Whoever invented formal meetings needed to be strung up by the balls and shot in the arse twelve times. That was the shared opinion of both Toph and Kyoshi as they both sat in the War Room of the Fire Nation Palace, listening to the man with the most boring voice possible drone on and on and on.

Kuruk, Roku, Suki and Aang were doing a much better job just not cringing whenever he started up a new sentence. In fact, as impossible as it seemed, there was the distinct impression that they were actually listening. But that was ridiculous. Maybe they were just sitting there trying to figure out why their ears were going into shock.

Toph projected her mind towards Kyoshi and activated their link. They were connected by the Avatar Cycle, both representing the element of earth, so they, like the rest of the Avatars, could do that. It was pretty cool sometimes.

"Bigfoot, I don't think I can last much longer. You're powerful. You're an Avatar. Can't you do something?" she begged. "Get us out of this pit!"

"He's too strong," Kyoshi responded sarcastically. "I would but my mind has already started shutting down."

Toph barely suppressed a snort. "You have a mind?" She sensed Kyoshi stare at her when the hair on the back of her neck prickled.

"It's either that or you're mental," Kyoshi snapped. She reclined in her chair and folded a corner of the report she had been given. "Get out of it yourself. What do I look like to you? A slave?"

Oh now that was just asking for it. "You look like a human tree, Bigfoot. Your arms are like branches and your feet can squash a mountain like a pile of shit. Speaking of heights, how's the weather up there?"

The meeting abruptly halted when Toph was suddenly launched through the floor above, still sitting on the chair. "I don't know. Why don't you tell me yourself?"

It took a few minutes to find her and bring her back. Kyoshi sat, pretending to be oblivious to the suspicious looks cast her way as her student was pushed back into her spot, sulking as her attempt to hide failed. Her ruffled fringe covered her face and her nose poked out from between her bangs. Huffing, she blew them out of her face and continued to pout.

"Well done, Princess Shortshit. You would have succeeded had you not shouted, 'no, don't come near me you bunch of old creepers' just as they turned to leave. If that's your best, I wouldn't want to play Hide and Seek with you. You'd just give yourself away before the game even started."

Toph gave her the best well I'd like to see you try look possible, which was a feat considering, y'know, she was blind. "Think you could kick my arse a little harder next time? I think I quite enjoyed bouncing through the fucking ceiling."

The meeting abruptly halted again. This time Kyoshi kept count. It took just under five minutes for them to find Toph, two for the rest of the gathered officials to stop staring at her accusingly, and about thirty seconds for her to get bored of swirling debris around her water glass while pointedly ignoring them and attempting to maintain an innocent façade.

"This time I hid under the bed. Last time it was the curtain."

"There's a bed up there?"

"For some reason. Man, this guy's voice should be banned on the grounds of torture!"

"You two should try listening," said a third voice calmly. Both inclined their heads challengingly to Roku, who glanced at them subtly through the corner of his eyes. "It's getting increasingly difficult to concentrate with all these distractions."

"Difficult to concentrate?" Toph scoffed. More like impossible.

"That's because you're a boring bastard just like he is." Kyoshi muttered instead. Rather than be offended by the blatant search for a fight, Roku turned his attention back to the briefing. "Yeah, that's right. Back down, you old codger."

"Ky-ohhhhh-shiiiii."

"Shut your face, Kuruk." One look at the Waterbender and she was already sneering at him as he drooled in an apparent daze. Aang was trying to poke him with his staff to get him to wake up, but to no avail.

"Come on, that's not nice. Why are you always so mean to me?"

"Fuck off you-" Kyoshi proceeded to call him something incredibly rude. Out loud. And everything suddenly went quiet (if they disregarded the sound of Suki choking on her water as noise).

"E- excuse me...?" choked the speaker.

"You're excused," she said dryly. "In fact, we all are. Can I go home now?" Seven minutes later they were ready to speak again after trying to remind the Earthbender of proper behaviour and language. The first syllable rolled out of the speaker's mouth and Toph crashed spectacularly through the ceiling a third time.

Finally Zuko exploded. "What are you doing?"

"Trying to figure out why she keeps flying off."

"She's flying off because you keep playing footsie with her under the table," Kuruk complained, watching as three tired men went yet again to retrieve the blind (and quite dangerous) child. "Can't you play a little less rough?"

"Alright, fine. I was trying to find better methods of birth control."

"Birth control?" Zuko and Aang blinked in confusion and turned to Iroh, who was suddenly scratching his head in embarrassment.

Roku shook his head as tell-tale bangs and crashes began anew a floor up. "Perhaps it would be better if those two were excused from the meeting?"

"They need to be here, Roku. It's important they hear this."

"Well it's taking too long."

Zuko rounded on her as she huffed. "You're dragging it out!" he growled.

"That's disgusting." Kyoshi hissed.

"Just-" Roku stood from his seat and sighed. "Let's just calm down-"

"-fuck that-"

"-Kyoshi!" he said sharply. Pausing, he went on, "let's just calm down and get on with this. The sooner we do that, the sooner we can all go home."

"Are you saying I can't go home now?" Kyoshi growled.

Roku's expression turned to one of slight panic. "No," he said quickly. "But you should be here to hear this, considering it relates to the damage that was done last week."

Kyoshi remembered that. It had been around lunchtime when Toph had been escorted in by guards, all out of breath, who had attempted to rip a sign out of the ground at one of the major intersections in one of the local markets. They had given their report and left to nurse their damaged pride while they were left to deal with the Earthbender.

"Kyoshi, she's your apprentice!" Zuko had turned to her when all other efforts to discipline her failed miserably. She had just been idly trying to draw pictures out of nuts on a plate, using her finger to nudge them into position. That hadn't turned out well and the pictures had come out horribly, so she had scattered them across the floor in a tantrum. "She'll listen to you. Deal with her."

Brushing off her hands on her robes, she had glared at her apprentice. "Tomorrow morning, you're going to show me where that sign is. Is that understood?"

Toph had nodded silently and said nothing for the rest of the night.

"Yeah, I remember the damage." Kyoshi folded her arms over her chest. "I don't see the problem."

"The problem-" Zuko spluttered indignantly. "Do you happen to remember what happened after that?"

Oh yeah. That.

Kyoshi, as well as Zuko, Kuruk, Roku and Iroh, had headed into the marketplace to survey the damage. Toph had shown them where the sign was. It had been a fairly dignified thing, made of wood. The paint on it had been scratched into intelligible black marks, it had been snapped and splintered slightly, but it still stood.

"What is this?" Kyoshi had snarled in outrage, pointing at the wooden eye-sore. "Look at what you've done!"

"I … can't...?" Toph replied with a degree of nervousness.

"I can't believe you'd do this. You should know better!" Toph had lowered her head in shame as Kyoshi chastised her. The others had stood to one side; Zuko smiling smugly that finally someone could control the child, and watched.

"Vandalism?" she raved, stomping forward angrily. Toph backed away a step. Her hands raised defensively, as if she were expecting to be hit. "I taught you better than this. If you're going to break shit, at least do it properly!"

Looks of relief turned to confusion, then disbelief and horror. Grabbing the middle of the wooden beam, she started ripping it out of the ground violently. Toph had cheered, Zuko had cried out in alarm, and Kuruk had shouted, "STOP! KYOSHI, NO!" And then got slapped with it for treating her like a dog. The bruise had since healed. Tensions, however, had not. But like she gave a damn.

Blinking back to awareness, Kyoshi looked over at him. "...I don't see the problem."

Grinding his teeth in rage, Zuko was going to be in a lot of pain later. "You don't see the-?"

Toph escorted herself back in at that point. She was looking rather bored and dragging with her three very exhausted servants, who were too tired to apologise. She left them in a tangled heap on the floor and reclaimed her seat, throwing a piece of fruit to her teacher, who kicked her feet up onto the desk. "What did I miss?"

"Group sex," Kyoshi said, swallowing a small bite of fruit. "Don't worry though, it was shit. All Emperor Smart-arse did was complain."

"Emperor...?"

"Where'd you hide that time?"

"Oh, I didn't. I just stood in the corridor until they found me and charged them."

Kyoshi looked over her shoulder at the servants. She'd given them a run around alright. From the looks of it they weren't going to get up for a while. "Well it worked. They look pretty much dead now. What's the score?"

"Uhhh … seven, I think. There were those four guards last week."

Taking another bite, Kyoshi wrinkled her nose, spat out the food onto the floor and threw the fruit at the window. It missed and rolled onto the floor. Zuko muttered something about never letting an Earthbender into his palace again as the Speaker, who was not welcome at all to continue, decided to resume his attempted brain-murder.

"What about the two cooks before that?"

"...nine," Toph corrected herself. "How about you?"

"Eight. But then again I did help you with those three so that makes it eleven."

"Eight? But you only did five guards and one servant. That's six."

"Correction. I tired out Emperor Smart-arse. He's Fire Lord, he counts as two."

Toph blinked in surprise. "What? Why didn't you tell me?"

"You never asked."

This time it was Kyoshi who was launched through the ceiling. She got as far as the end of the corridor before someone bowled into her and Earthbent her back into the War Room.

"Didn't get far, then?" Toph sucked on her lips in disappointment. "Damn."

"Shame, isn't it? Maybe if I got sucked through the floor next time." She glared at Roku, who had been the one to catch her. Even though he was one to support her listening in the meeting, he looked utterly bored out of his mind. He didn't take notice, his thoughts taking him elsewhere.

Kyoshi's mind began to roam as well. It travelled into places that made the other Avatars squirm in their seats and glance at her uncomfortably. The two Earthbenders smiled to themselves, feeling the ripple of unease though their link, and made their thoughts as loud, and as dirty, as possible.

The response was instantaneous. Kuruk's nose erupted with such force that the bloody geyser propelled him backwards and out of his seat. It took several minutes to revive him from his sudden daze, and as he waved away the startled and panicking servants, a thin trickle of blood ran down Roku's upper lip. Despite his determination to ignore everything, he hadn't been able to manage it. Aang just sat there, absolutely mortified, as one by one the thoughts ran around his mind.

By the time the meeting ended, Kyoshi and Toph were grinning and thoroughly entertained. They left with the biggest devious, shit-eating smirks on their faces imaginable. Zuko, the speaker, Suki and Iroh blinked in confusion as, even as they headed towards the doors with sighs of relief, the Avatars remained rigidly sitting and staring at each other apprehensively.

None of them was going to make the first move to leave. The raucous laughter echoing down the halls only made their flustered blushes deepen.