Little Things
Dedicated to: horselover94, who placed second in the "Other" category in the PFF2 Fan Contest on deviantART.
Jet was, by nature and personal quirk, an organized, albeit not a fastidious, man. He could find what he wanted at a glance from among what even the most casual observer would call the "unholy mess" that was his office/living quarters.
Most of the time. But his "system" worked when it mattered, so everyone could just keep their opinions to themselves, thankyouverymuch.
Besides, a man should be cut some slack, given Jet's current situation: what with the renovation and expansion of the old Hideout to accommodate the influx of newly-recruited Freedom Fighters in the aftermath of goings-on in Ba Sing Se, things were bound to be a little disorganized. However, Smellerbee had observed that the "unholy mess" was beginning to resemble the "aftermath of typhoon's unfortunate love-child with an earthquake." After pointing out the sheer absurdity of the proposed metaphor, Jet hastened to add that he was not spending all the much time in his office in any case, so why did it matter? Rebuilding the Hideout had only been the first step; rebuilding relations with the survivors of Gaipan and other villages downstream that had been affected by the flood unleashed at his order required many visits, many overnight stays, many hands-on demonstrations of his sincerity. As the leader of the Freedom Fighters, it was on him to rebuild the image of his people, and Jet shouldered the responsibility with the same manic, obsessive energy that had made him such a thorn in the side of the occupying Fire Army those years ago.
It helped that the Fire Nation had withdrawn completely from the valley since the end of the War, but that is another story.
And so, bearing all this in mind, when things began disappearing from his quarters without his notice, one really ought to excuse Jet from being oblivious at first. It was not as though they were objects of any importance: a spare bootlace here, the faded silk tassel from a scroll there, and the odd fragment of broken drinking saucers or waxen plug from an empty bottle. Every once and a while, if he was lucky enough to be able to stay at the Hideout for an extended period, Jet might notice that something was missing. Even more odd, however, where the things he chanced to find: a small, round river-polished stone of mottled grey and green, a shard of high-quality Fire Nation porcelain, egg-shell white and gleaming through streaks of dirt, a bit of gnarled ginseng root. Strange as these occurrences were, none of them were monumental enough to register for very long, and Jet would shrug and be off again, leaving his quarters deserted, dusty, and jumbled.
On one such of these periods of reprieve, Jet woke to the lances of sunlight snaking through the slats of the window-screen stabbing his eyes. Head pounding from the amount of alcohol last night's dinner had entailed (the leader of a merchant guild based in the provincial capital had contracted Freedom Fighters to provide guard duties for various caravans in the past, and was considering putting a remote detachment permanently on his payroll; the negotiations had gone off beautifully, once the man had seen for himself the sort of organization he would be backing), Jet flung himself out of the way of the painful, burning radiance to catch another few precious minutes of sleep.
Unfortunately, he had forgotten the new position of his bed in his quarters, and thus ended up on the floor with a loud thud! punctuated with a string of curses that would have made an Earth Army drill instructor blush (or made Skillet raise an eyebrow, although that might be overstating things). Hoisting himself up on his knees with the aid of his traitorous bed, eyes blood-shot and senses bleary, Jet pressed his face into the blanket, massaging his temples, muttering all manner of epithets to any spirit who cared to listen until the pounding in his braincase subsided. Coughing and in desperate need of water, Jet climbed to his feet. The clay water jug stood on the small table at the foot of his bed; ignoring the cup beside it, Jet drained the jug directly from the spout with a sigh of relief. No longer dehydrated, he could at least put two coherent thoughts together now and make himself presentable enough to see off his guest after attending to some domestic business. Although it was just past dawn, there were a couple of things Sneers had indicated that needed his attention, and the former-monk's apprentice was sure to monopolize as much of his leader's waking hours as he could. Jet was only surprised that Sneers had not already kicked the door down and dragged him off the bed.
As he reached for his "appropriated" Earth Army officer's cloak (another story, and one worth telling, but not here), Jet belatedly recalled that the clasp had fallen off on the road back to the Hideout and still needed to be repaired. Needle, the Freedom Fighter's self-designated tailor, had been after him for months to "get that thing attached properly," and Jet had been reluctant to give the other man the satisfaction of being proved right, after long last. But reattaching the heavy gilt bronze buckle, a trophy from an unfortunate Dai Li squad captain ("unfortunate" in that he no longer needed to concern himself with such petty mortal trappings such as badges of rank), was something beyond Jet's poor sewing skills. With a grunt of resignation, Jet turned back to the end table to retrieve the buckle.
Which had disappeared. Raising an eyebrow, Jet dropped to his hands and knees, scanning the visible floor-space under and around the table and bed, should the object have somehow rolled off during the night. Nothing. Jet sat back on his haunches, frowning now; his hangover was gone, and he knew for certain that he had placed the buckle on the table before last night's dinner. Unless someone had snuck into his room while he was out and took it (unlikely, even if the Freedom Fighters had a fair number of former pickpockets and thieves in their ranks), it had to be somewhere in his quarters. A quick but thorough search of his office turned up nothing. At a loss and quite irked, Jet sat at the end of his unmade bed, digging his hand through his awry bangs, trying to think.
"Things just don't walk off their own!" he insisted aloud, furrowing his brow.
Out of the corner of his eye, he noticed something that he had somehow missed in the fervor over the missing buckle: a small heap of white cloth where the buckle had been, just beside the cup. Mystified, Jet reached over and picked it up. Soft, light, nothing like he remembered owning, and yet it seemed… familiar somehow. He spread it out between his thumbs and forefingers, holding it up to the light spilling through the open window screen.
"Wait a second," Jet muttered, blinking, wondering if his eyes were playing tricks on him, "this is…!"
"Oh, you're up, Fearless Leader," Sneers greeted, barging into Jet's bedroom like he owned the place, a leather satchel under one arm and a twine-bound stack of papers in his other hand. "Excellent. I've been receiving some troubling reports for a couple days from…" The intelligence chief's hard black eyes widened as he trailed off, staring agape at the garment Jet was currently dangling in front of the window. Surprise, however, quickly slid into something else that made the hairs on the nape Jet's neck stand straight up as a cold chill trickled down his spine.
"Jet," Sneers said very calmly, placing his satchel on its side on ground and the stack of papers on top of it, "what are you doing, waving a pair of Skillet's underwear in front of your face this early in the morning?"
Ignoring the pertinent question (namely, "How do you know these belong to Skillet?"), Jet flung the underwear into his lieutenant's face and, using the distraction, dove straight through his window, shattering the flimsy screen and hitting the deck outside at a roll. He almost went over the edge, but a lightning-quick grab of the base of the guardrail and years of treetops living redirected his momentum back onto the deck.
Jet regained his footing, and made off at a dead run for the bridge to the next platform, the sound of Sneer's pounding feet just behind him thundering in his ears…
'What in the name of…?' Smellerbee wondered, staring as Jet threw himself across a dangerous gap between platforms, as if the rope bridge not three feet away was worth the trouble.
She was about to shout at him for being an idiot when the older gentleman beside her, the merchant guild master and Jet's guest, made a sound that could have been surprise, delight, or approbation.
"Um…!" Smellerbee hastened to say, turning toward him, though not before noticing that Sneers of all people, had made the same jump seconds after Jet, and indeed seemed to be in hot pursuit of their leader.
"Marvelous!" he exclaimed, shrewd brown eyes twinkling beneath his shaggy, frosted iron eyebrows as he tracked Jet and Sneers. "No wonder your people were such fantastic guards! To be able to run about the treetops at such breakneck speed and not fall to your deaths, as a matter of course!" He grinned at Smellerbee. "I'll admit, I spent an uneasy night in your wonderful guest quarters; it was not unlike being on a ship when you know a storm's approaching, the way the tree swayed in a strong wind. Master Jet is certainly an unorthodox sort, but then, perhaps that what was needed to fight those Fire Nation bastards."
"Yes, and every Freedom Fighter keeps up a strict training regimen in some form of combat in addition to living up in the trees," Smellerbee said with a smooth smile, more-or-less herding her guest along the walkway toward the dining platform, away from the sight of Jet fleeing for his life from an enraged Sneers. As the merchant continued his cheerful, oblivious banter, Smellerbee looked for her husband; Longshot could track Jet easily enough, and even better, he could keep a lid on any gossip.
High in a fluff-and-twig-stuffed bole in a certain branch in a certain tree, a chubby pack-munk chattered gleefully to itself over its newest acquisition. It regretted the loss of what could have been marvelously soft bedding, but the chance to bring up another shiny thing to the nest was well worth the trade.
--- END ---
A/N: This fic is based on the Plight of the Freedom Fighters alternate-universe created by SioUte on deviantART. It's a brilliant series for anyone who is a Freedom Fighter fan. :3
I got the idea for the story from a children's collection of Native American "fairy tales" I vaguely remember reading when I was a kid (not tell how many years ago that was! ^^;). Namely, there was a story about the pack rat, who supposedly is a great trader. Since this is A:tLA, I made up a hybrid pack rat/chipmunk creature to inflict on poor Jet. Because schadenfreude is fun! 8D