Fanfic / Operation Eclipse

Operation Eclipse (also on Archive of Our Own) is an ongoing Avatar: The Last Airbender Fan Fic by rodsantos.

A mysterious visitor arrives at Kyoshi Island in the winter of the Avatar's return, coming to forge an alliance. He is U.S. Army officer Harry Bedford, representing the Allied Expeditionary Unit, a makeshift force of Second World War veterans stranded in an alien land.

Their only way home is a return to battle. They must find a way to defeat the Fire Nation, end a brutal hundred-year conflict, and bring peace to a war-torn world.

This Work Contains Examples Of:

• After-Action Report: Bedford is shown typing one out, summarizing the Battle of Kyoshi Island for the benefit of those back at headquarters.
• Amazon Brigade: The Kyoshi Warriors, as in the original show. The AEU originally tries to recruit them as scouts for the planned invasion of the continental Earth Kingdom, but when that plan falls through, they're used as a training pool for Bedford's plan to assassinate the Fire Nation royal family.
• Ambiguous Situation: Bedford tells a story to Team Avatar about being ordered to capture a heavily defended German town, in which he was forced to choose between launching a direct assault and taking heavy casualties, or softening up the town up with an artillery barrage and risking civilian lives. Aang is aghast to learn that he chose the latter option, but Sokka is suspicious and demands to know how much truth there is in the tale.
  Bedford: Enough to get my point across.^note The point being that no matter how much you agonize over it, some problems, such as Aang's lack of earthbending ability, only have one ugly solution.
• Ammunition Conservation: Although plentiful, the AEU's stockpiled ammunition and fuel isn't infinite. Without the ability to resupply, the only viable plan with Sozin's Comet on the horizon is to gamble on their ability to knock the Fire Nation out of the war with a single, carefully-prepared blow.
• Anti-Cavalry: Unfortunately for Zhang Min and his men, cavalry charges and machine guns don't tend to mix.
• Assumed Win: The Fire Nation landing force at Kyoshi Island is confident of a swift victory over the lightly-armed locals. They end up being almost totally annihilated, with only thirty-two men left over to be taken prisoner from the three hundred-strong force.
• BFG: A Real Life example in Bedford's service weapon, the four-foot, twenty-pound Browning Automatic Rifle.
• Big Bad Wannabe: Lieutenant Commander Zhang Min, a Fire Navy officer with ambitions of becoming a great conqueror. He tries to begin with Kyoshi Island, but has the misfortune of arriving only a few hours after the AEU's diplomatic mission does. Zhang is unceremoniously dispatched ten seconds into the ensuing fight, and his troops are subsequently torn a new one by the combined AEU/Kyoshi Warrior force.
• Boom, Headshot!: Carwell takes out Zhang Min with a well-aimed sniper bullet to the head.
• Christmas Episode: Chapter 16. The garrison at Kyoshi Island enjoys a Christmas party with the locals, while German and American infantrymen sing carols together while dug in around the Laghima Island airfield.
• Cleanup Crew: Ralston's engineers are tasked with fixing the mess caused by the battle for Kyoshi Island. They plow through the manmade landslide with bulldozers to reopen the pass through the valley, dismantle the burnt-out wreckage of the sunken FN troopships, and even dig a mass grave to bury the three hundred or so recovered corpses.
• Demoted to Extra: The series' main cast don't even appear until Chapter 17.
• Dice Roll Death: Patryk's death in the convoy raid. A rocket fired by his wingman strays off target and strikes the next ship in the line, penetrating its cargo hold full of blasting jelly. The ensuing secondary blows Patryk's aircraft straight out of the sky.
• Drama-Preserving Handicap:
  • The AEU has only three thousand personnel and no means of resupply. While they have plenty of ammunition, they don't have enough to simply bomb and shoot the Fire Nation into submission.
  • USS Langley is subject to this during the fic's first battle. When ordered to sink the Fire Nation invasion force, they find that their engines have stalled due to damage from the unagi attack, leaving Bedford and co to deal with the enemy troops themselves.
• Elites Are More Glamorous: Much of the story revolves around 82nd Airborne officer Harry Bedford and his battalion of paratroopers, while Deuteragonist Peter Carwell is a US Army Ranger.
  • Averted, though, with the rest of the AEU. The German contingent is made up of standard (though experienced) ex-Wehrmacht infantrymen, the British are split between reservists, military policemen, and RAF personnel, while the only other Americans are Navy crewmen.
• The Engineer: The AEU have a whole company of them, though none have actually seen combat before.
• Everybody Smokes: It is the 1940s, after all. Carwell and Ryan in particular are shown to be heavy smokers. Bedford is a notable exception, though, having given up the habit early in the war in order to keep up with his younger subordinates.
• Extremely Short Timespan: The first nine chapters take place over a period of about ten hours, with Chapter 1 beginning at precisely 8:37am and Chapter 9 ending at dinnertime.
• Fish out of Temporal Water: The AEU personnel, who are trapped in a world of benders, strange hybridized creatures, and steam-era technology.
• General Failure: Subverted with Zhang Min. While his attack on Kyoshi Island eventually ends in miserable failure, he does actually employ a reasonable strategy based on the information at hand. He accurately anticipates the warriors' threat. deploying his fast-moving cavalry to overwhelm any prospective defensive line, with solid infantry ranks following close behind to sweep aside any remaining resistance and a force kept in reserve for contingencies. Unfortunately for him, he runs straight into a force equipped with modern firearms.
• It's Raining Men: Much of the story focuses on Bedford and his battalion of paratroopers.
• Lost Roman Legion: Rome's XVII Legion, believed to have been annihilated during the Battle of Teutoburg Forest in 9 AD, were actually the first documented victims of the break of the barriers between the worlds. One thousand, three hundred thirty-six years before the beginning of this story, they appeared on Laghima Island. By quelling the civil unrest in the Earth Kingdom under Avatar Li Han, they managed to earn their passage home.
• Mercy Kill: During the last stages of the engagement at Kyoshi Island, Ralston shoots an FN soldier in the leg, severing his femoral artery. With no other humane option available, Carwell puts the mortally wounded man out of his misery with a bullet to the chest.
• Mook Horror Show: At Kyoshi Island, we get the perspectives of an unnamed company commander (picked off by Carwell after witnessing Zhang Min's head explode out of the blue), a firebender sergeant (pinned down on the beach and killed by Ryan's men during the final sweep of the battlefield), and a navy ensign (who runs to get help from the landing ships and is presumably killed by the RAF air strike).
• No Kill like Overkill: USS Langley absolutely shreds the unagi in Chapter 2, using no fewer than ten anti-aircraft cannons against it. They manage to hammer the giant eel so hard that it disintegrates into Ludicrous Gibs.
• Reckless Gun Usage: Happens a couple times with the warriors, first in Chapter 3 when Suki and Akiko mess around with Bedford's weapon, then again in Chapter 13 when Rena accidentally points a rifle in Carwell's direction during the first day of training. Their weapons handling does improve over time, though.
• Series Goal: Get home by defeating the Fire Nation and restoring balance to the world.
• Shout-Out: The ending of Chapter 16, with the Germans singing "Silent Night" while dug in on the airfield perimeter.
• "Shut Up!" Gunshot: During the freak storm at Norden, Bedford fires off a burst from his automatic rifle into the air to get the attention of the panicked soldiers fleeing the tornado.
• Time Skip: The fic jumps ahead from Christmas Day 1945 to February 1946 in between Chapters 16 and 17, to signal the end of the first act.
• To Win Without Fighting: The titular operation's ultimate goal. With Sozin's Comet on the horizon, fighting a more methodical campaign is off the table for the AEU. Instead, they plan to hit the Fire Nation with one overwhelming strike, designed to smash their warfighting capability by crippling their leadership and capturing their capital.
• Wham Episode: Chapter 24. In a bid to save Ba Sing Se from imminent attack, the AEU launch an air strike at the convoy bearing the Drill. The fighters sink two of the three cargo ships carrying the device, but the AEU sustain their first fatality when the mission leader is met with a freak accident. The crashed aircraft is then discovered by War Minister Qin.
• Winter Warfare: Very briefly, at Kyoshi Island. Both sides are well equipped for fighting in the snow, though, and the conditions quickly develop into a secondary concern for the Fire Nation troops.
  • The Battle of the Bulge is a Truth in Television example, as mentioned in passing by Bedford and Ryan. Both consider it to be their greatest hardship, and in Bedford's case, it's the closest he ever came to death, having been wounded by two bullets to the chest while leading his battalion in a counterattack.