Sora watched from above as the earthbenders, along with Aang and the rest of the group, boarded the ships and sailed away from the prison rig.
Once he was sure they were safely out of range, he turned his gaze back to the remaining Fire Nation soldiers on the deck.
There were about thirty guards left, and they were in terrible shape.
Some were badly wounded from the earthbenders’ sudden rebellion, while others had barely survived the chaos.
Sora began to draw in the air around him.
He raised his hands in a sharp, circular arc and thrust them forward.
A crescent air blade tore through the sky toward a group of four guards.
The soldiers instinctively unleashed a wall of fire to counter the attack, but the compressed gale sliced right through the flames and struck them.
Spack!
The sharp sound of slicing flesh echoed across the deck.
The air blade cut three of the guards clean in half, separating their upper and lower torsos with brutal precision.
The fourth soldier managed to dodge just in time to save his life, but he didn’t escape unscathed—the vacuum sliced off his left arm and left ear.
A second later, and he would have been cut in two.
Sora used his airbending to rocket himself forward, closing the distance in a blur, and landed right in front of five guards who were trying to regroup against him.
Before they could even think of a formation, Sora unleashed a barrage of rapid air blades.
The lacerations tore through their bodies in an instant, scattering blood and severed limbs across the metal floor.
“Damn it.
At this rate, killing them one by one is going to take way too much time and effort,” Sora muttered, dissatisfied.
Facing a large crowd of enemies by hand was becoming tedious.
Deciding on a different approach, Sora began running in a tight, rapid circle using his airbending to accelerate.
As his speed increased, the trapped winds condensed violently, creating a localized vortex that rapidly spiraled upward into a massive, roaring hurricane.
With the cyclone spinning at full force, Sora, standing right at the eye of the storm, decided to try an experiment.
He compressed dense air into his palms and began launching razor-sharp air blades directly into the vortex, allowing them to fuse with the rotating currents.
The blades started out small, but as they spun through the core of the hurricane, they expanded drastically, feeding off the storm’s momentum.
Sora fired one last volley of compressed blades into the heart of the storm.
Realizing he couldn’t control the growing monster and would easily get caught in it himself, he used every ounce of his airbending strength to launch himself straight up into the sky.
He managed to clear the eye, but he was still dangerously close to the storm’s outer radius.
The hurricane had grown unnaturally powerful.
Violent winds battered the structural iron of the prison, and the air blades he had fed into it were now spinning out at random, slicing through the heavy metal floors like paper.
The Fire Nation soldiers had tried to run the moment they saw Sora doing something strange, but there was nowhere to hide.
The sheer size of the cyclone swallowed the deck, shredding the facility apart and pulling loose metal plating into the funnel, turning it into a massive, whirling blender.
Sora kicked against the air, creating a solid wall of pressure to jump off of to escape the updraft.
He honestly hadn’t expected the storm to become this destructive.
Channeling his bending to its absolute limit, he blasted through the sky.
The friction from his sheer speed tore through the air with a deafening crack, and the intense heat even left faint singe marks on his clothes.
Finally breaking free, Sora soared high into the sky above the wreckage.
From up here, the view was almost peaceful.
He could see the ships carrying the earthbenders moving further into the distance.
Then he looked down.
The hurricane was leaving nothing but absolute devastation in its wake, crushing metal walls and tearing soldiers apart.
In a desperate bid to survive the slaughter, several guards threw themselves over the railing into the sea.
Watching them swim for their lives, Sora casually flicked his wrist in a sharp, sweeping motion.
A barrage of compressed air blades shot downward, cutting through the water and striking the swimming soldiers.
As bright red blood stained the ocean surface, the scent immediately drew a pack of sharks and other aggressive sea predators.
Within moments, the water turned into a feeding frenzy.
The Fire Nation soldiers were living through a literal hell—on deck, a metal-infused hurricane was waiting to tear them limb from limb, and in the water, predators were tearing at their flesh.
The sheer horror drove the surviving men into screaming madness.
Sora remained completely indifferent to their cries.
He thought about how many children these men had orphaned, and how many wives had lost their husbands to their cruelty.
These were the same soldiers who had mercilessly tortured and imprisoned innocent people.
To Sora, the earthbenders living in those small villages were the truly innocent ones; they had nothing to do with the Earth Kingdom’s military and just wanted to live in peace with their families.
Yet, the Fire Nation had brought their war machine to their doorstep anyway.
The hurricane continued its path of destruction across the rig, reducing the remaining guards to mist.
The stray air blades tore through every corner of the factory, some slicing into the ocean and parting the water in deep gashes.
Satisfied that the facility was entirely ruined, Sora decided it was time to leave and continue his own journey.
Enma flew up to meet him in the sky.
Sora climbed onto his companion’s back, and they charted a course due west, leaving the dying prison and the raging storm behind.
Sora made a mental note never to use that hurricane technique again unless he was in an absolute crisis.
He simply didn’t have enough control over it yet.
Meanwhile, a few miles away, Aang, Sokka, and Katara stood on the deck of their captured Fire Nation ship, watching the distant prison rig get torn apart by the massive storm.
“Whoa…
we got out of there just in the nick of time,” Sokka said, wiping sweat from his forehead, visibly shaken by the distant display of violence.
Katara stood beside him, watching the horizon in stunned silence.
“Talk about terrifying power, haha…
Guess we’re lucky Sora is on our side, right?!” Sokka added, trying to break his own tension.
“Yeah,” Aang replied softly, his eyes fixed on the smoke rising in the distance.
“You’re definitely right about that.”