Percy was waiting with Ty Lee as Azula and Mai scouted around the rest of the drill to see what was still intact or usable. Ty Lee was asleep, she seemed fine and said she was, but Percy's big brother instincts had kicked in and he nearly forced her into bed. Seeing Ty Lee choking on his element like that unnerved him. If he hadn't left Azula to go back and check…
He was shaken from his thoughts as the door to Ty Lee's room opened and a sullen Azula and Mai walked inside sitting down.
"How bad is it?" he probed cautiously.
Azula huffed in frustration, "It's pretty bad. The front three sections of the drill are completely collapsed; we couldn't even get inside them. Any engineers and soldiers in there are gone. The midsection hasn't collapsed nearly as bad, but it's been completely ruined by the flooding when the pipes burst. The far end of the tail is pretty good, a little flooding but usable. Otherwise, it's just the section you saved from the inside. There's our chambers, the kitchen, and the prison brink."
"The prison brink is untouched?" Percy asked.
Azula let out a short bark of laughter, "Yep. If it wasn't for you, the Avatar and his friends would've killed all his fangirls with their attack on the drill."
Percy hummed in acknowledgment, "What about War Minister Qin?"
"Dead. He and the others in the control room fell when the support braces snapped and the entire thing came falling. Nobody made it out."
Percy winced, "What about the tanks outside? Can you make contact with one of our bases?"
"Already done. One of the soldiers had a war hawk with them so I wrote a letter explaining the failure of the drill. I'm sending our surviving soldiers and the prisoners back with the tanks. They're useless to us now."
Ty Lee stirred as Percy turned his attention towards her as she sat upright in her bed.
"How're you feeling?" he asked her.
Ty Lee shrugged, "I told you, I felt good before, and I'm good now."
"That's good because we're not going back with the rest of the attack force," Azula said calmly.
"What's the play, Zula?" Percy asked seriously.
"Well, I got the idea from our very own prisoners in the brink. They're allies of the Avatar, so we use that to our advantage. We disguise them to get into the city. We'll wait a few days to let the heat settle down but even without a failed attack, we were just minutes away from invading. They'll welcome us with open arms to help quell their fears."
Percy chewed on Azula's plan for a minute before addressing the most obvious flaw, "I'm not putting on a dress and makeup Azula."
She rolled her eyes, "Of course, you're not."
"You're not going to make me?" Percy asked puzzled.
"Percy, you're 6'2. Mai is the tallest out of the three of us at 5'8. There's no way that even for a second with all the makeup in the world you're passing for a girl at that height. The guards would have to be old, blind, and deaf to let you through."
"So, what am I gonna do?"
Azula smirked, "Well, you're wearing blue armor, aren't you?"
Percy eyed Azula's smirk narrowly, "Yes, but there's a slight problem with that," he said tapping the Fire Nation symbol in the center of his chest.
"So, we get rid of the symbol," Azula said confidently.
"How? It's a metal breastplate, you can't just color over it or take it off."
