"We always used to have the same people who would say 'don't hit the brake until the glass breaks. Don't stop until you hear glass break.' And so I always think the point of writing is to coach yourself to that point that you would never have gone voluntarily and also to coach a reader to the point where the reader would never have gone voluntarily"
~Chuck Palahaniuk
Look at that man, cobbled together, shellacked, holes in his legs and sides and a few ounces lighter. He scrambles like a rat. He thrashes like an animal. He's fighting for very life, yet is only in this position because he chose this path. He chose some worthless ideals to go and die for. But he does not scramble and thrash aimlessly. After wiping the blood and jet black hair from his eyes, he finds the electrical panel. He yelps as he plunges his fingers into his wounds, then again as he cauterizes them with a jet of flame from his fingertips. The barricade thrown across the door won't last forever. Every second he wastes, his chances of escape and survival grow slimmer.
Come on, you bastard! If you don't make it, it will all be for nothing! But the weight of what he's just done has yet to sink in. It's so repugnant it will take days to sink in. Even as he finds himself cornered he has no understanding of just how many sharks have begun to circle him.
He opens the electrical panel and grabs the hot-wire with bare flesh. The hair on his body stands on end as if afflicted with goose pimples. The man sighs in exhaustion as the door begins to cave inward. Its handle begins to crush inward like one would crush up a newspaper and then is hurled as ejecta across the room by invisible forces. The man closes his eyes. It is time. The thunderclap is as deafening as it is brief, and the flash just as bright, only to be followed by total and absolute darkness. Not just in this room, but for five city blocks every light bulb, every telescreen, every Satomobile, and all but the spring-wound pocket watch sputter and stop in their tracks.
The man uncoils. He explodes from where he stands. He has not merely channeled lightning but become it. He sweeps the rifle from the floor and holds it tight, his fingertips charring the walnut handguard, As he crashes unseen through that very same door and it erupts into splinters. He can't see them. He can feel them. And as their roles switch in an instant, he can feel their fear. The butt of his rifle slides into his shoulder as it has so many times before and once more he pulls the trigger.
The world is forever changed. The seeds were planted long, long ago and they have no one to blame but themselves. Those like me have no other choice – we simply have to punish them. If you really want to understand why you have to go back, to the very start of it all…
I stood transfixed to the music that filled the crowded subway as we waited for our train. In the corner by the stairs was an old and disheveled looking man playing a violin (the 2nd movement of Cao Cao's 5th if my memory hasn't failed me). I remember my mother kneeling down beside me, putting her hand on my shoulder and looking me in the eyes
"It sounds beautiful, doesn't it?" she asked. I nodded. My mother smiled, "Food and drink nourishes your body, but music is what feeds and nourishes your soul." My mother then held my hand as we boarded our train, but not before putting some money into the musician's violin case. Looking back, she was right. Music did nourish my soul; but I don't believe it was enough to save it.
My name is Hiro. This is not a memoir, and this is not my earliest memory, but this is the earliest one that matters, so I have included it in the hopes that you might understand what made me what I am a little better. I am a mercenary by trade, but you already know me as a terrorist or a fugitive. That is why I have written this account, in the hopes that I may plead my case.
Maybe that was a little too far back. Let's fast forward about twenty years
It was the Summer of 152 ASC. Everyone knows how it started; I won't bore you with details. I was in my apartment watching the telescreen when it happened. I usually don't watch the news, I just keep the telescreen on as white noise (why bother hearing about the latest daily Water Tribe on Water Tribe murder?), but the urgency of the anchor's voice caught my ear, and I couldn't believe what I was hearing. District eleven, a predominantly Water Tribe autonomous region, had declared independence from the from the Fire nation.
As a colony of the Fire Nation, it would have been insignificant had it not been turned into a breadbasket almost overnight under the stewardship the region's Chancellor Du Lin. There was no ultimatum, no declaration of secession, nor was there any warning. That fateful night, while half the Fire Nation's soldiers lay asleep and the others were drinking to oblivion, a thousand Water Tribe locusts descended on the farm land and wrested their ownership gunpoint. The other's were rounded up and arrested. They were packed onto blimps and sent back unfettered to the Fire Nation the next day as a show of good will. While bloodless, this was the theft of massive and valuable Fire Nation territory under threat of violence by direct order of Du Lin herself. "Nationalization," she had called it. And now the entire world held its breath and turned its gaze to a tiny little peninsula jutting from the underbelly of the Earth Kingdom.
The little nation that could. Ha! What rubbish.
I got the phone call two weeks later. I can't recall the specifics (I was unaware at the time of how important it would become) but I do remember the gist of what happened
"Is this Hiro?" asked a woman's voice. It sounded older.
"Who wants to know?"
"I'm offering you a job in Jia," she said, "I know it's getting harder and harder for someone with your skill set to find work these days."
Immediately I began running a backtrace. I talked with her for several minutes partially as standard formality, and partially to stall for time. She talked with me long enough without really saying anything, and all I got out of her was that it was in Jia (that's what they were already calling this newfound state of theirs). Eventually we began to talk dragon-turkey.
"I'm gonna need details. You can't expect me to just take a job blind."
"We're looking to hire some extra muscle during our… transitioning stage. You'll be working as part of a special operations cell. You've done that before, haven't you?"
Not since I'd left the Earth Kingdom Army, "I'm not a charity. Give me a real reason I should work for some raggedy waterbender gang?"
"Five hundred Yuans per day, all expenses paid, one hundred thousand at completion of contract."
"When, where, and how?"
"Go to the aerodrome at noon tomorrow. You'll find a man there holding tickets for you. The decision is yours." She hung up.
I checked the back-trace – no dice. I had no idea what sort of line she was using, but it was very secure.
I started to pack my bags, and left the radio on to fill the empty space.
"What I meant to say is that the very existence of Jia is a rallying point for the Water Tribe people. By flexing their newfound political muscles, the idea of having Water Tribe reservations in the Earth Kingdom and Fire Nation is a very real possibility. It would be good for everyone to bury the hatchet and make friends with the Water Tribe."
"What you really mean to say is that you'd be happy to appease a rogue nation. There is no need to have reservations, nor should the nation of Jia exist."
Big empty words coming from a citizen of the Fire Nation. They would do nothing against Jia save blow hot air. I personally doubt the Fire Nation would even go to war again for the next thousand years lest someone accuse them of genocide.
"The Water Tribe finally has its own country to call home," another commentator spoke, "and I believe that this is a good thing. If Jia exists then we will not need the reservations. Were the airbenders only a little bit less well off than the Water Tribe when they were given the Air Sovereignty?"
The man was immediately cut off by a typhoon of booing as the audience cried 'murderer' and 'supremacist.' But he was right. The Fire Nation genocide killed millions, but the reach of the Fire Nation was only as far as its frontlines and the airbenders were nomads free as the wind. By the end of the war there were about a thousand airbenders in Ba Sing Sei alone. Of course, by then the damage had already been done and no airbender dared practice their ability lest the Earth Kingdom collaborators were to turn them over to the fire nation for money or safety – something the Earth Kingdom was quick to forget.
"That's where you're wrong. The Air Nomads can go freely as they please. Many of the waterbenders in the Earth Kingdom cannot even afford to leave. How do you suppose they'll make it to Jia? Reservations will become necessary, like it or not"
The firebender spoke again, "What do you think Jia was up until the point when they seceded? Autonomous Region Eleven was a reservation for the Water Tribe, in everything but name. You give you give and give, and the Water Tribe just takes and takes and takes. Where does it end? Those reservations of yours would become nothing more than breeding grounds for crime. What happens when those reservations feel like succeeding and becoming rogue states? Reservations in the Earth Kingdom; reservations in the Fire Nation… Next you'll be telling me that you want reservations in the Air Sovereignty. Tell me where it ends, Shin!"
You could hear the audience rise from their seats in applause, and I rose from mine to turn the radio off I had to focus on packing my belongings, anyway. Some long guns and battle rattle to be shipped in an unmarked crate. You could sneak just about anything through security onto a zeppelin if you knew who to bribe. And so, against my better judgment, I made my preparations to depart the Earth Kingdom's People's Democratic Republic.
The money was just too good.
That morning I went to the aerodrome and found a waterbender with my tickets just like the woman said there'd be, and boarded the Zeppelin. We were off with a boom! Arc elements fired bolts of manmade lightning into the bladders of dephlogisticated air. The room temperature helium and nitrogen heated and expanded, lifting us skyward. I smirked as I watched the first timers jump at the report.
But I had gotten used to the sound some time ago. The first thing you learn serving in the military is to sleep at all times in all places whenever possible. Never stand when you can sit. Never sit when you can lay down. It's about the only way to get thru the lulls in an eight month deployment; it would be insufferable otherwise. So I did what all grunts did. I tipped my head back, closed my eyes, and slept.
I woke with the Sun streaming directly into my eyes. Such is the price to pay for having a window seat. I tried to make sense of where we were and how much time had passed, and groaned from the stiffness in my neck. I looked down and saw an expanse of brown and tan and grey in the flat Jian bush; sparse vegetation and the occasional gnarled tree that stretched for miles. Ahead of us was a horizon of green. It grew closer until it we passed above. It looked like a marvelous patchwork quilt of more different hues of green than I even knew existed. The unnatural bismuth-like fractal of crops was hard to believe and made any attempt at judging distance impossible. An Oasis of green in the middle of desert and only made possible thru the efforts of Jian water bending. Yesterday owned by the Fire Nation's corporate and state organs. Today owned by the Jian people. Only the farms of Ba Sing Sae could rival this place. We passed by several of these farms on the descent to Yakima
As we landed and I departed the air ship, the aerodrome looked like any other. You might think you were in Ba Sing Sae if not for the suffocating heat. Sure enough a man was waiting for me, by name. His bright teeth and genuine unapologetic smile stood out against the darkness of his skin. He was a broad shouldered towering man, with arms like timber and skin interlaced -with tribal tattoos.
"Greatings, Hiro!" his voice boomed. "I am Buno! Quanuippit!"
"um…"
"this is the part where you say 'Quanuinngittunga,' my friend. Hahaha! We should get going if we want to beat the heat."
The two of us dragged my luggage from the air ship and loaded it onto his four by four satomobile. We began to drive past the city and all of its carbon copied concrete and into the brush. As we drove farther and farther west I could every so faintly make out mountains in the distance.
"How much farther are going, anyway?" I asked
"About an hour more. We have a fob out there, and I'm taking you to meet our handler. He's a good man. Swamp-bender from the Earth Kingdom Army named Hei Bai."
"What about you?"
"I grew up here. In the bush, not in the cities or one of the ghettos. I's a hunter. Learned to track and use the bow from my father, and my father from his father. I guess you could say I'm one of the old breed"
"You some kind of noble savage then?" not my most tactful choice of words.
He shook his head, "Water Tribe's not savage. Not noble, either. We're all just folk, same as anybody else."
"But you have made pilgrimage to the legendary Northern Water Tribe, right?"
"I have."
"And the city ruins? What was it like? What did you see?"
"The city? …I don't know."
"What do you mean?"
"There's not enough ice anymore," He said. "It's all gone, Hiro; there is no city. It's all melted."
Soon enough we come upon the mess of tents and sandbags the Buno promised. The air is abuzz with the sound of shovels and patter of running boots and foul words, gunpowder and motor oil and an even fouler smell of men that haven't washed in three days. Buno slows to a stop and parks as we reach some particular tent indistinguishable from all the others. As I unpacked my equipment from the satomobile a man approached me from one of the tents.
Like a contorted parody of Buno he approaches with a stupid ear-to-ear grin on his face. He was a wiry tooth pick of a man in contrast to Buno's stature. Where Buno was dark he looked almost sickly pale and where Buno had tattoos on his arms, this man had hideous tan lines from where he had worn body armor without a uniform. I know this because he was shirtless and wearing nothing but a boonie cap and revealing pair of shorts that would probably not even been acceptable for a woman to wear in an Omashu strip club. With a pair of short socks he also wore a pair of clown-like combat boots. It was somewhat difficult to make out the features of his face; his nose was covered in too much sunscreen and his eyes were hidden behind a pair of goofy aviators. His lanky stride was… comical at best but at the least seemed self-assured.
"Hello! Is your name Hiro?"
"Yes, it is"
"My name is Hei Bai," he said, "But you can call me 'Sir'."
"I'm sorry?"
"I'll be your handler for the duration of your contract"
"Yes, sir"
I went to snap a salute but he stuck out his hand instead. It took me a second to understand his gesture, and awkwardly I lowered my salute and gave him a handshake.
"Come to my tent," He said, "There's something you need to see."
Captain Hei Bai's tent could only be described as a rat-hole. All around were unopened cardboard packages, re-rationed MREs and ruck sacks littering the floor. He had replaced is bed with a hammock, in order to fit more stuff on the floor that wouldn't fit under a bed. He had made enough space in one of the corners for a desk, which was littered with papers. He dug around in one of cluttered drawers until he pulled out an elephant-rat trap.
"Do you trust me?" he said.
There was an awkward pause – I wasn't sure where he was going with this.
After taking off his sunglasses, he set the trap on the desk, cocked the bar back and set it to spring, and said, "This is an elephant-rat trap." He pulled a pencil form one of the drawers then locked his icy blue eyes with mine. "It'll snap your finger like twigs. Watch!"
Hei Bai poked the trap with the end of the stylus and it was ripped from his fingers, splintering in two. He reset the trap.
"Do you trust me?" He asked again
"I don't understand, sir."
He picked up the trap, delicately, setting it on top of his palm, "You're going to play your hand flat, palm down, and when I tell you, you're going to slam it on top of this trap." He held the trap in front of me and reluctantly my hand hovered over his.
"Do it," he said.
I started to pull my hand back
"If this trap goes off and breaks your trigger finger, I've just lost an invaluable asset. I trust myself enough to know that this will work; all I'm asking is for you to do the same."
My hand levitated over the trap for what felt like eternity, and then I slammed my hand down on his. There was a *click* - my heart stopped, but Hei Bai's hand held firm, pressing the trap into mine. It held. I eased off the initial force once I knew that I had made solid contact. Dozens of pounds of spring-loaded force now held back with the weight of a feather. He started to giggle.
"So little faith…" Hei Bai chided, "I told you it would work."