Boss

The gulls we saw that morning told us enough. Land. Finally. There was something interesting about waking up one night in the middle of an empty sea and rising the next with an entire landmass now sitting on the horizon, as though it were the land moving and not us, but of course, that was fantasy talking. The Jianghe archipelago, a series of islands in the Nagar Sea of decreasing size the further they extended from the Earth Kingdom mainland, civilization only existing in truth on the biggest of the 4 islands. It was unlikely we'd find the bulk of the conflict here, but if anything, it was high time we disembarked. It didn't take a psychic to see that my men were done with the sea. At least for the time being.

We docked in the town at around 9 in the morning. I was thankful I remembered enough about this island from my raiding days to know where to dock on the island's southern side, the fortress Jianghezhen facing east, towards the mainland, and potential danger. The ease of our docking without being fired upon was enough assurance that the island was in Fire Nation hands as of this moment. It was easy to tell there wasn't too much of an iron grip on this region. Being on the coast, it made sense they would have been one of the first territories taken by the Fire Nation when the war began. They were assimilated to their occupiers. We wouldn't be given any strange looks.

The plan was simple enough. We'd stay in town for the next few days, let ourselves rest back on dry land, and, most of all, see if we could find some work. We had materiel, compliments to our kind hosts of Whale tail island, but it would only last so long. We needed a constant stream of income, and besides, our goal is to fight this war for those who can't fight it themselves. How can we expect to do that if we don't go job-hunting?

It was easy enough to bring the ship in with Gordez's management and the help of the rest of the crew. Luke, silent as ever, made his way around the ship. After this much time, I had been hoping that he'd start talking often enough to hold a conversation, but that hadn't been the case. Ka'lira claims she had heard screaming and yelling from his room one night, even talking as though there was somebody else, but she chose not to check it out. Didn't blame her. I'd heard Luke at sleep before, back before the Patriot. The nightmares never seemed to stop for him. I pitied him. He'd been in the army for almost a year, but I guess at his age, the stuff you see just doesn't pass as quickly as it does foe the rest of us.

But I understood him too. More than he probably knew. I still remember my first months with the raiders. I was 15. My initiation was to torture a water tribe villager until she gave up the location of which villages still housed benders.

Naturally, of course, I had no experience in that regard. I didn't know the ways of the inquisitors the Fire Lord kept hidden away. It took me 3 weeks to break her. I tried everything I could while my crew watched on and laughed, waiting for me to figure out the secret in breaking the will of another human being. I started as I thought they'd want me to start. I thought I could get it done all in the same day and be done with it, my initiation over, and the struggle over with. I hit her, electrocuted her, beat her, humiliated her. She held out. A few days passed going nowhere. She was so adamant that she knew nothing, so I tried more. I tortured her. Waterboarding, more electrocution, humiliation to break her will all the quicker, but she persisted. And so did I. We both had things on the line. The way initiation worked in the Southern Raiders; you weren't a raider until you passed. For all intents and purposes, you were a prisoner. You slept in a steel cell, they hardly fed you, gave you a cup of water every few days, through a cup through the grates so you couldn't ration it. As the days passed, I wondered how I was any different from her. We were both prisoners to the same people, facing the same treatment, but the only difference was, I had hope of a way out. And that hope was by breaking her. I didn't do what I did because it was part of the job. I did what I did because I didn't want to be the one to suffer any longer. Only by inflicting that suffering upon her could I be free. So for 2 weeks I did everything I could to break her. I beat her, humiliated her, I…I did things I don't want to think about. Things I know will send me straight to hell once my life comes to an end.

Then near the beginning of the third week, I broke down in front of her. I sobbed, cried, with nobody there to watch. The entertainment of watching a 15-year-old try to torture a defenseless woman only provided them with enough entertainment for the first few hours of the first day. I let everything out in front of her. I couldn't bear to touch her again. And that, funny enough, was what did it. She told me everything. Because she couldn't bear to watch a child my age endure this any longer. She gave me what I needed, because she was the only person on that ship that cared for me. That didn't stop my captain from making me look her in the eyes as they forced me to have my way with her, followed by the rest of the crew, and, eventually, kill her. They told me afterwards that one can only do what has to be done when their own life and well-being is at stake. They taught me their lesson, but I knew it was bullshit. And they knew it too. Later that evening, as the crew got drunk, me among them, perhaps most of all to cast aside the memories, but to no avail, I overheard their talk. They knew where the waterbender were. They just wanted me to have my first kill. That was their initiation. No lesson. No moral. Just so I would become like them.

In the first month with the Southern Raiders, I already knew I had to get out as quickly as I could, but bureaucracy didn't work that way. I stuck around with them for 2 years, killing civilians belonging to all sides of this war in the name of "the war-effort." They didn't believe in the war. They believed in the bloodlust, not even the loot. They believed in the warmth of human blood against their skin amidst the frost of a winter night in the south pole, the steam it made when it melted the snow beneath their feet, and the warm embrace of an unwilling participant as they made the world around them their slaves, taking what and who they wanted.

The violence was the easy part. Easy to blur after what I'd already done. We went from tribe to tribe, over, and over, and over again, taking a few, running, coming back, taking a few more, and running away again. We were cowards. We'd come to fight, all full of energy, until the tide turn, then we'd run with what spoils we could, and return again after we deceived ourselves into thinking the outcome would be any better. And eventually, after months of continuous raids, we would eventually succeed, and we'd celebrate as though we were the superior fighters, despite the fact that it was the Water Tribals, living in a winter wasteland, no natural resources, just their own will, that turned us back time and time again. But I watched as the violence unfolded around me and did my fair share.

The hard part, however, was what happened outside of the violence, what happened in my head. For those 2 years in service, I saw her every night as I tried to sleep. I was her as she was before the torture began, the bruises, scratches, tissue damage, exhaustion, all these things gradually appearing over time as I watched myself beat her senselessly, the monster of my own nightmares.

Then, at the end of those 2 years, General Iroh, the Dragon of the West, laid siege to the Earth Kingdom capitol of Ba Sing Se and put the call out to any enlisted or unenlisted men willing to join his great crusade. I think I may have been the first to ever sign up. I was done with the raiders. And so, the nightmares finally stopped, the same night I saw the walls of Ba Sing Se for the first time, after what was possibly my first real battle when the Earth Kingdom garrison left their walls to face Iroh's host. It was a true battle. A true war. Iroh turned them back, running to their city. He accepted their general's surrender, tended to the injured, ours and theirs, provided housing and hospitality for the prisoners, and showed me what being a soldier meant. Because the men I had served beside for those 2 years. They weren't soldiers. They were uniformed savages. Even today, I was ashamed to fly their banners, even if it was only to spare ourselves, but a part of me hoped that this beacon would draw the right kind of attention. Not from the Earth Kingdom or Fire Nation, but from the band of murderous pillagers who called themselves soldiers. I was hoping that, as time went by, we'd find more and more of them, because I had a score to settle.

It was unlikely we'd find any here but killing them was only a half of my intention. For too long, I'd been on the wrong side of this war. Not the Fire Nation, but the side of the wicked, of those who exploited war for their own gain and bloodlust. Men like this existed on all sides of this war, and I was done serving with them, but I still had a debt to pay, one to pay to the other side-those who couldn't protect themselves. We needed money to live, but that was only part of why I was doing what I was doing. I, as well as my crew, all had our histories, and we all defected for similar reasons, to make amends. And so that would start here. So we disembarked and went our own separate ways to find however we could lend a hand and earn our keep. I like to think that that day marked the first real day of our little band of mercenaries.