A/N: Behold, a story nearly six months in the making... I first had the rough plan of writing this story way back in April of 2011. At the time I had other things on my mind- finishing up my previous story, which can be found in all its glory by going to the search engine and typing in "black company", then clicking the story at the top of the list.

Also, I was rewatching Full Metal Jacket and wondering how much Army Basic Training would resemble it. The answer: for about 50% of the first half of the movie, I was able to say, "Hey, that totally happened to me!"

So hammering a good story out of the idea was not at the top of my priorities.

But now, hell, I got a shiny new laptop and a fair bit of time to kill at my shiny new duty station. It's time to stretch those literary muscles again and see if story-telling is still in my repertoire.

Many thanks to J. Idanian (who writes some pretty kick-ass fanfics as well), for his help in editing this story.

Cheers, and please review if you can spare the time. Suggestions, concerns, and other corrections are always taken into account, even if I don't always follow them. Also, I get a small thrill in the pit of my stomach from watching the number of reviews rise.

To whom it may concern-

If you are reading this, then it's very likely that either you or one of your friends killed me, and are now looting my body.

If this is not the case, you may just throw this message away now.

If this is the case, then know this- you will be joining me soon. I promise. We can Bend the deadliest element known to mankind; we are strong; we are legion. My comrades will scatter your ashes to the four winds. It's just a matter of time.

So enjoy yourself! While you can!

Shenzi

The tea room was empty save for the two teenaged soldiers. The owners, a married couple in their sixties, knew that traffic wouldn't pick up until nightfall when the locals got off of work. They also weren't charging the pair for the tray of full tea cups the soldiers were slowly emptying and turning upside down, which both Shenzi and Hsu greatly appreciated.

"Hey, Hsu! Check this out."

Shenzi swivelled the crisp sheet of paper around the table so his friend could read it.

Hsu pinned the sheet to the surface with two fingers, read it, shook his head.

"Wow, guy. Just wow."

Shenzi smiled. He flapped the paper gently up and down to dry it out.

"There's cocky, and then there's ultra cocky, and then there's you, guy." Hsu shook his head in wonder.

"Life without cockiness is like dinner without spices. You can do it, but you'd never want to."

"So. Are we all set for tomorrow night?"

"Yep. Wakizashi, sharpened. Map, studied. Armored, cleaned. Tea..." Shenzi paused to slurp. "...consumed. Yep, all set."

Hsu frowned. "You're... you're really going to Jump in armor?"

"Oh, yes. Can't get in a scrap with an Earthbender without some metal between him and my precious, vital organs." Shenzi carefully rolled his note into a scroll and tied it closed with a length of string from his pocket. A graceful swirl of his long, clever fingers conjured a small flame that burned the ends of the string, and semi-melted the middle knot.

"Let me try this from a different angle. You're seriously going to land in armor?"

"What? I can handle it."

"... Cocky."

Shenzi slipped the roll of paper into a waterproof tube that would hang around his neck. "It's only cockiness if I screw up. If I land intact, it actually counts as confidence."

"Uh-huh. Remind me again why I spend time with you?"

Shenzi thought a moment. "Skilled, handsome, no one else would associate with you- ai! You little-!"

Hsu had upended Shenzi's cup into his face, and the tea was served hot here.

Shenzi and Hsu first met when they were both ten years old, as study partners assigned by the teacher. Hsu took to mathematics and economics naturally; Shenzi could add, subtract, divide and multiply, but anything past that and he was overwhelmed. Likewise, Shenzi knew History and Politics, areas where Hsu was lost in the woods.

What started as mutual support quickly developed in friendship, and pretty soon they were spending every moment of free time with each other. Shenzi grew tall and lanky, with a sly, fox-like face and long, clever fingers. Hsu was six inches shorter, a lot more natural muscle mass, and had a face that haunted the daydreams of every girl in the class. And yet strangers still mistook them for twins.

Shenzi's father was a sculpter, and Hsu's mother was a server in an upscale tea room in a prosperous part of town. They might have gone on in their parent's footsteps, still life long companions, save that they both excelled in the art of Firebending.

Nonbenders might or might not get conscripted in the endless war out to the east. Firebenders of any skill level at all were shipped out the moment the Fire Lord could get away with it.

Hsu drained another tea cup and placed it on the tray as Shenzi Bent a small flame up and down his gi jacket, drying himself off.

"Damn, but this is good tea."

"Mmmm," Shenzi agreed. "It's even better when you drink it, instead of trying to absorb it through the eyeballs."

"Strong, but sweet."

"Like me."

Hsu cocked an eyebrow. "Either you misheard me, or I misspoke. I said that the tea is strong, and sweet."

They exchanged quick, easy grins. Then the future loomed in both their minds, and the smiles went away again.

"We'll leave a good tip here," Shenzi said.

"The best. It's not like we can use the money."

Shenzi and Hsu were Jumpers. Becoming a Jumper had only three requirements.

First, a good service record. Shenzi had clocked in two solid years with the Northern Fleet, skirmishing with the resilient Northern Water Tribe and the minor Earth Kingdoms on the north coast. After that he was assigned the task of guarding convoys in an area with a heavy guerrilla infestation. Hsu had received a battlefield promotion to corporal on the fields of Yagaki- an infamous three day charnel house that claimed the lives of almost 20,000 Fire soldiers, with thrice that wounded. The Fire Nation had won, technically, but it had taken them months to recover before they could advance and claim the territory they had won.

Second, extraordinary prowess in the art of Fire Bending. The moderately talented need not apply.

Third, the ability to land hard from a great height and at high speeds, and emerge from the landing unharmed and able to fight.

Jumpers were a relatively new concept, created by a Navy Captain named Bazu. The idea was simple; the Fire Navy had scores of catapults available, but few targets. Once an enemy was a few thousand feet inland, none of the might of the Fire Navy could touch them, save by shooting at random and hoping for the best. The enemy wouldn't even need to go far- slipping into a local gorge or behind a hill would save just as well.

Captain Bazu had meditated on this problem at length, and concluded that, obviously, the best solution was to launch soldiers from the catapults instead, and have them mark the enemy's location with flares.

The initial trial was discouraging. The proto-Jumpers had a tendency to land badly, breaking legs and wrists and backs. Even when they survived the landing intact, they found themselves alone behind enemy lines, and none of them had any method of dealing with that sort of fear and pressure. They were all used to fighting in a block of comrades, and being cut off in the heat of battle was something that had always scared them. They were either captured or slain in short order. Only one volunteer succeeded in reaching his objecting and shooting up the flare. The man, who was named Kazuo, failed anyway, though it wasn't his fault- it seemed that each ship had a different opinion as to where on the map the flare was. The result, though awe-inspiring, was ineffective. The Fire Navy had bombed an entire valley to ash but somehow missed its target.

Kazuo made good his escape in the confusion, and after he was picked up at the rally point, Captain Bazu asked him for suggestions as to what to change for the next time.

"Everything," he was told.

"If I drink another cup of tea, I'm going to puke." Shenzi pushed a half full cup away from himself. The cup slide gracefully across the smooth wood table. His face was pale, drawn, like a man dying of cancer.

"What, are you nervous or something?" Hsu made a stab at jocularity.

"Yes."

There was, at least, a certain amount of forethought put into the operation this time around.

Instead of using fifty individuals, Captain Bazu was slimming it down to twelve total- four teams of three.

Instead of using anyone who volunteered, regardless of how able they were, those twelve had received extensive training. They had all completely mastered the skills necessary to pull a successful operation- how to fall without injury, how to swim, how to move silently, how to use cover and concealment.

Instead of using a single flare to mark the target, Captain Bazu had developed a more complicated system. Once a Jumper team found a viable target, they would take up positions around it. Once in position, they would each Bend two columns of flames into the sky, aimed up in a ninety degree angle. Distance from the shore would be color-coded: red for one thousand feet, green for two thousand, and so on.

Ideally, the Fire Navy would see the flames from inland and extrapolate (using direction, distance, and terrain association) exactly where on the map each set of flames was coming from. It would form a triangle on the map- everything inside that triangle was to be destroyed.

There were some problems with this system, of course. The Jumpers weren't worried about receiving friendly fire; they were resigned to it. Taking up a position right next to an Earth Kingdom battalion and then lighting up your location was not the safest of plans either. The Jumpers would have to keep the fires burning until they saw the catapults loose, regardless of whether the enemy is attacking or not. And it's damned difficult to fight anybody with both your hands keeping the signal sky-high.

Captain Bazu had no great hopes that his Jumpers would survive the mission. But he was pretty sure that the Jumpers could successfully call for fire before they died- and all he needed was one vital target destroyed, just one. He believed that if he could just show his Commander a previously untouchable Earth Kingdom post charred into the ground, the patronage would allow him to refine and expand the program.

Captain Bazu dreamed of being the man who single-handedly won the war, of the glory and riches that were in store for the one who could deliver the Earth Kingdom to Fire Lord Azulon.

Shenzi and Hsu dreamed of steel and screaming and fire.

Both Shenzi and Hsu left over half their gold at the table- the tip was far larger than the bill would have been.

They went out into the night to find another place of business they could patronize. They wanted empty purses when the time came to Jump.

As the old saying has it, it's not the fall that kills you, it's the landing.

It turned out there was an art to landing that had kept Kazuo alive. They had got into the essentials on the third day of training.

"You," Kazuo had said, pointing to Hsu. "Oh, sacred flames, look at you." Like everyone on the Jump field Hsu was bared to the waist, wearing only a loose black gi bottom. His three years of training in the Fire Army had him in peak physical condition. The only thing marring his body was an ugly scar on his left side, where a Water Tribe whale tooth sword had broken through his armor.

Hsu jumped a little, self-conscious at being singled out. "Sir?"

"You have muscles like wrought iron. You poor bastard, you're going to break on impact."

"Sir?"

"Stop calling me sir, guy. Look-" Kazuo threw a quick, casual body punch at Hsu, who took it without flinching. Shenzi, who was standing next to him at the time, almost jumped Kazuo then and there but held himself back, recognizing in time that the strike was at far less than half power. By this time, he had enough muscle to go along with his height that he could qualify as intimidating instead of lanky.

"See? Like punching solid steel. Oh, you're going to drive me insane, guy." Kazuo sighed. "I mean, you're all going to drive me insane, but you in particular, Mr. Muscle man. Pay close attention, now. There are several tricks to Jumping and landing safely. This is the first and most important. Loosen up. If you tense your muscles up mid-flight, guy, you're going to shatter." He slammed a fist into a palm for emphasis. "Bam! End of mission, end of story. Half the guys I Jumped with tensed up before they got tossed. They all neutralized themselves on impact. Never even engaged the enemy. We could have all saved a lot of time, money and effort and just had them trampled by a Rhino squadron back home."

Shenzi had seen a lot of bad things in his short life. But he decided that he had seen nothing as horrible as the look in Kazuo's eyes right then.

"Let me throw a metaphor at you. When a tsunami strikes the shore, what survives, a mighty oak tree or a blade of grass?"

"Blade of..." "The blade." "The grass." "Yes, sir, the grass."

"That's right," Kazuo nodded. "You, Shuzi. Tell me why."

"It's Shenzi, sir."

"Guy, I'm gonna..."

"Sorry, s-" Shenzi kept the "sir" from escaping, but it was hard. Kazuo just felt like a sir to him. "The blade of grass survives, because it accepts its fate and allows the water to flow over. The mighty tree gets broken off because... because it's too strong too survive being beaten."

"True. But needlessly wordy and philosophical. Let me just say it flat out, preschool style. If you Jump hard, your bones pick a fight with the ground. At the speeds you'll be going, the ground will win, every time. If you Jump loose, you allow the ground to win, and in gratitude, the ground will allow you to survive. Well, I mean, there's a lot more to it than that, but this is what you need to master before anything else happens."

Kazuo pointed out into the field. The field had hard, packed dirt, and the trainees could make out glimpses of jagged rock half-hidden beneath yellow chaff.

"This is where we'll be training. Not today, of course, you don't know a damn thing. Today is breathing exercises, and stretches. Tomorrow we'll start at twenty foot Jumps, and see where we'll go from there.

"And remember- always Jump loose."

The lesson had come, hard and fast. Direct your momentum across the ground, not into it. Initial impact should happen on the balls of your feet. Arch your back while in flight to increase wind resistance and avoid building up too much speed.

Of the two hundred total applicants that went through the camp, only 30 could master the landing techniques to Kazuo's satisfaction. The twelve that showed the greatest progress were selected for the raid on the Yu Gao peninsula. The rest would form the backbone of the next class. And Captain Bazu would make damn sure that there would be another class to sacrifice upon the altar of victory.

The pair were sitting on a park bench, staring up at a glorious sky.

Shenzi started to speak, perhaps to comment on the night's beauty or ask his friend a question. He stopped himself. This could be the last time in his life he could just hang out with Hsu. There was no need to spoil it with random words.

Hsu twirled his purse around his wrist, then twirled it off again. No gold jangled in it. Shenzi absentmindedly walked his remaining copper across his knuckles, over and over again.

Silence continued its reign in peace until Hsu spoke at last.

"What time are we meeting up Jeong Jeong again?"

"Six o'clock in the morning. Then we got last minute stretching, inspections, and so on. That crap'll last all afternoon. After that..." Shenzi trailed off.

"After that we eat dinner."

"Yes. Yes, we do. But after that, around nightfall..."

Hsu nodded. "Around nightfall, we fall."

Shenzi breathed deep and tasted the cool, damp air. He exhaled hard. "Then I suppose we'd better hit the sack early tonight."