Author's note :

wuups, sorry for the extra week delay. I've had major troubles writing this.
1) because I don't like realeasing things I wouldn't read myself. No crap-quick-easy writing please. Keep off the cheap clichés, or at least revive them in an interesting way !
1bis) documentation work too (see the funny facts' note. teehee !) for this and next chapter
2) the story got a mind of its own, and it grew and it grew... I've already had problems splitting the story into chapters (eg : chp 8 & 9 were supposed to be a all-in-one big chapter, but that seemed 'stuffy' all thrown out together... so split !)

I ran into the same thing here - lots of events belonging to the same 'arc', too much to be all put into the same chapter. correctly. So split again ! It was hard to find the good place to cut it though. A bit of a weird cliff... Oh, next chapter coming in a week to make up for it ! Yay ! (it's already well on its way).
this 'arc' will probably be a 3 chapters lenght one - so another weird cliffy end coming next saturday... sorry !

funny facts :

-the anecdote at the very end is directly inspired by something my father's mother lived during WW2. Jee would actually be German there. When I heard about it I was like 'duh ?' so I thought the world needed to know.
-My mother's father was part of the french army in 1940, and then was taken away to Germany for STO (might mention something similar in the upcoming chapters, don't know yet, YOU tell me)
-German occupation of the place I live in, and in a larger part the Sino-japanese war of the 19371945 (avatarverse is rather asian-ish), both widely inspired this and the next chapter.

-and just for the lulz : when I published last chapter, I went to check it in a live preview. And guess what the ad at the bottom of the page was ?
" military love links dot com" lol

The year of my twenty-first birthday was also the one of my first battle

The year of my twenty-first birthday was also the one of my first battle. I had been so lucky as to avoid the frontline until then, which gave me the significant asset of a grown up man's strength, stamina, and stability. Physically and mentally.

Usually, it was the Fire Nation's policy not to waste its young recruits in fights they weren't prepared for. The newest soldiers were appointed to relatively secured areas, so they could get a grasp of the enemies' techniques without any real thread. For example, when putting down local or petty rebellions, tracking and taming unrecorded earth benders, or just supervising more or less docile towns.

Those weak resistance points were perfect to improve and practice their fighting skills in the field, and when it came to real harsh battle, they already had a little experience and had better chances of survival. This was what had made the Fire Nation armies so strong on the long term. The Earth kingdom armies had suffered from a lack of cohesion and planning from the start, and had just thrown random boys in random places at the sudden Fire offensive forces. There was no way they could have rivalled.

This way of managing the troops had given the Fire Nation a powerful advantage and a reserve of experimented soldiers. But the recruits were not meant to be kept away from the war front as long as I had. I think you could say I had been incredibly lucky.

And finally, there I was.
When I found myself ready to charge, I looked around me. It was a clear morning. For a brief moment my mind forgot about what was going to happen. At least, about the consequences it could have for me.
The guy behind me was just a kid, he couldn't be more than 16. Now he had been incredibly unlucky.

I looked in front of me. There was a green wall of men right ahead. All standing up straight, in neat rows, countless number of people perfectly still and arranged in a nice little square. I could have thought we looked just the same but for our red armours, but I was way too anxious. Not scarred, anxious. How to say it ? The air smelled like something big what about to happen. You could feel it, you could touch it. The air was thickening with the stillness. It was heaving over your shoulder pads, it was sinking in your limbs. It was not normal. It was deeper than fear.
When you are in fear, you wish you were somewhere else, you pray and you look forward to be through with what scares you. But this, was different. I don't know for the others, but I knew prays and wishes would not help me. It would be useless, for hope was out of touch. It would distract me. And I had to be ready, even if I didn't know what for. I was waiting for something I had no idea of.
But I had to face it, and there was no way out.

Things around me were changing, the idea I had of them faded, they became hollow, and suddenly time didn't matter. No past, no future, not even a present. My head was empty except for that strange feeling, and the green wall of men became just a green wall.

And then we charged.

With all of my long years in the army, I can tell you now a charge is the worst.

In a naval battle, the ships will just fire at each other, you'll only see metal or wood sinking – even if you know there's more to it, you don't actually see it. You just confront the ennemie. And when you take over the ship and fight the feuding crew on board, you don't find yourself surrounded by deads as far as the horizon lays, you won't have to watch out for a whole battlefield where the blow could come from, you don't have to fear to be killed by a lost shot from one of your allies. You know where you are, you know what you do.

In a siege, you have something to fix your mind on : taking the city. That's the reason why you do those things, for the city, and your country.
The corpses are somehow hidden at the walls' roots, you can tell which is alive or not from the clear line it traces in between. The livings get up to Victory. The deads go down.
If you don't succeed right away, the troops will just retreat from the walls. Far from odours and blood for the night – you've got time. You're not lying down next to the Wall. You're alive.

Even in-town battles are better. I know that's far from obvious. Living through this is a miracle. But if you die there, it's blissful death : it's over.

But in a charge… at some point, you've been taken so far you don't really know when someone's alive or not; and you, your own self, you don't know if you still live or if you don't. There's no red armours, no green uniforms anymore. Just some strangely stomping forms, everywhere. Brownish and splattered in dark blood and dust, and you're one of them, and they come at you.

There are no walls, no allies, no enemies, no goals and no blissful death. Just a big mess, like, you're vulnerable from every sides, and there's nothing to fix your mind on. But you're not lost, you're there. You're like sitting in the back of your eyes, you see what happens, you know it's you doing it, you know it's you. But you live it from afar, in a deep spot, deep in your head. And the only thing you can do is watch, and take it.
You live it. You can seek as hard as you want, but the only thing that'll come to you is the arm of that sixteen years old boy, ripped apart a mere centimetres away from yours by a giant earth blade coming up from the very grounds you're walking on.

That's what a charge is to me. I don't know how to explain it clearer, and I won't make a hobby of trying to. When you snap out of it, when your body's available for you to handle it as you chose, you wish the charge had never stopped. Because then it becomes real. The corpses; faces you saw animated and lively now still and shining like cold wax; the pieces of flesh inlaid in the soil as if it was the way it was meant… And then you think you've been part of it. Your knees catch your fall, your head spins, your throat burns, and you throw up all you're worth.

My captain congratulated me. He said I was a skilled firebender and I had kept a cool head and acted quickly when it was needed. I just had a minor cut at my arm cleaned and bandaged then. I thanked him, but in truth, at that moment I would have thanked him too if he had told I was a good ostrich-horse.

The following nights, I was seeing scenes of the charge over and over again. I saw the faces of the soldiers I had burnt. I was discovering them somehow. Just like if the charge had been a dream, and when closing my eyes, I was living it true.

At that time my head was empty. I didn't think. There was just no sense to make out of it.

We moved deeper into the lands, and a few days later we met the earth kingdom forces that were supposed to push us back. We charged. They retreated, only to come back with more men. We charged. We had to back away. Reinforcement joined us and we charged a third time. We outnumbered the earth kingdom soldiers in the end, and we finally acquired the position.

This was a breakthrough from which another battalion would launch another charge, in hopes to get close enough to the nearest town and siege it.

But I was sent at the Northern colonies' boarder.

Too bad, I'd have liked to see that city a sixteen years old boy had died like the lowest of the low for.

I had been very thoughtful all along the trip to the North, and when I arrived, I was seriously starting to ponder : why the only link between the War, the Earth People Civilizing policy, the charges, the mining, the occupation and slavery, the death, the families torn apart; was Nonsense ?

When I would come back from the Northern colonies, this wouldn't matter either anymore.

Things had taken a special turn there. Historically the Northern colonies had been the first ones to fall out under Fire Nation's forces of occupation. Its soil was cluttered in shallow coil beds, which were easy to access to and cheap to run and exploit. The locals were roped in and the forests alongside cleared away to ease the transport. The mining industry quickly sucked every vein of the mineral of the region and left it worn out.

Then it lost most of its interest, since it was cold, foggy and full of swamps near the coasts, and resources in men were needed where resources in mineral were available : in the southern earth kingdom territories.

The only mining still gainful existing in the area was on the locals' incomes. And the soldiers there had pretty much every right over the people to puncture their funds. The ranking officers looked away as long as Money came in, and the few soldiers who eventually got scolded were soon excused by the necessity for a man to occupy himself in an unexciting and freezing place.

When I first landed, it indeed was freezing. The winter at that latitude was something I had never experienced before. I had never really seen a snowy landscape before. Of course, I remembered when I was a kid, it had snowed a bit a few times – melted warmish remains of ice that vanished almost as soon as it touched the balmy ground of our street.
Fire Nation winter…

This had nothing to do with what I had under my eyes – and boots. The cool cracking as my foot sank when I walked was both exhilarating and creepy for me. There were layers and layers of white fluffy snow, that smoothened everything on which it laid. It was shining and radiating a blue glow, and it swallowed every noise in a very languid way. It was like a big and clean pillow and the air was resting on it.

That's when I realize, when I saw my breath fade away in pale steam, how warm my body could be.

And I wondered how anything could be this cold when I dipped my hand into the snow on the ground. The ground itself was cold and wet, and my flesh was getting so.

The only way to block the feeling when you are out is Booze. Booze flew, like the blood when it rushes out in spasms out of the gashed white neck of a twelve years old girl. Booze darkened, as deep as the forest can be on a cold night of tracking downs. Booze overrode, and when your commanding officer tells you to come back with the head, the words have no meaning, and you just obey the raging finger pointed at you.

I have seen blood stained snow. The pure white marred in red hot, seems as appalling as the deed that brought the crimson warmth where it never belonged.

Somehow, that sight left me meditative to the extreme, and it kept me awaken for many nights.
The room I was assigned to was crossed through by a steam pipeline, and overcrowded by men, but I was still freezing. And the sight of the tainted snow always came up to my mind.

I realize now it was much more than this sight popping up.

It ran much further than I was ready for at the time. But I was working on it.

I chew on it many times. As time would get by, it would become a necessary routine before I could ever fall asleep. At times, wicked ideas found leaks from it, and got through my brain, and I'd start pondering what a good soldier should never ponder on. So I'd just push it aside, toss in my bed, and wait for slumber.
I saved it for later. This was precious. This was my sanity. It kept me human.
Heavens forbid I should ever feel okay with it.

The Northern colonies were rancid. The fire nation soldiers were drunk, bored and patronizing. But they were not the only one. The locals, men women youngs and elders alike, were picking at each other and scorning their very own selves. Each trying to have the upper hand on his weaker neighbour, to forget they didn't have it on themselves. The patriarchal men of the region felt robbed of their authority. They were put underneath the officers in charge of a region their ancestors had been born in for generations. The only way they could still have some control was through beatings, sellings of their wives and children. It gave them back the feeling of power and superiority the Fire benders were taunting them with, with much pleasure.

This had repercussion, and every member of the social chain being stripped of his natural place tried to find a new one in this devious fashion : by putting themselves as superiors holding every power physical strength could bring, ordering the weaker with rich reminders of their inferior's position.

Women killed their noisy children, mothers sold their daughters to lonely soldiers, older siblings humiliated their younger ones just for the sake of it.

Not every one of course. But merciful Agni forgives, most of them…

A lot of families had fallen apart. Long ago.
The parents kept the boy, but they let the girl be on her own. Too much of a bother to feed her for years and mould her into a good housewife, just to hand all the efforts' result over to the husband's family, I guess. That's much of an Earth Kingdom thing apparently. It's recurrent. The difference up North was that we kept the food on strict control, and the bother of feeding another stomach for another family in such restricted conditions was not something parents wanted to afford anymore.

Once, I was in a day patrol with two other men, around a small town's excuse for walls. A young woman came to us. She clung at my arm and asked if we'd like to spend some time with her. It was a cold day, another one. It began snowing while we were with her, but I didn't feel the chill because I had drunken. The flakes were getting trapped in her black hair and her skin under the many layers of rags felt drenched in a tepid-ish sweat. At some point I noticed her fingers were turning a frozen purple, so I moved and guided her hands under my shirt and onto the skin of my belly.

When we were done, I gave her some money, and one of the soldiers handed her his flask of alcohol. All wordlessly. And then we left.

Another time, I was escorting a taxman. Arrived the moment we claimed an earth kingdom farmer's due, and all the while I was hearing people arguing and a baby's fretting. In the end I decided to get to the bottom of it. I left the taxman for a minute and went to the next room.

It appeared the farmer's first born son was helping in the business.
He refused to sell even a single litre of milk to a mother who couldn't feed her baby anymore. The earth kingdom woman took a step back when she saw me, in full armour. The baby in her arms kept whimpering.

I asked what the matter was. With a commanding tone; the baby turned silent.
The young man answered me, and added with pride and a conniving look he knew better who to sell his products to.

That got me gaping open – thanks Agni for the Firebender's mask by the way. Wasn't the guy earth kingdom too ? He was messing with his own people ? Ready to leave this child die of starvation, for what ? Show me what a friendly man he was ?

I ordained his milk was brought in front of the farm in large opened containers, and exposed there a whole day for everybody's self-service.

Now, the woman gaped open. But that quickly was covered up by a mad wide grin.
Of course, when I took this decision, I knew even if it hadn't all gone away by dusk, the milk left would have curdled… I am such a cruel man, am I not ?

Review please ?