Greetings, FF community! This is a four-chapter fic written as part of a series of fics I have developed filling in what happened in Jet's life from the time his village was taken up until the series takes place. In this series is also my torture!fic, Driving Force. I'm not writing in any order when it comes to the stories in the series, so don't expect a continuation of this story right after it. I might hop around in the series. (There are six scheduled stories in the series.) Also, I have already written this entire story, I've just got to go through a proof read it. I'll be posting the chapters up here as I finish doing so.
Hope you enjoy, please review if you like it: that's what motivates me to keep writing. :)
Three children-no, three young heroes were fanned out through the autumn forest, pursuing their prey. They were as far apart as they could get while still staying within each others' line of sight. All three were sprinting, hastily yet quietly maneuvering through the forest, which they obviously had much experience doing. Determination was pushing them to their goal as their faces portrayed their focus, only looking ahead. The girl of the group, only eleven, flowed between the thick barricade of trees, the blades of both her daggers gliding around the trees so close, yet not skimming the bark as to not leave a trail. One of the young men, fourteen, carried a bow made from what he could gather in the forest. As he sprinted across the brush-covered forest floor, the precision of every step he took proved that he knew every inch of the area. Their leader, the one charging forth slightly ahead of the other two, carried two hookswords. He knew the forest like the back of his hand as he avoided every stumbling block, every trap, every root, even when the obstacles were covered by the brush of the forest.
They continued charging forward until their leader suddenly stopped, lifting a hand. They all froze, silent... listening. Their pursuit had been so disguised and masked that when they stopped, there wasn't a slightest difference in the natural sounds of the forest. The leader pointed forward as he and the girl slowly knelt down. The oldest boy grabbed his bow, drew an arrow, and with a only second of aim, released the string.
A horrendous squeal was released from the target as a boarcupine fell onto its side, squirming and kicking until its energy faded away, its life leaving its body.
"Mm, dinner!" the girl popped out of the brush, rubbing her hands together.
"Good shot, Sneers." The young leader complimented the archer. He walked up to the kill as the archer removed his arrow and stood up to face his companion.
"Thanks, Jet."
The light of day began to fade away and the forest became bleak in color. Darkness enshrouded the looming trees across the entire land... save a small area illuminated by the orange light of a campfire. The trio had hauled their game back to their setup in the brush and were roasting it over the flame. The oldest of the group was consistently rotating the meat over the fire to ensure its even roast, while the girl hovered over their leader as he monologued, pointing all over a map.
"We won't be able to stop their full forces when they leave the town, but we can at least do some damage along the way. They'll exit on the southeast side of the town and enter our forest here," the leader said while pointing out a path.
"What if they go west instead though?" the girl interjected.
"Smellerbee, we have reliable information and only a week to prepare; we need to focus all our efforts on slowing them down and doing as much damage as we can along the trail."
The little girl pointed to the route in question. "Yeah, but if we go to all this trouble to prepare this path and they don't end up taking it, there's not much of a point."
"Look." He said as he handed Smellerbee a piece of paper. "This is from Jin Li. He overheard some soldiers discussing the plan in the town."
While reading through Jin Li's note she spotted patches of information scattered across that seemed convince her. Her eyes scrolled across the sheet until they suddenly focused on a piece of circled intel.
120.
Her eyes widened. "Jet!" She gasped as she tightened her grip on the paper and reached a hand down to the log she was sitting on to help herself up quickly. "They're sending a hundred and twenty?!"
"What?!" exclaimed the oldest, who had been contentedly listening to the conversation while preparing their dinner from across the campfire. "How are we supposed to handle a hundred and twenty armed soldiers?!"
"Calm down, guys," Jet told them. "We don't have the force to take them all out, obviously. But as they're traveling we can follow behind them and take out the soldiers in the back, hopefully not alerting the rest of the crew until we're through with them."
"And if we do get caught?" Smellerbee asked, nervous.
"We retreat. They'll go off the path into the forest if we lead them out, then-"
"Then what? We can't escape an army of Fire Nation Soldiers, even if we can outrun them! They'll track us down to wherever we go!" The panic in Smellerbee's voice echoed through the trees.
"That's why we go up," Jet said, pointing into a tree. Above them was a hideout made of wooden planks, wires, and a vast variety of pillaged Fire Nation material. The entire hideout had a layer of leaves beneath it, hiding it from any threat below. "This is our forest. If we go off the trail, of course they can track us. But if we go up, they can't track that. That's why we've got to spend the next week focusing on getting a pathway set up through the trees that follows the trail to the city. We can come down behind the group and take out a small number of them, then flee into the woods. By the time we're out of sight, we'll be in the trees ready to attack again when they regroup and move on."
The other two were deep in thought. It sounded like a good plan, and while there was still an element of danger involved, it was a war, and war is dangerous. They were only kids... but they knew it was their job to play their part in the ongoing fight. The Fire Nation had captured the town north of their hideout roughly fourteen months ago, and since then, the trio had been ambushing small squads of incoming and outgoing enemy troops and cargo when they could. They were only children, but they did what they could.
Word had been spreading throughout the region that the Fire Nation was going to ship in a small army of troops to the town north of Jet's hideout, and march southwest through the forest to a trading village to take it over. When the trio heard the rumor, they began evaluating the situation, confirming suspicions and brainstorming their plan of attack. Now, it was time to take action.
"Seven days," Jet said, marking out a line alongside the path through the forest. "We've got a lot to do."
- Four Days Later -
The layer of darkness blanketed across the forest was about to be broken by the morning light. The leaves were covered in dew and the trio was deep in slumber in their hidden fort amongst the thick leaves. Each of them had constructed a room for themselves, all three of which connected to a central area with a makeshift table taking center stage. It was quite a complex tree house the children had made for themselves, and its construction never really had an end. It was an ongoing project; a massive hideout in the trees hidden from those below.
Jet awoke first as he always did, startled up by the nightmares of five years prior. His past haunted him whether he was awake or asleep. He never could doze for long, but it was almost convenient since he needed to be up before the rest of the crew. He rose out of his bed, if you could call a pile of leaves a bed, and stretched in the darkness of his room. The birds that surrounded their fort had begun to sing their joyful morning songs. It was time to start another long day of hard work.
Jet pulled back the blanket covering his doorway and walked out toward their newest construction: a narrow pathway of planks endlessly extending from their home base. They had been building this pathway for the past four days, following close by the trail below. Every so often they would drop a rope down, hidden in a convenient location, to pull themselves up with. And today was just like any other day... time to continue building. Jet started his walk down the pathway through the treetops. Sneers and Smellerbee would join him soon enough, but he liked starting his days in solitude. Thus, he headed for the end of the path to continue construction.
As he walked, his mind wandered through the events of his past. The memories of his village being raided and his parents being brutally murdered before him overflowed in flashes before his eyes. He walked on for a ages, his goal nowhere in sight, and as he continued down the path he let the memories overtake him. He could see the past before his eyes: an orange glow of the raging fire which ate away at his entire village. He nearly felt its heat when...
Crack!
His foot descended. A board he stepped on broke and his entire left leg fell through. His other thigh slammed down on the remaining platform, saving him from the fall below with the help of his arms grasping tightly to anything they could once the recognition of what was happening blasted into his mind. Startled but not hurt significantly, he pulled himself back up, snapping out of his memories. He hadn't seen the fire of his past; the sun was finally rising. The orange morning rays dashed and sparkled through the forest, spots of light and shadows splattering themselves over every surface. Jet took a sigh, stood up, and continued on. He walked through the glistening morning, spots of dew now rolling off the leaves as the heat of the sun warmed the forest.
Jet's concept of time faded away as he walked, all things blurring together into his monotonous morning. Suddenly, though, the peaceful serenity of the morning was shattered by a panicked scream.
"Jet!"
It was Smellerbee's voice coming from the fort. He turned around, panicked, and charged towards their home. The closer he got to the fort the stranger things seemed, but he couldn't stop. Nothing indicated there was a struggle going on, but he continued hearing his name called. Then the fort came into view: nothing out of the ordinary. He couldn't imagine what it was. He slowed his pace as he got to the central meeting area and looked around. He heard clanging metal from behind Sneer's room: the weapons stockpile. He ran over to see his two teammates packing their bags as quickly as they could: Sneers stocking his quiver, Smellerbee sheathing her knives.
"Jet!" Smellerbee exclaimed, relieved he finally arrived. She threw him an empty satchel.
"What's going on?" He asked.
"We're too late," grunted Sneers.
"What?!"
"Jin Li came by." Sneers remained focused on his work while spitting out what he could. "The troops left last night from the west exit. They're probably at the town by now."
Jet started stuffing his bag.
"You got a plan?" Smellerbee shouted as Jet ran to his room to grab his swords.
"Working on it," he replied. "Sneers, how many berry bombs did you end up with last week?"
"Perfect," Sneers mumbled to himself, smirking as he remembered his creation. He shouted back. "Couple hundred. They're in the explosives room in a bowl. Make sure to pack them gently."
Jet hopped over to the next room from his. He walked in to see boxes packed with leaves stacked all around. He found the bowl with the new invention on top of a box near the center of the room. It was filled with small circular explosives wrapped in berry skin. One alone couldn't do much damage, but craftily planted in the enemy's armor, a handful could take out a soldier's spine in a heartbeat.
"They explode on impact," Sneers shouted to him. "And if one goes off too close to the others they'll all go off. Don't drop them."
The three hurried with their packing. Sneers grabbed a map and rushed out to their center table and rolled it open. It was quite detailed and mapped a very concise area.
"Alright here's the plan," Jet shouted to the others, carefully placed the berries in his bag. "We're going with a full on evacuation plan. Avoid the troops as much as you can and we'll get as many civilians out of the town as possible."
"What side do we want to come in from, Jet?" Sneers shouted as his eyes scrolled across the map. Jet peeked out of the explosives room to see he had the map out.
"Northeast; mark out a good path. Each trip in and out of the town we'll move entry and exit points towards the east until we circle around to the southern entrance."
"Where do I put the rendezvous point, Platform 15?"
"Platform 15," the words came out of both boys' mouths simultaneous, one a question, one an answer. "It's directly east of the town. It'll be a good, common place to drop the villagers."
"Bee, come look." Sneers barked the other direction. He used charcoal to mark a path coming down and over from their forest to the northeast corner of the town as he waited for her to join him. When she came over he ran her through the plan. "We'll go in here," he said pointing to the first spot, "and bring the first wave of villagers out to you. You'll run them to the rendezvous point here," he circled a red dot east of the city, not terribly far, "then you meet us at the second exit point for the second wave of survivors. Got it?"
Jet jogged up quickly, gently swinging the satchel over his shoulder. "Make sure to avoid leaving a trail. If you're being tracked, take them out."
They looked over the plan one last time, then exchanged a serious look with a nod.
"Let's go."
Three children, young yet cunning. They set off through the forest, weaving their way through the brush. They had to get there in time. If another massacre happened like the one they were all so familiar with from five years prior... it would devastate the morale of the northern Earth Kingdom. As they sprinted, they approached a small opening in the trees above. Jet's feet planted themselves, his face rising in horror to the sky ahead.
Smoke. A black pillar of smoke rose from the direction of their target.
"We have to hurry!"