Fluke
I was awake and on my feet by the time the first horn blared.
All across the Dragon's Host, tens of thousands of men would be stirring out of their bedrolls, the realization slowly dawning on them hundreds at a time that today was the day. Today was the day we fought once more for the outer wall of Ba Sing Se, preceded only by hundreds, if not mere dozens of officers who'd known, perhaps with only hours of foresight that today was a day.
I would not be among those just now stirring. The understanding of today's significance had been reached by me just this very night, and so I'd spent an entire night trying to get even a motivos of rest, and failing miserably at that.
I had long since, by the time of this first horn, risen out of my bedroll, eaten what little my stomach could take, emptied all else inside of it, and equipped myself for the day to come. As such, hundreds of soldiers belonging to the 44th armored scrambled to get their belongings together, put their uniforms on, grab what little a bite they could as officers announced as loud as they could what we had already since gathered.
I, meanwhile, already having readied myself for this day, the horn enough to invigorate me with a newfound burst of energy that would make up for what the lack of a night of sleep hadn't provided, made a B-line for Shanzi, past the rest of its crew as I saw them now struggling with their uniforms, their weaponry, their wits.
I needed none of these things now as I already had them and so crawled up Shanzi's iron chassis and found my place quick and easy enough in spite of my bad arm in her gunner seat. I knew to anticipate a fight on the subject of it, but it was a fight I was dedicated to win, by stubbornness alone if it came down to that. But I would rely first on their better sensibilities, and hoped that they would prove sufficient.
Those few minutes were quiet ones, waiting, hearing as the noise of camp shifted around me. Not a man here was untrained in the ways of quick preparation. A good soldier didn't need more than five minutes to bring himself from deep sleep to a state of battle readiness.
A minute, a minute and a half at most to get out of bed and equip one's uniform; thirty seconds to pack all necessities, a minute to eat scarf down enough of a morning's ration to suffice for the day, and no more than two minutes at the very most to report to one's station, be it fifty feet away or on the other side of camp, it made no difference.
It gave me some gratification to know at least that those I was fighting beside could be counted among those 'good soldiers', revealing themselves to Shanzi's interior one at a time not long after the first tanks of our battalion had already begun to move out and make for formation.
Hizo was first inside, acting on pure muscle memory alone as he situated himself inside, fastened in his harness, not noticing anything awry.
The same would go for Boss who entered the pilot's seat and already began running through the prechecks with hizo, ensuing all systems were operational.
It would only be when Zek opened the gunner's hatch above me that my choice had begun to be noticed.
"Oh," he said, startled. "Uhh."
Boss would turn around, only then noticing me where I sat, and so promptly said, "Kid! Get over here!"
"We're not just doing a patrol today," I countered before his argument could be expanded upon. "We're attacking the wall. We need an actual gunner."
Zek turned his head towards Boss, not about to disagree for himself.
"A gunner with one working arm? You're co-pilot. That's final."
It was the same argument made numerous times before. And if that was his only support to lean on, then I would deprive him of that.
I wasn't about to let my handicap work as his crutch any longer. No part of me knew if this was a good idea. If anything, nearly every part of me was screaming at me to not do exactly this, but I was beyond listening to anything other than the answer I had long since come to.
I pulled my knife from my belt, bringing the edge of the blade to where my cast ended, and so cut.
It was multiple layers to cut through, and nothing about it was simple, but I was hardly going to leave the job half finished, not when I had a point to make.
The blade seared across my skin once or twice, but I continued anyway until I felt the material suddenly go flak, and so the blade exited from the other end of my cast. It fell to the ground around me, revealing an arm that I shouldn't have still had, that should have been amputated three months ago.
I could hardly spy a part of my arm south of the elbow that was as it was supposed to me. I could find no skin that matched the complexion of the rest of my body, all of it either an unearthly pink or a blood-tone of red. I could still see the thin lines of stitches running across the length of my forearm and hand where fragmentation had pierced through. How I could even feel it was a miracle, which was an odd thing to say when the only sensation that I did feel from it was piercing and screaming pain.
But as I stared Boss down, I realized that my point had been made.
To Zek at least. "Well fuck men, then," he said, stifling a nervous chuckle that struck me as more a combative effort to combat the sight of my arm. He climbed down the length of Shanzi to the co-pilot's hatch, met instantly with resistance.
"Zek!" Boss scolded him. "Return to your post!"
"You saw the battalion paperwork, Boss," Zek said. "He's our gunner."
That I was. I looked back at Boss from Zek, and met his eyes. He was on the brink, and so the last push. From Hizo.
"Boss!" He called out, seemingly oblivious to the conflict going on in the front half of the tank. "All systems are prepped! We moving?!"
And back at Boss, his eyes meeting mine once more for the seconds that seemed to stretch on for far longer than that, until finally. "Let's move."
I closed the hatch above me, and felt as our tank came to life at long last. The decision was made, and so we moved.
Preparations for today had gone on for the better part of the Winter that we now left behind us now. We had the men, the equipment, the sense of what our orders were, and a formation that we all fit neatly inside.
A third of our forces would make up the initial wave, consisting mostly of armored units with a number of infantry battalions being held on standby. Behind them, another third would act as reservists in case our initial attack ran into more difficulty than we expected.
The reservists would be deployed.
After the reservists, the last third of our forces would remain behind to hold the line. Should worse grow into worst, and the battle was lost, they would be the last line to ensure that a year of progress would not be undone in the span of a single day.
But we wouldn't let it come to that. Not any of the thousands of us here would.
Our company was the third row of five, the very center, the elimination of which would significa that it was time for the reserves to be deployed—a comforting thought.
Behind the armored battalions, I could just barely make out about two brigades of infantrymen. So this was our first wave, perhaps around seven to eight thousand soldiers cumulative, half of what the 64th division had committed in their all or nothing assault. And half of what they had lost.
A single division today, a single leadership, a single goal, and a single plan—to ascend that wall, and get to the other side, or, should all else fail, bring it down.
The wall was directly ahead, this sight a familiar one, the dejavú returning already.
Below, I could hear Hizo from the rear maintenance bay whispering a prayer to himself, Boss running though last checks with Zek before breaking Hizo out of his trance to ask, "Hizo! We prepped!"
Hizo snapped out of it. "All prepped!"
"Harness strapped?" Zek asked, a good item to scratch off the list before our world became vertical.
"Strapped in!" Hizo confirmed.
And so hardly a second later, the last and final horn before the battle was sounded.
I breathed in.
The first line advanced.
I breathed out.
The second line advanced.
I breathed in.
I breathed out, and we advanced.
Our artillery had only ceased half of an hour ago. The Earth Kingdom would have known what that meant as much as we would have. If we were dedicated to destroying Ba Sing Se, then the Earth Kingdom was twice as dedicated towards defending it. This was their home. They would have recognized the first sign that we planned to attack before we could even have risen from our bedrolls, and so would have rushed immediately to their walls defense from wherever they were hiding beyond it.
And so we would take advantage of it.
By now, most if not all of their soldiers would already have made it to the wall and readied their posts above. And so, after only thirty minutes of silence, we resumed our artillery. It would not last long, just enough to ensure that their defenses atop the wall would be rattled.
We heard the simultaneous snap of hundreds of cannons detonating behind us. Artillery shells soared overhead as we drove on, outpacing us by hundreds of miles per hour until they reached that wall, and so pounded it with a reminder of the last three months that this city had endured, but for hopefully now would be the last time.
The artillery could not hold up forever, not with us racing to be within its kill zone in a matter of minutes, and so one, two, three volleys later, they silenced.
So soon enough, the Earth Kingdom's turn came.
They would never have had time to place artillery atop the wall, not after we had already cleared it with our first barrage when our artillery first sounded. But what they would have had time to do, as we would soon find out, was line their wall with hundreds to thousands of soldiers, and enough ranged firepower between them to blot out the sun.
We could hear the whistle in the air before they struck, and we all knew what was coming.
"Hatches down!" Boss called, and I didn't wait.
I heard the first arrow strike as soon as the hatch closed. Then another would fall, and another, and soon, thousands of arrows were striking across the earth around us. The odds of a single arrows having a possibility of worming its way through a tank's defenses enough to strike a crewman were slim, possibly one in a thousand, but when thousands of arrows were being fired, one after another, those odds no longer seemed so bad.
A tank a few columns beside us veered off track, striking another tank and running it off its path as its pilot took an arrow through the front viewport.
Rockets came down shortly after, arrows inladen with enough blasting jelly to send them soaring through the air down back atop us. The explosions were plentiful and were loud, a far cry from what we'd put the Earth Kingdom through for the last season, but still enough that the sensation of us sitting inside a steel coffin became all the more apparent.
I watched from my turret as we rode past a tank that burned out from within on account of a lucky rocket, a tank whose harpoon gun was torn apart in a mess of scattered fragmentation, doomed already ahead of time for the ascent they would never make.
More arrows came down, one striking directly below the hatch of my turret, enough to incentivize me to close it, at least most of the way, leaving only a sliver for me to watch as the wall ahead of us drew closer, and closer, and closer, until finally, the rockets of the enemy would find us out of their range, too close to strike.
I opened the hatch of my turret again, met with the sight of the wall stretching across the horizon as far as I could see without spinning the turret. Instead, all I could see was the massive extent of earth ahead of me, and the first line of tanks that they remained as, in near perfect unison, their harpoon guns raised, braced, and so fired their payload.
Hundreds of tanks at a time would jolt back from the recoil as most would meet their mark, and so their ascent would begin.
So ended the time of arrows and began that of rocks, boulders, and pitch as they would begin to be hurled atop us from hundreds of feet on high.
The first line of tanks had fared well by merit of haste as the Earth Kingdom tried still to cull the rear ranks. The second line would not be so lucky however.
It would be around now that the Earth Kingdom would switch their strategy to one of harassing the enemy that now ascended the wall or so began their journey.
There could be no questioning that the harpoon turrets attached to our tanks were an objective positive, capable of greater range, stronger, and far more reliable in terms of nearly every metric.
They came, however, with one truly fatal flaw. Operating them could not be accomplished from either of the pilots' seats or from the safety of the tank's interior. Rather, operating such a weapon required the gunner's direct involvement, opening their hatch in order to operate the mechanism, head and whole of upper body exposed.
Such a fatal flaw would live up to its name, seeing the gunner of the tank ahead of us crushed, a boulder falling atop him that would see his helmet caving into his skull from the weight, sending a mess of gore into the tank below him, crippling it.
I offered what cover I could from my position, firing blasts of flame as far high as I could, knowing more likely than not I was not striking anything. I wanted to think at least that the strikes were close enough to distract the enemy for at least some few seconds, but even then, it was a forced belief.
It didn't save the tank ahead of us, and so it remained to be seen if it would be enough to save us.
The Shanzi veered right to avoid the crippled tank ahead of us, and so I took my place, already calculating my odds of meeting a similar fate as those now beside us.
The survivors, if any there were, would find themselves forced to huddle within the ruins of a broken slag of scrap metal for the duration of the fighting.
They would not make it
What would happen to us, however, was still yet to be determined, and very soon would be hanging from a literal thread.
"We're at the wall, kid!" Boss shouted. "Make that shot count!"
I was already on the harpoon gone, my attention previously running parallel to the wall as I peered above for the sight of a falling boulder that may dare to end my life, but it seemed that with the loss of the tank ahead of us, the earthbenders had decided that our lane was blocked enough to turn their attention elsewhere.
That was their own mistake. It would give me the time needed to begin to aim the harpoon cannon upwards. I leaned back in my eat just to afford me a view of the wall's edge above, observing as other tanks before us made their ascent, taking their hits, many holding on, many more falling.
There was no point delaying it any longer.
I looked down the iron sight attached to the harpoon cannon's barrel, bringing it to the point of the wall's highest point, my eyesight focusing, narrowing in, just in time for something to move across my periphery. An arrow.
It struck, not me, but directly beside me. I should've flinched more, but my focus couldn't waver, not yet.
But their attention was back on us. That was sure.
A boulder came falling down, headed towards our cannon. I matched its velocity as it fell, fired, caught it in air so it could break into harmless fragments before striking us, one of the many pebbles bouncing against my helmet and knocking my head aside, altering my aim enough for me to be forced to adjust.
"Come on, kid!" Zek yelled. "Get us up there!"
"Working on it!"
I found my mark again, but they weren't going to leave us alone. Not that easily. Another rock fell, towards me, set to be a direct hit on the very front of our cannon. The shot would disable the harpoon, no doubt, if it struck, but I had the shot. If I fired, it would land, but the earthbender's rock would undo it all and disable us. I could intercept the shot again, delaying our efforts, leaving us exposed for even longer to attract more attention. There was no good option.
Except for the third.
I waited for the moment that the rock was in my sights, and fired.
The tank shook from the recoil, the harpoon propelled into the air at full force upwards. It met the falling boulder midway, piercing through as though it was paper, and found the wall.
"Harpoon's a hit!" I yelled.
"Test connection!" Hizo yelled.
I engaged the mechanism to reel the chain back in. Upon meeting the resistance that came with the fact that the chain was secured, a safety switch clicked back, waiting for me to release it and full redraw the chain back in. I disengaged the switch, the merit of it having been activated in the first place testament to the fact that is was solid.
"We're secure!" I said, ducking back inside the tank in time for a rock to strike against the hatch as I closed it above me.
"Hizo!" Boss called out. "Get us moving!"
"Splitting treads!" Hizo called.
I knew the process, the same as that which Gunji had done to get us moving laterally before, de-tethering the tanks treads to allow for the front pair to be raised without disruption to the rear pair.
"Split!"
At that, Boss brought us forward again, and so the treads found their traction against the wall, but we would need more than that.
"Kid!" Boss yelled again. "Reel the line!"
I nodded. A number of the harpoon gun's more basic functions had been modified to be accessible from inside the tank, one such being drawing in the line , not the harpoon towards us, but rather, us towards it.
Then we really lurched forward, and the cleated treads found their place in the wall, the front pair first, and finally, the latter.
And like that, we were vertical. It was a damned good time to be strapped in, which I unfortunately hadn't been on account of needing to access the harpoon gun, but as I found gravity itself forcing me back against my seat, I realized that waiting any longer would have been unwise, and so reconnected the harness keeping me tethered to my seat.
Our ascent had finally begun, meaning, as did my job.
My seat a rotating turret, I afforded the ground beneath me a single glance as we left it behind, and so found my gaze returning upward at the sound of Boss exclaiming, "Alright, kid. We're gonna be needing cover now!"
Sure enough, the Earth Kingdom had become wise to the fact that the ascent had already begun. Ahead of me, above, I could see the smoke trails of rockets still being fired at armored units that yet had to reach the wall, but I knew it would only be a matter of minutes before they started battering us as well.
We were the third row of tank companies advancing, and at the center of our company as well.
Each company consisted of nine tanks in a three by three square, meaning, as such, there were seven, or rather, with the loss of the tank ahead of us in our company, six tanks ahead of us. That number wouldn't last, but it would have to be enough plus us and those behind.
It was impossible not to be reminded of our first assault with the 62nd, that same sense of helplessness as I could only watch the tanks in the rows ahead of me eliminated one at a time. They each tried to put up a fight, some equipped with firebenders, most others not, all going down all the same.
And where I was, far enough behind as we ascended one foot at a time, I was helpless, only able to watch, flexing the muscles in both of my hands, breathing slowly, waiting for that first moment when a shot would be available to me.
Five rows ahead of me and three columns to the right, a massive boulder torn off from the wall itself crushed in the cockpit of the tank, severing it from its harpoon as it went falling down to the ground.
Four rows ahead and five columns to the left, a discus of earth severed the tank in half right below the turret, likely severing the gunner in two, completely removing the harpoon gun from the lower half of the tank. Said lower half and what was left of its surviving crew went falling down to the ground, colliding with the tank behind it, sending the two down to the ground, thankfully avoiding those behind.
I still wasn't in range of any earthbenders. I could only watch as the Earth Kingdom began utilizing their rockets now, bringing them to the edge of the wall to aim down at us.
One crackshot firebender from a tank to our immediate right, three rows ahead, managed to score a perfect shot on a rocket gunner, sending them falling down below alongside their hwacha rocket launcher.
The firebender and his tank would not be spared for long, however, as a volley of tens more guns would soon come, and so the fire arrows came cruising down.
"Rockets!" I yelled. "Cover!"
I closed the shade of my turret and ducked down, watching as Zek and Boss did the same. Not a second later would the barrage come, rocketed fire arrows whistling as they came down upon us, some detonating as soon as they found contact with tanks, others ricocheting off, others failing to detonate. I heard the ding of multiple arrows against our hull as well as felt the tank rock from the numerous explosions in close proximity to us.
The first barrage had ended.
I opened the viewport again, and found that the numbers of tanks around us had been slimmed. Some tanks were simply gone, disconnecting from their unyielding harpoons. Some tanks simply hung lifeless, crews killed. Others were in the process still of trying to climb in spite of being set ablaze, burning from the inside.
Two rows ahead of us, the inferno grew two great for the crew to bear. One would never be able to rationalize what they would be willing to do in order to survive until the only other choice presented to them was death.
That's what it had been for me when, over two hundred feet up the wall, I'd severed our cable and allowed us to fall, killing Gan and Gunji both, just barely saving myself.
And I supposed that's what it must have been for the crew two tanks ahead of us when they left through the hatches, themselves burning ablaze, and hurdled themselves over fifty feet to the ground just to escape from their rolling, burning deathtrap.
None would survive the fall, one even hitting the tank directly behind him before spiraling out of control and falling to the ground, myself able to hear his screams grow and then fade once again.
It wouldn't take long for the rest of their tank to go falling after. I could hear as the metal itself of the tank was torn and the harpoon gun broke free of the tank, sending the lower half of the vehicle losing its only support, and go falling behind it.
"Oh shit," I heard Zek say from the cockpit.
The tank fell, grinding across the wall as it descended, directly on top of the tank behind it, the one ahead of us.
We have to get out of the way.
"Zek!" Boss yelled. "Secondary cable. Due starboard.
"I need a heading, kid!" Zek yelled at me.
I turned my turret right, away from where the tank ahead of us had stopped its ascent, too weighed down by the forward tank that'd fallen atop it. the path blocked by another tank rising above us. "Starboard's blocked!" I yelled. I turned my turret left. There was room for mobility, we could get a cable ahead of us, but we needed to turn. "Good mark point 27 port!"
Boss didn't question it. There was no time. "Hizo! Hard brake starboard side!"
"Braking!" Hizo yelled back. I felt as our right-side break engaged, and the harpoon kept pulling.
"Kid! Add slack to the cable!"
I was already on it, and so from within the tank, slackened the line, releasing a good couple of feet of the chain.
On impulse, the tank lost its upward pull, and so fell, pivoting around the rear right brake as though a hinge as it fell with the weight of the tank's whole left side. By merit of the direction we fell in, my turret crossed once more to see the tank above us, now being drive down, the upward pull of the cable not enough to match the downward push of two tanks' worth of weight.
If we were to fully fall, the brake would not have supported us in the slightest, but the chain of the harpoon caught us before we could fall too far, now allowing the left side of our tank to face left, just enough.
"Zek!" Forward harpoon!"
"Adjusting! Firing!"
Zek fired the low-yield harpoon attached to the front of the tank, and so it pierced the wall.
My turret's position offered me the perfect sight as the harpoon attachment of the tank ahead of us began to bulk, and I could hear the ptang of its bolts flying loose. It wouldn't hold for long.
"Draw us in!"
"Disengaging brake!" Hizo yelled.
Hizo did just that, and Zek drew the harpoon in. Now being pulled by two harpoons, one upwards and one left, our tank changed paths, driving upwards to the upper left, out of the path of the tanks above us, just in time for the weight to prove too much, and for both to come crashing down right where we'd been seconds ago, bouncing off the wall, and go the rest of the way free-falling to the ground, thankfully out of the way of the other tank units below.
But all the same, that was two tank crews dead, the rows above us cleared. And so it meant that we were at the front of the line, and as I noticed the columns beside us being slimmed down as well, now the center of the enemy's attention.
We reeled in the auxiliary harpoon and so drifted back to our original climbing position, cleats digging up into the wall as we continued our prescheduled ascent.
I had only a second to turn my turret in time to see a disc of earth being thrown down on us, and so just barely managed to meet it with a blast of fire from my left arm, tearing it apart in the air, sending harmless debris down atop us.
I saw the man who'd fired it too, not quite at the top of the wall, but about midway down the wall. I had him well in my sights, us about a quarter of the way up, and so felt the energy buildup in my right arm, and, ignoring the pain, tried to fire it. The effort was to no avail. All it did was shoot an agonizing jolt of pain through the whole of my right arm, spreading up like lightning from my fingertips to my shoulder where it thankfully stopped. I couldn't keep the pain to myself, and so instinctually yelled from the pain.
"Kid!" I heard Zek yell. "You alright?!"
"Yeah!" I grunted back, knowing I couldn't focus on my own pain for too long, not while the earthbender was preparing another strike against us.
I bit down on my tongue and so relied alone on my left hand, grabbing onto the guard rail with my right for support as I fired.
This shot, thankfully, would find home, directly striking the earthbender in the stomach. In spite of his armor, the explosion of the impact would be enough to knock him back against the wall. He would struggle, for a moment, to refind his footing, but it wouldn't be in time, not before he went teetering over the edge and to the ground, sure to die.
First one for today, I thought to myself before discarding the thought. I'd lost count a long time ago. There was no time trying to keep up now.
Instead, I focused alone on finding the next target, and found him quickly enough–another earthbender descending the wall, not atop the platform, but simply by digging his hands into the earth of the wall to slow his descent before stopping adjacent to us to our left.
I turned my turret and fired, striking him where his armor didn't protect him, between his neck and shoulder, burning straight through the cloth as well as his skin, flesh, and bone. He lost all consciousness in less than a second and with that, his grip, falling to the ground.
I hadn't, however, considered the possibility of the man being a mere distraction, and so found myself caught unawares at the sound of Zek yelling anxiously, "Rocket strike, rocket strike!"
I turned my turret up, and sure enough, peering over the edge of the wall, a hwacha rocket launcher aimed down at us, explosive arrows already primed to fire, the fuse requiring less than a second to launch.
Shit!
I didn't have time to close the turret, and so could only turn it to the right side as I heard the simultaneous slight bursts of each rocket firing at once, creating an ever-pervasive boom that seemed to have shaken the wall itself. The rockets fired, and the angle of my turret allowed me the perfect sight of two striking the tank to our starboard side dead on, tearing apart its treads and blowing out the chassis from beneath where the armor was weakest.
The tank set ablaze, it broke free of its harpoon and entered free fall like so many others as this next row took more than its fair share of a beating.
We were hardly ignored, a fair number of rockets striking us as well, one ricocheting off our hull and detonating mid-air while another hit the top of our chassis, slid across the hull, and found the left side of my turret, detonating, tearing a breach into its armor.
The plating bent inward, blowing a piece of fragmentation that found my left shoulder and cut across it, a mere flesh wound, but hardly a good one.
"Fuck!" I yelled.
"Kid!" Boss yelled.
"Still with you!" I called back, biting down the pain as I faced my turret up again to be met with the sight of another hwacha rocket launcher being brought in to replace the first.
I don't think so.
Once more, I braced with my right arm and looked upwards, judging the feasibility of the shot. I could make it.
I shut my left eye, staring only through the broken eye hole of my helmet, and, the shot targeted, fired.
The Earth Kingdom soldiers had just lit the fuses of the rockets when my blast of fire found the launcher. All it took was the ignition of one arrow's blasting jelly payload before the chain effect found every other arrows of the launcher, sparking the whole of it.
Just over two-hundred feet above us, an explosion shook the wall as the rocket launcher exploded, creating a brilliant display of fire and smoke trails as other rockets went flying every which way. I watched as enemy soldiers became consumed by the fireball, as other were thrown off of the wall from the force of the explosion, and others chose the death of three-hundred feet to that of being burned alive by their own failures and so threw themselves from the wall in a way mimicking the fates of those they'd let die in so similar a way just minutes ago.
"Holy hell," I heard Zek say from the cockpit. "Add that to the counter!"
Too late for that, I thought to myself as I grinned, enjoying the few seconds that it took the Earth Kingdom to recompose themselves from such a beating before opening fire on us once again.
Another boulder came down at us, this one easily enough intercepted by myself as I found it first with a blast of fire.
I retaliated, throwing a blast of fire that would not find a target, but would at least get the earthbenders atop the wall doubting how safe they were. The closer we got to them, the less they were, but by the same token, the less we were as well.
And they realized this.
It didn't take too long for them to recover from the initial shock of that hwacha's self-destruction, and so they focused on us now yet again, regaining their bearings so as to launch a rejuvenated defense against us.
So we found ourselves put up against them once again as they sent down rocks atop us as well as overeager defenders ready and willing to claim the kill for themselves.
The benders were easy enough to dispatch, at a natural disadvantage as they were too busy descending the wall. I caught two on their way down, my blast on a third interrupted by a boulder striking our starboard side that sent my aim awry. I would kill him soon enough after though before he could manage to get a hit on us, but only seconds before another discus of earth would strike the left side of our tank, sending us reeling back along our line a good few feet before I engaged the emergency clutch to halt the chain from reeling back any further.
It caught us, and we made the ground we lost back quickly enough, but the pressure being put on us was no lessening in the slightest.
It was hardly just our tank taking such a beating. Around us, the rest of the tanks sent to ascend the wall were facing a similar hellish pressure, many far less fortunate than us.
I saw an earthbender descend to my right, and so managed to shoot a bolt of fire through him as he had his back turned to me, but not before he broke away a chunk of wall beneath a tank further to our right that sent it falling helplessly to the ground as the chain broke free and it had no surface to cling onto.
To our left, an earthbender brought a piece of the wall out as though a hand to grab the chain of an adjacent tank's harpoon, pulling it into the wall and absorbing it before it snapped from the pressure, sending the tank down without a second chance.
My shot against that earthbender would go wide, and so I could only watch as the man retreated back enough in time for a barrel of pitch to be dropped atop another tank of that same column, lit ablaze by a fire arrow.
The tank would burst into a ball of fire, but would continue to climb, a glowing blazing torch to light the way up like a beacon of where we were to go, and what fate we were to meet as well.
How we were still holding on was near a miracle, but it put us in no better a position.
Near every tank above us had been eliminated and our row was holding on by merely a thread as well. That put us well ahead of the rest of our formation, and just nwo halfway up the wall at that–far from a desired place to be.
The Earth Kingdom didn't dare attempt to use their rocket launchers again, but that didn't stop them from continuing to barrage us with boulders, one coming down atop us once more, stretching the line as it buckled and I worried for a moment it might snap. It held. For how much longer?
I braced myself for a shot, and fired, striking the earthbender in question who was pushed back from the force of the shot. A crack shot arrow flew down at me in response, just barely being caught against the side of the turret.
It was a favor I would have returned had we not been struck on the side by a cascading earthquake wrought along the wall towards us, rocking us to the side, forcing Hizo to engage the brakes to keep us in place rather than entering a catastrophic swing.
That strike, however, I was able to return to the bender beside us–a direct shot to the head, effective enough that all I would see on account of the smoke would be his helmet spiraling down to the ground.
"Taking a lot of pressure over here!" I heard Zek call from the cockpit, and that we were. I could no longer reliably tell if there were even any tanks in the rows above us. The first and second row had, without any doubt, been eliminated, and it was beginning to look like the same could be said for the third and fourth while ours was just a few scattered remnants still trailing upwards. Even the row behind us was taking a hell of a beating and it was a miracle we were still hanging on as we were.
"Move us down, kid!" Boss yelled, but what he was asking for was not possible.
"Can't!" I yelled back while turning my turret 180 degrees around to verify. "Got friendlies behind us!" To try and move ourselves back down the line, we'd only collide with them. We were stuck here, and we had to live with that. We had to live.
I turned my turret back around in time to see another discus of earth–a smaller one–being hurdled at us. I attempted to intercept but my reaction was too late and the disc of earth hit the front of our tank.
I heard Zek grunt from the cockpit, which was met immediately by Hizo asking, "Zek?!"
"He's fine!" Boss retorted. "Hizo! We need more juice in the engine!"
"Fed the boiler as much as it can take already!"
I turned my attention upwards and forwards as a pair of earthbenders to either side of descended, earthen payloads already in hand to batter our sides with. I caught one's platform of earth below them with a blast of fire before they could reach the same level as us, inciting them to lose their footing and fall over, scraping their face against the wall mid-fall with a bloody trail that I preferred not to envision before they fell the rest of the way, dead, or at the very least, soon to be.
The second earthbender would manage to make it adjacent to us, ready to fire their payload, but not managing to do so as I caught him in the upper left leg where he wasn't obscured, burning right through. I watched as leather armor, cloth, skin, flesh, and bone all melted away in the blink of an eye and the man toppled under his own weight with a guttural scream before falling like his companion.
The two of them however had been only a distraction as the real threat lay ahead.
"Kid," Zek yelled. "Two ahead!"
I turned my turret, and sure enough, two descended beside one another, directly forward and downwards upon us.
I fired, aiming for the left, who took my shot and fell the rest of the way dead. It would be upon the death of his partner, however, that the second would break his descent, and pulling it from the wall himself, would reach behind him to unveil a wall of earth that he now threw towards us.
My attempt to intercept it proved futile, the blast of fire simply dissipating against us.
"Brace!" I yelled, and not a second after, it struck.
The impact was not a generous one, enough to rock our entire tank, and buckle our harpoon turret beyond the point that it could sustain itself. The echo of it breaking free of our tank roared through its entire interior as the chain-drawn mechanism buckled, stopped, and failed, the pressure put against us more than the harpoon was able to bear.
The harpoon broke free, the chain unraveled itself.
"Backup harpoons!" Boss yelled, and Zek fired, both of the two forward ones at once. They found their marks, one in the wall, and one in the heart of the selfsame earthbender who'd tried to strike us down. Fortunately, the rightmost harpoon was enough to catch us, and so our fall ceased.
Even braced to my seat as I was, I felt the straps on the verge of snapping from the impact, and it was all I could do to stop myself from hitting my head against the side of the turret. I imagine that such was the case as well for the two pilots, who, fortunately, managed to keep their bearings.
The same could not be said for Hizo, however.
I heard only the clang and the sound of him grunting behind us, enough for me to turn and see the man fallen, held only in place by his harness and tether, but otherwise, gone.
"Hizo?!" I heard Zek yell from the cockpit.
"Hizo's down!" I yelled back. He'd hit his dead, and with some luck, was still alive, but I couldn't confirm that. Not now.
"Kid!" Boss yelled now, focusing on the real matter at hand. "We need cover!"
I turned back to my turret, rotating it to focus upwards and forwards. We'd drawn in the line that'd struck the earthbender and managed to reattach it to the wall, but our primary harpoon was down, and there wasn't an earthbender atop that wall who wasn't eager to finally bring us down once and for all.
I just barely managed to intercept another shot fired at us from straight ahead, and even had to deliver another blast of fire out of the hole that'd been creating to my left in order to strike another overeager bender who'd descended the wall to target us. That was another man down. However many that made today, I couldn't begin to count. It'd been a lot, but not enough.
To strike the one on my left had taken my attention away from above, and so I could only hear, feel, and watch as the entire front half of my turret caved in, a boulder hurled at it with such precision that the turret collapsed in on itself, bulging inwards just a half foot away from my face, obscuring all vision out of it, completely blocking any chance I would have to fire from it.
Shit.
"Turret's down!" I yelled.
We were defenseless, and the look I received from Zek as he gazed at me from the cockpit confirmed that much. We were on borrowed time from this point. We had no way to defend ourselves. We were down our only armament, and as another projectile struck us along our left, I knew we couldn't hold out.
Even Boss didn't have any orders, only able to stare ahead at a wall whose height stretched far too much for us to reach in a state like this.
I looked back at Hizo, still down for the count, tethered in place, lifeless by the look of him, still in place.
I saw Gunji,frozen there, hands on the release, no part of him knowing what to do as we faced certain death.
I saw Gan in the cockpit of the tank, staring down our fate ahead of us, screaming at Gunji not to release the harpoons as I yelled the opposite command.
I saw them dead in the same places where they'd been alive only seconds ago.
I saw Hizo dead in the back of the tank, lifeless from a million bleeding wounds. I saw Zek and Boss in the front, collapsed from the weight of a tank that'd been caved in upon them. I saw the exact same events as our last time trying to ascend this cursed wall.
A plan formed in my head at around that same time, far from a good one, but the only one I had. And that was better than no plan. At least, that's what I told myself as I released my harness, and let gravity take me into the rear hatch of the tank. It's what I told myself as disconnected Hizo's harness. It's what I told myself as Boss yelled back to ask me, "What are you doing?!" It's what I told myself as I fasted Hizo's tether to myself, and it's what I told myself as I swung open the overhead hatch of the rear cabin, and climbed above.
The entire world was wrong, as was the pull of gravity as it pushed against me towards an earth surface now what must have been nearly two-hundred feet below.
I climbed up the outside of the tank, past the sears and breaches along our hull, grabbing onto what was left of our harpoon turret to pull myself up, a disc of earth just barely missing me, instead striking the tank below us, less fortunate than myself, caving in its entire frontal section, sending it falling down to the earth, dead.
I turned my attention back above, forcing myself not to think about it until, finally, I could stand atop what was left of my turret, and do whatever I could still to keep us alive.
Already above on a jutting platform of his own, an earthbender prepared himself to deal a killing blow. I caught him with one of my own while he could only stare in muffled shock at the sight of a firebender standing atop his very own tank over a hundred meters in the air. The blast of fire found him straight through the chest, ignoring his armor.
To my right, another earthbender who had just finished off a tank of his own now turned towards us, but only in time to see an arc of fire sever him down the middle.
I didn't have the time to watch him fall, instead turning to the upper left to intercept a blast of earth before it could reach us. I would have retaliated immediately were not another disc of earth being fired at me from the right. I ducked and evaded to the side, careful with every step I took knowing that the viable space for me to stand was limited to just a little over four square feet.
I dispatched the rightmost earthbender first, sending a kick of fire that removed his feet from beneath him and sent him dead on his hundred-foot journey downwards.
Another strike from the upper left earthbender, this one striking our tank. I felt it rumble beneath us, and I just barely maintained my footing enough to send a controlled burst of fire from both of my hands towards him. The strain did a number on my right arm, which now burned ass though the fire had struck me itself, but I couldn't focus on that. Not now when there were still so many of them left.
We continued our climb, I turned my attention to an earthbender on the wall above us, the shot finding him well enough, powering through his own projectile before meeting him, victorious, and killing him on the spot.
The momentary victory would be dulled by another strike against the hull of our tank, this one stronger than the last, enough to make the tank lose its grip on the wall, carried only by our auxiliary hooks. The shake was a violent one, overtaking even me as I fell backwards, my helmet falling off from the gravity and abandoning me. I dropped onto my back, and it was all I could do to roll onto my stomach, still atop the tank somehow. From where I was, prone as I was, I fired at the enemy.
The earthbender lowered himself in time, avoiding my blast of fire, and used the opportunity to press his advantage, sending a cascade of earthen fragments along the wall towards the Shanzi. They struck, and hardly having even found her grip again, the Shanzi rocked even harder than before, hard enough that even from where I was, prone, I could not maintain my grip.
I fell, my arms flailing, searching for something to grab on to, finding nothing.
It would be a whole two seconds of free fall before the harness found its greatest extent and caught me. It jerked against my torso, enough to make me want to puke, which I likely would have had I no greater concerns, but the earthbender who'd struck us was still alive, to my left, rear, right as I spun with my harness, until, finally, he was right ahead of me, and with my left hand, I fired.
He'd thought me dead, and so hadn't anticipated a followup shot from below, which now caught him, killing him on the spot.
But that was only one down, and we were just over the halfway mark. I felt the tank shake above me as it took another, still taking a hell of a beating from above. From enemies I couldn't see, hanging where I was. My plans had hardly proved intelligence thus far this night, and so I pulled another trick from my sleeve, turned to my left, and, clinging to my tether with my right hand, fired a sprout of fire to my left. The force was enough, and so I swung to the right, affording me just a moment's glance at our newest attacker above us. I fired, catching the earthbender before he could get another hit on us, killing him, and so I swung back with violent enough a motion that I felt the tether I was hanging weaken.
Shit.
I wasn't wearing a harness, having merely clipped the tether to my belt, a weak connection at best, and so felt it beginning to give out as I could maintain my grip with my right hand onto my tether until even that proved to be not enough. I felt the buckle give out, and looking down at my belt only confirmed it, leaving only me with my two arms clinging onto the tether above me to keep me from falling a near two hundred feet to the ground below.
I couldn't move, not even if I wanted to. I couldn't climb, couldn't get a firing angle on the enemy above us, even as I felt the Shanzi shake from another blast straight to it.
There was nothing more I could do. We couldn't fight back, couldn't get up quick enough, couldn't make it.
It was then that I felt the world shake, slow at first, just a slight rumble, then a boom to my side, my right, further down the length of the wall, coming from it itself.
Then there was another, below. Then another two, above and beside, then four more, eight more, more and more growing across the wall, one boom after another as they approached, the fireballs along its length growing with unimaginable speed, and all towards us.
It was all I could to use my weight to turn my back to the blasts as they finally reached us, and I found myself enveloped in a cloud of smoke, the wall still. Eerily still.
Then, it moved again, that same rumbling. I spun on my own without any ability to influence, and no found myself faced with the tank's right again, and the sight of the wall do something I didn't think it could.
It began first as a single point, and grew from there, layer upon layer collapsing in on itself in a cascading effect that reach as far as just yards away from me, and down towards the flat earth itself, brick upon brick, tonne upon tonne, all reaching the floor in a cloud of smoke and debris.
The wall of Ba Sing Se fell.
And like that, it was over.
The understanding of the breach was one that overtook every man there that day, be them Fire Nation or Earth Kingdom. Already, a half mile away, I heard our horn blare, and not a single man could doubt that it was a horn of advance.
The wall of Ba Sing Se had fallen.
All resistance atop the wall seemed to stop. Perhaps some would have believed themselves still able to fight, but by this point, their delay and shock had claimed the better of them. Scattered Fire Nation tanks had begun to reach the top of the wall. Some would be claimed by the enemy, but others too would wreak their havoc enough for the understanding to be reached that the battle for Ba Sing Se's outer wall had been lost.
The enemy retreated, and ours advanced.
It took some time for the Shanzi to reach the top of the wall on account of the damage she'd taken, but when it did, when I was finally on the brink of being able to let go of my tether, it was a feeling like none other.
The Shanzi reached the top of the wall, leveling out, my tether pulled along with it, and placed my hand on the edge of that stone wall, pulled myself up alongside her, collapsing onto my back, staring at a cloudless winter sky.
The sun was hot against my face, but I didn't mind in the slightest. I was alive. I could hear the sound of infantry marching below, towards the wall, advancing on a retreating enemy, and I smiled.
We won.
I wanted to yell, to laugh, to scream, but all I could do was stare up at the blue sky.
We won.
I heard the hatches of the Shanzi begin to open, and so I forced myself to rise to my feet to meet my crew once more, praying they were alive.
On the right side of the tank, exiting from the pilot's hatch, Zek was the first out, his eyes wide, as though he himself was still trying to comprehend the fact that we had won. But as other tanks now rose to join us atop the wall, there was no questioning it. Ba Sing Se's wall had fallen, and we had taken it.
Zek walked towards me and the back of the tank, eyes drifting over me, still wide, as though questioning everything about what had happened here, about what I had done, how I'd survived, hell, how any of us had survived.
Zek approached the back of the tank, opening the rear door, likely to check on Hizo.
I turned away, walking the few steps it took to bring me to where the collapse of the wall ended still only yards away. Through the breach now, Fire Nation forces marched, column after column, hundreds, thousands, enough to establish our foothold, enough to secure the victory that we had won. That I had helped to win.
I heard the sound of a man grunting behind me, and turned to see Zek now re-exiting the tank, supporting the weight of a disoriented Hizo who held a bloodied hand to the back of his head where he must've struck it. I was relieved to see him alive, not a single man among us lost by some miracle. I chose not to question it, but merely nod as the two walked along to pass me before Zek stopped. With one arm, he was supporting Hizo, but with the other, he was holding something, and he held it out to me now.
It was my helmet.
How?
"Fell in the back of the tank," Zek said. "Here. Wouldn't want you to lose count."
I reached forward, slowly, and took the helmet from him, looking at each of the marks I'd scratched upon it, enough to nearly cover the whole top of it, and so far off from what reality was.
I scoffed, and looked back up at Zek. "Don't worry," I said. "I lost count a long time ago."
Zek looked back at me for a moment,a s though trying to decide whether or not I was joking, and upon realizing I wasn't, chuckled. "Fucking sick," he said before continuing forward alongside Hizo who, before leaving, gave me a simple nod.
I trekked forward across the width of the wall. I knew what I wanted. I wanted to see what lay ahead of us, the war to come, the other side. I walked forward past Shanzi before a voice from it stopped me.
"Hey."
I turned. It was Boss, sitting atop the hull, looking down at me. He was still catching his breath from all that had transpired, but when he finally found enough air, he said, "What did you say your name was?"
A name formed on the tip of my tongue, but I stopped myself.
Fluke. That'd been for near my entire life. It was the name I was given, the name of one that was lucky once. And for the longest time, that'd been true. It was a name that belonged to one who had survived not by merit, not by belonging, but my ill-placed fortune. That was who I'd been for the longest time. That was who I'd been as one who hadn't known his place in the world.
But that was no longer the case.
For the first time in my life, I knew beyond all question where I belonged, and it was right here, a soldier, fighting against all odds against a bloodthirsty opponent, against unspeakable odds, and not for myself, not nearly to survive, but to protect those beside me, to bring victory for a cause greater to myself, and to bring the enemy to ruin. I wasn't a fluke. Not any more. Now, I knew where I belonged.
"Aegis," I said.
And Boss looked at me, and he nodded his head. "Alright," he said.
And alright it was. I nodded back to him, and turned, walking those few more steps to the northernmost extent of the width of Ba Sing Se's wall, and I found the edge, and beyond it, a vast expanse of green: farmland, forests, lakes, villages, towns–all that lay ahead, scattered soldiers scrambling for their next line of defense, hoping, praying to hold onto whatever they could.
They wouldn't. As we had today, we would advance, and we would beat them. We would do so again, and again, and again. I would do what I had today just as many times to ensure that the days here would be remembered as the last of this war, and I wouldn't stop until this city had fallen, and as for those who would prolong the end of this war that'd gone on one century too long already, I wouldn't stop until I had killed every last one of them.