Pre-Chapter AN: Here's a chapter out on time. Before you ask, I haven't been captured by aliens. School has just decided to take a break from kicking my arse. As always, more chapters of this story are on my pa-treon, and more stories are on my profile. Go wild!

"You're much more handsome than your father ever was" were the words that General Han greeted me with when I walked into his tent. It reeked heavily of alcohol. So heavily that the smell actually made me crinkle up my nose.

"You definitely inherited his taste then. The man would not abide a whiff of alcohol in his presence" He said with a laugh. I traced his figure with my eyes, seeing him slumped backwards on his chair.

"We knew different men then," I said without emotion. I'd come to terms with my father's death years ago. Grandfather had been unable to keep him from wasting away. Either he couldn't or he just didn't want to, but my father had been declared dead a few years ago. I'd got the notice in the form of a letter from the steward informing me that all his personal wealth and holdings had been folded up into the family accounts and holdings for the time being. I was, of course, fully allowed to lay claim to them if I wanted to. I'd been fine with them being folded in there. I never particularly liked the man, so there was no sentimental value to his inheritance. And from a utilitarian perspective, there was no point in contesting his wealth and holdings being folded into the family accounts.

They'd be better managed by a dedicated team of stewards who were trained for that specific purpose than by me, who'd be away from the Homeland for the foreseeable future. Besides, either way, everything would be mine sooner or later. I ignored the twinge that thought brought to my heart. Grandfather would die. That was the way of things.

"I see. I guess the Royal Family can have a way of doing that to a man. You know, I still think about him to this day. Most of us there, we all ached to do the same thing he did. We supported him. Thousands of men and women of the fire nation had died, bled, and strived to get to that point. Victory was at our grasp. Iroh had sent thousands of sons and daughters to die for the glory of the Fire Nation, my own Nephew died in an ambush mere weeks before that day and all he had for me were empty platitudes and condolences. The second he was the one feeling the loss, though, he abandoned everything. Set us back decades in the war efforts. Allowed a beaten earth kingdom to have a second bite at the apple. The truth of the matter is that, one way or another, this can all be laid at his feet. But will it? No! Ozai is going to remove my head from my shoulders while his brother gets to gallivant across the world on a holiday." At the end of it, he was screaming. I could see that it had happened. The man was broken.

"I gave them everything. Everything I had I gave to the fire Nation and this is how they repay me?" He asked rhetorically, sweeping a drunken hand across the desk, sending all the scrolls and documents flying. By sheer chance, one of them rolled towards my feet. It had the insignia of the Fire Nation High Command on it.

General Han noticed what I was looking at. "Lift it and read it. Have a look at what happens when you make no mistakes and something completely out of your control happens" He said, pointing at it.

I wisely didn't mention that the wiser move would have been to establish a perimeter around the town before moving in to make sure that no ambushes happened. It was the same tactic Sung often used, after all. But discretion was the better part of valour, I thought to myself, while remaining still and at attention.

"Open it!" He screamed at me, and I was moving to pick it up before I even noticed what had happened. Once my brain jolted back into consciousness, I still completed the movement and held the scroll before me.

"_General Han,_

_ Your report has been well received by the Command, and we extend our fullest condolences for your losses. Report to the Fire Nation Palace for further conversations and strategy. _

_Signed, _

_High General Hiro"_ I read aloud at his request.

"You know your father got a letter just like that one before he got disgraced at the Palace?" He asked me.

I didn't need to nod. Everyone knew every part of what exactly had become of the man I called father from the moment he made the mistake of striking a Prince of the Blood. The story as still often repeated in several circles as a reminder of what could happen to even the highest lords and Generals if they made the mistake of thinking of themselves as equal to the royal family. The House of the Sozin did not like being contested for dominance.

"Then you know what they intend to do with me. They'll either kill me or worse than that. They'll set my family back centuries of progress, just like they did with yours. Except somehow you're on the rise again. Wu lands on top." He said the last sentence like he was quoting someone. I could, perhaps, have seen it had the tent been better lit. Maybe I could have seen the moment General Han came to a decision.

"You will take care of my family, boy. I have written them and asked them to seek solace in your family's protection. You will not deny them. Honour would have it of you" He said, and before I could tell him he was crazy, or even refuse. He took a blade out from his robes and stabbed himself in the stomach, driving the blade deep before pulling it from one side to the other.

Everything was a blur as I ran out shouting for help, even as I knew that he was already dead by the time he hit the floor. There was no way he was going to survive that. He'd done it purposely, laden me with that obligation on his own. No one could hear a man's last words and not at least try to abide by them.

XXXXX

A dead General made the rest of our admittedly short stay rather awkward. I mean, no one with any real understanding of nobility or the fire nation upper caste ever expected him to do anything but kill himself in time, but that unfortunately did not include most of the army. Han had been loved by his soldiers. The general pulse of things was that he'd been a good man who cared about every single man under his command, and now he was dead. And I was the only one who'd been there to see it happen. The looks were the worst part about my short stay.

Han's death, however, meant that I didn't personally have to address Maki's request. The Army was commanded by a different officer, a Colonel whose name I hadn't been able to catch. But Maki herself had been sensible enough to realise that with the change in leadership, leaving to join our hunt for The Mountain would have her executed for desertion in the very best-case scenario. Worst case was that Toji and I ended up on the block right next to her.

"So you're leaving now" She said to me as the rest of the Detachment I came with filed at the outskirts of their camp, about to set off.

"Yes. I'll miss you" I said, saying the words that she wanted to but couldn't get out.

"I know" She replied. I'll miss you too, her eyes said, even if her mouth didn't. The handshake we shared was formal but appropriate. We'd had our intimate goodbye earlier at night and the kind of attachment we shared, while not prohibited, still wasn't looked at kindly. Members of the army were brothers in arms, every one of us. You didn't really sleep with your brothers, did you? And there were worries that such relationships could affect decision-making and objectivity, especially when it came to officers in command. Speaking of officers in command, there were even worries about sexual harassment and power dynamics. Needless to say, we'd had more than a dozen classes in the academy about keeping it in our pants.

The Fire Nation Military had really progressive sexual harassment laws. Everything but the most appropriate of conduct was prohibited. We had the Fire Lady Ilah, mother of Iroh and Ozia, to thank for that. The laws existed and were broadly enforced, but I didn't for any reason assume that no infringements were happening under the table, where no one could see or do anything about it. An honour system was only useful in the absence of bad actors.

"Off we go" Toji said by my side, exchanging bows with her, and we both spurred our ostrich-horses forward. We were going to follow the main division down the road until we'd diverge near the town that had been the site of the ambush. Hopefully, we'd be able to gather enough clues there to guide our chase.

"Way down to hell and beyond" I completed for him, knowing that by the end of the day, it would be clear

XXXXXX

When the time finally came to split off from Colonel Shinsuke and the rest, it was an easy task. A clean break. Me and a hundred men to hunt down the most dangerous foe plaguing the Fire Nation's advance, apart from the concentrated earth kingdom strongholds like Omashu and Ba Sing Se. When we marched towards the town the ambush had taken place, I could feel the dread that nearly every single of my men was faced with. It was welling within them, all but determined to reach a crescendo sooner or later. The Major General had been gone with releasing one or two of his team of 12 Yuyan Archers to act as scouts for us, and we'd found that the Mountain and his people had kept their eyes on us from the moment we'd left the main camp and had watched us head to Han's camp, provide aid and then left.

The theory then became that the only reason we ourselves hadn't been attacked was because it would have proven too expensive in terms of manpower for them to do so. Even if we only each took down a single earth kingdom soldier with us, it would be too costly for the Mountain to consider. His numbers were not endless, and beyond that, we were better armed, trained, and each of us was practically guaranteed to be worth at least three of his own soldiers. Where the fire nation military was a well funded, smooth, and trained machine of war, made up of career soldiers trained up for years to join the war effort, the earth kingdom military, on the other hand, was made up of former hunters and farmers taken from their families (oftentimes at sword point) and forced to stand and do their best to stem the tide of the Fire Nation advance. It was why they were losing. That single difference was the key to the Fire Nation victory. It was why any news of dedicated training camps for earth kingdom soldiers was met with immediate action on the part of the High Command. No matter where it was, or what support it enjoyed, we'd find a way to get to it and destroy it. Our lessons had been filled with the nearly dozen times the Earth Kingdom had attempted something so bold. And even better for the Fire Nation, the main reason for the sad state of the Earth Kingdom army could be traced back to the Avatar. Avatar Kyoshi, when she put down Chin the Conqueror without caring about what he had wrought or bothering to stir from her island for long enough to truly resolve the problems of the Earth Kingdom.

The new constitution she had the 46th Earth King, Karu, sign to turn the Kingdom into a more constitutional monarchy had collateral effects that could still be felt centuries later. It was that constitution that returned much of the governing power to the individual city-states that made up the large kingdom. It was that same constitution that allowed someone like Bumi to style himself as a King while maintaining control over a kingdom that was essentially seceded from the main Earth Kingdom. We called it such, everyone did, but the truth was that the Earth Kingdom died that day the Avatar forced the King to sign away his power. With a pen instead of a hammer, she did what Chin never could. She shattered the earth kingdom into a hundred different pieces.

That was why we could do what we were doing. Ba Sing Se had not once bothered to send out a single soldier to resist the Fire Nation advance, only stirring when the wolves were quite literally at their doors. That was why Iroh, in his genius, had led the army on a sweep of the Earth Kingdom, leaving targets like Ba Sing Se and Omashu for last. Even most impressively, Omashu was left for after Ba Sing Se because the Prince himself had been hesitant to face off against Bumi, the mad king of Omashu. After the last time the fire nation had made an attempt, when hundreds of soldiers and three powerful Generals were slain by a single earth-bender and his army, he'd been left alone. Omashu would have to be taken, though. In time. Luckily, I was pretty certain that he wasn't going to bother resisting the Fire Nation after his conversation with Aang.

These were the thoughts that travelled through my mind as we marched through the town, waiting for the ambush to begin. Unlike Han, I was expecting the ambush, and also unlike him, I had a plan. A plan that I made sure to run every soldier through until they all knew it like the back of their hands. We wouldn't make any attempt to defend the village or what remained of it. These Earth Kingdom citizens who stared at us with boiling rage in their hearts would kill us if they ever got the chance. Why waste precious energy in trying to keep them safe from their people. What happened to Han was not entirely his fault, but some of his instructions had just been braindead. How could a General of the Fire Nation ask his own people to risk their lives to keep earth kingdom peasants safe from the attacks of their own people? There was empathy and there was foolishness? And now that foolish man had saddled me with the responsibility of keeping his family safe and taken care of.

I could have lied. When I was asked whether he had any last words, I could have just lied. Avoided the obligation in its entirety. But no. I just had to feel some stirrings of the most foolish of all emotions; guilt. "This is the third lap we're doing" Toji commented, and I nodded along with him while still keeping my senses strained for the ambush that I knew was coming, but had no idea from whence.

"There's no way they didn't bite the bait" I said to him. There was a reason we'd split up with so few men. We had to make sure that the Mountain saw a target that would be easy to take down.

"Look up. Over there" a man to my side suddenly said, pointing towards the east. I could see it now. A pillar of smoke, narrow and concentrated, but still very much there. The signal.

What the fuck?

"He ambushed the larger band?" Toji asked, clearly just as confused as I was. I'd torn through the files I had on the Mountain. I read every single word that the Fire Nation Intelligence had ever written about his skills, origin, tactics, and tendencies. One of them was to always exploit weakness. We were the weaker garrison, and we were heading right to the site of his previous ambush. There was nothing in his files that would have ever given the idea that he'd fail to take simple bait like that one, I thought to myself as I kicked any horse and began galloping at full speed towards the smoke trail. The only good thing was that we'd separated from the delegation about two hours ago, and since most of them were on foot and marched relatively slowly, I could only be about less than an hour away from them at full gallop. The only hope was that I'd catch on to the tail end of The Mountain's ambush on the larger part of the split up division of the encampment. I could already imagine what would happen if we failed here. We'd lose hundreds of lives for no just cause in an attempt to catch someone we hadn't been ordered to go after.

It was almost as if my horse could feel the urgency of the situation. She ran faster than she ever had as I saw the plains of the earth kingdom go by in a blur. I could hear Toji's horse behind me, and the rest of the squad even further down. We'd taken most of the horses with us for the ambush, as they were a key part of the original strategy, but now we used them to haul ass. My only hope was that it would be enough. That Shinsuke had the presence of mind to send the warning right at the beginning of the attack, and that the others were strong enough to hold the Mountain for long enough. Either way, I could feel it in my bones. This was to be the fight of my life.

I heard the battle before I ever saw it. Explosive blasts of fire clashing with boulders, and the sound of steel ringing against steel. When I came upon the camp, it was pure mayhem. An ambush in the daytime. Just looking at them told me that half the men were already out of the fight.

"For the glory of the Fire Nation. Victory or Death!" I heard the war cry before I realised that they'd spilled forth from my own lips. The famous words General Shifu had spoken before the taking of Yu Dao. I'd cringe at the blatant lack of originality at a later date. For now, it was war.

Post Chapter A/N; We've got the next two chapters of this story available on pa-atreon, and you can read all of that right now just by heading to the link on my profile or searching for my username up there. Feel free to have a look.