Koshi was used to an eventful life as Xing’s bodyguard, but even he was surprised that the colonel had a visitor so early in the morning. The troops at the gate had said it was a rather angry young woman looking for a meeting with Xing, and Koshi racked his brain for any possible offense Xing might have caused right up until they reached the entrance. He didn’t recognize the restless girl, but her voice was definitely familiar.
“Excuse me, miss,” Xing began with the usual courtesy bow, “but what can I help you with?”
The girl huffed, her features stuck between a pout and a scowl. “Xing. I challenge you to a duel.”
Xing startled a bit in recognition, but admittedly it took a few more seconds for Koshi to realize that this was the Kyoshi Warrior they had met the day before and back on their island.
“A duel?” the colonel asked with naked confusion.
She gave a determined nod. “You bested me back then, but I want a rematch.”
Koshi saw his charge press a palm against his forehead as he muttered softly. “It’s too early for this…” Xing let out a heavy sigh before he addressed the Kyoshi Warrior again. “If this is a duel…what’s at stake?”
That gave the girl pause, and her mask of determination was instantly replaced with one of puzzlement. “Huh?”
Xing sighed again. “Suki, duels usually are held to settle something. Honor, claims, and so on.”
“W-Well, then consider this a matter of honor!”
“Fuck. Look, whatever I did to annoy you, can we settle it in a different way?”
The Kyoshi Warrior put her hands on her hips, glaring daggers at the colonel.
“Fuck,” Xing cursed again. “Can I just admit defeat now? I’ll let you sprea-”
“No.”
“There’s no way to get out of this?”
“No.”
Xing paused to glance at Koshi and the other soldiers, and everyone could only offer shrugs in return. This was the first time someone had so brazenly come up to the barracks like this.
“Fine,” he relented with a sigh. “But it’s a non-lethal duel. And since you’re not a bender, I’ll not use my fire against you. Yield or incapacitation to determine the loser.”
The girl looked even more affronted at that, but she folded her arms and nodded. “Fine.”
Xing led the Kyoshi Warrior Suki towards the nearest sparring ground, gathering a crowd as soldiers woke up to the unusual commotion.
“What’s going on?” Captain Ping asked, and a Han scratched his head trying to explain.
“Some girl came up to challenge the colonel to a duel.”
“The fuck did Xing do?” Weikong interjected, glancing at Koshi.
“Nothing,” the bodyguard answered honestly. “We ran into the Kyoshi Warriors yesterday at the market, but the interaction was minimal.”
“Kyoshi Warriors, huh?” Ping asked speculatively, staring at the girl taking her place in the sparring grounds. “Did he do something to her last time he went to their island?”
Koshi sifted through his memory for a moment before answering. “She was their leader… XIng defeated her.”
“Ah, personal honor then.”
The soldiers within earshot of Weikong nodded at the captain’s assessment, but Ping looked skeptical. “There might be more to it.”
Captain Sungho announced his arrival out of the shadows with a thoughtful hum. “Espionage perhaps?”
“It’s always espionage for you.”
The scout captain shrugged. “Doesn’t mean I’m wrong.”
Koshi looked at the two unarmed combatants sizing each other up, and tried to put the pieces together. That idea did have merit. It could be possible that this Suki came up to learn more about Xing, possibly to decipher his fighting style?
If that was the case, to what end? Was she looking to study him for a weakness to exploit? But he was not bending, so their information would be incomplete.
Was this an assassination attempt, then? Was the Kyoshi Warrior banking on a level playing field to take Xing out?
No, that was suicidal and futile. Even out of armor a normal firebender would hardly fall prey to an unarmed assassin, let alone Xing.
Still, Koshi kept his guard up, ready to dive into the field. A glance to his fellow bodyguards was all it took for them to get the message and prepare as well. Bofang and Kwan led some to surround the perimeter, while Yan moved to add another layer of interception between the sparring grounds and the gate, just in case.
The captains noticed the bodyguards’ movement, and threw quizzical looks at Koshi. “Expecting trouble?” Rufen asked warily.
“Not sure, but it’s possible.”
The duel began before he could say anything more. Suki charged in with a defiant roar, her arms out in a peculiar guard position that Koshi only saw in historical manuals. She had to quickly dodged aside though when Xing suddenly shot towards her with a roar.
“Genocide cutter!”
Koshi winced as the sweeping kicks lashed out, trailing smoke from the bursts of fire Xing used to pull off an otherwise impossible move. The flying kicks were slower than usual, and was clearly restrained in its strength. The bodyguard also remembered the first few times the boy had tried it, far back before he became colonel. Such was his firebending that Xing suffered dislocated legs and torn muscles from the initial attempts, but managed to eventually master the impractical move after constantly breaking Colonel Lidai’s order in against practicing it.
It apparently was worth it, because the first time Xing used it in combat, he broke his feet in exchange for literally tearing off the heads of two Earth Kingdom officers.
“You said you weren’t going to firebend!” the Kyoshi Warrior yelled out.
Xing flashed an annoying grin. “I said I wasn’t going to use my fire against you. Nothing about using my fires to help me move.”
Suki seemed like she wanted to grumble, but then she had to leap aside as the colonel launched himself forwards with an upwards hook. She tried to retaliate by sweeping her legs out to trip him, but Xing simply skipped back out of range.
The Kyoshi Warrior growled in growing frustration as she got back up and adopted a more defensive pose. Xing smirked, and then lunged at her with a fist leading the way. The girl didn’t take the bait, and dodged right out of the way, probably her honed warrior’s instincts warning her of the trap.
Those instincts let her put up an impressive fight, as she eventually adopted a pattern of anticipating Xing’s attacks and improvising a suitable retaliation. She managed to stay clear of him and land several glancing blows, but those were far from being able to slow Xing down. The colonel had fought on with grievous wounds on the battlefield, compared to that this duel was a sport to him, and everyone, an annoyed Suki included, knew it.
And compared to the spars with the princess, this was a much tamer affair. Koshi’s sense of looming danger wasn’t even tickled.
Eventually, after a few minutes of trading blows, the Kyoshi Warrior fell so much into her pattern that Xing exploited it. He rushed at her with a fists cocked back, and she skipped out of the way at the last second. Xing’s leg quickly shot up, landing his first hit on Suki and sending her stumbling backwards. Before she could fully recover, he lunged at her again, this time leading with an elbow.
Off balance, Suki raised her arms in front of her to block the attack. The force of it broke through her guard and knocked her back even more, and then Xing suddenly shot up with a burst of fire from his legs, and dove back down with a downwards kick that struck the Kyoshi Warrior on her shoulder with enough force to send her spinning as she fell.
Xing knelt beside her as she struggled to rise up, and the tone of his voice was admirably restrained rather than mocking. “This is the part where, if we were fighting for real, I either knock you out or accidentally break your neck. Yield?”
Suki coughed and shook her head sharply before she answered him with a dark glare. “F-Fine. You win.”
All of Koshi’s expectations about intrigue and assassination flew out the window when he saw the flash in the warrior’s eyes. He shared a look with his comrades, the captains especially noticing it as well. Ping wore an all-too-wide and stupid grin on her face, while Rufen was muttering something that was starting to annoy Sungho.
The colonel offered Suki a hand, and she stared at it for a second before taking it to get back up.
“Thank you for being understanding, and for the fight.”
The girl snorted, wearing her defeat poorly. “It wasn’t much of a fight for you.”
Koshi felt a sudden worry when Xing gave a warm and reassuring smile. “It’s the first time I got to use a bunch of those moves in the sparring field. You’ve no idea how hard it is to find people that I can spar with on that level.”
“Thanks…I guess.”
The bodyguard saw another telltale flash in the Kyoshi Warrior’s demeanor as she mulled his words, and he decided then that he’d better be the one to inform the princess, at least before Ping and her sense of drama does.
“So, I hope that the matter’s settled?’” Xing asked, and the girl gave a hum before she nodded reluctantly.
“Yeah…yeah, I guess so.”
“Care for a break? Breakfast should be ready in the mess hall now.”
Suki paused for a second before accepting the offer, and as the two combatants finally left the sparring grounds, the crowd dispersed.
“Han.” The nearest Han stopped trying to slink off and turned to the colonel at attention. “Please guide our guest to the mess hall for a meal. Captain Ping?”
“Yes, sir?” Ping drawled in reply as she reported to him.
Xing let out a heavy, weary sigh. “Please…please don’t make this a bigger deal than it is.”
“Sir?” The captain had the audacity to feign ignorance.
Xing gave her a half-hearted glare. “You’re going to write to Ren and Azula.”
“I am?”
“On second thought, Mozi.”
“Sir.”
“Report this to Azula. Keep to the facts, and use words to emphasize that Suki is just here to get her previous defeat out of her system. Harmless encounter. Orange ribbon priority.” Ping pouted at that, but Xing ignored her and headed back towards his room. “I’m going to see if I can get another hour of sleep. Wake me up if anything happens, Koshi.”
*****
Despite the earlier match, Suki found the soldiers around her rather…friendly. Friendlier than the town guards at least. Apparently, many were genuinely impressed at her showing, and some of the officers were gushing in their praise.
“You Kyoshi Warriors really are a different breed. It’s a good thing we don’t see much of your caliber in the Earth Kingdom armies,” a wiry captain said. “Would’ve caused hell for us.”
“But I lost?” Suki couldn’t help but reply over her half-eaten bowl of stew.
“Eh, you stalled him for long enough and barely got hit,” he answered with a wave of his hand. “On the battlefield, those seconds can mean extra spears or benders coming to help you. We were often badly outnumbered back then.”
But the Scorp- But Xing would be firebending in real combat, she thought .
As if sensing that, the captain snorted. “His firebending’s powerful, but his body couldn’t handle long uses. So he either destroys everything around him, or he fights a bit like how he did against you. Just…bloodier. And with firebending thrown in.” The soldiers around the captain were nodding at the information as if it was new to them, and Suki went back to her meal when the officer went on to answer someone’s question.
Suki had just finished her rather heavy breakfast when another officer, a woman with a bright smile, sat right next to her. “So, Kyoshi Warrior, huh?”
“Yes?”
“Your honor’s satisfied then?” Despite the wording, the question bore no hidden threat or malice. Instead, Suki sensed an undercurrent of…mischief?
She mulled through the question before settling for an answer. “For now. I know when I’m beaten.”
The woman’s smile turned from dazzling to warm and consoling. “Don’t worry about it. If it’s any consolation, I think you’d still wipe the floor against any of our non-benders here. And probably half of our firebenders even. It’s a struggle to reach Xing’s level.”
So she wasn’t as badly matched against Xing as she had thought? That was…not that bad to hear, admittedly.
“Now, if you got the time, maybe we can do an exchange?”
Suki frowned at the question. “What kind of exchange?” she asked back.
“If you can offer to teach us some of our moves, we might be able to teach you some of ours that might be useful to the renowned Kyoshi Warriors.”
Suki’s frown deepened. On the one hand, that wasn’t a bad deal, if the 11th fought like their colonel, there was value in learning from them. Xing’s moves definitely showed promise against benders of any sort.
But on the other hand, teaching them Kyoshi Warrior stances might be dangerous. Even if the fighting style was geared towards subduing criminals and bandits, and was mostly incompatible with actual combat, Suki didn’t like the notion of being in any way responsible for future Fire Nation atrocities.
The captain noticed her conflicted expression and grinned. “If you want, I might be able to convince our colonel to-”
Her words were interrupted when a commotion caught everyone’s attention. Outside the mess hall, Suki spied an officious robed figure walking hastily past, and judging from the way the officers around her got up to follow after, it must be some sort of important announcement. Taking that as her cue, Suki earnestly thanked the soldiers around her for their hospitality and left the barracks.
Her walk back to town was far from unpleasant, but it was concerning in a different way. Rather than wallow in defeat, Suki chose to take some heart in the praise of the soldiers at her skill. She was a good fighter by their standards, and they had revealed Xing’s weakness in his stamina. That meant that Suki now had something to plan around if they ever fought again.
And despite thinking of her defeats, both old and new, her neck no longer felt so…exposed.
Now, if only she could focus on recalling how Xing moved in his attacks, and not fixate on just how good he looked as he pulled those moves off…
Koshi was used to an eventful life as Xing’s bodyguard, but even he was surprised that the colonel had a visitor so early in the morning. The troops at the gate had said it was a rather angry young woman looking for a meeting with Xing, and Koshi racked his brain for any possible offense Xing might have caused right up until they reached the entrance. He didn’t recognize the restless girl, but her voice was definitely familiar.
“Excuse me, miss,” Xing began with the usual courtesy bow, “but what can I help you with?”
The girl huffed, her features stuck between a pout and a scowl. “Xing. I challenge you to a duel.”
Xing startled a bit in recognition, but admittedly it took a few more seconds for Koshi to realize that this was the Kyoshi Warrior they had met the day before and back on their island.
“A duel?” the colonel asked with naked confusion.
She gave a determined nod. “You bested me back then, but I want a rematch.”
Koshi saw his charge press a palm against his forehead as he muttered softly. “It’s too early for this…” Xing let out a heavy sigh before he addressed the Kyoshi Warrior again. “If this is a duel…what’s at stake?”
That gave the girl pause, and her mask of determination was instantly replaced with one of puzzlement. “Huh?”
Xing sighed again. “Suki, duels usually are held to settle something. Honor, claims, and so on.”
“W-Well, then consider this a matter of honor!”
“Fuck. Look, whatever I did to annoy you, can we settle it in a different way?”
The Kyoshi Warrior put her hands on her hips, glaring daggers at the colonel.
“Fuck,” Xing cursed again. “Can I just admit defeat now? I’ll let you sprea-”
“No.”
“There’s no way to get out of this?”
“No.”
Xing paused to glance at Koshi and the other soldiers, and everyone could only offer shrugs in return. This was the first time someone had so brazenly come up to the barracks like this.
“Fine,” he relented with a sigh. “But it’s a non-lethal duel. And since you’re not a bender, I’ll not use my fire against you. Yield or incapacitation to determine the loser.”
The girl looked even more affronted at that, but she folded her arms and nodded. “Fine.”
Xing led the Kyoshi Warrior Suki towards the nearest sparring ground, gathering a crowd as soldiers woke up to the unusual commotion.
“What’s going on?” Captain Ping asked, and a Han scratched his head trying to explain.
“Some girl came up to challenge the colonel to a duel.”
“The fuck did Xing do?” Weikong interjected, glancing at Koshi.
“Nothing,” the bodyguard answered honestly. “We ran into the Kyoshi Warriors yesterday at the market, but the interaction was minimal.”
“Kyoshi Warriors, huh?” Ping asked speculatively, staring at the girl taking her place in the sparring grounds. “Did he do something to her last time he went to their island?”
Koshi sifted through his memory for a moment before answering. “She was their leader… XIng defeated her.”
“Ah, personal honor then.”
The soldiers within earshot of Weikong nodded at the captain’s assessment, but Ping looked skeptical. “There might be more to it.”
Captain Sungho announced his arrival out of the shadows with a thoughtful hum. “Espionage perhaps?”
“It’s always espionage for you.”
The scout captain shrugged. “Doesn’t mean I’m wrong.”
Koshi looked at the two unarmed combatants sizing each other up, and tried to put the pieces together. That idea did have merit. It could be possible that this Suki came up to learn more about Xing, possibly to decipher his fighting style?
If that was the case, to what end? Was she looking to study him for a weakness to exploit? But he was not bending, so their information would be incomplete.
Was this an assassination attempt, then? Was the Kyoshi Warrior banking on a level playing field to take Xing out?
No, that was suicidal and futile. Even out of armor a normal firebender would hardly fall prey to an unarmed assassin, let alone Xing.
Still, Koshi kept his guard up, ready to dive into the field. A glance to his fellow bodyguards was all it took for them to get the message and prepare as well. Bofang and Kwan led some to surround the perimeter, while Yan moved to add another layer of interception between the sparring grounds and the gate, just in case.
The captains noticed the bodyguards’ movement, and threw quizzical looks at Koshi. “Expecting trouble?” Rufen asked warily.
“Not sure, but it’s possible.”
The duel began before he could say anything more. Suki charged in with a defiant roar, her arms out in a peculiar guard position that Koshi only saw in historical manuals. She had to quickly dodged aside though when Xing suddenly shot towards her with a roar.
“Genocide cutter!”
Koshi winced as the sweeping kicks lashed out, trailing smoke from the bursts of fire Xing used to pull off an otherwise impossible move. The flying kicks were slower than usual, and was clearly restrained in its strength. The bodyguard also remembered the first few times the boy had tried it, far back before he became colonel. Such was his firebending that Xing suffered dislocated legs and torn muscles from the initial attempts, but managed to eventually master the impractical move after constantly breaking Colonel Lidai’s order in against practicing it.
It apparently was worth it, because the first time Xing used it in combat, he broke his feet in exchange for literally tearing off the heads of two Earth Kingdom officers.
“You said you weren’t going to firebend!” the Kyoshi Warrior yelled out.
Xing flashed an annoying grin. “I said I wasn’t going to use my fire against you. Nothing about using my fires to help me move.”
Suki seemed like she wanted to grumble, but then she had to leap aside as the colonel launched himself forwards with an upwards hook. She tried to retaliate by sweeping her legs out to trip him, but Xing simply skipped back out of range.
The Kyoshi Warrior growled in growing frustration as she got back up and adopted a more defensive pose. Xing smirked, and then lunged at her with a fist leading the way. The girl didn’t take the bait, and dodged right out of the way, probably her honed warrior’s instincts warning her of the trap.
Those instincts let her put up an impressive fight, as she eventually adopted a pattern of anticipating Xing’s attacks and improvising a suitable retaliation. She managed to stay clear of him and land several glancing blows, but those were far from being able to slow Xing down. The colonel had fought on with grievous wounds on the battlefield, compared to that this duel was a sport to him, and everyone, an annoyed Suki included, knew it.
And compared to the spars with the princess, this was a much tamer affair. Koshi’s sense of looming danger wasn’t even tickled.
Eventually, after a few minutes of trading blows, the Kyoshi Warrior fell so much into her pattern that Xing exploited it. He rushed at her with a fists cocked back, and she skipped out of the way at the last second. Xing’s leg quickly shot up, landing his first hit on Suki and sending her stumbling backwards. Before she could fully recover, he lunged at her again, this time leading with an elbow.
Off balance, Suki raised her arms in front of her to block the attack. The force of it broke through her guard and knocked her back even more, and then Xing suddenly shot up with a burst of fire from his legs, and dove back down with a downwards kick that struck the Kyoshi Warrior on her shoulder with enough force to send her spinning as she fell.
Xing knelt beside her as she struggled to rise up, and the tone of his voice was admirably restrained rather than mocking. “This is the part where, if we were fighting for real, I either knock you out or accidentally break your neck. Yield?”
Suki coughed and shook her head sharply before she answered him with a dark glare. “F-Fine. You win.”
All of Koshi’s expectations about intrigue and assassination flew out the window when he saw the flash in the warrior’s eyes. He shared a look with his comrades, the captains especially noticing it as well. Ping wore an all-too-wide and stupid grin on her face, while Rufen was muttering something that was starting to annoy Sungho.
The colonel offered Suki a hand, and she stared at it for a second before taking it to get back up.
“Thank you for being understanding, and for the fight.”
The girl snorted, wearing her defeat poorly. “It wasn’t much of a fight for you.”
Koshi felt a sudden worry when Xing gave a warm and reassuring smile. “It’s the first time I got to use a bunch of those moves in the sparring field. You’ve no idea how hard it is to find people that I can spar with on that level.”
“Thanks…I guess.”
The bodyguard saw another telltale flash in the Kyoshi Warrior’s demeanor as she mulled his words, and he decided then that he’d better be the one to inform the princess, at least before Ping and her sense of drama does.
“So, I hope that the matter’s settled?’” Xing asked, and the girl gave a hum before she nodded reluctantly.
“Yeah…yeah, I guess so.”
“Care for a break? Breakfast should be ready in the mess hall now.”
Suki paused for a second before accepting the offer, and as the two combatants finally left the sparring grounds, the crowd dispersed.
“Han.” The nearest Han stopped trying to slink off and turned to the colonel at attention. “Please guide our guest to the mess hall for a meal. Captain Ping?”
“Yes, sir?” Ping drawled in reply as she reported to him.
Xing let out a heavy, weary sigh. “Please…please don’t make this a bigger deal than it is.”
“Sir?” The captain had the audacity to feign ignorance.
Xing gave her a half-hearted glare. “You’re going to write to Ren and Azula.”
“I am?”
“On second thought, Mozi.”
“Sir.”
“Report this to Azula. Keep to the facts, and use words to emphasize that Suki is just here to get her previous defeat out of her system. Harmless encounter. Orange ribbon priority.” Ping pouted at that, but Xing ignored her and headed back towards his room. “I’m going to see if I can get another hour of sleep. Wake me up if anything happens, Koshi.”
*****
Despite the earlier match, Suki found the soldiers around her rather…friendly. Friendlier than the town guards at least. Apparently, many were genuinely impressed at her showing, and some of the officers were gushing in their praise.
“You Kyoshi Warriors really are a different breed. It’s a good thing we don’t see much of your caliber in the Earth Kingdom armies,” a wiry captain said. “Would’ve caused hell for us.”
“But I lost?” Suki couldn’t help but reply over her half-eaten bowl of stew.
“Eh, you stalled him for long enough and barely got hit,” he answered with a wave of his hand. “On the battlefield, those seconds can mean extra spears or benders coming to help you. We were often badly outnumbered back then.”
But the Scorp- But Xing would be firebending in real combat, she thought .
As if sensing that, the captain snorted. “His firebending’s powerful, but his body couldn’t handle long uses. So he either destroys everything around him, or he fights a bit like how he did against you. Just…bloodier. And with firebending thrown in.” The soldiers around the captain were nodding at the information as if it was new to them, and Suki went back to her meal when the officer went on to answer someone’s question.
Suki had just finished her rather heavy breakfast when another officer, a woman with a bright smile, sat right next to her. “So, Kyoshi Warrior, huh?”
“Yes?”
“Your honor’s satisfied then?” Despite the wording, the question bore no hidden threat or malice. Instead, Suki sensed an undercurrent of…mischief?
She mulled through the question before settling for an answer. “For now. I know when I’m beaten.”
The woman’s smile turned from dazzling to warm and consoling. “Don’t worry about it. If it’s any consolation, I think you’d still wipe the floor against any of our non-benders here. And probably half of our firebenders even. It’s a struggle to reach Xing’s level.”
So she wasn’t as badly matched against Xing as she had thought? That was…not that bad to hear, admittedly.
“Now, if you got the time, maybe we can do an exchange?”
Suki frowned at the question. “What kind of exchange?” she asked back.
“If you can offer to teach us some of our moves, we might be able to teach you some of ours that might be useful to the renowned Kyoshi Warriors.”
Suki’s frown deepened. On the one hand, that wasn’t a bad deal, if the 11th fought like their colonel, there was value in learning from them. Xing’s moves definitely showed promise against benders of any sort.
But on the other hand, teaching them Kyoshi Warrior stances might be dangerous. Even if the fighting style was geared towards subduing criminals and bandits, and was mostly incompatible with actual combat, Suki didn’t like the notion of being in any way responsible for future Fire Nation atrocities.
The captain noticed her conflicted expression and grinned. “If you want, I might be able to convince our colonel to-”
Her words were interrupted when a commotion caught everyone’s attention. Outside the mess hall, Suki spied an officious robed figure walking hastily past, and judging from the way the officers around her got up to follow after, it must be some sort of important announcement. Taking that as her cue, Suki earnestly thanked the soldiers around her for their hospitality and left the barracks.
Her walk back to town was far from unpleasant, but it was concerning in a different way. Rather than wallow in defeat, Suki chose to take some heart in the praise of the soldiers at her skill. She was a good fighter by their standards, and they had revealed Xing’s weakness in his stamina. That meant that Suki now had something to plan around if they ever fought again.
And despite thinking of her defeats, both old and new, her neck no longer felt so…exposed.
Now, if only she could focus on recalling how Xing moved in his attacks, and not fixate on just how good he looked as he pulled those moves off…
