Chapter 78

There were only a few things that made Tanya absolutely livid.

She was, she insisted, a creature of logic at heart, and liked to think of herself as above the petty emotional reactions most people allowed themselves to be ruled by.

The wastrels she'd been responsible for firing back in her first life had often ranted and raved about the unfairness of it all, yet she'd never so much as raised her voice in retaliation. None of them had been worth her time. It took something special to get her worked up by emotions, and the list of things that could do that was small indeed.

Being X occupied the top of the list. The self-proclaimed god was the antithesis of everything she valued: freedom, capitalism, and logic.

Trailing close behind him was that sanctimonious, hypocritical harlot Mary; not only because of her slavish devotion to Being X, but because of the amount of comrades she had killed in her personal vendetta against her.

Third place however did not belong to an entity at all, but rather a feeling. Tanya considered herself to be an intelligent person; more so than the average person in fact. She would never claim to be the next Albert Einstein, but it was rare for her to encounter a problem that she didn't feel she possessed the intelligence to solve.

Yet perhaps it was because it happened so rarely, but the feeling that someone was outsmarting her set a fire underneath her like little else could. Being thwarted by bullshit divine intervention or brute force was one thing, but the suspicion that someone was smart enough to anticipate her actions and lead her around by the nose with nothing but good old fashioned intelligence was absolutely infuriating!

That was why, when she led a detachment of the finest soldiers in the Omashu garrison down the excavated tunnel, fully prepared to purge the rebels once and for all, only to find that the rebel headquarters had been evacuated no less than an hour ago, she saw red. Violent, bloody red. In hindsight screaming "BACK TO THE PALACE, NOW!"

And then rocketing off back through the tunnel and high into the sky had not been a stellar example of leadership, and she was sure she would look back on this moment with shame later, but right now she was too bloody furious to care! Never before in this life, or either of her previous lives, had she felt like this before: like someone was making a fool of her!

Someone was playing her like a cheap violin! Someone had convinced her that there was a plague as ridiculously named as the Pentapox, all to draw her attention to a tunnel leading to their own headquarters, knowing that they could sacrifice it to draw her and her best soldiers away from the palace!

They had plans hidden within plans, a great web of masterful misdirection that could have fooled even the finest strategic minds! And she'd been baited! Lured into a trap like a fish on a hook! Now the rebels may well be about to capture the strategic heart of the city under her watch!

Was it Bumi! Was the crazy king so utterly brilliant that he'd been able to foresee her every move before he was even captured? Or was he somehow able to communicate with his rebels even while held in the most secure cell in Omashu? It boggled the mind, but Tanya did not know of anyone else who could be behind this. Had she met her match in a hundred year old madman? Or was some unknown puppeteer pulling the strings behind the scenes?

The cold night air whipped past her face as she soared in a beeline straight to the palace, mind already whirring away to figure out the optimum plan of attack.

Ideally the soldiers stationed at the palace would focus on holding the rebels back and waiting for the elite troops she'd taken to come back and reinforce them; trapping the rebels between two sides. With that in mind, the best thing she could do was clear away any obstructions the rebels had left in their path so that nothing would delay the reinforcements.

But wait, her strategic nemesis had already proven adept at guessing her moves! What if that was exactly what they wanted her to do, and she was flying headfirst into yet another trap?

If that was the case her best bet was to do the opposite of what she'd been planning to do, unless of course her nemesis knew that she would do the opposite of what she'd normally do and that would be playing into their hands and-…

Tanya gave herself a hard slap around the face to silence her spiralling thoughts. What was she doing making rookie mistakes like this? Nothing killed a strategist's effectiveness like self-doubt; if you assumed that your opponent had foreseen every move you made, you'd end up destroying yourself for them.

In a situation like this, where the threat of a hidden trap loomed over you, the best option was to keep your strategy simple, straightforward and flexible enough to change on the fly.

And what could be simpler than a head-on attack?

The palace was rapidly approaching, and so Tanya flipped in a front roll so that she was falling towards it feet first, strategically slowing her descent enough to stop herself from breaking her legs. Deciding to be dramatic, as she landed she slammed one fist onto the ground, letting the fire from her hands and feet wash away in a wave of flames all around her. Nobody was watching, but it made her feel damn cool.

As she stood up from her landing pose, Tanya wasn't surprised to see that the portcullis had been lowered to block the front gate. An irritating obstacle, but not an insurmountable one. She walked towards it and ran the palm of her hand across the thick bands of metal, measuring the width of empty square spaces between them.

There were few defences as effective in their simplicity as a portcullis, yet there was one little design flaw that few people besides herself were capable of exploiting.

Unfastening the buckles of her armour, Tanya let the thin metal plates slide off of her and clatter to the floor one by one, until she stood in just the plain fire-red under robe beneath the armour. Then she placed both hands against a pair of metal bars, tilted her head forwards, and began to squeeze herself through the gap.

Portcullis' were designed to allow archers to easily fire through them at invaders trying to storm a castle, and because of that the holes between the bars were big enough for a grown man to just about fit both arms through.

The gap wasn't big enough for any adult to slip through; unless of course, by some unwanted miracle of divine intervention, that adult happened to have the body of a girl in her early teens who was short even for her age group.

As humiliating as it was having to flop around and grunt like a greased pig trying to fit through a catflap, Tanya was eventually able to pull herself through the metal grate and drop down onto the floor of the palace interior.

"At least none of my men saw that." She muttered to herself and she picked herself up again, brushed the dirt off her robes, and resumed walking forwards.

The foyer of the palace was empty, but the mud and dust trampled across the floor and the sounds of raised voices echoing from out of the hallways made it clear that the rebels were nearby. Nobody had stayed behind to keep watch on the entrance; all they'd done was stack a few wooden barrels up against the corners of the room and leave.

That seemed a little odd to Tanya. Surely they realised that even a closed portcullis would only delay her reinforcements for so long? It would only take one lucky soldier to find their way to the winch that opened it and her elite rooms would be able to rush in unchallenged. It was idiocy to not even leave a single guard-…

The faint rustle of clothes from above her, so soft she almost missed them, caught Tanya's ear, and instincts honed by decades of war blazed to life.

She threw herself to the side just in the nick of time to avoid the hail of dagger-sharp icicles that would have crashed down on her head, skidding across the polished stone floor to safety. Tanya slipped her hands beneath herself and vaulted upwards, flipping in the air like an acrobat, and as her feet touched the ground she dropped smoothly into a crouched fighting stance.

Her attacker meanwhile descended down from the ceiling in a spiralling spout of water like a spider, melting the fractured ice as her feet touched it and bending it around herself like a shawl as she settled into a graceful stance of her own. The air hung heavy between them as the two girls stared at each other in hateful silence, waiting to see if the other was about to attack.

"Well well, look who it is. The Avatar's cheerleader." Tanya taunted as the seconds passed and the waterbender made no move to initiate the fight.

"Better than The Firelord's little lapdog." The waterbender shot back.

...

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