Strong & Silent

Chapter One: Another

_Chapter One: Another_

"Today's great, eh, Longshot?" A brown-haired youth remarked with a grin while leaning against a thick tree trunk and peering up at the cloudless sky above.

An older, darker-haired boy nodded in silent reply, shielding his eyes from the bright sun with a large hand. Sunshine was a hard thing to come by during winter in this Earth Kingdom Forest and the two Freedom Fighters were not about to waste it. They had spent the later part of the morning high in a tree soaking in the rare rays, the younger boy declaring an official "Day of Rest" for all living in the Freedom Fighters' trees.

Longshot stretched and closed his eyes, preparing to nap. Napping in the sun had always appealed to the darker-haired boy; it was simple and the calming affect the sun had as it blanketed him in its cozy warmth was like no other. As a young child, Longshot remembered falling asleep in a field on his family farm one afternoon. He had stumbled groggily into his home that evening, only to be yelled at by his mother for, "disappearing" and "scaring her half to death".

Just as Longshot could feel every inch of his body succumbing to sleep, a shout jolted him awake. He groaned mentally and opened his onyx eyes. The youth across from him was standing up while grumbling under his breath, brow furrowed in irritation.

"Jet! Jet!" A child's voice called from beneath the branch the two sat upon.

Longshot looked over the edge of the branch and saw a short, thin boy no more than eight or nine. The boy stood on one of the numerous wooden platforms wrapped around sturdy tree trunks many feet over the forest floor. These platforms, along with shaky wood bridges, rope and cloth, were the basis of the Freedom Fighters' tree top "village". The brown haired boy gave an aggravated sigh as he leapt form his perch to the waiting child below.

"What Duke?" Jet asked as he landed on the wooden platform with ease.

"It's _The_ Duke!" The boy exclaimed.

"I know, I know," Jet said, annoyance clear in his voice, "What do you want?"

The Duke pointed to the east, "There's lotsa smoke comin' from that village over there!"

Jet squinted and peered into the distance; there was smoke. Thin, dark grey plumes of smoke drifting upwards into the clear azure sky above. The source seemed to be, as The Duke said, from one of the two villages on either side of the forest—the one that hadn't been occupied by Fire Nation soldiers.

"Where there's smoke, there's the Fire Nation,' Jet whispered, anger rising up inside him.

"Ya think so? Sneers said so too, but I thought it was a festival and Pipsqueak said they were clouds…"

Jet called to the boy sitting on the tree branch. "Longshot!"

Almost immediately was Longshot on the platform beside Jet, a grave look in his eyes and a bow in his hand.

"Get Smellerbee, Pipsqueak and Sneers, we leave in five minutes!" Jet commanded to The Duke, who instantly bounded away to fetch his comrades.

All of Jet's previous irritation had been replaced with seriousness as both he and Longshot prepared mentally for battle. Death was no stranger to the Freedom Fighters, but the sight of bodies mangled and burned beyond recognition still gave Jet the chills. He often found himself picturing the corpses over and over in his mind, to fuel the burning hatred he felt towards the Fire Nation; that was one fire he could never—and _would_ never—let die. Those flames would keep growing until the Fire Nation paid for the misery it caused the world, and for the misery it caused him.

"How many do you think?" Jet asked Longshot, fists clenched tightly.

There was no need for elaboration; Longshot knew what Jet spoke of. He was referring to the number of innocent people killed by Fire Nation hands. Jet asked this to Longshot frequently and at the most random times. Sometimes during dinner, on lookout, while they trained or, like today, before going into battle. As always, Longshot never had an answer. And, as always, Jet never expected one.

"You're sure it's the Fire Nation, Jet?" Asked the small and nimble Smellerbee as she dashed across a bridge, the slower Sneers, The Duke and Pipsqueak trailing.

"Positive," Jet replied simply.

Once Jet had assigned directions to the Freedom Fighters they began leaping and racing through the forest towards the burning village. The journey was fairly quick and silent. None of the six spoke and there was a solemn air about each of them. Even The Duke, young as he was, knew of the graveness of the situation.

As the village came into view, Longshot knew there were no survivors; nearly all the houses had collapsed into piles of blackened wood and ash and the smell of smoke and blood was thick in the air. Smoke—that was the worst smell to Longshot. It reminded him of when his village was attacked and burned to the ground. In the back of his mind, Longshot hope there were no survivors, that no one else had to experience the pain that accompanied losing everything you cared for. As much as Longshot wanted the killing to stop, he also wished the suffering would too.

The six Freedom Fighters stopped outside the village, surveying the damage done with sharp eyes. There were no soldiers to be seen and there were plenty of bodies littering the ground and trapped beneath rubble. Small fires crackled here and there and it appeared as though the Fire Nation had left only a few hours prior to their arrival. Sneers cursed loudly as he nearly stepped on the arm of a bloody corpse.

Jet, walking into what was left of the village, noticed a Fire Nation soldier's body and a sadistic grin crept across his lips. Sneers appeared behind him, muttering something about the villagers fighting back. Jet felt a strange sense of respect for these fallen villagers as he noted five other soldier bodies.

"Hey Jet, can me an' Pipsqueak an' Longshot go look for survivors now?" The Duke asked excitedly, bouncing on the balls of his tiny feet.

Jet nodded and turned around to face his Freedom Fighters. They were all lost in their own thoughts and each showed varying degrees of sympathy. Smellerbee stared fixedly at the body of a girl her age, fists clenched around her daggers and brown eyes narrowed and fierce. Sneers kicked a pile of ash, only to cough and splutter as it rose in a cloud to his face. Pipsqueak and The Duke wandered away to begin their search; Longshot scanned the area with his keen, archer eyes, mouth in a thin line and an arrow latched in his bow.

Jet, now beside Smellerbee, placed a hand on her shoulder. She started and Jet knew she had been deep in thought; it wasn't an easy thing, sneaking up on Smellerbee. Once before Jet had, though, and that was also how he had found out she was, in fact, a she. He wondered if her being a girl made everything they did as Freedom Fighters—the killing, the raids, living in trees, being surrounded by all this death—more difficult. His father once said women _were_ more emotional than men…

"When will the Fire Nation stop, Jet?" Smellerbee asked quietly, eyes still fixated upon the dead girl's face.

There was something different about Smellerbee, Jet thought, eyeing her quizzically. She had never been like this before during raids or while killing a soldier. Jet decided that the dead girl must remind Smellerbee of what happened to her nearly two years ago, just before she joined the Freedom Fighters…

Just as Jet was about to share words he hoped would comfort the distraught Smellerbee, The Duke's voice could be heard from a ways away.

"Jet! Pipsqueak an' me found someone!" The young boy shouted. He was perched atop Pipsqueak's broad shoulders, waving frantically.

Longshot jogged over to the two, Jet, Smellerbee and Sneers following suit. On the ash-covered ground beside Pipsqueak's wide foot, lay a girl who seemed Jet's age. She didn't seem too injured, with only a shallow cut on her forehead and a small burn on her arm. Longshot bent down and lowered his cheek, stopping an inch above the girl's mouth.

"Uh, she's breathin', right, Longshot?" Pipsqueak asked in his slow, booming voice.

Longshot felt a warm brush of air against his cheek and nodded. He felt relieved there was one less casualty. A part of him, however, pitied her, for when she awoke, nothing good awaited her.

"So we have to bring her with us, I guess, right?" Sneers asked, sounding slightly irritated, as if possibly saving a life was a pointless, time-consuming task.

Longshot glared at Sneers, his black eyes hissing "_yes_". Ever since Sneers joined the Freedom Fighters three years ago, Longshot had never been fond of him. Whether it was insulting him or a friend, his arrogance or his blatant lack of sensitivity to _everything_, he seemed to always find a way of getting on Longshot's bad side.

"Yeah, we should bring her. Who knows what the Fire Nation did to her…" Jet whispered, voice filled with spite, "Pick her up, Pipsqueak, but be careful."

Pipsqueak lifted the girl's limp body from the ground with ease, his hands, almost comically so, a fair amount larger than her head.

"Smellerbee, you go with Pipsqueak back to the house. We'll look for more people," Jet said, knowing Smellerbee needed to leave the village and the sight of girls' corpses.

Smellerbee, concealing her gratitude well, nodded before setting out after the wide form of Pipsqueak. She didn't think she could handle seeing another corpse, much less the corpse of a girl. Their blank, dead eyes staring into hers as she looked on their body was almost too much. It was one thing to see a dead Fire Nation soldier but another to see someone her age, knowing they were smiling and laughing mere hours ago, unaware of their imminent death.

* * *

Hours later and Longshot was lying awake in his bedroll. His body was exhausted, but his mind was racing after the day's events. The four—five, after Pipsqueak returned to aid the search—Freedom Fighters had located six more survivors beneath piles of ash and rubble. Two young girls of about ten or eleven were found on the outskirts of town by Pipsqueak and The Duke; Longshot found a young woman half-buried underneath the remains of what must have been her home. A boy and his sister were caught wandering in from the edge of the forest by Sneers who snickered at their cowardice as Longshot bandaged their cuts. The last survivor, a man with a large gash on the back of his head, was spotted nearly fifty feet from the village.

When he and Smellerbee had taken food to their room two hours ago, he saw five of the seven awake, a story being recited by the eldest boy quite dramatically. The oldest of the girls, the one Pipsqueak had found first, had looked up at Longshot with red, swollen eyes before muttering her thanks and handing the bowls of rice to the children.

Longshot shifted onto his stomach and peered out his room at the sliver of silver moon hanging in the night sky. While drifting off to sleep he wondered what the moon thought of them. He wondered if the moon laughed at how stupid humans were, killing each other in wars and burning down each others homes. Or if the moon pitied them, its dim light a gift to the world it wished it could help.

**Author's Note: Thank you very much for reading. Expect the next chapter in a week.**


End file.
