as the turn of the worlds, book two, part two
Title: As the Turn of the Worlds; Book Two: Still Flying
Chapter Title: Lilac
Rating: High T/Low M
Genre: Action/Adventure, Space Western
Characters/Pairings: Ensemble; Mai/Jet, Zuko/Katara (est. relationship), Smellerbee/Longshot (est. relationship), Toph/Haru, Suki/Sokka
Summary: Aang never woke up from the iceberg, and the world went on without him, and without the Avatar. Over the next three thousand years, technology advanced astronomically -- literally, the people of the overcrowded world taking to the stars, colonizing a whole new solar system with dozens of planets and hundreds of moons. Now, the Avatar is a barely-remembered myth, bending is regarded as a relic of a rightfully-dead past, and only two of the original four countries still exist: the Fire Nation, one of the most powerful forces in the Union of Allied Planets, and the Water Tribe, clinging to life on the Outer Rim, still fighting desperately for the dream of independence. The latest civil war ended seven years ago, in a landslide victory for the Alliance -- but that doesn't mean the fight for independence is over.
Book Two: Still Flying: Azula isn't the only one on the hunt for the Avatar -- the Parliament, untrusting of the Fire Lord and looking to help Azula supplant him, has sent out their own man, an Operative who works with a small strike force of powerful, secretive men. Meanwhile, a woman from both Sokka's and Jet's pasts has a job offer they can't afford to refuse, Katara must learn to heal as soon as possible, and the specter of a recent Reaver attack hangs heavy over the whole crew...
Chapter Summary: In which Aang and Ty Lee fail to bond, the crew's job takes them to the edge of Reaver space, and the unthinkable happens.
Notes: Special thanks to feral_shrew for helping me with this chapter, and a few subsequent ones, to make sure I got the medical things right. I'm posting this here without the other links for now. I'll add them later.
FFN // LJ // AO3
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(on freedom)
Mai brewed tea in her shuttle for Aang and Ty Lee while the others went to the bar or hung around the ship, straightening things up and generally trying to keep busy.
"I just feel useless," Ty Lee grumbled, flopping back on Mai's bed. She twitched, but didn't comment, and glared at Aang. He hadn't done anything yet, but he was fidgeting like he really wanted to do something.
"You're allowed in my shuttle this one time," she told him severely, and he grinned. "Otherwise, the ban is still in effect."
"Yes, Lady Mai," he replied cheerfully. "I don't think you're useless, Ty Lee," he said, joining her and bouncing on the bed. "You're a really good acrobat, and you helped out a lot at the Water Tribe."
"Yeah, but what good is that here?" she growled, and then sighed. "I'm just in a bad mood. It's -- " she paused, and looked at Aang before saying, very carefully, "uh, the red knight is lodging," she said cryptically. Aang stared at her; Mai buried her face in her palm and set about to making the tea she had made for Toph once.
"So, tell him... he can't… stay?" Aang replied uncertainly.
"Uh," Ty Lee replied. "It doesn't work like that."
"Oh, for... Aang, it's her time of the month," Mai snapped, and Ty Lee turned red, but Aang just nodded.
"Your moon cycle?" he asked, and then when Ty Lee gaped at him, he shrugged. "The monks told me all about... stuff," he said, wincing. "Since I traveled a lot, they thought it was important that I understand the human body and..." he coughed, "um, things."
"You're only twelve!" Ty Lee yelped, horrified. "Why'd they tell you all those things?"
"Twelve is a good age for that," Mai said calmly, idly wondering who she could arrange a meeting with so that she never had to sit around and play therapist ever again. "I was younger when I learned. And as a Buddhist monk, I suspect they found it important to teach their children at a young age."
"A what monk?" Aang asked, and she sighed, pouring hot water into each cup.
"Buddhist," she replied. "It's a religion descended from the teachings of the Air Nomads in ancient times."
Aang's whole face lit up and he bounced closer to the edge of the bed. "Really?" he asked eagerly. "Do you -- are you a Buddhist?"
"No," she answered shortly, and his face fell. "Katara is, however," she added. He looked confused and eager and hopeful all at once.
"Why didn't she say so?" he asked, and she gave him one of her looks.
"I suspect she simply didn't think it was important," she said, serving him his tea. He took it, worrying his lip. "I doubt she would be interested in pursuing a relationship with you, shared religion or no," she told him, and he jumped, looking mortified. Ty Lee giggled.
"Aww, you have a crush?" she teased. "That's so cute!"
"I don't -- it's not -- " he sighed heavily. "It doesn't matter," he muttered, hiding his embarrassment by taking a too-large gulp of tea. "She's with Zuko. And I'm too young, anyway."
"That's true," Mai replied, earning a scowl from Ty Lee, but she went on before Ty Lee could give the boy false hope. "Don't worry," she said, since Ty Lee was currently trying to bore a hole through her skull with the force of glare (Ty Lee's glare was, however, somewhat lacking), "when you're older, I'm sure you'll find someone."
"You're so cute," Ty Lee cooed, mollified by Mai's token reassurance. "He's like our own personal child," she squealed, petting his bald head. He huffed.
"I'm not a child."
Ty Lee's grin stayed perfectly still on her face. "Aang, what did the monks tell you about women and their moon cycles?" she asked, and Aang's brow furrowed.
"Um, well, they said that it's different for every woman, some get sad and some get really angry and some don't act any different -- "
"I'm one of the angry ones," she cut him off, still grinning. Aang suddenly looked slightly desperate. "So... you're like our own personal child!" she squealed again, and he smiled, but with the eyes of a caged animal.
"Of course," he replied, laughing weakly and taking another large gulp of tea.
--
The job was weak tea, stealing some coin off a Blue Sun outpost on Lilac, but since he had Aang on board, he had to step lightly, and as hungry as his crew was, they couldn't afford to turn down a job 'cause it didn't pay enough. It had taken a lot of work to convince Fanty and Mingo that it hadn't been his ship involved in the Independent Uprising (he winced when he heard it called that) at the Water Tribe. Luckily, the only concrete info the Alliance had was that a Firefly had been involved, and there were enough of those still flying around that he could play dumb about it.
Jet loaded up his weapons -- he didn't expect trouble, but he had a bad feeling all the same, and Lilac was close to Reaver territory, so it paid to be prepared. He'd forced Toph to come with them even though she didn't want to, because he'd need her extraordinary skill to ensure that no one was coming their way. She'd saved them on more than one occasion by giving them early warning.
"Grenades?" Pipsqueak asked, and Jet heard the Duke mutter something in response. "We don't need grenades."
"No," the Duke replied, "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 that he don't need grenades."
Jet shrugged. "S'long as they don't go off at random, I don't ca -- okay, you don't need that many grenades." The Duke looked almost comical, dressed head-to-toe in fragments of old armor, dripping with spare magazines, a whole belt of ammunition 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 of how thick his armor was. Jet rolled his eyes.
"Lose some o' that," he said, waving his rifle carelessly. "You gotta be able to move."
"So, the three of us, plus... Toph, right?" Pipsqueak asked, joining him at the table and loading up his weapons as well. Jet nodded.
"I don't like to leave Bee out of a job, but we need Toph's range of vision. You volunteering to stay behind?"
Pipsqueak shrugged. "I'd like to," he said slowly, "but I think I need to keep an eye on him."
"Well," Jet mused, making a face. "We could take Bee and Longshot, leave the two of you here guardin' the ship. It ain't easy, though."
"What, guardin' the ship? A monkey could do it."
"Hmm, nah," he replied, shaking his head. "Let Bee and Longshot have their time off."
"And us?" the Duke asked, returning to the room with slightly fewer grenades. "When do we get time off?"
"You plannin' a nice romantic evenin'?" he teased, but the Duke scowled.
"Just ain't had a day off in weeks," he grumbled, and both Pipsqueak and Jet stared at him.
"And this past two months we've been floating in the black?" Jet asked, crossing his arms. "What were you doing?" The Duke blushed, and Jet nodded. It's decided, then," he growled. "You two, me, and the Tophlet. Speaking of, where is she?"
"Right here," Toph grumbled, shuffling in from the direction of the engine room. She looked as though she had just woken up. "How long till we land?" she asked, moments before the ship touched down. "Oh," she said. "Well, then, I'll go get ready."
"Hurry up," Jet shouted after her. "We've got a short window to do this in!"
"Yeah, yeah," she snapped, disappearing into her bunk. Only a minute later, she returned, tugging an oversized t-shirt on over her usual top (that only covered her breasts), a knife between her teeth and a bag full of weapons slung over her shoulder. "Ready," she mumbled, stuffing the knife into her belt. It was longer than the shorts she had on.
"Uh, Toph?" Jet asked, raising an eyebrow.
"What?" she replied, strapping a gunbelt to her thigh and putting several magazines in. "You said it was summer on this planet. Also, how far away is this station? I can't feel it."
"A good mile east of here," Jet replied, deciding not to push Toph on the clothing issue. "There's plenty of surveillance set up, and we don't want 'em finding the ship too easy."
"No," Toph said, arms crossed. "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 can get," he countered, "and that's final. C'mon."
"I don't like this, Cap'n."
"None of us like this," he replied, and went on before the Duke could respond that he quite liked it, "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 rousing game of pai sho on the counterspace.
He was losing, and badly.
In the recesses of the ship, someone let out a blood-curdling scream, followed closely by a semi-masculine shout, and then Aang flew (literally) 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, but just rolled her eyes. "You'll have to apologize to her," she said, and Sokka held up a hand.
"Suki, Suki, look," he said, placing his hand on her thigh. "Our young Avatar has just had his first experience with a naked woman. You mustn't rush things. Now, Aang," he continued, turning to the brilliantly blushing twelve-year-old, "how much did you see? This is a very important moment in your life, so you shouldn't -- ow!" He turned to see where the protein bar that had just belted him across the temple had come from. Mai was standing in the hallway, wrapped in a bathrobe, scowling.
"How many times have I told you that you aren't allowed in my shuttle?" she asked, arms crossed, and Aang grinned sheepishly.
"We were playing hide-and-seek," he mumbled. "I thought it was the last place anyone would look for me."
While Suki was busy laughing at Aang's antics, he surreptitiously switched a few of the tiles around. There, now he wasn't losing quite so badly.
Unfortunately, she saw him. "Hey! Cheater! Aang, Sokka's trying to cheat!"
"Oh, no," Mai droned, still scowling at Aang, who looked hugely relieved that the change of subject.
"Sokka!" Aang admonished, rushing away from the still-dripping Mai. The grin fell off his face suddenly, though. "What's that?" he asked, pointing at the screen.
"Oh, it's a -- " Sokka started, and then froze, "that's a ship," he said dumbly. "Coming for -- move," he muttered, and Suki jumped away, concern on her face. "That's a ship -- a -- oh cào ni zuzōng shíbā dài," he hissed. "That's a Reaver ship."
--
(at blue sun outpost 6519 on lilac)
Toph's communicator let out a burst of static that startled all of them. She jumped and hit the off button hastily, tapping her foot against the ground to see if anyone was running, and then her communicator to see if it was broken. It wasn't -- then why had it just buzzed her? Sokka knew that he wasn't supposed to contact them on this job!
Unless, she thought, it was something bad enough that he thought it was worth getting caught over.
"What the ruttin' hell is going on?" Jet hissed, and Toph shrugged.
"It's not broken," she replied. "Jet, that means 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 growled, "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. She knew Jet was glaring at her, but she didn't care -- there weren't many reasons Sokka would have hit the call button, and all of them were seven kinds of nasty.
"Freedom, this is Jet, what the hell is going on?" he snapped shortly, and then released the call button. Not a second later, static burst through it, followed by Sokka's panicked voice.
"Reavers," he gasped, "we're in the air already, they're on our tail."
A ripple of fear went through their tiny group, and Jet looked at them, face pale. "Roger," he said, and then 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, and several men came running. "You got Reavers incoming," he shouted, "so you best find a place to hide. Crew, outside, now!" he barked, and took off running as the highly confused Blue Sun men went back to their coworkers and warned them about the incoming attack.
All three of them hit the mule at a downright run and took off in the direction of the ship -- which turned out to be a bad idea as the ship passed overhead and Toph heard the Reaver ship coming at them. Jet cursed violently and whipped the mule around so that they were coming in on the Freedom -- static crackled over her communicator (she heard Sokka ask if that was them) -- and she heard a strange, loud, ominous humming sound. "Jet, EMP!" she screamed, and felt him dodge the blast.
Oh, this was going all kinds of wrong.
And then, Longshot's voice came over her communicator, calm as the sky above, "Get off the plains," he said, "take her into the hills, we're doing a barn swallow."
"Roger that," she replied, and yelled, "Jet, hills, barn swallow," over the next EMP shot, striking so close that she could feel it thrum in the air.
Reaver ships had a special sound to them, the way they rattled and shook and roared -- it sounded to Toph like a monster shaking its cage, about to come out of its skin. The monster growled behind them, so close, and she felt Jet turn the mule sharply so that they skimmed a cliff face (rock shuddered to her left as the Reavers skimmed the cliff a lot closer than they did) and she could hear Freedom singing to them from above, coming around to pick them up.
A barn swallow was a difficult move to pull off, since the cargo bay only went so far back, but Toph was willing to patch up the whole gorram ship if it got them away from Reavers. The Duke and Pipsqueak were steadily shooting at the Reaver ship, trying to keep them from getting a lock on them, and Jet was flying like a maniac.
She snatched his machine gun and checked that it was fully loaded, then turned and unloaded the whole clip at the Reavers. Distantly, she heard the dings of bullets ricocheting, and used the sound to gauge the size of the ship -- a large one, bigger than Freedom. Raiding party, which meant that it was probably coincidence that they had hit them -- they had been after the settlements on this side of the planet.
She turned, moving to hand the gun back to Jet, and then it hit her. It went in smooth and then opened once it had gone all the way through her abdomen -- a javelin. Toph screamed as it pulled her backwards, and she grabbed at anything she could, but the pain -- oh God the pain. Her senses briefly lit up like they were on fire and she was acutely aware of everything: there was Jet, trying to steer one-handed while he clung to her arm with his other, heart pounding so fast it was like it was going to come out of his chest, and there was the Duke, screaming every expletive he knew, trying to shoot the cable that connected the javelin to the ship, and there was Pipsqueak, loading his grenade launcher and taking aim, and there were all the spare clips with all the spare bullets with all their metal casings and every tiny little grain of powder.
She choked, and she felt Jet's hand slipping from her, and the Duke screamed in what sounded like pain -- she sensed the bullet hit his arm -- and then the tension against her stomach eased up ever-so-slightly as Pipsqueak's weapon roared, and then they pulled her into the mule, the sharp javelin still embedded in her, but at least the cable was broken, and --
--
(on freedom)
Jet screamed several different curses as his ship finally came into view, Toph unconscious and sprawled out over his lap. They'd saved her, but for how long?
He managed to pull the mule up, into the open cargo bay doors, and there was an awful screech and crash as they hit the cargo bay, followed by the top of the Reaver ship, that hadn't been able to pull up or down fast enough to either hit them or avoid them. He leaped out of the mule, dragging the bleeding, limp mechanic along, and hit the side of his ship as his mule crashed into the back wall. That would be a bitch to repair, he thought idly, as the ship rose into the air.
"Get the doctor," he shouted, and he saw Katara's face go white as he hoisted Toph into his arms. God, she was so tiny. 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 as he helped Jet carry her into the infirmary, laying her on her side so as not to disturb the giant hunk of metal that was going straight through her. Katara bolted in after them and began rifling through the supplies. "Morphine," Haru snapped, and she tossed him a vial, then paused, looking at the tap. She turned.
"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 get this out of her," he replied, and she bolted over to hold her steady. Haru worked slowly to remove the javelin, and Jet thought it might have been better if he'd just wrenched it out in one quick movement, but he was moving excruciatingly slow -- to make sure, he 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 savagely and cursed. He looked up at Katara, eyes just this side of wild. "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. Her hands were bloody, but she didn't seem to notice. She held the water to Toph's back and it glowed brilliantly, tinged with red light from the blood. "I think it's helping," she said softly, while Haru started putting metal implements around the wound. He growled.
"Jet, tell me you have suction somewhere in here," he yelled at Jet, who shook his head.
"It's a standard infirmary," Jet replied desperately, and then Katara swept a hand over the wound, pulling blood out of it and throwing it into the sink abruptly.
"That works," Haru muttered, and then looked up. "Get him out of here," he added suddenly, and Jet turned to see Aang, pale and wide-eyed, at the doorway.
"Aang," he said, "c'mon, you've gotta go."
"Is she gonna be okay?" Aang asked, and he might have been imagining it, but his voice wasn't quite normal -- it was like he was holding something huge back. 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," he 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 hoped sincerely that he wasn't lying.
Chapter Title: Lilac
Rating: High T/Low M
Genre: Action/Adventure, Space Western
Characters/Pairings: Ensemble; Mai/Jet, Zuko/Katara (est. relationship), Smellerbee/Longshot (est. relationship), Toph/Haru, Suki/Sokka
Summary: Aang never woke up from the iceberg, and the world went on without him, and without the Avatar. Over the next three thousand years, technology advanced astronomically -- literally, the people of the overcrowded world taking to the stars, colonizing a whole new solar system with dozens of planets and hundreds of moons. Now, the Avatar is a barely-remembered myth, bending is regarded as a relic of a rightfully-dead past, and only two of the original four countries still exist: the Fire Nation, one of the most powerful forces in the Union of Allied Planets, and the Water Tribe, clinging to life on the Outer Rim, still fighting desperately for the dream of independence. The latest civil war ended seven years ago, in a landslide victory for the Alliance -- but that doesn't mean the fight for independence is over.
Book Two: Still Flying: Azula isn't the only one on the hunt for the Avatar -- the Parliament, untrusting of the Fire Lord and looking to help Azula supplant him, has sent out their own man, an Operative who works with a small strike force of powerful, secretive men. Meanwhile, a woman from both Sokka's and Jet's pasts has a job offer they can't afford to refuse, Katara must learn to heal as soon as possible, and the specter of a recent Reaver attack hangs heavy over the whole crew...
Chapter Summary: In which Aang and Ty Lee fail to bond, the crew's job takes them to the edge of Reaver space, and the unthinkable happens.
Notes: Special thanks to feral_shrew for helping me with this chapter, and a few subsequent ones, to make sure I got the medical things right. I'm posting this here without the other links for now. I'll add them later.
FFN // LJ // AO3
|< first // << back // here \\ next >> \\ last >|
(on freedom)
Mai brewed tea in her shuttle for Aang and Ty Lee while the others went to the bar or hung around the ship, straightening things up and generally trying to keep busy.
"I just feel useless," Ty Lee grumbled, flopping back on Mai's bed. She twitched, but didn't comment, and glared at Aang. He hadn't done anything yet, but he was fidgeting like he really wanted to do something.
"You're allowed in my shuttle this one time," she told him severely, and he grinned. "Otherwise, the ban is still in effect."
"Yes, Lady Mai," he replied cheerfully. "I don't think you're useless, Ty Lee," he said, joining her and bouncing on the bed. "You're a really good acrobat, and you helped out a lot at the Water Tribe."
"Yeah, but what good is that here?" she growled, and then sighed. "I'm just in a bad mood. It's -- " she paused, and looked at Aang before saying, very carefully, "uh, the red knight is lodging," she said cryptically. Aang stared at her; Mai buried her face in her palm and set about to making the tea she had made for Toph once.
"So, tell him... he can't… stay?" Aang replied uncertainly.
"Uh," Ty Lee replied. "It doesn't work like that."
"Oh, for... Aang, it's her time of the month," Mai snapped, and Ty Lee turned red, but Aang just nodded.
"Your moon cycle?" he asked, and then when Ty Lee gaped at him, he shrugged. "The monks told me all about... stuff," he said, wincing. "Since I traveled a lot, they thought it was important that I understand the human body and..." he coughed, "um, things."
"You're only twelve!" Ty Lee yelped, horrified. "Why'd they tell you all those things?"
"Twelve is a good age for that," Mai said calmly, idly wondering who she could arrange a meeting with so that she never had to sit around and play therapist ever again. "I was younger when I learned. And as a Buddhist monk, I suspect they found it important to teach their children at a young age."
"A what monk?" Aang asked, and she sighed, pouring hot water into each cup.
"Buddhist," she replied. "It's a religion descended from the teachings of the Air Nomads in ancient times."
Aang's whole face lit up and he bounced closer to the edge of the bed. "Really?" he asked eagerly. "Do you -- are you a Buddhist?"
"No," she answered shortly, and his face fell. "Katara is, however," she added. He looked confused and eager and hopeful all at once.
"Why didn't she say so?" he asked, and she gave him one of her looks.
"I suspect she simply didn't think it was important," she said, serving him his tea. He took it, worrying his lip. "I doubt she would be interested in pursuing a relationship with you, shared religion or no," she told him, and he jumped, looking mortified. Ty Lee giggled.
"Aww, you have a crush?" she teased. "That's so cute!"
"I don't -- it's not -- " he sighed heavily. "It doesn't matter," he muttered, hiding his embarrassment by taking a too-large gulp of tea. "She's with Zuko. And I'm too young, anyway."
"That's true," Mai replied, earning a scowl from Ty Lee, but she went on before Ty Lee could give the boy false hope. "Don't worry," she said, since Ty Lee was currently trying to bore a hole through her skull with the force of glare (Ty Lee's glare was, however, somewhat lacking), "when you're older, I'm sure you'll find someone."
"You're so cute," Ty Lee cooed, mollified by Mai's token reassurance. "He's like our own personal child," she squealed, petting his bald head. He huffed.
"I'm not a child."
Ty Lee's grin stayed perfectly still on her face. "Aang, what did the monks tell you about women and their moon cycles?" she asked, and Aang's brow furrowed.
"Um, well, they said that it's different for every woman, some get sad and some get really angry and some don't act any different -- "
"I'm one of the angry ones," she cut him off, still grinning. Aang suddenly looked slightly desperate. "So... you're like our own personal child!" she squealed again, and he smiled, but with the eyes of a caged animal.
"Of course," he replied, laughing weakly and taking another large gulp of tea.
--
The job was weak tea, stealing some coin off a Blue Sun outpost on Lilac, but since he had Aang on board, he had to step lightly, and as hungry as his crew was, they couldn't afford to turn down a job 'cause it didn't pay enough. It had taken a lot of work to convince Fanty and Mingo that it hadn't been his ship involved in the Independent Uprising (he winced when he heard it called that) at the Water Tribe. Luckily, the only concrete info the Alliance had was that a Firefly had been involved, and there were enough of those still flying around that he could play dumb about it.
Jet loaded up his weapons -- he didn't expect trouble, but he had a bad feeling all the same, and Lilac was close to Reaver territory, so it paid to be prepared. He'd forced Toph to come with them even though she didn't want to, because he'd need her extraordinary skill to ensure that no one was coming their way. She'd saved them on more than one occasion by giving them early warning.
"Grenades?" Pipsqueak asked, and Jet heard the Duke mutter something in response. "We don't need grenades."
"No," the Duke replied, "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 that he don't need grenades."
Jet shrugged. "S'long as they don't go off at random, I don't ca -- okay, you don't need that many grenades." The Duke looked almost comical, dressed head-to-toe in fragments of old armor, dripping with spare magazines, a whole belt of ammunition 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 of how thick his armor was. Jet rolled his eyes.
"Lose some o' that," he said, waving his rifle carelessly. "You gotta be able to move."
"So, the three of us, plus... Toph, right?" Pipsqueak asked, joining him at the table and loading up his weapons as well. Jet nodded.
"I don't like to leave Bee out of a job, but we need Toph's range of vision. You volunteering to stay behind?"
Pipsqueak shrugged. "I'd like to," he said slowly, "but I think I need to keep an eye on him."
"Well," Jet mused, making a face. "We could take Bee and Longshot, leave the two of you here guardin' the ship. It ain't easy, though."
"What, guardin' the ship? A monkey could do it."
"Hmm, nah," he replied, shaking his head. "Let Bee and Longshot have their time off."
"And us?" the Duke asked, returning to the room with slightly fewer grenades. "When do we get time off?"
"You plannin' a nice romantic evenin'?" he teased, but the Duke scowled.
"Just ain't had a day off in weeks," he grumbled, and both Pipsqueak and Jet stared at him.
"And this past two months we've been floating in the black?" Jet asked, crossing his arms. "What were you doing?" The Duke blushed, and Jet nodded. It's decided, then," he growled. "You two, me, and the Tophlet. Speaking of, where is she?"
"Right here," Toph grumbled, shuffling in from the direction of the engine room. She looked as though she had just woken up. "How long till we land?" she asked, moments before the ship touched down. "Oh," she said. "Well, then, I'll go get ready."
"Hurry up," Jet shouted after her. "We've got a short window to do this in!"
"Yeah, yeah," she snapped, disappearing into her bunk. Only a minute later, she returned, tugging an oversized t-shirt on over her usual top (that only covered her breasts), a knife between her teeth and a bag full of weapons slung over her shoulder. "Ready," she mumbled, stuffing the knife into her belt. It was longer than the shorts she had on.
"Uh, Toph?" Jet asked, raising an eyebrow.
"What?" she replied, strapping a gunbelt to her thigh and putting several magazines in. "You said it was summer on this planet. Also, how far away is this station? I can't feel it."
"A good mile east of here," Jet replied, deciding not to push Toph on the clothing issue. "There's plenty of surveillance set up, and we don't want 'em finding the ship too easy."
"No," Toph said, arms crossed. "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 can get," he countered, "and that's final. C'mon."
"I don't like this, Cap'n."
"None of us like this," he replied, and went on before the Duke could respond that he quite liked it, "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 rousing game of pai sho on the counterspace.
He was losing, and badly.
In the recesses of the ship, someone let out a blood-curdling scream, followed closely by a semi-masculine shout, and then Aang flew (literally) 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, but just rolled her eyes. "You'll have to apologize to her," she said, and Sokka held up a hand.
"Suki, Suki, look," he said, placing his hand on her thigh. "Our young Avatar has just had his first experience with a naked woman. You mustn't rush things. Now, Aang," he continued, turning to the brilliantly blushing twelve-year-old, "how much did you see? This is a very important moment in your life, so you shouldn't -- ow!" He turned to see where the protein bar that had just belted him across the temple had come from. Mai was standing in the hallway, wrapped in a bathrobe, scowling.
"How many times have I told you that you aren't allowed in my shuttle?" she asked, arms crossed, and Aang grinned sheepishly.
"We were playing hide-and-seek," he mumbled. "I thought it was the last place anyone would look for me."
While Suki was busy laughing at Aang's antics, he surreptitiously switched a few of the tiles around. There, now he wasn't losing quite so badly.
Unfortunately, she saw him. "Hey! Cheater! Aang, Sokka's trying to cheat!"
"Oh, no," Mai droned, still scowling at Aang, who looked hugely relieved that the change of subject.
"Sokka!" Aang admonished, rushing away from the still-dripping Mai. The grin fell off his face suddenly, though. "What's that?" he asked, pointing at the screen.
"Oh, it's a -- " Sokka started, and then froze, "that's a ship," he said dumbly. "Coming for -- move," he muttered, and Suki jumped away, concern on her face. "That's a ship -- a -- oh cào ni zuzōng shíbā dài," he hissed. "That's a Reaver ship."
--
(at blue sun outpost 6519 on lilac)
Toph's communicator let out a burst of static that startled all of them. She jumped and hit the off button hastily, tapping her foot against the ground to see if anyone was running, and then her communicator to see if it was broken. It wasn't -- then why had it just buzzed her? Sokka knew that he wasn't supposed to contact them on this job!
Unless, she thought, it was something bad enough that he thought it was worth getting caught over.
"What the ruttin' hell is going on?" Jet hissed, and Toph shrugged.
"It's not broken," she replied. "Jet, that means 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 growled, "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. She knew Jet was glaring at her, but she didn't care -- there weren't many reasons Sokka would have hit the call button, and all of them were seven kinds of nasty.
"Freedom, this is Jet, what the hell is going on?" he snapped shortly, and then released the call button. Not a second later, static burst through it, followed by Sokka's panicked voice.
"Reavers," he gasped, "we're in the air already, they're on our tail."
A ripple of fear went through their tiny group, and Jet looked at them, face pale. "Roger," he said, and then 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, and several men came running. "You got Reavers incoming," he shouted, "so you best find a place to hide. Crew, outside, now!" he barked, and took off running as the highly confused Blue Sun men went back to their coworkers and warned them about the incoming attack.
All three of them hit the mule at a downright run and took off in the direction of the ship -- which turned out to be a bad idea as the ship passed overhead and Toph heard the Reaver ship coming at them. Jet cursed violently and whipped the mule around so that they were coming in on the Freedom -- static crackled over her communicator (she heard Sokka ask if that was them) -- and she heard a strange, loud, ominous humming sound. "Jet, EMP!" she screamed, and felt him dodge the blast.
Oh, this was going all kinds of wrong.
And then, Longshot's voice came over her communicator, calm as the sky above, "Get off the plains," he said, "take her into the hills, we're doing a barn swallow."
"Roger that," she replied, and yelled, "Jet, hills, barn swallow," over the next EMP shot, striking so close that she could feel it thrum in the air.
Reaver ships had a special sound to them, the way they rattled and shook and roared -- it sounded to Toph like a monster shaking its cage, about to come out of its skin. The monster growled behind them, so close, and she felt Jet turn the mule sharply so that they skimmed a cliff face (rock shuddered to her left as the Reavers skimmed the cliff a lot closer than they did) and she could hear Freedom singing to them from above, coming around to pick them up.
A barn swallow was a difficult move to pull off, since the cargo bay only went so far back, but Toph was willing to patch up the whole gorram ship if it got them away from Reavers. The Duke and Pipsqueak were steadily shooting at the Reaver ship, trying to keep them from getting a lock on them, and Jet was flying like a maniac.
She snatched his machine gun and checked that it was fully loaded, then turned and unloaded the whole clip at the Reavers. Distantly, she heard the dings of bullets ricocheting, and used the sound to gauge the size of the ship -- a large one, bigger than Freedom. Raiding party, which meant that it was probably coincidence that they had hit them -- they had been after the settlements on this side of the planet.
She turned, moving to hand the gun back to Jet, and then it hit her. It went in smooth and then opened once it had gone all the way through her abdomen -- a javelin. Toph screamed as it pulled her backwards, and she grabbed at anything she could, but the pain -- oh God the pain. Her senses briefly lit up like they were on fire and she was acutely aware of everything: there was Jet, trying to steer one-handed while he clung to her arm with his other, heart pounding so fast it was like it was going to come out of his chest, and there was the Duke, screaming every expletive he knew, trying to shoot the cable that connected the javelin to the ship, and there was Pipsqueak, loading his grenade launcher and taking aim, and there were all the spare clips with all the spare bullets with all their metal casings and every tiny little grain of powder.
She choked, and she felt Jet's hand slipping from her, and the Duke screamed in what sounded like pain -- she sensed the bullet hit his arm -- and then the tension against her stomach eased up ever-so-slightly as Pipsqueak's weapon roared, and then they pulled her into the mule, the sharp javelin still embedded in her, but at least the cable was broken, and --
--
(on freedom)
Jet screamed several different curses as his ship finally came into view, Toph unconscious and sprawled out over his lap. They'd saved her, but for how long?
He managed to pull the mule up, into the open cargo bay doors, and there was an awful screech and crash as they hit the cargo bay, followed by the top of the Reaver ship, that hadn't been able to pull up or down fast enough to either hit them or avoid them. He leaped out of the mule, dragging the bleeding, limp mechanic along, and hit the side of his ship as his mule crashed into the back wall. That would be a bitch to repair, he thought idly, as the ship rose into the air.
"Get the doctor," he shouted, and he saw Katara's face go white as he hoisted Toph into his arms. God, she was so tiny. 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 as he helped Jet carry her into the infirmary, laying her on her side so as not to disturb the giant hunk of metal that was going straight through her. Katara bolted in after them and began rifling through the supplies. "Morphine," Haru snapped, and she tossed him a vial, then paused, looking at the tap. She turned.
"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 get this out of her," he replied, and she bolted over to hold her steady. Haru worked slowly to remove the javelin, and Jet thought it might have been better if he'd just wrenched it out in one quick movement, but he was moving excruciatingly slow -- to make sure, he 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 savagely and cursed. He looked up at Katara, eyes just this side of wild. "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. Her hands were bloody, but she didn't seem to notice. She held the water to Toph's back and it glowed brilliantly, tinged with red light from the blood. "I think it's helping," she said softly, while Haru started putting metal implements around the wound. He growled.
"Jet, tell me you have suction somewhere in here," he yelled at Jet, who shook his head.
"It's a standard infirmary," Jet replied desperately, and then Katara swept a hand over the wound, pulling blood out of it and throwing it into the sink abruptly.
"That works," Haru muttered, and then looked up. "Get him out of here," he added suddenly, and Jet turned to see Aang, pale and wide-eyed, at the doorway.
"Aang," he said, "c'mon, you've gotta go."
"Is she gonna be okay?" Aang asked, and he might have been imagining it, but his voice wasn't quite normal -- it was like he was holding something huge back. 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," he 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 hoped sincerely that he wasn't lying.