Luke

I recognized the silence. Hated that I did. I had heard it too many time to have disillusioned myself into thinking that hell had, all of a sudden, decided to stop falling to the Earth below. The shells of gas had ceased their descent, and a thick mist of yellow gas now dominated the clearing between the outer wall and the town proper. The clearing, despite being laden in trenches, defensive positions, and the like, was completely abandoned. Had they all gone to reinforce the beach head?

It was nearly impossible to find our way, the task made all the more difficult by the merit of our unfamiliarity with the locale we were confined to. We had spent all of a day in Jingping before promptly leaving. What had been a good idea then, well, far from it, what had been a passionate idea then was now revealing itself to be the mistake that it was. We had no idea where we were going.

I didn't wish to think what Zare's perspective of the whole state of affairs was at that. It had been her who lost everything, whose idea had put us on the endeavor that had accomplished nothing. While I knew I nor Zek held any ill will, I did not doubt that Zare's guilt was still weighing heavily on her, perhaps now most of all as the misadventure was finding us in a position it would have invariably better to have been left out of.

Zek would be making his own way to the town, I knew. He knew, in at least some vague sense, where Ka'lira would be. I did not hold his decision against him. I was not about to try and spend these precious few seconds sprinting to try and rationalize the irrational. I would just keep on running, and running, while the silence still dominated.

And then the whistle.

"Get down!" I called.

It was instinct that took over. The whistle of falling shells, my response to it at that, it was about as instinctual as breathing was at this point. As though she were somebody I was intending to end the life of as quickly as possible rather than preserve, my arms wrapped around Zare's side as I threw myself, and, in effect, her, to the ground, tackling her.

The hard earth terrain did not give us a warm welcome, a pained grunt emitting from us both as we competed our descent, being met with packed soil, loose gravel, and sizable pebbles. It was, however, a preferable alternative to the shower of burning shrapnel that travelled above our heads a second later.

We hadn't seen the shrapnel. Zare and I had been too busy facing the floor that all we had perceived had been that characteristic whistle, and then the flash and the boom all at once, the minimal distance between us and the explosion reducing sound and image to the selfsame moment.

The aforementioned moment passed, and the two of us were still lying there, me just then realizing I was still lying practically atop her. My head was raised, scanning the surroundings. Already, it had begun—the second bombardment, shells falling to the ground, explosions lighting all around us, the night sky suddenly becoming lit in a fashion that could only be described as the transition of night to the day in the span of seconds. Even closer, however, than the newly falling shells, was the crater made by the first, red shards of debris still scattered around it.

"There!" I called out, knowing there was no guarantee of her hearing me above the resounding thunder of the newly falling shells, but it didn't matter. Me rising to my feet and sprinting forward would have to be evidence enough of my intentions. Sure enough, Zare caught on quick enough, quickly recovering her footing and making the dash and following dive into the crater, our survival instinct, in that moment, based on nothing more than the likelihood of two shells never falling in the same place twice.

It was something they never taught you in the academy. It was unfounded, ridiculous, and superstitious, but it was never wrong. That was the sort of thing you learned once on the field, likely after already having watched more than enough people suffer the effects of hell's descent to Earth. Such had been the case for me, a lesson kindly taught to me by Squad Ironfire.

I prayed Zek was following his own advice, keeping his head low, not being an idiot in spite of whatever irresistible drive was keeping him pushing forward.

Can't worry about that now, I told myself, our own personal hell enough for me to worry about as it was.

It was only then, still for the moment, that I became aware of the fact that my arm was still around Zare's waist. I promptly removed it, using my now free arm to raise my pack above my head to protect against what future debris may fly. I was thankful for the mask, the smoke, the severity of the situation, and practically everything else around us for concealing the brief red tint that rose to my face.

I was unsure why I was even embarrassed. There had been no shortage of occasions in which I'd found myself in far more "intimate" circumstances with other soldiers at Ba Sing Se. Whether it was dragging one another out of harm's way, performing field CPR, or simply holding onto one another for whatever comfort you could field during a bombardment, I had been far closer to others on more than one occasion. Perhaps it was due to her being a woman, but looking at her now, it was imperceivable. Lying prone on the ground, pack held above her head as a shield against debris, mask over her face, she was just any other soldier I had shared a foxhole with back in the Earth Kingdom capitol.

What am I getting so worked up about? She's just another soldier.

Just another soldier, I nodded to myself, staring ahead. We had just reached the edge of town, and so were enabled to behold the sight of stone buildings being blown apart in front of us, shards of earth and wood flying every which way.

Deeper in town, the others were there. If I knew anything about Fire Nation tactics, this barrage was merely a cover for troop mobilization. They would be landing I knew.

Their first barrage had been to soften us up, draw us out.

The second, the gas, had been to reduce our line of sight, weaken us, bring us to a state where we were more preoccupied with breathing than staving off an invasion.

And the third, the present, was to keep our attention away from their forces that would be hitting the beach any moment now.

I had counted three ships. I wondered if it was the same that had come to Xiahu. I suppose it made little difference. They had artillery, they had gas, they had troops, they had the backing of the Fire Nation. And what did we have? A slim chance in hell.

I shook my head. I couldn't think like that.

"We need to keep moving!" I could just barely hear hell yell during a brief intermission between explosions, the desperation in her voice indicating it wasn't her first time exclaiming such.

"We're safer down here!" I called back.

Unsure if she had heard, I was already in the midst of repeating myself before She grabbed me by the shoulder to pull herself closer and yell to where my ear would have been behind the mask, "Fire Nation is using the beach landing as a distraction. Same as Xiahu. We need to tell Cholla to reinforce our rear!"

I found myself surprised at how quickly she had picked up on the presence of a troop landing in this very moment. Perhaps I shouldn't have been. She seemed the observant sort, and the type who would have been able to put the pieces together in regard to the specifications of what had happened at Xiahu.

And her mention of the troops distracting from a threat to our rear guard…she was far from wrong. Last time it had been the Rough Rhinos. If they were coming again, well, then we would need every man we could spare to our south as possible.

I nodded. I hated to admit that she was right, that we would have to abandon the only semblance of safety we had here. But with an exposes flank, well, we were all as good as anyway.

"Alright!" I yelled back! And so I waited in those few seconds for the next nearby explosion, as though that would mean another wouldn't fall so close any time soon. If this third barrage was doing any good, it was in, through the sheer force of the explosions alone, pushing away the gas. We now possessed a clear enough line of sight into the town ahead. It was not a pretty sight, but it was what we had to work our way through, and try not to die in the process.

An explosion came, this one close enough to feel the heat of despite our shelter.

This is it.

"Now!"

And so it was then.

There wasn't time to dwell on the decision. There was only time to run, so we did just that. It was difficult to ignore heat, the dust, dirt, and ash dominating the air, the shards of single-story buildings barreling towards us, all of it, but we kept on running regardless with only one direction in mind-north, us knowing that was where the action was, that was where we would find the others, if indeed they were still among the living.

A building blew up somewhere to my left, as indicating by the horrific sound of what sounded like bones breaking, shattering within an empty puppet of tissue and flesh.

Another explosion sounded behind us, close enough that I was willing to reason it would have claimed our lives had we left our crater cover a second later. Once again, the gas hood proved a welcome addition to my kit in shrouding the fear I knew was evidenced on my face.

Then came an offense from the Fire Navy fleet that was less avoidable-an explosion directly to my right.

It was odd in how it felt, as though I was being shoved off of my feet by some invisible individual of unimaginable strength, placing both arms on my shoulders and proceeding to hurl me to the ground.

Then came the heat, one that reminded me of a not so dissimilar experience from over a year ago whence I'd found my arm trapped beneath the burning rubble of my old tank, the dead eyes of Gan and Gi Gu staring right at me.

It was a similar wave of heat, but one that was, fortunately, far less long-lasting, with only isolated singes of pain appearing across my body, recognizable to me as the burn of rocketed debris.

I knew I'd been hit, but was smart enough to realize as well that it would have to be something to deal with later and only if I managed to get past the rest of today, assuming I got that far. Adrenaline would keep me going long enough, I wanted to think. I just have to pick myself off the ground first.

But I wasn't on the ground, instead being held up by Zare, helping me back up to my feet, ensuring the ground and myself did not once again become closer friends than would have been desired. I wasn't sure if she was talking, or it was only the sound of her grunting from behind the thick cotton fabric of her mask, but whatever it was, it was enough to compel back to my feet, regaining my footing and pushing ahead.

We were close enough now that I could see the dark shadow of the Fire Nation battleship bridges in the distant, rising high, a dark starless gap in the sky.

So it begins.