"Oh, those guys," Toph nodded in understanding. "The Ellimist told me a little bit about them before sending me to your 'Earth' world."
"How much did he tell you exactly?" Cassie asked. "You know, so we can simply fill in any gaps."
"Very little," Toph admitted. "He only told me that the Yeerks were intelligent, that they were secretly taking over your planet-whatever that is-and that you were the only people who were fighting back against them."
"I see," Jake said. "Anyway, first of all Toph, do you know what a slug is?"
"Of course I do," she said. "I sense them literally all the time whenever I'm outside back home-and I have here as well."
"Okay, then imagine a slug about as long as your hand. That's what a Yeerk is like."
"Gross!" she spat out in revulsion.
"Very gross," he concurred. "But that's nothing compared to what they do to people. They're parasites, like leeches or biting flies-you have those on your world, don't you?"
"Yeah, we do. Go on," she said.
"But instead of drinking your blood or living in your insides, they enter your skull, wrap around your brain, and utterly control you. Every movement you make, every word you speak, is decided by the Yeerk alone."
The earthbender felt her jaw fall open in shock, her eyes widening as a frigid knife of fear pierced her.
"You guys aren't laughing," Toph said. "This has to be a very sick joke, so why isn't anyone laughing?"
"Because it's all too real," Marco replied, his voice severe. "And the Yeerks are no laughing matter."
And indeed, while Toph's intellect told her one thing, her ears and feet told her quite another.
The level of agitation in the group's demeanor, their stance, heartbeats, and their muscles all combined to affect Toph to an extent that shocked her. Through the stone, their fear and contempt was transmitted to her, and she realized, Oh by Oma and Shu, they truly have seen and dealt with these Yeerks!
A memory from her travels with the Gaang through the Fire rose up in her mind, awful and dark.
"It's just like bloodbending," she said softly.
"Bloodbending?" Cassie repeated in confusion.
(Uh, come again?) Hawk Boy asked.
"Okay, remember how I told you guys that there are people in my world who can control water in any of its forms?"
"Yeah." Rachel said while the others nodded.
"Well, while I was traveling through the Fire Nation with Aang, the current Avatar, as his earthbending teacher-it's a really long story-we came across this old witchy-type woman called Hama in one village, who was a really powerful waterbender."
"Anyhow, she'd formerly been imprisoned by the Fire Nation for decades, but she figured out in the jail one day that since all living things contain water, she could move and influence the water inside an animal's body to make it move around however she wanted."
Cassie gasped. "You mean this Hama-Oh. My God!"
"That's pretty horrifying," Tough Girl said.
She felt Marco nod.
(And let me guess, it didn't take long until she used this bloodbending technique on the most advanced animals of all,) Tobias proposed dryly.
Toph nodded herself. "And that's how she escaped the clink of course. But to make a long story short, bloodbending seems to only really work under a full moon-"
"Heh, like a werewolf transformation," Marco said in amusement.
"and Hama began to take revenge by imprisoning Fire Nation citizens herself with the ability. Well, when we came along, my friend and Team Mom Katara, who's also a great waterbender, she found out about what Hama could do, and Hama tried to persuade her to be like her pupil and become a bloodbender too so they can deal out some justice against the evil Fire Nation once a month."
"Katara however, sees Hama and this bloodbending for how messed up and sick they truly are, and so Hama forced Katara to use it anyway to fight her in a sort of bloodbending duel, and then later to keep Aang and her brother Sokka from stabbing her or each other after Hama got control of them. Well, in the end Katara got the upper hand, and Hama was taken away to be imprisoned herself."
"Good for Katara," Cassie said approvingly. "Two wrongs should never make a right."
(Were you ever subjected to this bloodbending ability yourself?) Ax asked.
"No," Toph shaking her head, "at least, not on that night."
"What do you mean, 'not on that night?'" Rachel said curiously.
The earthbender hesitated a bit before saying, "A few months later, during a full moon-I can tell from the way it pulls at the earth you know-I asked Katara to perform bloodbending on me, because I was really curious to know just what it felt like to have happen to you. Sugar Queen really, really didn't want to do it, saying she was not going to do something so vile and creepy to her best friend, blah blah blah. But after a while, I persuaded her, although she only did it to my right arm below the elbow."
"What did that feel like?" Jake asked in amazement.
"And what did she make you do?" Cassie chimed in.
"It really was creepy," Toph said simply. "My arm just felt all tense and swollen all of a sudden, and as much as I tried to fight it, it wouldn't obey me. It moved in the direction Katara's hands made it move."
"Sugar Queen tried to make it more of a silly, playful event than anything else," the young earthbender went on, "making me lightly smack my cheek a few times, wave back to her, scratch my butt, cover my face with my hand. Still, it was disturbing on so many levels, having even just a part of me under somebody else's control like that...even if she was my friend."
"The Yeerks are nobody's friends, I can say that much," Rachel growled. "And with us the feeling's mutual."
(When this Hama had your two male companions under the control of her bloodbending ability, how much control did they retain over their own bodies, if any?) Antelope Boy inquired.
"They told me later that they could still cry out and speak, but other than that they might as well have been that creepy woman's puppets," she shuddered. "And that is what these Yeerk things are like?"
"Even worse," Jake said. "At least your friends still could speak when they wanted while being bloodbended. You don't just become the Yeerk's puppet, but its slave Toph." His voice then became noticeably subdued, even haunted. "And I should know, because it's happened to me once."
"And me," Cassie added.
Dear Tu Gong...
"Good Oma, what was it like?"
"Nightmarish," Jake said simply. "Totally nightmarish. No matter how much you struggle and curse, you can't move a finger, take a step, blink or turn your head unless the Yeerk wrapped around your brain feels like doing so. You can still hear, taste, understand speech, and sense everything that's going on you, but now the Yeerk calls the shots, speaks with your voice, says the same sort of things you'd say, walks with your gait. You're the ship and it's the pilot."
Toph was equal parts sickened, appalled, and horrified. She felt her body sag and her jaw hang. To be in such a state, a prisoner in your own body, unable to call for help, talk freely, tell your friends or parents you loved them, reduced to a living carriage...
"And as horrendous as that is already," Marco added, "the Yeerk can also sense your thoughts and go through your memories, just like your mind was one great big library. Your experiences, your skills, the relationships you have, your favorite activities, things about your job...the Yeerk can get to them, analyze them-and exploit them."
This was far worse than bloodbending, a thousand times worse, and it made Toph's flesh creep. This level of domination, the abhorrence of it, such a violation of free will, shook her profoundly, was beyond both her capacity and desire to comprehend.
"So, if I was taken over by one of these slugs, does that mean it could force me to earthbend against my will too?" she asked, voice tinged with shock.
"Absolutely," Cassie told her. "It could not only force you to earthbend, but to use your powers against your family, your friends, everybody and anybody who's close to you, cares for you."
A nauseating image (of sorts) flashed through Toph's mind, of being nothing more than a prisoner in her own skull and silently, helplessly shrieking out as the imaginary Yeerk coolly pushed outward with her own hands, sending two great slabs of bedrock outward to smash her defenseless, uncomprehending parents into a stone wall with a terrible impact that resonated through both her ears and soles...and accompanied by the sickening crunch of their ribcages and hips being mashed flat. And if what they'd just said was any indication, the Yeerk wouldn't even allow her to weep.
"You say these Yeerks are like big slugs. How exactly do they get into people's heads in the first place?"
"We've actually witnessed it," Tough Girl told her. "They bring people to a huge, secret, underground complex called a Yeerk pool. It's like-like a huge underground lake, except it contains a substance that's almost like liquid mud instead of water, which thousands of Yeerks swim in. Now there are these two long steel piers that go out into this lake. What happens there is that a pair of infested Hork-Bajir drag a guy or gal-"
"Hold up," Toph said, raising her hand. "What exactly is a Ho...rrr...kkk-Ba...hee...rrr?"
Through her soles, the earthbender felt everybody's hearts beat just a bit faster, and Tough Girl adopt a somewhat chagrined stance.
(Imagine a cross between a man and a big lizard that's three times your height, walks on two legs, and is covered in loads of extremely sharp blades,) Tobias explained. (That's a Hork-Bajir. They're actually pretty good-natured simpletons when free, but if they have a Yeerk in their head, Watch. Out!)
"Thanks for the assistance Tobias," Tough Girl told him, with a distinctly warm note to her speech. Well, well, she had a thing for Hawk Boy!
"But like I said, what they do is drag a person out to the end of one of the piers, kick their legs out from under them, and force their head sideways into the sludge. And while they scream and thrash and buck, one of the Yeerks in the pool swims over and squeezes into one of their ears. It digs and burrows its way right into their skull, then spreads around and basically links into their brain. The Hork-Bajir pull the person back up out of the liquid...and then that's it," she lightly shrugged. "That person is now a Controller, a slave to the Yeerk."
"That's what we call any creature that's, well, controlled by a Yeerk," Cassie supplied. "They've already enslaved entire species like the Hork-Bajir Tobias told you about, and are now working on us."
"How many humans do you think they're controlling right now?" the blind girl asked.
"Probably around 25, 000 people at this point," Marco estimated. "And that's just a guess for our local area alone."
Now the enormity of their battle was sinking in, and the fearful odds.
"Wow. No wonder the Ellimist sent me to help you guys out."
(We definitely appreciate any help we can get,) Tobias said dryly.
"My brother is already one of them," Jake told her.
"So is my mother," Marco said, and she could feel his bitterness and torment.
"Wow, I'm really sorry," Toph told them sympathetically. "Spirits, I wish I could do something to help."
Marco snorted. "There's nothing you can do. But we will free them, one way or the other-and make those filthy slugs pay," he darkly vowed.
Jake nodded with hesitant conviction. "We'll take them back, set my brother free again."
"And that is why we have to be so cautious Toph," Cassie told her. "Anyone can be a Controller, no matter how nice or familiar they are to you, no matter how normal they act. We have to always be on our guard, because all it would take is just one little mistake and we'd all end up like Jake's brother-or even dead."
As always, practice the two R's. Reviews are the only reward I can receive.