“So… Colonel, eh?”
“Don’t start, Captain Ren,” Xing shot back at the woman waggling her eyebrows at him as he took a seat by the tavern’s table, causing her to scowl.
“Ugh, don’t remind me. The pay raise from lieutenant to captain isn’t worth the workload…” She leaned back in her chair and huffed petulantly. “Why’d you have to promote me anyway? The rank scares all the sweet, cute soldiers away, and draws in all the brainless court weaklings.”
Xing shook his head with exasperation, picking up and gently swirling a bowl of tea in his hand. Neither soldier paid the serving girl or the other staring clientele any mind. “I’ve been given orders to rebuild the 11th Regiment, which means reviving three whole battalions and filling in the existing empty one. You, Weikong, Rufen and Ping will be in charge of that.”
Ren winced at the reminder of the 11th’s near-broken state. Even under Colonel Lidai, attrition had whittled the 11th Division to half strength, and the disaster at Tai Plains had brought it down to one and a half battalions. A lot of good men and women lost to the warriors of the Earth Kingdom and Water Tribes. But the greatest shame were those lost to the folly of the prick Shiluo. If he wasn’t already dead, Ren and the others would’ve gladly forfeit their ranks just to repay his idiocy.
“So who’s your lieutenant colonel?” Ren asked to distract her from those dark thoughts.
“I was thinking Mozi,” the boy said thoughtfully, and Ren nodded her agreement.
“Yeah, Mozi’s reliable. Kai treats you too much like a younger brother.”
Xing gave a lopsided grin. “You should know.”
“Pfft, everyone knows me and Kai are fighting over who gets to adopt you. Say, you know the current odds for that?”
“Nine to six, favoring you, last I heard,” the colonel replied with a smirk.
Ren grinned triumphantly. “Damn right. Though, now that you’ve made rank, I guess you don’t need to be tied down by ‘lower’ families, eh?” Her eyebrows started waggling again. “Gonna catch some young, sweet girl and introduce her to your ‘Young Dragon’?”
The faintest of blushes crept up on Xing’s cheeks, but otherwise he kept up an unamused mask. “Keep up your crassness and it’s no wonder you’re not getting any good catches yourself, captain.”
“Now that’s just low.”
They settled for a comfortable silence, never acknowledging the rest of the tavern goers.
As Xing sipped from his tea bowl and Ren began emptying her mug of rice liquor, the soon-to-be-promoted Mozi entered, with Captain Kai in tow. The latter wore a huge, proud grin as he quickly closed the distance to grab Xing off his seat in a crushing hug.
“Congratulations, Xing!”
“Kai, put the colonel down,” Mozi stated evenly, eyeing the bystanders a little awkwardly. “We’re in public, and with your strength, it might be considered an assault on a superior officer.”
The burly commander dropped his much younger leader down with an apologetic smile, and then had the decency to offer sheepish nods to the people in the tavern before he took a seat by the table. “Oops. Sorry about that, colonel.”
Xing rolled his eyes as he waved it off. “No problem, Kai. How was the royal quartermaster?”
“Surprisingly accommodating,” Mozi answered as he joined them and called for a serving girl. “The 11th Regiment will get all it needs, we now just need the bodies.”
Kai grinned cheerily. “Well, with how the news is spreading around, I’m sure we won’t have recruitment problems.”
“Good thing we have a generous time limit,” Mozi agreed with a sagely nod before changing the topic. “Have you seen to your new accommodations yet, colonel?”
Xing gave a shrug. “Just a quick look. General Shiluo’s taste was not too gaudy, thankfully.”
“I suppose that’s one virtue the b- late general had,” Ren remarked, her expression along with the other two colonels turning dark at the mention of the bumbling fool’s name. The 11th Regiment would not forget the damage he’d done to them anytime soon.
The conversation ended on that sour note, partly due to the food finally arriving. The four of them ate with a gusto that betrayed the sense of urgency that still clung to them out of combat. They left after a brief scuffle of who had the rights to pay - Kai won by being the first to reach the tavernkeep - and all signs of joviality fled as soon as their feet left the establishment’s door.
“None of them are following us,” Mozi mumbled under his breath.
Xing kept his gaze fixed to the front. “We’ve satisfied their curiosity. Were any of them recognizable?”
“One of them’s from Count Mura,” Kai replied with the same near-silence with a thoughtful frown, trying to recall his life as a minor noble before his commission, and all the social pageantry that came with it. “I think.”
“The table in the back end had Marquis Bo’s and Countess Xiu’s people,” Ren added, her lips barely moving. As a distant cousin of a duke, she too had experience in the pretentious circle of the Fire Nation’s nobility.
“Will any of them be a problem?” the young colonel asked.
Ren gave a negative snort. “Like you said, they were there just to scout us- you out. I double checked with my parents, Duke Cho is practically ostracized after Shiluo’s idiocy. The news of your promotion probably sealed his isolation.”
“And our retribution will seal his fate,” Xing added firmly.
The officers walked through the streets without a sound, even as they picked up speed and melted into the shadows with ease. They had honed their stealth against Earth Kingdom rabble rousers with keen eyes and a penchant for detecting the slightest of tremors. Here, in the heart of the Fire Nation, the officers of the 11th might as well be ghosts of vengeance.
They wound up in Duke Cho’s estate, and settled for observing the over-equipped guards. “They look shiny, but they don’t look well trained,” Xing commented as he noted how the patrols did not overlap, and how the individual guards spent half their time focused on their comrades in avid conversation instead of keeping their eyes fixed outwards.
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“Too sloppy,” Mozi, ever the disciplinarian, agreed. “We could get this over with right now.”
“No,” Xing immediately replied. “The duke has family, and he might be with them now. Our grudge is with him alone. We wait.”
“Yes, colonel.” The three captains obeyed despite their reluctance. Despite his youth, Xing’s plans had always brought the 11th victory, and this time it will bring them vengeance for their fallen comrades.
They patiently waited for the hours to melt by, never leaving their shadowed cover until midnight came and the residents of the estate were all asleep. With a gesture from Xing, the four of them moved out in utter silence, slipping through the disappointingly large gap between patrols and climbing over the estate walls before the glow lanterns could reach them. Entering the manor was simple enough. The nobles’ value of quality meant that the hinges of doors and windows barely made a squeak as they were eased open.
It took the quartet far more time to locate their quarry than it did breaking in. But the master bedroom was eventually found, with the duke and his wife sound asleep within. Xing shared a look with his officers as they loomed over the couple’s sleeping forms.
Duke Cho was awakened by a discomfort in his mouth and an unfamiliar rocking movement. His eyes shot open with surprise as he realized that he was being carried by two shadowy figures. He made to scream, but then found his mouth gagged with cloth. The noble’s panicked struggles did little to loosen the grip of his kidnappers, and the cold blade against his neck quickly stopped him from wriggling any further.
His kidnappers brought him into the larder and before he could break free his hands were bound behind his back, and his legs folded back to have his ankles bound together with his wrists. The figures ignored Duke Cho’s muffled panic, though one of them eventually had enough and wrapped a large, meaty hand around his throat, and began to slowly squeeze.
With a whimper, the duke took the hint and shut up, and the pressure around his throat was gone.
A much smaller figure came into view, taking up Duke Cho’s vision. “Shh. Save your energy, your grace.” It was the voice of a boy. The duke’s panic momentarily got overtaken by confusion. And then he matched the voice to that of the new colonel just promoted by the Fire Lord the day before, and the noble’s struggles renewed with terror-fuelled vigor.
Or he would, if not for the blade pressing against his throat again.
“You should know who I am, Duke Cho. If you do, then you should know why I’m here.”
The duke shook his head frantically, muffled sobs leaking out of the cloth stuffing his mouth. The Young Dragon ignored his incoherent pleas and kept talking.
“You should know that I treat the 11th as my family, and its men and women, my brothers and sisters. They took me in and raised me after all.”
Duke Cho froze in terror as the voice hardened. “And you should know that I am most offended by General Shiluo’s time ‘leading’ my family.” The shadowy figure leaned back, letting out a soft exhale. “I care not that he had me lashed. I care not that he carelessly sought glory…”
Then the shadowed form of Xing leaned in again, and a palpable sense of danger radiated from his obscured face. “I do, however, take offense that the inexperienced idiot belittled Colonel Lidai’s accomplishments. I take offense to his poor treatment of our respected prisoners. And I take the most offense for the farce he called a plan that resulted in the completely wasteful, utterly unnecessary deaths of my brothers and sisters.” The boy was snarling by the end of it, and the duke tried in vain to back away from the waves of rage directed at him.
“He’s dead now, yes. But the greater idiot that bought the idiot his commission in the first place?” The metal on his throat was lifted, only to have its sharpened tip tapping lightly between Duke Cho’s brow. “Imagine my offense, imagine my brothers’ and sisters’ offense, that Shiluo's idiocy was inflicted upon us simply because someone paid for his excellent grades in officer school, and subsequently sponsored his command of the 11th?
“Duke Cho, can you imagine how angry we are at the fool that almost wiped us out simply by buying his brother’s way into an undeserving post? And just to cheat their way into some renown, at that?”
The silhouette of Xing moved back and rose up, ignoring the duke’s muffled noises and desperately shaking head.
“Be thankful we are not so wasteful with lives, Cho. Your family will live, unharmed. Your mistresses and their children will live, unharmed.”
Other larger figures then filled the terrified duke’s vision, each with a glinting sliver of metal. “You, however, will not live, and will be harmed.”
The gag in Duke Cho’s mouth was very effective in muting his anguish throughout the night. They took turns stabbing him, reciting the names of the fallen each time a blade was buried in him. Medicinal poultices were pressed against his wounds to stop him from bleeding out. The shadows were careful to work their way from the least lethal areas in, severing fingers and toes knuckle by knuckle, just to make sure their victim would remain alive long enough that the venerated dead were all avenged.
Duke Cho almost lived to see the dawn; the men and women of the 11th had learned not to be wasteful with lives.
Sounds of alarm rang as the sun began to peek on the horizon. They found the barely identifiable remains of Duke Cho in the outhouse, his head and plenty of shredded gore filling the bucket.
Rumors quickly spread that the duke’s youngest brother had offended the spirits so much with his failure at Tai Plains that they took it out on his immediate family.
Xing and his officers were initially suspects, but concrete alibis knocked them out of the list almost immediately. Too many witnesses could attest to the Young Dragon bantering with his men and women. That the witnesses were all related in some degree to the soldiers of the 11th was overlooked, either by genuine accident or on purpose.
Princess Azula ensured the latter occurred if the former did not work. Not that anyone would know, of course.