Chapter Fourteen: Lit Fuse
Saiben saw the small group tense as the doors opened and he walked out, trying to look as imperious as he could. As he got closer the members of Fallen Fire regained their composure and got into their fighting stances.
Saiben continued to walk towards them with Seizu a little ways behind, until he was easily in earshot then began his ultimatum to them, "I'll give you five seconds to get out of our way and leave us alone."
After he said that, one of the regular police stepped forward and began talking, "By order of the High Chancellor," Saiben held up five fingers to show his count down, "you are to be placed under arrest," four, "for crimes against the crown, assaulting with intent to hurt a police officer," three, "theft, arson, and malicious destruction of property." Two, "You have the right to remain silent," one, "and we have been authorized to use deadly force if necessary."
"Times up!" Saiben shouted. He held up his remaining finger and used his new move, sending a giant fireball towards them. Saiben didn't actually want to hurt any of them to that extent, so he detonated it and sent most of the group flying backwards, to land unconscious on the ground a few metres away. Amazingly, all the Fallen Fire members had thrown themselves flat on the ground, avoiding most of the blast. The one police officer that hadn't been knocked out tried to rise groggily, but just fell down and gave up joining the fight.
The Fallen Fire members got up and started to mutter amongst themselves as they dusted themselves off. Most of it was things like, 'Why did we bring them anyway' and 'useless pieces of brass'. This only got Saiben madder because he had originally intended to knock the Fallen Fire members out first, only to have it back fire by him missing them and hitting everyone else.
Saiben didn't bother to wait for them to take the offensive and charged at them. They reacted immediately by launching reams of fire at different heights. Saiben sent his own blast of fire at the wall and blew a hole through it. Before they could react Saiben was in front of the centre one and caught him full in the chest with a punch while he was using the burning hand. The man was launched skyward with a trail of smoke coming from his body the whole way.
Saiben tried to continue the punch into the one on his left, but the man blocked it and flipped Saiben over his shoulder, just like Saiben had done to one of the Fire Ants the day before. As Saiben flew behind the man he left him a parting shot with a kick to the back of his head. He landed and rolled upright, sending out a wave of flame in case anyone was already coming after him. Nobody was though and he took a moment to analyse how his opponents were acting. Within moments he had a good idea how they would act from their past comrades, stance, and their reactions before this.
He watched as the two remaining members recovered from their initial bout and came towards him. They both started launching fire at him and he didn't even bother moving. He stood where he was and deflected them with back hand movements like he was brushing off an annoying fly. This only served to anger them and they went closer which was a big mistake. They both seemed to realize it as Saiben launched forward and hit them in the chest with a powerful burst of fire. Thanks to their body armour though they were only stunned. Saiben continued his charge and used his elbow to crack one of them in the skull. In the same movement he sent out a wave of fire to block the one that had been launched at him from the other member. Saiben's was weaker though because of his initial movement had he had to jump to avoid getting hit.
The remaining member kept his distance and started pumping blast after blast at Saiben which he avoided easily. Saiben let the man keep his distance and continued avoiding blasts with negligible effort. The man continued this until a fireball hit him in the back and he fell over with a surprised look on his face. His eyes glazed over as he hit the ground.
Seizu was incredulous, "Did he forget there's two of us or something?"
"No, I made sure I had his full attention. The way I moved let him predict where I was going to be a little easier. He took the bait without realizing it and he would have kept doing that unless you did something."
"And you got that from their stance or something like that?" Her voice was a knowing and exasperated one.
"Yeah, it made the whole thing way easier. I think I'll call my move the Flash Fire." He said the last bit more to himself than to Seizu. She was a little irked at him for being shrugged off so easily, but she didn't let it get to her and promptly began walking towards the harbour. Saiben followed without asking questions. The only way he could think of getting away from their nation was to get a boat, even though that entailed walking into a hot bed of Fallen Fire activity.
Before they got anywhere near the harbour though, Seizu turned down another street.
"You know the harbour is down that street, right?" Saiben pointed out.
"I can guarantee that if we steal a boat then we'll get chased. It also won't help our credit with the other nations at all."
"I know that, but how else are we supposed to get out of here?"
"These." Seizu said and pointed to a normal looking warehouse. "They store all the fireworks for the Fire Festival in these. All we have to do is make a little raft. I bet that'd go faster than any of the ships in harbour right now."
"That might work if we were going across a crystal clear lake. If they get wet at all we're going to be stuck out there with no way of going anywhere."
"Do you have any better ideas?"
"Not at the moment, but to actually make it all the way to the Earth Kingdoms would take days with the fastest ship we have in harbour right now. That boat is our obvious choice, so that will be guarded the most. If we were to take the second fastest we could force them into using the fastest. We disable our own and then capture theirs and we're all set because they won't have a boat anywhere near fast enough to catch us."
"As is said before, that won't help our credit at all. If word gets out the wrong way we'll have the Water Tribes looking for us too and there is no way we'd ever be able to out run them."
"Right back where we started." Saiben sighed.
"Can't you use that crazy brain of yours to figure out a way to make a faster boat?"
"Our boats are already as good as they're going to get. The problem is that the water makes too much friction for the boat to achieve any incredible speeds without bending being involved."
"I thought that we came to the conclusion that you're probably the avatar."
"Just because I might be doesn't mean I know how to bend already. I still need to learn how." Saiben explained desperately.
"Could you make something that skims over the water instead of through it?"
"You mean a hydrofoil? Our top scientists are just starting to try and find ways to make one. I'm not a savant; I'm only good at bending really." Saiben got a glazed look in his eyes as he finished and Seizu was starting to get a little concerned when he started speaking again, "I got it! We can still go over the water; we'll just go way over it."
"What are talking about?" Seizu asked nervously.
"You were right when you had the idea of using fireworks to go. The problem is that they can get wet easily on a raft. If we were to make gliders we could use them to launch ourselves and get to the Earth Kingdom in no time!"
"Saiben, there's one little problem with your plan: we don't have anything to make gliders from! Do you even know how to make one?"
"I was learning about aerodynamics before this started and I was going over Aang's history before he turned and disappeared. I bet I could make one."
"Okay, but do you have any idea how to fly it?"
"Glide it would be more correct, and how hard could it be? You're just shifting your weight around."
Seizu gave a sigh that had a little bit of exasperation in it before she continued trying to poke holes in Saiben's plan, "Assuming we'll be able to figure out how to fly them, what are we going to use to make them?"
"I don't know what Aang's used for the fabric across the top, but I doubt it really matters. It just has to be light and won't rip easy. The same goes for the wood." Seizu could see this plan failing in so many places, but Saiben's willpower was absolute and in the end she was forced to go along with it.
It took them a couple days to get all the materials that Saiben deemed necessary, and another for him to actually build the gliders and test them. Seizu surprised himself by actually managing to stay in the air on their first test flight.
The tests flights were a tricky business because they had to leave the city to get to a forest so they wouldn't be spotted. Once they had practiced enough to be able to stay straight and not dive bomb the ground they made their final plans to leave the Fire Nation.
Over the next day and a half they stockpiled all the small fireworks they could find. They figured they wouldn't need much lift to keep them up and didn't want to risk putting too much strain on their gliders. When they thought they had enough Saiben had a bit of bad luck because Seizu found the firework for the grand finale.
The thing was huge. It was as wide around as a tree and was as tall as Saiben was. Seizu had been quite adamant about using it for take-off which he thought was sheer suicide. When it detonated they would be blown to bits. When he told Seizu this she promptly went to work on getting rid of the explosives which she was amazingly adept at. She had all the parts defused that would be dangerous to them within an hour and had carted it out near the docks at around midnight.
They both struggled onto its top and Saiben was about to light the fuse when he remembered to tilt their projectile a little so they would have some forward momentum. Then he lit that candle. At first there was a little sizzling sound and then it felt like he was being squashed by a hundred pounds of something as the giant firework launched skyward at speeds that Saiben knew the human body wasn't built to take. Thirty seconds later they jumped off, spread the wings of their gliders out and lit the first of their firework propellants.
It took a while for Saiben to realize what a good speed they were going at. Then he saw the light of a ship way below them trying to catch up. The only thing that tipped him off to this was the fact that they were firing at them in vain. All the fireballs they loosed at them fell short by a mile.
"You can stop firing now you know. There's no way you can hit them, they're way too high." Jouku said, putting as much boredom into his voice as possible. As soon as Jericho had found out that his two prisoners had escaped he had put Jouku on board the fastest ship in the harbour and had it moved to the opening from the bay. Jouku had known that Saiben would try something outlandish to get away, but nothing had prepared him for the sight of a giant firework getting launched into the air and seeing his best from jump off and fly away into the night sky. Needless to say, they had been ordered to pursue them.
Now Jouku was sitting on the ship's deck trying to get rid of his boredom. There was nothing to do on this ship because the crew were all quite adamant about non-crew members touching anything, so particular was the ship, or so they believed. Jouku wished he could believe them because that would mean a slight slip and they would stop, leaving Saiben to have a clean getaway. As long as Jouku wasn't able to have a direct part in his capture he would be okay with that.