"Good evening mother. Good evening father." Isamu said to his parents. "What are we having for dinner tonight?"
"Good evening Isamu. I believe we are having some sort of earth nation delacacy tonight." Isamu's mother, Sheila, replied.
"Sounds great!" Isamu smiled as he pulled his chair out and sat down. They began to eat the food that was prepared by their personal shef. It was silent for a few minutes before Sheila tried to break the silence.
"Um, how was school today honey?" She asked her son.
"Decent enough." Isamu replied.
"I still don't understand why you wanted to go to that school. We could have very well sent you and your friend to a much more elegant school." Isamu's father said bluntly.
"I've said time and time again. Leon would have felt uncomfortable at a stupid prep school. Besides, it's close by. This way we can walk to school and back. It gives the two of us to spen time together without having to worry about what the other kids are talking about." Isamu said.
"Fine." His father said.
"Anyways, what happened at your meeting today dad?" Isamu asked.
"... um..." Isamu's father looked a little pale. He had all night, as if something had been bothering him. He usually was a bit white after meetings with his war council, but he was worse than normal today.
"Do you want me to tell him sweetie?" Isamu's mother asked her husband.
"No. No, that's not nessacary. I'll do it. If I can't tell my own son the bad news, how will I tell our entire nation?" The Fire Lord replied.
"Huh? What are you two talking about?" Isamu was scared. His father only made public annoucments for things that were really important. Like if a member of the royal family died, or if he was going to replace a general with a new man. The last time he made a public annoucment was when he declared peace with the air tribes!
"Son, our council believes there may be an attack on our nation..." The Fire Lord paused and took a deep breath. "Infact, our city is the most likely target."
"An entire city?! That's crazy! What nation? What would they use to whipe out an entire city! How could this happen?! Something must be done at once! What are you doing home? You should be fixing this!" Isamu was outraged. He had always had a big interest in war and battle. He had stood up at the table and slammed his hands onto the table while saying this, just to increase the drama of how he felt.
"... calm down and ask one question at a time, son." Isamu's father said. Isamu sat down and took a deep breath, he exhaled steam. He repeated the process without the steam this time.
"Alright, I'm ok. First question, what nation is attacking?"
"The water nation. We're not sure when they will attack yet."
"An estimate on how long it may be?"
"A month at most, maybe a few weeks... maybe even a few days..."
"WHAT?! You mean that tommorow everyone here could be dead or ingured?" Isamu's father swallowed hard when his son said this. He barely let out a soft:
"That's correct." Isamu pushed away from the table and let out a long breath once more.
"What are we going to do?"
"I'm going to try and evacuate as many people as possible before the attack."
"How do you know they're going to do this?"
"They sent us a message. It was a recording of the northern water tribe's head preist."
"Can I see it?"
"I'll have it sent to your room."
"I'm going to go to my room. I lost my appitet." Isamu ran out of the room imeatly after that.
In his room, Isamu dropped a rope out the window he had stored in his closet. He made sure that it was secure to his bed post and climbed down. He had a backpack filled with clothes, water, dried food, a flash light, batteries, and a knife. Once on the floor of the garden he ran out, pass the guards, and too the orphange in which Leon lived. He climbed the wall to Leon's window. He knocked on it and waited for Leon to come to the window. Once he did, Leon looked surprised and opened the window to let Isamu in. Leon and Isamu had taken their screens off their windows to sneek to eachother's house any time they needed.
"Dude! What are you doing? We didn't plan anything for tonight. What's wrong?" Leon asked when Isamu was inside.
"I have horrible news. Get together clothes and supplies your pack. Hurry! I don't know how much time we have." Isamu was dumping out Leon's school bag to get stuff into it.
"What?! Stop that! I just organized it! Tell me what's going on, we're best friends. You can trust me. Are you running away?"
"No. Well, close. We need to get to a safe area. There's going to be an attack on the city!"
"Again I ask, what?! How do you know this?"
"My dad told me, he got a threat from the water nation. We need to get to a safe area!"
"Dude, are you sure your dad's generals aren't just being paranoid again?" Leon asked, pulling some clothes from his closet to try and get together some things that Isamu wanted him to. Isamu was helping him.
"I'll have proof in a few minutes. They're going to give me the tape in my room. Once we have your things together, we'll walk over to my room. You wait in the garden next to the rope I used to get down. I'll ask them to leave and give you the signal to climb the rope when it's safe."
"What's the signal?"
"I'll flash my flash light at you twice."
"Okay, but I wanna watch that tape too."
"Duh, that's why you're coming into my room!"
Once they had everything that they needed, Isamu and Leon climbed down and ran back to Isamu's place. They did exactly as planned when the moment came.
"Alright," Isamu said. "Here's the tape. Take a seat." He played the video and sat near the TV in his room. Leon sat beside him.
The tape stared and they saw an older man take a seat at a desk. He was tan with long, pure white hair, and a decently long white beard. He began to speak with a deep voice.
"Hello, Mr. Fire Lord. Hello generals and commanders. If you are watching this, then I'm sorry to imform you that you have seemed to loose our favor amoung the nations. We've decided to send a large bomb your way. We will send it over very soon, and thanks to our most recent technology, we don't have to send any living person or animal over with it. There's really nothing you can do." The man grinned now. "It's targeted to a city near your capital. Unfortunatly for you, we don't know how wide it spreds, but we do know that it covers at least this area." He pointed to a map behind him. He used his finger to show a wide part of the main land. It circled, the capital (The city they're in) and at least a fourth of the nation. "And that is the smallest ammount it will spred. Of course, it will not be big enough to hit the nations next to you. Because your nation is so wide, it will not cover the entire nation, but may expand to half of the main land. We wont attack you small islands..." he paused and chuckled a bit. "At least for now. We also can't asure the other nations will leave them alone either." He sat back down at the desk. "This bomb may very well leave some surviors, but most of them will suffer from pain, most of those in pain will die, and the rest most likely die from starvation. We'll be sending you the bomb in less than a month after you receive this tape." The man smiled and waved. "Goodbye, and good luck with the falling of you nation."
The tape ended and the screed went fuzzy. Isamu's eyes were wide with anger and surprise at the bluntness of the threat. Leon was calm, but had a very determined look on his face.
"We need to tell the nation imeaditly, and we need to get as many people in a safe place as soon as possible." Leon said, standing up.
"Where?! This is a huge bomb! Half the nation! Where can we go?" Isamu was yelling. Leon thought for a second.
"The sewers, old bomb shelters, anything below ground. Maybe even basements." Leon started to Isamu's door. "I'm telling your father that he needs to tell the nation right now."
"What? No! Don't, they don't know you're here."
"I don't care! We need to get as many people as possible to saftey." Leon opened the door and ran to look for Isamu's father. When he finally found him, the Fire Lord was crying quietly. "Sir! I know I have no right to tell you this, but we need to get the message out to the public and now! They need to know!" Leon said to the Fire Lord.
"I know what you're saying, but I wont do that."
"What? Why not? The people need to know, sir."
"Leon, you have been best friends with my son for years. Go now, and try to forget about this. I want you to go and have some fun. Eat sweets, stay up late, and watch cartoons or whatever it is you kids for fun."
"Wha-what are you talking about? Sir! I'm serious, we... you need to do something now!"
"No! God-damnit! I'm not telling the world about this! There's nothing we can do about this. People need to spend their last days like everything is normal. Not in panic. I'd be worrying them about something they have no control over."
"What are you talking about? If we can find a way to get them under ground before the bomb hits, they can have a chance to survive!"
"No! We need everyone to live and die happily! Not as a panicing nation!"
"Why? Because it will reflect badly on you?"
"Exactly!"
"Well, sorry to break it to you, but letting your nation die will seem worse than warning them about their coming demise!"
"I don't care what a child says about what I'll seem like!"
"If you're not going to do something about this, I will!" Leon ran out of the room and slammed the door. Leon saw Isamu out of breath right behind him. He had just caught up. "Isamu, do you have some sort of emergency brodcast system in your house? I mean, this is the Fire Nation's Capital Building."
"Yeah," he huffed out. "It brodcasts to all the news channels."
"That'll have to do. Where is it?"
"I'll show you. You're lucky I'm an athlete. Otherwise, I wouldn't have the energy to do this so late at night."
"Let's pick up that tape first. You know, the threat tape?"
"Alright." They ran to Isamu's room as soon as they could and grabbed the tape. They started to the brodcasting room. It was locked. The person who was trying to open it had to know the code. It had a keypad of numbers between zero and nine.
"Shit! You know the code right?" Leon exclaimed.
"Uh..." Isamu hesitated.
"Uh? What does that mean?" Leon sounded alarmed.
"My father only has so many different numeral passwords for the stuff around the house... I have to try a few, but..."
"but what?"
"There's this problem with our systems. We only have five tries."
"And how many possible codes are there?"
"Twenty..."
"SHIT! SHIT! SHIT!" Leon cried out. "What happens if we use all five tries?"
"It... um... locks down. We can't use it for another twenty four hours."
"Dude..."
"I know, I know. Just let me try." Isamu walked up to the keypad. "Each code is a four letter number. I'll start with 4862. There's a trick to rembering all of his codes. This one is in a cross formation on the keypad." A loud buzzer noise came out of the keypad.
"I'm guessing that means you used the wrong one." Leon said.
"Yeah. Next, I'll try 7535. It goes diagonal and then back." The noise repeated itself when he finished typing it in. "Okay, um... let's try it the other way. 9515." Again, the noise rang out.
"That sound is really annoying." Leon said with an irritated sound in his voice.
"I know. It doesn't exactly help me remeber when you complain though."
"Sorry!"
"It's alright. Lemme try my next one... 7931. All the corners." The noise rang once again. "Only two more tries... umm... 8520?" It buzzed. "Last one..."
"Be carefull!"
"I know! Shut up!!" Isamu wiped sweat from his brow. He entered one last number. "0258. That's the last one." The made a sweet 'Ding, Ding, Ding' sound up the musical scale. The door opened.
"Okaaaaaay..." The boy went into the room and pressed the record button on the control panel. Leon sat infront of the camera.
At a near by home of a family of five, the father and mother are watching the news. The TV says: "You're regular program has been interupted for this special announcment."
"Go wake up the kids. I want them to see this." The mother said. The father picked up his daughter and sons and brought them into the TV room. The annoucment started. Leon appeared on screen.
"Hello people of the Fire Nation. I am Leon Flames. I live near the Fire Lord's home and am a loyal fried of the Fire Lord's son. I know that the Fire Lord did not wish us to do this, but we need to inform you of what's going on. We have received a threat from the Northern Water Tribe. I wish for you to see it and then I will tell you what I hope to do to help protect yourself from this attack." Leon said. He played the tape of the threat. After the video was finished he continued speaking. "Is it done?" He was turned to the side like he was talking to someone. Isamu's voice replied.
"Yes, go on! You're on national television. GO!"
"Oh, uh. Yeah." He turned back to the camera. "I purpose to protect you and your family that everyone gets under ground. Such as in a basement or an old bomb shelter. If you can not get to something like that, please go to the nearest plumbing hole in the street and enter into the sewers. I know that doesn't sound very sanitary, but it's the best way to protect yourself. Bring supplies for about a month. Clothes, dried food, water, flash lights, excetra. Please hurry." When he was done saying these things, the Fire Lord pushed Leon out of the way of the camera.
"Loyal people of the Fire Naiton. Do not listen to this child. He Has no idea what he's talking about. Stay in your homes. Live happily and safely. We are going to protect you from the bomb." The Fire Lord was pushed out of the way.
"If you want to DIE then listen to this man, but those of you who want to survive, please! Get to saftey."
"NO! Listen to your Lord and Master. I am king! Follow my command."
"It's not my fault if you're injured by this attack. You need to get to safety. Your choice. Live a few days happily and die in pain if you listen to this man." Leon said.
"Or, you could listen to the child and live your last days in fear, and die of starvation and sickness."
"Whatever. Your choice. Come on Isamu, let's finish getting our stuff together." Leon left the sight of the camera and the Fire Lord reached to turn it off.
The family looked at eachother and tried to decide on what they should do.
"I think we should go under ground." The father said.
"No, no. We need to live happily. The king said he would protect us." The mother replied.
"He doesn't know what to do! I say we get our stuff and go into the basement."
"No. I'm staying here."
"Well, you stay here then. I'm getting my children to saftey. I'll get some clothes for you and food enough for us all. If you change your mind, come with us." The man was holding his daughter in his arms. She was the youngest of the three children. Her hair was long and beautiful, her eyes big and colorful. She was probley about seven or eight. Just old enough to understand the seriousness of what was going on. Her two brothers, one around ten and the other was fifteen or sixteen.
"Why are we leaving mommy?" The little girl asked when her dad started packing her things.
"Mommy is being stubborn. I know it's not nice, but I want to bring you and your brothers to saftey before the bomb hits. Even if it means leaving mommy behind."
"Oh." She just watched her dad pack her things.