I know, it's been a while. Don't kill me. Blame UCSB and they're retarded as admissions office! Now, just need to find housing before January. :o/ More stress, and more stress, and more stress.
Anyways, WOO! New chapter. And, more Toph being real Toph! (as opposed to slightly more grown up Toph.) Always fun.
--
How do the blind dream? Does the mind create images that the eyes cannot see? Or do they dream in nothing more than scent and sound? Toph didn't know, for she was not, by any account, a normal blind individual. Toph dreamed in vibrations. Of course she dreamed in scent and sound, as well. She dreamed the taste of dust in the air or finely seasoned meats from Kyoshi Island. Most of all, though, she dreamed in a thousand different shades of black, and tonight she dreamed of things she never imagined experiencing again. The first image out of the blackness came as the ripples of a leaf falling to the ground in the fall. Then another, and another, forming footsteps. They formed footsteps that became footsteps only from the patterned falls. Then came the voice. A soothing tenor, with an air of power and devotion, and an optimistic lilt that only those trained vigorously in the suppression all things painful could possess.
"It's been a while, hasn't it?"
Most people, confronted with the dreams of dead loved ones would feel a great mixture of emotions, one would presume. Confusion usually being first, considering their being dead and all. Quickly that would be willed away and succeeded by a feeling of sorrow at their passing, wonder at the impossibility of it, and great joy at being able to spend even this, imaginary as it may be, with those that have gone. Toph, however, felt none of this. Of course it was possible for former Avatars to do such things, and of course it was a dream in which she resided currently (for in actuality she could not sense the vibrations of anything in her current predicament). All Toph felt was anger.
"Yes, it's been a while Twinkle Toes! Where in creation have you been?! You couldn't have stopped by for tea in my dreams for the past, what, three, four years? And now you finally show up, and you're probably expecting me to be so happy to have you here at long last, aren't you?" If one had to breathe in dreams, Toph would be panting for the effort around this point, but alas, the poor deceased Avatar had not even begun to hear the rage from his beloved earthbending master. "Well, let me tell you! I am not happy at all, feather boy! I've been stuck here in a miserable shell of nothingness for ages with no word from you or those fair weather friends that we all held so dear! So don't come to me now expecting nothing but smiles and kisses and hugs, mister all powerful airhead! You're not going to get them from me!" The scolding went on like this for quite some times. Finally a silence passed between them.
Aang, or at least the dream of Aang, knew his place in this situation was to keep his distance. He spoke no less lovingly to his beautiful former wife, though. "I have been here. I have been here many nights, even nights that I did not intend to be, when you pulled me here of your own longing. Every night since my passing, when you awoke with no recollection of your dreams, I was there. Tomorrow, however, you will finally be allowed to remember it."
Toph's anger subsided enough that she dropped her accusing finger, as well as her heavy head. "I get the feeling there's some spirit world mumbo-jumbo that's allowing this? It must be important."
"It is, and I am sorry that this is the first time you'll be able to recall my voice in the morning. It is good news that I bring, though…"
--
Jung shot twenty feet in the air out of shock - a feat hardly worth mentioning for an airbender. However, it did give away the fact that she was not quite sleeping a moment prior. None of this mattered, however, as the cause of the rumbling beneath their feet was vastly more important. Jung grabbed her glider and started up into the air.
"Stop! Jung! Get back here and put on your hair!" Katara's voice rang out from below. The airbender gently guided herself back down to the camp site. She put on her disguise with great annoyance: the wig that covered up her hair and the arrow tattooed to her scalp, the gloves that covered up the blue on her hands, and knee high boots to cover the arrows on her feet.
"It's not like it makes a difference. If they see me in the air, they'll know who I am anyways." Jung grabbed her glider again and took off once more to see if she could find the source of the problem.
"Well don't you think that's a good reason to not be flying around up there?!" Katara screamed at the disobedient child soaring off in the night. She turned to pack everything up, only to find Zuko holding out her pack for her. Da Shan already had his bags strapped to him as well. She grabbed the bag and started heading towards the source of the thunderous noises that were still working their way through the mountains. She moved with purpose, while mumbling to herself. Something about a lack of rules in Jung's life, and a conversation she needed to have with Toph.
"Katara, maybe you should let me lead." Da Shan was almost running to catch up with the waterbending master. "It feels like a great deal of earthbending coming from the town that we were going to be heading towards. I should be able to find a more direct path."
Katara froze and shook her head as though just coming out of some reverie. "Yeah, that's a good idea," she said, conceding her lead position to the teenaged earthbender.
Da Shan was right about finding a more direct path of course. When one couldn't be found it was easy enough to make one. Remove moisture from plants in the way, set fire to the newly dried plants, cover with earth to smother the flames. Groves of trees and large overgrowths of manzanitaberry bushes were moved out of their way in seconds. After a half hour of travel in this manner, their progress could be judged by how much louder the rumbling became. It was becoming difficult to hold conversation without needing to scream over the racket of moving boulders. Then there came a gust of wind from behind them, and a light-footed girl with her staff in hand was running up from behind them with worry written all over her face.
"What's causing the noise?" Zuko spoke loudly over the constant crashing.
"Well, unless there's some midnight earthbending festival that I don't know about, I think our destination town is in trouble." She spoke too softly to be heard but the sound arrived at everybody's ears regardless. A simple trick she picked up when she was hiding secrets from her mom. "It looks like a war zone down there."
"Ai Qiuyue needs our help. Fast." Da Shan started wearing the path through the forest at double speed before their destination town could be demolished.
"Ai Qiuyue? Loving autumn moon? Sounds a bit, water-triby."
"It's was originally a farming settlement. They've had to build walls and hire mercenaries for protection from Jianguo. That's the port city I was mentioning. They've been at odds since the slaughter of Avatar Aang. From the sound of it, things have finally come to a head." Da Shan smoothed out one last rock formation, and the group finally saw the war raging in front of them.
They found one thing none of them were expecting to look upon, though. All the noise of the earthbending had drowned out the sounds of moving water, but there was a lot of it. Northern waterbenders were attacking along with the soldiers from nearby Jianguo. Katara rushed forward. Zuko screamed over the noise, "you two stay here, and stay out of sight! We'll take care of this." Both of them disappeared into the fray.
"Where are you going?" Da Shan asked as Jung started moving towards the battle.
"Where else? To beat up some waterbenders."
"But, Prince Zuko –"
"Uncle Zuzu is just paranoid. Now, are you coming with me or are you gonna hide over here like a scared little badger-mole?"
She was breaking a direct order from the prince of the Fire Nation – the ground leader of the entire Fire Nation Army. Not only that, but she called him "Zuzu"? Da Shan's jaw dropped.
"Alright, go ahead and hide behind a boulder somewhere, Rock Head. I'm gonna have some fun." Jung formed an air scooter and charged towards the battle, Leitha following after her.
Da Shan closed his mouth and ran after the airbender. "Wait up!"
--
The aggression that had built up in Katara over the past three and a half years had finally found an outlet. As soon as she was within range of the water skins hanging from the sides of the northern tribe soldiers, she started draining them. When she had emptied the reserves of five, now defenseless benders, she turned it right back on them. Two of her targets never saw the ice shards coming. The other three had no chance to react in time. With five soldiers dead on the ground in a matter of seconds, Katara moved on to the local earthbenders. On some level, she knew she may regret this scene once the adrenaline wore off, but there was no way she would let that slow her down now.
On the other side of the battle field, Zuko was trying to create order amongst the mercenaries that were losing ground fast. "Listen up! We need to form a wall of earthbenders here! Don't let any one pass!"
The reaction was not very good. A couple men tried to follow the order, most kept with the assault that they were already failing at. One particularly independent bender turned to face the prince and yelled his response. "Who are you, to think we should obey any order of yours?!"
Before a response could be voiced, Zuko reached past the man's side, launching a stream of fire on the ground at the bare feet of an enemy earthbender charging towards the pair. In the sudden light, the mercenary's eyes went wide.
"Everybody form a line!! Listen to Prince Zuko! He has been sent by the spirits to help us!" The group, now a little star struck into obedience, lined up immediately for as far around as the Fire Prince's words could be heard. That's when the prince noticed something that unnerved him. A lemur, flying just in front of his newly formed line of defense, was attempting to distract enemy soldiers.
"Dammit Jung!! I told you to stay out of this!" The words were shouted to nobody, though, as the airbender herself was a great distance away diving down on unsuspecting groups, using her airbending to flatten them against each other and surrounding rocks.
Da Shan, panting, ran up next to Zuko at the loud rebuke. "I'm sorry, sir. I tried to get her to stop."
"Listen, I want you to get the men down there to file in with the men here."
"On it, sir."
Da Shan sped off to communicate the order. With the name of the Fire Prince behind it, and the visibility of the flames being launched from his direction, the mercenaries obeyed, and found themselves finally stopping the progress being made by the opposing forces.
"Alright, we need to move them back now! On my count, I want a synchronized launch!" Da Shan shouted at the men in front of him. "1!... 2!... 3!!" A row of boulders shot up from the ground and forward, leveling a couple dozen men. He turned to see the same repeated on Zuko's side of the wall soon after.
Katara had long since lost track of how much blood she had spilled while acting as an assassin behind the enemy lines. Her own water reserves had run out long ago, and she began bending the thick red liquid lying at her feet. She cleared her mind enough to notice that the good guys were moving through the lines towards her. Looking back away from them she spotted a water bender running back away from the troupe towards a waiting ostrich-horse. An officer by looks of it. She froze the blood on the earth and launched herself towards the man, hoping to subdue him before he could ride away. She arrived just in time to freeze the mounts feet to the ground, causing it to buck the rider into the dirt. The battle behind her subsided as the remaining attacking soldiers dispersed and fled. Just as Katara was freezing the man to the ground, face up, in ice made from the blood of the fallen, Jung floated down and landed in front of the man.
"You look familiar," she breathed, allowing only the subject to hear her. "Why?"
The man's face twisted into a crooked smile as his eyes lit up. "I should hope so. That scar you've got was a main reason for my promotion."
This, everybody heard, but before anything else could be done, Jung picked up her staff, and swung it straight towards the man's temple. Now unconscious, the mercenaries carried him away as a prisoner, per Zuko's orders.
Katara looked around her at the dead men and women scattering the field. She tried to count how many of them had been killed by her. Failing to do so, she fell to her knees and vomited.
--
"Do you even know where we are?"
"Of course I do, sweety. We're in the high desert, and we've found a perfect place to camp for the night. Tomorrow morning we continue our move north, and I believe we'll find a town in the early afternoon where we can get some supplies. We'll have to find some kind of cover for the big guy here while we do that, though." Sokka patted the wind bison's side affectionately.
"I swear, by the grave of Kyoshi, if you have gotten us lost, you're gonna be waiting a long, long time before you get to do any of your 'sword-training' on me again." Suki wiggled her fingers in the air as quotation marks, and sounded quite disturbed the euphemism that her husband liked to use.
"Look, I know where we are, ok? Now, can we just get some sleep? We still have at least three days before we're supposed to meet up with the others, and we'll be able to fly again very soon." Sokka suddenly grew sad thinking about Suki's threat. "You wouldn't… really withhold our, training sessions would you?"
Suki cuddled up closer to her idiot husband, her head resting on his chest. "Of course not," she said softly. "But… Sokka?..." She broke off, as though wondering if it were the right time to tell him.
"Yeah, Suki?" He yawned, loudly, into her ear.
Suki gently patted his stomach and nuzzled her head into its resting spot a little more. "Nothing, I'll tell you in the morning."
The suspense kept Sokka worried enough to not be able to sleep. Well, maybe not. But it took him about fifteen minutes, until he kissed the top of her head, put his head back against pillow, and began to snore.
--
"Alright, I'm calm. Now, what's the good news you've brought, Twinkles?"
"Those 'fair weather friends' of ours, are on their way. You won't be stuck here much longer, dear."
Toph couldn't stop herself from smiling, but she then realized that she wasn't the only one stuck in this wasteland. "He will be, though," she sighed.
"No, he won't." Aang calmly closed the distance between himself and his former lover. Wrapping his arms around her tightly, he then whispered. "So, would you like some tea?"
"Eh, I think I can wait until I can get a hold of Iroh's."
