Response to Review:
RonaldM40196867: That's a whole can of worms right there. It's probably Aang because, you know, he's the Avatar, but other than him you could make cases for Toph, Iroh, Ozai, Bumi and several others.
As Always, Please Review, and we pick up our story as Bumi decides to do something drastic...
As Bumi stormed into the rock tent, causing Amisha to drop her dinner in surprise, he scowled. With a movement of his arm, the rock slid up behind him, sealing them both inside and allowing them to talk freely.
"Did you have fun?" His companion asked with her tongue in her cheek.
"Turns out dining with a bunch of rich fire nation soldiers is about as fun as it sounds," he replied, "and I think I annoyed them, to top it all off."
"You didn't eat with your hands again did you?"
"I do not-"
"Yes, you do. I've worked in your household for years."
Bumi just scowled.
"No, I may have insinuated that I thought the Fire Nation's war was unjustified."
"You did what?" Amisha suddenly sat up. "What if he suspects us?"
"He is an idiot, to be fair," Bumi pointed out.
"He was smart enough to win the battle. We won't do any good if he arrests us!"
"We're going to need to move our schedule up then," Bumi stated.
"Tonight?" She asked.
"Tonight," he confirmed.
Amisha began to eat her dinner faster.
At the stroke of midnight, all was quiet in the Fire Nation encampment. A few sentries stood vigilantly around the perimeter, keeping a constant lookout against the possibility of a surprise attack, but most troops slept peacefully in anticipation of another long days' March towards Omashu the following day. Only the last embers of their campfires sputtered lightly in the darkness.
Asahi and his companion surveyed the scene grumpily. Just my luck to get stuck on night watch, he sulked.
His companion noticed his foul mood.
"Come on, don't be like that," he told him. "We can play I-spy?"
"And what are we going to spot in these conditions?" Asahi pointed out. "Using D for darkness every time gets old."
"We don't have to use that every time."
"Name one other thing we can use."
"S for stars?"
"Apart from that."
The man thought for a second, and then slumped. "N for night."
"Precisely."
"Well there must be something we can do?"
Asahi opened his mouth to reply, but a movement caught his eye at that moment. Some kind of glint off in the distance.
"Wait, do you see that?" He asked, pointing. His companion squinted, but shook his head.
Which was when the ground around them erupted. Asahi was hit in the head with a rock and immediately collapsed, unconscious, without any time to cry out.
Bumi stopped long enough to admire his handiwork, and then turned to the other man, who had his hands up. He had a strange expression on his face.
"You're Bumi, aren't you?" He asked. Bumi stopped, knowing that he should smite this man, but his curiosity was piqued. His curiosity was even more piqued a few seconds later.
"You ride in mail chutes, and call yourself a mad genius."
Bumi's eyebrows rose in confusion. "Do I know you?"
The soldier shook his head. "Look, just don't hurt me and I'll keep quiet that you were ever here."
Bumi thought about attacking this man anyway, but found he couldn't do it.
"Fine," he hissed. "But breathe a word of this and you're going down with me!"
The guard nodded frantically.
"You can trust me!"
"I hope so," for your sake. "Now, scram!"
The other man turned and scurried away, and Bumi wondered if he hadn't just made a mistake.
"What was that?" Amisha asked, coming up beside him.
"I don't know," Bumi replied. "He knew my name."
"It's not like you came here under a fake one. Word probably just spread."
"No, it's not just that. He knew things about me that he shouldn't have known."
"And you just let him go?"
Bumi nodded.
Amisha just sighed.
"Alright, is this the right place?"
Bumi surveyed the tent in front of them. It was comfortably the largest structure in the entire camp, being far longer than the Black Prince's tent and almost as tall.
"I think so. Shall we?"
Bumi pushed aside the entrance to the tent and entered. He was greeted by the sight of what seemed like hundreds of figures in green, lying on the floor and obviously chained together.
"Oh, yeah, this is definitely the right place."
As Amisha secured the flap of the tent behind them, Bumi bent down to look at the nearest figure. They weren't wearing a hat or any armour, and their weapons were missing, but it was quite clearly an Omashu military uniform. They had found the prisoners.
Bumi poked the man with his foot, and he woke up with a start.
"Wake up, sleepyhead!" He told him.
The man grunted, and looked up, clearly expecting someone else. When he saw who it was, the look of surprise on his face was so obvious that Bumi could even make it out in the dark.
"Bumi?" He asked.
"Shhh!" Bumi told him. "But yes, it is I."
"What are you doing here?"
"Rescuing you, what does it look like?"
"So you just snuck out on your own and came here?"
"Not quite alone," Bumi corrected him, "but yes. Listen, what happened?"
The man looked at the floor.
"They ambushed us," he told them. "Targeted our leadership first, decapitated the army. It was chaos after that."
The implications of this dawned on Bumi.
"Does that mean..."
"Yes," the man nodded gravely. "The King is dead. So is the Prince."
"What about my father? What about my brother?"
He just shook his head. "I'm sorry, I don't know what happened to them."
Bumi set that aside for a second. "We're here to get you out of here," he told him.
"And then?"
"With any luck, we're going to defeat the Fire Nation."
"How?" The man replied. "We couldn't beat them when we were a full army, how are we going to do it now?"
Bumi thought for a second, and then a plan popped into his head.
He bent down and whispered into the man's ear, and he nodded. Bumi stood up again.
"Have you got that? This plan hinges on you being there at the right time."
"Don't worry, we'll be there. But first, if you would do the honours?"
"Wake everyone else up," Bumi told him instead. "Quietly."
Obediently, he turned to the next man along and shook him awake, and told him to do the same; as the process repeated down the line Bumi ran along it, looking for any signs of his family as Amisha did the same on the other side of the tent.
Unfortunately, possibly because of the dark, he saw nothing. There was no sign of his father or brother. He was about to begin his walk back to the front of the line when he heard a muffled gasp from the other side of the room.
He whipped around to find Amisha on the ground, hugging one of the men; her brother, he supposed.
"Amisha!" He whispered, gradually increasing in volume until he got her attention.
She looked at him, her eyes shining with tears. "Yes?"
"Stand back!"
She did as he said, and Bumi assumed a horse stance. In time with the movement of his hands, small pillars of rock leapt out of the ground between each prisoner, and wrapped themselves around their chains.
Bumi then made a fist, and drove it towards the floor. The rocks began squeezing the chains hard. Bumi strained, and after a few seconds of concerted effort the bonds gave way. The snap of hundreds of chains breaking was heard across the tent as men began scrambling to their feet, rubbing their wrists.
Immediately, Amisha grabbed the man she had been hugging and dragged him over towards him.
"Bumi!" She whispered loudly. "He's alive!"
"I take it this is your brother then?" Bumi asked. She nodded in confirmation.
"My name is An," the man bowed. "Thank you."
"You're welcome, but I think you should leave," Bumi replied.
"Where to?"
"Follow the herd," Bumi told him, "but once you get far enough away listen to the plan. You are still needed."
"Great," An muttered, but he nodded. Across the room, the man Bumi had spoken to earlier was trying to marshal the rest of the group quietly, and had succeeded in bringing some into line, but others were still milling about.
Bumi stepped to the entrance of the tent, and prepared to unzip it.
"When you leave, run for the perimeter of the camp," he announced to those inside. "They should be too surprised to stop you."
He turned to Amisha. "Are you going with them?"
She shook her head. "I'm still needed here, aren't I?"
An looked horrified. "What? But what if they arrest you for this?"
"We might be able to convince them that it wasn't us," Bumi replied. "After all, nobody saw us do it."
"One person saw us do it," Amisha pointed out.
She embraced An, and they exchanged a few whispered words. An still looked annoyed, but he nodded and stepped away before Bumi pulled back the flap and the former prisoners began rushing out into the open air. A few shouts of alarm could be heard, but it would be a while before the Fire Nation could organise an effective resistance.
He turned to Amisha. "We should get back to our tent," he told her. She nodded.
Together, the two of them stepped outside and made for their rock tent, trying to stay out of sight for as long as possible.