It takes a peculiar amount of skill and experience to be a great thief, and though Jet was growing into a talented killer, he lacked the latter. An untold amount of patience is required, which his hot-head did not possess; also, and accurate calculation of distance and proportion, which were both warped by the rage in him; an extensive insight and knowledge of human perception, which he understood slightly but was too young to fully comprehend; and the realization of his own bodily limits, which he had felt vaguely during his killings but ignored, having his blood pumping with adrenaline.
All in all, an experienced bandit would have stopped Jet in his tracks and carried him back to his treehouse, but Jet had no such mentor. The seven soldiers, who were examining the rotting bodies with both curiosity and confusion, were all firebenders, and well equipped with such weapons necessary for a stroll in dark and twisting woods. But the gleam of metal and the smell of armor polish did not defer Jet; he was too consumed with confidence, blinded by his own conceit.
The closest soldier was slightly shorter than the others but more broadly built, and it had been quiet and ordeal trying to fit him armored shoulder blades. He inspected each body carefully as Jet began to fidget in his hiding place, his patience running low.
"It is Rugato, of the Third Regiment. His wife Mi Lin was with him, and their son, Roku."
Jet kept forward under the cover of the man's voice and received a clearer picture of the soldier's vicious attire. His confidence gave way slightly and a naturally, boyish fear threatened to surface. A man across from the short soldier spoke.
"Who attacked them? Rugato was to come up the day after the raid, when all villagers were slain. Did someone escape?"
"Impossible. They set up a perimeter around the whole village. They were securing the spot for a settlement."
Jet's heart slowed as he thought over these words. A settlement? What did they mean?
At this moment a question slipped into Jet's thoughts like some sort of ethereal snake; why had the Fire Nation attacked and slain every man, woman, and child in a secluded, unarmed, and remote Earth Kingdom village? What threat had they ever been to those thirsty fire demons?
The short man was speaking again, but Jet was no longer listening. A devil will attack the innocent without reason or cause, lavishing only in the horror of their screams. But wouldn't the might of the Fire Nation be concerned with places of strength and spoil?
"…back to the settlement, they're starting to rebuild. The bodies have all been buried and they're shipping in supplies. We can lay Rugato and his family in the flames and have a proper burial…"
Settlement? Rebuild? Supplies? None of it made sense to Jet. He lost all desire to murder and replaced it with a sudden lust for the unknown. The men were shouldering the bodies (he saw only one soldier wince – the one who carried Rugato's head) and starting west. West – the direction of the ruins of his village.
Jet followed them carefully, summoning all his minor skill and creeping up the path in a nervous silence. He had not returned to his village since that dreadful night, for the ghosts there haunted him with such vigilance that he hardly slept for nightmares. Horned helmets and fire-licked bodies constantly crossed his gaze and he struggled through long hours of meditation to seal such horrors away. Now that he was nearing his bloody home the screams of that night began to repeat in his ears and he flinched. He paused several times on his journey to shake visions of devil-masks from his mind, or – more often – the memory of the glittering blade, glowing pale as the white skin of his mother's neck.
It took three hours to get to the village, and the soldiers never paused once. As they neared the edge of the trees Jet chose a noble oak and resumed his chase from the branches. The squirrels, fearful of the rage in his heart, scuttled from his path and the birds took instant flight. The soldiers, however, noticed nothing of the animal's strange behavior and walked boldly into the ruins of Jet's town. And when Jet laid eyes on his destroyed home, a fit of rage swept over him.
They have taken my family. They have taken my home.
He gripped the branch he crouched on so fiercely that his bare fingers dug through the bark and began to bleed.
This is why you fight.
They had burned the village's temple to the ground, and on top of it a make-shift building had been erected. Military Admirals and Generals were entering and exiting the front door with a casual air, lugging stacks of papers, marked maps, compasses, rulers, and others assorted tools and writing utensils. A General, recognizable from the symbol on his tunic, was huddled at a poorly built wooden table with several of his men, pondering the location of something or other on a half-torn map. Soldiers had taken off their horned helmets and were busy aiding servants and settlers as they carried boxes of nails, barrels of sugar and salt, crates of produce, sacks of flour, planks of thick wood, caged chickens, and other such supplies necessary for the settling of a new area. A fire raged in the midst where the town square had once stood. Jet vaguely remembered a slim, dark-haired female that pushed a pastry cart past that same spot. She was kind and her voice had been soft; often she gave them free candies and sweetened apples. Jet's stomach did a turn as he hands began to tremble. They had killed her, ruthlessly, probably slain her as she opened the door of her house and walked timidly outside. She had never hurt a fly, that woman…
Jet lowered himself from the tree and dropped silently to the ground. The dagger, filled with the flask of poison, lay gleaming in his hand. He would kill them all, he decided. One by one, a swirling terror, a fearsome wraith to deadly to follow…
He was seconds from leaping into the clearing when a scuffle broke out between two soldiers. Apparently, one of them had stolen something of the other's, or some such trivial nonsense. Before Jet could blink an Agni Kai was raging before him.
Jet had never seen such fighting in his life. He had watched Earth bender duel before, had watched the blackbelts perform at festivals – but he had never watched the brutal ferocity of a real Agni Kai, the raw power of real firebending, martial art masters.
It roared in front of him, a devilish dance, limbs spinning and spurting fire that glowed orange and made Jet sweat. Both men were equally enraged and fire licked their sides with ruthless barbarity before flashing towards the equally volcanic opponent. The fight was entrancing: a ritual of strength, agility, passion – and Jet was dazzled by it.
It ended when an Admiral strode between them and cancelled their attacks, screaming at them to get back to work. Grumbling angrily, the men obeyed their superior and walked away, but the impact was no less heavy on the young boy crouched among the trees. The ground was black and ashy, the trees slashed and broken, the rocks blasted so hard that pebbles lined the ground. In that moment, Jet realized exactly what he was up against.
I am fighting devils.
A good fifty men inhabited the settlement and Jet, for the first time in months, subdued his rage and crept back into the forest.
Jet had not been defeated. Never, for as long as the charismatic boy lived, would he admit to defeat. But he admitted, if only to himself, that he stood no chance against so many such men.
He labored, incessantly, in his tree-tops, hacking away at wood with his slim dagger, struggling with all his strength to cut one plank from a tree. His mind flashed often to the heavy carts of wood the Fire Nation was bringing to his town, but he put away such ideas. One boy could have no hope of getting away with a plank of the ghastly heavy wood, not to mention to whole cart. Instead, the outcast spent his days sharpening his dagger and hacking at the stubborn logs, so that slowly – very, very slowly – his fortress in the trees started to shape.
He was constantly hungry, so eventually he resigned to chewing twigs as a supplement for lack of food. As he hacked away at trees with a dagger that was half his arms length, sweating profusely and chewing the bark off his twig, he hammered the thought of his parents into his mind.
It was a constant reminder, a constant pain/
Remember why you fight.
Jet's progress would have been dreadfully slow and tedious, had it not been for several incidents that began the league of his Freedom Fighters.
The first incident happened four months after his village was burned. Tired of hacking at his twentieth plank he stumbled down to a shallow stream that ran a few yards away from the midst of the forest. When he reached the clearing and found the water, frothy and cold, he found something else too.
Jet stepped onto the river bank and heard a twig crack. He spun instinctively, his life now filled with constant paranoia, only to stare into a pair of dark eyes that matched perfectly with his own.
