CHAPTER TWO: Homecoming (Pt I)

"C'mon guys…," the now more than slightly inebriated leader of the Freedom Fighters whined as he attempted to appeal for the actions that had earned him the bruise now flowering on his sternum. "You know I didn' mean it!"

"Sure you didn't," chirped Pipsqueak with an edge of sarcasm, "but given the circumstances I don't blame Bee for getting pissed at you."

Longshot accompanied the comment with a stinging glare toward their leader, making a point that he'd heard more than enough of Jet's sexist, uninformed banter. Too drunk to perceive the archer's message, however, Jet simply shrugged and staggered along as the troop took its usual route back to the hideout. After the remainder of their search had yielded no other promising evidence of survivors, the small band of Freedom Fighters had made the unanimous decision to return home for the night, regroup, and then return to and make final checks at the site in the morning and salvage what the Fire Nation hadn't already plundered.

Now—after nearly an hour of trudging through thorny brush and avoiding the worst of the ancient trees' knarled roots, Jet mumbling and swaying and staggering and attempting to make excuses for his behavior the entire way—all three of his present comrades were running dangerously low on patience. Sneers wore a mask of practiced apathy, but Longshot could detect the downward turn of his lip clearly enough to determine that the monk was on the cusp of requesting that Pipsqueak knock Jet out with his log and carry him the remainder of the way home. Even Pipsqueak—as deceptively gentle as he was—looked like he was contemplating a similar plan of action, and Longshot noticed in himself the unmistakable urge to raid the cellars and drain the barrels there of their fiery, mind-numbing contents before Jet would thirst for it again.

It was a saving grace when the group finally arrived at the hideout not ten minutes later. Sneers and Pipsqueak yanked tersely on two separate retractable lines hidden in the massive tree's lowest limbs, disappearing into the canopy. Rolling his eyes, Longshot strapped Jet with some difficulty into one of the harnessed lines typically reserved for injured Freedom Fighters and, with a tug, sent the boy on his way. As far as the archer was concerned, Jet was Pipsqueak's and Sneers' problem now.

At that point—exhausted and imbued with a particularly nasty migraine—Longshot crouched at the base of the tree, pinching the bridge of his nose and letting out a long-held breath. It was hard for him to distinguish exactly what aspect of his day had been most taxing: between the razed village, the bodies, Smellerbee, the baby, and Jet's whisky-inspired tirade, the archer couldn't possibly pinpoint and meditate on a specific event that had affected him in the past couple of hours. Now, as his thoughts and questions and memories zoomed about his head like a loud and angry swarm of mosquito-wasps, the sheer volume of Longshot's preoccupations was enough that he knew better than to try to lift his hand and swat the pests away.

And so he sat, silent as ever, taking in instead the chirps of evening cricadees and the distant chatter of hog-monkeys, and before long the lullaby of dusk had pushed away the once impervious buzz and moved him to sleep.


Rolling grass ticked Smellerbee's ankles as she glanced at the Gaipan settlement from the summit of a large hill, the cogs in her head turning in an effort to devise a plan for getting from her current location to the town not too far below. Of course, in late summer, thick weeds and brush obscured even the most weathered of dirt paths, and with the added hindrance of the small child sleeping soundly from a makeshift sling about the swordswoman's neck and shoulder, the proposed journey would take far longer than she'd originally anticipated.

"You're a real pain, aren't you?" she mumbled, staring in mock-contempt at this fresh addition to her person. The child, however—having never broken the silence since Bee's departure from the wreckage—had long since drifted off to sleep, and had remained as such for the past hour despite the bumps and stumbles all too frequently encountered on the decidedly less developed roads of Gaipan. The swordswoman suspected that the constant movement may have actually played a role in keeping the child silent for so long—in any case, though, she wasn't going to complain about the single positive circumstance that had befallen her that day.

If anything, the responsibility of taking the child back to Gaipan was far less of a burden than the prospect of dealing with Jet in his current condition: if her leader's prior encounters with hard Fire Nation whiskey were any indication, Smellerbee was willing to bet her entire set of knives that Sneers, Pipsqueak, and Longshot had individually contemplated the…elimination of the source of their mutual migraine. The swordswoman grinned, making a mental note check up on the boys later to make sure that they hadn't actually killed each other.

The task at hand, however, took precedence over the girl's musings, and before long she had swiftly begun her descent into the valley below, hopeful that her mission would be complete before sundown.


Upon reaching the towering wooden gate that marked the village entrance, Smellerbee had taken a moment by the nearby river to rearrange her appearance. While the task was necessary in order to separate rumors of vigilante children in the forest from a perceivable truth, she couldn't help but stare at her reflection in the water without a measurable level of discomfort: the swordswoman had shed her breastplate and trademark weapons, concealing them in the bushes before hastily scrubbing her face free of paint and combing through her hair with wet fingers, tugging at the untamed knots and frizz. Though the daylight was waning, Smellerbee could tell that the girl staring up at her from the watery mirror— with her wide eyes and rosy cheeks— hardly resembled the warrior that she had become.

Before she could dwell on the image further, though, a gurgle startled her to her senses.

"All right," she affirmed, scooping up the child from the bank, doing her best to coax him back to sleep with gentle bounces. "Let's get you home, you little hogmonkey."


(A/N: Sorry for the short update full of fillers: finals week is approaching, and I haven't had as much time to write as I'd like. I'll get the rest of the chapter up soon.

Also: thanks to Jordan, somniumweb, and tumblr's wiltedredrose for the words of praise and encouragement! I deeply appreciate the support!)