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Tian Mi Shi Liu, Chapter 4: Down Deep
The group proceeded down the roadway to the main southern gate of Omashu, the green fire of the guard's torches casting eerie shadows along the stone path. Toph was unclear on the concept of "color", but the others had described the strange fires to her in Ba Sing Se, and she could smell the faint acrid odor from the salts used to make the flames burn emerald. For some reason she found herself getting a bit uneasy, which struck her as utterly stupid given she was surrounded by friends, including the Avatar himself. Stupid or not, though, her instincts insisted that something here was not quite what it appeared.
It's just that green-fire smell, she told herself. It's reminding me of Long Feng and his gang of creeps in Ba Sing Se, that's all.
Certainly no one else in the group appeared to be feeling anything other than pleasure at being reunited with dear friends on a special day. Teo was a little nervous, but that was directed right at her – she guessed he was wondering if she was genuinely angry with him. The answer was "of course not", but she had no problem letting him worry a while longer. The glider flight was one thing, but the dragon-drop at the end had been truly terrifying, and he deserved to sweat at least as much as she had. Plus maybe a little extra, just for the embarrassment factor of making her shriek like a child in the presence of Zuko and Sokka – particularly Sokka, who would probably require some serious pummeling before he'd stop teasing her about it.
While she was mulling this over, Aang kept up a running commentary regarding the ongoing resettlement efforts with the Fire Nation colonials. After years of hard work, only the most intractable villages were refusing to negotiate, and Aang remained determined to finish the work without bloodshed. Toph got the impression that Zuko was frustrated enough to start shedding at least a little bit of non-lethal blood, if it would finally bring an end to the issue, but he had, as usual, bowed to Aang's preferences. At the back of the group, Katara chatted with Sokka and Zuko, although her focus was on the project to develop a reliable system of transport using the Fire Nation hot-air balloons, which she wanted to employ to be able to quickly move waterbender healers around to wherever they might be most needed in case of widespread illness or a natural disaster that managed to sneak past Aang's vigilance. At least there was no shortage of firebenders to power the transports.
Teo trailed slightly behind her and Aang, not saying much of anything. Toph took a closer "look" at him and realized he was struggling not to fall behind – overdoing it yet again rather than trouble the group to slow down for him. He'd be limping soon, and by tomorrow he'd be bedridden from the pain in his back and legs. Toph planned to sic Katara on him at first opportunity. In the meantime, though….she shaped a few simple motions with one hand down by her side, and a section of walkway under Teo's feet began to move. She was careful not to topple him over as she set up the slideway. He stumbled a little, then realized what was happening and slowed down with a grateful sigh as the moving earth began doing most of the work of walking. Toph noticed a flicker of interest from Bumi at her actions, but he didn't say anything, and everyone else had seen this trick before. The guards might be puzzled if they realized Teo was taking only one step for every two of theirs, but they'd seen stranger things in Bumi's service, she was certain.
Just inside the gates, Bumi waved the parade to a stop. "Why don't the rest of you go off and get a nap or something while I talk to the Lady Bei Fong?"
"Good luck with that," Toph growled. "My mother is about an hour due west by dragon flight, Bumi."
"Ooh, testy. I like that." He waggled his outrageous bushy eyebrows at her. "All right then, I'd like to speak to Little Miss Bei Fong, then. I suppose until the dawn comes you're not officially an adult anyway!" Toph started to make an outraged retort, but Bumi cut her off. "Tian Mi Shi Liu rules, not mine! Not adult until the dawn! So come talk to me, the time will pass faster, eh?"
"ONLY if you promise not to call me anything but TOPH!"
Bumi snickered. "I'm the King here, Toughie Toffee, and I'll call you what I like!" She heard Sokka snickering, and twitched her fingers. The ground dropped him unceremoniously onto his rear. She heard him yelp and smiled grimly. Far too many people were having too much fun at her expense tonight for her taste.
"Fine. Whatever. Let's go, Bumi." Head high, she stalked away from the group.
"Wrong way, Little Miss Toughie." Bumi clearly was not going to stop with the nicknames. Toph wished he'd at least come up with some better ones.
"All right, all right. Let's go and get whatever this is over with. If it's some kind of Tian Mi Shi Liu surprise present, I hope it's a good one after all this fuss."
"Be careful what you wish for, my dear."
Now what did that mean? Only one good way to find out. She'd have to go along with whatever craziness the "mad genius" had come up with. "Katara, while I'm gone, would you take a look at Teo? He's been overdoing."
Katara shot a look at Teo, and Teo cringed slightly – not because he minded Katara's healing, but because he knew she'd chew him out the whole time she was repairing his self-inflicted damage. Katara could be very gentle, loving, and compassionate, but she did not appreciate her patients ignoring her orders. Such behavior was certain to bring out the side of Katara that fought in and helped to win a one-hundred year war, which was not very gentle at all.
"I'll take care of him, Toph," Katara promised. There was just the tiniest hint of menace in her tone. Teo cringed even further away and accidentally overbalanced. Aang zipped over and caught him before he hit the ground, which saved him a little embarrassment – but not much. He watched Toph walk off with Bumi – they even left Bumi's guards behind – and had to fight down the urge to run…well, limp slowly…after her.
Bumi led Toph through several side streets. By the smell of them, they weren't exactly the kingly quarters. And Bumi seemed to be getting lost a lot – he probably didn't spend much time down here. She became aware that some of the locals were stopping to stare at them. Bumi waved at a few of his people, but mostly he just ignored the lookers. "Bumi, if I asked you where we were going and what we were doing, you wouldn't answer, would you?"
"Of course I'd answer! I'll tell you all about how I hired Gān Lán Cài as my financial advisor of cabbage. Poor guy. Went through about ten of those carts of his, and was facing ruin when I --."
"Wait, wait, what's that got to do with – oh, never mind."
Bumi snorted with laughter – a particularly unpleasant noise. He led her to an alley that looked like a dead end, but Toph could tell there was a vertical shaft at the end of it. It did not smell good. They must be close to the city's sewers. Toph remembered the tales the others had told of using the sewers and some of the sewer inhabitants to aid the locals under attack by Ozai's soldiers under the command of Mai's father. Turned out Mai's father was basically a decent guy, and her family was being very useful in helping to put Aang's colonial resettlement plans into effect. It was a reminder that good people sometimes found themselves stuck working for evil regimes.
She wondered if Bumi planned to give her a pet purple pentapus for a Tian Mi gift. Perhaps she was supposed to go down into the sewers and pick one out for herself?
Bumi led her to the end of the street and stepped onto -- nothing? Toph pulled back and focused her senses. No, not nothing – Bumi was standing on a solid surface of wood inside the shaft. Compared to rock it barely registered on her ground sense. Toph guessed it was an elevator platform of some kind, though it being made out of wood instead of stone like everything else in Omashu made it a trifle strange. Still, better to just go along and get things over with. She stepped onto the uninviting wood surface, hating the way it muffled her special sight, and waited.
Sure enough, the platform dropped down the shaft, moving fast enough that Teo might have declared it a fun ride. Being unable to see, Toph didn't like it quite so much. She hung on hard to the metal chain that was controlling their descent, needed the feel of something solid under her hands.
After what seemed like a remarkably long descent, the platform came to a stop with a dismaying splash. They had landed in water. Fortunately it smelled like fresh water, not sewage. Still, it was water. She was on a wooded platform, in water. She was blind for real in here, which was always unsettling.
Toph was more unsettled yet when she heard Bumi fumbling at the chain. "Step back and let go," he ordered, and she politely did so. He unsnapped something, and she felt the rush of air as the chain parted company from the wood and Bumi, hanging onto it tightly, ascended at a high rate of speed up to the ceiling and then back up the shaft with a jubilant "WHEEEEE!", leaving her alone and blind in the middle of what was probably the city's main fresh water cistern. She could sense no rock or earth anywhere nearby. She was deep within the mountain's core, afloat on a wooden platform, and completely alone.
"Oh, pooh," she sighed, unable to come up with anything strong enough to accurately reflect her feelings about Bumi's sense of humor, or whatever this strange prank was.
From across the water, she heard a faint call. "Toph? Is that you?"
"Teo?!" She spun around, making the wooden platform – now a raft, really – tilt precariously. The voice had come from behind her. Other than that, she couldn't tell a thing. Damn Bumi, leaving her truly blind like this!
"Yeah, I'm down here too."
"Why? Are you okay? Did Katara fix your legs? What's going on?"
"I don't know why, I'm fine, yes she did, and I haven't the foggiest idea. I thought you might."
"How did they get you down here?"
"The guards asked me politely. No one else seemed to think anything strange was going on. I'm beginning to think I was set up here."
"You were set up?"
"Yeah. Zuko and Sokka didn't say anything about all this stuff – they just said they'd show up and make things more interesting for you at the party. I didn't know about the new glider or Omashu or any of it. I was just supposed to get you into the back of the garden so you could get 'jumped by ninjas'."
"Oh, I get it now. But you sounded pretty serious fighting Sokka back there – that clubbing and all?"
Teo sounded somewhere between embarrassed and proud. "Well, I didn't know my new truncheon design was going to be quite so effective. We're lucky Sokka has a thick skull."
"At this point, a small part of me wishes you'd totally brained him. Then we wouldn't be stuck here participating in one of Bumi's stupid pranks. Normally I like the guy's sense of humor, but this really isn't all that funny, with the wood and the water and all."
"Didn't Aang say he did something like this during the war years?"
"Yeah, but Aang's the Avatar, and Bumi was just trying to help him, in his own strange way. I'm not anyone special, and I don't need Bumi's help for anything that I'm aware of."
"I think you're very special."
"You should hold onto lines like that for when I'm close enough to kiss you, you know."
"I'll take an IOU. As for Bumi's help – maybe he's just trying to amuse you?"
"I don't know…there's something about this that seems not exactly like a complete prank. I just can't figure out what, or why."
Teo seemed to mull that over. "I guess I'd have to agree. All of the others looked kind of solemn when I walked off with the guards. Not upset or unhappy or anything, just a little more serious than I'd expect."
"What, all of them? They're all in on it?"
"Looked like it to me."
Toph sighed again. 'I am going to have so many butts to kick when I get out of here."