At the Fucanglong Docks on Beaumonde
Jet and Pipsqueak hauled the box they had stored the body in out of the cargo bay and laid it gently at Diana's feet — no matter what he felt for the woman personally, he knew what it was like to lose a loved one.
"We could take you to St. Albans," he offered, but she shook her head.
"You've done plenty. Come with me, I'll get you the — " she was cut off by Alliance men storming up, guns raised, followed by a man with long hair pulled into a low ponytail.
"Captain Jonathan Reynolds, you are ordered by law to stand down."
He glared at Diana, who looked just as surprised as he was, but then he remembered what this was about: the registration! He'd forgotten entirely, in the chaos of Toph and the job and then the body and... oh, cào. He raised his hands, and so did Pipsqueak — he didn't even have a chance to warn his crew or hide Aang or anything. They were dead in the water.
Still, he tried for the charming smile. "What's the problem, sir?" he asked cheekily, and the man smiled at him like a cat with a mouse.
"You failed to report at the nearest Alliance outpost," the man replied. "All crews sailing on a Firefly-class vessel were to report for registration three days ago."
"Yeah, well, I forgot," he said honestly. "There a reason for the, ah," he waved his hands at the green-robed Alliance men, "this?"
"We did not find what we were looking for on any of the other Fireflies who did report," he started, and Jet tilted his head.
"You've got a list o' all the Fireflies in the 'Verse? That seems a bit..."
The man blinked. "We had information that a Firefly known to be traveling with a Companion involved with the conspiracy to kill the Fire Lord docked at this port four days ago. Captain Jonathan Reynolds, you are hereby bound by law for aiding and abetting a fugitive," the man recited, and began to handcuff him, but Jet, reacting with gut instinct and the reflexes of a war-veteran, whirled around, punched him across the face, and pulled out his gun, managing to land a decently impressive shot to the man's torso, shooting from the hip. Immediately, the green men swarmed him, but he had given Pipsqueak enough time to bolt inside and get the warning out.
The man stood up, dusting off his clothing — and his armor. Of course. It was never that easy. "Add resisting arrest and attempting to kill an Operative of the Parliament to the list of grievances," he told his men, and Jet mouthed the word operative... what the hell did that mean? "Sweep the ship," he barked.
"Where is Aang?" Pipsqueak shouted, barreling into the dining room "We got Alliance incoming now!" he yelled, and Suki took off for the cargo bay before she had consciously processed what he was saying — Aang was in Katara's shuttle, too close. She hit the cargo bay at the same time as the green-robed men did, and her fans snapped in her hands.
She lunged for the first one, slashing him straight across the throat with a single jerk of her wrist, and then used his falling body to vault into the second one feet-first, but hit the ground awkwardly on the follow-up and stumbled. The second man went backwards into a third, and she snapped a fan closed, using it as a makeshift knife to stab with the razor-sharp edges and with all of her strength into the soft tissue just above second man's collarbone, and he went down, gurgling. Another crucial second was lost as she fought to wrench her fan out of him; she prepared herself mentally, like she had so many times before, for the fight to shift out of her favor.
In her experience, a successful ambush or initial attack gave you around ten seconds, before your opponent would regain his or her footing. Suki was up to seven, outnumbered — and badly — but she kept fighting to keep the men occupied for as long as she could. She had just slit the third throat and identified the fourth target when a shot rang out and the right leg exploded in pain.
She screamed as her fans fell from her fingers, senseless for a split second before the ground struck her hard in the shoulder; someone shouted, someone began running, and someone opened the door above and across from her. "No!" she shrieked, as Aang yelled her name and hit the green-robed men with a violent blast of air.
"It's the Avatar!" someone yelled as the man who had shot her calmly walked into the cargo bay. He held his pistol to her face and she looked up at him defiantly, accepting her fate and denying him the satisfaction of seeing fear in her eyes, but just as he started to squeeze the trigger, someone tackled him, sending his shot wide, ringing as it hit the wall behind her. The world began to shift out of focus.
Sokka hovered over Suki, one hand on her back and the other ineffectually attempting to staunch the bleeding centered from her knee, and tried to think clearly. But he couldn't; all he could think of was the sound of Suki's scream and the blood on her face and hands as she looked into the barrel of a gun, unflinching. Everyone was shouting, wind was pouring around the cargo bay like a waterfall, chaos and raised weapons and blurred motion — and then the metal of the ship warped up and wrapped itself around the man with the ponytail.
Toph walked, slowly and unevenly, staggering against the wall, into the suddenly still room.
"You're gonna walk away," she said, voice low and dangerous, "right now."
The man smiled. "Metal-bending," he cried, laughing. "I am impressed. However, you might do to learn from this mistake, Lady Metalbender, and research your enemies before you face them." With that, he pulled on the metal and it gave a horrible screech as he bent it away from him. Toph shifted her foot and grunted as her still-weak legs struggled to hold her up, but turned it into a bending form and used it to twist a large chunk of metal off of the floor — chased up by pavement from underneath the ship — and threw it at him, but he caught it and broke it into two clear pieces as it flew by his head. Toph's hand was clutching the wall so tightly that it was twisting around her fingers like a blanket, her face white and angry and betrayed as she sank to her knees, gasping for breath and mouthing curses.
"A good effort," the man started, folding his hands into his long sleeves, and then Aang landed on him, yelling like a wild animal. The man let out a shout and reacted violently, hitting Aang in the chest with an arm and a rock, sending him sprawling to the ground.
Sokka jerked as a hand dug into his side, and looked down to see Suki, sweat and blood streaked on her face and a dangerous distance in her eyes, pulling him closer. Terror, unrelated to Aang's predicament, rose up in him.
"Get — Aang — out — " she choked, her fingers slipping away from him. Sokka grabbed her arm convulsively and opened his mouth to speak words he had no time to prepare.
"Suki, listen — " he started, as the ship began to vibrate with the liftoff initiation sequence and rattle with the damage Toph had done to it.
"Get to the bridge, stop the pilot!" the man shouted, motioning to his men, but Aang was on his feet, prepared to fight them, and even though the man could match Toph's element and she was barely recovering from a terrible injury, she was still a powerful bender with three limbs on the ground and a nearly demonic fury on her face, and Sokka could stand and he could — he could probably fight if he could make himself let go of Suki. It didn't look good, but they'd all faced worse odds. And then the tide turned again with movement behind Toph, from the direction of the engine room.
"Oh, boys," the Duke said in a sing-song voice, dragging Toph's giant weapon — the Maria Mark Three, she had called it — into the room with Pipsqueak, Zuko, and Katara all helping him move it. "You might want to close your eyes."
Toph grinned viciously and used her weapon as a crutch to lean on, standing just high enough to hit a series of buttons with one hand and shove the ball of her palm into the floor with the other — to what end, he didn't know, but he did know enough to get out of the way of anyone with that look on her face and a gun that large in her hand.
He hoisted Suki into his arms as gingerly as he could and rushed to get out of the hyper-Gatling gun's blast radius, to where Katara had water at the ready to heal her. There was a single moment, right as the gun's whining reached fever pitch, where everyone scrambled to move at once, before the first pulse tore out.
It was blinding, a livid white beam — an ultra-powerful anti-aircraft laser — appeared as Toph pulled a lever and twisted it down sharply. It only lasted a fraction of a second, one huge flash of white, and then there weren't any more green-clad men, just a quickly-dulling red streak leading out of the cargo bay and onto a wall of rock that Toph must have put up as a barrier to protect everyone outside of the ship. Everyone stared in shock at the gun and the tiny mechanic clutching its trigger.
"Fire the weapon again"
Sokka turned away from Toph and cursed violently: the leader, hair falling out of his ponytail and face flushed with anger, was holding Aang by the neck and leading him into the gun's sights.
"Go on," he hissed. "Do it."
Jet and Diana had just finished fighting off their captors when the wall went up. He tapped it, confused, listening to his ship on the other side, where a low whine was steadily going up the scale, and realization hit him almost too late. He wasn't sure how he moved as fast as he did, but one second, he was standing at the rock wall and the next, he and Diana were on the ground and rolling several yards away. He threw his arms over his head as the whine gave way to a noise like the sound barrier breaking, too loud to even hear.
"I know what that was," he slurred, getting to his feet, the vibrations of the sound and the blast making him stagger like a drunk — he'd only felt it once before, when Toph had pulled out her biggest gun to shoot a Reaver ship that was chasing them straight out of the sky. "That was Toph's — oh, what now?" he snapped, as someone grabbed him by the arm and bent it backwards, twisting his gun out of his hand. He looked to the side, half-expecting it to be Diana, but he saw that she was similarly captured by an Alliance officer — not one of the green-robed ones with the Operative; this one wore red.
"Jonathan Reynolds, I presume," a woman's voice purred, perilously close to his ear. She marched him around the rock wall and into his own cargo bay, followed by Diana, before passing him off to one of her soldiers. He tried to attack when she transferred him, but the soldier had him unarmed and in a vice grip. "Well, well, well," the woman drawled as she walked past him, and he finally got a good look at the room: in addition to a series of gaping holes in the metal, there was a scorch mark straight down the center of his cargo bay, and standing right in the middle of it was the Operative, holding Aang by the throat, daring Toph to shoot him with the Maria Mark Three. "Looks like I got here just in time."
The woman looked harmless — too harmless to be safe — and it was Zuko who stood up — he was covered in blood, whose blood? — and faced her. "Azula!" he shouted, fire springing to his fingers, and the woman — the princess? — laughed.
"Hello, Zuzu," she trilled, grinning at the Operative. "Looks like my idea worked," she said lightly. "Pass the boy over, we'll take him back to Sihnon." The Operative watched her carefully, seemingly weighing his options, before he passed Aang to the soldier next to him. Zuko made a move as if to attack, but then the princess raised two fingers to Aang's throat with a pointed look at him, and he froze, eyes darting from Azula to the small group huddled behind him to Aang and back.
"Princess Azula," the Operative said. "To what do I owe this pleasure?"
"Which pleasure?" she asked, with false innocence, "The saving of your life or the fixing of the mission you botched?"
"You're one to speak of botching a mission, my lady," the Operative replied through clenched teeth. "The Parliament brought me on to solve the problem you failed to contain at the Capital." The princess didn't seem concerned, merely tinkering with the communicator, two fingers still pointed at the Avatar. She finally heaved a sigh and motioned towards him.
"You, Captain," she said congenially, "tell your pilot that if he takes off, I'll mount his lungs over my fireplace."
He gaped at her for a second, but then she held the open button for him, watching emotionlessly with eyes the exact shape and color of Zuko's and nothing like them at all, so he leaned forward a bit. "Longshot, turn her off," he said, eyes never leaving Azula's face, and resisted the urge to spit at her.
"That will do," she sighed, as the ship stopped humming. "You — " she said, indicating to her soldiers, "I want you to protect all entrances to the cargo bay — there are six," she added, helpfully. "Ensure that no one goes in or out."
"Princess, everyone on this ship is bound by law for — " the Operative began, but Azula stopped him with a glare.
"I don't care about the law," she replied distastefully, and tapped Aang's shoulder lightly, gaze locked back on Zuko, who was tensing and untensing like he was trying to gauge the best moment to attack, and failing to find an opening. "I care about getting the Avatar back to where he belongs — a box in my possession." Jet glanced at Aang and saw raw fear on his face at the prospect of going back into cold sleep.
The Operative turned, expression violent. "You cannot think to — " he started, spluttering, and then scowled. "In that case, Princess Azula, you are under arrest for obstruction of justice," he said coldly, like he had just won a great battle. Azula paused for a moment, then burst out laughing.
"Do you feel powerful saying that to me?" she asked condescendingly, and didn't wait for a response. "At any rate, Long Feng, I assure you that I am not under your jurisdiction."
With a snarl, the Operative stomped hard once, bringing up the metal of his ship — his ship! — to encase her, but she was faster, stepping out of the way of the warping metal with the agility of a cat.
"I hereby — " he started, raising his hands to bring rock up from the dock beneath them, but she stepped aside again and turned her hand from Aang's throat in a graceful arc around her head; time seemed to slow down as they watched, transfixed, blue lightning forming and crackling around her, and then crashing down on the Operative, striking the back of the neck in a blinding white flash. Thunder snapped through the air, and then silence.
(Distantly, he filed a note away in his head that she had struck, angling the bolt so that it hit the Operative right at the start of the spinal cord, and recoiled, keeping the bolt from his body down into the metal of the ship, with precision accuracy and timing. That took planning and research, and power and control in a measure he'd never heard of before.)
"Does anyone else want to stand in my way?" she asked softly, hands steady like a surgeon's. No one responded; there was a strange look on Zuko's face, something between loathing and apprehension, and even though Jet internally screamed at him to do something, he honestly couldn't think of anything Zuko could do.
The Operative lay still on the floor of the ship, body blackened from the face down.
"I thought so," she answered herself, and then looked to her soldiers with a tilt of her head. "Girls, stay where you are until the Avatar has been removed," she ordered quietly, turning around and directing the soldier holding Aang to march away. "Now, I couldn't care much less about the biaozi or those who have sheltered her. I'm going to be very generous and even allow you to go about your way — minus the Avatar, of course," she added, smiling benevolently. "In fact, I would love to see you try to rescue him," she continued. "It would really brighten up the boredom."
With that, she walked out of the cargo bay; her soldiers waited a few more minutes before releasing them abruptly, and then they too marched out of the ship, leaving them standing silently in the ruined, warped, and scorched cargo bay — without Aang.