Tensions ran high the next day. Naturally all of us were scared. But no one hiding like rats with me in this ditch could take all of the enormity at once. War. Real War. Not with trouble makers but with a super power. Was this really happening? Weren't we already at war? The officers were nervous. Koko, Peng, and I started to feel relaxed. We'd trained to fight a real war for our whole adult lives but had the indignity of shooting at children at peasants.

But our enemy was more faceless than we had hoped. They would be content to bombard us with near impunity from the air. Once their attack aircraft finished bombing tactical targets, the gunships would sweep across the land, like stepping on an anthill - unless we could put a stop to it.

"The mission will begin at zero hours tonight. Squads two and three will be laying low and hitting the enemy from the rear after they deploy troops. You'll keep your ears open for orders, and be ready to move from your fighting holes at a moment's notice. My squad is the sexy mission squad. We're gonna be taking this fight to the enemy."

Hei Bai stopped to squirt a glob of sunscreen onto his fingers and rub it into his nose. He then drew his knife and began to scratch his plans in the soil.

"Other than the bombings and the probing infantry attacks, the real air bender offense comes from the airships; the Sovereignty refers to all of their own airships as Appas, and all of their friendly fighters as Momos. They have four types of these air ships: Sanzuwu class bombers, Yanwu class gunships, Jinwu class flying aircraft carriers, and transports. The biggest threat is the bombers and the aircraft carrier escorts. The infantry scout a region. They pick soft targets, and the transports drop hundreds of paratroopers. Once the troops have encircled and defended an area, the gunships sweep across that area like scythes. I plan to board that sky-bison, and turn their own guns against them."

The silence was deafening. Everyone who wasn't one of Hei Bai's heroes was holding their breath. Chang, Koko, and Buno didn't look phased in the slightest.

Someone broke the silence, "how are you gonna do that? Who is going to do that? That's a suicide mission. To pull something like that off, you'd have to be…"

Right on que, Peng strolled into the circle, bent a rock out of the earth, and sat on it.

"…the Oni of Si Wong," some else finished.

Peng licked his lips.

Hei Bai unwrapped a candy bar and began to take bites of it. He continued, "Koko and Peng will be the ones assaulting the gunship, the rest of you are just support. You can call this mission whatever you want. But this mission is happening and you will follow my orders no matter how suicidal you think they are. I don't care what you think of them. It's about time that the Air Nation takes us seriously. Furthermore, PFFFFFFFTT! Pft! Pft! P'!"

"you OK, sir?"

"ah, gross, I got sunscreen in my mouth."

One of the younger soldiers asked. "What is the Oni of Si Wong?"

Everyone turned to stare at him. after an awkward pause, Koko finally answered, "he's a ghost story. A fairy tale. An invisible, unstoppable spec-ops agent of death? It's a story for scaring over-privileged children."

"But why does everyone talk about him? Where did it come from?"

"Here's the story I heard a few years ago," another said. "It was during the sand-bender insurrection. There was a special forces group. Something you wouldn't want to dance with, demon or not, you know what I mean? But on their way out on a mission, things don't go so well. The story always changes but the end is that they all get killed. All of 'em but one. And this guy just goes… nuts! Like just sick with rage. But I think he was just scared, you know. Afraid. But what he does next is the really scary part. He just up and kills all of 'em. The story always gets taller and taller, but at its lowest count that I remember, he goes and kills over a hundred of these insurgents, a good order of them with his bare hands, even.''

"or she," Koko chimed.

"Yeah, or she."

"Sounds like a load of crap to me," says Peng.

"I thought you were gloating about it; not actually a bad reputation to have in the scheme of things, I guess,'' I said to Peng.

"Guess he hasn't told ya. You're the Oni tonight, Hiro."

"What do you mean?"

"You and Koko are taking the airship. They just think that I'm the one going up there. After all, it is a legend right? Doesn't really matter who the Oni is or not. But let's keep this a little spec-ops secret, OK, private?"

"Y-Yes, sir."

We sat in that hole for hours, trying to ignore the heat and the distant sounds of gunfire. Dusk came. Then night. Koko and I got up from the dirt, leaving a puddle of sweat behind us. Stepping out from the camouflage netting, Hei Bai was waiting for us with our equipment. Chiefly, a tandem parachute.

"Can you see that, right above us?" asked Hei Bai. I could not. "It's almost right above us now. But they can't see us either. This will be one for the history books. Good luck."

Hei Bai handed the tandem parachute to Koko and we began to strap ourselves together.

"You know," Koko said as she tightened the parachute harness around her shoulders, "this whole thing could be a suicide mission. I don't trust that Hei Bai isn't just sending us up there to die."

"Because you're an air bender?"

"Yeah."

"maybe Hei Bai doesn't trust you. Why did you decide to stay and fight against the airbenders?"

She paused long enough for me to take in the sounds of the warm summer night. The chirping of the cicadas. The distant rumble and of engines and cannon fire and the thunder. The twinkle of heat lightning and muzzle flash. A very pleasant night for the amount of dying that was about to unfold.

"Because I love my people, but I don't love what my country has done to them. Did you know Tenzin wanted to dissolve the Air nation? He wanted us to be free, even from ourselves. Have you ever seen what life in the Air Nation is like? We're in shambles but our politicians like to distract everyone by roaming around and shooting at every outside problem we see. I want this madness to stop. And I hope that if I stop it here then maybe we can finally fix ourselves. At least that's the spiel of what Hei Bai told me to believe."

"do you believe him."

"I do," she said. "or at least I'm trying, really hard."

I remember once, on a night in a dessert foxhole like this, asking comrade and friend Korah about the Air Sovereignty. "hey Korah! Don't you Air Nomads have any normal folks like me? It's always air benders, air benders, air benders!" Korah laughed.

"You know," Korah said to me, "Back in the day, we all used to be pretty savage. A newborn child was inspected. And if he was discovered not to be a bender, he was cast aside and left to fate. It was cruel, but hey, we didn't have a homeland… we had to stay strong and mobile. We're nomads after all. What're ya gonna do?"

"And what about now?"

"Well of course we don't do that anymore, we're not savages. The gene tests the eggheads have these days, they can tell if a fetus is a going to be a bender or not, and take care of it right there. Painless. Hell, it took my parents two tries before they got it right with me."

I miss him. I miss all of them.

Koko stood up as I approached her. I pressed my back to her as she strapped me into the parachute.

"Now don't get any funny ideas, ya hear?"

"I'll try not to."

Koko took a long, deep breath as she prepared to airbend. She pulled the cord on the chute and whisked us up into the starry moonless sky. A pair of Jians take flight.

We spiraled around on the warm summer air, riding the thermals up and down and up again, waiting for our target. We knew it was out there, somewhere. It was massive but nearly invisible, like a leviathan of the deep. I looked over the horizon to the north and I didn't see it. I didn't see anything; but most of all I didn't see the stars that were there a few seconds ago. That had to be our mark. I turned on my night vision.

There it was! Only three hundred meters away and moving at us fast and oblivious, it had no idea we were here. I signaled to Koko and turned my night vision back off – blasted things give you motion sickness, the field of view is so narrow.

Koko sent us skyward with a blast of wind we swooped up toward the sides of the monster. We had to get close, but had to be even more careful of the propellers that lined the said of the craft. I readied my shotgun as we swept in toward the zeppelin and fired. the grappling hook snaked a coil of rope behind it, arcing through the sky. That half second felt like an eternity. Bull's-eye! Perfect clip right onto the starboard nacelle. I began spooling out the cable so that it would snap taught.

"Hold on!" Koko shouted to me.

The gust of wind caught me off guard as we were slammed into the side of the zeppelin. We rolled over top each other down the side of Kevlar canvas, our eight limbs flailing uselessly and wildy.

"Grab something! Grab something!" one of us shouted. Our parachute had deflated and twisted and dangled as dead weight beneath us. I did everything I could to cling to the side of the zeppelin, but it just wasn't working. And that's just when our parachute decided to untangle itself. We were both violently ripped from the side of the airship, and stopped just as violently. I could barely hear Koko screaming over the sound of the wind rushing over us. I looked behind me at Koko and saw that our chute wasn't even three meters from being sucked into the starboard propeller. I look forward and I could see that the rope was caught and coiled around Koko's legs, nearly twenty meters of loose rope dangling between it and our harness. We had to get Koko's foot free but if that rope slipped off now…

That's it. Time to do something desperate. With a swish of my hand and a jet of flame I severed the parachute from our harness. We swung, upside down, like a pendulum on nearly thirty yards of cable.

"Koko! Are you OK?" my head was starting to go fuzzy from all the blood rushing to it.

"Does it look like I'm OK?"

I tried to reach for the rope, but there was no way I'd ever be able to sit up and reach high enough above Koko's ankle to undo the coil with her weight on our back. Koko wasn't going to like what comes next but it couldn't be help. I reeled in all the cable I could with the electric winch on our harness. I pulled it taught, and then Koko groaned as it pulled our waists up to her heel, tightening the rope around her ankle from both ends. The pain must have been unbearable, but now I finally had enough purchase to reach above her ankle. I could grab the rope, but there still wasn't enough slack for me to undo the coil. I was out of options. Above me I could hear the guns of the air ship had just started firing on Jian soldiers and villages. So I did the only thing I could. I clutched the rope as tightly as I could with my right and with my left, I severed it beneath her ankle.

The two of us whipped violently back and forth as our bodies righted themselves. My arm felt like it was going to explode. I was grateful for having a ninety pound girl on my back instead of, Rhava forbid, Buno.

"Koko! Clip the end of the cable into the winch right now or we're toast!"

"I can't!" she said. "There's not enough slack!"

Hand over hand, I pulled the two of us higher and higher up the rope. I stopped us when Koko had about half a meter to work with. She fumbled for a few seconds as she tried to feed the rope through the auto-gri-gri that should couldn't see. It probably didn't help that we were vibrating thanks to violent shaking in my arms. They felt like they were going to explode.

koko gasps, "I did it!"

I let go of the rope and my heart skipped a beat as the harness caught us. For the next five minutes, the two of us simply hung from the cable, saying nothing.

After collecting myself, I flicked the switch on the winch and we whorled our way up to the cable to the Airship's nacelle. As we reached the top I noticed my grappling hook was only a centimeter or so from coming undone. It took me a minute, but I managed to slice through the exterior with a jet of flame. Mustering all the strength we had, Koko and I pulled ourselves inside, tumbling into the empty maintenance corridor. We rolled over, unclipped ourselves from each other, and slumped up against the aluminum pipes.

"Are you OK, Koko?"

"Check my leg"

I rolled up her pant-leg and applied pressure. She winced in pain. Lots of swelling.

"strained ankle, broken fibula. Can you complete the mission?"

"yeah, I'll be fine. Thanks for asking, jerk."

"We got a long night ahead of us yet."

The two of us popped open the maintenance hatch that connected this corridor to the rest of the airship. Taking point, I rounded the corner into the fire control center; three air benders, each sitting in a chair at their stations. I relaxed: they couldn't see us or hear us. Tubes ran from the console to their mouths, supplying them with oxygen and water. Fiber optic cable ran from the console to their eyes, so they'd never have to be disturbed by turbulence when looking through their gun sights. Hoses ran from the console to their groins, so that they'd never have to leave their chairs. Wires ran from the console to their ears, so they'd only hear the radio communication from the rest of the crew. Completely closed off from the outside world, this is how the eggheads say all warriors will fight in the future. I wonder if this is the future of the rest of us, too.

I draw my little snub-nosed revolver and attach the suppressor. It's got a cylinder that meshed together to make a seal when it fires, so no little casings go flying out and making noise, either. Pop! Pop! Pop! I shot each of them through the skull and pried them from their chairs. Koko and I then raced as fast as we could to the bridge. With a gust of air she blew down the door. I'm sure you understand how this little song and dance goes by now.

"Loaders are gonna start wondering why the guns aren't firing anymore," Koko said. "Get down there fast, I'll take over the bridge for now."

Koko and I moved with purpose to the gun deck. All she had to do this time was simply knock on the door. It opened right up, and the air benders inside were met with a staccato of Koko's burp gun. As she limped back to the bridge, I topped off the rounds in the ammo hoppers and then made way to the fire control station and strapped myself in. I attached the fiber optic lenses to my eyes and my head throbbed as my vision was filled with radiant green snow. I adjusted the tracking and dialed in the resolution until a green and black image began to materialize. Was it the ground? Yeah I think so. I swiveled the gun around and checked the loading: forty millimeter, high explosive incendiary. Not bad.

"Look east," Koko said over the radio. "I'm bringing a pair of zeppelins to you. Hold your fire till I give the order."

I felt the zeppelin I was in begin to lurch and turn on its new course.

"Come in Durga one. Why have you broken formation? Is something wrong?"

"Go for the aircraft carrier first, so it can't sortie," Koko said. "then we go for the bomber."

I aimed my cannon at the airship and zoomed in. at one kilometer away, it was like the eraser on the tip of a pencil held at arm's length; close range for the kind of weaponry we were using.

"Now!"

The tracers arced through the sky like the steaming tails of a kite. Even through the blurry monochromatic optics I could see the other airship erupt in flames, lurching around in confusion before nose diving into the ground.

The radio channel exploded next. Screams and panic and interrogatives. The bomber began to break formation before I opened fire, but a lucky round found its way to the bombers magazine. For a moment, my optics stop working, completely whited out from the conflagration. Several seconds later our gunship rolls back and forth from the shockwave. There's nothing left but atoms.

"We're ground pounding now." Koko's voice cracks over the radio. "got 'bout twenty minutes till aircraft show up and swat us."

I can see and feel Koko changing the zeppelin's course again. We're gliding over farmland in the dead of night. Over two kilometers away I can see flashes of guns like fireflies. One kilo closer I can see houses as clear as day. I wonder if they can see me. I wonder if they can even hear me. I check to make sure it's the enemy and not friendlies, but you can never be one hundred percent sure. I cross my fingers and pull the trigger. There's a pause and the rounds seem to hang in the air. And then those fireflies are drowned in a miniature sun. the blast splashes like water as droplets of incendiary jelly splatter all around. For the next half a minute, the airbenders don't dare shoot at the other side of the fight. One of them does dare break the ceasefire and I dump round after round onto his position.

On to the next fight. The gunships swings around and we head to the next location. Koko sets the ship to autopilot and comes to join me as we slowly drift across the battlefield. Our tracers streak like comets across the void, reaching out to tear apart people that can't even see us, that can't even fight back. In the span of minutes we're killing dozens. But we've only been here for minutes. the crew that we killed had been doing this for hours. Think of all the soldiers that fight wars. All the bravery and acts of heroism. When they die it's not face to face with some enemy at some disputed barricade. It's in a state of confusion, killed by an enemy miles away. Since its invention, the majority of soldiers to die in combat have been killed in by artillery.

But even then, in the end it is boot on the ground, not bombs that win the war. You can blast all the people to bits, but you need people of your own to hold the land you've laid to waste. I don't pretend to be better than those bombs – I see that even clearer now that I'm the one dropping them. I don't pretend to be better than the boots either. In spite of all our actions and antics tonight, I realize even more clearly that people like me do not win wars or battles, just try to tip them into someone's favor. If war's used to have 'Heroes,' I can tell you that they don't anymore and if they did I'm not one of them.

"I see tanks down there!" Koko says. "I'm switching to the big cannon. You know what to do."

I unstrapped myself ran down to the gun deck.

Thwump!

With every shot the 105mm gun kicks like an elephant-mule. With every shot I heft a twenty pound shell into the gun and slide it on in the breach, going elbow deep.

Thwump!

There's a rhythm to it that picks up the more you do it it

Thwump!

Heft, fist, step way back,

Thwump!

The pace of Koko and our grotesque love making picks up.

Thwump!

I trust Koko enough to know that she's hitting whatever she's shooting at.

Thunk!

The jolt sent me stumbling over off balance. That wasn't a thwump that was –

The impact struck me so fast I didn't even know I had been hit. By the time I felt the pain of being struck by over five hundred kilos buck backwards at ten meters a second, I was on the other side of the room.

"Koko! Were we jus – "

"Yes!" she shouted, "get up here on the guns, now!"

As I limped up off the ground I gasped for breath, and with each breath came a sharp, unstoppable pain. It doesn't Burn, nor does it sting or ache. The pain of broken bones is very unique sort of misery.

But I fought against the pain with every step. Every second counted. I collapsed into the chair next to Koko.

"Two fighters on us," Koko said as I switched to the anti-aircraft guns.

Tracers scratched their way into the night sky, arcing past the plane as it banked back around towards us. I missed. Koko waited patiently and then fired when she knew she would hit. A stream of red erupted from her turret, licking the fighter as it past us.

"Where's the other one? Where's the other one?"

"Lost track of it," I said.

And that's when the rockets hit us, and we loss half of our gas bladders.

For what it's worth, I saw the streaks of lead belching from koko's gun tear the wing of the responsible fighter clean off.

She ripped the goggles from both of our faces as she erupted from the chair.

"We're losing altitude. Suit up and get us some lift, now!"

Shrugging off the pain in my ribs I limped along the corridor the maintenance section of the airship. The radio cackled to life, "Hei Bai, it's Koko. We're coming down hard and need an extract. Stand by for coordinates…"

I put the heat-proof suit on and strapped it tight. I looked like I was some sort of deep sea diver wrapped in tinfoil. It kept all the heat out but it sure kept the heat in, too. I clumsily climbed the ladder in my suit to the airship's gas bladders. they had an airlock for maintenance. And I climbed inside. Breathing off of my regulator, every single raspy metallic breath I took was deafening. That's what I thought, until the airlock closed and hissed as it swapped out my air for the gas-bladder's mix of nitrogen and helium. I could feel the nose of the airship begin to tilt downward… could this airlock pressurize any slower?

"Hiro!" my headset radio screamed in my ear, "we're falling to fast and starting to lose buoyancy in the nose, you gotta get that gas bladder heated up in temperature. I think the arcing element is busted."

With a heavy clunking sound the inner airlock door swung open and I stumbled into the gas bladder. Sure enough the oversized spark plug was out of alignment. These suits were also supposed to conduct electricity around your body to protect you from something like that, but I'm not sure I trusted getting too close to it. One option left, I guess, and it wasn't going to be fun. I took off my glove and arced lighting from my fingertips into the receiving end of the spark gaps.

"Whatever you're doing's working… hold on!"

My feet buckled as she steered the airship with a gust of wind.

"brace yourself!"

In her defense she tried her best. The huge blast of wind pushed off the ground to cushion us, but that didn't stop the blimp from slamming into the ground and sent me bouncing around the gas bladder. Any landing you can limp away from is a good one, I guess.

"Hiro!" Koko shouted, "Are you OK?"

Couldn't talk with this respirator in my mouth. Had to get out fast… There was a rupture in the side of one of the bladders leading to the corridor. I squeezed and struggled through it only to get out just as the airlock door depressurized and opened. Figures.

As I stumble my way through the corridor and the gaping hole in the airship that leads outside, I pull my helmet off my face.

"Koko!" I shout.

"I'm right here!" I hear from a few meters away. I turn to look at her, and suddenly I'm blinded by a pair of hi-beams.

I Fall to the ground deaf and dumb and blind as the machinegun on top of the truck opens fire. The supersonic booms of the bullets going next to my face explode in my ears. As far as I know, I'm somehow not dead.

"Watch behind you, moron!"

A familiar voice… Peng?

I looked behind and saw the ventilated body of the Airbender that was about to shoot us.

"Give us a head up next time, for Yue's sake!" Koko said.

"You can complain about it later," Hei-Bai this time. "Just get in the car"

Hei Bai swung the armored car around next to use and the door popped open to Chang's friendly face with an outstretched arm. We climbed inside just as the bullets began to ping against our steel.

I didn't think he'd do it. Koko definitely didn't think he'd do it. But here he was. Here we all were. In a tin can bouncing up and down over the countryside, over ten kilometers deep in enemy territory. And now racing back to the friendlies as fast as we could. Koko might not have trusted Hei Bai and to be fair I had some slight doubts too, but I hadn't trusted Peng. He could have shot me on 'accident' any time he wanted to and probably wouldn't have had to admit it was an 'accident.' Could have just as easily claimed it was the enemy. But he didn't shoot me. As a matter of fact he saved my life. I guess I owe him a favor right now.

His heavy roof machinegun is still chugging along. The only thing that matches the sound of it firing is the sound of the incoming rounds striking our armor. It's rather deafening and violent, even when we're safe. If you want to get the idea of what it sounds like, take a tin and fill it with glass marbles of various size and weight. Now hold that tin can up over your head as high as you can, and slowly dump the contents into an empty ceramic toilet bowl. That should sound about right. On top of that sound was Hei Bai's driving, bouncing and swerving at full speed as I tried to escape. The most dangerous part of a mission is always extraction. As safe as we were from bullets, if a single rocket hit us we'd be vaporized in an instant. But that didn't concern me right now. That was out of my control. If it happens, it happens – maybe there was something to Buno's fatalistic hippy talk after all. So given the circumstances I did the only thing I could. The one thing that soldier's learn to do best. Not even the pain in my ribs could stop me. I fell into the deepest sleep of my life.