Zuko exited the ice raft Katara had bended up the river and looked up. Banners rippled in the moonlight, proud and stark against the muddled gray stone and rusted metal that covered ever other surface of the structure in front of him. There needed nothing else to identify to whom this factory belonged. The two banners on either side of the primary gateway leading into the building stared back at Zuko, bloody, ugly reminders.
He cursed under his breath. "I will stop you."
They waved back impassively.
Katara stepped under a side archway hidden in shadows, and Zuko, giving one last look at the twisted symbols of destruction, followed.
Unlike the fortresses and battlements Zuko was accustomed to, with guards and minimal signage, the factory looked rather civilian with signs directing them to the mess hall, bunks, offices, and the main floor. And because it was late, there wasn't anyone walking around. Despite this good luck, a part of Zuko couldn't help but criticize the lack of guards, as if he were inspecting their security rather than exploiting it.
And for some reason that made him angry, the ease of it all. Why was it so easy? This powerful nation that stood as an unshakeable pillar holding up his life-that-was seemed so weak and fallible. The idea that the Fire Nation was unstoppable was now as firm as the flags that stood watch outside. It was a lie, and he helped support it. If only I had stood up once. If I had questioned what I was doing….
He shouldn't be thinking like that. The past is the past. The past is the past. He tried to imagine those words covering up the anger rising within him.
"Zuko." His head jerked to Katara. They hadn't said anything to each other since they arrived for fear of being overheard and spotted, and her sudden whisper, however quiet, felt like an unnecessary risk. Yet the look of concern on Katara's face as she raised her eyebrows in an unspoken question made him consider that she knew exactly what risk her actions entailed and deemed them worthy.
A quick nod to let her know everything was okay assuaged but didn't completely mollify her concern. But she accepted it with a nod of her own and continued down a wide corridor that couldn't escape the Fire Nation's signature metallic walls and fixtures. Red light came from lanterns fixed to the walls, bathing everything in a dim maroon that almost made Zuko's eyes hurt and reminded him of his time with the Fire Navy.
Another sign labeled Factory Floor directed them left and up a short flight of stairs. Their breathing grew faster as they drew deeper into the factory and farther away from the safety of the exit behind them.
Zuko stopped at the same time as Katara. A deep, constant rumbling like thunder from a distant storm reached them. The power behind that sound was unmistaken, but the source was still unknown.
Katara, who had remained ahead of Zuko as they traveled down the hall, looked back.
He shrugged a shoulder and crept to her side. Hoping the sound would cover his words, he said, "It's got to be coming from the main floor. Whatever they're making there…." That, he didn't know, but it'd make sense for a factory this size would have equally sizeable equipment.
Continuing down the hall and turning a corner, they reached a set of doors. An epithet had been scratched into the rusted metal, marking the entrance to the factory's main floor: Welcome to the beach. The rough, pounding sound's last obstruction fell away when Zuko cracked open the door and a dull roar greeted them along with a blast of heat and humidity.
He waited and glanced around as much as he could from his limited position behind the door. No one in sight. Taking a breath, Zuko stepped past the doorway and into the hot room with Katara close behind.
They found themselves on a raised, exposed platform with a flight of stairs leading to the factory floor below. The space they oversaw was about the size of one of the courtyards in the Palace but was filled with stagnate equipment unknown to Zuko.
A large pipe with a diameter slightly smaller than Appa was round ran the length of the floor to his right, and coming out of an opening in the back wall was a raised table that was unusually long, longer than any banquet table he'd seen and longer than any one needed to be. Sparse for the most part, the table was dotted with rocks about the size of Zuko's hand. It was hard to tell from this distance, but there didn't seem to be anything particularly special about them: they didn't glitter with gold or jewels, nor did they look anything other than plain, unremarkable stone. Toph might have had an idea of their value had she been there with them, but Zuko supposed it didn't matter if they were worth anything; whatever was happening here was poisoning people.
His eyes followed the table as it emerged from the back wall and continued, twisting and turning throughout the room and into and out of various currently stagnate equipment, undergoing some process until it met the source of the room's suffocating heat: a furnace, twice the size of any one Zuko had seen in his life. It was closer to the size of a raised pool, and a sudden, inane thought enters Zuko's mind, asking him to jump in to swim in the pool of fire.
He swept the thought aside. Though they weren't being tended to, the furnace flames still licked at the small cracks and openings around the top of the structure, trying to escape as Fire always did.
Moving on from that and continuing the progress of whatever stone was being mined and processed, the next step looked like they were dumped into a pool of water. The pool swirled with a strong current that flowed out and away into a pipe that ultimately connected to the larger one on the right of the room.
That's what the sound was: running water. Fast, crashing water like a waterfall.
And that's how it's getting into the water, whatever it is. Zuko glanced at Katara. She was frowning, and her eyes were following the same track his had until she looked up and said, raising her voice above the sound of the rushing water, "We need to destroy this place."
It was a simple enough plan, and Zuko wouldn't sit back and not help like before. Here, he could do something. He nodded. "Let's start with the furnace."
-o-0-
They descended the steps to the bottom floor, and the furnace rose above them like a dark monster readying itself to attack.
But Katara knew this monster's weakness. She started to waterbend, but Zuko shouted over the noise, "Wait! I'll heat it up first!"
Heat it up? Why? The furnace was already so hot that they had to stand several steps away. She started to ask, but Zuko had turned his attention back to the beast in front of him.
His face screwed up into a grimace, and he wiped the sweat from his face before he took a stance—familiar, now that Katara was watching him teach Aang—and began to manipulate the fire.
If it were possible, it was getting hotter—hot enough that she had to take another step back, but Zuko stayed where he was. The flames grew brighter and longer, and the dim orange around the edges of the cracks and seals of the furnace were increasing in size but also changing into a bright orange.
Then the walls of the furnace shifted. Katara looked on as, like soft clay, they twisted under their own weight, the doors leading to the bowels the furnace fell off their hinges, and the lid that had covered the fiery container disappeared from sight with a bang. Flames that had been held in check leapt and flew out, along with a blast of heat that hurt Katara's eyes.
Spirits, he's powerful.
She checked back on Zuko. He was covered in sweat and looking as if he was carrying a massive weight on his shoulders to the point where it was causing him pain. "Zuko!" she called. "That's enough! Zuko!"
It didn't appear as if he heard her, but then he dropped his hands and rolled his shoulders back. He looked at her, tiredness and pain were plain on his face but also hard anger that made it seem his gaze was fixed on something beyond her. He nodded without replying and returned to Katara.
Though the furnace was ruined, the same couldn't be said of the rest of the equipment. Gesturing to the stairs behind her, she ordered, "Get up there. I'll burst the pipe and flood the place."
Once again, he nodded wordlessly and went back the way they came. Katara took up her waterbending stance and felt the strong flow of water, its pressure feeling along every crevice of the pipe's interior for some sign of weakness. It wouldn't need much help to pry it once it was weakened.
She could take care of that. Taking the water from the pouch at her side, she targeted the bolts connecting two pieces of the metal piping. Like the drill in Ba Sing Se, the key wasn't to puncture the tough metal, but to weaken the existing structure enough so that the forces on it would destroy itself. A slicing motion with her hand caused the water to shoot out and cut into the head of one of the bolts with deadly accuracy. Not surprisingly, nothing appeared to happen, though Katara knew if she looked closer there was probably a small cut in it.
Gathering the water again, she launched another attack at a neighboring bolt. There were five within her view, and if she switched between them, gradually weakening them, it would hopefully be enough for the pressured water to escape and ruin the Fire Nation's operation.
Another attack. And another, but not as strong. Last night was catching up with her. I can always sleep when we're on Appa again, she thought doggedly, keeping her focus on the task at hand and not the exhaustion seeping into her arms.
Light and heat flared up to her left. She could almost feel the fire eating the air—a phrase Dad had once used to describe the behavior of that element—as it passed by her head. It collided near the joint she had been working on, and a small spray of water began shooting out, a warning of the impending disaster Katara was trying to cause but not be stuck in the middle of.
Katara followed the angle at which the fireball came and spotted its maker: a Fire Nation soldier. He stood on the same raised platform as Katara and Zuko had when they entered the main floor and where Zuko stood presently, though this soldier was on the far end next to a second set of stairs leading down to the factory floor.
"Stop, waterbender scum!" the soldier shouted. The tired part of Katara dimly thought the words sounded awkward, like he was simply repeating something he had heard. She must have been more tired than she thought because it wasn't until the soldier turned to meet Zuko running toward him did she register any movement from either of them.
With a hoarse yell, Zuko attacked with a spinning kick and sent an arc of fire at the soldier. In return, the soldier used a simple but effective block that protected much of his body, though he retreated several steps in the process. Katara and the others had encountered much more skilled firebenders, so while she couldn't dismiss him as a threat, she didn't expect it was going to be too much of a challenge for Zuko to incapacitate him.
But Zuko didn't seem to share her belief. As with his first attack, his second was preceded by a yell so raw, it was as if he was fighting through extreme pain. Is he hurt? She had only noticed the one attack by the soldier, but maybe there had been another, and she had just been too tired or focused on her work to notice. Or maybe he had been hurt somehow when he melted the furnace. Regardless, Zuko's attacks were relentless, and his opponent struggled to keep his footing as he defended himself.
The first set of doors—the ones Katara and Zuko had walked through—exploded open, revealing three other soldiers, two with long, spear-like weapons and one seemingly unarmed, likely another firebender. They were in various states of undress since it was in the middle of the night, but that would not change the sharpness of their blades nor the heat of any flame. Their sudden appearance left Zuko on the raised walkway alone without an open escape route and Katara down below, watching the new arrivals.
Team Avatar had been outnumbered before—several times, in fact—but it was with a deep pang of doubt in her stomach that Katara knew she and Zuko by themselves were not Team Avatar, and victory was not as certain as it had been seconds ago.
She tried to yell over the rush of water, "Zuko!" but neither he nor the soldiers appeared to hear her. The soldiers approached Zuko from behind, but he must have heard their entrance as well and turned to face them. The one soldier he left behind ran away out the second set of doors, nearly tripping over himself in the process.
One of the armed men started to say something, but Zuko didn't hesitate and attacked before he could do more than open his mouth.
A cold memory from the North resurfaced: 'Here for a rematch?' He'd always said something when they fought; it was like he couldn't help it. Even when they were still enemies and he was recovering from Ba Sing Se, he spoke to her as if he was trying to reach out—in his own odd way.
But here—Zuko's rapid kicks sent several lines of fire down the walkway and knocked one of the armed men flat on his back—here, he was silent except for his wordless shouts, which were worrying in their own right.
BANG!
Katara whirled around and received a spray of water to the face. The sound of groaning metal rose above the already deafening rush of water.
BANG!
This time she saw the cause of the noise. The head of one of the bolts she cut into popped off and disappeared into the shifting shadows created by the water reflecting Zuko's fire. The pipe groaned dangerously and more water gushed out and onto the floor, soaking Katara in the process. It wouldn't take much more for the entire joint to break.
Had the water not been so powerful and rough, or if Katara hadn't been weary from the night before, she might have been able to do more to control the flow of water, but water had its own flowing path to follow and interrupting that—especially powerful currents—required more energy than she knew she had.
Nonetheless, she had to act. Looking back, Zuko—Spirits! Katara gasped.
Scorch marks covered the walkway. Where there had stood three men half a minute before, all three were on their backs, motionless except for one. Zuko stood over that one, still not having said a word, at least, not anything Katara had heard. Everything remained bathed in the ever-red light of the factory, yet it did nothing to lessen the shock of blood covering Zuko's right hand tightly curled up in a fist.
Katara didn't hear the impact of his punch, but she saw the motion of his arm suddenly stop as it connected with the man's body.
Running from the pipe, she halfway up the steps when a series of sharp, successive bangs sounded behind her followed by a loud crack. She turned back. The final bolts had finally failed and the two pieces of piping were now completely apart from each other. The water poured out of the back wall like a constant wave and began to flood the factory. Small, light tools and equipment were immediately pushed to the corners of the room or caught on larger pieces of machinery.
Katara bended a small amount of water to her, then finished running onto the raised platform. She rushed past one of the incapacitated men towards the second which was the one Zuko was still standing over. Zuko looked up and straightened to meet her. He started to say something, but she talked over him, breathing hard, "What are you doing?"
"Are you okay?" he panted, apparently repeating his previous question.
"Yeah—" She paused and took in a full breath her lungs desperately needed. He really wasn't acting right, but as long as he was well enough to leave with her—and it looked like he was—it wasn't the time to discuss it. "We need to go."
He nodded. His eyes traveled past Katara to the flooded room below, and his expression told her he hadn't noticed this development. Just like she had been too focused on the piping to see the firebender attack, he had been too focused on fighting to notice a flood.
The two of them turned and jogged to the exit doors, back to relative freedom and safety. As they reached the exit, the doors swung open, revealing six men in full Fire Nation armor. Upon seeing her, they crouched down into firebending stances.