"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.