder than the jet engines tore out of her throat as it wrenched her backwards, and her hands floundered against the seats and walls, trying to hold onto anything that wouldn't go with her.

For one white-hot moment, the world stopped and her senses lit up brilliantly, so she was acutely aware of everything: Jet, one hand on the wheel and another holding her arm in a slipping grip —

— the Duke, mouth open in a snarling curse, with one hand shoving a grenade into its launcher and another holding her shirt in a slipping grip —

— Pipsqueak, jaw locked, with one hand on the trigger of his most powerful gun and another grasping her waist in a vice-like grip just under the scalding bolt of the harpoon —

— spare magazines scattered around the floor of the mule, bullets slipping out of place and dancing around their feet —

— hundreds of tiny metal casings and thousands of shifting grains of powder, singing in static as they bounced against the floor —

— her communicator firing bursts of garbled voices —

— the heartbeat of the Reaver ship, pounding through the cable drawing her in —

— the smell of ozone from the EMP —

— the taste of blood —

Everything was chaos as they all tried to keep Toph on the mule and break the cable that was pulling her towards the gunship — it was the Duke, pulling Toph's knife from her belt and hacking madly, who actually succeeded, and she fell, motionless, over Pipsqueak's lap.

Freedom rose up in front of them, cargo bay doors wide open, and Jet wrenched the little hovercraft upwards to meet her; they hit it with an awful screech and crash, chased forward by the top of the Reaver ship, that hadn't been able to pull up or down fast enough to either hit or avoid them.

They leaped out of the mule before it had even stopped moving, Pipsqueak dragging Toph's limp form roughly along with him. Jet hit the ground and rolled to the side of the cargo bay, arms over his head, as the mule and the jagged sheet of metal from the gunship crashed hard into the far wall and finally stilled. The bay doors closed behind them and they rose away from Lilac in a sudden, deathly silence.

"Get the doctor," Pipsqueak shouted, and he saw Katara on the catwalk, face going white as he hoisted Toph into his arms. Jet ran forward, mouth dry — she was so tiny in the mercenary's arms. She carried herself so big and bad and dangerous, but without her boastful attitude puffing her up, she was just a little twenty-something in a shirt three sizes too big for her.

And she was his mechanic, dammit, the best mechanic in the 'Verse, and she couldn't — she wouldn't —

Haru took one look at her, and his face went blank and still as Pipsqueak carried her into the infirmary, flanked by Jet and joined by Katara. They laid her on the bed, on her side so as not to disturb the giant spear that was going straight through her, while Katara began rifling through the supplies and Haru washed his hands and pulled on a pair of surgical gloves with deliberate, mechanical motions. "Morphine," he said shortly, and she tossed him a vial before pausing, looking at the tap, and whirling around.

"If you can get that out of her," she said quietly, "I think I can heal her. Maybe. I can help," she added, voice catching.

"Just hold her still while I remove it," he replied, and she bolted over to hold Toph steady. Haru worked slowly to remove the harpoon, painfully slow — to make sure, Jet realized, that it was leaving in the exact same path it had gone in. As soon as he had it out of her, he threw it aside carelessly and looked up at Katara, calm in the way that only a surgeon could be. "Can you heal any part of this?" he asked, voice barely above a whisper.

"I can try," Katara replied, and pulled water from the tap without touching it, which she held to Toph's back so that it glowed brilliantly, casting loud shadows against the walls. "I think it's helping," she said softly, while Haru started putting metal implements around the wound.

"I'm going to need suction," he declared, without looking up. Jet shook his head.

"It's a standard infirmary," Jet replied desperately, "we don't have anything that — " and then Katara swept a hand over the wound, pulling some of the free blood out of it and throwing it into the sink abruptly.

"That works," Haru said evenly, and then looked up. "Jet, get him out of here," he ordered in that same even tone, and he and Pipsqueak turned to see Aang, pale and wide-eyed, at the doorway.

"Aang," Pipsqueak said, walking forward and reaching out to him but stopping at the sight of blood on his hands. "C'mon, you've gotta go."

"Will she be okay?" Aang asked, and he might have been imagining it, but his voice wasn't quite normal — it was like he was holding back something huge. Jet didn't know if Haru could save Toph, but he did know that Aang was close to Toph and when Aang got mad or distressed, bad things happened — things like a whirlwind that ripped up his infirmary or a cyclone that killed almost ten thousand men.

"Yes," Jet answered firmly, steering Aang out of the room. "Doc's good at his job, he'll take care of her, and plus he's got a healer with him. She'll be right as rain in a coupla days."

He couldn't make it sound like anything but a lie.