A/N- Four days ahead of schedule this time, guys. Be pleased, and do give me applause if you love it. Next chapter will take the full scheduled two weeks so expect it on Thursday, the 31st October. You could skip the wait and read the next two and continuous updates on Pa-treon right now. For Pa Treon, you can remove the hyphen between Pa and Treon and Google it, then search for my username—Oghenevwogaga. Or you could copy the link in my bio and remove the spaces before pasting it in your address bar.

Note: please do subscribe to my pa-treon using the website directly, instead of the IOS app. It's cheaper on the website.

XXXXXXXX- THE BOULDER

"The boulder is not the biggest fan of this plan" He said, making sure to get his objections heard before they all ended up killed at the end of the day. Gecko, as always, was silent. So were the Gopher and Headhunter. Cowards the lot of them were.

"I agree. He killed King Bumi himself, I don't think we can do this", Lin said, and the Boulder made sure to nod his thanks at the man who constantly took defeat after defeat to hype the crowd up. The Boulder could appreciate a good performer, and the self styled 'Fire Nation Man' was one of the best in the business.

"Shut your mouths" Xin Fu said, the greedy fool. "We have lured him and his army in. The mayor has plied them with alcohol and women. By nightfall, he will be completely exhausted and asleep. All we have to do is use already existing tunnels to infiltrate the place and capture him. Once we have him, we negotiate with his army- His freedom for their lives." The man explained like it was so easy. Like the Fire Nation Army were well known for their mercy and their ability to stick to their word. Like they would not just sooner set fire to the entire city and sift through the ashes to find their leader.

"This plan will work. And you will be hailed as heroes for this success. Each of you will receive your weight in gold" A voice said, reminding him that they were not alone here. Lao Beifong stepped into the spotlight with an easy smile on his face. The Boulder knew his kind well. Hated them. His former employer had been just like this. Too cunning for his own good and sure that his money would save him from whatever situation he went and got himself involved in. Of course, that had turned out to be far from the truth. The man had failed to learn the lesson before he died, and The Boulder was beginning to get the feeling that a similar fate would befall Lao Beifong.

"There are eight of you here. Eight of the strongest earthbenders in the whole Earth Kingdom gathered to take out one man while he sleeps. Surely this is not an impossible task to ask of you" The Mayor was the one who spoke now. Earth Rumble Wrestling was supposed to be illegal within Gaoling so it itched at his senses, being so close to the foremost legal authority in the city, but neither Xin Fu nor any of the real veterans seemed to care. Of course he was in on it.

"Let's just get it over with. Where are the chains?" Gecko finally asked in that deep baritone of his.

XXXXXXXXX

Night gathered, and so their mission began. They fluttered from shadow to shadow until they were outside the Mayor's office. From there, they followed the map given to them to the hidden tunnel. The Boulder figured that this tunnel would be closed and redrawn after they succeeded here today, but that was none of his concern. They followed the path in the darkness, trusting their hearing and sense of touch to guide them through until they could reach their destination- the room they were assured that the Fire Nation General was sleeping in.

Gecko was the first to go in. Headhunter followed afterwards and once the rest had gone in, the Boulder brought up the rear and closed the tunnel behind him. First things first was putting the general out. He was pleased to see the poison dart already sticking out of the man's neck so it was smooth sailing from here on. Or at least it was supposed to be. They removed the covers, and the Boulder felt the urge to gasp at just how young the boy was. Not even in his second decade, and already a murderer known all across the world. What was it with children of this generation and being insanely overpowered. It reminded him a lot of that new Blind bandit kid that was rising up the ranks and taking down people with no delay. He was expected to face her in a few months to ride out the tension, but he was already beginning to see that she would be more of a challenge than previously calculated.

Sharply, he shook his head as his turn arrived and he moved to bind the boy's arms together. The chains continued downwards, connected by a single length to another set of cuffs that Headhunter used in binding his feet together. Having secured him, they moved to pick him up and begin their exit. Of course, that was when the wrench in their wheels appeared. She slammed the door open with none of the respect that one would have expected for a Commanding Officer's personal chambers, "Natsu you said-" the brown skinned woman with long hair froze as she looked at them. He was ashamed to admit that he also froze on looking at her. His life seemed to flash before his eyes as he had no illusions that they would be making any sort of escape if the alarm was sounded at this moment. The Mayor would disavow them in a blink.

"As you were, then. I saw nothing" She said, turning around and closing the door.

Gecko turned to him. He shrugged. Xin Fu just clicked his teeth and opened up the tunnel again and so they began their retreat. This time, they could not move as quickly, trying to avoid jostling their hostage too much. It was a powerful sedative, but they had already been warned that firebenders tended to have a higher resistance to poisons than others, and this was one of the most powerful of his kind so he could wake up at any time. They followed the bending and winding route, covering the distance until they reached the exit.

The Boulder breathed a sigh of relief at the way the fresh air felt across his skin as they entered the next stage of their plan- escaping the compound without being caught by the partying fire nation. It seemed to be going well, Gecko and Headhunter acting as scouts, while the rest of them crawled across wide spaces as soon as they gave the all clear.

Of course, it could not last forever as only Lin's reflexes saved his life. The self-styled fire Nation Man pushed him out of the way of a spear that landed right where he had been standing.

He traced the man who had tossed the spear to the far end of the compound. Quite a distance away from them. The fact that he had even been able to toss the spear with enough strength to bury it into the ground from that distance was already a bad sign. The fact that he was running at them so quickly that The Boulder was struggling to follow was another bad sign. Pulling on that power in his gut, he stomped his foot into the ground and forced the earth to bend, shifting the ground behind them into a very loose mud that was guaranteed to slow that one down for a bit. And then next, he lifted a massive wall of pure stone behind them.

Turning back around, he was unsurprised that the others had kept moving. He ran even faster to catch up to them. The alarm within the compound had already been sourced so there was no need for stealth. They just had to be quick enough to make it out and into the city's wider tunnel system where there was virtually no chance of them being located by this lot. Of course, he still had fears about what would happen even if they did manage to succeed with the kidnapping, but he shut off that part of his brain since it was offering little in the way of useful help right now.

With the fire bender on his shoulder, Xin Fu struggled to move as quickly as the rest, and they were being forced to slow down for his benefit more oft than not. The alleyway they could disappear down was only a few meters away, but they were quickly beginning to be surrounded by firebenders in all directions.

"Give him to me" He said and Xin Fu wasted no time to toss the limp body over in his direction. Stronger than the old man by quite some margin, The Boulder was able to handle the fire bender's heft with ease. Skinny little bugger, isn't he? A warm one as well, He thought to himself with a chuckle as they ran across the straightaway. They were going to make it, he thought. So focused on the glimmer of victory, he was that he never even noticed the body on his shoulder's heating up every few seconds.

He never noticed it until the body got to the level where it hot to touch, and just like a child who had picked something hot up, his body obeyed his instincts without thinking, and he dropped the package. All their eyes snapped down to their intended victim, and The Boulder could have sworn that they all sucked in a collective breath once his eyes snapped open and those coal black orbs regarded them almost absently.

He struggled to narrate what happened next. In a second, Gecko was on the floor and their victim had a chained foot on his colleagues neck. How? Xin Fu moved quickly, trying to close the distance between them.

He wasn't fast enough. The fire bender general turned away from him and instead jumped over Headhunter's attempt to trip him up. It was a smooth backflip, the kind of thing that defied gravity with the chain on him. At the apex of his flip, he seemed to stop, hands on headhunter's shoulders. In seconds, those same hands had moved in such a way that the chain was pressed against his colleague's neck. When the General landed on his feet, Headhunter slammed into the floor a second earlier. He rolled to the side to avoid a boulder sent at his head, and that was the Boulder's own reminder to move, but just as he took his eyes off the man for a second to force the earth to move, the man was at his side in that second. The heat on his throat gave him no illusions as to what was going on.

Perhaps seeing his chances of escaping this alive dwindling in the sunlight, Lin began to run. The "Fire Nation Man" fled the kingdom he was paid handsomely to pretend to support, and this General allowed it with an amused chuckle. Xin Fu was a different sort of man. A harder one. That's why he did not flee. That was why a spear of pure stone flew at the Boulder's position and he knew precisely what was being asked of him. 'Stay still and this will pass through you and kill the man behind you' the attack almost seemed to whisper. But he had not survived this long by making sacrificial plays. His hand moved while being careful to keep the rest of his body still. Still enough that the Fire Nation man at his back would not think him a threat.

The spear shattered against his fist as he brought his own bower to bear and forced the earth to bear.

"How interesting" He heard whispered against his ear and then a kick to the back of his knee forced him to bend before he felt two fingers against his neck. And then unconsciousness.

XXXXXXXXXX- NATSU

The last one did not put up too much of a fight, even as chained up as I was. When my army finally managed to catch up, it was with Toji at the helm, and to the sight of me slumped against the piled up bodies of three unconscious men and one dead one. The split second I'd woken up after that dart had been shot into me had proven to be their undoing. It hadn't taken much to tell that I'd been poisoned, and it also hadn't taken much to know what to do. My many times GreatGrandfather had married a woman with a penchant for poisoning after all. He'd done it to claim her family lands and wealth, so he ate every meal with the expectation that it had been poisoned. That expectation was valid on more than one occasion. That led him to developing one of the most interesting fire bending techniques that I had come across from my ancestors.

He called it overheating. By forcing our internal fire to burn hotter while never giving it an outlet, we could make it flow around our bodies. That technique served as the basis of my enhanced strength and speed techniques to a large extent, but using it to get rid of poison was a whole different ballgame. An exhausting ballgame as well. It felt like I had run a dozen marathons with boulders tied to each limb as I tried to take deep breaths and cool down naturally.

XXXXXXX

"So what have you been able to find out?" I asked Toji as I took a sip of the tea that Amara had so graciously made me to celebrate my almost capture and aid my recovery. She'd been worried when I explained the technique I'd used to survive the poisoning to her, but since there wasn't anything immediately wrong for her to point at and she didn't have the data on how overheating could affect children of Agni like myself, she had relented from her worry and prescribed a simple ice bath before bed and now there was the cold tea she'd recommended.

"Not much. Also haven't been able to ask much as we've been spending the time keeping them unconscious until suitable accommodations can be found." He said.

"We have wooden carts, do we not?"

"Sure, the ones we use for food and provisions"

"Add some chains and lock them in separate carts. Close enough that they'll be able to hear each other scream when the real fun starts, but not so close that they start talking and plan an escape." I told him, and he spent a second giving me a look to verify that I was being serious before he nodded and left the room.

I hummed, focusing on my inner fire while I drank the tea. Another thing I'd noticed since waking up was that it felt like my fire came easier to me now. Maybe it as the practice of essentially dropping into a meditative state to overhear yesterday, butty fire had never felt so close to my skin before. It was like I could-

With a thought, I'd breathed out a blast of fire from my lips. The dragon of the wast was definitely going to have some competition coming his way.

X

"So who hired you?" I asked, looking down at the muscular one. He was one of the last to be interrogated in this first round, and just like the others, he kept his lips sealed. I wondered how long this state of affairs would continue for.

It turned out the answer to that one was- 'not long'. After the first set of questioning we returned to the first one. The one with the green mask and lithe frame. Step one was taking off the mask. Since I didn't have any members of the Interrogation corps with me. It was up to Toji, Shin, and I to get information out of him. A matter that was causing no small amount of stress. My idea to burn them until they spoke had been tossed out almost immediately for being needlessly cruel. Toji's idea to play them against each other with mind games until someone spoke wasn't tossed out, but was placed on the back burner for later because Shin's assertion that he could get the information out of them with only a few minutes was too tempting not to try.

So that was what led us here. Standing in front of a man while Shin knelt in front of him and dragged the blunt edge of a carving knife across his naked thigh. Even knowing what was going to happen did not prepare me for the screams when Shin made the first cut. He hadn't even asked a question yet.

"Who hired you?" Shin finally asked after the man had begun to sob. The skin running from his knee to his pelvic area had two long smooth cuts running through. Two cuts that stopped right at the edge of the most important limb that as men had.

"The Mayor. The Mayor" He said after keeping silent for a few minutes and making Shin pull the surface of the blade across his penis almost teasingly.

"Only the mayor? I need a list of everyone involved" I said.

"It was just him. Him and Beifong and Xin Fu. But you already captured Xin Fu"

"So what was your plan"

This time, he did not even bother with trying to keep silent. "We wanted to capture you and use you to blackmail your army into leaving." He explained and I actually facepalmed. I knew the people of this Kingdom were not the brightest, but what truly was going on in their brains? Hostage or not, the Fire Nation Army would rather burn this city to the ground than do something as dishonourable as surrender and leave a village they'd already conquered. Whatever threat was placed on my life, they would be sure to double in the city's burning while they dedicated it all to Agni.

In the end, we found that this one knew very little so we moved on to Xin Fu, the head of this ragtag group. He was a much harder nut to crack but Shin's knife seemed to have the ability to ferret out all sorts of secrets. Unlike with the other guy, Shin hadn't been able to stop at just a few cuts into his thigh. The psychopath had actually used the knife to flay some skin off the other man's penis. The look Toji gave me while it happened made it clear that we were both going to be giving Shin a second look moving forwards.

In the end, the information we received placed a lot of things into context and helped confirm the words of the first man. First of all, the Mayor and Lao Beifong had indeed hatched the plan. But the plan had first of all been Lao's idea. It had also been in the works even from before we set camp at their walls and showed that the Mayor had lied to us from the very beginning. A problematic situation. A very problematic situation indeed.

A/N; Here ya go. Like I said earlier, you can either wait till Thursday, the 31st of October, for the next chapter or skip the waiting and read the next two, as well as continuous updates as I write on pa-treon (same username as up here- link in bio). Both are equally valid actions, so no rush. For Pa Treon, you can remove the hyphen between Pa and Treon and Google it, then search for my username—Oghenevwogaga. Or you could copy the link in my bio and remove the spaces before pasting it in your address bar.