castleinthemist | 1 | Won't You Save Me?

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1 | Won't You Save Me? | Open!

"AUUUUGHH!"

The scream was muffled, but still managed to echo through the chamber as it sounded from one of the sarcophagi. Whoever was in there was not doing well. At all. And a broken leg that was still in a cast but angled very awkwardly where he lay was the cause of it.

For Sokka it was not the darkness or the confined space that he noticed first after waking with a massive headache. It was the fact that he couldn't hear anyone, or anything, except himself and his own breathing. Well, breathing, and the screaming that came once the pain in his leg hit him.

Where were his friends? Where was his sister? Why was everything so damn silent? It didn't make any sense! They had been there not an hour before when he'd gone to bed with Suki! And what was this... thing he was confined in?!

Of course there were no answers, especially since he never asked any of the questions aloud (not that anyone would have been there to answer anyway), but as the pain ebbed some clarity managed to come back.

"... Katara? Suki?"

No answer. Not even the sound of a voice. Just the wind blowing through windows somewhere near by.

"Hello?! Some one get me out of here!"

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"Hey," Sokka said, raising a hand in greeting to the one who was holding him up. If the pain in his leg had been less he might have been more attentive to how the rest of him felt right now, but for the most part 'ran over by a Sky Bison' described about all of it.

"I'll live," was his weary answer as he leaned heavily against Duo, lacking any real balance to stay on one leg alone.

"We should probably get him to bed. He can have mine. It's my shelf more than anything, anyway."

She pointed towards the door.

"I'm not sure how safe it is around here."

"Shelf. Yeah." Duo couldn't help but grin at Toph's word, glancing at Sokka knowingly. This is who you gotta put up with! Sympathies. No, but really. He was growing fond of the little girl. She was making life interesting that was for damn sure.

"Tch. Toph. Nothing's safe here. I can't leave the damn common area without getting ganked by those damn things." What'd you expect. So he was marching Sokka down the steps, careful not to agitate his bum leg.

"You're in good company, kid. Long suffering, the lot of us."

"... what things? What's not safe? What IS this place?"

A million questions at a million miles a minute. He was confused. Toph was there but so was this relative stranger, and it didn't look like any building or structure he had ever seen even in the Earth Kingdom.

And the talk about it not being safe didn't make him any more at ease, either. He followed, but he did so cautiously, wanting answers but knowing that if something wasn't safe they shouldn't stick around.

"There's a lot of monsters around here, Sokka. They make no noise and they don't touch the ground," She sounded apprehensive, and rightfully so.

"So far, we've noticed they rarely attack the living area, but it has happened at least once that we know of. Every other place in this castle is fair game for them, though."

Toph walked ahead of them, making the terrain easier to walk, moving stones and flattening out uneven flooring.

He walked dutifully behind Toph as she cleared the path up to the store room. He had suggested making some stairs and taking the metal from that chain for weapons, may has well do half the job now. As Toph described the shadows he nodded in agreeance.

"Yeah. Toph can't see em' but they look like shadows only... y'know. Solid? Sort of. Claws. Some of em have wings. Some of em look like spiders. So pardon our paranoia here. It's been a hellish month." He pauses when they get to the store room.

"Toph. Can you make the stairs?"

"Shadows... " Sokka echoed slowly, watching both of them carefully. This wasn't a joke. It couldn't be. Toph wouldn't joke about something like this, and more than that she actually looked... well, not afraid but pretty close to it.

He swallowed hard, licking his lips nervously as they stopped so she could make the stairs. He was already cursing lack of weaponry here.

"Can they be stopped at all?" he asked after a second, already trying to formulate some sort of plan in his head. He could make weapons if he had the right materials after all. Crude and hardly as refined as his Space Sword but any weapons were better than none.

Stairs wouldn't do well for Sokka's foot. The last thing he needed to do was keep limping, especially up stairs. Instead, she took a stance and made her movements, arms shoved into the air. They rose steadily but quickly up to the appropriate level, and a stone-bridge connected their pillar to the tattered and beaten walk-way.

Lost in thought, Toph finally spoke again.

"Did you break yourself again, Sokka?" Last time she'd seen him, he was okay and walking just fine.

"Tch." Duo scoffed a bit at Toph's actions, gesturing back behind him once he stepped on the platform. She still had to make the stairs.

"C'mon Toph. Might as well do what we came here for." He readjusted Sokka in his grasp and nodded.

"Stopped? Yeah, but it's hard. I can take down a guy twice my size pretty easy, but these things? Or maybe we're just doing it wrong." Better weapons? Stronger people? He didn't know.

"I didn't break myself again," Sokka snapped, rolling his eyes at Toph even though she couldn't see it. The mild irritation in his voice was probably enough. "My leg is still broken from when we fell on the airship."

He scowled for a second, deciding it wasn't worth arguing over and changed back to the subject of the shadows.

"Well, what have you tried?"

He had to get an idea what they were up against, but without actually seeing them he went with the next best thing - what had been done so far.

From the airship? But that was at least half a year ago, and... oh, right... the castle. Likely this Sokka wasn't the Sokka from her point in time. Oh, well.

She turned her attention towards fixing the stairs. It took her an entire few seconds to get it done. She gave a satisfied nod before letting the boys go, and leveling the pillar behind her.

"They don't like being cut up, and they don't like getting stone-shafted," she offered, smirking to herself.

"Air ship?" And that even gave him some pause. "Toph, I thought you said blimps were as advanced as you had for technology. That sounds a little more than just a blimp." He started on moving again once Sokka went along with him.

"We tried that, like Toph said. Gravity works great. Dropping large objects from high places? Toph seems to pull that off nicely. Aaaand yeah. Sharp weapons work a lot better than the club." Had to be honest. While he wasn't going to get rid of it or have her turn the club into something different, he just needed something else to fight with.

"The airships were based off a hot air balloon I helped make," Sokka said with a very angered edge to his voice. That still pissed him off. Beyond pissed him off. He had known dropping the hot air balloon he and the Inventor had been inside might come back to bite them at some point later on down the line, but the didn't have a choice unless they wanted to die in it. Still, he hadn't expected... that.

But it was done and over with and at least with Ozai out of the picture they weren't being used for war and destruction anymore.

He grunted as they got to moving again, taking in the information about the shadows and what seemed to work and what didn't. First thing was first when his leg was healed then - he needed to get metal, and he needed to make it sharp. It wouldn't be his space sword, but when options were limited one had to take the first they could get their hands on.

See, Duo? Toph told you he was smart.

"There's plenty of metal lying around," Toph told him, pausing at the entrance to the hall once they got there. She didn't like entering rooms without knowing what was in it, so she let the working eyes do the looking. She was always more than willing to do the fighting, she just had to know where and what she was fighting.

"Metal I can Bend," she clarified. That automatically made them a lot safer than without her abilities and willingness to abuse them for the greater good of the company. Or abuse them just for funsies. Whatever struck her fancy at the time.

Duo knew better than to underestimate the abilities of younger kids. After all, look at him. He was sent to war at fifteen, after all. So he passed Toph with Sokka and headed inside towards the fountain that led into the common hall.

"Toph told me you were somethin' of a genius. Even with that busted leg of yours I'm sure we can pick your brain, can't we?" He pauses briefly and chuckles.

"Probably shouldn't stroke your ego too much but hey? You're down on your luck, you deserve it." With that he offered a kind smile to the younger boy and moved onward still.

"We've been having Toph use her metal bending like she said, making us a few weapons. Seem to work alright. Better than those wood planks we found lying around."

"Genius?" Sokka echoed, suddenly breaking in to a grin. "Well, I don't wanna gloat..."

They were going to wind up stroking his ego anyway. That's just how it works, didn't you know, Duo?

"That's good, though. Really. Gotta survive, right?"

They didn't hesitate, so she assumed the path was clear and followed them closely.

"Of course you wanna gloat. That's what you do," said the pot to the kettle. "But we should probably warn you about the food."

Of course that was the most important bit.

"One... step at a time." Duo said to Toph with a bit of weakness on his voice. He was forced to start eating that stuff again and he wasn't all too happy about it.

"Sokka? It's bad. The food here is..." He grimaced. Hated that stuff. What else could he say about it?

"Yeaaah, you gotta see it." There had to be a better way to do this, right? Find better food? Welp, there was an ocean, and there was birds!

"Hey, I can be humble!"

Sometimes.

"... that bad?"

It sounded positively horrid, and he was not looking forward to that.

"It's not nice to lie, Sokka," she said as she nudged him in the side.

Here, her room was closer. She had roommates, but they wouldn't care, at least she didn't think so. Sokka could rest on her bed. She opened the door and let them enter first.

"The food's edible, but not good at all. There's fruit tree and some fish in the courtyard, but it's not enough to keep us all fed."

She sat on the edge of the bed. Here, Duo, have a rock chair.

"Is Quatre home?" Duo asked quietly as he entered, then looked around. Hm. No sign of him. Weird. Ratchet wasn't here either. He looked to Sokka and gave a brief shrug, bringing him over to the bed. Once he set him down and withdrew, he noticed the chair bent out of nowhere.

"Hm. Thanks Toph." He took a seat.

"There's apples, yeah. I've been trying to live on the apples and fish... Looks like it's not enough."

Sokka just rolled his eyes at Toph, but didn't try to argue. He hadn't asked, but from the sounds of it she had... some how been there a lot longer than just a day or two. He wasn't about to give her a hard time if that was the case.

He dropped down on the bed with Duo's help, rubbing his upper thigh above the cast with a groan. The worst part of a broken leg wasn't the actual break sometimes, it was the damn muscle cramps from being laid up, walking funny and having an extra five pounds of cast attached to it.

"No other animals?"

That'd be weird if there wasn't. What place didn't have at least some sort of local wildlife beyond, well... fish.

Try a week or two. Perhaps longer. She honestly had lost track. What was the point in counting passed days, anyway, when she needed to focus on finding a way home?

"I can hear birds, but I don't know how far away they are," she pointed to the window. "They might be too far off to be considered a food source."

"No, the birds are gulls and crows. They're big enough to eat but hard to catch. Course we haven't really tried yet." He shrugs. Fish were just easier.

Remembering he promised Sokka some aspirin, he rose from the chair again. "Hey, you guys talk amongst yourself a few minutes. I'll be right back."

"Huh."

That just got Sokka thinking more, of course. Things he'd have to work on, when he could walk.

He watched Duo leave, looking to Toph once he was out of the room again.

"... how long have you been here?"

Might as well ask the question that's been bugging him all this time.

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