Zhao

They brought him in the night of. It was past midnight when the patrol skiff came in. The boy was bloody from head to toe. I half thought he was dead when they brought him aboard, a dead body being held up by the Fire Nation soldiers.

He was, in fact, being held up, but he was very much alive. He'd only passed out during the ride from the shore to The Ajax. He wasn't injured, at least not to a severe extent. None of the blood was his own. I heard the report that the soldiers had given, how Lei'fo, half lost, disoriented, covered from head to toe in blood, had just stumbled into the Fire Nation position.

Fearing the Separatists were approaching, they had stricken camp immediately and set out with the boy in tow to the beachhead where they lit a flare and a nearby patrol boat extracted them.

Harzek had immediately assumed the best, seeing the kid both alive and covered in blood. His only assumption was that he'd fulfilled his objective and killed the leader of the Separatists. He was already making predictions on how, by morning, the Nip Sea Separatists would be nothing more than an unpleasant memory for the Fire Nation to quickly and effectively scrape clean from history.

I was less concerned with Harzek's war games. Even if the leader of the Separatists was eliminated, recent reports indicated that it was the least of our concerns. South of the swamp, there had been rising numbers of attacks from waterbenders. They swamp exiles were increasing their offensive, and the more we were distracted by the Separatists, the more harm they'd deal. While I was prone to agreeing that the Separatists' leader's death would likely divide them to the point of being unrecognizable, it was our other objective, my objective, that would end the conflict here, and for that matter, across the world.

I could have cared less about whatever Lei'fo had or hadn't done. What I wanted to know what something less concrete. Something he had inside his head.

"Get him cleaned and wake him up. Bring him to my office" Harzek ordered the men, him the only one able to give them the order to do so. The soldiers nodded, once again lifting the boy by his arms, carrying him away to have him prepped for questioning. He turned to me and shrugged, an overconfident grin plastered onto his face. "Guess we'll both have our answers soon enough."

He returned straight away to his office while I took my time going there, figuring the last thing I needed was any more time sitting alone with him than was necessary.

I allowed 15 minutes to pass, mostly spent on the deck, taking in the cool sea breeze, my eyes fixated on the coast ahead directly to the east, my mind intent on what lay beyond it however: The Swamp. In there, we had all manner of threats to the Fire Nation: insane hillbilly tribals, spirit shamans, disagreeable nature, exiled revolutionary waterbenders. We'd be better off torching it to the ground, but I feared the repercussions. The spirits were an interesting sort. They played by their own rules, theoretically bound to the spirit realm, but prone to interfering in the matters of the material world when certain circumstances occurred. I did not wish to provide those circumstances.

I left the deck, the atmosphere now calming around me, previously rendered quite hectic from our sudden midnight visitors. I imagined that, if he wasn't already, Lei'fo would be cleaned up and ready for questioning soon. I wanted to assume that the college student, the prisoner, was dead. If he wasn't, it was to be assumed that he would have told the Separatists about what Lei'fo had asked them. In itself, that would be of little consequence. The Separatists lacked the knowledge, resources, manpower, or interest required to interfere in our operations, especially if they took us as far out as the Si Wong Desert as I anticipated.

Harzek's office was occupied by him and him alone, Lei'fo clearly not yet ready, but at this point, I was already in, and there was little point in leaving.

"May as well take a seat," He said, motioning over to the chair in front of his desk, a second one by its side that would likely be intended for Lei'fo when he arrived.

"Doesn't make sense for him and me to be next to each other," I commented. It needed to be understood that I was in as much a position of authority as Harzek was, at least as far as the boy was concerned.

"Too cramped back here for a second chair. You'll have to stand."

"I'm fine with that," I grumbled, moving to the other side of the room, leaning against the wall. From where I was, I had a solid enough view of whatever papers Harzek was working on. By the looks of it, he was already in the midst of filing reports about Lei'fo's assignment. He had already marked the Separatist leader as 'KIA.'

"You presume too much," I said, allowing my tongue to flow more freely now that I wasn't in the direct presence of the fleet's general.

"Excuse me?"

"We haven't heard anything back from the kid yet. We don't know if he finished his mission."

"Right, because I'm sure you're patiently waiting to start putting together plans for whatever suicide mission you have ready for my squad next."

I crossed my arms. I had simply been offering him advice, yet as ever, he was quick to the insult, an unyielding grudge it seemed. "I'm not planning anything until I have the information I'll need to proceed. And I have no intention of leading your men into a suicide mission. And besides, it's like you said, we live and die to serve our nation." I threw his own words right back at him. He saw that plainly enough, and the discontent was palpable.

He had nothing more to say after that, instead, attempting to go back to his preemptive report, but my words still seemingly floating in his head, pushed it aside, instead figuring the less painful option to be talking to me. "What are you expecting the boy to tell you, if anything."

"I told you. I'm not planning-"

"Cut the bullshit."

I sighed. He wasn't wrong. Even doubtful, I couldn't help but want to hope for the best, and had done exactly that. "I expect we'll be taken into the Si Wong desert. It's a large expanse of territory to cover."

"That's putting it lightly."

"Naturally," I continued, ignoring his remark, "We need a better lead than 'The Desert.' That's what I'm hoping to get from the boy-information on any tribes or other groups that may know of the library."

"And this library. What do you think it'll tell us."

"I told you. Answers on-"

"On how to defeat the waterbenders, I know. You've said this before. But what kind of knowledge? Military strategies, different bending forms?"

"I don't know."

"So we have no idea what we're looking for."

"It's better than being locked in this stalemate. Clearly, what we've been doing thus far hasn't been working, and it's costing the Fire Nation soldiers. I want to change that, and if it means putting myself and a few other men to help save the Fire Nation men and bring about a victory for our Nation, then it'll be worth it."

Harzek had turned in his chair, looking towards me, an amused look on his face.

"What?" I asked.

"It's funny. You almost sounded like you were actually doing this for the Fire Nation for a second, and not yourself."

I scowled, looking away. I don't need this. Nothing I do will change his mind. He had his mind set on me 10 seconds after he met me.

Finally, before things could become too tense in the silence of a room, there came a knock at the door. Thank the Spirits.

"Come in," came Harzek's voice, myself almost speaking to allow the visitor entrance, only remembering at the last moment that this wasn't my office.

The door opened, and escorted by two guards, the boy Lei'fo, much as he had been before, hands bound in front of him, walked into the room. At the very least, he wasn't covered in blood, and he seemed somewhat awake, though exhaustion threatened to down him at the nearest moment. I couldn't blame him. It was rather late for us as well, somewhere near 0200.

"Close the door," Harzek said to the guards, finishing with, "And stay outside."

The guards nodded, the two of them leaving the room, shutting the steel door behind them.

"Take a seat," Harzek nodded to the boy, who submissively enough, did just that. I hadn't been privy to the details of how Harzek had been working alongside the boy since he was brought in, but whatever he had done, it had clearly been effective. I couldn't avoid giving him credit in that regard. He took a staunchly nationalist anti-Fire Nation terrorist, and successfully turned him into a war asset, the effectiveness of which was about to be determined.

There was a grim look on the boy's face, one that could mean many things. Perhaps he had failed, and the sorrow was over now having to say such to us. Or perhaps he had been successful, having just killed his long-time father figure more than likely. I suppose we were going to find out soon enough.

"I'm going to be asking you about the details of your assignment. For the sake of protocol, I will ask things in their proper order. Were you able to successfully re-establish contact with the Nip Sea Separatists?"

"Y-yes."

"Good. We you able to properly identify your two objectives, the first of which being the Separatist leader, the second of which being the relevant prisoner."

He nodded. "Yes."

Harzek nodded. "In regard to your first objective, were you able to properly carry out your assignment and eliminate the Separatist leader?"

Harzek paused, eyes locked on the ground. It could have meant anything in the world for him to do that, but the muddied water would soon be cleared as he eventually responded, "No."

Harzek froze. I saw his face shift before my very eyes as he went from shock, to confusion, to complete and utter hatred. "You-You didn't kill him."

Lei'fo simply shook his head, eyes fixed on the ground. That was settled, we had to move on, "What about the-"

"Shut up, Zhao," Harzek interrupted me. He fixed his eyes back on Lei'fo. "You-you ungrateful shit! You had no plans of killing him, did you?! After everything?! After he left you behind, traded your life for those new arrivals?! He abandoned you! He gave you up! We gave you a second chance, gave you your damn family back, and this is how you repay us?!"

"I-I tried."

"Bullshit! You didn't have the spine for it. I should have known you couldn't be trusted. Now we all know that somebody has to pay the con-"

"Harzek!" I said, stopping him. On normal occasion, what I just did there would be considered breaking rank, a junior lieutenant interrupting a proper lieutenant, but in the case of our mission, I had superiority, and in this case, where matters of information were at a risk of being violated, I was highest in the chain of command. This was my say. I wasn't sure if Harzek saw it that way. Perhaps he just needed somebody to yell into his ear to snap him back into reality. In either case, he calmed down quickly enough, one last silent "damnit" before a wave of his hand indicated for me to continue the debriefing.

Lei'fo hadn't seemed to notice the exchange, his gaze still fixed on the ground. "Your second objective," I started, "The prisoner. You said you were able to locate him?"

He nodded.

"Were you able to properly question him?"

He nodded once more.

"Did he know the location of the library?" I asked.

I expected him to either nod or shake his head, but rather, he actually spoke up, saying, "No. All I got was the name and location of a tribe that does."

"Who? Where? Which tribe?"

"It's in my bag pocket."

"Then take it out."

He raised his cuffed hands. Of course.

I sighed, walking over to his chair where he promptly shifted, exposing his back to me, and in effect, the sewn-in pockets of his dungarees, the faint hint of a slip of paper exposed, just enough for me to be able to pull it out, unfolding the sheet of paper-the map I'd given him to mark a location, and on in, scribbled in graphite, a circle, and next to it, in hasty writing, "Hami."

It wasn't the library, but it was a lead. It had to count. It had to count for something. There was some purpose to it all.

I looked it over again. They were located to the Desert's Northeast, furthest away from where we were in the Southwest than any other point, but it was an answer. More precisely, an answer leading to another answer down the road, but each step closer was a welcome one.

"It wasn't worth nothing," I said to Harzek, who seemed rather uncaring towards the boon to my own objective. I couldn't blame him. In his position, if it had been my own pet project that had failed miserably, I wouldn't be behaving much differently. But Harzek seemed to make a recovery, now that his own project was done for, a newfound interest in mine. "This information. It's real?"

I turned to Lei'fo. This was his question to answer. "It's real. I swear."

Harzek sighed, a moment of silence ensuing until Lei'fo asked, "What happens to me now. What happens to my family?"

Harzek turned towards me, as though expecting me to have an answer, though I only shrugged. My interest in the boy had ended. I had what I needed. What happened to him now was of no concern to me. And besides, it had been Harzek who had been responsible for this boy. If it was anybody's decision, it was his. He understood this, and turned back to the child soldier.

"The Fire Nation has no further use of you. You're free to go. Upon morning, transportation will be arranged for you to go home. You did alright, kid. You're free."

Lei'fo looked awestruck, as though he couldn't believe what he were hearing, the option of Fire Nation mercy something that never had started occurring to him until recent days. "So that, that's it? I can go home? We're done?"

"We're done, kid. We'll give you a room to spend the night, but come tomorrow morning, your interactions with the Fire Nation are done, and the slate is wiped clean. If we hear you are causing trouble for us again, there won't be any third chances."

He nodded. "I understand."

"Good, then go. The guards outside will escort you somewhere to spend the night."

"And my cuffs?"

"The slate is clean tomorrow. For now, you are still a liability and a risk. Guards!"

The doors opened instantaneously just as Lei'fo began to rise.

"Bring him somewhere to spend the night. Leave his cuffs on, but give him a hot meal as well. Arrange for him to be brought to Miaowan tomorrow morning."

"Yes, sir. Is that all, sir?"

"Yes. Now go."

They took the boy, Lei'fo giving us, rather, him, one final look before leaving. I couldn't tell what the look was. If it was suspicion, confusion, hate, or perhaps thanks. I suppose only he would ever know, if even he did himself. The boy was going home, but a part of me knew that, after the events of today, he would never be quite the same.

The soldiers shut the door behind them as they left.

"Well," Harzek spoke. "At least one of us got something out of this."

"Assassinating their leader had a slim chance of working. Man like that, surrounded at nearly all times. No way to kill him without the assassin getting killed as well."

"That's why I used an expendable asset."

"Except he wasn't expendable. He had a secondary objective, and a person like that, knowing nothing but how to preserve their own life. It wasn't going to work."

Harzek let out a prolonged sigh. "I just-I thought I could help end things on this front. Bring the fighting to an end."

"You still can. We have a lead. Maybe your plan didn't work, but there's still a way we can help the Fire Nation. And there's still a way that you can help."

He closed his eyes, a noticeable grimace on his face. It was clear enough to the world that no part of him was pleased, stuck in this state of submission, but whether or not he believed my intentions to be true, he couldn't deny the logic of what I'd said. "So what's your plan then?"

"Come morning, we take what we know to the General. We won't make the same mistakes as last time. Acclimatized gear, proper equipment, mounts, and sufficient supplies. We'll do this right this time."

Harzek nodded, himself likely completely agreeing with the assessment that we were nowhere near prepared for our swamp expedition.

"Very well. Your plan it is, then. Lead the way, Junior Lieutenant.