"You know, Chan. Somehow, THIS doesn't look anything like what you described," Mai said, watching the airborne Leviathan with an unreadable expression.
"What a... beauty!" Azula gazed lovingly over the vessel. No, seriously, the expression on her face stunned those of us who knew her even more than the appearance of the aforementioned vessel itself. "You could drop burning barrels of blasting jelly from it right onto our enemies' heads! Or deploy troops behind the front lines, which would let us attack almost any enemy from the rear!" Right, that explained everything. The young maiden's militaristic soul was already imagining all the ways she could slaughter her enemies.
As for me, the sight of that monster with a snarling maw on its ballon brought one particularly memorable tune to mind, and I could practically hear the legendary words ringing in my ears: "Kirov reporting!" (For those who don't know, the Kirov is a combat airship from Red Alert 2, one of the legendary strategy games in gaming history. —Author's note)
"Yeeeah... The Mechanist is scaaary," I drawled. What else was I supposed to say in a situation like this?
"You think this was his doing?" Suki turned to me.
"Not without some help from our engineers, but there's simply no one else in Yu Dao who could've done something like this."
"I wonder how many people it can carry? Would cages with platypus bears fit?" Ty Lee drifted off into some kind of rosy daydream, bouncing eagerly on the tips of her toes.
"Don't know about the bears, but you could definitely fit a company of soldiers in there," Mai replied indifferently.
"And a couple of tanks," Zuko agreed.
"And those horns are so cool!" Toph announced enthusiastically.
"Where?" the acrobat, Suki, and several other Kyoshi Warriors exclaimed in unison.
"Right there!" the little bandit said, pointing toward the airship.
The whole merry company obediently turned to look in the indicated direction.
"I don't see any—" Azula began, then stopped. "Wait a minute..." The princess looked suspiciously back at Toph, who was beaming like a freshly minted gold coin. "You're blind."
"I am?" The little menace put on an extremely unconvincing look of surprise as every pair of eyes around her narrowed in unison once again. "Sorry, I kinda forgot." Then she shamelessly flashed all thirty-two teeth in a grin and innocently scratched the back of her head.
"Ha. Ha," the heir to the throne commented, enunciating each syllable. "Veeery funny."
"Toph!" Ty Lee almost cut her off, sweeping the earthbender into a hug like an unleashed force of nature before the girl could so much as squeak. "Forgive us! That was so rude of us! We didn't mean to hurt your feelings! Toph, you forgive us, right?"
"...L-let... g... go... Can't... b-breathe..." came a hoarse wheeze from somewhere around the acrobat's chest.
"Oops! Sorry, Toph! I didn't mean to!" The little earthbender was finally released from the chokehold.
"Put me down!" the disheveled girl demanded, bordering on panic as she finally managed to draw a breath.
"I didn't mean to hurt your feelings!" Squeeze-squeeze. "Please don't be mad!"
"I wasn't mad!" Squirm-squirm. "Let me go!"
"You're so cute when you're angry!" Squeeeeze.
"Chan!.. Pff!.. Sa... s-save... m-meee!"
"That feeling when you watch someone discover the power of love right before your eyes and can't help but sympathize..." I offered my profound observation as I watched the young earthbender's futile attempts to break free.
"Ahem..." Azula coughed, hiding a smile. Mai covered her mouth with one hand. The warriors were openly enjoying the show. Zuko was trying to look cool, tough, and utterly unfazed, but wasn't having much success.
All in all, everyone got a well-deserved dose of positive emotion out of the spectacle. Even Toph, who, despite her extremely loud and theatrical attempts to break free, never actually resorted to earthbending.
Meanwhile, events continued to unfold. We'd obviously been spotted, and... soldiers in Fire Nation uniforms began jumping from the ship.
For a moment, I was dumbfounded, but on closer inspection I noticed something like a cable attached to each man's belt. Their "fall" was also much slower than the laws of physics suggested it ought to be.
A winch? But how powerful would the thing have to be?
Meanwhile, the soldiers formed up into a square, leaving an open space in the middle, into which...
"Yeeeeee-haw!" A man I knew very well came leaping down, though he was now wearing a flight helmet. It looked almost exactly like similar gear from my old world, circa the 1940s.
"Oof... The deployment mechanism still needs some calibration," the engineer admitted as he failed to stay on his feet and landed squarely on his ass. Two of the nearest soldiers immediately hauled him upright and supported him by the arms, but the Drama of his grand entrance had been hopelessly murdered.
Oh well.
Once he recovered, the Mechanist practically bounded toward us... insofar as a civilian surrounded by a tight ring of soldiers could actually "bound" anywhere.
The escort made it safely to the entrance of the governor's palace, where our group happened to be standing. At that point, the armored men simply dispersed, not forgetting to bow respectfully to the princess and her entourage, and the engineer descended upon me.
(End of Chapter)
🙌Bonus chapter for 400 power stones!
🔥The next bonus chapter will be for 200 power stones.