4/2016 edit: Because my edits are few and far between and I don't want to make you re-read anything, I have added a summary of Chapters 1-10 between Chapters 10 and 11 (that'll help you bypass these awkward chapters a bit better). Hope that helps!

TITLE: Of Freedom and Folly: The Untold Tales of Gaipan's Arboreal Vagabonds

SUMMARY: To what extent does the freedom of one justify the destruction of the other? Follow the Freedom Fighters before, during, and after canon appearances as they struggle with the moral and meaning of their actions in a world marred by war. Rated T for language and violence.

CHAPTER ONE: The Unexpected

"Monkey Feathers!"

Jet kicked away a charred, fallen pillar, pulling away smaller debris with his hook swords as he searched the smoldering ruins of what had probably been a temporary Earth Kingdom settlement just hours before. It was rather small, he had noted: just a handful of peasants scattered along the bank of the Hong Ye River, not more than two leagues from the main settlement at Gaipan, quietly farming the fertile floodplains toward the end of the peak season.

And just as they were settling down to enjoy the labors of their harvest, the Fire Nation Army had gone ahead and made spoils of the good people and their hard-earned wares, consuming what they couldn't store in their greedy bellies in flames. As usual, they'd left nothing but death and destruction in their wake, sparing neither man nor child in their never-ending conquests.

And, as usual, the Freedom Fighters had been too late to aid the innocent.

The mop-headed teen grunted as he pushed out the part of his mind that mocked the futility of his actions; that questioned the worth of it all. It was so tiring, so taxing: taking care of oneself and a few dozen displaced orphans day after day, season after season, cutting down Fire Nation scum even as more always seemed to appear in their place, doing anything; everything, to keep his home, his friends, his children safe. And as his love for them had grown, so had his hatred of those who threatened their well-being: there was too much to do; too many Fire Nation to expel from the only home he had left; too many deaths unavenged…

Stopping suddenly, Jet pinched the bridge of his nose, his eyes smarting from the airborne ash, fingers aching for the metal and leather flask at his hip. No time to cry; no time to gripe; no time to just stand there all day when his Freedom Fighters were picking apart what was left of this razed town under his orders.

He took a swig, eyes snapping shut as the fiery liquid burned down his throat, carrying ash and soot and worries with it. By the second swig the pain had dulled to the point of being bearable and, with a sigh, the Freedom Fighter and his hook swords were back to their futile work, the soft crunching of his feet upon charred debris fading into the wind.

"Those heartless bastards," muttered Sneers, kneeling over a charred corpse in seething contemplation as he finished performing an abbreviated Earth Kingdom burial rite over a fallen civilian. Stomach churning, the monk wiped a gloved hand over the sickeningly small body's eyes, shielding their bloodshot torment from the ash-grey sky.

A massive, but gentle hand on his shoulder announced Pipsqueak's arrival. The behemoth regarded him gravely, his usually jubilant, booming baritone dulled to a quiet rumble.

"Longshot and I pulled up four bodies down by the riverside," he muttered. "No word from Bee yet; she's got the four huts closest to the forest."

"You and Longshot go help her clear debris," Sneers replied, resuming his full height as he mentally prepared himself to face more remains. "I'll take care of the dead."

The gentle giant nodded, turning to face the Freedom Fighters' tall, silent archer as he came over the ridge. With an inclination of the head, the two set off toward the forest, dread bubbling up in their throats as experience and imagination began to formulate the unspoken misery they would likely find there.

Out of all of the huts in the village, those near the forest's edge appeared to have suffered the least damage. The designation, however, was of little consolation: straw and splintered wood littered the earthen floor, while the façade of one dwelling had been peeled away like a skin of a fruit, exposing the still-smoking contents within. Another beside it remained intact, but scorch marks radiating from the entrance betrayed its inhabitants' gristly fates.

Not a moment later Smellerbee had emerged from that very dwelling, her paint-striped face covered in soot. The swordswoman appeared green, and before Pipsqueak could process what she might have seen she had staggered past him, just barely reaching a bush before emptying the entire contents of her stomach. Longshot was at her side in an instant, rubbing her back as she struggled to find her breath again, offering her his canteen as soon as she had gathered her bearings enough to rinse the foul taste from her mouth.

"I'm not done yet," Bee muttered bitterly as she wiped her mouth on her sleeve, accepting the archer's waterskin without meeting his concerned gaze. She took a quick swig, gargled, and spit the contaminated water at her feet in a manner so unladylike that Longshot might have smiled in happier circumstances.

But for now, he had to insist that she take a short breather.

"I don't need a 'breather,' " she snapped at his pointed look, turning to face the hut again, "we owe it to these people to make sure that we don't leave a single stone unturned: if there are any clues as to where the fire Nation's going next, or if there are any survivors—"

Survivors.

Longshot cringed, remembering how the term, while positive in the fact that it meant 'not dead,' had acquired far too many negative, empirical associations to it in his time as a Freedom Fighter. Being a survivor implied that you had been through something thorny enough to pick off something close and dear to you: friends, family, a home, a voice—

And then there had been those who had lost an arm, a leg, or just too much blood, and then there was nothing they could do but hold hands and whisper assurances that it would all be over soon; to barely keep it together as the innocent were slowly and agonizingly consumed by death.

And whoever did manage to escape the jaws of death with little more than their fractured lives and the tattered clothes on their backs:

Well, you got the Freedom Fighters.

Before he or Pipsqueak could stop her, Smellerbee had pushed past Longshot and reentered the dwelling, intent on sifting through every potential clue if it meant she and the rest of the Freedom Fighters were that much closer to preventing another raid. Her stomach would just have to deal with it.

Without bothering to argue the matter further, Longshot ducked under the low threshold after her, hissing as the odor of burnt flesh filled his nose. A quick survey of the dwelling's interior revealed why Bee had gotten ill.

What few personal items that had once decorated the small home had been torn from the walls, or now lay in smoldering, crumpled heaps on the hard earthen floor. The remains of a cracked table, two chairs, and—his stomach turned violently—a high chair, lay unceremoniously strewn about, not quite obscuring the—

Two twisted bodies in the far corner of the home, their skin blistered and black, laying face-down in the muck and the filth and —

The tiniest of sounds twitched past his ear.

The perceptive archer had whipped around in an instant, the sharp intake of his breath catching Bee's attention. Their eyes locked momentarily before going to the lifeless heap in the corner, thoughts bouncing between them at the speed of sound—

No. There was no way that it'd still be here, in a condition that wouldn't be etched into his mind for the rest of his life, but before he knew what he was doing he was in the corner, carefully turning over the woman's hunched body—

And there, yes, there, in the smooth, miraculously uncharred crook of her arm and breast, was—

"BEE!"

The words had no sooner vibrated through atrophied vocal cords and escaped once-mute lips when his addressee yelped in surprise, and a strangled, gurgling cry bubbled forth from the struggling bundle in the dead woman's arms.

In a second, the swordswoman had dropped her weapon and was now craning over Longshot's hunched figure, not daring to believe what she had heard before she had seen it with her own eyes—

And then suddenly the entire façade had been ripped from its earthen foundations, Pipsqueak's broad silhouette shading his comrades as the late afternoon light as it filtered through the dwelling, his eyes popping as the sights and sounds finally came together in a beautiful, miraculous realization that—

"Great Spirits, there's a BABY in here!"

Pipsqueak's booming declaration all at once turned the deathly silence of the site into a bustling menagerie of sounds, each overlapping the other as the troop of young vagabonds staggered over their discovery in frazzled incredulity: Pipsqueak had done away with his load with a great heave, the crash of splintering wood augmented by the infant's rolling wails and a cacophony of cackling viper-ravens, spooked from their roosts, pooling in a great black cloud far above their heads. Longshot cringed, his perceptive ears ringing painfully from the sudden influx of noise, and it wasn't until Smellerbee tugged at his tunic with slight urgency that he came to his senses.

"'Shot, gimme your cape."

Without delay, the archer fumbled with the knot on the garment in question before handing it to the swordswoman. She'd snatched it pointedly, her eyes never leaving the wailing infant before them, carefully (though with obvious inexperience) wrapping it up in the tattered red material before scooping the child into her arms, bouncing slightly at the knees as she attempted to quell its crying.

By the time Jet and Sneers had appeared over the ridge, Smellerbee had somehow managed to reduce the baby's wailing to whimpering.

"Shhh… s'okay, you're safe now. You're gonna be just fine…"

She nodded as their leader approached them, shooting a venomous glance at Sneers as she sensed him assimilating this veritable goldmine of blackmail material he'd surely pester her with later. The monk closed his mouth, but in his inebriated stupor, Jet wasn't as soon quieted.

"How on Earth—"

"I'll explain later," she snapped quietly, clutching the infant against her armor-padded chest before nodding at Pipsqueak pointedly. "Pip, would you mind gettin' my knives?"

The behemoth nodded meekly, performing the desired action as Smellerbee approached Jet, the successfully quieted infant still bouncing in her arms.

"My best guess is that the people who were living here came down from Gaipan," she remarked stoically. "I saw some wood cargo boxes stamped with the town's seal in a few of the huts."

Jet nodded, swaying and chewing his wheatgrass thoughtfully. "They were probably here to do some seasonal farming," he remarked. "Not that you'd know it, though, with how much those damn ash makers have burned away…"

"In any case," she interrupted, "I think that our best bet of finding any family this kid may have is in Gaipan."

Jet quirked an eyebrow, unaware of how quickly his verbal filter was disintegrating. "You sure you don't wanna keep 'im?" he quipped, the corner of his lip slowly curling upward as his train of thought intersected Sneers'. "I'm sure Longshot wouldn't mind playing da—"

If Bee hadn't been preoccupied with the bundle in her arms she would have done more than glare daggers at her leader just then, but all she could do (lest the child wake up and resume wailing again) was duck her head and hope that her teammates hadn't noticed how flustered she was.

"I'm not a nanny at your Freedom Fighters Daycare, Jet," she muttered with tactile contempt, doing her best to ignore the pang she felt as her silent companion recoiled under the brim of his hat, his reaction to the notion artfully obscured.

"Hey, hey, cool off, Bee!" he slurred, the bootleg boosting his intrepidness. "I mean, you obviously know how to take care of 'im, and you are a girl—"

"What the hell is that supposed to mean?!" Smellerbee hissed, clapping her hand over the child's ear as not to perturb him.

"Well, you've certainly got the equipment to, you know… feed him…"

The tomboy froze, half inclined to laugh at her leader's ignorance if the urge to crawl into a dark hole and never come out again hadn't completely engrossed her. Hell, she might have even dropped the poor kid in shock had Longshot, ever stoic, not gently freed the girl of her burden, trying his best to hold the now-sleeping child the way the swordswoman had.

Jet barely had time to suck in his breath before Smellerbee managed to knock it out of him again with a tiny, well-placed fist to the solar plexus. As he doubled over from the blow, the swordswoman whipped out a concealed penknife from a pocket in her leather breastplate, bringing it dangerously close to Jet's nether regions.

"I don't assume that the presence of a sack between your legs means that you've got balls," she growled venomously, grimacing as she caught the stench of alcohol on his breath. "You'd do best to know how girl parts work before you get drunk enough to spit out that kind of crap again."

Her leader did nothing but gurgle inaudibly in return, at which point Smellerbee turned her heels (smirking inwardly as she observed the shock on Sneers' face) and returned to her loyal friend, reclaiming the sleeping bundle with little fanfare.

"I'll be back before my watch shift," she muttered, feigning indifference as Longshot regarded her apologetically. "And in the meantime, keep Jet's head away from the bottle and out of his ass."

A/N: New story, people! I've been working on this one on and off for a few months when I can, but now that summer is rolling around soon I feel comfortable posting it with the guarantee that I'll be able to update it at reasonable intervals. I won't update, though, unless I know I have an audience, so if you like the story and want to see more, please follow/favorite/comment! I am totally open to criticism, suggestions, and the like if they are stated politely, but a simple "Yay!" from my dear readers always makes my day!