Lu Gun closed a fist and the steam engine crumpled. Pressure gauges jumped into the red. Pipes began to burst around him. As he turned and stepped over the bodies on his way out of the engine room, one of them groaned. He paused just long enough to fold the metal bulkhead around the man, crushing him flat.
Lu Gun took a moment to survey his work: the ruined engine, the growing pools of blood shimmering black in the firelight, the fire nation soldiers and engineers in various states of undress and dismemberment.
It had been so easy for Lu Gun; no one had expected a metalbender on the ship, and certainly not one so well trained as Lu Gun.
Still, a lesser bender could have done it, Lu Gun thought as he went over his orders, the plan, the mission that was worth the life of one of the Republic’s greatest living metalbenders.
Suddenly his blood felt hotter than magma, power and anger begging to be released. He roared and with a powerful swipe of both hands he tore the furnace from its rivets and sent it crashing against the far wall to explode in a wash of burning coal.
It was completely unnecessary, of course. The ship would go down within minutes. The lifeboats were all split at the seams. The coast of the Farwilds was still too distant for any of the ship’s passengers to swim ashore.
There was nothing more for Lu Gun to do. No next mission. No next plan. No next promotion. He had given his whole life to the Republic, had accepted the rigorous structure of the elite cadre of benders that had trained him, had held himself in check for so many years. All for nothing!
Another violent motion and the metal ceiling came down atop the coals, shooting sparks in all directions and igniting yet more of the ship. He was tearing the ship apart, but subtlety didn’t matter now. All evidence of sabotage would be at the bottom of the sea, and the only ships that would follow were those of the Earth King’s own conquerors.
When Lu Gun had gotten too good for the earthbender elites, he became the Earth King’s dirty little secret, making inconvenient rivals disappear, isolating Avatar Dandao even while the kindly old leader had still lived. But apparently Lu Gun had been too good, too efficient, and now that Avatar Dandao was long dead, and the Earth King’s war machine – and ambition – were out in the open… well now his superiors feared him more than they needed him. The greatest metalbender in the Republic neatly removed from play along with the Fire Lord’s last efforts at finding the next avatar.
How could he have been so naive!
He tore another swath of bulkhead from the wall. By happenstance, it was the bulkhead that separated the engine room from the adjacent one. As the wall came down, suddenly there he was: the Fire Lord’s lapdog that had started all of this, standing in pristine white robes as if he were about to attend a prayer ceremony. Except there was no temple here. No monks. No lords or sages. Only the wreckage of an engine room. Only a groaning engine that would explode in a matter of moments, ripping the ship in two and sending all souls to the black depths.
Only Lu Gun and the monk.
“So you’re Yaosen,” Lu Gun snarled, “Disgraced darling of the Light Temple.”
The white-robed monk inclined his head.
Lu Gun stabbed a finger at the monk. “This is your fault!”
“The engine, no,” said the white-robed monk, “I assume that’s your fault. But the rest of it…”
The monk shrugged apologetically. Then, with a deep breath and a gesture, he stifled the burning coals. He shifted his stance to fight.
A clawed hand lashed out and Lu Gun tore a jagged chunk of metal from the floor, sending it spinning toward the monk. It would have cut those white robes in half, had Yaosen not pushed it aside with a flexed wrist and a gout of flame.
Three more wild, tearing motions and three more smooth snappings of sleeves. Suddenly Lu Gun was on the defensive, pulling up sheet after sheet of metal to block flaming fists and sweeping arcs of fire from the monk’s feet.
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This Yaosen was good, but he wasn’t aiming to kill. That was his mistake.
Lu Gun only had to protect his flanks, he only had to half parry, and while he did, he found his opportunity. With a flick, he brought the roof down atop the firebender.
The monk cried out, flattened beneath the weight.
Lu Gun smiled.
But his smile turned sour as he stood over the heap of metal that marked what would be his last fight. This victory didn’t mean anything. He was only fighting to stop the firebender from saving the engine. He was only fighting to buy time for the ship to explode and kill them all. Or, barring a quick death, a slow one by drowning.
But the engine – Lu Gun cocked an ear – was no longer groaning under pressure.
Lu Gun turned his back on the buried monk and inspected the gauges. They were ticking down. The engine was cooling and the excess steam was venting from a sliced valve.
Oh, this firebender was good indeed. Lu Gun hadn’t even seen when he had extinguished the fire in the engine’s very heart, hadn’t even noticed among all those frilly movements when the monk had sliced off the valve with what must have been an extremely focused blade of fire.
Luckily for Lu Gun, a metalbender wasn’t just a metalbender. A metalbender was, first and foremost, an earthbender.
He slipped into a traditional form and brought his arms together, all the coal on deck collecting in front of him.
“I don’t suppose you have a light,” said Lu Gun, cocking a grim smile.
There was no response from the ruined pile behind him.
Lu Gun dug in his pocket and lifted a match before himself ready to strike it and end it all.
A white beam of light cut past his vision, slicing his hand in half.
The unlit match, along with his fingers, fell to the deck.
Lu Gun roared, clutching at the gushing wound and turning to face the firebender – no, the lightbender – once again.
The monk was standing there, robes no longer pristine white, but covered in soot and blood from the chunk of metal that had impaled his shoulder. The metal pile he had been under was cut neatly in half by the beam of light, still sizzling and glowing red on the edges. The monk was in bad shape now, panting and wobbling on his feet. Probably bleeding out. But he was still standing.
With one more indignant snarl, Lu Gun mastered himself.
The firebender let out a gout of flame, but he was nearly spent, and the attack was child’s play for Lu Gun. He flicked it aside with his uninjured hand and stepped closer, throwing a jagged metal disk.
Yaosen slid past it, moving more like an airbender than a firebender.
The monk stepped in and countered, but Lu Gun didn’t even have to use his own bending to block it. He simply batted the monk’s hand’s away before he could finish the form and punched the monk in the gut.
The firebender – lightbender; whatever he was – crumpled to the ground.
Even from the ground, Yaosen prepared another desperate attack.
With a motion, controlled yet angry, Lu Gun lifted a metal wall before the lightbender, backfiring the monk’s attack. Then with a moment’s thought, Lu Gun realized he wouldn’t need to hit the monk to kill him. He curled what fingers he had left, splattering blood around the deck, cinching the edges of the makeshift metal box closed, and preparing to crush it.
Then he paused. He could hear alarm bells ringing above, rallying the other firebenders; too late for that. He could hear lifeboats being readied; that wouldn’t help them either. But he could also hear the call for land on the horizon; and landfall meant he’d fail his mission.
Lu Gun snarled, and he could almost feel the monk smiling within his metal tomb.
“See you in the Farwilds,” said the monk, voice muffled by the walls of metal.
“I wouldn’t count on it.” With a flippant stomp the bulkhead beneath them opened up and the monk’s metal coffin plummeted into the rushing sea below.
Now for the real work.
Even as the water rushed into the hole that marked the lightbender’s watery grave, Lu Gun set his feet and prepared himself for the most vicious display of power any metalbender could muster.
With two clawed hands, one missing fingers and the other merely sooty and singed, he began to tear the ship in two.
Water rushed in, filling the gap faster and faster, even as Lu Gun continued growling, then roaring his effort.
He was the greatest metalbender alive, and even if no one lived to bear witness, he would prove it to the spirits before his death.
The rent grew larger and larger, and as the prow of the ship cracked in half, Lu Gun caught a glimpse of the black coast of the Farwilds beyond. The western continent. The only place the leaders of the Four Nations hadn’t looked for the missing avatar. Unfortunately for the Fire Lord’s delegation, not a single soul aboard this ship would live to reach that dark shore.
But for Lu Gun’s part, he wasn’t just the greatest metalbender alive, he wasn’t just an elite earthbender. He was an Earthbreaker. And Earthbreakers could survive anything.
With a last effort, the ship split in two, and even as the two halves buckled and fell apart, yielding screams, explosions, and unearthly metal groans, Lu pulled his arms in tight, calling the last scraps of metal to himself.