Responses to Reviews:

RonaldM40196867: I already have; In The Five Avatars, one of the five is an original character. I have no active future plans to write another though.

Zigzagdoublezee: Yeah, I want to try to inject this with a sense of genuine danger. I have no idea how successful I'm being, but I'm trying.

TORONTOSUN: I'm biased, but I like Hotaru. She's one of my favourite original characters.

Sharpe: I don't know, she's not the heir but she probably does have important duties at home, so my guess is that she would go there.

As Always, Please Review!

Asami

Asami watched Hotaru and Korra drop away from her aircraft, and felt the aircraft suddenly climb several feet, freed from their weight, before pulling up on the control stick and beginning to gain altitude. She felt tears sting in her eyes.

She knew why Korra was doing this, but a large part of her railed against it. Couldn't she see how dangerous this was? And Asami could not lose more people.

She watched the first waves of torpedo bombers fan out across the bay and then swing in to launch their attack runs, targeting every ship except the Colossus. They dipped low over the water, and as they accelerated towards their targets Asami was suddenly on the bridge of the Taka again, watching her father going to attack the Colossus. She closed her eyes and took a shaky breath. Those memories were still far too raw.

Just then, there was a tap on her shoulder. Asami was so surprised she nearly crashed the flying machine, but swivelled in her seat with a startled yelp.

Meelo reclined in the radio operator's seat, and waved casually at her.

"Hey," he said.

She looked past him to see four sky bison had fallen into a flying V formation behind her machine, two on each side. On one side, Jinora and Kai waved at her, and on the other, Ikki rode on the outside of the formation. The sky-bison next to her, between her and Asami, was riderless.

"What are-" Asami stopped. "What happened to the wind? Why can I hear you?"

Even the sound of the engine seemed dulled, somehow. She could understand Meelo perfectly despite having had to shout at Korra just two minutes earlier.

"We're Airbenders, remember!" Meelo said proudly. "It's our thing!"

Asami nodded slowly. She supposed that made sense. The flying machine and its new escort were flying in a wide, lazy turn over the battlefield, slowly gaining altitude. Asami slowed down so that the Bison would have an easier time keeping up.

Meelo waved to his sisters, who waved back. He turned back to Asami.

"What's the plan then? Are you just going to sink them?"

"Most of them," Asami told him. "They went to fight Kuvira face to face."

She said this with a degree of bitterness, and felt bad for it a moment later. Meelo did not seem to notice, but a moment later he sat up in his seat and gasped.

Asami whirled to see what he was looking at, and saw a torpedo bomber trailing smoke, with half of one wing missing as it climbed sharply and twisted in mid air before losing altitude again.

"Help him!" Asami shouted, and then Meelo was gone, jumping cleanly over to his sky bison which shot away. Asami didn't even know bison could move that quickly. The noise of the wind and the engine returned to normal, nearly deafening Asami, who had grown used to the quiet.

The pilot managed to jump clear of the flying machine as it twisted lazily in the air and then began to descend towards the water, and then Meelo was there, scooping him up and depositing him in the saddle. A moment later a huge splash marked where the stricken aeroplane slammed into Yue Bay.

Around them, dozens of white lines marked where torpedoes were speeding through the water. Asami watched the Imperial warships frantically dodging them. One managed to get its nose around in time so that the streak barely missed its bows, but a second slammed into it amidships. There was a titanic explosion, and it began belching smoke and took on a list. The victorious torpedo bomber began to climb, just as the dive bombers began to approach.

Asami looked up as a formation of them passed over her head, before the pilots throttled back and put their flying machines into a steep dive. Flaps on their wings were deployed to slow them down as they thundered downwards in front of her, before their bombs separated from their fuselages and the pilots pulled up with all their might just before they would have hit the ground. Suddenly, the bay was full of splashes, small ones as the bombs hit the water followed by big ones a moment later as they went off.

Asami's flying machine had a bomb strapped to it, and she briefly thought about making a bombing run of her own, but before she could Meelo was back.

"Got him!" He reported.

"That's great!" Asami called to him. "Maybe you should do it again!"

Meelo looked around.

"Are there any other pilots who need saving?"

"There will be!" Asami told him. "All of you, go!"

Meelo gave a salute, and the others nodded, before the Airbenders banked away. Asami turned her attention back to the unfolding battle. The first wave of dive bombers looked like it had completely missed, and only one of the Imperial ships- the one which had been hit by the torpedo- was out of action. Several torpedoes had scored hits on the Allied fleet which had been abandoned and chained along the shoreline though. A couple were sitting noticeably lower in the water as they beached themselves on the shallow bottom.

Now the second wave of dive-bombers were coming in, but increasingly it looked like the Imperials were beginning to get their act together; torpedo bombers were having to fly through clouds of metal strips and other debris, fired at them as improvised anti-aircraft weapons by desperate metalbenders on their decks. One torpedo bomber was struck in the engine by one of them and began belching smoke, but Jinora was there a moment later, plucking the pilot out of his seat before the plane made a belly landing in the water. An explosion rocked the bay as a dive bomber landed its bomb on the Fire Nation cruiser, which rocked under the weight of the blow. Asami saw a huge hole had been carved in the deck in front of the superstructure by the bomb, but the ship was still intact and already metalbender damage control teams were swarming across it. Other bombs continued to miss, and Asami cursed. For all of their weight of numbers, clearly these land based crews were not fully trained at targeting moving ships.

And then Asami looked out to sea. That fog bank had got a lot closer just in the few minutes they had been there, she thought. She wasn't an expert on sea weather, maybe that was normal. But it seemed odd for it to move so quickly.

And then the fog cleared in an instant, to reveal more warships steaming towards the entrance to the harbour. These ones were painted a rich dark blue, and as she flew closer she could make out letters emblazoned on the bow of the lead ship; huge, golden writing which read Princess Yue.