The resistance and Team Avatar arrive in my canyon close to midday. They find me severely hungover. And wondering why there's a toddler crawling after them.
It waves at me. I raise a hand and curl and uncurl my fingers from where I'm propped against a rock. It decides to come over. That is in itself strange. Why hasn't the child been picked up? Who is this? It's dressed well and well-fed.
I end up entertaining the child with a bit of bending throughout the entire time they set up camp. Katara looks at me funny, Aang gives me a soft smile and Sokka looks like he wants to say something, but refrains because we're not alone. I even end up finding a niche to change his diaper in and bend him clean. He likes playing with tendrils of water.
But since he is easily distracted, I have time to cure my headache and look at the people setting up camp. They're ragged. Nobody wears clothing that isn't ripped or mended somewhere. No one is well-fed. Everyone looks grim, tired and too thin.
Not all of them know how to set up camp. I decide to help out a little with setting up drinking water for everyone. With a bender's help, in the middle of camp, there is now a trough with fresh water from which everyone can drink. The child falls asleep on my shoulder. It must have been exhausting crawling all the way from the city.
I also ask the bender if he thinks they'll stay here for longer. He shrugs. "It's been decided that we can't live underground any more. But I don't know if we're staying. All of us want our homes back. But living under Fire Nation rule is not a home."
"Then, just in case, let's set up a well," I suggest. "I'll show you where the water flows underground."
"Thanks."
He makes quick work of it, but looks exhausted afterwards. "Come on, let's get you something to eat."
He follows me to where Aang, Katara, Sokka and a middle-aged man are cooking up a soup above a fire. "So," I greet, "Does anyone want to tell me why the resistance of Omashu is now outside of it? And, who are this child's parents?"
"Er… so, we had to be really sneaky inside the city, but we were almost caught!" Aang says, but it's not in the tone that he should be using. He's cheerful. I put the child in his arms, since he's still sleeping and I'm kind of bored with him already.
"Yes. Some of my men found these guys when the Fire Nation patrol were just about to arrest them for suspicious behaviour," the middle-aged man says. So he's a leader of some kind. "We followed them out here because… the resistance is running out of resources. They've arrested some of our family members and those of the workers who were helping us. They've put our children into orphanages to be re-educated!"
"I see. So have you formulated some kind of plan?" I ask and there is only silence. "What about our original objective? Finding King Bumi?"
"He let himself be arrested, so that the rest of us would go free," the man says and his tone is one of frustration.
"Do you think it was the right choice?"
His silence is unhappy. Perhaps not, then. Or perhaps it was at the time and he thinks in the long-term that it wasn't.
"Do you know where the prisons are?"
Sokka's head shoots around in my direction. Katara stirs the soup more violently. Aang's eyes begin to shine with hope. It's that last bit that makes me want to be very careful about all of this and what is said.
"Yes, but they're all metal. We can't free our people and we can't free our King. The only thing we've been able to do is survive and hide. We were making right nuisances of ourselves for the Fire Nation, so I'm not surprised they let that little disease-ploy slip into an exodus of all those wanting out. We couldn't even get everyone to pack their things really, or we might have been too slow and stopped. And you can't let all the innocent civilians get arrested. But they can't live like they have to with the reparations so high. They're all going to starve to death at this rate. Like we weren't just defending ourselves. Fire Nation bastards."
His frustration and anger and helplessness are palpable. It's contagious. I let that settle in a bit. It's best if we all understand exactly where we stand.
There is more silence before I speak up again. I draw circles for each sentence into the dirt. "So, what do we want to do? We want to free everyone who's been imprisoned. We want the Fire Nation out of Omashu. We want the food to do that and we want the weapons to do that. We want the organisation and coordination of all those willing to participate. We want to make sure there's nobody who knows everything about the other participants in the case of capture and interrogation."
"You know where the prisons are. There will be keys for the cells and there will be guards. They need to be targeted and there needs to be an escape route for everyone to where they can arm themselves and eat and drink something," I add two overlapping circles to the first one.
"Fire Nation soldiers are all over the city. We will have to locate them, disarm them and bring them outside all at the same time. You could kill them, but I think that if you do, the reaction will be to burn Omashu to the ground from the outside or just starve the city entirely," I add two more circles to the second, "Which brings me to my next point. Omashu is defensible enough, but King Bumi gave himself up to save you because you had no more food, is that correct?"
The resistance leader nods, looking like he's heard all of this before. He probably has.
"So before all else, you will have to secure resources. The war won't end, even if we succeed in our first two objectives. This takes priority. My suggestion is tunnelling to the settlements that are still Earthkingdom for now. Pay them with promises of protection and sanctuary in Omashu. Develop plans for keeping those settlements safe. Also develop plans for retaking those places that the Fire Nation has already occupied. You can't resist without the resources and the Fire Nation is very good at bleeding villages dry. Reach out to Omashu's nearest allies."
His mouth takes on a thoughtful slant.
"Weapons. The Fire Nation has quite a lot of those, don't you think? If you know where the prisoners are, do you know where they've put their armoury? Both the attack on the prisons as well as the armoury have to happen at the same time."
"And this reminds me," I draw another, new circle. "The Fire Nation leaders. It will be harder to defend against us, if they have no way of coordinating. We need to not only free prisoners and weapons, we also need to cut off their channels of communication and the chain of command needs to be fractured, if not destroyed completely.
Soldiers who don't know what's going on tend to be disoriented, afraid and a little volatile. The population has to be forewarned to be vigilant. How to do that without warning the Fire Nation? Spread more news of the disease."
I let it all settle in. Then I make squares in the dirt for each question. "How many men do you have? Who is injured and could go to secure the food? Who is good at stealth and who knows where the prisons are located? Do you have the numbers of Fire Nation patrols and guards? Do you know where they keep their birds?"
We get to work.
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Don't forget to throw some power stones :)
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