Jet was breathing hard, struggling to gain composure, his shoulders shaking visibly beneath his shirt. His right arm was wrapped in a bloody shred of gray fabric, the wound still fresh and pulsing. There was a cut beneath his right eye but he paid no heed to either of the wounds. He was furious, wrathful, his eyes raging with dark fires of unquenchable anger.
"This is what happens," he snarled viciously. Then his fists clenched and he thrashed violently through the air, repeating it through a scream.
"THIS IS WHAT HAPPENS."
The children trembled before his rage, knowing full well that he was absolutely right. And that, of course, meant they had been absolutely wrong.
The were sitting in a clearing beneath a maze of tree-top houses, cowering from Jet's anger, trembling from what they had done. They could not look at each other; they were terrified and ashamed, weighted with so much sudden guilt it was impossible to feel anything but dejection. Longshot was leaning against a tree, an arrow twirling lightly in his hand, his gaze smoldering above a blood-stained shirt. Jet roared, spun, and slammed his fist into a tree, his eyes flooding with tears. The children across from him winced and began to cry.
Lying delicately on the earth between them lay the fresh, burned corpse of a ten-year-old girl.
It had been one year, almost exactly, since Jet's meeting with the stray children. The transfer had not been easy - but it was the smartest thing Jet had ever done. Several children disliked Pipsqueak's decision to follow this dark, fearsome boy with the captivating eyes (including the girl Jet had interrogated) but majority ruled in favor of this new leader. Even at their young age they sensed the great cunning and intellect of this superior, and - though his motives were never fully understood by the children - the idea of heroism was too tempting to their imaginations. Seldom did these toddlers think of revenge, for it was a concept foreign to them and incomprehensible - but for Jet, it was his basic code of life.
The desire for repentance consumed Jet, spurred him to dispense judgement, devoured him with the thought of bloody revenge, threatened insanity whenever he closed his eyes. Of all the children only Longshot had the vaguest idea of Jet's bordering bloodlust, and even he believed him to be a knight for good. Jet hid his emotion well - so well, in fact, that sometimes he himself forgot it.
The presence of other children, for example, seemed to silence his rage, if only for a short while. He took up, once again, the games he and his friends had played; games long forgotten in his months of solitude, games he had tried to give up after bloody murderers and terrifying Agni Kai's. He played endless tournaments of Hide and Seek with the toddlers in the evenings; he passed peaceful hours carving animals from wood with Longshot; he dripped Leechy Nut juice into the girls hair with Sneers. For brief moments Jet had the ignorant freedom of the eleven-year old boy he was meant to be; freedom that, when it all added up in the end, came at an unbearable price.
He immediately began instructing them on ways of stealth and cunning; things of which he still knew little, but was avidly learning. Each day the children were required to creep as close to the Fire Nation settlement as possible without drawing any attention to themselves. Jet himself could walk up behind an Admiral unseen, for he had often haunted the place and stolen food when the soldier's backs were turned. The other children, however, were unskilled in such matters and Jet was quite often driven to madness with their incessant failure. Little by little, though, they became better; and little by little, they began to realize the enormous weight of their new lifestyle.
Food came first. A slightly older boy named Tushur contributed the idea of setting traps for animals - something that, had they the materials, would have worked. Unfortunately, they did not have the materials. But the Fire Nation did.
Sneers, always in search of food, discovered one crisp autumn day that a squirrel had abandoned its Leechy Nuts for some obscure and unknown reason. Overjoyed at his discovery, he leapt upon them with his empty stomach growling. To his immediate dismay, gravity took away his snack and left him hanging twenty feet above the forest floor, ensnared in an iron cage.
Eventually, Jet sent a search party and they found him, very forlorn looking, among the branches. They were hesitant to cut him loose since it was such a hilarious joke, but - in the end - Longshot raised his heavy bow (which he had been practicing with day-in and day-out) and cut him loose. They took Sneers back to camp, as well as the trap, which was quickly put to use and provided them with a much better fare than handfuls of nuts.
The events which led to the girl's death were marked chiefly by the sudden rapid success and growing skill of each child as they developed into the silent, cunning league of Freedom Fighters. Among them, the girl - Mayia - whom Jet had fancied as a rival, was, soon enough, becoming just that.
There were no weapons besides Jet's dagger and Longshot's bow, but this deficiency was soon remedied. Gathering his best thieves - Sneers, Pipsqueak, and Longshot - he traveled to the ruins of his village, curbing the screams of his mother that threatened to echo in his ears.
It was the dead of night and the camp was eerily silent. A fire was crackling near a wooden house, built by the soldiers and now inhabited by Fire Nation civilians. Snores crept through tents and houses every now and then, but this only lowered Jet's suspicion of their awakening. He had made a pact with himself to kill at least two of Fire Nation before leaving again, something he often did on missions such as these; it made him feel stronger, it made him feel like the righteous redeemer of lost lives. For as long as he lived, he would never look on one of Fire Nation without hatred - and in these early years, still subject to his emotions, he temper was most dangerous.
Longshot abruptly tapped his shoulder as they neared the clearing and pointed behind them. His pale face was emotionless, but Jet could practically read his thoughts by now and his eyes fell behind him with faint anger.
"I told you all to wait at camp!" he hissed angrily. Situated in the shadows, almost all of the others had assembled in a collective group, and they were being none too quiet. One of the children burped loudly and Pipsqueak, sensing Jet's fury, clapped a hand across his mouth. At the head of all the children stood Mayia, grinning.
"You need more help. Weapons are heavy, and it'll be more sufficient to have one trip and get all of them out, than to have many trips and risk discovery," she snapped quietly, glaring at Jet with equal wit. Jet felt like snarling but knew it would be bad for his reputation.
Remember why you fight. She is your ally. She is trying to help.
"If we send to many in, it will be too noisy," he said lowly, watching the camp with rising uneasiness. "And I told you to stay and work on those rope ladders. If we carry out all the weapons at once, they'll be suspicious. A few at a time would be best. Go back."
The girl glared at him through the darkness, her eyes glinting.
"No. We want to be in on the fun too."
Jet hissed between his teeth and Longshot reached instinctively for his arrow. Behind them, a man had come out of the house and was crouching in front of the fire. The red light glinted faintly off of his armor-plated chest.
"I said, go back," he said. His voice was even, but it carried a hint of threat. "You made me your leader. Now do what I say."
Mayia huffed indigently. Indigently, and loudly. The man at the fire paused and slowly looked in their direction. They were still shadowed by the darkness, but the small children were now making a rustle, fidgeting wildly from anxiety. The man stood slowly and began to walk towards them, hand lit to flame.
Jet felt Longshot's hand on his shoulder and sensed his urgency. Spinning, he looked wildly through the trees and saw the dark form approaching them. Cursing, he nodded to Longshot, who strung the arrow to his bow. This was a rule made between them long months ago; if an enemy got too close to either of them, kill it. No questions, no captives.
"Go back. Now," he snarled, so softly she barely caught his words. Mayia, still set on rivaling Jet's unabated and unquestioned power, hissed and began to talk very loudly, not noticing the soldier.
"You can't treat us this way, we deserve to have a say in the things that go on! How do we know you won't dictate over us -"
"You made me your leader! You said you would trust my decisions! You vowed to follow me!"
"You're not a good leader - !"
She leapt towards Jet, but Jet saw it coming and swung to the side just in time. Her foot caught his and they fell, simultaneously, into the dirt. Mayia grabbed desperately at forwards and grappled Longshot's shoulder; his fell heavily as his arm pulled back with a mighty snap, his arrow soaring into the sky. It landed, heavy and hard, at the feet of the soldier.
Jet saw it out of the corner of his eye and cursed again. Shoving Mayia away from him, he leapt desperately from the hedge and sped towards him. The soldier had a moment before the whirling wraith was upon him; but in that moment, he sealed their fate. With that one terrible word, Jet knew he couldn't hope to win.
"Ambush!"
Jet pulled the dagger from his throat but it was too late. A bell, somewhere afar off, started to ring. Jet started to run but nearly stumbled at the sound of it. It was a clear, merry ring, as though it was calling in an evening mass or wedding guests. It was beautiful, piercing, and altogether deadly. And jet recognized it, in all its terrible and wonderful glory.
It was the bell of his Temple.
The Temple they had burned.
The town they had burned.
My family.
His eyes fell on the dead body of the soldier and he roared. Soldiers, running from their tents with flaming palms, heard it and shook. For a long while after that night, the rumor of a forest demon lingered among the people, spawned from Jet's furious roar. He was ripped with guilt, consumed with wrath, maddened by the sudden desire for revenge. The first soldier to near the dead body fell hard and viciously, screaming his death cry into a pair of demonic, dark eyes.
Jet killed two more soldiers in a row, hidden under the shadow of night, before he was hit. Whirling upon his third offender, he rammed the dagger ruthlessly through the man's temple, only to feel a searing pain etch across his arm. With his last gasp the demon had slid an identical dagger through the Jet's arm, and the boy howled and toppled, bleeding, to the earth. He lay there for a moment, unused to the pain, but almost instantly convinced himself to ignore it. He staggered from the ground with his bloody dagger, only to look up into the face a another devil. His face reared with flame, his head wreathed in smoke, his eyes burning like live coals. Jet had only an instant before the hard iron of the man's armored glove slashed across his face.
The ground met his face with a bolt of absolute torture. Jet coughed up dirt and struggled to his feet as the man lit his hand and prepared the deadly blow.
A great, heavy stone hit the back of his head and toppled forward towards a strange, pale boy with an arrow in his hand. The arrow found home in his heart and Longshot winced as the blood spurted forwards onto his clothes.
Pipsqueak - who had grown sufficiently in the last few months and was now taking on the appearance of his massive father - dropped the rest of his rocks and helped Jet to his feet. Mayia stood beside him and struggled to aid her wounded leader.
"I am sorry Jet, I -"
"Go!" he roared. His anger was too complete for them to subdue, his fury beyond words. He was glaring at her with a hatred he had before saved for the Fire Nation, a hatred that threatened both her life and his own. "You want so badly to be leader? Go! Take everyone back to camp. NOW."
She lost her balance, caught by his sudden wrath, and half-crawled towards the woods. Jet and Pipsqueak followed her, with Longshot spouting arrows behind them. The devils were advancing, though they knew not what they were fighting. The disaster, of course, came soon enough.
Jet, preoccupied with his fury and pain, did not see it until it was too late. Most of the children had already begun running back to camp, and Mayia was ushering the few who had stayed behind. A firebender - highly ranked, if the symbol on his chest proved true - leapt past the dark boy, who was still curtained by shadows. Mayia was yelling loudly an clearly visible, careless and ignorant, and Jet knew it.
He tore the dagger from its sheath and ran from Pipsqueak, yelling towards Mayia. She turned and her eyes grew wide.
Jet knew that moment. It was the moment when time stopped, when all life ceased to breathe. Sound lost its potency; screams were mute, and everything played out like a silent painting of moving color. Mayia's eyes grew wide, grew tearful. They were glistening from the fire's light, from the red heat of the demon's laughter...
The same way the blade had glistened in his mother's eyes.
Jet reached out and thrust his dagger into the soldier, sobbing. Then he pulled the blade back, let it glisten, and plunged it back into his unresisting, unholy, demonic body. The knife ripped his flesh twelve times before Pipsqueak could pull Jet away.
"This is what happens when you don't follow orders," he snarled, pulling his knuckles from the bark. His skin was torn viciously, but he was already riddled with cuts and he didn't very well care. Longshot was gazing out beneath the shade of his hat.
"She's DEAD," he roared. Several children jumped at this statement and trembled violently. Jet was too furious to care for there feelings, too furious to care for their conscience, too furious to care about anything.
"Do you know why she's dead?" he yelled, pointing accusingly at the charred body. "Do you know why? Because of you! Because you made me your leader, and you didn't listen to me! This is what happens when you don't follow orders! Remember this! Remember why you follow me! Remember the Fire Nation! Remember why you fight!"
He gestured wildly towards the children and they shrunk away. Jet stood silent for a moment, bringing his thoughts into line. His heart was beating wildly in his chest, fueled by his confusion, fueled by his grief, fueled by the slaughter. He turned away from them all and left them to stare at her hideous body.
He felt a tapping on his arm and spun fiercely. The little boy shrank away, but he had been toughened by his new life and did not run. Jet glared at him until he stuttered his.
"We - we will n-never disobey you again, J-Jet."
The girl's little brother was gazing up at him, his eyes shining with unwept tears. Jet softened slowly at the sight and bent down onto his knees. He gazed at the boy for a long time.
"What is your name?"
The little boy sniffed. His cheeks were labeled with identical twin lines, painted in red paste. His bushy brown hair fell thick about his eyes and he had a lean, almost snakelike quality.
"Bi Lin...but Mayia used to call me SmellerBee."
Jet swallowed as he finished carving the Earth kingdom symbol into the oak wood. Beneath his breathe he chanted a prayer of thanksgiving - the same one he had chanted the night Fire Nation attacked - and thrust the point of the stick into the ground above the girl's grave. It was the only prayer he knew, and he hoped it would suffice the Earth Spirit into laying the girl's soul to rest.
The children had dispersed to their usual tasks, doing everything possible to keep their mind off of the tragedy. There was no time for sorrow, no time for grief. They had finally realized the consequences of fighting, the consequences of heroism, the consequences of disobedience. Jet alone stared at the grave, emptying himself of any and all emotion. He could not become emotional. He could not relent to grief. He could only reap repentance. For her, for his family, for the lives lost to the devils that lived beyond the trees.
Remember why you fight.
He felt a familiar tug at his wrist and turned to see SmellerBee. His eyes were red from crying and Jet struggled to keep his emotions in check.
"It's ok. She's gone to join the Earth Spirit..."
"That's not it, Jet," whispered the boy quietly. His eyes darted to the grave constantly, but he was taking after his leader's example and hiding his sorrow. "We want to say sorry. We got you something. It was the only thing we got from the soldier's camp."
Longshot, Pipsqueak, and Sneers stepped forward and Jet hesitated. The little boy turned to the pale-faced archer and held out his hands as though receiving a precious gift. Longshot relented and handed him a long, thin bundle, with the word "For Jet" scribbled on its packaging. SmellerBee handed it to him with a soft, hopeful smile, and Jet took it, bewildered.
The wrapping fell away and Jet stared at the gleaming metal, the breathtaking precision, the sudden arc of a razor hook. He gripped each handle with trembling fingers and twirled them in a flash of sudden glamor; the blades made a snapping noise as they hissed through the air and he returned them to a stationary post.
He smiled at SmellerBee, still gripping the Twin Tiger-Head Hook Swords, and knelt down to his knee again. He placed one sword upon the ground and reached to his side, pulling out the Fire Nation dagger. Without a word, he handed it to him.
Jet stood up and SmellerBee stared hungrily at the knife. Then the two looked at each other for a long moment. Jet, straight and tall, his red tunic littered with shreds of armor, his eyes piercing dark from behind his black hair, the shadows embracing him like his own personal Spirit guardians. And SmellerBee, his eyes drying and turning to black, the snaked dagger twisting in his eager palm, his hair clouding his face in a mirror of Jet's own.
Jet put a hand on his shoulder while Longshot looked on, ever silent and loyal. Pipsqueak closed his eyes and looked downwards in quiet prayer and Sneers sniffed sadly. SmellerBee felt Jet's hand and clenched the dagger tightly.
"I will always remember," he whispered.
