When he finally lays eyes on that blind girl again in April, more than two years since she stopped showing up at the Rumble, he feels…odd, murky emotions he doesn't want to label. Surprise, he can say that for certain. Frankly, he didn't expect to ever see the Blind Bandit again.

Privately, he'd convinced himself she'd died or something worse.

"It's you," Toph says in breathless wonder, like she's greeting a top-ranking hero or a pop star. She's lankier now, but still pretty short for her age. She looks better than before, though, not pale and terrified—her whole face is flushed pink from running to catch up to him, and she grins genuinely at him.

No one that could see his face would ever smiles like that at him. For Kami's sake. This girl really is still oblivious. He scratches at his irritated jawline, frustrated. She's still a tiny punk of a fighter. "Yeah, it's me. The hell're you doing here, brat?" He frowns at the deserted street they're on, and at the grimy alley he was about to walk down. "How'd you even find me?"

He didn't think it possible, but she smiles wider, pointing to her ear. "I could hear you from a block away. I don't forget voices," she steps closer, brow furrowing. "I never got to call you about what happened."

Touya blinks down at her, bemused. Has she really been feeling guilty about it all this time? Granted, on worse days he felt a little responsible for not doing more, but he had no way of knowing if she needed help. Seeing her now—she's fine. That's enough. Case closed. A phone call sooner would've been appreciated, but fine.

He turns around, walking towards the wire fence separating the alley from the next street over. "You don't owe me an explanation," he says flatly. Toph follows him. What a gullible kid. What kind of idiot follows a guy like him into the back of an alley? She really has a skewed sense of danger.

"Well, sure I do," Toph replies, shoving her hands into the pockets of her jacket. "I bet Loban would've liked to know too."

Loban, that tiger-mutation guy that ran the Rumble. He lets out a sharp exhale through clenched teeth, letting his back fall harshly against the wired fence. Toph's head tilts in curiosity at the sound. "Yeah, maybe he would've, I dunno," he says crossly. The girl waits expectantly, eyes facing him rather directly. Touya turns his gaze upward. "I found a better paying gig a while ago. Before they got busted."

The fighting ring bust was in the news recently, so there's no surprise at the statement. Still, he sees the girl's face shift, with a downward turn of her lips. He expects a demand from her, maybe anger or annoyance for dismissing it all so easily. Instead, her expression smooths over. "Are you okay, Hotshot?"

His jaw clenches reflexively. "No one calls me that, Bandit," he says tightly, looking at her shoulder instead of her open, innocent face.

"I'm just Toph now," she counters softly. After a moment, when he's unforthcoming about his name or anything else he's doing now that he's out of the Quirk Rumble, Toph leans against the fence with him and explains. "I don't live with my parents anymore, but I haven't changed my surname. So it's Toph Beifong."

"Toph," he repeats nonchalantly, but it brings a small smile to her again. "The Beifongs, that's a Chinese family. They're pretty well off, aren't they?" Not that he's surprised her parents were assholes. Wealthy people get away with everything.

She nods, picking at dirt under one nail. "Yeah, they're filthy rich. That's how they paid for a whole hospital of quirk experiments without anyone knowing."

Quirk experiments. He definitely remembers reading about that raid. "Cato Hospital?" Toph nods timidly. That would mean her folks were fanatics, and hated all quirks. "You were there for the raid?"

Again, the girl nods. She never took any of the prize money she earned. And she always said she liked the Quirk Rumble for the freedom it gave her to hone her quirk.

Touya swore to himself he wouldn't care about this dumb blind brat once she stopped showing up to the Rumble, and it's been years since then, but… Is she really okay after all that?

"What the fuck, Toph?" He asks instead.

"I'm okay now," she promises, as if reading his mind. "Endeavor raided the hospital before I could escape on my own," Toph continues blithely, ignorant of the way the name sends a rush of electricity through his veins. "I got sorted with a foster family, and I've been with them ever since. If that hadn't worked out... I would've ran away like you."

Endeavor.

Touya can't help it as his fingers dig painfully into the sensitive skin of his forearms. "Hm," he says in response, unable to articulate a more coherent answer without releasing the white-hot resentment scorching through his mind.

Suddenly there's a different pressure on his arm, and he looks down to see Toph's hand, small and firm next to his own.

"You never answered me," she points out. "Are you okay?" Her hand drifts to his wrist, and she bites the inside of her cheek as she traces the warped path of scars forming. "You shouldn't be using your quirk like this, Touya." The name tears at him the same way his quirk does

He can't stand it. He can't stand the look of honest confusion and pain on her face. "Don't call me that," he says evenly, pulling his hands out of her reach. "Don't ever use that name. I don't wanna hear it."

"I won't tell anyone," she says indignantly, but that's not the part that bothers him. He knows Toph wouldn't give his name to the police or anything. "I promised not to, and I haven't. There's probably a good reason you ran away. But if you didn't want to be called Touya you shouldn't have told me at all."

She's an idiot. He flexes his fingers irritably. "Whatever. It's not like we'll see each other again."

"Why do you think we won't?" She shoots back, almost sounding defensive. Hurt.

"Because you're a brat," he snaps, rubbing the bridge of his nose. "You're a normal brat now. Me? I was never normal. Never—never up to his standards." He taps a foot on the ground, and a shred of anger crawls back into his tone. "I'll never re-enter society like you, with a brand new family. I don't belong in that world, and I never did." He eyes her sharply. "Besides, you probably want to become a hero with a quirk like yours—you like fighting too much to give it up. You can't be seen around me."

She chews over his statement quietly, hands sliding back into her pockets. "Well, none of that erases what happened," she finally settles on. Touya stares. "We trained together. I don't do any of the illegal stuff anymore, and I am going to become a hero, but that doesn't mean it never happened." She cracks a wry smile. "At the very least, we're ex-coworkers, don't ya think?"

Touya stares. And stares. "You're a dumbass, Toph," he grumbles, dropping his arms to his sides. "A real piece of work. Fucking co-workers, like we both had shitty retail jobs or something…" Touya buries his face in his hands with a moan that quickly devolves into slightly-hysterical snickering. "Fuck. Fucking shit. You're crazy."

"I dunno, you sound pretty fucking loopy right now," Toph crosses her arms loosely, expression wary. "You won't even answer a question properly, but I'm the piece of work, huh?"

"Yes," Touya confirms. "You are a piece of work. Because if you had even a shred of self-preservation, you wouldn't have followed me into an empty alley." He gestures sharply through the air, not caring that she can't see it.

She gives him a look. "You're not going to hurt me."

"Not now I won't," Touya concedes. An idiot pass, he thinks sourly, that's all this is. "If I see you again, though? All bets are off."

She scoffs, like she's calling a bluff. "I think we established a while ago that I can kick your butt. What's the big deal?"

He scowls. "You don't see it."

"No shit, I'm blind," Toph quips back.

He pinches the bridge of his nose. "Kid, I'm—I'm not in the Rumble anymore. I got kicked out for nearly smoking someone, and then I found work that pays more and cares less about how I do it."

"So?" She presses on, not even blinking when he admits to nearly killing a man.

"So," Touya repeats, painstakingly. Fucking hell, this is like pulling teeth. Does he really have to spell it out for her? He really doesn't want to. "I'm running errands for a broker. A loan shark. He deals with all types of shitty people, and I have all sorts of shitty tasks to do."

"Okay?" Toph frowns, still skeptical.

"I'm—shit. Shit. You're making this so difficult." He snaps. Just leave already.

Toph throws up her hands. "Am I? You're the one acting all—squirrely."

"What does that even mean?!"

"You know what it means!" Toph explodes. "Touya, you asshat. If you can't even admit you're a villain, you probably don't want to be doing any of this." Her glare is directed somewhere near his chest, but her brow furrows in worry. "I asked around for you first, through other fighters. Quillfish told me what you've been up to." She shifts from one foot to another, uncertain. "It took a while to do all that, and I could've left it as is, but I wanted to see you myself."

So she knew. She already knew the shit he was digging into, and she still ran after him. You can't get much stupider than that. Touya straightens up and shoves her backwards abruptly.

"Hey!" She yelps in protest, nearly falling over.

He shakes his head. "Get away from me, kid. You wanna be a hero so bad, you should be far away from me as you can get." Is that what this is? He thinks wildly, She thinks I need saving, that she's capable of handling what I am?

"You can't tell me what to—"

He activates his quirk violently, feeling his skin scream in protest, and throws a handful of flames between them until she's forced to move far out of reach.

"Touya," she says quietly, and finally, finally, there's a hint of fear in her. Good. It's worth the dull ache in his arms. "Stop it."

"I told you to go. Leave, you idiot," he growls.

"No," she barks, and with a shift of her foot, the stones dotting the ground of the alley overturn in a wave of neat ripples, smothering the blue flames. In the back of his mind, he does admit she's gotten better. She stays a few feet away from him, glaring. "You're hurt. Quit pushing me away, I can help."

"Worry about yourself, Toph." He mutters, opening the fence up and sliding behind it. He melts down the door frame until it's fused together, careful to not let the heated metal touch his skin. "You already tried helping me." It's not your fault I'm like this. "If we do meet again, I won't be this nice."

"...Fine." Something in his tone seems to hit the mark, because she relents, taking another step back and dropping the emotion from her face. "I'm sorry, Touya," she says at last, though he doesn't have the slightest idea what she needed to apologize for. She takes another step, and then walks away.


Her brief talk with Hotshot bothers Toph for a long time, even though she feels some level of satisfaction from being able to find him at all.

Toph dreams about it sometimes. Not in a wishful, yearning sort of way, but as a hypothetical 'what if' that explores the choices she's made to get to this point. What if she'd left everything behind and ran away?

She would still live away from her parents, which was her greatest concern, but it would be different. No cushy house with a baby, no school, no friends her own age. But the other fighters liked her a lot. She didn't have to worry about quirk laws or showing too much strength for a girl of her size and age. Everything she did would be of her own volition, and there would never be an adult around to take that independence away. Maybe she'd be slumming it in the streets, but maybe she'd also make a bunch of money from the Rumble instead of having to beg Loban for a chance in the ring. And yeah, sometimes those thoughts spill over into her actual dreams at night, and it becomes so vividly real and honest that Toph wakes with a start, questioning whether or not she really did call Touya.

Last night was one of those nights, and Toph is in a fog all morning, all day in class, right up and continuing her thoughts on the train ride back from school.

I didn't call, she reminds herself. And she's… not any better or worse for that decision. After seeing Hotshot for the first time in over two years, it's obvious that things are different—and if Toph truly wanted to get back into fighting, it would take a lot more work than strolling back into the underground arena. (Loban got busted, but as soon as one ring closed, another would emerge). Hotshot had moved on, and Toph expects that most of the other fighters had too—Quick Slice, Omega Bomb, Bunny Babe, Stendhal, Quillfish, Reel Pop… dozens of other names she could list from her time in the ring—a few of them caught in the police bust—but people came and went as easily as businessmen used a train station. Whatever traction she gained would have to be re-earned, and it… it wasn't worth it anymore.

She's happy here. She has Kouta and his parents. She has Fuyumi and Natsuo and Endeavor. She gets to see Twinkletoes and build friendships with Shouto and Shinsou.

Speaking of Shinsou, he saved a seat for her in the crowded car, and she gives him a quick nod before sitting. He tends to be in his own fog each morning, and didn't mind her silence on the way to Okubo, but he's much more conscious by three o'clock. "Hey Beifong," he greets her lazily, running a hand through his hair. "I was thinking of heading to the bike trail..."

"Uh huh," she replies, not really hearing him past 'bike trail'. Hitoshi Shinsou is one of the people she's never have met if things had gone differently.

If Toph hadn't been saved that day, would Shinsou's mom still have been caught? Endeavor raided the hospital of his own accord, but it seemed to Toph like that lady, Aiko, had been falling apart already.

Regardless of all that… Toph misses Touya and the way it used to be. She misses the rush and the risks she took in the Quirk Rumble. The fun and danger so intertwined they were one and the same. The cheers from a crowd that respected her. She earned all that on her own, no help needed. It was a different life, but to Toph, it was a perfectly valid one. Touya is the only person that might've understood that, but he's moved beyond it already. Her time in the Rumble wasn't bad. If she'd stayed, would Touya have stayed too?

Is she supposed to forget it ever happened?

Toph has no idea what kind of repercussions there would be if the Izumis or Endeavor knew where she learned to fight. Shouto might keep her secret, but she's certain it would change the way he acted around her. Inasa would certainly be upset—he's been awfully strict about his own quirk usage these days, and dislikes it when she puts herself in danger. She's been meaning to broach the subject of his (changed?) quirk, but Twinkletoes is a tornado all on his own, and difficult to pin down. Talking about the Quirk Rumble with him would be doubly impossible.

Finally Shinsou shakes her shoulder, unceremoniously dragging her attention back to him. "Beifong, better tell me now if you're blind and deaf," he says mockingly, and Toph slaps his hand off with a scowl. "Oh, she lives. Welcome back."

"What?" She throws back, instantly going defensive when she registers his tone.

"I said I'm going biking, on my bike. Wanna come with me?"

Her nose scrunches in distaste. "What kind of question is that? I can't bike."

He flicks one of the pom-poms on her headband, and Toph slaps his hand away again. He's not a very tactile person on his own, so she knows he's doing it to annoy her. "I mean you can ride with me, there's space to stand on the back wheel—" Toph is already shaking her head in horror at the thought. "—don't give me that, it's not even dangerous—"

"It's a bike, I can't steer or do anything but hold on—" Shinsou gets to his feet, tugging her up by the strap of her backpack as the train rolls to a stop. Toph stands with him and they step onto the platform, still glaring. He's being cheekier than usual today, forcing her full attention to deal with his antics.

"How's that different from a train? You still ride trains—"

"—Trains are necessary, this is your terrible idea of a fun time—"

"—it is fun, you're just being a coward, Beifong," he says pointedly, but there's a levity to his tone that makes Toph suspect he's grinning like an asshole too.

"I'm not a cowar—" and then her head goes a little foggy. She shakes away the daze and realizes they're at the very beginning of the trail, and Shinsou is rolling a bicycle towards her.

Oh, that bitch.

"Are you kidding me?!" Toph gripes, glaring at an approximation of where his head should be and continuing as if he never paused the conversation for his own nefarious purposes—biking. "Where's my bag?" She demands. He's not carrying his backpack either.

"Left it at my place. No point carrying around even more dead weight," he teases, and Toph narrows her eyes.

"I'm not riding that thing," she spits out, regarding the bike like she's being asked to cuddle a Komodo dragon.

"You're already here, you might as well try," Shinsou cajoles, knowing full well that's entirely his doing. "I'll go slow, you won't fall off."

Toph punches him in the shoulder for the brainwashing. He's done it before, with and without her permission—it's different than Aiko's, unnerving and invasive but not something she's worried he'll actually hurt her with—and while it's annoying to be caught so easily by it, the bigger issue is the metal and rubber contraption before her now. "I ain't afraid of falling. This is just—stupid. You're stupid."

"It's fun," He says evenly. "I won't make you do it, but you did want to hang out today." He holds out a hand to her. "C'mon, coward."

Her nostrils flare, and Toph's mouth presses in a thin, furious line. Asshole, goading her like this. Toph can't refuse. She takes his hand and lets him instruct her how to balance on the bar across the back wheel. There's very little room, and this can't possibly be safe. Her hands find his shoulders for support, and she squeezes him until he winces. "I better not regret this, Snoozles."

"You're still using that nickname?" Shinsou asks under his breath. He begins to push on the pedals and they drift forward. "So childish, Beifong."

"I'll call you whatever I want, dick."

He pushes them to move faster, and Toph lets out an involuntary squeak as she's pulled forward. Shinsou laughs wickedly. "Oh my god, that was cute, you're like a kitten—ow, shit, don't pull my hair!"

"Don't call me cute!" Toph threatens, but her voice is tight and high, and sounds more like a whine.

"We'll crash if you keep that up, kitten," he cackles, and then they both yelp in fear when he swerves the bike, but Shinsou's scream devolves into laughter while Toph just focuses on not slipping off the tiny metal bar saving her from disaster.

Trees whiz by, rustling in their wake. It's different to hear bugs and plants rush by, compared to the hum of buildings and people and machinery when she's driven through the city. The gears and chains clink in a softer buzz beneath her trainers, and she can still sense the ground rumble under the wheels, though she can't tell much about what lies ahead.

"How far do you plan on going?" Toph asks, trying to relax. They're moving pretty fast, and they'll blow past the farthest they've walked on this trail soon.

"You might be a faster runner, but I've got more endurance. I could do this for hours," he brags, and Toph just rolls her eyes.

"Yeah, not happening…" Toph snipes back, spitting hair out of her mouth. She likes the sounds in the bike trail much more than the city, she's just hearing more of it at once. The wind isn't bad, though she wishes she'd thought to tie back her bangs properly so she would stop eating hair.

Overall… not terrible. "You okay, Beifong?" Shinsou asks over the wind in her ears.

"It's fine," she admits ruefully.

"Obviously, but that's not what I meant," Shinsou answers, only slightly winded from pedaling. "You've been distracted basically all day, what's up?"

Her mouth curves into a frown. So he had noticed. "Weird dream."

Shinsou doesn't answer immediately. "You're all glum because of a dream? Seriously?"

She resists punching him, if only to avoid a crash. Toph doesn't really want to talk about the 'what-if' scenario in her head, but it occurs to her that there was a choice she made few people even knew about, least of all Aiko's son. So before really thinking over her words, she asks, "Shinsou, did they ever tell you what Umeko was doing before the raid?"

"Huh?" He jolts back, startling Toph. "Beifong, what're you—ah!" Shinsou slams hard on the brakes, throwing Toph forward in a horrified scream as she clings to his neck. "Hey—stop it—get off me—!"

Toph staggers to the ground instantly, straightening her shirt angrily. She scrapes her leg in the process, but it's the abruptness that makes her lose her cool. "You little shit!" She shrieks, fists clenches and ready to punch him in his stupid face.

"You're the little shit! Why would you spring that on me while I'm steering?" Shinsou exclaims, untangling from his bike and setting it on the side of the path.

"I don't know! I just thought of it now, okay?!" Toph yells back, rubbing her chin where she smacked it against his skull.

"What does that mean?" Shinsou gasps for breath, rubbing his head in equal measure. "What does it matter what she was doing, why're you bring it up?"

"I was getting to that," Toph hisses through clenched teeth, still catching her breath. "It's a long story. But Umeko—she… she released me on her own. She didn't plan on turning herself in or getting the police involved, but she saw a way out for me and I—I almost took it."

Slowly, they both settle down enough to stop glaring and yelling. Shinsou takes a slow inhale, and on the exhale, asks, "What was your plan?"

Shouto would judge her, even if he didn't mean to. Inasa would worry about her. But Shinsou, whose mother was just as twisted as Toph's, who used his quirk teasingly and toed the line like her because it was naturally how his quirk worked—He might understand.

Or not. But either way, Toph is tired of pretending it all never happened.

So she tells him everything, from the moment her parents started controlling her to the last time she went to the Quirk Rumble. She tells him about begging Loban to let her fight despite her age, just desperate for the chance even if she had to give up all the prize money and build free stadiums for him.

She tells him about Hotshot, who offered her a way out when it seemed like no one else cared. It makes her feel odd to recount it now, especially once she describes her final conversation with the confusing, fiery teenager. Toph doesn't say his name, but the incongruity of her interactions with Touya grates on her mind.

"You feel bad about what's happening to this Hotshot," Snoozles surmises quickly. "But if he doesn't want help, there's nothing for you do about it." Toph agrees, but she doesn't have to like it. But it's nice to know he agrees.

Finally, Toph tells him about Aiko's last words to her—frenetic, confusing, but certain of her crumbling morals and what little life she had left to shield from her actions.

"She mentioned me?" Shinsou interrupts her again, his voice small and hesitant.

"You said you and your dad never knew anything about what she was doing," Toph says softly. "She was serious about keeping you out of it, even if she was… well…"

"A psychopath," Shinsou finishes dryly, but he sniffles rather conspicuously and drags a hand over his face. "I never imagined it was… that's definitely enough shit to mess you up, but I'm glad you told me, I guess."

"Yeah, well," Toph gestures vaguely, trying to pull back some semblance of indifference back into herself, even though explaining it all makes her itchy from the inside out, like she swallowed a cactus and laid down on a bed of needles to digest. "Just don't go blabbing about it, I haven't even told the Izumis about it."

"Aw, and here I was excited to tell all my friends about this," Shinsou says in a lazy drawl true to form, leaned against a tree like he owned the whole forest.

"Shut it, Snoozles," Toph throws back at him, a little harsher than she means to, still so full of sharp edges and prickly emotions—falling off the bike didn't help—that she continues, "Since when do you have other friends besides me?"

"I don't. Have any other friends." His answering tone is frank and simple, so unexpectedly vulnerable that she accepts it with the same grace she'd accept a knock-out punch in the face from her 2 year old brother. Shinsou pauses long enough for that to sink into the tense space between them. "You're the only person that doesn't treat me like I'm about to snap. I—that means a lot to me and—I'm not about to trash the one person that took a chance on me."

Shinsou's answer fills her with a confusing blend of relief and pure, unadulterated anger. "That's fucked too," spills from her mouth with the unrelenting force of a landslide, gritty and startling.

"What?" He gapes, taking a turn at being caught off his guard.

"You don't owe me anything," Toph proclaims, only just stopping herself from stomping her foot plaintively. "People are asshats for thinking you're dangerous."

"Well, yeah—" he says haltingly.

"Yeah, so don't act like it doesn't matter because you're afraid to upset me," Toph snaps, not really sure where her anger is coming from anymore. "Trash me all you want. I made some shit decisions and I-I'm a criminal-for-using-my-quirk-like-that, I know that and so do you, so don't coddle me over this—"

"I'm not coddling you, what the hell?" Shinsou finally raises his voice over hers, pushing off from the tree. "Toph, all that you did—that doesn't make you a criminal. That was—that was survival."

Toph glares, befuddled. "What part of 'I beat up full grown men for a crowd' screams survival to you?"

"The part where your crazy parents were trying to hide you and your quirk from the whole world," Shinsou exclaims, "The part where my mom tried to alter your own sense of self, and you fought it in the only way you knew how!" He seizes her by the shoulders firmly. "That's how you coped, Beifong. Not even Endeavor was able to fight her. Maybe it was illegal, and it's definitely stupid to re-analyze your every choice—but of course you joined the Rumble. You hung onto the one thing you still wanted, when every other choice was being controlled by AV."

She's never considered it that way, and she resists it even as she's relieved at Shinsou for saying it. "I miss it sometimes," she argues quietly. "Even with everything I've been given since then… I should be more grateful. I shouldn't miss it."

His hold on her loosens, but he doesn't back off. "Can't you be both? Miss what you had, and look forward to your future? I miss my mom all the time, even now that I know all the things she did. For me it wasn't all bad, and I want that part of my life back." He takes a breath. "But if we went back to that… you'd never become a hero. Neither would I."

And Toph desperately needs to become a hero. She knows that much about herself. She can't see herself doing anything but fight… the Rumble was fun, but it wasn't fulfilling. She knows what it feels like to be saved, by Endeavor, by the Izumi family. If she could give other people just a fraction of the relief and safety she's been given—if she could stop other kids from ever being targets or victims of villainous people like Aiko and Amon's Vision…

Maybe when she first thought of becoming a hero with Inasa it was a fanciful thing. Not anymore.

"Yeah," she says lamely, head tilting downward. "I… you're right. This was…" She pulls back from him with a huff. "I already know all that. This was a stupid talk."

"Only a little stupid," Shinsou replies easily. "Can't believe I'm the one that has to say the cheesy bit, but—it's not a question of if we become heroes. It's when. So… stop daydreaming about running away with some Hotshot bad boy," he delivers with a flourish, and she can practically hear the cheshire grin on his face.

Toph makes a sharp noise of dissent, and tries to punch Shinsou again, but she's facing him head on and he had plenty of time to catch her arm. "I don't daydream, definitely not about some fire asshole," she asserts pointedly, twisting out of his grip. She heads for his bike, if only to escape Shinsou's relentless wisecracks now that they're no longer dwelling on heavier topics. "Let's keep moving, see if you actually have any endurance, Snoozles."

Shinsou scoffs, but picks up the bike and helps her balance on the back wheel once more without any further stupid comments. At least, it seems like it until they're going full-speed on the bicycle and he feels safe enough to bother her some more.

"So who do you daydream about, kitten? Me? That airbender kid?" Toph lets out a frustrated growl, unable to properly smack him. "That's still adorable, it's like you're purring."

"Shinsou, I swear to god, I swear to All Might—" The bike swerves dangerously and Toph screams again, clinging Shinsou's neck while he laughs. That was on purpose. "I'm going to murder you! I'm gonna break your neck—"

"Then why do you keep hugging me?" He asks, even though the answer is infuriatingly apparent.

"Why do you keep comparing me to a cat?" Toph quips back, eyes narrowed. "Trying to tell me you're a furry?"

"What—" Shinsou splutters, completely taken aback, but at least he doesn't swerve the bike again. "Where'd you even learn that word? I'm not a furry—"

"Oh ho, that sounds a whole lot like denial," she points out smugly, delighted to finally get a reaction out of him. Toph's usually the one to be provoked first. She can thank Natsuo for teaching her weird things. "The first step is acknowledging the problem, Shinsou."

"Shut up," he grumbles, clearly still insulted.

"You started it," Toph declares with a grin. "Don't dish it if you can't take it, kitten."


A/N: So here's the long-awaited talk with Touya. Not sure I made Hotshot mean enough lol, but I'll attribute that to age.

It kinda got flirty at the end and the dialogue flew out of my hands, (Shinsou has in common with Todoroki that he can provoke Toph instantly) so there's that, but I'll be clear and say I haven't chosen an end pairing for this.