[A/N] Another chapter in Eiko's adventures is here!
I've been thinking of making a Dreamworks Dragons fic but I'm not really sure what the plot would be. Maybe the first movie? I'll workshop it.
As always, Enjoy!
As she began slowly began lose herself in the comforting motions of earthbending, her mind couldn't help but return to that strange firebender. She was one of the first opponents in a while to give the earthbending prodigy a challenge in a long time and she couldn't help but look forward to their next battle.
Little did she know that miles away, Eiko was thinking the exact same thing.
Eiko hadn't been lying to Toph when she said she had other contracts to take care of. One of the perks of being one of the most well known bounty hunters in the Earth Kingdom was an abundance of people willing to pay for her services. Her contracts mostly came from high ranking government officials, some old man wanting to hide an affair before his wife found out, a worried noble family wanting her to find their missing child, that sort of thing.
When she received the contract to hunt the Avatar, she already had three pending contracts at the time. She figured since the Fire Nation had paid her so handsomely, she'd put the other contracts on hold for a time while she attempted to capture him.
The most time sensitive of her contracts she had already dealt with, a noble's son had been kidnapped and she was tasked with finding him and bringing him home. Short and simple. It hadn't taken long to find the boy, young adult really, and convince him to return to his family. Apparently he had become smitten with a village girl he had met while traveling with his family and was going to elope with her. A simple suggestion to have him hire her at his families estate solved that problem relatively quickly.
She was on her way to her next contract when she was asked to meet with Xing and was given the contract for the Avatar. Normally she wouldn't hold a contract for so long but they paid half up front and well, money talks.
She figured she'd go and capture the airbender, bring him to the closest Fire Nation outpost, collect her pay, and go on to the next contract. Quick and simple. Only it wasn't, her second contract had moved on by the time she found the Avatar and now she was playing catchup, not that she really minded but still.
To be fair, she hadn't been expecting an earthbender of such caliber to have joined the Avatar's group.
Eiko's mouth curled into a wide smile as she recalled the battle she and Toph had in that small abandoned town. The earthbender had done a splendid job in keeping up with her, even catching the bounty hunter off guard a few times over the course of their fight. In fact, the blind girl had done something few others had been able to do in her years of bounty hunting.
Made her try.
Most other earthbenders Eiko faced were all the same. Standing in one place and chucking rocks at her in an attempt to defeat her and acting shocked when she simply dodged. Sure, some earthbenders switched it up now and again, the Dai Li of Ba Sing Se liked to cover their hands in stone gloves and shoot them at their foes in an attempt to capture them, but the core principle remained the same, throwing rocks.
Toph was different though, while other earthbenders made walls in an attempt block her fire, the blind girl made ramps to deflect the flames. Where other earthbenders simply threw boulders in hopes to catch her nimble form, Toph made spikes directly under her to trap her in their clutches, Where others panicked when faced with Eiko's jian, Toph created armor in an attempt to fight her directly, something she had never seen before.
Eiko shuddered slightly, grin widening as she had a thought. If Toph was capable of giving her such a fight, what would the other members of her group be capable of? She had heard that there was a waterbending master on in the group. Not only that, she was from the Southern Water Tribe, Eiko had never fought a waterbender from the south as they had been wiped out years ago. A pity really, Eiko always wondered how their fighting style differed from their northern brethren.
Not only that, but there was apparently also a nonbender in the group. Some might not find this very impressive, but some of Eiko's toughest fights had been against nonbenders. Without bending to fall back on, nonbenders had to get creative with their fighting techniques in order to effectively combat their bending brethren. This usually led to unorthodox fighting styles meant to take people off guard and use their surprise to end the battle quickly. Eiko remembered a woman who used a thorned whip of all things, to devastating effect. She still had the scars on her arm from where she hadn't been careful enough and paid the price for it.
That wasn't even mentioning the Avatar himself. Young he may be, he was still allegedly an airbending master. Eiko had always wanted to fight an airbender but never had the chance because a hundred years ago, the Firelord had decided he didn't want another Avatar running around and committed genocide in an attempt to prevent one from being born by breaking the cycle of reincarnation. An attempt that had failed of the bald monk running around was any indication. Oh well, that just meant Eiko would have the chance of fighting not only an airbender, but one who could use all four elements.
She may have agreed to let Toph purchase her services if she gave Eiko a good enough fight, but that didn't mean she couldn't battle the others for fun. They could treat it like a sparring exercise, they did those right? Of course they did, there's no way they had survive this long without at least practicing their techniques. When Toph paid her, she'd simply ask to join the rigorous sparring sessions they no doubt often had.
Eiko sighed happily as she thought of the battles that awaited her in the future. She couldn't wait.
A sharp cry broke her from her thoughts. She looked up and spotted Helios diving down towards her, she held out her arm and the dragon hawk landed on it with a fluttering of his massive wings.
"Find our target?" she asked, giving him a little scratch on the crest under his beak. Helios trilled happily, nodding an affirmative as his master him attention. Eiko grinned viciously.
Her current target was a deserter from the Earth Kingdom military. Normally, this wouldn't be anything new, the Earth Kingdom had a bad habit of conscripting soldiers from towns that had been mistreated by their government officials, either by embezzling funds meant to go to the town's infrastructure or simply by being bad at their jobs. Either way, this inevitably led to deserters, something that was nothing new to the armies of the Earth Kingdom.
Normally this would be handled by the army itself as they had a unit specifically dedicated to handling deserters, usually conscripts unhappy with their circumstances. They would find them, bring them back, and reprimand them in the form of vastly lowered rations and daily beatings. This was usually effective in lowering the chances of desertion and a conscript was unlikely to desert again after being subjected to the punishments.
The deserter she had been tasked with finding wasn't a simple conscript however, he was a captain.
Military ranks in the Earth Kingdom were mostly linear, owing to the fact that they barely had a navy. From ranks lowest to highest it went; Conscript, Private, Corperal, Captain and finally, General. A conscript could normally raise their rank to coperal through years of exemplary service but rarely if ever made it to captain. Captains worked in duos under a general to command a squadron of soldiers over a fifty men strong. They answered to nobody but their general and the Earth King himself. They rarely ever deserted and when they did, they normally did so alone.
The man they were after, Captain Hua, apparently didn't get the memo as when he deserted, he did so with sixteen conscripts, three privates, and a corperal.
Hua's plan was actually clever from a tactical standpoint. After a victorious battle in which there were next to no losses, he and a few of his men who were in on the plan, offered to make the camp a celebratory dinner. It was practically unheard of that a captain would be willing to make dinner for his men so everybody was immediately on board, thinking that it was a reward for doing so well in the battle earlier that day.
Soon after everyone ate their fill however, they began to notice a their eyes and limbs growing heavy with fatigue. Most simply chalked this up to being exhausted from the battle and simply went in for an early night, never to wake up again.
Hua's fellow captain, Jin, was more cautious. She believed Hua was acting suspicious and never ate a bite of the meal he had prepared, so when Hua along with several of his closest men loaded up a cart with enough supplies for several days, she attempted to stop him, correctly believing he was deserting. Their battle apparently lasted for several minutes, during which they both accrued numerous injuries, with Hua breaking his arm and Jin her leg. Hua emerged victorious however, slaying his fellow captain and fleeing into the night with his men.
Several days later, when an patrol from another company found the camp, they were met with the bodies of men and women dead in their beds and a captain buried alive. Further searching of the camp revealed the missing supplies, the herbs used to poison the food, and the other captain nowhere to be found, the patrol immediately alerted the nearest high ranking official of what had occurred. Eiko received the contract from her informant several days later on the way to meet with Xing in the middle of nowhere.
The contract stated that Hua and his men had committed treason against the crown by murdering their fellows and were to be executed, leaving the method to the bounty hunter taking the contract. Normally Eiko wouldn't take a contract like this, finding extermination contracts distasteful, but nothing boiled her blood like a traitor so she took it, happy to hunt down a man who would so easily betray those who trusted him with their lives.
It only took a few days to find his location, only a few miles away from the abandoned town where she had fought Toph, and after a few hours travel, she was nearly upon him.
According to Helios, Hua was camped in a clearing a few minutes into the forest away from the main road. He most likely chose that spot believing that bandits would be easy to spot if they happened upon his camp. Unfortunately for him, he was about to deal with something much worse than a measly bandit.
After a few minutes of trudging through the forest, Eiko came upon the camp, multiple green tents surrounding a campfire. She climbed a nearby tree in order to better observe the camp, grinning as she spotted her target.
Hua was a mildly unnimpressive man, somewhat owing to the fact his arm was still in a sling, but also owing to his generally unimpressive stature. He was a short and stocky man, standing about five foot six. He had a patchy grey beard that looked more akin to a molerat that had decided to take up residence on his face. He was wearing a short sleeved version of the standard Earth Kingdom uniform, his leathery skin was covered in bruises that had yet to heal, most likely leftovers from his fight with Captain Jin.
Also around the camp were several men and women she assumed to be a part of Hua's former company, seventeen in total, fewer than was stated on the contract but that could be chalked up to losses or those simply away from the camp. A moment of scrutiny revealed that most of them were likely nonbenders, as only two wore the attire most earthbenders were known for. Eiko grinned, that would make her plan easier.
Eiko turned to Helios, "I need you to hang out above the treeline just in case of reinforcements. I'll let you know when it's safe to come down." She raised her arm and he took off with a beat of his massive wings, leaving Eiko alone to enact her plan.
She situated her self in the tree until she could stand on one of it's thicker branches. Taking a moment to gather her chi, she breathed deeply and offered a small prayer to the spirits. Extending her right hand in front of her, she focused on the wispy feeling she had come to grow used to over the course of her life.
After a small moment of focusing, smoke began gathering in her palm, condensing and becoming a ball the size of a walnut, it quivered slightly as if asking to be released. Eiko held it there for a moment, before sending it flying forth at an immense speed. It shot towards the center of the camp, impacting unnoticed against the fire burning in the hand dug pit.
There was a moment where nothing happened before the outer layer of the smoke ball burst. Immediately, smoke began spreading in every direction, quickly overtaking shocked soldiers and green tents until it finnaly stopped at the edges of the camp, held there by some unseen force. In a single moment, visibility in the camp had been brought to zero.
Eiko grinned as she heard the screams of panic coming from down below, "Now for act two." she muttered to herself, gathering golden fire in both palms and condensing it like she had with the smoke. With a small grunt of exertion, she flung her hands upward, the balls of fire following her movements and arcing upward above the camp. As the spheres reached their apex, they burst, raining down fire on the camp below as screams of terror sounded out as the soldier's world burned around them.
Eiko spend a moment to observe the chaos below her. Through her smoke she could feel several forms running around frantically as they tried to put out the quickly growing fires around them. Screams of pain and terror rang out as those unfortunate enough to be caught in her flames realized that removing their clothes would do nothing to stop the golden flames from burning them as she simply had them jump to their bodies directly. It was both beautiful and terrifying.
She frowned as she realized Hua and two others had not been caught by the flames, they were also too far away from any of her flames for her to exert her control on the fire and capture them in their burning embrace. She would have to go down there and deal with them herself
"Oh well." she shrugged, unsheathing her jian and commanding the flames below to grow hotter in order to end the suffering of those caught in them, "Maybe they'll give me a good fight. Ha, yeah right!" she laughed, before leaping down into the smoke as the screams slowly quieted.
Hua's day was going fine. He had woken up, eaten breakfast, joked around with his men, and had cursed Jin in his head for being so cautious. All in all, a good morning.
And then everything had caught on fire.
He looked around, hardly able to see through the thick smoke that had come from nowhere, he watched as men and women he had known for years burned around him. The golden flames attached to their skin would not go out no matter what they tried, sand wouldn't extinguish the fire, water was useless, even amputation didn't work as the flames simply jumped to the next closest limb like they had a mind of their own. It was madness. Clearly the work of spirits.
The screams of anguish of his fellow soldiers continued for several minutes before abruptly silencing as the flames around him grew white hot, burning whatever they had been engulfing to ash within seconds, before simply disappearing as if they were never there.
He looked around him, the charred corpses of his men lay motionless on the dirt, burned faces staring up at him imploringly, as if asking why he wasn't down there with them.
A quick glance revealed only he, Corporal Fan, and Private Ming had survived. Ming seemingly thanks to the large earthen wall she had erected around herself and Fan because he was with Hua, going over maps in his tent. That was it, three people left alive out of twenty. Seventeen soldiers gone in less time than it took for him to eat breakfast.
Hua fell to his knees and prayed to whatever spirit they had so clearly angered, prostrating himself in hopes to avoid the wrath of beings greater than him. He had never been a very spiritual man, but given his current circumstances, he figure it couldn't hurt.
His groveling was interrupted by Fan's gasp of shock. The mountain of a man grabbed the spear off his back in preparation even as Hua looked up to see what had him so spooked.
Hua looked up from the ground watching as the thick smoke around the camp slowly receded into a single point, he followed it and was met with a feminine figure in a cloak walking slowly through the camp, sword held in hand.
Hua watched as the smoke curled up into the woman's cloak and disappeared from sight and was struck with a realization. This was the person responsible for the attack on the camp. Responsible for the deaths of the men and women he had known for years.
Fan had clearly came to the same realization as the man roared beside him and rushed at the figure, spear held in front of him to skewer them through. Hua noticed however, that the cloaked figure hadn't moved even with the mountain of a man quickly bearing down upon them.
"Fan! Don't!" Hua screamed, standing up as if to rush after him. But it was too late, Fan brought his spear down on the figure with a scream of rage only to have the figure dart into his guard and bury her sword in his chest.
There was a moment of silence as Fan processed what had happened, Hua and Ming watching on in horror. Fan jerked slightly, a fountain of blood escaping his lips as his Fands lost their grip on his spear, the weapon clattering to the ground.
Fan looked down at the cloaked figure between his outstretched arms, "Y-you bit-!" The figure stepped backward, pulling their sword from Fan's chest before swinging upwards and decapitating him in a single swipe, Hua watching on horror as another of his men was killed.
"Rude." She stated simply, swinging her sword to rid it of blood. She looked toward them and drew an arm back revealing the winding tattoos on her pale skin, "I'll try and make this as quick as possible."
She threw her fist forward and a torrent of bright golden flame followed, roaring a path toward Ming. The woman screamed in terror, planting her feet and drawing her arms up, forming an earthen wall between her and certain death.
It was futile however and Hua watched in horror as the fireball broke through the wall with only the bearest hint of resistance, incinerating the woman behind it before she had the chance to scream. The fireball continued past the edge of the camp before abruptly extinguishing as it crossed the border.
Hua fell to his once more, staring at the figure as she slowly approached him, jian held loosely in her grip. "Why?" he whispered as she got closer.
She stopped a few feet in front of him, cocking her head to the side, "Why?" she repeated incredulously, "You sit there, the blood of your fellow soldiers on your hands and you have the audacity to ask me why?!" Her grip tightened on her jian as she brought it to his neck, glaring down him.
Hua scowled staring death in her golden eyes, "There was no other way! They would have never let us leave! None of us were there by choice, forced into service of a king who can't see past his own nose, and made to fight for a country who couldn't give less of a shit about us! We were expected to smile happily and play the part of good little soldiers, all the while the nobles in Ba Sing Se laugh and languish in their fancy mansions without a care in the world! WHAT ELSE COULD WE HAVE DONE?!" He spit, practically frothing at the mouth with rage.
The woman spit, forcing her jian closer to his skin, a bead of blood trailing down his neck at the pressure, "So when things get hard you resort to fratricide, murdering your brothers and sisters in arms just to cover your tracks!? No attempt to simply talk to your fellow captain, convince her to join you or simply put them to sleep?! No you simply decided to go with the most convenient option and now men and women who were in the same position as you are dead thanks to your actions!"
Hua howled with rage, "YOU KNOW NOTHING!" He slammed his hand on the ground and pulled with his very being, a massive earthen spike coming from the ground aimed at the woman's face and forcing her to remove her jian from his neck.
The woman simply leaned to the side to dodge the spike, and as Hua went to capitilise on the opening, he was stopped cold by the appearance of a hand engulfed in white hot flame in front of his face.
"I know enough." He heard, before his world was engulfed in flames and Hua knew no more.
Eiko sighed, sheathing her jian as she did so. She hated extermination contracts, no matter how much she enjoyed the battles themselves, they always left a bad taste in her mouth when she was finished.
She stretched, taking stock of her surroundings just in case there was anyone left. A single moment of scrutiny revealed the absolute devastation she had wrought. Burned tents and charred corpses lay strewn around the camp, half formed walls of earth lay crumbling as their makers couldn't get them up fast enough to block her fire. There was not a single person left breathing but her.
She rolled her shoulders to alieviate tension before whistling sharply. A moment later, Helios swooped down to land on her shoulder, "Did you see anybody else while you were up there?" He shook his head, trilling softly.
She scratched the top of his head, "I guess we're done here then. Lets go see if there's anything worth taking and get out of here."
As she walked to the largest tent, the only one left untouched by her flames, she sighed once more.
'I hope Toph is having more fun than me…'
[A/N] That's all folks! Next chapter will most likely be in Toph's Pov.
Till next time!