Disclaimer: Heck no, it's not mine.
A/N: I actually disturbed myself writing this.
That should serve as fair warning.
Don't Look Too Closely
She might have been beautiful, thought Private Kui. Her lips were pink enough, her skin mostly blemish-free, dotted with a few freckles for character. Her breasts, he noted, were ample, and the skin of her neck curved nicely.
Yeah, he thought, she would have been beautiful, if her hair wasn't shaved half off, her eyes not such a dull color, and if the lower part of her body wasn't burned to cinders.
"Keep moving, Private!" shouted Sergeant Ze Ren. "We only have a few hours to get off this spirits-forsaken mountain and back to the ships!"
"Y-yes, sir," said Private Kui, and reached towards the body. The Sergeant leaned in.
"And if I were you, Private? I wouldn't look at these Sky-rats too closely."
Private Kui nodded, and hooked his hands under the armpits of the body, dragging it along the walkway towards where the others were being.
The pile, Kui noticed as he dropped the corpse on top, was getting quite large. He removed his faceplate for a moment, to scratch his nose.
"Kui! Ey Kui, over here!"
Kui turned, and saw, Nizu, a comrade-in-arms, his faceplate off, sitting by a small fire. Something smelled like it was cooking, and it smelled very good.
Kui approached, and saw it was some kind of small animal with long limbs, roasting on a spit.
"Nice break, ey hotman?" said Nizu jovially. "It's a bit gamey, but not a bad change from Komodo jerky and hardtack!"
All the firebending he'd been doing earlier had quite tired Kui, and he was happy to have a little rest, officially sanctioned or not.
Kui took a piece of meat and sat back against a large urn that looked like it might have once had some sort of painting on it. Whatever it was, it was too obscured with soot now to make out.
Kui bit into the meat, teeth crinkling through the crispy skin and bubbly fat. Nizu had been right; it was gamey. But not too bad.
The pile was large. It must have been 25 feet across, and a good 6 feet high. It would take a long time to burn all that, normally, but Kui's officers were sure that, with comet-fire, it would only take a few minutes.
One soldier, Kui could see, was having trouble with a rather fat corpse. Another soldier had to help him lift it onto the pile. Someone else, Kui saw as he took another bite, was carrying two small corpses, one over each shoulder like sacks of rice, legs dangling.
Kui finished his meat, and gnawed on the bone. If he had time, he could crack it and suck out the marrow… but no, here came the Sergeant.
"What are you doing, Private? Didn't I tell you to move? We're doing our final sweeps."
Kui didn't find anything on his sweep, just a few of the little black and white monkeys that he recognized as the likely source of the meat he'd been eating. By the time he returned to the plaza where the pile was located, the sweeps were done, and only a few new bodies had been added.
It's strange, he thought, as he took his place amongst the firebenders preparing to incinerate the pile. All those arrows, pointing at nothing.
Then, he breathed deeply, and released his fire, and the orange robes caught, and they burned. The clothing seared away, the skin blackened and split, the features became unrecognizable…
The smell was like burning hair and overcooked cowpig, but the officers had been right about the comet-fire. Soon enough, it was all ash.
It wasn't until later, when he had gotten back on the ship, that Private Kui heaved the contents of his stomach onto the floor. "I shouldn't have eaten that meat," he said when the others asked, but he knew in his heart it was a lie.