Where Words Fail
Book Seven: A Game of Pai Sho
Chapter 1: Use your drill to pierce the heavens!
AUTHOR'S NOTE: This story is a fan fiction - nothing more, nothing less. It has been made purely for entertainment purposes, and is not meant for commercial gain. Avatar: The Last Airbender and all characters, places and concepts are copyright of Nickelodeon, Michael Dante DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko. All original characters are copyright their respective owners and are used with their permission. The story has been illustrated by the talented and awesome SioUte.
SCENE DIVIDE
Hong Ye Forest
29 days until Sozin's Comet
"I learned something yesterday."
Skillet turned to look at Smellerbee. The swordswoman sat at the vacated Pai Sho table captured from a Fire Nation caravan, maps spread out across its round, polished surface. Smellerbee leaned over these with her elbows propped up on the table's surface, her hands folded over her forehead.
"What?" Skillet probed, her voice coming out thick and dry. Her eyes stung, but – but they were dry, too, and her chest felt hard and light. It wasn't that she didn't want to cry, just that – well, she couldn't anymore. Freedom Fighters had died in the past, due to illness or as victims of the war or the weather, and it was just part of the lifestyle they led – constantly outdoors, fighting a dominant country in a losing battle. But the frequency never made it any easier to cope with, and losing Mortar and Telltale…
They hadn't died because of the war, or the weather, or some kind of disease hiding in the very air they breathed. They'd died because of one insane man's ambition.
Which wasn't to say Smellerbee hadn't done a fantastic job rallying and leading the children. She had, and – and Skillet would be lying if she said she wasn't a little mad at her for it – and they had won with only those two fatalities. Two lives in exchange for forty.
Two lives, young and fresh and extinguished far too early.
But would things have changed if Sneers had followed through with his plan, waiting for the right opportunity? Skillet wasn't a leader herself, she didn't have that kind of foresight, so she didn't know. If she were to hazard a guess, then probably not, because – because Overdweller hadn't been feeding the children, they would have starved before Smellerbee could whisk them all away. And doing it unnoticed, when the Overdweller had realized Skillet had taken away Wind-Up and Bedrock so soon…?
Silence clung to the air like clothes to skin during a monsoon, wet and heavy and cold and awkward, but Skillet didn't push Smellerbee just yet. She probably hurt the most of all, because – because it had been her directives that sent Telltale and Mortar to their deaths, and she knew it.
Skillet wasn't sure if that was good or bad.
When Smellerbee broke the muted atmosphere, her voice was subdued. "I learned that leading – really leading – is like a game of Pai Sho. You have to make hard decisions, and sometimes you have to sacrifice tiles. But even if you lose one, you have to keep playing. You know?" She glanced up at Skillet, and the cook saw how, how sad the swordswoman's eyes were, how her eyebrows had furrowed and pupils had gone wide. "Even though things look grim."
Skillet sighed and lowered her head. Yeah, that made sense, sorta. You – you had to overlook the fact that there had been a loss, that there were greater things than just the Freedom Fighters to worry about, like the rest of the world.
"…that's a beautiful sentiment," Skillet murmured, folding her legs and perching on the bench opposite Smellerbee. "There's a lot different about you that I don't know about. You were always more…"
"Blunt?" Smellerbee chuckled. "Yeah. One of – one thing I've noticed since Jet died is that…there's a lot more to the world than I noticed before. I kinda took everything for granted."
Skillet nodded, looking down at the charts and scrolls and maps Smellerbee had unfurled. Her strength, her perseverance, was admirable…because, even as she mourned, she continued to plan, to lead, to work for an unobtainable victory. The chef had no way of knowing if the Day of Black Sun invasion even succeeded, and it made her feel…proud, she guessed, that her teammate continued to plan in the event that the Avatar had ultimately met in failure. It was almost as if she didn't know he was alive at all –
…Wait.
The world at large assumed Aang had died in Ba Sing Se, and only a select few people knew otherwise. Smellerbee and Longshot, on the lam and out of contact with any of those people, might not yet know that – that –
"Smellerbee…" Skillet took a deep breath, feeling her chest tighten and tingle. "Aang is alive."
SCENE DIVIDE
Western Earth Kingdom
23 days until Sozin's Comet
Lying on his back on a thin bedroll, the cover pulled up to his chest, The Duke stared upward at the unique, inverted buildings suspended overhead. The Western Air Temple - a haven to the Airbenders a century ago. Hidden by a tremendous, abyssal gorge, the buildings had been carved out of one side and hung from beneath the surface of the planet. The sky peeked out from between the two edges of the gorge, dark and glittering with stars. A warm summer's breeze caressed his cheeks, ruffled his hair, and the ground was cool against his shoulders. Sleep wouldn't come to him...it didn't matter that the invasion had ended in failure over a week ago. He could still see Pipsqueak in his mind's eye - that moment, that one moment, with vivid clarity that he wished he could slough off. The shame - the sorrow. Pipsqueak had saved him, and Smellerbee too. One was dead and the other a prisoner of war.
"Take care, The Duke."
Pipsqueak had been - smiling, when he parted ways with his best friend. The Duke's stomach lurched every time he thought of it, because it was such a peaceful smile - his beady eyes reflecting back the steel-blue color of the Fire Nation's sky. He had been okay with the circumstances as they were. Maybe it was because Pipsqueak had entertained the possibility that the rebellion forces would lose on the Fire Nation's home turf during the Day of Black Sun more acutely than The Duke had. He couldn't tell for sure, because - because they didn't share the same nonverbal bond Smellerbee and Longshot had. Jet had said those two had the best synergy after all, and he was right.
(The fact that the Fire Nation had blue skies still amazed him. After everything he and his friends had endured at the hands of the Fire Nation, he had never assumed the sky there could be such regular colors. He wasn't exactly sure what he had imagined, but he figured something more apocalyptic would have been far more fitting. Crimson skies, lit up with fire and slathered in huge, cottony black smoke...not something as normal as blue.)
Their best shot at winning the war had been sunk, and now Pipsqueak and the rest of the adults were rotting away somewhere in a Fire Nation prison. That was it, wasn't it? There were no more Freedom Fighters out there except The Duke and Sneers, and Sneers wasn't going to be able to help them now.
The Duke was alone.
Despite the colossal failure - despite his best friend becoming a prisoner of war - brooding on it wouldn't do any good. Some of the others had managed to escape the Fire Nation as well. Aang, Katara, Sokka, Teo and Haru.
And Toph - the blind Earthbender girl, the one that had found Pipsqueak and The Duke with Sokka in Chameleon Bay over two months ago. The one whom The Duke gladly lent his helmet to when she was overcome with a bout of seasickness - sure, a little washing out needed to be done, but...but for some reason, it didn't really bother The Duke that much. Toph's puke certainly held no sentimental value to him, but the kindness itself...
He didn't know. It was too confusing. He just liked her, and that was all he could readily admit to right now. There were too many other things he needed to think about at the moment. Like a contingency plan.
The solar eclipse had lasted for all of eight minutes and it was the only time in which Firebenders were vulnerable between here and the upcoming comet that - according to Sokka - would grant their enemies tenfold power. On top of that, Aang only had until that time to learn and master Firebending, and...and, it wasn't enough, it was bad news all the way around.
Still, a voice inside his head whispered - don't be overwhelmed by it. Don't, or else you'll fold and be useless and the world needs you now more than ever. Of course; he couldn't be harried by the current state of things. He had to stay calm and figure out the next steps, and he'd already gotten an inkling of what they were.
So long as the world was at war, it would need Freedom Fighters - and The Duke had seven able-bodied potential draftees at his disposal.
Teo and Haru would be the easiest to talk to about it - they knew about the Freedom Fighters exclusively from his and Pipsqueak's perspective, and The Duke genuinely enjoyed their company (despite the condescending attitude Haru slung around). He loved luging down the hidden access tunnels they had discovered while exploring, clinging close to the back of Teo's wheelchair as it bumped and rattled and soared across the floor, the wind howling in their faces. And as far as Haru went, neither Mortar nor Pestle had been very good at fighting, so getting the chance to toughen up against a combat-ready Earthbender was a rarity, indeed, and Haru fit that bill (even though he was a butt).
(The Duke had had a lot of time to process the fact that Jet had been killed by an Earthbender to realize that nothing was impossible. So, better to cover all of the bases.)
The others…it would be a tough call. They might want to do their own thing. Which was all well and good, but having a secondary rallying point never hurt.
All he could really do was wait for morning to come again before casting out his lines.
SCENE DIVIDE
Hong Ye Forest
29 days until Sozin's Comet
"Five feet wide, ten feet tall, half a foot thick...allow three-quarters of an inch for the adjoining wall, and then an inch for the - the roof, and..."
Pestle grunted as she planted her feet apart and thrust her hands down, arms straight, palms flat; she brought both arms up in a swift motion, a block of stone erupting from the ground with a shower of pebbles, shaking the ground beneath her feet. It - it was...she narrowed her eyes. Trying to - to build a temporary supply closet for the school since she'd ruined the old one, broken through it with her Earthbending. Muttering to herself, she spun around and brought up another wall parallel to the first with identical dimensions...then, the back wall, and - and - Spirits damn it all, she'd forgotten to put the roof on in the first place, this was stupid, it -
With a low growl, Pestle stomped the ground and splayed her arms out again, the three walls crumbling and sinking back into the forest's floor. She glanced over to the blueprints she and - she had made years ago when first building the school, weighted down at the corners with fist-sized rocks. The dimensions for the new closet - instead of making one from scratch, it was just easier to re-create the old one, only separate from the building. Really, working with stone was an improvised science in this context; if she had the time, the patience, she would go cut more wood, shape it into planks, but really the sooner she got the supply closet remade, the better. This was a placeholder, it didn't have to be exact. So why was she busting her butt over this?
The Earthbender walked over to the spot she planned on erecting the supply closet (in the clearing, just a few yards away from the schoolhouse); she knelt down and jabbed her index finger into the ground, carving a groove into the dirt. Five feet, turn, five feet, turn, five feet...there. That would do it. She pushed back up to her feet, the ground rough under her bare soles, and slid one leg out behind her in a wide arc; she thrust her arms up into the air again, and this time - this time - the entire building sprouted up from the ground, spraying Pestle with dust and pebbles, the roof and walls perfect, an opening on one side for a door to be put in. This success bolstered her confidence; now she had the patience to take care of cutting the wood for the door. Making it would be another lengthy task, something to keep her nice and occupied.
Oh man, Mortar would be so proud of her -
...oh. Oh.
Pestle glared at the newly-made building with narrowed, stinging eyes; her vision blurred, and her stomach churned and did flip-flops, her throat sealed itself tight, and - and - she wanted to cry, she really wanted to, the tears were already falling but she wouldn't sob, she couldn't, she needed to be strong, Mortar would have helped her be strong but Mortar wasn't around anymore, gone, no, she was gone -
Before Pestle realized, she'd whirled, turned away from the new closet, surging for the tree line behind the school, each impact jarring up her legs, brush and twigs and dirt scratching her bare feet, the wind cold and scathing against her face, blowing back her hair, ruffling her clothes and she needed to get away, people could find her in the clearing and she didn't want to be found, not if she was going to be weak, not if...
...she wasn't sure how long or how far she'd ran by the time her lungs began burning, her muscles howling; she came to a gradual stop - somewhere in the forest, she had no idea where, though she wasn't lost so much as she didn't care to know. She could be alone here, she could -
"No," Pestle hissed, gulping, clenching her teeth, her voice wobbling. "Don't cry. Mortar never cuh-cried. You huh-have to be strong now."
"There's nothing bad t'be said about crying, you know."
The Earthbender spun around, raising up a fist at the, the intruder who had -
"Easy," Skins said, holding up his hands and hiking a brow. He sat perched up on a tree branch about ten feet above the ground with a spear in one hand, his straw, horned hat tilted back up onto his forehead. "I didn't mean to eavesdrop. I was hunting, is all."
"I - " Pestle felt heat rush up through her face, and she glanced away, folding her hands in front of her. "S-sorry. I'll...just go..."
So much for - for being alone, the forest was a big place but only so big...
"Wait, hold up a sec." Before Pestle could move, Skins dropped down from the tree branch and landed in a crouch. "Before you take off..."
"Don't talk to me," Pestle whimpered, turning away and cringing. "I don't want - I don't want to hear it. Anything. Whatever you have to say, it's not important."
"I think it is," Skins replied. "My brothers and I were there when Mortar..."
"Shut up."
"This is something you need to hear." Skins stepped around Pestle, stopping in front of her, and - and the lanky, eldest Hunter Brother looked at her with a grim expression - she tried to turn away from him again, but Skins was persistent, cut in front of her again, and damn him for not leaving her alone! "I know what it's like to lose somebody so important to you. We all do. Every Freedom Fighter here has lost parents, siblings."
"This is different."
"It's really not." Skins sighed. "We can help you - any of us, all of us. You've been shutting everyone out, and trying to keep everything inside. It ain't healthy."
"Shut up!" Maybe if she said it enough, Skins would get the point - she didn't want to be consoled, didn't want his pity - just, just, "Just go away! Leave me alone!"
"Pestle, it's the responsibility of the older siblings to take care of the younger ones. Believe me, I know!" Skins planted his hands on Pestle's shoulders, glaring into her eyes. "But you did everything in your power to save your sister, so don't you dare go about thinking you let Mortar - "
"LEAVE ME ALONE!" Pestle shrieked, slamming a foot into the ground; a wall of rock erupted between her and Skins, and she heard him yelp, surprised by the - the attack? Had it been an attack? Maybe. Maybe not, she didn't know, it didn't matter, she was running again, gone, away from the obnoxious hunter, and this time she did sob as she gasped for air, her body protesting, didn't want to keep running, but, but she had to move, had to get away from the hurt, from the pain.
It was the Fire Nation's fault.
The Fire Nation had invaded the forest, her home. They'd chased Skillet, Wind-Up and Bedrock away. They'd chained up Sneers. They hadn't fed any of the Freedom Fighters. They'd killed Telltale, and they'd killed -
She tripped - toes had caught a root or something, already knew she'd stubbed them - flopped forward, grunted, rolled onto her back, the ground rough and uneven beneath her, and, and, the Fire Nation, Jet had been right about them. Pestle hadn't ever been that scared of them, their touch on the Freedom Fighters had been an accepted fact to her, taken for granted. She'd been too young to remember any parents, or where Mortar had even come from. And Jet would scare her sometimes when he got angry, angry about them, the bastards who wore red and killed and killed and killed, but Jet had always been right, just like Mortar, and the Fire Nation had taken Pestle's sister. Jet was dead, too - gone, but by an Earthbender, not a Firebender, that was so wrong, that was - everything was - so - so wrong...
Pestle finally felt the walls inside her crumble to dust and began crying, and the crimson canopy draped overhead said nothing in return.
SCENE DIVIDE
Pan Xing Island
28 days until Sozin's Comet
Prison life sucked.
Longshot supposed he should be grateful - that Waterbender Spatula knew had healed the archer up in a manner of minutes. The pain had subsided with an icy, relieving calm, leaving behind only the two small, diamond-shaped scars where the arrows had penetrated him. They were healing up nicely, too - still a little scabby, but the edges were a nice, healthy pink, which meant that he hadn't borne any further infections.
Spatula had said on their first day that the key to not being somebody's bitch in this place was to be a lot tougher than they really were; the ex-Freedom Fighter managed to get around that by cooking (he was arguably (supposedly) the best chef in the prison, in his own words), but he would repeatedly recommend that Longshot pick up that hardened, brutal exterior. That wasn't his thing, though, and despite his best efforts, Spatula seemed to forget that.
The problem - at least part of it - was that, well, Longshot was stuck with Spatula. Kind-hearted or not, and his best intentions notwithstanding, the Firebender did two things that just absolutely got under Longshot's skin: he rambled, frequently, to fill the silence the archer left instead of talking, and he treated said silence as a sign of idiocy. The archer doubted he did the latter on purpose - but, that seemed to be Spatula's trade, bungling into accidents that made him lose face.
The kid was annoying (didn't matter that he was older than Longshot by a year or two, he was still a kid). Longshot kept his distance when he could, but downtime was only for a couple hours of the day; the rest of his time was spent either performing menial labor in the kitchen while Spatula cooked (though not always; sometimes he'd be assigned to other areas of the prison with a rough, splintery mop that kept nipping at his palms and fingers, callused as they were), eating bland, disgusting prison food with Spatula (even the old 'food was food' argument had little ground to stand on thanks to that barely-edible garbage), or being stuck in his cell with Spatula.
Lying on his back in his cot, Longshot sighed through his nose and shifted his weight. Keeping his left hand behind his head, the archer stared up at the steel-gray ceiling overhead, at a bulls-eye smeared onto the metal with some stolen grease from the maintenance bay. Longshot found himself mopping that floor pretty frequently, so smuggling away the occasional supply bit here and there had proven itself a habitual task - the grease today, a few nuts and bolts the day after, nothing the Fire Nation would really miss in operating this prison. (He liked to fool himself into thinking they would, though...too tempting to believe he could still make a difference from in here. Even a small one.)
In his right hand, the archer held several of his stolen industrial bits - tiny, little things, easy to secret away, none of the heavy-grade materials (though he had those also, hidden in a shadowy corner of the room where light never seemed to reach, like it was afraid of the grodilation). One-by-one, Longshot tossed a nut, a bolt, a washer, up at the bulls-eye; ping! Ping! Ping! Each time, hitting the center, each time watching the piece ricochet off the cold, rough metal and following where it landed so he could retrieve them.
This is what his free time amounted to. Throwing machine parts at a bulls-eye that wasn't even that hard to hit.
Some Freedom Fighter, right?
SCENE DIVIDE
Hong Ye Forest
29 days until Sozin's Comet
Smellerbee blinked, and did not look away from her charts at first, because – because she wasn't entirely sure she'd heard Skillet correctly. She drew in a slow, cold breath, exhaled it, and drew another before glancing up at the cook and shaking her head. "I – come again?"
"The Avatar. Um, Aang." Skillet cast out one of her hands, waving them at the Pai Sho table – one game of tactics and strategy replaced by another. (Smellerbee noticed how uncomfortable she was to refer to Aang by name, which was understandable - even though he'd stopped by on his journeys, he was still "the Avatar" to most Freedom Fighters.) "He survived the encounter with Zuko and Azula in Ba Sing Se and led an invasion force into the Fire Nation yesterday."
Smellerbee's chest tightened and her ears began to ring, a strange, rumbling throbbing coming from inside her skull. What - it didn't make any sense. Everyone she'd spoken to on the subject had either claimed Aang's death or been out of the loop. And - and he was alive…? That - that changed everything! For the longest time, all Smellerbee and Longshot had had to rely on was each other, because they both knew that no single, major force had been left standing, that any fight set against the Fire Nation would start on the small scale. And maybe it had been a bit ambitious of them to think that they would be the ones to see the war's end one way or another, that they would helm that movement, make their own Freedom Fighters. And then Longshot had been taken, and Smellerbee had returned to Hong Ye to find everything shot to hell. Even though she'd managed to save her friends, there had still been losses, and she'd just about had it up to her eyes with dealing with all this crap. She never remembered Jet seeming this exhausted after a mission, which could either have been a testament to how heavy a toll all of this had been putting on her, or how inexperienced as a leader she was, maybe (probably) both.
All this time…
"You're not bullshitting me, are you?" Smellerbee asked at last, leaning forward over the table and meeting Skillet's eyes. "Like - seriously, I think I'd suffer a breakdown. You saw him?"
"No," Skillet admitted. "But Pipsqueak and The Duke have."
"What?" Smellerbee shot bolt-upright this time, eyes wide. "They're okay, too?"
"Yeah," Skillet replied, crossing her arms over her chest and crooking her head to the side. "Things didn't work out for them in Omashu because – "
" – because the Fire Nation overran it." Smellerbee felt giddiness washing over her like a high; they had survived, they hadn't even been in Omashu when Smellerbee and Longshot went, and – and all that trouble for nothing, really, because her friends were alive and okay, and, and a tickling feeling swelled upwards in Smellerbee's chest. Before she realized it, she threw her head back and laughed, a bubbling fit of glee and joy and renewed hope and suddenly the gears set out of place by the Overdweller and Longshot's ambiguous status clicked back into their proper positions. Smellerbee laid one hand flat down on the table. "Longshot and I were there. We ran into Azula and Zuko ourselves."
"Well – The Duke and Pipsqueak were traveling with some of Aang's allies, gathering as many as they could for this invasion. They stopped here to try to get Sneers to join, and he didn't."
All three of them had survived their ordeals! It was fantastic, amazing, and it wasn't as if Mortar and Telltale's murders no longer mattered – because it still did, it was still on her head, and she was more than willing to accept that responsibility. But it restored a level of functionality to the swordswoman, put salve on her wounded spirit. She'd still have to talk to Sneers (because he blamed her for the outcome of yesterday's brawl, which was why he wasn't in here helping her with her plans) before addressing the Freedom Fighters as a whole; she had proper motivation, and now all she needed now was a heading – a course to take, a direction to venture into –
The door to the hut swung open, and both Smellerbee and Skillet turned their attention to it – in the doorway stood an older boy in his mid teens, with tanned skin and sharp cheekbones. He had his hair pulled up into a topknot and wore the underclothes of a Fire Nation soldier, (she could recognize it so easily, from all the times they'd stripped members of the enemy down before sending them packing, selling off their armor for food and supplies), black fabric with a unique cut on the shins, shoulders and back – but, his eyes were brown, not hazel or yellow or amber. And he was – familiar.
"Didn't you used to have short hair and a beard?" Smellerbee asked, quirking her head to the side and frowning. His garb didn't matter because the boy was a Freedom Fighter (their clothes came from wherever they could be found), but…
"Smellerbee?" He asked, his eyes going wide. "I thought you were dead."
"Just like a hellcat, I got nine lives." She smirked.
"What is it, Chameleon?" Skillet asked, rising to her feet. Smellerbee noted how she kept one hand anchored on the table as if afraid the floor would fall out from under her; didn't blame her, 'cause she knew how much of an ordeal it was for the cook to handle being in the tree house. "I thought Sneers stationed you in a Fire Nation outpost to gather information."
"My cover was blown," he said, tilting his neck sideways, cracking it. Ah, yeah – now Smellerbee pinned him down. Chameleon was the best impressionist the Freedom Fighters had, and oftentimes when dinner called for some kind of entertainment, he'd offer his vocal talents to his friends. He could pull a laugh and a cheer from the grumpiest Freedom Fighter – even Sneers was known to crack a rare smile now and then. Easy-going and carefree, it almost surprised Smellerbee that Sneers would pick Chameleon to go subversive as a mole in the Fire Nation army – but his skill in deception probably made him perfect for what the monk had in mind. "I had to get out as fast as possible."
"You weren't tailed, were you?" Smellerbee asked, rising to her feet and glancing to Jet's swords, laying crossed on a nearby chest.
"N-no." Chameleon shook his head, and when Smellerbee returned her gaze to him, she caught him staring at her, befuddled – as if trying to come to terms with the fact that, yes, Smellerbee was actually still alive. The swordswoman didn't blame him. "I made sure. I learned from you guys, remember? I broke for a forest and made my way in the trees."
"Because the Fire Nation never checks them." She smirked again. "Good job. Now, uh – why are you here?"
"Oh! Yeah!" He smacked a fist into the open palm of his other hand, eyes going wide again. "I was looking for Sneers – I have a report to give him. Very important stuff."
"Well, since you haven't been in the loop, I should tell you that I'm in charge. At least – for now, anyway. Anything that's going to Sneers goes through me first." Smellerbee planted her hands on her hips. "What do you have for me?"
Chameleon hesitated – fixed Skillet with a questioning look, to which she responded by saying, "It's okay. Go on ahead."
"Alright, well…" He took a deep breath and exhaled it through his nose. Casting a serious gaze to Smellerbee, he said, "I've isolated a handful of paths the Fire Nation takes for moving supplies outside of the normal radius we attacked them with under – under Jet's command. It'll be helpful if we start running low ourselves – Sneers said the Fire Nation's been using the routes through and around the forest less frequently. But – but the big news – an archer got caught by the Fire Nation recently. A week ago, if that, brought to Pan Xing Island – a big Fire Nation prison, third-tightest in security of their entire prison system. We got a messenger hawk about it before I had to skip town - Whiplash, one of our new guys, went undercover there. The Avatar's Day of Black Sun invasion...well, um, it failed. Most of the prisoners from the invasion are going to be shuttled off there."
"What - how could it fail?" Skillet demanded, eyes wide, "Pipsqueak and The Duke were with them!"
"Well - the Avatar escaped, and what I've got through the grapevine says he took several of the younger invaders with him and his company, so it's possible that The Duke went with him." Chameleon cast a quick glance to the side.
"Well, if the Day of Black Sun invasion flopped, I guess that's all the more reason for us to mobilize," Smellerbee murmured. But - oh man, Pipsqueak and The Duke had been caught in the middle of all that! It - it wasn't any fair, that she could have lost them so soon after having found out they were okay.
Before she could properly finish the thought, Chameleon's voice cut through the threatening haze. "But there's one more scrap of information he managed to get out to me: apparently the Fire Nation incarcerated this Earth Kingdom archer who's been causing a lot of trouble for them, and Fire Princess Azula's taken an interest in him for causing trouble in Omash - "
"OKAY!"
Skillet and Chameleon jumped in shock as Smellerbee knocked her chair back and brought one foot up onto the Pai Sho table. With a vicious grin, her heart thundering in her chest, she thrust one arm straight upward and pointed at the unseen sky above.
"Longshot's alive, knew the jerk wouldn't quit without me!" She felt her face getting sharp and, and – suddenly, everything was right in the world. Aang and Pipsqueak and The Duke and Longshot were alive, and as long as they were, then they could still win this thing – provided that there was even a war left that needed winning. "Freedom Fighters, we have a new mission! It's time we take the fight to the enemy. We've got a new source for pissed-off renegades that would love to take a piece out of the Fire Nation's ass, and we have to save one of our own – and we can do it all in one fell swoop. Call for an assembly! I'll find Sneers and set our plans into motion."
Grabbing Jet's swords from the table, Smellerbee strode past Chameleon and started to make her way to Sneers' hut.
SCENE DIVIDE
Western Air Temple
22 days until Sozin's Comet
"Hey, Teo, I want to ask you somethin' real quick."
The older boy turned his attention to The Duke, a grin splitting his face. Because of his wheelchair, Teo sat low enough to the ground where he and the Freedom Fighter were at eye-level so long as The Duke stood up – which was nice, because he liked not having to look up at people when talking to them.
"What's on your mind, The Duke?" Teo replied, grappling the wheels of his chair and turning them so he could better face the younger Freedom Fighter. The wood scraped against the stone floor of the Air Temple's corridors, echoing and rebounding before being swallowed up by the sound of Haru's Earthbending.
"Well – I got to thinkin'." The Duke shuffled his feet and tamped the butt end of his pike on the ground. Now that the time had come to, to – you know – actualize the idea that'd been brewing with him, 'cause he'd been thinking about it for days now, his stomach and voice collaborated against him and nervousness began to overtake him. Sweat percolated on his brow and he fidgeted, trying to quell an uprising of flutterflies in his chest. "We walked away from the invasion, but the rest of our friends didn't. If a group of people that big can lose to the Fire Nation…what chance do you think the eight of us stand alone?"
Teo frowned, resting his chin in the crook of his gloved thumb and forefinger. His brow furrowed and his gaze flickered over to Haru for a moment before glancing up. "I…that's a hard question. The circumstances were different during the Day of Black Sun; Katara didn't fight once her father got injured, Aang, Sokka and Toph were too busy with Azula and the Dai Li…and we didn't have Zuko at the time, either." His eyes shimmered and his expression lightened. "I mean, I've got a pretty good feeling about this now that Zuko can teach Aang Firebending."
"But a contingency plan wouldn't hurt," The Duke said. Frowning, the young Freedom Fighter (the last of his kind) glanced over to Haru as well, the Earthbender shifting stances in order to bring up a wave of rocks before letting them settle back into the floor, undisturbed. He couldn't calm down, and he heard himself talking faster – out of control. "Say Aang can't beat Fire Lord Ozai."
"I – okay." Teo nodded, and The Duke could see in his eyes that this particular game of Demon's Advocate didn't catch the older boy's fancy.
"I was thinking of reinstating the Freedom Fighters properly," The Duke explained, casting his free hand out into Teo's direction. "In case Aang fails. We'd do whatever we had to in order to make sure we save this planet. You know? And…and I'm going to do it, but I want you to join. You've got what it takes, and I'll need a lieutenant who can operate advanced machinery like you can. You have that glider built into your chair, and you drove one of the slinky tanks in the invasion - "
Teo laughed, catching The Duke off his guard. The jittering sensation in his chest jostled (did he think it was a dumb idea?), but the older boy set the Freedom Fighter at ease almost instantly, resting a hand on his shoulder. Beaming, he said, "It's okay, you don't have to explain anything. I'll be your lieutenant. I…I'm kinda envious, to be honest, knowing how you grew up, and I'm honored that you want someone like me as a Freedom Fighter."
"'Someone like you?' What do you mean?"
"Well…I lost my mom when I was young, but I've known my dad for my entire life." Teo glanced up at the ceiling, and a vision of the scrawny, eclectic, frazzle-haired Mechanist entered The Duke's mind, if only momentarily. Very much an inventive sort, The Duke had gotten along well with the man, and he liked to think their lateral thinking meshed well together. "And yeah, the Fire Nation drove us from our home to the Northern Air Temple, and in the trip I got sick and lost the use of my legs…but, that was so long ago, I can't remember it." He shrugged, another grin splitting his face. "Until I met Aang a few months ago, I lived a pretty easy life. You – the Freedom Fighters, from what you and Pipsqueak've said, don't get that luxury."
The Duke didn't respond at first, the only sounds being the echoing, rebounding thunder from Haru's Bending. Around them, the catacombs of the Western Air Temple spanned into a rustic labyrinth, a twisting, turning oasis, ripe for exploring and sparring and playing. In his short time on this planet, The Duke hadn't yet seen anything like Airbender architecture before, and every little facet and design had so many interesting hooks to them.
Like life, really. Not to mention how much fun Mortar and Pestle would have had here - they would probably be lost for days, admiring these archaic designs.
"Just because the Fire Nation hasn't always been a factor in your life doesn't make you less eligible." The Duke decided, nodding and following Teo's gaze. "That's been a common theme, but my Freedom Fighters are going to be more than that. I want my Freedom Fighters to stand for something greater than revenge, to have a bigger cause other than oppression at the hands of the Fire Nation. That's why I plan on asking Zuko to join, too."
"Zuko, huh…?" Teo chuckled. "Sure, why not?"
SCENE DIVIDE
Pan Xing Island
27 days until Sozin's Comet
"...and so my cooking got him to step off," Spatula concluded, disregarding the tray of pseudo-foodstuffs laid out before him. They were in the prison's cafeteria, a wide, imposing room lined with benches and tables for the inmates to eat at. The walls and ceiling reflected back cold, gray, unfeeling metal, and the sun and sky only peered in through barred windows set high above their heads. In all honesty, Longshot hadn't been paying attention to what the Firebender was talking about. It was easiest on his sanity to amuse the boy; he was too thick to detect the masked abandonment in any of the archer's nonverbal sentiments, so a nod here and a furtive glance there usually satisfied him. "I have to tell you, though - I don't think I'd ever have gotten in proper shape if I hadn't been arrested for deserting the Fire Nation Army. I mean, being with the Freedom Fighters really slimmed me down, but I wasn't getting any muscle. Working out is pretty much the only thing you can do here when you're not pulling some sort of duty, and the food is so...lean, if you want me to be nice about it (even a chef can only do so much with the ingredients and kitchen he's given), that you don't get a whole lot of excess fatty stuff. And while making good food helps, it's a lot harder to, you know, be able to stand up for yourself and all that if you look sorta like an undercooked sweet bun."
Longshot let a genuine smirk tug at one corner of his mouth. Okay, that was pretty funny; Spatula-of-three-years-ago had been on the doughy side.
"I got lucky, though...my cooking was popular enough to warrant respect from some pretty burly inmates," Spatula continued, leaning forward and folding his hands in front of his mouth, allowing a half-hearted grin past his fingers. "They're more than willing to drive away people who think they could make me their prison whipping boy." He paused, and as an afterthought, added, "Wish they served more fruit, though. I don't think I'll ever eat mashed potatoes ever again if I ever get out of this place. What about you, though? You don't do anything to make yourself less of a target. You get into a brawl with someone and you're screwed - assuming you still suck at hand-to-hand stuff. With the silent act, you're definitely gonna piss some ignoranimous off, I guarantee."
Longshot shrugged. Yeah, his close-quarters skills were pretty questionable, but he'd gone up against a skilled unarmed fighter twice recently and walked away both times (so to speak). If all else failed, he'd at least keep avoiding blows until whoever wanted to hit him badly enough accidentally punched a wall. Or a bigger inmate. Either one would work.
The archer blinked when Spatula nodded in response, only slight befuddlement clouding his eyes. The Firebender sighed and turned to his food tray, sizing it up and hesitating before grabbing his fork from the small glop of mashed potatoes that remained on it. "That's not a bad plan, if I understood most of it right. Make up for your weaknesses with something you're kinda good at. You've spent so much of your life jumping around in trees that I'm sure some place like this wouldn't even be a problem." He waved a hand around, illustrating his point.
Setting a hand on Spatula's shoulder to draw his attention, Longshot narrowed his eyes. He'd been able to read him? Just a couple weeks ago, the Firebender had been struggling so hard the archer thought he'd strain his eyes.
"Oh, yeah," Spatula replied, beaming and waving his hand again. "It's still kinda hard, but - but I think I got it down. You're a lot more expressive than you used to be, so that helps."
Oh. Heat flushed the archer's face. So that means he probably knew Longshot had been blowing him off, then, huh?
"I got the feeling," the Firebender replied, running his free hand through the back of his hair and glancing away. "That's alright. You don't exactly have a reason to trust me, and...and I do have problems when it comes to shutting up. My foot and my mouth are very familiar with each other. I know it bugs you."
With the thrumming sound of other inmates chatting in low voices around them, and the clatter of utensils on trays, Longshot simply sighed and grinned. Maybe there was hope for Spatula yet.
The rest of their meal was spent in respective silence, Longshot forcing down the steamed squash and mashed potatoes by matter of virtue; if he didn't eat now, there wouldn't be anything else until dinner. He knew all to well that food was food, regardless of how nasty it was. Still, even rotten, squished apples would have been better than this slop. (What he wouldn't give to eat once during Spatula's shift in the kitchen...like the man or not, he had been a good chef three years ago.)
Besides, if he didn't have his strength up, a jailbreak would be a lot harder to pull off.