On Desdemona

Jet cursed as Katara's water formed into a wall of ice to block the gunfire. So much for bluffing the bad guys - he'd have to hope that one of the other teams just happened to get lucky and stumble across the prison block.

Katara's ice shattered in the blast of a grenade, and she quickly pulled all the shards into another wall. "Jet, I can't do this forever!" she cried, and looked to Toph, who was up to her elbows in the wall, tinkering with the locking mechanism to clear their path to Aang. "We have to come up with something else!"

"I'm almost done here," Toph yelled, ducking as another grenade shattered Katara's ice wall, vaporizing another large amount of her water and showering them with ice. She pulled the remnants into another wall, but this one was smaller and thinner, probably the last one she could risk putting up - if she wasted any more water, she'd have nothing left to fight or heal with. "Got it!" Toph shouted as a third grenade struck. Katara tugged on all the water she could get to, but it was much, much less than she'd started with.

"Push forward," he yelled, unloading a full clip into the guards firing on them. He cursed as a bullet slashed across his thigh and drew a disproportionately large amount of blood, barely managing to get behind a wall, wincing in pain. Katara was there immediately, holding her hand over the wound, using the remnants of her water and quite a bit of his own blood to heal it. "That's a neat trick," he gasped, shaking his head to clear it, and pulled out a cigarette. "Hey, Sparky, you gonna give me a light this time, or what?"

Zuko shot him an incredulous look from the other side of the doorway.

"Tch, fine," he growled, pulling out a match and lighting the cigarette. He paused for a moment to let the nicotine hit his system, counting four seconds for the nearest gun's suppressive fire to run out, and then turned and began unloading shotgun shells into the nearest guard, taking what little aim he could before ducking behind the wall again. "That was a hell of a waste," he grunted around the precariously dangling cigarette, then turned and shot again until the guards reloaded or were replaced. "They won't keep this up," he muttered, taking a deep drag. "Waste of everyone's gorram time. Four," he hissed, turning and getting out three more shells (all of which again went wide) before another shot hit him in the side. "Cào," he snapped, and slid against the wall again as Katara laid her hand over his side, glaring at him.

"You can't keep doing this, you'll go into shock," she snapped.

"You kiddin'?" he asked lightly, grinning against a growing delirium. "Me and this wall, we're becomin' best o' friends." When the annoyance on her face shifted to worry, he rolled his eyes. "Can't a guy joke around when he's gettin' hit with eight different kinds o' bullets? Relax, I'll be fine. 'Sides, I don't have to keep doin' this," he replied, glancing across the doorway. "Sparks, give us some fire, Toph, hit the ground and stay there. Katara, you and Sparky watch our backs."

He and Toph ducked to the ground at the same time that Zuko sent a blast of fire into the hallway, and the two of them belly-crawled over to the guards while they were busy trying to fight the two benders. Toph was on the same wavelength as him, and hit the ground with her palm, bringing the metal flooring up to knock all of the soldiers over at once. Before they could react, he was on his feet, pumping shells into as many guards as he had time and ammunition to put down, while Toph used her earthbending to trap or kill the ones he didn't have a chance to shoot.

"Let's move!" he called, and Katara and Zuko followed him deeper into the ship.

Azula, leaning against the door to Aang's prison - her very own practice room - smiled.

It wasn't part of her plan that the Avatar's little friends attack her; to be honest, she didn't actually have anything at all to gain by baiting them here, except perhaps the chance to kill a few of them before the panic cleared and they could start planning effectively.

In fact, she had told them the whole truth - and nothing but the truth - when she had said that it would really liven up the boredom. It was a long ride from Beaumonde to Sihnon, and in Azula's experience, uneventful journeys lead to very eventful destinations, so better to draw out the wild cards in the deck before they had a chance to do any damage to her plans.

"You know," she said cheerfully. "I'll make a bet with you, Avatar. Now, before you get the wrong idea," she added, "I'm not a gambler. This is a special exception, just for you. So, let's say... I'll give you, hmm... how about one deadly weapon per crew member I kill today? It'll be nice and fair," she trilled sweetly, not really caring if he was listening or screaming or catatonic. "The more people I get to kill, the more tools you'll get to avenge their deaths. Sound fun?"

He didn't answer, but then, she hadn't expected him to.

Zuzu had never liked her games, either.

They hit the stairwell at a hard run, leaving the door open behind them but taking places on the walls beside it. When the guards followed them, Ty Lee was on them, twisting in the air like the acrobat she was, kicking with her feet and slashing with the fans, injuring the first three while Sokka and Mai shot the four following, before Ty Lee could even hit the ground. She used her body more effectively as a weapon than she did the fans, struggling to cut and stab using them anything like Suki had. When it started to get messy, Mai finished off the two remaining.

"This looks so much easier when Suki does it," she muttered, stuffing the fans into her belt and wiping her bloody hands compulsively on her pants. Mai shrugged.

"Practice makes perfect. Next time, stick to your acrobatics. They worked better."

"Okay," Sokka said, "he'll be in the prison block, any ideas where that'll be?"

"The top, probably," Mai replied, reloading her crossbow. "Always keep prisoners as far away from the hangar as possible."

"That's a long way," Ty Lee said, peering into the stairs. "Lots of doors, too. It'll take way too long to get up there," she mused, and Mai sighed heavily.

"Then what do you suggest we do?" she snapped, while Sokka started rigging a grenade to go off if the door was opened again. "Fly?"

Ty Lee shot her a glare. "No, we can climb. Didn't you ever try to use the banisters instead of the stairs when you were a kid?"

"No," Mai replied at the same time that Sokka said, "Yes."

"It'll leave us with less cover, though," Sokka muttered, and Ty Lee leaned further into the stairwell intently.

"But it'll get us there way faster," she said seriously. "Time isn't really on our side, you know?"

"You make a compelling argument," he replied, glaring at the ungraceful heap of wires and repurposed fishing line that he had used to secure the door.

"Your art leaves something to be desired," Mai drawled, clenching and unclenching her fingers as a hard shaking set into them, already-weak nerves and anxiety turning themselves into pain under her skin, a sensation she was only starting to get used to.

"Wow, let me tell you how much I appreciate sarcasm when I'm about to die," Sokka replied brightly, and without any hint of irony. "Let's get moving, we've got a lot of ground to cover. Hey, Di - where is Diana?" he asked, eyes closed and one hand already over his face.

"She bailed on us! We needed her and she left!" Ty Lee cried, and Mai shook her head.

"Forget her, let's just go," she barked, leading the way up several levels until they heard the explosion from below, followed by a lot of shouting and a few errant gunshots. "Hurry!" Mai hissed, and they began racing for the top at full tilt.

"Jet," Sokka snapped into his communicator, "we're making for the top, hold the bottom."

"Roger," Jet replied. A few more shots rang out from below, but they had enough of a head-start to avoid getting shot, provided they kept up the breakneck pace they were going. Ty Lee quickly gave up on the stairs altogether and began her banister-leaping, making full use of her gymnastic training. Grudgingly, Mai had to admit that she was right: Ty Lee was moving up fast, fast enough that if they'd started off moving like that, they wouldn't have to worry about the people following them.

But Sokka was right, too: around ten levels above them, Ty Lee let out a shriek and pulled off some complicated acrobatic move (that probably wasn't part of any kind of training) to dodge a shock of blue fire that lanced across the opening and licked against the opposite wall. Sokka let out a string of curses behind her as more bullets struck much closer, and turned around to cover her back as she ran for Ty Lee.

She was almost there - one level below - when Ty Lee cried out again, and they hit the same corner at almost the same time, Ty Lee with a brutal open burn covering most of her abdomen and Mai out of breath and shaking so hard she felt like her skin was about to come off.

"Well, if it isn't Sun Mai!" Azula trilled, as she pulled up her crossbow and took ragged aim, but the princess just clicked her tongue and shot out another burst of fire almost lazily, that Mai barely managed to dodge, flattening against the wall. She glanced behind her, to see Sokka hoisting Ty Lee over one shoulder, and then back to Azula, shooting the crossbow as she turned and feeling a split second's gratification as it grazed her cheek, leaving a mark to match the ones that Ty Lee had put on her.

All shallow cuts that barely bled, but they were a moral victories at least, little as those were worth.

Azula touched her cheek and checked her finger for blood before laughing outright and showing her white, unmarred hands to Mai. "Do you feel accomplished, Mai?" she asked, snickering. "Oh," she sighed. "I was going to kill you, but that's really - " she paused to laugh again " - that's so... hilariously pathetic, I have to - "

Mai cut her off with a trio of tiny bolts discharged from her wrist.

They should have hit.

Mai had perfect aim, she never missed with a thrown object, she always landed dead on target. They all should have hit, but her nerves were convulsing erratically under her skin and she couldn't hold her hands steady; still, one embedded itself deep in Azula's shoulder and another narrowly missed her neck. Azula cried out in pain, turned on her in anger, and then tilted her head in calculation.

She watched as the pieces fell into place in Azula's head, as pieces of Mai's own mask began to crumble under the weight.

"Mai never misses," Azula said softly, and then smiled. "You just keep giving me reasons not to kill you, don't you? I could do it now, but I really think I prefer the thought of taking you prisoner and watching you slowly become a vegetable and drool yourself to death."

Mai let out a growl like a wounded animal and drew three stilettos up into her right hand, poised to attack, but Azula kept smiling and smiling and the gunfire was right up beneath them and -

They were trapped.

The thin knives were hard between her fingers and she tried to focus on the edges digging into her gloves; if there was no escape and no time for another attack, she should make this last one count.

She shifted her footing, judged Azula's agility, and threw all three.

Katara pulled the water into the pentapus form, and lashed out at everyone around her while Zuko sent blast after blast of fire - but it seemed like they couldn't make any headway. Every time she knocked someone down, someone else would rise up to take their place. Toph was beating down everything she could get to, but she was forced to crawl or stagger flushed against the wall, so her range was limited. Of all of them, it seemed like Jet was the only one who could consistently do much damage, but with his rapidly draining stock of ammunition, he was becoming less and less effective by the minute.

She saw blood bloom on Toph's shirt, but the way she had turned made it clear that the bullet had only grazed her; still, Katara made her way over to heal her. She couldn't do much offensively in the chaos and flickering light - at least this was making some kind of difference.

"Thanks," Toph gasped, slamming her heel onto the ground. "Sparky's been hit," she said, bringing up a ridge of metal to cover her as she went to Zuko, and then seemed to think that this was a pretty good idea and began wrenching further ridges into the metal, chasing soldiers as they tried to dodge.

"Here," she breathed, using his blood and what little water she had left to heal the wound in his stomach. Haru would still need to attend to it to remove the bullet, but at least he wouldn't bleed out. Zuko looked up and then grabbed her, jerking her down to the ground as a grenade went off somewhere to their left; she felt shrapnel hit him, but he protected her with his body.

"Tā māde!" he hissed, and she turned so that she could see the warped piece of metal sticking out of his back. In one movement, she pulled it out and then placed her hand over the wound, healing it as well as she could - but time was running out. He was starting to show signs of shock setting in; she could hold it at bay with healing for a while, but not much longer, and if any of them went into shock in this place, they were all dead.

"Katara!" Toph yelled, bringing up another ridge through their attackers and sending their shots wide. "Jet!"

She gasped, already feeling spent from all the hasty waterbending and healing she was having to do, and thanked all the gods she knew of that she and Aang had practiced and practiced that healing scroll. She crawled over to Jet and began healing his third mortal wound - he, too, would need Haru's attention, and like Zuko, he was lagging with blood loss, and shock had already started to set in. "Jet," she said in a low voice, "I don't think we can make any more headway."

"Just keep fighting," he replied through gritted teeth, then shook his head to clear it and reloaded his weapon while he had the chance to. Katara pulled up the blood that was now soaking the ground and formed it into a thick, sluggish pentapus, and she managed to take two men out before Toph called again and she had to drop the offensive to heal.

It was clear - they were at an impasse with their opposition. The tower just had too many people, and they didn't have enough. She whispered a prayer to the moon goddess - please let someone get through.

Bee's team razed the command center, shooting everything - the walls, the doors, the control panels, the lights, the chairs - her strategy was a bastardization of the playground bully's tactic: when shunned from a game, break everyone's toys so no one else can play, either. It was a dirty, destructive gambit, but it was also the best plan for dealing with a situation in which winning was such an outside chance that it paid to bet on losing.

Sokka and Jet's short conversation over the communicators told her that something must have gone wrong in the hangar if Sokka's team was now making for the prison block. "We go for the hangar," she said, motioning behind her. "They'll need backup."

Before they could even make it into the hall, there was another crackle at her ear - Sokka, again. All he said this time was, "Tell Suki I love her," and Bee sighed.

"Change of plans," she yelled. "We're hitting the main stairwell. We got us a Water Tribe idiot to save."

Longshot nodded, and they ran for the stairwell, firing without abandon. Bee hit the stairs, wrenching open the door and staring a whole battalion of Alliance men in the face. She had enough time to smile at Longshot before she ran in, tackling the first man and leading to a chain reaction that resulted in about half of the soldiers falling down the stairs in a domino effect, leaving her on the other side of the stairs, pinned into a corner by two halves of a battalion.

She threw one concussion grenade down the stairs as Longshot began picking off the men between them one by one with his trademark accuracy; she ducked against the corner as the grenade blew, feeling shrapnel tear into her left side - luckily, she was wearing armor under her spacesuit - they all were - but her left leg and arm weren't quite so lucky. But hell, she thought, she was right-handed, and the wounds were less of a threat than the guns pointed at her, so she didn't bother to take inventory of the injuries or give in to the pain.

Bee was good at ignoring unimportant details and paying attention to the big picture.

This was for the whole 'Verse, for a cause even bigger and more important than Independence. She turned around, firing her rifle with one arm and leaning her injured left side hard against the wall, as much defense as she'd get from this position - and then Longshot met her, followed by Pipsqueak and the Duke, each firing relentlessly into the growing crowd beneath them. Above her, she caught a glimpse of blue fire and then there was movement coming at them - Sokka's team, repelled by the princess and given the opening they needed to get through the battalion.

The princess simply leaped into the center of the stairwell, jetting fire from her hands and feet like Zuko had done at St. Albans, coming to a perfectly calm stop on the banister in front of her.

"Boo," she said, grinning in spite of several shallow cuts, a bolt embedded at least two inches deep in her shoulder, and three of Mai's stilettos tracing a deadly-looking diagonal from one shoulder to the opposite hip. Bee fired, and it was a perfect shot except that the princess somehow dodged in between Bee raising the gun and firing it, and jetted back up the stairwell like a ghost, unconcerned with killing them, just ensuring that they failed to reach Aang. Why? Why not kill them now and be done with it? Why had she even let them come?

What game was Azula playing?

Sokka reached them then, carrying a barely-conscious and badly burned Ty Lee on his back (he was clutching the golden fans, now blood-stained, in his left hand), flanked by a gasping and oddly discomposed Mai, whose top was scorched but whose burns didn't look severe, covering his retreat. They were vastly outnumbered, and more were pouring into the stairs beneath them. She glanced at the rifle in her right hand - it was almost out of ammo, and she didn't have the space or the time to reload.

Bee took a deep breath and closed her eyes - for one hopelessly long second, she was back at Serenity Valley, listening to the report from command, saying that it was too hot, they were pulling out. She wasn't one to surrender, even now, but Bee wasn't stupid - she knew what impossible and suicidal looked like.

"Back through the command center," she snapped, opening her eyes again. "Sokka, follow us, we're getting back to the ship. Jet," she said into the comm link, "Sokka's team and I are overwhelmed, Azula's guarding him personally. We can't get him."

"Don't you dare say that to me," Jet snarled through the comm, but he knew in his gut that she wouldn't have sounded the retreat if she had thought there was any chance. "Shit," he growled, and then looked to Toph, Zuko, and Katara. They were all outnumbered way past reasonable - they couldn't even make it to the stairs! - and Katara had already healed at least two mortal wounds for each of them, they'd all been hit so much that he was pretty sure there was enough of their blood on the floor to fill up at least one other person... they were tapped out. Push it any longer, and they wouldn't make it back at all. Already, they were barely standing, with Katara as the only one with a clear head.

He slumped against the wall - They ain't comin. We're to lay down arms - and then stood straighter. "Roger," he said gravely. "Retreat," he said, and Toph hit the wall so hard she almost took it down.

"We've gotta get Aang!" she shrieked. "He's still trapped!"

"I said retreat," he said, voice low and dangerous - this was the worst part of the job he'd never wanted and never asked for but fallen into just the same. He could lead a thousand charges forward, but he'd never gotten the hang of the backward run. He tried to shake it off, because this wasn't the end, even when it sure as hell felt like it. "We regroup, find another way in. We can't get him like this. It was a risky thing from the start."

He shot a few more times at the sea of guards between them and the stairwell, more out of spite than anything else, and then nodded at Katara. "Give us cover," he said, and she opened her mouth to protest, but then nodded and used the last of her water - and more than a little blood from the ground - to put up a wall between them, and then he motioned back the way they had come. "Hurry, that won't hold long. Grab helmets from those assholes," he added, motioning to the bodies strewn about. "Don't matter what kind, just so long as it covers your face and stops air from gettin' sucked outta you."

"Jet, there's still more we can do!" Toph cried, and he grabbed her by the arm.

"Listen to me, Toph," he said, "gettin' Aang ain't on the table anymore, and we stay any longer, we'll never get ourselves out either. You think you can help Aang if you're dead? What's your plan for that, huh? Come back as a ghost?" She snarled at him, and he released her arm. "You're coming with us, like it or not," he snapped, wrenching the helmet off one of the dead guards and pulling it over his head. "If I have to knock you out and drag you back to the ship myself."

She clenched her jaw, but followed him. He motioned for Katara and Zuko to make for the far shuttle, while he and Toph would seal the hangar and take the closer shuttle. Mouth turned in a vicious sneer, Toph opened the panel she'd tinkered with before and plucked a few wires, causing the doors to slam shut. She didn't bother to close the panel again.

They ran for the shuttle as Katara and Zuko bolted for Mai's, and he saw the blast doors shaking under the weight of grenades - he prayed to the god he'd given up on at Serenity Valley that the others were safe, and took off in the shuttle, racing back through the gunships trying to blockade their exit - he pulled it down and veered hard to avoid the bullets - on the other side of the hangar, he saw the other shuttle fly out, going up and dodging similarly to him, and he looked around desperately for the ship. There was no way they'd survive long in this without heavy artillery helping them out.

Luckily, the ship wrenched itself out of the Tower above them, and he saw the blinding white flash from Maria take out a whole block of gunships. Katara's shuttle was closer, and he watched it land before he began climbing up. Maria thinned the crowd around him several times, as close as Pipsqueak dares to shoot her, until he finally landed the shuttle in its port and they flew away at hard burn.

They had failed.

Again.

On Desdemona

The door opened as he was midway through visualizing his grief and trying to let it go. Azula leaned against the doorframe, with a savage sort of smile on her face.

"You can relax, Avatar," she said mockingly. "Everything's been taken care of."

No!

He swallowed hard on the power, the rage, the chaos within - he certainly couldn't lose control now, alone in Azula's hands and with no help coming. She walked in and peered at him; up close, he could see spots of blood on her clothing, and a small, dark part of him hoped they hurt. "Hmm," she said lightly, "I'll be honest: I expected you to start glowing."

"Not for you," he replied through gritted teeth, and tried to continue visualizing grief. They'd try again - they would, he knew it, and he had to be ready when they did. He had failed them this time, but next time... next time, he would join them, and save them, and he hoped that they were all okay, that no one had died trying to save him. Katara, Toph... he closed his eyes and willed the tears not to fall, at least not in front of Azula.

For being the bearer of phenomenal cosmic power, he thought, he certainly seemed to fail a lot.

"Well, perhaps you will for my father, then," she mused, leaning against the wall. "He's just dying to meet you. It will be a while, though," she continued dismissively. "Your friends left quite a mess for me to clean up." She leaned down to speak conspiratorially in his ear, "We'll talk in a few hours about how many weapons I owe you, hmm? I really can't wait to see which ones you choose, you'd be amazed at how much someone's weapon of choice tells you about them. I have you pegged as a blunt object kind of person," she said, stepping back and smiling like they were friends, "but I've been surprised before."

She smirked as she walked out, and the door clicked closed behind her - and then a vent on the floor opened and a dust-covered Diana crawled through it into the room, out of breath as she massaged her limbs absently.

"I had to wait for her to go," she said quietly. He stared at her for a moment.

"They failed, they had to retreat - you're stuck here!" he whispered, and she nodded.

"I know," she replied, and then smiled, her eyes brighter blue than he remembered them being. "I'm the one who's gonna get you out of here, Avatar."