Carved In Rock || ATLA

I'm So Sick

The Drill Fin

"If you want more of this we can push out, sell out, die out, so you'll shut up and stay sleeping with my screaming in your itching ears. I'm so sick, infected with where I live, let me live without this empty bliss, selfishness. I'm so sick." - Flyleaf

🌊🏔🌪🔥

"For the last time Sokka, that isn't going to fucking work." Aelita pinched the bridge of her nose as she laid down on the metal beam inside the hull of the drill while her friend tried his damndest to make the brace budge using just his body weight. Beside her sat Aang and Katara, the three of them wracking their brains for a solution. The drill had officially made contact with the wall and it seemed like nothing was even kind of slowing it down.

"This is bad, really bad." Katara groaned.

"Maybe we should just take a nap like these two." Aang gestured towards Mushu using Momo as a living pillow while the two snored away, long since having gotten bored of their humans. "Maybe we'll dream up a solution."

"Not helping Aang." Katara glowered.

"Sorry."

Sokka sighed and flopped back against the steel. "We're putting everything we've got into busting these braces, but it's taking too long!"

Sudden realization washed over Aang with Sokka's words. "Maybe we don't need to cut all the way through. Toph and Aelita both have been teaching me that you shouldn't give one hundred percent of your energy into any one strike." He floated onto his feet and asked the other boy to take a fighting stance before him to demonstrate his idea. "You've got to be quick and accurate. Hit a series of points and break your opponent's stance." The monk lightly but rapidly hit his friend in several different places, leaving Sokka wobbling backward as he tried to keep his balance. "And when he's reeling back, you deliver the final blow." A flick to the warrior's forehead had him falling on his ass. "His own weight becomes his downfall, literally."

"That's genius Aang." Aelita complimented. "So we just need to weaken the braces, instead of cutting all the way through."

"Then we get Aang to the top to use his earthbending and deliver the final blow," Katara added.

"And boom!" Sokka pushed himself back to his feet, no longer caring he was knocked down in the first place. "It all comes crashing down!"

"We need to work fast." Aelita brought them back to reality, confident in their new plan but still cautious. "It's only a matter of time before another engineer goes to see why nothing was fixed and finds our frozen friend."

"She's right." Aang agreed. "A lot is riding on our shoulders. Everyone inside that wall. The whole world is counting on us."

Sokka smirked. "The whole world minus the Fire Nation that is."

Setting to work quickly the three benders split up, the girls both giving a small round of their water to Aang so that they could all tackle the braces at the same time. Working as quickly as they could they sliced away at the steel until they were around halfway through each brace to weaken it before moving on to the next one. It was exhausting work but there was no time to slow down.

In the control room, Azula only sulked more and more the farther into the wall her brother's stupid machine drilled. Zetzu on the other hand was reveling at the moment, dreaming of how satisfying it would be to tell his father that he accomplished what the pathetic man never could. Just when the euphoria was starting to set in a set of voices crackled over the loudspeaker.

"War Minister, an engineer was ambushed! His schematics were stolen!"

"War Minister, a brace on the starboard side has been cut clean through! It's sabotage, sir!"