"No Prince, no Avatar! Apparently, the only thing I do have is five traitors, and an incompetent subordinate who couldn't outsmart a lemur!"
Tanya looked down in shame. She had no excuses. Zhao had trusted her to capture The Avatar, but she'd wasted the opportunity.
If she'd just tried a little harder she could have captured The Avatar before the solstice, and then Roku would have never showed up. The burning wreckage of the fire temple in the distance was a monument to her failure.
"But Commander!" Rafike spoke up. "Only Shyu helped the Avatar."
Yet Zhao was in no mood to listen to reason. "Save your stories for the Fire Lord. As far as I'm concerned, you are all guilty!" He declared, gesturing for his nearby soldiers to apprehend them. "Take them to the prison hold!"
"No! Please!" Rafike struggled against the soldiers, but was too old to force his way to freedom.
As he and the other sages were dragged away he glanced over to Tanya, desperation in his eyes. "You are one of us! A child of the fire temple! You know this is an injustice! Please, Captain Tanya, say something!"
Zhao's gaze bored into her, daring her to speak up in their defence. They weren't wrong, it was a clear injustice and an awful abuse of power, but Tanya knew how to read the room.
She was so far from Zhao's good books that it wasn't funny, and if he sensed so much as a hint of disobedience from her at this moment she'd be joining them in the brig. No, Tanya was not such a selfless person as to risk her own freedom in an attempt to secure theirs.
The best she could do was keep her head down, wait for this to all blow over, and then bring this issue up again after she'd done something meritorious enough to get back in the commander's good graces.
When it became obvious Tanya wasn't going to say anything, Zhao sneered. "That's what I thought. Take them away."
As the fire sages were led away, Zhao turned his back on her to stare out towards the ocean, where The Avatar's bison had been seen flying away into the horizon back towards the Earth Kingdom.
For a moment a heavy silence hung between them, and Tanya resisted the urge to fidget uncomfortably.
When Zhao finally spoke again, the sharpness of his tone made it clear that he was not in the mood for anything less than total obedience. "Next time there can be no failure, Tanya. Am I clear?"
"Yes commander." Tanya replied dutifully.
"You and I are birds of a feather, Tanya. We both seek positions worthy of our ambitions and intelligence.
When the Fire Nation wins this war a new era will begin, and it will be people like you and I who will shape it. It was destiny that placed The Avatar in our path, so that we might be the ones to claim the glory for capturing him." Zhao clenched his fists.
"But if we should fail, The Firelord will hold us responsible, and he doesn't take kindly to failures. We cannot fail Tanya. If we do, it will be the end of us. Do you understand?"
"I-..." It was the sign of a bad workplace to punish someone for failing. Negligence, disrespect or just plain stupidity should be met with consequences, but the act of failure itself could be a result of inexperience or just simple bad luck in many cases.
How could any new employee grow into a competent asset if they were afraid to test their skills and knowledge by taking a risk every now and then? But it was too late to back out now.
Tanya had been born into the Fire Nation, had sworn her loyalty to The Fire Lord, and was locked into whatever fate awaited her new homeland; whether that be good or terrible. As unreasonable as this demand was, what choice did she have but to obey? "I do, commander."
"Good." Zhao turned to face her, the anger in his eyes settling into a look of raw determination. "The Avatar has won this battle, but the war isn't over yet. Not by a long shot."
...
For hundreds of years, Fort Tenpei had served as a bastion of the Earth Kingdom: as immovable as the mountain it was hewn into. Built back during the war against Chin the Conqueror, the military outpost had allowed the land for miles around to be kept free of banditry.
And now it stood in the Fire Nation's way.
Earthbending soldiers manned the walls in full force, piles of heavy rocks at their sides as they observed the army of common soldiers amassed in a defensive formation before them. In the distance the rhythmic pounding of thousands of men marching in unison heralded the coming arrival of the Fire Nation army.
Scouts had reported that they were outnumbered two-to-one, but that didn't concern their commander.
The Earth Kingdom was always better at fighting defensive battles, and with the fortifications of Tenpei to assist them he was confident that the Earth Kingdom would win this siege.
The Fire Nation had made such headway into the Earth Kingdom because it used dishonourable tactics such as damming rivers, burning farmland and others forms of sabotage to force the Earth Kingdom soldiers out of their defensive positions before engaging them.
There had been no sign of such cheap tricks here though, which meant their commander must have arrogantly believed he could take them in a straight fight. The foolishness of the Fire Nation truly knew no bounds.
It was as the first row of Fire Nation troops came into view, one of the watchmen up on the walls blew their horn in warning. The earthbenders manning the walls looked over to where he was pointing, and a chorus of fearful murmurs broke out across the troops as they spotted what had caused the alarm.
High up in the night's sky a pinprick of fast-moving light, like a shooting star, could be seen flying towards them.
The Devil of the South Sea was here.
For the soldiers of the Earth Kingdom she was something of a boogeyman; tales of her terrible deeds passed around in hushed, fearful tones during night watches.
Though she had the appearance of a fairy-like little girl with hair the colour of spun sunlight, her eyes glimmered like hot coals with the heat of a soul that blazed with lust for violence.
They said she arrived to battle on a flying chariot made of hellfire, and devoured the spirits of those she slew to fuel her unnatural powers.
If you said her name three times while looking at your reflection in the water she would appear behind you, and at night she roamed the woods like a wolf, hunting for deserters and feasting upon their cowardly livers. Nobody truly believed such tales, but that didn't stop the sense of trepidation that would hang in the air whenever someone mentioned her name.
There were many firebending masters across the world, but none who were both so young nor so infamous for their acts of violence.
As the fiery pinprick came close enough for the beginning of gold coloured hair to be made out, none of the earthbenders needed to wait for orders. As one they began firing the nearby rocks up towards her with the force of cannonballs, determined to remove the icon of dread before it could sap away at the morale of their soldiers.
High up in the sky, Tanya felt a sharp-toothed grin spread across her lips as the hail of stones came her way. Gravity was already doing the brunt of the work for her, slowing the projectiles down and pulling many of them off-course.
While she was up here drawing the earthbender's fire, the vanguard of the Fire Nation army was just beginning to crash into the Earth Kingdom's front line without being pelted by an unrelenting hail or rock. Fear really could make even the most hardened soldiers act like novices.
The flames spewing from her hands and feet grew brighter as she began to duck and weave erratically, swerving through the barrage of stone like a fly dodging clumsy hands.
To the Earth Kingdom's credit, it didn't take the earthbenders long to realise that their attention was misplaced. The barrage of stone grew lighter as more and more of them returned their attention to the battle below, and Tanya took the opportunity to press forwards.
Projectiles came at her faster and more accurately as the distance between her and the earthbenders that still chose to target her closed, and after one boulder narrowly whizzed past her head Tanya decided it was time to strike back.
A large fireball grew in the palm of one hand, and with a yell Tanya threw it down towards the wall.
As the fireball travelled it split apart, breaking down into smaller sized fireballs. One crashed harmlessly against the stone walls of Fort Tenpei, and another was blocked by an attentive soldier, but the other four struck earthbenders with enough force to knock them cleanly off their feet.
A bright flash of light flared out from Tanya's feet as she pushed her propulsion technique to the maximum, rapidly accelerating towards the wall, until she was close enough to make out the terrified expression of the nearest soldier.
Then the flames cut off abruptly as she flipped around, now falling towards the quickly approaching ramparts legs first as if intending to drop-kick it.
Moments before a bone-shattering impact flames burst from her hands and feet again: not aiming to counter her momentum, but push her up into a horizontal line.
Like a professional football player she slide-tackled along the ramparts at the speed of a racing car, waves of fire spewing in the wake as her armour grated and sparked against the stone floor.
Each earthbender she passed was blasted off the ramparts and down into the chaotic melee below, crashing like heavy sacks upon the defensive formations of their own troops.
Tanya's slide got her halfway along the ramparts before her momentum ran out, and with a spin that any breakdancer would be envious of she sprang to her feet in a swirl of flames. It was impossible for the other earthbenders manning the walls to not have noticed her now, yet their own defensive position now worked against them.
The narrow ramparts were only wide enough to allow about three people to pass by each other at once, and since she was now positioned at one end of their line those on the other side could not fire at her without hitting each other in the back. Only three people could engage her at once, and only from the front.
It was a massacre.
...
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