Tian Mi Shi Liu
Chapter One: It's My Party
The antique locust wood tables held the finest dumplings and sweetmeats available in the Earth Kingdom. The most talented musicians played exquisite melodies under the steady murmur of the guests, while paper lanterns in beautiful colors swayed in the warm, gentle spring breeze.
Toph had never been so bored in her entire life.
All right, that was a bit of an exaggeration. She had been at least this bored before Aang found her and showed her the way out of her parents' pampered prison. But it had been years since she had felt that way and she wasn't remotely nostalgic for it.
She couldn't see the lanterns anyway.
And she didn't really feel like mingling now that Aang and Katara had taken their leave, saying something about a spirit emergency out west somewhere. She had hoped they could stay at least a couple of days this time. Or that they might even take her along to help. No such luck. She guessed maybe they didn't want a third person crowding them right now.
Footsteps approached her hiding place. The door of the wardrobe creaked open and Teo's familiar scent wafted in. "Hiding again?" he asked. "The guests want to offer their congratulations and a toast."
"They've already toasted me about ten times. Now it's just an excuse to get even more drunk on my father's best plum brandy. They don't need me for that."
Teo sighed. "How about a walk in the garden then? Just you and me."
"Aren't you supposed to be setting off the fireworks?"
"I did all the set up work already – The Duke can handle the ignition." Teo took her hand and began to tug gently on it.
Toph grumbled at him, but levered herself out of the cabinet. It had been getting stuffy in there anyway. She listened carefully to Teo's heartbeat and breathing for a moment to be sure he wasn't overdoing it. Katara had become as skilled a healer as she was a fighter, but the life-long damage to Teo's back and legs was proving a challenge even to her talents. Still, Teo could walk now, after a fashion. His steps were slow and halting, and he had to rest far more often than he liked, and on bad days he still needed his chair – but he could walk. Teo had proclaimed this method of locomotion "not nearly as good as flying" but he was clearly delighted with his progress in what he sometimes called "leg bending".
Toph headed for a back entrance to the mansion, but was unable to avoid a small knot of guests hanging out by the door. They clustered around the two young people, laughing and waving glasses in the air. One of them bumped Teo and he swayed dangerously. Toph steadied him, then threw courtesy to the wind and shoved the guests out of the way. The one who had bumped Teo got an elbow in the stomach as a special gift; he made a startled gagging sound and sat down hard. And then they were out into the relatively free air of the back yard. There were guests here too, but fewer in number and in much smaller groups – two being the popular number. It would take the gardeners a week to clean up the mess being made of the solanga bushes, Toph was certain.
She sensed a couple of overly-dutiful guests headed their way for, no doubt, congratulations and a toast. She summoned an earth sled and scooted herself and Teo into the far back of the garden, where she knew there would be no lanterns, and thus no guests. Well, perhaps a few guests looking for some real privacy, but she trusted they'd be too busy with their own concerns to bother her and Teo.
"Not quite what I meant by a walk," Teo said, snickering.
"Too slow!" Toph snapped, then regretted it. "Ugh, Teo, I didn't mean it like –"
"Sh, sh, I know you didn't." He kissed her lightly, stopping her embarrassed protests.
Later, Toph would kick herself for letting down her guard, but honestly, was it fair for a girl on her sixteenth birthday, busy getting some snuggle time with her boyfriend, to get jumped by ninjas?
There were two of them. One glided carefully over the ground, while the other was a bit of a stomper. Unfortunately the stomper's footfalls pretty much masked the steps of the quieter one, so it took her a moment too long to realize there were two of them.
The stomper charged past her and shoulder-blocked Teo to the ground. He grunted painfully as the air was driven out of him. She aimed an earthspike at his attacker, but the second one pulled a blade with a whisper of steel and said, "Please do not resist, Lady Bei Fong, and neither you nor your companion will be harmed." His voice stopped Toph cold.
Teo, busy struggling on the ground, didn't hear this. He pulled a short metal rod out of his belt and swung it with great accuracy at his attacker's head. The rod was of his own design, with a core of liquid silver that moved as the rod was swung, adding additional force to the blow. It connected with a solid CRACK! and the stomper ninja dropped like a stone.
The first ninja yelped, "Sokka!", at which point Toph swept his feet out from under him with earthbending and deposited him neck-deep in the dirt, where he would be unable even to squirm, let alone firebend. The young Fire Lord would simply have to stay put until Toph decided what to do with him.
Sokka sat up, groaning. She heard him pulling his black mask away. "Stinking fish guts, Teo! That hurt!"
"Sorry, Sokka. It's the first time I've used it. It hit a lot harder than I thought it would."
"No kidding," Sokka grumped, feeling the bump on his head.
"At least he didn't hit you anywhere vital," Zuko offered from his earthy prison.
"Leave the jokes to me, Fire Lord Jerk." He turned back to Teo. "So let me see the design on that thing already. What exactly did you do to it? Hey, your Royal Jerkiness, can we get some light over here?"
"I'm kind of occupied at this second, O Eater of Rotten Walrus Blubber. Go grab a lantern. And try not to let everyone know you're here while you do it."
"Hey, I can do stealth! I'm stealthy! They call me Sokka the Silent!" He stood up and tried to imitate Zuko's gliding ninja walk, but ended up tripping and falling face first in the dirt. Teo failed to smother involuntary snorts of laughter. Toph decided not to let Sokka know that she knew he'd made the pratfall on purpose. Comedians frowned on the audience knowing all their secrets.
Sokka did manage to go grab a nearby lantern and return with it without incident, and he and Teo bent over the rod, Teo explaining and gesturing. After assuring herself that Teo was unharmed by Sokka's enthusiastic tackle, Toph ignored them and turned to stand over Zuko. It was one of the rare times she wished for normal vision so she could see what he looked like with just his head sticking out of the ground. What happened when you planted a Fire Lord? If she left him there and watered him regularly, would he sprout flowers?
She felt the earth start to warm up under her feet and let out a yelp of her own. "Sparky, don't fry my parents' garden!"
"Let me out and I won't have to." He sounded perfectly calm and reasonable, which she hated. She liked him better all flustered and flailing. He flailed so nicely.
"How can you firebend when you can't even wiggle your fingers, you cheater?" She glared down at him in mock outrage.
"Uncle and I have been spending more time in the Dragon Catacombs, trying to figure out how to …well, how to palace-train Shai, actually. But we stumbled on some interesting old firebending scrolls and we've been working on them. Only in the fireproof practice rooms, of course. Some of the scrolls are pretty badly damaged so our techniques are – let's just say we still have a lot of work to do. Now…are you going to let me out? Or am I going to turn this patch of the garden into glass? It might even be pretty that way, who knows?"
Toph snarled and made a chopping motion. The earth divided on either side of Zuko and then rose up and dumped him out. She tried to make him land on his head, but of course he just rolled out of it and stood up, brushing the dirt off his clothes. Then he further irritated her by giving her an excessively formal Fire Nation bow. "Thank you, Lady Bei Fong. And congratulations on this auspicious day of your Tian Mi Shi Liu."
She tried to knock him off his feet again, but he was ready this time and easily sidestepped the moving earth lump. "Sparky, you idiot, if you call me that again I'm going to bury you and leave you there until you take root. Imprison yourself in glass all you like." She paused. "Could you really do that, or were you bluffing?"
"A little bit of both. If there's enough pure sand in the dirt, and I get the temperature up high enough, it will turn into some really ugly glass. Pure beach sand works much better." Zuko shrugged. "But it wouldn't have helped me much here – the molten glass is hot enough to kill even a master firebender, and it stays that way for quite a while if I don't actively work to cool it down. Definitely not my preferred way to go."
"Really? Show me." Toph held out a hand and a fine grit sifted upward from the ground, collecting in her palm as a small pile of pure white sand. She offered it up to Zuko.
The firebender looked at the sand warily. "What exactly do you want me to do with that? And keep your suggestions clean, if you don't mind."
"Make glass out of it. I want to try bending molten glass. It's earth, right? I should be able to bend it."
Zuko blinked. "I hadn't thought of that. All right. Consider it a Tian Mi Shi Liu present then. Unless I set the garden on fire, in which case I was never here, and I have a palace full of people who will vouch for that." He paused. "As long as they don't think to ask Uncle, that is."
He accepted the sand, set it carefully on a clean flat rock, held his hands over it, and began moving them slowly back and forth. Sokka looked up, saw the sand beginning to glow dully in the darkness, muttered something about "showoff benders", then ignored the proceedings for a more interesting discussion with Teo about how to free liquid silver from raw ore without the need for a talented earthbender to help.
The glow increased and the heat became intense enough for Toph to take a step back. She was ever so slightly envious of how Zuko's firebending allowed him to keep his hands that close to so much heat without burning. Finally the sand glowed white hot, and shortly after that it stopped being individual grains of earth and became a thick and gooey superhot liquid. Nearby plants suffered singed leaves from the heat it was giving off.
"Okay," Zuko said, through gritted teeth. "If you're going to do something with it, Thumper, now's the time. But be careful!"
"I'm always careful." She felt her way into the glass. Yes, it would respond to her bending – more easily than solid rock would, even, due to its liquid nature. She wondered briefly if a waterbender could do anything with it. She wished Katara were here, and willing to try, like old times.
Toph forced her mind to stop wandering and focus on the task at hand. She shaped what she wanted first in her mind, then, slowly, with her dancing fingers. The glass danced in return. "Hurry up," Zuko gritted. He smelled heavily of sweat.
"Don't hurry an artist," Toph snapped, but tried to do as he asked – being so close to such an intense heat source was beginning to strain even Zuko's formidable resources, she could tell. Her fingers stroked the air, and the blob of glass shimmered in response and began to reshape itself to her direction. It took a few more minutes, during which she distinctly hear Zuko's teeth grinding, until she finally said, "Ok, cool it down, Sparky!"
Zuko pulled his hands away and at the same time bent out all of the heat he'd put in. A brief sharp crackle sounded, and suddenly the glass lost its liquid state and became as solid as it had begun – but changed.
On the rock sat a small statuette, about a hand tall. The light from Sokka's blue paper lantern made it glimmer softly in the night. It was a glider, and under the glass sail was a small but clearly recognizable Teo.
"Hey, that's nice work," Sokka said. "Since when can you do such delicate stuff?"
"Sparky's not the only one who's been practicing, you know." She tried not to sound smug but failed.
"That's great! I've got some designs the Mechanist drew up. He wanted me to figure out how to precisely cast some pretty small parts – looks like I've found the solution!"
"Hey, if you think you're going to conscript me –"
"SH!" Zuko cut off the nascent squabble with a sharp hiss, head lifting as he looked back toward the Bei Fong mansion.
"…sure I smelled something burning, Keung…" The voice was drawing closer to their position.
"My father's guards," Toph whispered. Sokka immediately pinched out the lantern as Teo scooped up the glass figure and tucked it away into his carrying pouch. Sokka lent a shoulder to Teo. Zuko started to offer an arm to Toph, but she glared at him and he thought better of it.
"The back wall," Zuko murmured. "It's where we came in. We've got supplies there."
Toph bent them an earth sled and, as quietly as possible, moved them all up to garden's far side. The wall here was sixteen feet tall, made of polished stone, and had nasty metal spikes on top. Fine for keeping out riff raff; hopeless against Zuko and Sokka. Without waiting for instructions, Toph merged the earth sled directly into the wall and they all went up and over in next to no time. Yet behind they heard louder shouts and running feet.
"Our silhouettes," Zuko muttered. "Must have seen them against the moonlight." He leaped off the earth sled, grabbed up two sacks at the foot of the estate wall, and hopped back on again in no more than two seconds. "Keep going straight, Thumper. Up into the hills. You know the cave system there, right?"
"Don't ask dumb questions, Sparky. That's where I met the badger moles."
"There are badger moles there?" For some reason he sounded alarmed.
"Last time I visited, about a week ago, yeah. Why?"
"Um. I left Shai up there."
"In the caves? How did you even get her in there?"
"She's pretty flexible."
Toph snorted. "Well, if you're worried about the moles, don't be. I'd bet on them over your overgrown lizard any day. If she tries to cook and eat them she's going to be in for a surprise."
"I'm worried about Shai, not the badger moles. She gets…er…playful sometimes." The young Fire Lord looked pained as Sokka started to snicker.
"She got 'playful' in the Air Nomad memorial shrine last month. Zuko decided he had to make a big symbol out of personally scrubbing the soot off all the statues. It took him about a week."
"You could have helped, you know."
"Hey, clean up after your own pet. Or order servants to do it in your name. What's the point of being a Fire Lord if you can't get peons to do that sort of stuff?"
Zuko's voice turned sharp. "They're not peons, they're people, and they already have enough to do."
"Oh, and you don't?"
"As you said, my dragon made the mess, it was my duty to clean it up." His tone lost some of its edge. "Besides, I like it in the Air Nomad shrine. It's peaceful and quiet in there."
"Oh, now I get it. You were hiding."
"Pretty much. No paperwork, and the diplomats and nobles didn't bother me since I was, ah, making sacred amends or something like that. Uncle phrased it nicely for me. It's about the closest thing I've gotten to a vacation in two years or so."
Toph realigned the sled's trajectory slightly, then asked "So if you're here, who's holding down the Fire Nation fort? …And what ARE you doing here, anyway? It doesn't look like you planned to attend my party. Not that I mind," she hurried to add. "I didn't want to attend it either."
"First question: Mai and Uncle. It's budgeting time again and Mai's much better with numbers than I am. After the fifth time she had to correct my sums she told me to go take a nice long walk and quit making more work for her, so I did. The second I thought was obvious – we're kidnapping you. Assuming you don't object?"
"No objection here, Sparky. Kidnap away. Do I get to know what my awful fate is going to be?"
"I suggested selling you to pirates," Sokka put in. "But we decided that was just too cruel to the pirates."
She freed one hand from guiding the sled just long enough to whack him in the shoulder. Sokka yelped in a nicely pained way.