Chapter 14

	It was a relief to finally see fake grey Kopje’s peek their crests above the horizon. We still had to drive through a sea of barbed wire and tanks traps to reach the first of the fortresses. I nearly collapsed once I got out of the vehicle for the first time in hours. Of course, solutions to problems were come up with on the drive here. Thein Kyu discovered he could relieve himself directly out the back of the trunk. Koko, sitting beside him protested as she was a girl. “You are a girl, but you most definitely are not a lady,” Thein Kyu retorted. I ensured that Hei Bai’s canteen would never be used for drinking again.

	We parked and dismounted four hundred meters from the bunker. As we walked toward the base of the first concrete monstrosity, there was already a growing number of soldiers mustering for tasking. I joined them, if only to step under the camo netting and out of the sun. Hei Bai had already gotten to work instructing soldiers around him.

	“-- and Bao’s squad, go to the village of Ikko *here*, there’s about sixty people there, water tribe and native mixed. On the way back, hit the Tonrok’s farm. He’s stubborn. North of that is all Native land. Past marker sixty two it’s too sparse to spare the the manpower. We’ll be scattering evacuation order pamphlets from planes instead. If you run into any Natives on the way through though, stop and spread the word.  Get back here by twenty two hundred to dig in on the periphery. Don’t make yourself at home though, we’re going to be ceding ground and --”

“Are any of you guys actually listening to what he’s saying?” the voice sounded familiar.

“Hello, Pata” Hei Bai said.

“You all know this is craziness, right? We’re being invaded by the full might of the Earth Kingdom under the blessing of the Avatar and he wants us to waste time evacuating tribals, and then *ceding ground*?” Pata Dag-Patta asked rhetorically

“I’m the just the messenger, my orders come from on high and intelligence was thorough”

Ah, the spooks. I almost don’t blame Pata. A soldier could never trust his life to the intel boys.

“Well i am not Intelligence --”

“That much is certain”

“-- and I don’t care what plan they’ve come up with how can you possible hope to stem the tide. A swampbender, of all people.”

“Ok then. If you think you’re man enough to handle this, then why don’t you beat me fair and square? A gentleman’s wager. One round only.”

“Are you serious?”

“Of course I am. You’re a tough guy. Shouldn’t be a problem for something like you, unless you’re not man enough to take me. One round. A canteen of water each, and no sharp edges.”

By now a circle to form around the two of them; whispers and murmurs and bets passed between them. Pata’s eyes glanced shifted nervously left and right. He couldn’t back down now. Not with the growing crowd and his own honor at stake. He would have to fight.

I saw some of the younger enlisted men run off back to their units, shouting “hey! hey! get over here, two of the officers are fighting!”

Squaring off from each other, Hei Bai and Pata began wrapping their hands with bandages.  The full canteens on their belts were opened.  There was no backing away now. But Pata was tall and strong built like an oak tree. In comparison, Hei Bai was but a twig.

“No hard feelings, Pata.”

Pata swung first, a jab and a cross. Hei Bai leaned and ducked both of them before catching Pata’s knee strike with his palms. They momentarily disengaged to create space.

Pata pulled a bolus of water from his canteen, whipping it fast for Hei Bai’s head with a karate chop. Spinning around, Hei Bai caught it and hurled it back at Pata’s feet, turning the ground to mud. Pata rushed him in frustration.

	A flurry of strikes and punches assailed Hei Bai, drowned out by the cheering from the crowd. Hei Bai did not strike back once. In fact, he hardly even blocked a strike either. Instead, he dodged them. No, dodging would take speed and effort. Instead, Hei Bai moved like a wet noodle. He didn’t water bend -- he was water. His movements were not effortless like an experienced fighter, but effortless like a an unsteady drunk. Every punch, hit, and kick was sluggishly danced around or deflected to the side.

	Hei Bai disengaged, settling into a more tense posture and circling around Pata. His footwork was impeccable, and through it all his hands, raised en garde, were never closed into a fist. Pata, dripping with sweat, glowered at Hei Bai. Losing his temper, Pata charged with one last wild swing, but Hei Bai caught him and pushed himself to the side and out of the way.

	Pata stood there, dripping sweat, in that small puddle of mud with his hands on his knees, gasping for breath. “Come.. on… fight me… coward!” he spat at Hei Bai. But Hei Bai took a swig of water from his canteen as he strolled towards Pata, splashing the rest of the canteen’s contents at Pata’s feet.

Pata tried to throw another swing at Hei Bai, and this time Hei Bai had his whole body coiled up like a snake. As Pata tried to throw the his punch, he suddenly toppled over, tripping, not realizing that both his feet had been rooted to the ground with ice…

Crack!

	The strike  came as Pata fell face-first onto it. Sweat and teeth soaked everyone nearby as the blow connected to Pata’s jaw. This wasn’t just any uppercut. Behind it was the full force of Hei Bai’s body -- the explosive force of his legs synchronized with the rotation of his torso made for a devastating strike. Pata’s forward momentum reversed, and he launched backwards, landing on his shoulder blades.

The crowd gasped.

“Medic! Get a medic!” someone shouted as a crowd swarmed around the limp Patta. Two orderlies scooped his body onto a litter. Hei Bai shook the pain from his bleeding knuckles.

	“That!” shouted Hei Bai as the stunned crowned turned to him, “That is how we defeat the Earth Kingdom! Not with the brute force but the yielding of water and the crashing of waves! Water is about change. Like air, it is fluid. But it is also ice, and steam, and even a trickle will cut it’s way through mountains and rock and earth.”

Breaking from the group, Hei Bai followed the medics after Pata into a tent. He splashed Pata awake who then tried to push him away.

“Relax. Relax!” Hei Bai commanded as he ran his hands up and down Pata’s face, head, and neck. “I still need you in this fight, Pata.” Pata tried to yell something but the words came out garbled.

	“You’ve dislocated your jaw. I’ll have to reset it. Otherwise you could be waiting hours for the doctor to go over his tests before he resets your jaw.” Hei bai pulled a swirling, glowing ball of water up with each hand and ran it up and down sides of Pata’s neck, skull, and jaw in unison.

“I’m making a nerve block, for the pain. It will make the next part less… unpleasant. Open your mouth.”

Pata complied with a whimper. “Ok, no biting,” said Hei Bai, sticking both his thumbs into Pata’s mouth, resting them on his molars and gripping the left and right half of the lower jaw tight. Hei Bai stood above him as Pata sat on the litter.

“Ok now, I need you to stay upright and keep your head and chin up. On the count of three. One… tw--”

Hei Bai thrusted down onto Pata, leaning all his sixty four kilos down on his jaw. There was an agonized yelp as it popped out of place and then back in as Hei Bai relieved tension.

Hei Bai wiped the blood from the shattered tooth off his thumbs. Pata held his hands to the now relocated joint, slowly opening and closing his mouth to work things back into place

“Th… thank y--”

“Don’t pretend to like me. I don’t need you to like me. I only want you to let this go.” Hei Bai then signaled me to follow him as he left the tent.

	As we exited, the crowd that had gathered to watch the fight was replaced by a larger crowd scrounging through supply crates. They were loading all their gear and weapons as they clambered into satomobiles.  The scouts were saddling their dragon-horses. As our team’s convoy had begun to assemble and as we mounted our vehicles, the leader of one of the scout units trotted over and shouted to us.

	“We have only twelve hours of safety and only twenty for before we can expect the Earth Kingdom Army in force. The people you save today will save Jia tomorrow. Every life here is precious. Now ride for your lives! Ride for the fate of Jia!” He spurred his dragon horse and was off, the rest of his mounted companions galloping off after him. They’d have the shortest mission. The little hamlets too off the beaten path for vehicles and close enough to walk back in an emergency.

	But for, us, the senior officer of the garrison began to wave cars from the motor pool as if he were launching aircraft. I scrambled into the passenger seat of the off-road vehicle with Buno at the wheel The rest of the squad was in several vehicles behind us. When our turn came, Buno put the pedal to the floor and we launched off like an aircraft too.  The whole convoy raced off together, sun setting behind us.

	As the road split, most of the vehicles ahead of us continued straight as our squad’s vehicles and a dozen others split south toward the the ocean. The radio crackled to life with Hei Bai’s voice, “good luck out there, guys. Have fun in the boondocks. Let ‘ole Tonrok know he still owes me twenty Yuan.”

“Pleasures all yours, Hei Bai.” someone answered.

	“Sorry, not sorry,” said Hei Bai. The expression was native one. It had started to become a sort of unofficial motto for the Jian special operations teams like ours used to fighting behind enemy lines. Now we behind enemy lines in our own country. Not against children with two hours of training, but against real soldiers who were my former countrymen.

	The road veered off to the right and we followed it east. the smell of salt spray stung in my nose. Soon enough the sun was setting behind us and the waves glittered in the twilight.  Our convoy hurtled down the road, driving straight into pitch blackness. I could just make out the the tops of houses and roofs and antennas sticking out of the water.

The radio crackled to life again. “All Jian and Dao teams: The chancellor has landed safely in Capitol City.” Cheers erupted from the convoy and all the drivers honked their horns at each other. I slumped down into my chair.

“What’s wrong, Hiro?” Buno asked. After a moment of silence he said, “look over to the south, what do you see?”

	I looked back over the coastline and was treated to the sound of gulls and the sight and smells of rot and decay. I could see the roofs of submerged houses stretching for many kilometers into the ocean. The Sun was setting nowhere near over the water. If you were expecting some sort of beautiful or symbolic imagery, sorry, you’re not going to get it.

	“This whole coastline was once a tourist attraction,” he continued. “A get away for wealthy Fire Nation vacationers. But when the great thaw came, and the Northern Water Tribe holy city was no more, the flooding turned it into a death trap. All these cottages, submerged in what used to be our homes. And it is what will save us. Because of it, there is not a single Li of coastline in this country suitable for amphibious landing. The only place ships can load and unload is the Dragon’s Tail fjord that reaches the capital, and it’s shores are near vertical cliffs.

We were once are all one with nature. Man has fallen out of balance with nature. Man has lost sight of the Way. Now, nature is taking back what man thought was his.”

Still, It did little to calm me. But when I heard on the radio that Chang’s family had been successfully evacuated, it brought a smile to my face. It warmed my heart.

	It was around midnight that we reached our first village, a sprawling little native hamlet. Our security forces immediately set to work at the difficult job of maintaining a perimeter, as it was hard to judge just where the village ended. Mortar crews began firing lunar shells; packed like origami, they unfolded into sky lanterns from the rotational force of the the shell’s fins. Held aloft for hours by the heat of their magnesium candles, they bathed the whole area in cool blue moonlike glow. The brims of our hats cast dark shadows veiling our faces.

	Meanwhile, small squads like ours went hut to hut, house to house, waking residents. We let Chang and Thein Kyu take point on this one. Most of the natives did not want to leave. In fact, most of them probably wouldn’t leave. At least until Chang was able to find the village chief, and the two spoke back and forth in their native tongue. The chief was a scrawny man looking older than he probably was. A doubtless survivor of many bouts of malaria and even the mark of Shapona Sheetla, with a balding head and wise frizzy beard. despite our best efforts, he seemed flustered.

	They talked for a couple minutes until there was some sort of understanding about the rain we’ve had and other omens, and then we had to leave. There was one water bending family in the village -- a young husband and wife living in a hut but wearing the modern suit and tie and sundress, armed with a briefcase. They needed less convincing. “Well,” said the man, “someone’s gotta help water the crops. I liked the lifestyle, just not the dress code.” As much as he’d like to fit in, he was not beholden to the will of the chief like the others.

	As we drove off to the the next village, leaving one squad and an empty buss behind, Thein Kyu told me, “We don’t have much time. There’s no point wasting time with the whole village. If we can convince the chief the rest will follow, unless there’s a near unanimous vote against him.”

	This sort of occurrence continued for many hours, village to village. I’d like to say the Water Tribe farmsteads were easier.  They were not. Without the chiefs to get in the way, and with radios and emergency signals between each neighboring farm in case of troublemaker attacks, convincing families to leave was a little easier individually. But, we all learned quickly to stand to side of doors and not in front of them when we knocked.

	Time passed as we moved from town to town. The sun had not yet risen over the horizon, but we no longer had need of the flares. Still, it was dark. Koko, Hei bai, Buno Peng and myself would get this farm, as Chang and Thein Kyu attended to a Native family up the road. Peng swore as he stepped on what looked like a tripwire on the way to our next house. Jayvin’s farm. Jayvin had also dug a trench around it, put inviting false cover around that which could be easily penetrated by Jian rifles, and shored up the walls of their house with sandbags.

Hei Bai pounded on the door, “Jian Army, open up!”

We were all standing to the side by the door behind the sand bags as the bullets shredded through the door. “I said Jian Army!” shouted Hei Bai.

“That’s exactly what a troublemaker would say,” Jayvin shouted through the door.

Hei Bai splashed some water from his canteen at the bottom of the door then bent it under the crack.

“Gah!” Jayvin exclaimed, before opening the door and wringing out his shirt. “What is the meaning of this?”

“Haven’t you heard the news? We’re being invaded. We’re trying to evacuate you.”

“Now wait here just a minute…”

And then the arguments started again


~Yes, evacuation

No, it’s not mandatory

I don’t care if you can stay, you shouldn't stay

You’ll come back to your home later, arrangements have already been made

You fool! Is this patch of dirt worth you and your family’s lives?~

But it was, wasn’t it? Isn’t that what this whole war was being fought over?

Hei Bai, ignoring the old man’s dithering, clicked his radio to do the the quarter hourly status checks. “Delta five this is jian one, over.” He waited a few seconds still ignoring Jayvin. “Delta five this is jian one. What is your status, over.”

Hei Bai pouted, “their radios must be acting screwy again. You guys can handle this while I find delta leader?”

	“You got it, boss,” Buno said to Hei Bai before he turned and began to jog off down the road. By now there was enough of the morning twilight to make out more than silhouettes. The time wasted arguing with this coot wasn’t worth it. Buno tried to radio the security team to pack it on up and move onto the next one.

No luck… could their radios not be working either? I could make out one of the soldiers in their squad about one hundred and fifty meters that-a-way.

“Oi!” shouted Koko at the man as we waved for them to come over. He turned to us but did not respond. I could make out that he made a hand gesture to someone behind him, but we heard nothing.

“Are you serious?” asked Peng. “There’s no way all our radios are broken.

I borrowed the binoculars from Koko and began to scan toward him as Koko waived at the soldier again. And before I lined my binoculars up onto the man I scanned through the bush and could just make out the parachute laying in the field…

“Get down!”

The explosion deafened me as it threw me to the ground. Timber and dirt and sand were sent in every direction, pelting us with debris. And as I came back to my feet I realized the explosion had struck the opposite side of the house. Jayvin let out a blood curdling scream.

“Suppressing fire!” Buno shouted as we emptied our magazines into the the the rows of foxtail millet.

“My children!” Jayvin shrieked before his wild eyed wife ran out of the door carrying one of the children and dragging a shell shocked child behind her by the wrist. A sigh of relief was exhaled from Jayvin’s lips.

“Heads up!” Koko shouted, and as I looked up I saw the EKA paratrooper practically landing on top of us. Just before he could bend a pit under our feet, Koko cast the man aside with a gust of wind catching his parachute and hurtling him from the sky like a ragdoll.

“Your keys,” demanded Buno. The wife already had them and Buno shoved her into the family’s utility vehicle. Then he looked at Jayvin and asked, “You have emergency connection to your neighbor, yes? Is it radio or landline?”

“It’s a landline” Jayvin shouted, covering his ears.

	“The paratroopers are jamming our radios. We need to get these civilians out of here, link back up with the rest of our soldiers, and send the word out to the next town,” Buno said to us, squatting against the sandbags as he reloaded. As I looked up I could see many more parachutes in the distance, coming down from high altitude. “Koko, you just volunteered as our runner. We’ll drive these civilians out and you jump off at the fork at the road and get Hei Bai and the other squads formed up on foot.”

“You drive them out of here,” Peng said. “I’ve been itching for this.”

Buno took a deep breath, “Fine. Covering fire on my mark.”

Buno shouted and we leapt to our feet under cover of a berm of dirt that Peng erected for us. We dumped our mags back to back into the millet at the moving grass. I couldn’t tell how many soldiers there were but it was starting to feel uncomfortable. Buno had jumped into the driver’s seat as Koko hopped up and hung from the passenger side step boards

“I’ll kill them! I’ll kill all of them!” Jayvin shouted as he tried to run back inside his house.

Peng grabbed the man by his collar and hoisted him into the bed of the ute.

“Go! Go! Go!” Koko yelled, pounding on the roof of the vehicle with her free hand. Buno took off, spraying us with dirt and pebbles.

	Peng and I gave everything we had to keep their heads down. Just keep the their noses in the dirt long enough to keep them from shooting the satomobile as they made their getaway. The Two of us had run out from the cover of the house and into the waist high millet along the side of the driveway to get an angle on the enemy.

	The first rifle grenades landed past us, ranged about twenty meters too far and detonating with a pair of loud cracks. Peng and I jumped, rolled and sprinted to the left. The next pair of explosions came  in and landed about twenty meters too short. We juked to the right this time, and back a bit, hoping to lose contact in the the blades of grass. If it weren’t for all the vegetation we’d probably be plucking shards of metal from our skin by now. As we slinked off through the millet, the final grenade was right on the money for our last position.

“Pretty boy, we gotta get back inside that house and raise the alarm. My rifle’s run dry. You coming with me?”

“Of course I am!” I said. I loaded my mast magazine as Peng drew his pistol.

“Let’s go!”

	The two of us ran hunched over through the millet. We stayed tucked down as long as we could until we could make out the silhouette of the enemy across from us. We abandoned all caution, running in a standing spring as I poured fire from my palm into the crops in front of us, burning a cloud of thick smoke between us. Bullets snapped near our heads.

	Just outside the house was an EKA soldier raising his gun to us from, close enough to make out his face. Peng spun around like a dervish, bending one of the sandbags from the house and whipping it into soldiers temple with an audible crack as his skull smacked into the window frame.

“Stay out of the trenches!’ Peng shouted. He groaned as pulled the walls of the trench around house together, burying a pair of paratroopers alive.

	We both stacked up across from each other on opposite sides of the door. I liked it better when Jayvin was shooting at us. Peng pulled the contents of a sandbag into a small floating bolus that began to flatten out and spin. It was bended red hot as all the grains melted together into a spinning glass shuriken. Pistol in one hand, glass blade spinning beneath the other, Peng nodded to me. Rifle tucked under the crook of my arm, I nodded back.

	We rounded the corner into the room one after the other. Foyer -- clear! Peng stays forward as I check left. washroom -- clear! Inching our way around the the down the hallway, Peng comes round the corner as I rush straight past him to the other corner of them room and about-face. The lone Earth Kingdom soldier didn’t have time to react as the spinning glass blade was levitated straight through the side of his neck. Spine is severed before he can let out a gurgle. Living room, clear. We clear the bedrooms next.

	I run straight for the radio and headset in Jayvin’s room, throwing myself into the chair. Flipping through the switches and holding transmit with one hand and holding the headset mic to my face. I hope the message got out. I didn’t have time time to wait around and see if the villages I hailed had heard the mayday. Before I could get up a swarm of bullets smashed through the walls of the house and splintered the bedposts and dresser next to me.

“Hiro!” Peng shouted between the pops of his pistol “Get over here I need your rifle.”

I raced down the hall and back to the living room where Peng was crouching behind the wall of sandbags and blind firing his handgun out the window.

“They’re inside!”

	The two of us rushed together and stood pressed back to back as he fired his pistol at a soldier rushing in from the the kitchen dropping him to the floor. I fired a pair into another soldier as he rushed in from the front door down the hallway. “Reloading,” shouted Peng as he squatted down to reload his gun and I pivoted around, covering his sector with my rifle over his head. He stood back up and we switched back. “Clear!” we both shouted.

Then, Like a guardian spirit, like the Avatar himself had come to save us, I heard a voice shout out, “Jian’s coming in!”

Reinforcements here, covering our backside. We’d have to clear the rest of the house, or risk losing the best piece of cover in this whole empty field. Peng and I stacked up again, sweeping our way down the hallway again. Hallway clear, living room, clear. Kitchen…

	Clear. This was where the first explosion had taken place. The countertops and stove were covered in dust, plaster, and splinters. The corner of the house had been blasted off, likely by a rocket or rifle grenade. This left gaping hole from waist to ceiling, two meters across. Peng pressed his back to the wall and peered with one out of the hole. The sound Sato-mounted machinguns could be heard firing in bursts through the fields, with occasional back and forth between Jian and Earth Kingdom riflemen. By our fortune, most of the paratroopers had landed outside of the current combat zone. I peeked my head around the corner, and that’s when I saw the Earth Kingdom soldier raising the bore of his launch tube.

“RPG!”

I really don't know what happened or how it happened, but I remember jolting up in the direction I could fastest travel, directly towards Peng.  I heard the rocked ‘puh-fwoosh’ as it barreled towards us.

And in that instant, I saw Peng do something I never expected. He he stepped out behind me, standing in the middle of that hole, flashing his teeth, screaming, squatting into a horse stance. His face turned red as he pressed both his hands around the aether as hard as could.

The rocket struck me square in the chest.

	I was bowled over to the floor. The rocket was stuck in my chest rig webbing, the tail sticking from my body like an arrow. It hissed fire from the end and I swatted it off me only for it to become airborne again, bouncing off the room like a ping pong ball before it rode across the corner of the wall and ceiling and ran out of fuel. The rocket fell to the ground beside my head. It’s nose cone -- and fuze -- hand been crushed like an aluminum can.

“You’re OK?!”

“I think so… you did that?”

“I’ve… Oh man, I’ve never metal bent before.”

Peng, the Magnificent.

	Reaching down, he pulled me from the floor and back to cover, giving me the once over to see if I was OK. no broken ribs today. Keeping his head low, he reached across and picked up the rocket by its tail. A good sight for sore eyes, four Jian soldiers moved down the hallway to us rifles drawn. I gave them the thumbs up and urged them to stay back with my hand. ‘Enemies, several, outside’ I signaled to them.

	“You do the honors, pretty boy.” Peng chucked the rocked over his shoulder and out the window. Stepped into the open, raising the fingers of my left hand like a pistol, and fired a bolt of lightning at the dud as it sailed past a pair of paratroopers. I snapped back behind cover too fast to see the results, but the explosion rattled my teeth.

“You guys alright?” One of the water bender’s asked.

“Yeah, we’re OK.” I said. “You know where the rest of Hei Bai’s team is?”

	“They’re regrouped not much farther down  the road. He’s pulling the rest of us together into a front line. We’ll be retreating once we can fix the hostile platoon size element long enough to get the last civilians out of sniper range. It’s a little tricky when the enemy can bury themselves in the ground like grubs. No offence, Peng.”

“None taken. We’ll need to hold this pillbox a little longer then. You’re squad isn’t bringing up a machine gun to our position, is it?” The Jian soldier nodded.

“You know,” I said, “you could’ve just earth bended a wall between me and that rocket, right?”

Peng shrugged and smiled, “yeah probably. Wasn’t thinking at the time, just reacted somehow. Maybe next time.”

	Like a typewriter, the burst of automatic fire tore through the wall next to me. I flinched away naturally as the splinters exploded from the wall. And when I looked back up, Peng was no more. The bullet tumbled through his thoughts and memories, and Peng died where he stood. I threw myself on his body, but It had already began pooling blood around it. There was nothing I could do.