The Chong Sheng Trilogy: War by rachelthedemon

The Warning

Disclaimer: I own not, you sue not.

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The Chong Sheng Trilogy

PART I: War

Chapter 16: The Warning

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Jin sucked in a breath, trying to quell the shaking in her knees at the small crowd gathered outside the remains of what was once her favorite teahouse. "I...I know it sounds crazy, but you've got to believe me."

"Nonsense," one of the older men scoffed. "Why would anyone attack the city when there's no war?"

She pressed two fingers to the bridge of her nose, trying not to seethe. "There is a war. There's been a war for the last century, and it's going to be over one way or another by the end of Summer. Whether the Fire Nation enslaves the world or not is all up to us." She looked back up at them, sufficiently calm. "But at the moment, there's an airborne Fire Nation attack fleet on the way."

The youth who'd been standing next to the older man stepped forward. "Can you get us to safety?"

She nodded, feeling a rush of relief. "Yes. There's a network of tunnels over two hundred feet below us. You'll be safe from whatever they can throw at you down there."

"And what of the Dai Li?" a woman growled. "Why should we believe you over our city's own protectors?"

Her tone hardened. "Because they aren't protecting you. They're controlling you, and they have been for years."

"Where do you get off? I--"

"Look," she growled, "I'm not going to get into a debate about conspiracy theories. I'm only warning you because this city's about to be bombed into the ground, and you all have exactly one chance to survive it. Grab your supplies and follow me into the tunnels. If you choose to die on the surface, I sure as hell can't stop you. I can only tell you that not listening to me is a very bad idea."

"How long do we have?"

All eyes turned on the speaker, a short, surly girl with close-cropped hair and prominent tribal marks on her face. Jin breathed an inward sigh of relief, thankful that she'd gotten through to someone at least.

"A week at the very shortest. You have enough time to get to safety if you act fast. There are entrances to the tunnels scattered all over the southeast quadrant, and plenty of guides to get you through."

"You're not seriously listening to this broad, are you?"

The girl scowled at the speaker while her tall, silent companion looked on impassively. "She's the only person I've met in this city who's talking sense. So yeah, I'm listening."

"What do you mean talking sense! She's delusional!"

"You can't be serious," she scoffed. "You'd have to be either blind or a complete idiot to not know there's a war going on out there. Open your eyes and look around you. The refugees you see pouring through the gates every day looking for a job, food, and a place to live? They didn't come from natural disasters. They're coming from villages all over the Earth Kingdom that the the Fire Nation's razed to the ground!"

"How can you be so sure?"

"Because they did it to mine," she growled. "And no officer guy in an ugly hat is going to make me forget it."

"But..." the older man asked, "why would they lie?"

"Because nobody wants to deal with the civil unrest of a city that knows it's at war," Jin said. "It's easier to keep the people brainwashed with fear and blissful ignorance than to actually govern them." The murmur of her small audience died off into silence, and Jin sighed before speaking again.

"I know I'm asking you to believe a lot, but I wouldn't be doing it if the danger wasn't real. I'm risking capture by the Dai Li for even mentioning this. I have the least reason of all to be lying to you. I'm not asking for any money or allegiance or anything. All I want is for you to heed my warning and get to safety so you won't die."

She raised her head, looking squarely at them all. "You all have a chance to survive. Whether you take it or not is up to you. No matter how much I wish I could, I can't make you listen to me. The only thing I can do is give you the warning and hope you decide to save yourselves."

The moments dragged on for hours as they all frowned at her, expressions unreadable. Until the youth who had spoken first stepped forward.

"What supplies do we need?..."

****

Zuko winced at the sound of clanging metal as he held the small flame aloft in his hand, heading down to the warship's tiny cargo hold to fetch Sokka while Katara and his uncle made preparations for night sailing. They'd managed to reach the ship without being followed, though how that happened he would never know.

Okay, maybe he would. The credit went mostly to Sokka's sense of direction and knack for finding good hiding places so they wouldn't have to face a fully armed battallion, outnumbered fifteen to one, with nothing but their bending skills and good looks.

Would've made one hell of a war story, though.

He reached the door, raising a hand and knocking before pushing it open, and staring at the mess of strewn goods in blinking bewilderment. Sokka knelt at the edge of the storm's tiny center, arm outstretched and one eye closed as though sighting a measurement. Zuko dared not step away from the door, not wanting to chance picking his way through the mess with the pitch of the ship. But even from his vantage point he could see what the boy was calibrating; a collection of five wooden ribs, placed so that one of their ends met at a single point, branching out like smooth, curved fingers.

"Sokka?"

He looked up, both oblivious and determined. "Yeah?"

"What are you doing?"

He looked back at the wooden beam he was measuring. "Putting together our counteroffensive. We can't just run like rats from a forest fire. We have to do something."

Zuko felt his heart sink. "Like what?"

Sokka stood, pacing to the other end of the room and digging through a mountain of random clutter. "The last time we fought the Fire Nation at the Northern Air Temple, we won 'cause we were the ones in the balloons. They had tanks crawling up the mountainside, but they couldn't do a goddamn thing against an airborne attack. As long as we had the skies, we'd have them on the run." He paused, hands shaking visibly as he pulled out a heavy canvas roll. "Now, they have the skies. And we're on the run."

Zuko sighed, pressing his fingers to the bridge of his nose. "So what are you going to do?"

He set the canvas down, unraveling a bolt of it over the formation and grabbing a brush and ink to mark it off with small, angry black strokes.

"The only thing I can. Take them back."

"But how?" Although he regretted asking immediately, now realizing he didn't want to know the answer.

"If they're in the air, we have to be, too. Aang wasn't the only guy on earth with a glider. The Mechanist and his displaced villagers had them, too, and I studied those blueprints 'til my eyes bled. They'll be crude to make with this stuff, but they're doable."

Zuko paused, needing to let the very idea sink in. "You're going to mount the four of us on gliders. Against that entire fleet of balloons."

Sokka nodded.

"Have you bloody lost it?"

He didn't even realize he'd screamed it until the boy looked up at him. "We have to try. Even if we fail, we can't just lie down and take it."

Zuko's hand flew to his forehead, before sweeping his arm out around them. "For the love of Hou Yi listen to yourself! You saw the size of that fleet! There are at least a thousand of them! Maybe more by the time they lifted off! You, me, Katara, and the Avatar? We're four! Four against a thousand! Two-hundred fifty to one! You're out of your mind!"

Sokka just stared at him, as though not even hearing it. "You remember the Northern Siege, right? Zhao had a four-figure fleet on the chief's doorstep. Even before Aang did his spirit thing, he was trashing warships left and right all by himself. This time, the Fire Nation is attacking from the air, not the ocean." He went back to marking measurements, and though his voice was muted, there was no mistaking the depth of genuine conviction in it. "If anyone can give us a fighting chance, it's the last Airbender."

Zuko let the silence hang heavy and crushing, wanting to believe that the self-proclaimed Idea Guy was right and hadn't actually gone insane. Because he knew damn well that a normal person who didn't even have bending or half-decent combat skills to fall back on who was seriously going to take on an entire fleet with four makeshift gliders had to be putting something in his tea.

"Why are you so determined to stand and fight?"

"Because it's war and if we back down from this, we back down from everything." He swallowed thickly, pulling out a heavy-duty razor tool from the box at his side. "I've lost too many people to throw in the towel."

"No one's saying we have to give up. Only that we should be smart about the battles we choose. This isn't one we can win."

"If we only fight the battles we can win, then the whole effort is pointless. We don't know what we're capable of unless we try. The odds are against us, sure. But the best way to ensure failure is to do nothing."

Zuko knelt beside him, frowning and looking on at the measured canvas, vividly recalling the inscription on the dagger at his belt. The words his uncle had given him as a child. The words that had turned him into who he was today.

Despite the pall over his heart at the notion of Sokka's plan, they'd never rung more truthfully.

****

Jet wiped his arm across his forehead, pulling another jar of oil off the cart and loading it into the shop's back stockroom, where the vendor would later blend the scents and soak sticks in the mixture to make incense. It wasn't difficult work, moving jars of oil into stock and labeling them, then bundling finished sticks for sale and putting them out on display. It was merely tedious and long and strained the back. Not that Jet minded, since he was getting paid, and money meant a much better apartment than the literal shelf he had now.

He'd come for a second chance. He knew it would be hard, and he'd expected to feel restless and scared for a good long while until things settled into routine. But that wasn't the case at all, and he couldn't have been more glad. It almost made him wonder again about that cryptic boy he'd met on the ferry. The one with the scar and the really bad attitude. Try as he might, for days the guy's name had slipped his mind. Which was annoying because he knew it was a name he'd heard so many other times and with so many other faces.

"Jet!"

He looked up, wondering who else could be calling for him because the shop owner was the only person around whom he'd spoken to. But he saw them careening up the road in the distance, panting as they stopped, the girl bending forward to catch her breath.

"Jet, you've got to come with us. The city's gonna be attacked by the Fire Nation and we need to get supplies or we're screwed and there are these tunnels that go way below the ground and..."

He set the jar down on the ground, shaking his head. "Hold on, Smellerbee, back up a minute. What attack?"

"The one that's coming here!" she gasped. "This girl's been warning everyone and there are these soldiers stationed at the tunnels. They said they'll show us to safety."

"From what?" he asked. "That's crazy. No one would attack this place."

"Yes they woiuld if they were trying to win a war!"

Jet shook his head. "Calm down, we're safe. There's no war in Ba Sing Se. We're free."

She growled up at him, raising onto her toes to screw her face up into his. "Cut the crap, Jet, this is serious! We have to get some food and water and clothes and get underground, and I'm taking you down there with us if I have to drag you by the tongue. Now grab your stuff and come on!"

He backed away, shoving her down by the shoulders. "Now you're just talking psycho. The girl who warned you is probably out of her head or just trying to stir up trouble..."

"Look, I don't know what the hell the Dai Li did to your brain when they dragged you off, but no one would risk their wrath just for a damned prank. You don't go throwing a word like 'war' around in this city unless you mean it."

He swallowed hard, looking up at Longshot, as though hoping for some kind of backup. And though the boy stayed silent as usual, his eyes spoke volumes from under his paddy hat. This was not a joke, Smellerbee hadn't drunk any desert tonic, and there would be no peace until he agreed or they forcibly captured him.

He sighed, turning back to her. "Lead the way."

****

"Central camp has about twenty-five refugees so far." Suki frowned as she headed up the passage to the entrance where Shen was no doubt trying to convince more people to save themselves, Lao at her side. "Apparently, they think we're either hitting the cactus juice, or that it's a plot to undermine the Dai Li and are too scared to say so."

"Even the Avatar is having trouble being taken seriously," he confirmed. "Perhaps we underestimated the power of Feng's choke-hold."

"Boy did we ever." She sighed. "Speaking of Aang...he said he wants to make a stand against them. Toph and I have both told him he's out of his head, but the kid's determined."

Lao turned to her, arching a brow in a mixture of interest and disbelief. "Make a stand with what? The army he keeps in his back pocket?"

She shook her head. "I don't know what he's planning, and something tells me I don't want to. I'd like to think that he's the Avatar, so he's got something up his sleeve that he's not telling us, you know?"

Lao nodded. "Either that or write him off as completely out of his head. Like most twelve-year-old boys."

"But he isn't most twelve-year-old boys, therein lies the problem." She swallowed thickly. "In any case, that won't help us get more people into the tunnels. And we have very little time..."

Lao stopped her, setting a hand on her shoulder. "We won't be able to spare all of them. You know that, right?"

She looked up at him, feeling her chest tighten a little. "Yeah, I do. But we've got to get as many as we can."

"And if they won't listen to you, you have to let it go."

"But they'll die out there once the attack comes. I can't just leave them!"

His expression didn't change. "I know you want to save as many as you can. But with such little time, you can't afford to dote on lost causes when your effort can be put to better use with those you can save. If they don't want to follow, you have got to forget about them and move on to others. People who may actually heed your warning and come with you willingly to safety. If you waste all of your time trying to convince those too stubborn and scared to listen, you won't save anyone."

She swallowed hard, shivering and looking back at the ground. Her hands balled into fists, nails biting into her palms. The thought felt like a crushing weight on her chest, and she fought to keep her voice even.

"Before this...I was helping refugees into Ba Sing Se, because everyone knew it was safe. They thought they would be okay there. So did I. And now...I've done nothing but send all of those people to die. They would've been better off in the shells of their razed villages..."

Lao sighed, patting her shoulder comfortingly. "You did as well as you could. That city hasn't fallen in a hundred years. Not even the great General Iroh managed to take it down. How were you to know this would happen? All you can do now is try to get them out of danger once again." He sighed. "It's war, child. We all do things we're ashamed of, and mistakes we make will always end up costing lives. But we can't stop to dwell on it if we want to keep our sanity, especially when there are people out there who still need us. The best we can do is try to curb disaster as much as possible."

She nodded, looking up to the tunnel's end as though it was the bottom of a well. "I...I know that. But just...the thought of letting all those people die just to save a few... It sounds so cruel."

"It is, in a way. But it's a necessary sacrifice. You have to cut loose those you know you can't save if you want anyone to survive." He frowned. "If you manage to convince a cook to follow you, ask him if he's ever made fu yung don without breaking any eggs."

She let out a breath, looking up at him finally. "I will. But people aren't eggs."


TO BE CONTINUED...

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