Katara was still paranoid by Iroh's story. She could imagine spiders and all other manners of wee beasties crawling through her hair over her scalp.
"SOKKA! Get the comb!" She ordered to her brother. Her brother sighed. The Comb was made from bone, carved with little water symbols. Katara and Sokka used it to check their hair for nits and lice, which Katara hated with a passion unlike anything else. The Fire Nation could wait, Katara had to fight the war on lice, fleas and other parasites. Sokka fetched the comb and Katara loosened her hair letting it fall around her shoulders in beautiful waves. Sokka began to comb and she tilted her head back at the grooming. Both Aang and Zuko were watching her intensely.
"Well since it seems everyone else is speechless…" Toph began.
"I'll tell the next story."
"In a section of Ba Sing Se there was an old man who'd had his legs crushed by an earth bender. They were so ruined that he had to have them amputated. They only way he could get himself around was by dragging himself along with his long fingernails. They called him Click-Clack because of the sound his nails made when he dragged himself along. Unfortunately he was also insane,"
"Insane like King Bumi?" Aang asked brightly.
"No, not like King Bumi," Toph said roughly.
"He was insane in the bad way"
"At night he would find people walking about and disembowel him with his hideously long fingernails. So, the city ordered that people be in by six in the evening.
One day a girl asked if she could go meet her friends. It was four in the afternoon, so the mother told her to be home by five thirty so Click-Clack would not get her.
The girls stayed out with her friends longer than she intended. It was past five thirty. But she figured she'd make it home on time. Until she saw the noodle vendor. She ordered her favorite kind of noodle and went on her way. After she finished her noodles, she realized it was six a clock. People were rushing home, calling in their kids and locking their doors. 'Oh no! I better run home' she thought, dropping her empty bowl.
She ran as fast as she could, but when she reached her street she heard the dreaded: "click clack drag click clack," She turned around to make she it was her imagination but there was Click Clack! Meanwhile her mother (who had been out behind their little house hanging thw wash, feeding the chickens and doing other busy work) had figured her daughter was already home and in bed, so she prepared for bed herself, being quiet so as not to wake her daughter. She then heard knocking and pounding on the door, but she figured it was Click Clack, because she could her the clack and clatter of his fingernails. But it was really her daughter wanting to come inside.
The next morning the woman stepped out to go to the market, but there on her step was her daughter, dead and disemboweled and written in her blood was: "Mother why didn't you open the door?"
"When I was in Ba Sing Se I never saw Click Clack!" Zuko exclaimed.
Toph bended a rock towards his head, but Zuko ducked and it whizzed past Iroh, nearly knocking his tea out of his hands. It landed on the ground with a small thunk.
"You're lucky I missed," She growled.
"I never said the story recently happened. It probably a long time ago,"
"It probably did," Iroh said.
"And I'm glad you missed also. If my tea had spilled, I would have been a force much scarier than Click Clack,"