We had the charts. We knew what day the day was, in case we wouldn't be able to see the moon. But that night it had shone so bright that it illuminated the city of Ba Sing Se even below the shroud of the soot-laden clouds that were the consequences of this war. One of many.
I and my squad had been in Ba Sing Se for 2 months. We had done anything and everything to remain hidden and complete our mission. Every day was different. On the first day, we had intercepted a group of Earth Kingdom guards near the wall, before that entire area had become completely in traversable due to artillery. There had been 5 of them. We killed them, taking their identification and uniforms. There were 10 of us, however. And from that day, we had split into two units as per my orders. One unit would act undercover, the one I led, securing Earth Kingdom supplies, while the other would dare the walls amidst the artillery strikes to find weak points in the wall.
A month had passed. We had secured our equipment, hiding it away in an abandoned farmhouse. 7 kilotons of blasting jelly. Our other half never made it back to us, presumed killed by our own artillery. And then, after losing 5, reduced to 5 ourselves, we were reduced to doing their jobs ourselves. We spent the next 3 weeks braving the craters near the wall, running from cover to cover until we made it to the wall, until we found the perfect spot weakened enough by or artillery, sizeable crack running down the height of the wall, converging at one point at the base of the wall.
We spent the next one and a half weeks rolling barrels of blasting jelly towards the wall from cover to cover, mere inches between us and barrels of immediate painless death. Not the worse way to go. In fact, I, in some sick way, envied the 5 killed on the walls. I doubted my own death would be so easy. In retrospect, I wouldn't mind being killed by my own artillery. One second, I'd be alive and the next I wouldn't. How bad is that? But I couldn't think like that. I had a job to do. I was bringing down this city.
And somehow, we had only suffered 2 more casualties, 2 kilotons of blasting jelly, and we were ready.
Then that full moon had came, and we were back in the Earth Kingdom artillery camp, dressed as their own, only 3 of us now, waiting for our patrol shift to begin. Then the time came. The time we were told to send the signal. The signal, of course, would be the demolition of 2 months of work in a single goal. A blast large enough to see beyond the wall. All it would take was one spark.
And so when it was our patrol, with 2 of my remaining men keeping watch, I manned the trebuchet we had snuck out of the camp in the night behind a hill where it wouldn't be seen, loaded it with the final barrel of blasting jelly, lit it, and counted.
We had, of course, already done the math. We knew exactly what angles to set the trebuchet at, how long to wait until firing, but there was always that uncertainty. We could have done a million things wrong. The stash could have been found, we could have done the equations wrong, anything, but that was just how it was. And the sooner we put that out of our heads, the sooner we could do our jobs.
I got the thumbs up saying the barrel was lit and counted. 1….2…., every second longer than the last. 3…4…., and I fired.
The trebuchet shook underneath me, and I worried the shaking would throw the barrel our of its proper trajectory. The bomb flew into the morning fog and disappeared. If we saw, or heard nothing, we would have failed, but if we saw a burst of light brighter than the sun and heard a boom of a shockwave louder than a collision between this earth and a falling meteor, well, then we'd know we'd have done our jobs.
So we waited. We Saw and heard nothing for what felt like an uncertainty, but we waited, knowing our perception of the seconds was stretching them to hours. So we waited. And then, it became day.
I was on the ground, and when I picked myself up, hearing nothing but the ringing in my ears and seeing a plume of smoke and fire that put the Fire Nation itself to shame, I knew, that I had done my part.
The Battle of Ba Sing Se was about to begin.