I make my way down to the train station. Gorou will spot me and lead me to a secure location to talk before we go to Dionu.
And true to this pattern, he finds me. He's more than on edge. He's positively anxious, if I'm reading the shifty eyes, the clenching fists and the set shoulders right. He keeps his feet loose and easily set in case of an attack.
In between one house and the next, he tugs me into a shadow.
"Dionu got news from Tananga," he says, low and serious, "The Fire Nation is sending some kind of huge, long, metal contraption directly at Ba Sing Se. It just tears through forests and even hills. It just drills through them, if they're large enough. No one has tried to stop it yet, but it's clear where it's headed."
Oh. I'd forgotten about that.
A drill headed for the walls of Ba Sing Se.
"Dionu has more exact information?" I ask.
Gorou doesn't bother answering, just leads the way towards Dionu's Ba Sing Se headquarters.
We need to know where exactly it will hit. We need to tip off some of the City Guard. And we need to put together a team to get outside city walls in order to observe and perhaps even intervene, if an opportunity presents itself.
Dionu's face is grim as he meets us outside the bakery. He leads us inside wordlessly. Beyond the smell of the bread, the clouds of flour, he leads us through the small office into the secret brewery and betting office. And beyond that, into the office where he does his own business. A woman is already inside, his second in command here. Her arms are crossed as she looks at us, unhappy with our involvement, as always.
"Yranna," I greet, not expecting her nod in return. Seems like she's warming up to me.
Dionu doesn't bother with the civilities. He points at the map of Ba Sing Se on his wall, that is riddled with small markers of territory. "The drill will hit the wall here. That's more Pah-territory than ours, but close enough. Arrival should be around mid-morning tomorrow. Yranna's already tipped off the city guard, made it seem like an official courier's message from the Mashiro noble family, since it's their lands it's cutting across now. I've also put together a team that can get you and a few others out and stay hidden. We're gathering supplies and putting together some explosion kits now."
Ah. Dionu is so competent it makes my knees weak sometimes. With Yranna, they make the most efficient leaders of a gang I've met so far.
"Lovely. Gorou?"
"Fon and I are coming," he says. "He's on his way."
"Good. Dionu, do you have someone who can tell Haruto that he's going to have to get the yoghurt instead of me?"
He grunts, opens his office door and hollers, "Jeon! Go tell Haruto at the Watertribe Stall that he's going to buy yoghurt tonight! And Kaito, Gorou, Fon, Ebisu and I aren't coming to dinner!"
"Yessir!" Jeon hurries out.
"Itaka! How long till you have the kits ready?"
"Half an hour, Sir!"
"Good! I'm also coming," he says, once he's slammed the door back closed.
"Dionu," Yranna begins, but she stops herself at his glare.
He runs a stressed hand over his head. "I'm no good waiting around, so I'm going. You don't need me here anyway."
She frowns.
He turns to look at me. "Do you have some ideas?"
My brows rise. "You seem to have plenty," I say, but I sit down at one of the chairs, take a small chalkboard and begin to sketch. They wait with varying degrees of patience.
"The drill, if it's to get through the wall, needs to have some means of disposing of the rubble it creates by drilling. So there have to be openings. My guess is that they're here," I point at the drawing of a long tube, marking the places by erasing the chalk there.
"It's going to be powered somehow," I continue, "Either a motor engine or, more likely a steam engine. They haven't had time to locate enough oil reserves yet to transport enough of it to refuel all the way to Ba Sing Se. Coal is easily made if they have competent firebenders. And if it's steam, I can do a lot of damage. I just need to get to the engine rooms. And if we're there anyway, we can find the best places for those explosives your people are rigging together."
"There'll be a command centre and an army inside," Yranna says. "What about if they notice that you're infiltrating?"
"Well. That's what Gorou's for," I say, pointing at him with my chalk. We've sparred in between, and both improved our aim with our bending. Those disks of his are a mean piece of work. We've managed to hone them into having sharp edges. He could easily cut off someone's head with them now. And we tested armour's endurance against them. If he manages to spin them quickly enough, he slices through.
"And me," Dionu says. He's been training with us. He doesn't have tattoos like Gorou, but he's a mean piece of work as a bender. He also has some good aim with similar disks, but he carries them in pouches in his belt.
Yranna scowls, but nods. "I'm coming with you."
Dionu looks ready to protest, but I cut in. They can fight for hours when they get started. "So do you have anyone who can make suggestions for the defensive strategy the wall border can employ?"
He frowns. Yranna answers. "Yes."
"I was thinking, since it's a tube, its surface is going to be hard to penetrate. What would work best would be a concerted effort to set the drill off of its intended trajectory. Turn the front away from the wall. It would buy time, if nothing else. They'd also have to defend against Fire Nation troops. Tanks and rhinos and benders, I imagine. I'm not up to date with Fire Nation Army troops."
"I'll pass it on. Anything else?"
"It's not going to be a single piece of metal. It'll be divided into sections. We might be able to blast it apart at the seams. It will also have to have something like, ah, feet that dig into the ground, so that the drill, when it encounters resistance can push through. If possible, they should be damaged or destroyed entirely."
She nods in a do-go-on fashion.
"My guess is that they have some way of repairing, relatively quickly if it comes to it. So if something happens, like the City Guards failing, then we need to make sure this thing stays broken. How much power is in those explosives?"
"Enough to blast a war tank to pieces."
Oh shit.
"Ah. How many are we taking?"
"Five."
"Okay. How do they work? Do they have fuses?"
"Yes."
"Hm. We should split into three groups as soon as we find the openings. Which are probably on the underside, now that I think of it. Two on either end, with explosives, and one in the middle where I'm guessing they put the command centre. If I remember correctly, they have means of transferring commands through the metal pipes, so they can be heard from all over the drill. We should bring cloth balls to muffle them, if we can. That was really hard to circumvent during the invasion if we wanted to sink a ship. They can communicate a leak very quickly and rescue themselves."
Dionu yanks the door back open. "Make fifty cloth balls the size of your fists! We have enough scraps. If you need more, get tear apart sacks of flour and fill it into some of the empty barrels!"
"Yessir!"
So efficient.
"What do you typically do when a firebender extinguishes the spark that travels along the fuse of the explosives?"
"Kill them and try again," Yranna says.
Right.
"What about archers? Do you have good archers?"
Dionu yanks the door open. "Get me Thera and her sister! I don't care if she's drunk!" he closes it again. "They're good with the crossbows," he explains. They have crossbows. Yakuza are crazy.
"Even better," I say and go back to my drawing. I will never be an artist.
"So that team you put together. Who's on it?" Gorou asks, seeing as I'm back to my own thoughts.