now or never || an atla fanfic

𝔞𝔫 𝔦𝔫𝔤𝔢𝔫𝔦𝔬𝔲𝔰 𝔭𝔩𝔞𝔫

Still high off of the adrenaline, the six of them stood in the dining room of the vacation home, taking hours to devise their ultimate plan to defeat the Fire Lord.

Three weeks.

They had exactly three weeks from today to perfect their plan, their alliances, their military to take down the Fire Lord.

Sokka pulled out a letter from his stack of papers, unfolding it to reveal its contents. "We have an update from the Earth King, by the way. Everything's going fine in Ba Sing Se, and he'd be willing to lend us his troops to defeat the Fire Nation."

The avatar nodded in acknowledgement. "And we already have King Bumi's support as well. I'd say we're pretty secure in terms of manpower."

Crowded around the dining table, cluttered with documents and maps and files, they had drafted their plan for the Fire Nation invasion. Sokka revealed his ingenious plan with the underwater boats, or "submarines," as he called them, in order to bypass the Great Gates of Azulon.

"The problem is we don't know how to propel them through the water," he explained. "I've been working on a prototype for the engines, but it's taking me longer than I thought because I can't find all the materials needed."

"Can we use waterbending to propel the submarines?" Katara proposed, her eyes observing his diagrams of the submarines.

The prince gasped. "Katara, you're a genius!"

"Yes, but we only have two waterbenders on our side," Zuko pointed out grimly, glancing between Katara and Aang.

Katara pursed her lips, once again hit by reality. Right. She and her brother were only here for so long under the guise of being stranded on a random island. There was no way they could get the water tribe's support without confessing to their father that they had been lying this whole time.

"Sokka, I need to talk to you," Katara muttered, as they walked to a separate room.

Once they entered the living room, her brother crossed his arms.

"I have the same concerns," Sokka said, a hint of worry in his voice.

"What are we going to tell father? Are we even going to tell him? We can't just end the war and then show up back home," she said, her mind spinning.

"Okay, Katara, relax. We still have time to fly back home and explain everything to him."

"Okay, so we sneak back home and say, surprise dad! We're actually not stranded on an island with a broken ship and actually we've been traveling across the world with the avatar aka the world's only hope, also we need as many waterbenders as we can because we're fighting the Fire Lord next Tuesday?" she summed up in a single breath.

Sokka paused, deep in thought.

"You know...that might actually work."

Her face fell. "You know I was being sarcastic, right?"

"Well we have to break the news eventually to father. Either we tell him before we fight the Fire Lord and earn his support, or we hide it until afterwards and face the consequences. I don't know about you, but if we want our plan to work, we need the water tribes' support."

"Okay, so that's settled. We leave as soon as we can back home and sort through this mess. But by the water tribe, I hope you're not referring to the Northern Tribe too, right?" she asked, a hint of concern in her tone as her mind drifted to Hahn.

Sokka only shrugged. "If we get their support, that would be a plus. But it's not absolutely necessary."

The princess nodded, her mind feeling slightly alleviated after coming up with a semblance of a plan. They returned back to the dining hall, explaining to the others their plan.