The White Flame (An Avatar Story) Book 2: Warfare

by Aegis Whiteflame

The Rats and the Hornets are gone, but the streets of Citadel never change. Only its players. The Fire Nation's Siege of Ba Sing Se intensifies with every passing day, and the survivors of Citadel's latest turf war, now drafted into the Fire Nation, are on death row to see the worst of what war has to offer.

18. Counter Attack

Fluke

The point of my knife scraped the black paint from my helm with ease as it etched the first of six new tally marks that I had lagged behind on, scratching the first of them now-'seven.'

Seven had been an earthbender, not targeting us, but instead a friendly tank to our starboard side with a pillar of earth that'd made contact with the treads, tearing along them. A blast of fire from my tank turret had broken the pillar of earth quick enough before I'd found the source and sent another such blast towards him who'd bent it. He went down in a moment, a gaping hole burnt through his right shoulder, damn near severing the arm from his body.

Though I'd come to our allied tank's defense in what could be considered a timely fashion, it hadn't been enough, the entire left tread in shambles, dragging along the sand until another earthbender got to it, crushing it between the weight of two walls bent up from the earth.

I never wanted to kill while in that tank's turret, at least I only did so far as to want to stop myself from getting killed, but I remember the anger.

We'd seen those earthbenders coming too–the ones that'd destroyed the other tank.

"Hostiles on our six!" I called out. "Approaching unit 3! Turn us around!"

"Hard turn, Gunji!" Gan called out, the maneuver one that'd require his input too, but it wouldn't come. It wouldn't come late, or in a delayed fashion, but simply not at all, forcing me to watch as a friendly tank of a full crew of four was crushed by the earth itself when it all could have been avoided.

I considered adding their tallies to my helmet as well, but Gan stated that it wouldn't be fair. I knew he meant 'fair' in the sense that I would be adding a tally to my helm that I hadn't 'earned,' but that wasn't how it felt later. He was right, those deaths weren't on my hands. They were on Gunji's.

"Damnit, Gunji!" I'd yelled, kicking him with the studded toe of my boot from my turret, sending him down to the ground with a cry of pain not at all different from those he was letting out now as Gan made him feel at least a fraction of what those other soldiers might have felt in those last moments. Their deaths had stuck with Gan and I, and no so would they with Gunji, albeit for different reasons.

I didn't enjoy hurting, and hardly considered Gunji's screams of pain and begs for mercy to be music to my ears, but it was necessary. Because without them, without a sense that what he did on the field would have an effect, he would stay the same useless kid. The kind of kid whose inaction killed people. Our people. I didn't enjoy hurting, but I would be lying if I said that I hadn't felt some degree of vengeful satisfaction upon burning my next and eight tally mark, just an Earth Kingdom footsoldier who'd been in our way.

Killing him had fixed nothing, of course. Our men were still dead, and Gunji was still worthless, but in that moment at least, things had felt a little better for just a brief second before the fear took over again.

The 'ninth' tally mark on my helmet had been for an archer that'd scored a damn lucky shot on us, through the viewport of my turret. It'd been lucky enough to slip through, fired by his crossbow, but not quite enough to hit me. The bolt had instead simply collided against the turret wall behind me, inciting a sudden jerk to get him in my sights, burning him to a crisp not longer after.

It had been a long day, that one, still not over for Gunji who Gan had now resorted to kicking in the groin. Gan enjoyed it more than I did, I think on account of him being the angrier between the two of us. It hardly meant mine was any less, and a few times in that tank in the thick of things, I considered just adding Gunji to the tallies on my head if it meant being done with him, but Gan's hatred lasted longer than mine.

When our tank's engine would finally be shut off hours later, after my heart was done pumping at two hundred beats per minute, I was done, but Gan would still have more than enough steam to let off. I didn't blame him, but I was done with violence for the day, the likes of which I forced myself to remember now as I carved a line that bisected the four marks of 'six through nine' to act now as my tenth.

He'd actually been killed along with another at roughly the same time, caught beneath the treads of our tank while still consumed by the flames I'd doused him with. I was thankful not to be outside with him, capable of hearing the bones crack and crunch beneath the weight of a multi-ton steel landship, so small and insignificant by comparison that our tank's suspension didn't even allow for us to feel him beneath our weight. His friend, my eleventh as I carved it now, had been stupid enough to try and pull him free from beneath our treads, not knowing, or not comprehending rather, that his entire lower body had already been crushed.

He'd been an easy target to pierce with a bolt of fire through the heart, hands still clutching his buddy's shoulders. He didn't make it very far after that, falling to the ground in an instant-dead.

Then there had been the last one, after everything was already over. We'd won that day, somehow, if we considered routing the Earth Kingdom a few hundred yards from where they'd been previously 'winning.'

It was more of a mercy than anything to the lone Earth Kingdom soldier who'd laid on the ground while I inspected the damage to our tank. He was holding his stomach with one hand as though to keep his guts from place, and the other reaching towards me, clutching onto the steel plate of my boot to try and get my attention.

I'd nearly jumped out of my skin and fired a bolt of fire through his heart upon feeling the tug on my leg and seeing the color of his uniform, covered in blood though it was. He was for all intents and purposes already dead though, incapable of doing so much as reaching for the knife in his belt to stab at me.

His eyes traced up by body until they settled on the knife at my belt, and I knew what it was he was asking for. He understood his own mortality, and that his time was up. He'd lost the chance for his death to be on his own terms, and all that he could ask for now was for it to be swift.

I'd considered whether to do it or not. A part of it felt wrong. We weren't fighting anymore, the battle was over. There was no reason to kill him. None but the fact that he'd asked, and that he was suffering. There was no reason to kill him, but less to leave him alive to suffer without purpose.

A thin streak of blood still trailed from my knife as I carved the twelfth and final tally mark into my helmet. I wiped off the remaining blood on the knife that I'd been unconscious of on my pant sleeve before rising from where I was seated atop our tank's hull. I slid down, my shadow obscuring the three tally marks that decorated the port hull of our tank, met up close with the sight of Gan throwing Gunji to the ground once again, kicking him in the stomach with the toe of his boot.

He was going to town on him; had been for the last ten or so minutes since we'd gotten back. Gunji hadn't even tried to fight back. He knew what he was in for, and I was worried was just beginning to view this as another part of his routine: leave, cry on the floor a tank while we fight for our lives, get beaten within an inch of his life.

Gan turned his head at the sound of me descending and asked, backing away from where Gunji was huddled on the floor, "Fluke! Want a turn?"

I looked over at Gunji, nails clawing at the ground as he tried to push himself up, not as a show of defiance, but only to look at me, wondering what my answer might be.

I shook my head, and said, "No."

Gunji's expression turned to one of hope for a moment, thinking perhaps that he might be done for the day, and that would have been the problem. He would never be done, he needed to understand that. Whether in the furnace of our tank or out here back at camp, nothing would change, but whether it would get better for him from one place to the other was still up to him.

First he would have to understand though.

"You have your fun though," I said to Gan, watching as the faint hope in Gunji's eyes quickly vanished.

He was not done. Far from it in fact.

Gan grinned. He was glad to hear that. Unlike his victim, he still had a lot left in him. "Oh, I will."

I turned away in time to hear Gunji's screams and cries for help resume, and so placed my helmet, now bearing the mark of 'twelve', back over my head, dulling them as I walked away.

Danev

Being locked in a hole for two weeks wasn't good for a lot of things. It was cramped, smelled of shit, and was growing progressively colder with the deeping Autumn and creeping approach of Winter. Conditions were bleak, stuck on the very front of the frontline with nowhere else to. We should have been miserable, but if there was something that us slum kids had learned to master over the course of our lives, it was how to make everything of nothing.

As such, we were far from miserable. Far from happy too, sure, but we were content to reside somewhere in the middle ground between luxury and squalor. We'd carved out living quarters for ourselves within the ground, reinforced our walls to ensure that Earth Kingdom bombardments would not bring our roofs down upon our heads, and used what wood and miscellaneous supplies we were provided less to accomplish what our earthbenders, or rather, earth bender could manage alone, and more to return our lives to some semblance of normalcy.

Whether it was "street signs" that read the names of the roads we'd grown up on back in Citadel or mediocrely-constructed pieces of furniture such as chairs or wooden platforms to place our sleeping rolls atop, we were making the most that we could of our circumstances. We'd long since accepted that we weren't going to be pulled off the line any time soon, so we made due with what we were given.

It was better now too that the bodies had been cut down.

The corpses of Gimor and Fashun had remained hanging for the duration of the time that it'd been believed that they were working with the enemy. After Mano'd helped us find one of those Earth Kingdom scouts that the other earthbenders on our side had been certain about the existence of, there'd been no more question about where their loyalties had lain all along.

Nobody said a word about it after. None of the commanders did at least.

Within the trenches, however, had been a different matter. Those were our men put to the death. Our friends. And our superiors didn't give two shits about them. We were angry, but worse, we were emboldened. It'd been our actions that'd proved a division general, brigade colonel, battalion lieutenant colonel, and company captain wrong. We couldn't trust our command to lead us, we learned, but only one another. We relied and depended on one another, and nobody else.

And if there was one thing a military could not afford, it was that.

It would be about after a week of the 114th and 122nd being so called 'out of the system' that lieutenant Aozon would choose to confront me about our supposed insubordination.

We hadn't mutineed, or even done anything close to that. We still manned our posts, albeit feeling more free to leave them from time to time so long as we checked in with one another. We still followed orders, which wasn't very difficult to do, I supposed, when we were given no orders in the first place, and most importantly, we hadn't begun killing our own men.

"Staff sergeant Danev," lieutenant Aozon said to me as he found me where I was spending my break, playing at cards with Tosa.

Both of our attentions naturally turned away from the game, which was fortunate for me as it gave me time to think of a next move, and turned towards our commanding officer instead.

"May I speak to you?" he asked, clearly referring to me.

Now Tosa's attention shifted to me, waiting for an answer, as though there was something special to wait for.

Is saying 'no' an option? I wondered to myself. The way that Aozon had even bothered to ask, however, gave a unique impression that it was. A lot had changed in the last week, and, somehow, a lot of it seemed to be changing without me even being aware of it despite the fact that I was supposedly at the center of it.

Mano who deserves the credit for that more than anyone else, I thought. Or blame, I also supposed, figuring it depended on how one chose to look at it. Either way though, it was me that Aozon was coming to, and by the look of him, he did have something to say.

"Of course," I said, and Tosa understood that meant it was time for him to go for the moment.

"I remember the score," he added though as he stood, clearly not wanting to lose the advantage he'd gained over the course of the game. Such was fine by me. I believed I'd just found a winning strategy anyway. So, I gave Tosa a dismissive nod and wave of my hand, allowing him to leave off on his way.

I turned back to lieutenant Aozon, who now invited himself to take a seat where Tosa'd been sitting just a few seconds ago. It was impossible not to notice the passivity with which Aozon was sitting, by no means attempting to hold his authority over me.

What is this? Some form of peace offering?

"You didn't submit a platoon headcount this morning," he said.

The platoon headcount was, technically, the platoon lieutenant's duty, but such duties could very often be handed to the staff sergeant, as had been the case between us. It wasn't that I'd so much neglected to submit a platoon headcount as much as I thought there were useless routines that weren't worth bothering with. The headcount for today was the same as it'd been yesterday. It was the same as what it'd been the day before, last week, and almost the week before that too if we hadn't lost Azao in that artillery bombardment.

"Headcount's the same as it was last week, sir," I said. "Still forty-nine."

"You're still bitter about that," Aozon said, no doubt recalling the loss of a comrade that I'd since come to accept.

"No, sir," I corrected him. "Matter of fact, I'm just thankful we managed to find those Earth Kingdom soldiers before you could hand them Mano next."

Aozon winced. Why? Am I wrong? I doubted I was, but nonetheless, his face hardened. "They wouldn't have taken Mano," he said.

"No?" I asked. "So if Captain Yuzeh were to come down here to you and tell you to hand Mano over because he saw an enemy that nobody else did, you wouldn't have handed him over?"

"It wouldn't have gotten to that point."

"It would have."

"Then I wouldn't have handed him over."

I scoffed. That was bullshit if I ever heard it. "Right," I said. "Because your men mean so much to you."

This conversation was not going the way I imagined Aozon had envisioned it. I didn't quite know what Aozon had hoped to accomplish here: if he'd wanted to bring me back in the fold, put me in my place, or if he really had just wanted nothing more than to get that headcount report. But one thing was certain; it wasn't this. He closed his eyes and sighed, enough of an indicator of that.

"It's clear you'll refuse to believe I might actually care about the men under my command," he said. "So, let me put this in terms you might find more believable. You and the rest of the platoon are resources. You're assets, and Mano especially. Fuck the Fire Lord's propaganda; skilled soldiers are skilled soldiers, and a good earthbender isn't a resource I'm about to give up."

"Lieutenant Rulaan tried to save Gimor; he failed. What makes you so sure the Captain would've listened to you any different?"

"Because as much as Rulaan, soft as he is, cares about his men, it's only about half as much as I care about myself." That statement surprised me, and I wasn't sure if meant to target Rulaan or himself even more. Either way, I was taken aback and, needless to say, Aozon had my attention.

He continued. "I don't want to be a lieutenant for this lousy platoon forever, staff sergeant. I have better things in mind than sitting in a trench all day and all night because I don't have enough stripes on my shoulder. My job, same as yours, is to follow orders and get my job done. If I get my job done and follow orders well enough, then I get put somewhere a few hundred yards behind this trench and take orders from somebody with more stripes. If I do that job well, then it's a few hundred more yards, and orders from somebody with even more stripes. It goes that way until I get to do my job, sitting behind a desk somewhere with a substantial pay grade, a garrison at my command, and a title and land to my name. You want command because you think you can do the right thing, and that's great."

"I don't want that," I said, not thinking before I did.

"Yes, you do," Aozon scoffed. "Maybe you don't want it for yourself, sure, but you do want it. You think you can do my job better, do right by your men, and you probably can. I don't care. We both have our reasons to get ahead, and mine are selfish, so believe me when I say this. To do my job as an officer, I need soldiers. I'm not getting replacements, so I need you lot. I can only protect you for so long. You humiliated the captain, and he won't be fond of that, especially if you continue to act like you're on your own."

"We're not?"

"Only if you keep this up. I have more pull with the captain than you can hope to have on your own terms, and if the captain feels you're not with him, then, well, you saw what happened to those he thought were against him."

Fashun and Gimor…

"So," Aozon continued. "I want us to come to an understanding. You continue to look after your men, and do what's right by then, and I continue to look after myself."

And by his own definition, looking after himself meant keeping safe his resources, and ensuring that they weren't wasted. These were the plainest terms he'd ever spoken with me on, and they were honest. Fluke would've been able to tell better than I, but I didn't see anything dishonest about what the lieutenant was saying. We kept to ourselves, this silent agreement between ourselves, and we would both benefit. My friends would be safe, and so too would Aozon's hopes for promotion, so long as we both kept to our respective roles.

It was a fair agreement, but not one that I would shake on. Not with him. Not after what'd already happened thus far.

"Is there anything else?" I asked.

If Aozon was disappointed, he didn't show it. He had no reason to. He saw that I understood, that we were on the same page. He was a piss poor soldier and even worse leader of men, sure, but he was no idiot, and so he shook his head.

"No," he said, standing. "As you were, staff sergeant."

Though I wouldn't shake his hand, I did raise mine to my forehead in a half salute, one enough to seal the assurance that I knew where we stood, and so we would leave it at that.

Aozon left.

Tosa would return a few minutes later with a half roll of bread beneath his arm. Noticing Aozon was now gone, he took his seat for himself once again and asked, "What was that all about?"

"Nothing," I said dismissively. "Where's the bread from?"

Tosa looked at it with a prideful grin. "Well, the lieutenant was here, wasn't he? So, guess where he wasn't?"

I shook my head in disbelief. Sneaky son of a bitch. Stealing the commander's food from right under his nose.

"Shouldn't hold on for that too long," I said. "Doing you no favors as it is."

"Oh, don't worry. All evidence of it'll be gone soon enough."

"I can help you out with that. Wager it on the game?"

Tosa looked at his hand, still face down. He picked it up, inspected it, seeing no sign of tampering, meaning that as far as he could tell, the odds still were in his favor, thus provoking him to ask, "And when I win?"

"I cover your night shift today."

"For the week."

"Three nights."

"Deal."

And that, I did shake on.

I ate well that night, splitting the bread with Fluke who'd come to visit us once again, the tallies on his helmet rising by the week, but he was still him. For the most part. He wasn't thinking about any of that now. Such was his reason for being here rather than with Gan and Gunji back at the 62nd's staging area. Here, he had a fire, bread, and shelter from the night's rain storm that a defeated Tosa was standing watch in just outside, still likely moaning and groaning about how I must have cheated or how Aozon sitting in his place had given off some form of 'bad energy.'

"Nice digs," Fluke commented on our surroundings as he took another bite of bread that I'd justified giving to him as only fitting for the only one here to have seen actual combat so far.

None others objected to it between those of us in Dragon Platoon's subterranean barracks, dug into the ground adjacent to the front line, deep enough down to shelter us from artillery when it came as well as the pouring rain and howling wind of outside. Coupled too with the fire we gathered around, I couldn't help but agree. These were 'nice digs' especially to me, Fluke, Shozi, and Mykezia as we warmed ourselves around the fire.

"Mano do this all himself?"

"Hey!" Shozi exclaimed. "We helped!"

"Yeah," I said with mock defensiveness that would soon be used against Shozi. "Made that chair you're sitting on matter of fact."

"Huh," Fluke said. "Explains why I've got a nasty splinter up my ass."

"Oh don't say you're not into that kinda thing," Mykezia scoffed.

Fluke rolled his eyes, but beneath that, there was a slight flush too that seemed in some small part due to Mykezia addressing him in such an informal and friendly way. It was no surprise to me how he felt about her, and though it likely amounted to little more than a schoolyard crush, I was glad to see something being felt out here other than the usual doom and gloom. And so, to help himself return to normalcy, Fluke cleared his throat and returned to his original subject, saying, "No, but seriously. Damn impressive what he pulled off."

"Wouldn't be the same without him," I agreed. And to think we'd almost lost him too.

Mano, fortunately, had not woken in the time that we were talking about him, only a few feet away from us, lying on a cot of similarly poor woodwork. He'd taken a full dayshift and sure as hell needed whatever rest now that he could get. Especially as tonight was a night without an artillery bombardment.

After we'd caught their scout, the Earth Kingdom had decided to repay the favor by shelling us for a full day and full night, forcing us into our holes beneath the ground, a sure test of the defenses Mano had prepared for us as any. They'd hold, and so had we, and somehow, the 114th had gotten through without a single casualty. Numbers from the 122nd stated that they'd lost a single man, and the 54th 2, but all the same, that full 24 hours of artillery raining from the sky, I wanted to think, had cost the Earth Kingdom more than it had us.

We were thankful for quiet nights like these when they came, and I was sure that Fluke was too. He'd begun spending the nights here as opposed to back with Gan and Gunji in the 62nd. Nobody stopped him. Believe it or not, it was rather uncommon for soldiers to actually travel to the frontline in search of sleep. But anything was better than the 62nd according to Fluke. Apparently, Gunji had taken to crying himself to sleep most nights, and Gan's efforts to beat that out of Gunji had worked just about as well as his efforts to beat Gunji into a respectable soldier on the field.

"Don't know how long it'll be before Gan just decides to kill him," Fluke said, already seemingly set on the reality that it was bound to happen. We had a limited amount of cots, but I wasn't particularly tired, and so allowed Fluke to knock himself out on mine, but he still talked a small bit before seeing himself off. "It'll happen sooner or later, I know. Just don't want to be around when it does."

It was true, yes, that it'd most likely happen in the night, when nobody could save or do anything. Back in Citadel, Fluke might have taken that as a sign to never leave Gunji's side, but reality often trumped idealism. Gunji was going to die eventually. Even I could see that. I supposed too that it was better it happen here in the middle of the night rather than in the field where he'd drag the rest down with him. After it was said and done, I imagined sleeping back with his unit in their segment of the camp would go by easier.

Fluke didn't say much more after that, but he did fall asleep, joining the others in the 114th who'd called it a night.

I snuck my last few bites of the bread that I'd won and wiped the crumbs off on my pant sleeves. I stood to make my way over to the latrine pits to relieve myself before settling down for the night too when I noticed a stirring to my side. I was excited for a moment that it may be Fluke, but saw instead that Mano was rising out of bed.

Damnit, I thought. He'd only been asleep for roughly four hours. He needed more than that.

"Mano," I said in a harsh whisper. "It's still night. Go back to sleep."

He wasn't listening to me. His attention was elsewhere. Elsewhere entirely.

"Mano," I said again, louder this time, but he only held up a finger for me to shush. I obliged, realizing what was happening. I knew this Mano, the look of unbroken focus on his face, the way his eyes looked off into nothingness like a rabbit listening for a predator. Only, he wasn't listening. He felt something, and the look he gave me confirmed that.

"Scout?" I asked.

He shook his head. "More," he whispered. "'Bout a hundred yards out. Closing in slowly."

"Fuck," I said, no longer too concerned about speaking too loudly as it wouldn't matter soon anyway. I made my way to the bunk nearest to me to wake the first soldier in the line, happening to be Sujeh. We all knew what this called for, and so the private understood precisely what I meant when I said, "Silent alarm. Go."

He nodded, and within thirty seconds, as had been drilled into all of us by now, his armor pieces were equipped and strapped on, helmet tucked beneath his arm, and he was running outside into the still pouring rain to spread the word. We were going on silent alert. It was silent in that we wouldn't announce our fear with flares, gunfire, and an artillery barrage. That would only allow the Earth Kingdom to further gauge our response times and our limits, no. We would get to our line, hand cannons at the ready, on full alert, ready for them to finally poke their heads out, and when they did, we would be ready.

The next soldier I woke was Yam. Then the two of us woke the next two, Chejuh and Mi, then the four of us four more until before long, the barracks was awake.

"Eighty yards out," Mano alerted me as the last of the platoon were finally stirring awake. Nobody was oblivious to the general severity of what was going on, but I wouldn't neglect to fill them in with what was needed to do their jobs first, at least as far as I knew.

"This is a silent alert. We got Earth Kingdom incoming, high in number, about eighty yards out and closing. Grab your hand cannons and ammo; keep it and yourselves dry. Storm tonight. Go."

Sujeh may have been in too much of a rush to remember his poncho, but the rest of us didn't make that same mistake. There was no way of knowing how long we would be out there, but none of us doubted the truth of Mano's claims. Not anymore. The enemy was out there, and amidst the shuffling of Dragon platoon soldiers as they grabbed their kits, so too was Fluke in motion, clipping his poncho into place around his neck, and grabbing his firebender's helmet from where he'd left it at his bedside.

"You should get back to the 62nd," I said. "Things are about to get messy here."

"What? And leave you all alone. You need every firebender you can get."

"You're not 114th," I reminded him. "We're on combat duty now."

"Oh come on," Mykezia butted in, much to the dismay of my efforts to keep Fluke out of a possible engagement such as this. "He's right. Need everyone we can get. Besides, kid's seen more of the enemy than the two of us put together."

And so whether I liked it or not, the matter was put to rest there with Mykezia's statement, and sealed as Fluke said, "So it's settled," and slipped his helmet over his head, replacing his face with the ivory white skull mask designed to shelter him from his own flames.

It was strange how still in spite of knowing who it was beneath there, that helmet still managed to terrify me. I wondered if it was on account of how when he put it on, he was just another 'skullface' that'd used to haunt the streets of Citadel as a kid, or if perhaps it was the number 'twelve' that adorned the side of his helmet, reminding me plain and clear of what Mykezia had said. He'd seen more of the enemy than the two of us combined, and now he was going to see them again in spite of my efforts to stop it.

I was one of the last ones out of the barracks, in the pouring rain and met with a line of Fire Nation soldiers across all companies of the 114th gathered at the edge of the trench, atop their firing platforms, hand cannon barrels rested on the list and trained straight ahead. There was no sign of lieutenant Aozon, likely a small bit back in a place of his own, unlike lieutenant Rulaan of Elephant platoon who I could hear the shouts of past the rain, not far down the line, helping to organize his men, in the field with them. A real leader.

I'd made my peace with Aozon, but that hardly meant that I would put him on the same level as a commander who honestly did put himself beside his men in the thick of it. It didn't matter though. We had each other.

"All eyes forward!" I called out to the men of Dragon as I joined them on the line, placing my own hand cannon down, already loaded with powder and ball, ready for a single spark, from a matchbox that I kept beneath my poncho in my belt, to be fired off.

I'd found a convenient spot close enough to both Fluke to keep an eye on him, and Mano who was keeping me updated on the enemy.

"Still approaching," he said. "Fifty yards out."

There was no way of knowing where the enemy would choose to surface, but one way or another, at thirty, I would order the men to ensure their cannons were loaded, and fuses ready. At twenty, I would order them to prepare their sparks, and call for a flare to be fired to provide light. At ten, if so it was reached, well, then the cannons wouldn't matter. I would order my men to exchange them for their swords, and so it would become a melee. I hoped it wouldn't come to that. A melee couldn't be controlled, managed, mitigated. Here though, guns in our hands, trenches offering us cover, we could manage. We would be fine.

"Forty yards out," Mano said. I felt my hands tense, and forced them to react. I needed them steady, but nimble too if I was to recover my matchbox and get a spark going in good time to fire my weapon. I needed to be attentive, to not get tunnel vision, to be ready for anything. We all did.

As such, I gave the order, "Hold steady!" just to provide that reminder.

Soon enough, the enemy was closer yet again. "Thirty yards," Mano said, hand placed against the wall of the trench if only to feel the enemy approach more accurately.

"Load your cannons!" I called out, and saw as half of the trenchline inspected their cannons to ensure their balls were already loaded, quick on the draw, and the other half went about loading them now. That same order didn't go for Mykezia, Fluke, Penar, and our other firebenders, not exactly needing the steel tube of blasting jelly when their natural abilities served just fine. Or so I hoped. I'd never seen a firebender in combat before, as in, actual real combat. The training in Citadel was one thing, the sparring and war games, but this, this would be a truer test than anything else.

They can handle themselves, I told myself. Fluke was proof of that, a strike of lightning making the paintless scratches of tally marks on his helmet shine.

"Twenty yards!"

I decided not to call for a flare. The moon offered light enough in spite of the storm, and beside, we had Mano. If the enemy rose, we would know when and where, and so I simply said, "matches out! Prepare aim!"

They would come out any moment now. Soon, very soon, it would all begin.

Only, it didn't.

Mano's voice was quieter now as he said, still seemingly certain of where the enemy was, "Ten yards!"

It took me a moment to recover my voice as well, knowing what it entailed, but so called anyway, "Swords!"

The soldiers of Dragons scrambled to change their weapons accordingly, all of our heartbeats as one–fast, terrified, anxious, just waiting for the second that was coming at any moment, but still it didn't.

I looked at Mano. It couldn't have been a false alarm. He struggled for words, looking around himself as though waiting for an answer to come to him. He looked up at me, so used to calling their distances, and said, without an answer already in mind, "They're…they're." Then his eyes widened, and we understood at once. "They're below us!"

In the same moment that was occupied by his cry of warning, so too was it filled by the distinct crack of the earth opening beneath us as one hole formed, then two, then four, and eight and sixteen and many more that I couldn't count, and from them emerged those whom Mano had known were coming-the Earth Kingdom–the enemy.

And though we'd had Mano's warning, and had been preparing ourselves for attack, we hadn't been prepared for this. The first rock hurled at us by an enemy earthbender struck somewhere close to my side, hitting somebody, though I couldn't tell who. There was no time to know for sure. It had begun.

The enemy would get no hesitation from me. I'd killed before, back even before when it'd been demanded by the justification of war. So, I knew how to act.

I jumped down from the firing platform, unsheathing my infantryman's sword from my belt, and cut in an upward stroke clean through that first earthbender's upper torso, reaching all the way to his neck before the blade stopped, and I removed it, leaving the man dead. Mine was only the first retaliation of the evening, and all around me, the trench line had gone to war, the 114th's in battle with the enemy in a degree of close quarters combat that we hadn't thought to anticipate.

The enemy was still rising. Near me, I saw Suje take an earthbender's pike to the chest, dropping him to the ground dead in an instant. I saw the earthbender responsible too and would have moved in to engage the man had not a separate brawl between an Earth Kingdom infantryman and Shozi not gotten in my way. Shozi found his blade locked with an enemy soldier's spear, but by merit of a short range weapon going up against a long range one at such close distance, Shozi was easily enabled to maneuver out of the way of the enemy's spearpoint, and instead shove his sword in the soldier's side, assisted by me as I helped to finish the soldier, thrusting my own blade into his heart.

We both dislodged our blades at the same time and exchanged a look before Shozi spotted his next target and moved on. The earthbender who'd killed Suje had moved on. Damnit. I'd find him, I knew, or he would at least be found by another. He wouldn't make it out of here alive.

In the corner of my eye, I saw Fluke again, not in the midst of combat, but simply standing in place.

What is he doing?

"Fluke!" I called out, and was met with no response, completely out of it to the point he didn't notice the Earth Kingdom soldier approaching behind him. I rushed past Fluke to swing my sword at the soldier, catching him off guard as his attention had been placed on Fluke instead, downing him instantly.

Fluke's attention turned towards me, and I placed a hand on his shoulder to try and further get him to focus on me. I would've wondered just why he was like this, but then it struck me that he'd never faced the enemy headlong like this, more accustomed simply to facing them past the viewport of his tank. Now, he was facing them as we did, close and personal.

"I need you here, Fluke!" I shouted. "Snap out of it."

His attention was on me, and he seemed again aware of what was going on around him. If that wasn't enough proof of it, however, he very promptly turned his masked face to look past me, shoved me aside, and shot a blast of fire at something I didn't see until I turned and saw an earthbender crumple to the ground with a burning hole pierced directly through his chest. Fluke was back, and he'd just killed his thirteenth man to save me, but he was here again, and for his own sake, I was thankful.

"Keep moving!" I yelled. This wasn't a tank gunner's seat nor was this a simple trench raid where we could have just stood in place and fired. We were under attack, and staying too long in the same place would only get us killed.

Our trench line had devolved to close quarters melee now, just as I'd feared. Dragon needed to be rallied if we were to help the other platoons and rid our ranks of the enemy. I turned my sights to look south down our line. That's where I was headed, with Fluke close on my heels.

I pushed my way past Shozi as he pinned an Earth Kingdom soldier to the wall with his arm and cut his neck with the other. To my right side, I saw another soldier jump over the lip of the trench, now attacking from outside, before being hit mid jump by a blast of fire from Fluke's fist. He took it in the leg, stumbling right down to my side where I finished the job, cutting across his chest with my sword, sending a splatter of blood to the opposite wall.

I felt the earth shake beneath my feet, watching as the ground split open as small pikes of earth emerged from beneath to rise, headed in our direction. On its present course, it would have soon impaled Fluke, Shozi, and me, but was instead stopped in its tracks by a wall of earth that rose from the ground. I noticed then Mano who separated the top portion of the wall from the base, and sent it careening towards the earthbender responsible, crushing his skull to a pulp and sending him crumbling to the ground, nigh headless.

Seizing the moment of Mano's attention being elsewhere, however, a separate Earth Kingdom soldier charged Murao by his side, catching him off guard and managing to plunge a knife into him, though only his side. Murao screamed from the pain, but was momentarily relieved by me as I rushed ahead to tackle the soldier to the ground, opening the way for Murao to remove the knife from his side with a grunt of effort and plunge it into his assailant.

From where I was on the ground, still atop the now dead Earth Kingdom soldier, I looked up to see numerous others towering over me as they approached, swords, spears, and boulders raised. I thought to close my eyes in anticipation of the rushing end, but rather, kept them open to watch as the world erupted into flames before my eyes.

I ducked my head to shield myself as the heat became near unbearable. I thought at first they must've been Fluke's flames, but when I raised my head again, confident I must have lost my eyebrows, the direction from where the flames had come from proved they hadn't been Fluke's, but instead, had belonged to Mykezia who turned a burst of fire to finish off one of the last survivors.

While I was thankful for the assist, the fact that the flames hadn't come from Fluke was reason enough for me to wonder as to where he was. Turning around though revealed that he was, in fact, still in one piece, but focusing on our rear, firing a blast of fire that caught an Earth Kingdom soldier in the side, toppling him to the ground as the fire grew to consume him.

I rose back up to my feet, no use on the ground as I was, and helped Murao up to his feet as well. "Get Murao out of here!" I yelled to nobody in particular seeing as how he was in need of being stitched up. I saw Yam take that responsibility upon himself, and the two made for the Dragon platoon barracks to seek some form of refuge until the war to the medical unit could be cleared. All the more reason to finish up here.

A quick glance of the trench line in the midst of battle informed me that things were at least beginning to turn our way, the Earth Kingdom's numbers ever thinning. We fought on, myself finding Tosa who'd been out here longest among us, and saw that our numbers remained somewhat static, giving me the confidence that this battle was turning in our favor. That was, however, until the ground shook again. This time, it was not on account of an earthbender's machinations, so proved by the way the world lit around us and dirt and debris was thrown up into the air.

Then came another blast, and another, and we, by instinct, threw ourselves to the ground yet again. The Earth Kingdom was bombarding us.

"They're bombing their own men?!" Fluke shouted in disbelief as he threw himself to the ground alongside me.

"This was already a suicide mission for them!" I countered, yelling to be heard above the bombs exploding all around us just above our trench. The soldier who'd come here knew they were digging straight into enemy lines. They hadn't expected to survive. Such was their conviction that even now, under friendly fire, they still fought to the last man. I rose, pulling Fluke up along with me, and cut through an Earth Kingdom soldier who struggled for his footing amidst the shaking of the earth.

Another shell, and Chejuh, who I encountered just a little further down the line, barely hit his shot with his hand cannon, managing to penetrate the stomach of an Earth Kingdom swordsman, not quite killing him though, needing for him to be finished by a knife to the throat.

Behind us, it seemed that Elephant platoon had mostly cleared their line as had we, which was in good time too as the artillery was not growing any more sparse. A shell hit inside our trench just in front of me, throwing Chejuh to the ground as it collided with the trench wall beside him. By some miracle, in spite of his distance to the explosion, Chejuh had been spared of the fragmentation unlike Tosa, who in spite of being at least a dozen feet away, and behind me at that, fell to the ground as a fragment of the shell tore through his leg, dropping him to the ground.

"Bring 'em back!" I shouted. "Bring 'em back!"

I grabbed onto Tosa who was already near me, propping him up long enough to get a look at his leg, a bloodied mess, before lifting him to carry him on my shoulders. Shozi rushed ahead to Chejuh's aid, who simply shrugged him off and stood on his own, clearly more winded than anything.

Earth Kingdom shells still falling around us, and the Dragon platoon barracks a good way off, we had little choice but to get on the ground and hold steady. I set Tosa down and was about to call out for Murao to help me with his wound until I recalled that Murao himself was injured. Damnit, I grimaced to myself as I instead called the nearest person I saw, Mano, to come lend a hand.

"Hold his leg steady," I said, my sentence only partially audible above another shell falling not too far away.

Mano did as I asked, giving me time to pull my dagger out from my belt and cut away the pant sleeve that concealed Tosa's wound. He was lucky. The shrapnel had pierced clean through his leg rather than lodging itself inside. He would live, but only if we acted quickly.

"Get some pressure on that," I said in a haste while I cut a larger strip of fabric from Tosa's already torn pant leg to serve as a bandage to stop the blood flow. Mano held the leg steady as I wrapped the makeshift bandage around, noticing that Tosa had stopped resisting. Mano'd noticed as well.

"Is he-?"

I put a finger to Tosa's neck. "Just passed out," I said with relief. "Bandage'll do for now, but we need to get him-"

I was interrupted once again, this time not by a falling shell, but instead a shrill whistle that sounded across our line. We were being called to attention. If that hadn't been obvious before, then it was now by a voice I disdained to hear, Aozon's, yelling, "Dragon Platoon! Steady yourselves!"

"Fuck's going on here?" Chejuh grimaced, looking down the line at where the lieutenant stood in his officer's livery, standing as the rest of us were huddled down on our hands and knees. I half expected a shell to claim him at any moment, but the bombardment had moved behind us, targeting the weak stomach of our siege camp.

Why the whistle, why Aozon gathering us, unless he…"He's going to order us to attack," I said more to myself than to the others as the realization struck me, but it wasn't wrong. It was the only explanation. He was going to have us attack the enemy, and beside me, I saw as Fluke shifted. I thought at first he might be volunteering himself as the first to charge over our trench, but instead he said, "I need to get back to the 62nd."

"Through the artillery!?"

"They deploy without me, they're dead!"

He wasn't wrong, but the artillery was behind us now. He was safer staying here than trying to run through that to get to his men. "You try to run through that, you're dead."

The look in his eyes spoke of a similar concern. He didn't want to go out there, but even more, he didn't want the others going out there without him, devoid of a gunner, certain to die. So behind that fear, there was a conviction too. Fluke shook his head, as though trying to convince himself more than me, and said, "I'll see you at the finish line."

Fluke was lucky I was busy tending to Tosa rather than paying attention to him, allowing him to slip away as he crawled back up the side of the trench and made way towards his allies in the 62nd. I pulled myself away from Tosa in an attempt to catch him in time, but never was quite as fast. Mykezia held me at bay with a hand on my chest saying through the filter of the mask that was just as disconcerting as Fluke's, "He'll be fine! Focus!"

In spite of her saying this, my focus still turned to the distant sounds of artillery sounding from deeper within the area of our camp, knowing Fluke would already now be winding his way through them, if not already dead. He'll be fine, I told myself. He will. There was nothing more I could do. Not for Fluke at least. Mykezia was right. I was surrounded by forty-eight other soldiers looking to me rather than our official commander Aozon who sounded a whistle once again.

"Dragon platoon!" he shouted, turning our attention towards him once again. "Prepare to engage the enemy!"

Engage the enemy? Across no man's land. Similar questions began to be whispered amongst the soldiers of Dragon platoon, and I imagined all of the 114th and 122nd as I was sure similar orders were being conveyed to them.

Aozon's eyes settled on me as he said this. Why was he looking at me? Why me in particular? He was looking at me, right? So why? Why was he looking at me? To help sell it to the others? To convince them to march into no man's land in the face of certain death?

We're his tool to success, I thought to myself, recalling the conversation we'd shared just earlier today. He cannot afford to waste us.

"On my command!"

We wouldn't all make it, I knew, but it was that, or be labeled as the enemy by our own country, and face the price. But what instead? Walk right into hell?

The enemy's artillery is behind us.

"Charge!" Lieutenant Aozon shouted, rising over the trench alongside the soldiers of the other platoons as they rushed into no man's land, and I knew what had to be done.

I took a deep breath, and closed my eyes. There was no other way. "Dragon Platoon!" I shouted, and saw over forty pairs of eyes turn to look at me with a muted hope that I may give some contradictory order to counter those of our lieutenant, but I would not. We were soldiers, and we had our orders. "On me!"

And with that, I turned to be the first one out, crawling atop our firing platform, and over the lip of our trench directly onto no man's land, just one out of hundred others rushing towards the enemy, and with Dragon platoon directly behind me.

It was wishful thinking to imagine that the Earth Kingdom would be caught with their pants down. They wouldn't have time to react and train their artillery on us, but that hadn't meant that they'd left themselves entirely exposed.

It came first as a whistle and a crack against the ground that was characteristic of a hand cannon's musket ball, but it was far too accurate for this distance, and there'd been no sound of a blast. My next thought was that it'd been a shard of earth fired at us by a bender, but then came another, then one more, then ten more, then twenty, in rapid succession

I heard nothing of them but how they whistled through the air and clattered against the ground, and killed those beside me. I saw Eejun get hit and go down before anybody else, and watching as others were either hit or threw themselves to the ground, but I kept on running. There would be no going back. Not anymore. I forced myself to look straight ahead and focus on nothing else, watching as comrades fell in front of me, but I did not waver, did not stagger.

The enemy trench line was growing closer, and I could see the rims of their helmets now poking above, their earthbenders firing on us relentlessly. My target was set, on an opening between what looked to be hand cannons, but weren't. All I knew was that the shards of earth shot out from them, cutting down my men, my comrades, my friends. My eyes narrowed and I allowed the tunnel vision to sink in. My speed hastened and I held my breath in anticipation of one of their shots finding me. None yet had. The distance between me and their trench now just reduced to the dozens of feet, I prepared myself, reaching down to clutch a spear still lying on the ground, dropped by a fallen comrade, though not of my platoon, and I closed those last few feet.

At the lip of their trench, somehow still alive, spear in hand, I acted on pure instinct, and leaped straight down, plunging the point of it into the Earth Kingdom soldier closest to me.

By merit of the tip of my spear and my full weight behind it as I leapt down, the soldier was pinned to the ground beneath his feet, and now his back. I did not give the Earth Kingdom soldier beside him, to my right, time to react. I took advantage of his lingering shock to dislodge my spear from his comrade's gut and swing.

The spear caught him across the face, right at his jaw, tearing a gash that connected to his mouth, dropping him to the ground as he choked on his own blood.

I turned left now, towards one of the Earth Kingdom gunners. There were two, one manipulating what seemed to be a metal two, and another, an Earthbender, pushing his arms in quick and successive moments, firing miniscule shards of earth at my men. I chose the bender as my first target, and so adjusted my grip on my spear, and hurled it. I was hardly an expert at spear throwing, but knew the basics. At least, I knew enough to hit a target no more than fifteen feet away.

My spear struck the earthbender in the side, his turret ceased firing, and he crumpled down to the ground, offering no further obstacle for reinforcements to arrive, namely a single firebender who proceeded to knock the soldier to the ground, place a hand to the side of his head, and quickly burn through it with a single blast of fire.

The firebender rose, and I recognized Mykezia by her height soon enough, and fast behind her, Shozi, Chejuh, and Mano too. So they're alright at least, I thought to myself as they rallied on me without a word needing to be said. We weren't done here. Not by a long shot.

We proceeded down the line, leaving behind the dead Earth Kingdom gunners and their violent machination. Other Fire Nation soldiers had begun storming over the line, eliminating the other gunners by sheer means of number, strength, and speed, allowing me, Mykezia, Mano, Shozi, Chejuh, and others gathering behind me to proceed further to the Northeast, deeper through the line of Earth Kingdom trenches.

We turned right down a long corridor, met with what seemed to be backup gunners, holding one of those firing cylinders between the two of them. Having abandoned my spear, I cut through the one on the right with an upwards stroke. He fell, dragging the other soldier who he held the cylinder with down to his knee, allowing Shozi to easily pierce him through the neck.

We continued further, all things quiet for the moment, but the sound of chatter further ahead indicated we were in for close contact, and such proved to be correct, but only not from where expected.

There was a noise above us, a call that I couldn't quite make out the words of, but was loud and frightened enough to sure as hell be an alert. Above us and above the trench was an Earth Kingdom crossbowman, now raising his weapon to fire upon us. He wouldn't have time to do that or even finish his exclamation before a shot from Chejuh's hand cannon rang out, and the soldier fell over into our trench, dead, but still seeming to have accomplished his purpose.

The earth opened to my right, revealed a hidden passage with two Earth Kingdom soldiers waiting inside for us, crossbows raised. Mykezia was quick on the draw, letting out a stream of fire over my shoulder that was hot enough to make me think I'd been set a lit as well.

The two Earth Kingdom soldiers burned, but not before one had managed to let off a shot that grazed the side of my helmet, tearing through the metal and nicking my ear on the way out. Such was the least of my concerns though. Those two were dead, but above us, another enemy had appeared, this one a bender, and quick as Chejuh attempted to react, the earthbender was already in motion.

I saw as the stone chipped away from the walls to my side, the superstructure failing and daring to cave in on us, burying alive in a fashion not at all different from those we'd dug out of the ground when first arriving here.

In an act of his own, however, Mano stepped out in front of me, raising an arm so as to stop the rocks from rumbling atop us, and so shoved his other free hand into what was left of the wall itself, and as though carrying a weight that dwarfed him in size, but was still subservient to his will, Mano set the wall back in place, creating enough of an opening for Chejuh to rush past and aim his hand cannon up at the earthbender who'd tried to bury us alive, and fire.

He went down, and the resistance against Mano's saviorism was reduced to nothing as he set the wall back in place, clearing the way for us to continue.

By now, we were far from alone, other Fire Nation soldiers having either rallied behind me down this corridor, proceeded down others, or simply taken to the surface, rushing ahead to clear the Earth Kingdom out.

The next group of soldiers we came across were a trio that was fleeing. Mykezia gave them no such chance to do so, catching them in a flume of fire that consumed them whole. Now having reached their secondary defensive trench line, it was impossible not to see that the Earth Kingdom was retreating. We'd routed them. In the distance, past our new line, further to the northeast, I could see them still retreating by the dozens.

Fire Nation soldiers now having reached our same point took positions to fire at them, some such as Chejuh even managing to hit them, dozens of yards away though they were.

"Oh you're leaving now?!" some shouted.

"Get back here!" others cried, firing their last desperate shots as the enemy ran away, but to no avail. Shouts of anger now became cheers of joy as, in the distance, the enemy retreat was cut off by a new steel wall that'd formed, one mobile and fast-moving. It was our armored units, cutting the survivors off from retreating, and cutting them down like flies. I wondered if Fluke was in there somewhere, if he'd gotten back to his unit in time to join in. There was no way of knowing, but as my heart finally began to slow as I watched the last of our enemy here get cut down to pieces, one final crucial detail was clear and beyond question.

We'd won.

Maybe not the war, and perhaps not even this larger campaign, but this battle, tonight, we had won.