Avatar: The Birth of a New World

Toph grinned and smacked a fist into the palm of her other hand. "Yes, let's." This was going to be fun. The grin still on her face, she started forward.


(Two things. The first is that I find it funny that they could somewhat overhear the conversation between Haru and Katara before, but now Haru and Katara are much farther away from them. XD Inconsistency is grand.

The second is, and this is something that I've always wondered, how well can Toph "see" inside buildings? Unless the floor is rock or dirt, it doesn't seem like she could "see", but she doesn't seem to have any difficultly in the show, when in buildings. Speaking of which, I'm assuming the floor hear is made out of earth of some form.)

(Well, Toph sees through vibrations, right? Everything has vibrations or react to the, I think. As long as it's on the ground or attached to something on the ground, I think Toph can feel it.)

"You know, you look cute when you're ready to kick butt," Longshot teased his friend mildly as they headed upstairs. When they emerged onto the second floor, two guards began to draw their swords, only to find themselves pinned to the wall by Longshot's arrows.

((That makes sense.))

Mai

Following Longshot's strike, Mai brandished her two knives and flicked them toward the pinned guards. Before either of them could give crys for help, their throats were pierced by one of her knives. Both guards gurgled for few seconds before they each succumbed to death. Mai walked up to them calmly, then, and pried her knives from their throats. She quickly cleaned the blood off of them and looked over at Longshot.

"Where to next?"

Longshot frowned. Killing the guards really wasn't necessary. They could have easily been pinned to the wall and knocked out/restrained. He gestured at the end of the hallway, which looked like an ordinary earthen-wall.

"The interrogation room should be be hidden there. It's opened with earthbending," he told her.

(Yes, that does.)

Toph cracked her knuckles and then strode forward, a smile on her face. "Sweet. Looks like it's my turn."

She paused as she drew within a few feet of the wall and then shot both fists forward. The earthen wall immdetiantly broke apart, pieces of it flying forward straight into Haru.

(And she wasn't aiming to knock him out, just to knock him aside, for the moment.)

Haru

Haru whipped his head toward the entrance as Toph made her move, but he couldn't raise a defense before the rocks slammed into him, knocking him aside and dazing him for a moment. Meanwhile, Mai calmly walked forward and started to undue Katara's bonds.

"Make sure he's knocked out or dead, so he doesn't trouble us in a few minutes." Mai absentmindedly said to Longshot and Toph.

Once again, Longshot frowned at Mai's insistence of killing people or lack of trouble with it was a better way to say it. Quickly, he knelt by Haru, binding him with the same bonds he used on Katara. He then banged his head

"That should keep him from bending for awhile. Even benders need to be able to make motions with their arms and legs," Longshot stated as he made for the door, gesturing for the others to follow him, "This way. I think I can guess where a back exit is."

Katara was stunned when the doors blew in and her captor was knocked aside. As Mai started undoing her bonds, she quietly stated, "you came for me." She hadn't really expected to get out of this situation now, she had hoped when they were moving at some point she would have been able to escape, but things had looked bleak for a moment. "Thank you."

"Of course we came for you," Toph said from her spot right outside the room. She hadn't moved since knocking the wall in, guarding Longshot and the others from the guards who were sure to be coming. It wasn't like she had tried to be subtle about breaking that girl (Katara, wasn't it?) out. "Now, let's hurry this up, before company arrives."

Mai

"Agreed." Once Katara had gained her bearings, Mai followed Longshot and the others out of the dungeon and into the upper levels of the Regent's estate, where they tried to move as fast as possible while also trying to avoid as many guards as possible.

"We need to find where they put our equipment." Mai stated as the ran. "I'm sure you all want your stuff back, and I'm not about to leave without all my knives back on my person."

"I have my bow and a quiver of arrows, but I'd like my pack back," Longshot agreed, frowning a bit. He turned to Toph, "Can you sense any storage rooms nearby that might contain our stuff?"

Toph didn't immediantly respond, but instead concentrated hard on their surroundings. Buildings were not as easy to "see" in as was the outdoors, but she could manage.

"There!" she cried out a few moments later, stretching out her arm and pointing down a hall that branched to their left. As they turned down the hall, her finger then moved, pointing to the second door on the right. "There's somebody inside. A guard maybe, but just one."

Mai

Mai nodded and burst through the door with surprising strength and speed. Indeed, a single guard occupied the room, but before he could get even a word of shock out, Mai threw a knife at him. It smashed through his right eye socket, piercing the brain in an instant. The man went down without a word, likely died (or dying, even if the blow somehow hadn't been fatal).

Mai calmly walked over to the bleeding corpse, and plucked her dagger from his head. She quickly cleaned the blood off of it before she started to look around the room, trying to find her stuff.

"We'd best hurry." Mai advised as she searched. "I'd give it another five minutes, at best, before an alarm goes off."

A loud gong sounded repeatedly throughout the estate, then, likely alerting everybody in the area.

"Never mind."

"Then we better hurry," Longshot commented as he approached the barells that contained their equipment and bent down to strap on his own bow and arrows, tossing aside the guards' he had been using disdainfully. After strapping on his pack as well, he turned to leave, speaking.

"We should try one of the back entrances."

Toph gave a nod of her head after carefully fishing her small bag out of the barrel. She slung the bag over her shoulder and then turned towards Longshot. She stood still, concentrating on the layout of the place. "There's none nearby, probably to make it difficult for people like us to get out of here." She grinned then. "But not impossible. Let's go."

She took the lead, guiding the others through the large house. The trip was three times longer than it should have been, as she led them around anywhere she felt activity, but it kept them safe.

"We're close," she whispered at last. "Just around the corner."

Katara shuddered as Mai killed the guard, but didn't comment on it, instead looking for her waterskin. She found it, and then the alarm went off. Without water, she was useless, so was glad that they had made it to the exit without being seen.

Mai

Mai nodded wordlessly and kept up with Toph and the others. Finally, they reached the exit Toph was guiding them toward. Then, a group of guards started to swarm toward them, led by Haru as they came at them from two adjacent hallways.

".....Hm. Looks like we'll have to fight our way out." Mai dryly noted.

"Things are never easy," Longshot sighed he nocked a couple of arrows before firing them, pinning one unlucky guard to the wall. He'd kill if he must, but the archer would much rather avoid it if only because his great grandfather had already filled the family quota for the next 7 generations.

Toph's feet shifted forward and back as she moved into a fighting stance. "No, not for us." Her light eyes stared straight ahead of her, focusing on nothing, but her awareness was everywhere. She smiled and moved her right foot farther back. "But they can't spread out, not here." Her arms shot forward and the ground exploded in the center of the largest group, sending the guards flying up and backwards.

Katara stepped back, watching her allies fight against the guards. Her skin was emptied, but she was a master waterbender, there had to be something she could do. She breathed in and took a stance, and waved her arms, sucking water from the air. It wasn't a lot, but it would work. She turned her gathered water into a whip and began knocking guards away with it.

Mai

While her comrades of sorts dealt with the guards in their own unique and special ways, Mai prepared herself for a moment. Then she withdrew two daggers and leapt into the flanks of their enemies. She landed in the clearing made by Toph just seconds ago, when she had launched many of the guards into the ceiling or walls, and went to work doing what she did best:

Exterminating the life of any who dared attack her.

Slash. A guard went down, bleeding profusely from a wide cut in his neck. He was dead within seconds.

Stab. After ducking from an overhead swipe, Mai extended her arms forward and sunk her blades into the ribcage of the fool who thought he could take her head off. One dagger pierced his heart.

Slash. Another hopeless man went down, screaming, as Mai blinded him with a careful arching of her left hand. She finished him with a downward spiral toward his neck.

Stab. A large oaf who thought charging at her would do any good went down as Mai rushed forward, and sliced into his jugular with her right dagger. She took it out a second later, and of course the man went crashing down.

And as the battle raged on, Mai continued her dangerous dance of life and death; sometimes barely getting out of the way from a launched piece of earth or sword or spear, and delivering a fatal blow with either (or sometimes both) of her knives to any moron that got in reach of her blades.

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Within twelve minutes, the battle was concluded. Regent Haru laid upon the ground, unconscious due to hard contact with a wall after getting water-whipped by Katara. A good number of struggling guards were pinned to the wall, but despite their best efforts, they could not gain their freedom.

Others, like Regent Haru, were knocked out cold. Due to either the water-whip Katara wielded, or Toph's impressive and amazing bending skills. And as for the others...

Dead. Anyone who had crossed Mai's path was long dead, even if her blow had not been fatal immediately. Along with the unconcious or pinned, a good number of former Regent Haru's men lay dead on the floor, bleeding from wounds that varied from each individual man. All the way from the classic slashed throat to even, in the unfortunate case of one guard, a slow and painful death from excessive bleeding from the stomach, back, and groin.

"Hm. That was...impressive. But we need to leave, now. An angry Regent and his equally angry men are not something we ought to deal with right now." Mai said. She swiftly cleaned the copious amounts of blood off of her daggers, and made a quick effort to clean her stained hands on the uniform of an unconscious guard.

Hm. The blood stains on her clothes, however, would not be as easy to get off. That would be rather...annoying.

Toph was already inching towards the door, even before Mai spoke. She would never admit it to anyone, but the presence of so many dead bodies creeped her out. It wasn't that she was squeamish, but there were so many times that she had seen fellow slaves just collapse and die on the job, as well as never awake in the morning--those times had been the creepiest. She could always tell the second that a heart stopped beating.

Her right hand shot out and latched onto Longshot's arm as she moved past him. "C'mon. Like Mai said, let's go."

Longshot gripped Toph's arm. She might try to hide it, but she was affected by dead bodies like any other girl her age, moreso since he suspected she had "seen" it before. To tell the truth, he wanted out of here as well. He had seen many dead bodies in his past as well.

"Yes. We should try to put as much distance between the Regent and us as possible," he agreed.

Katara was not able to mask her look of horror when looking at the guards. It was just too gruesome, she could hardly believe that one person had managed to kill so many, even though she and the other two had been fighting without fatally injuring any of them. "Ok, let's get out of here," she said, trying to keep emotion out of her voice.

((So. With that battle over with, anyone mind if I do a short time skip with the characters?))