Walking through the house, Toph let out a sigh. How had a simple trip to the store turned into so much more then that? Apparently people from Shampoo's past had managed to find her but the girl froze up after meeting them. Meanwhile, she almost got into a fight with them herself, thinking they had caused their memory loss. Anger boiled within her at the memory of Ranma taking a blow for her before she even noticed someone was there. Her attention at the time was too focused on having found someone that knew something about her past. Judging from how the old lady on the stick reacted to her name, she knew something about her. Toph was sure of this fact.

She shook her head to clear her thoughts. She was sure that Nodoka would clear everything up in no time. For now she just had to work on something that she had been planning to when she got back anyway.

Grabbing Ryoga from the living room where he was watching TV, she took the formerly Eternal Lost Boy (formerly because he wasn't 'Eternally' lost anymore, just 'frequently') outside to the Dojo where they entered a roofless room. She closed the door behind them, flipping down the sign with the flick of her wrist hitting the stone wall so that the sign on the door which read 'Earthbenders Training Session DO NOT DISTURB' was clearly visible for all to see (maybe not ALL, but Toph was in there already so didn't really count), while Ryoga locked the door.

"Ok Ryoga, you go over there and do it exactly as you talked about earlier," Toph told him.

"Are you sure this is really a good idea?" Ryoga asked as he sat on a levitating piece of rock surrounded by a lot of basketball sized rocks.

"I am sure! Just get ready do it already!" she told him, looking in the wrong direction.

"Fine just remember that you owe me if Ranma comes after me for this," he told her.

"He was the one that brought this up in the first place so why should he be mad about it," the blind bender said.

True enough this was something Ranma had brought up as Toph seemed to be very good at defending herself against all other types of benders, especially earth and firebenders; however, he noticed there was one type of bender she had little to no defense against. That being airbenders like himself, since most of her abilities, even her sight itself, relied on not only herself but her opponent being on the ground as well. Attacks launched from mid air were her weakness, as she could defend herself against air attacks that were launched from the ground or from a person that jumped off from the ground. Do it from mid air and her reaction time was considerably slower than normal.

According to what Ranma thought, Toph must have come from somewhere that did not have that many airbenders, thus she never really had to worry too much about how to defend herself against them and attacks that took advantage of her sight's biggest 'blind' spot.

Though it was a rough idea, Toph came up with something that might help increase her ability to fight against hostile airbenders trying to take advantage of her inability to react to mid air attacks fast enough. She stomped down hard on the ground in a manner that would normally kick up some rock, but rather then rock a dust cloud surrounded her. She could control dust after all, so why not try using it as extension of the earth to allow her to 'see' what came into the cloud? If she could keep control of the dust cloud itself, then more then a simple gust of wind would be needed to blow it away.

Seeing that as the signal to start, Ryoga started hurling the basketball sized rocks he had into the dust cloud as fast as he could.

That is, until someone excitedly opened the door, ignoring the sign and entering the room anyway.

"Hey guys I want to…." Shampoo started to say before she noticed one of the basketball sized rock was about to strike her.

Before it could, Toph moved in the way, taking the hit so the rock fell to the ground a pile of rubble.

"Ryoga didn't you lock the door behind you!" she yelled in the completely wrong direction as she released the dust cloud from her control and Ryoga let his floating rock hit the ground.

"Of course I did. I checked the door twice before we got started as other than you and me the only person who could take one of those hits and keep going is Ranma," he told her.

"That was my fault; I unlocked the door myself," Mousse told them.

"Oh it's you again. What do you want?" Toph asked in an annoyed manner.

"Hey! This is my childhood best friend here. I don't go around treating Ranma like that do I?" the purple haired waterbender snapped, offended at her blind friend's tone.

"Whatever. If you are trying to introduce to him, then I am Toph and this here is Ryoga Hibiki and we're both earthbenders. There, introductions are over so now I would like to get back to my training," she said.

"So this is why you've been locking the door while training with Ryoga lately. Pretty interesting that you listened to my suggestion," Ranma said.

Though everyone else could see exactly where Ranma was, Toph was completely unaware. Thus when she quickly turned in the direction she heard his voice she stuck her head into the center of a sphere made entirely of air.

At that she just froze up and became stiff as a board, just standing there, not moving at all. Seeing that he had gotten the wrong reaction from his close friend Ranma hopped off the sphere of air

He started waving his hand in front of Toph's face. She might be blind but waving a hand in front of her face still gets her attention and annoys her at the same time. This time, however, it wasn't working. She just stood there with that unchanging shocked expression on her face.

"Hey Toph! You okay?" Ranma asked.

When she didn't respond he canceled the technique and placed his hands on her shoulders. She just continued to stand there in a daze; not even responding when her arms were raised.

While Toph stood there completely ignorant to all those around her, inside her mind she was experiencing a flashback triggered by Ranma's usage of the air scooter technique.

Mental images were arranging themselves inside her head. However, because she had been born blind and she was never actually able to see anything her mind began confusing an important figure from her forgotten past with an equally important person in her new life here.

Ranma was about to run off to get his mom when Toph grabbed his arm.

"Where the hell are you going, Fancy Dancer? We got training to do," Toph said glaring at him.

At this Ryoga and the others just looked at Ranma, trying to hold in the laughter at him being called that by Toph. The reason they were holding back though was because there was something clearly off about how Toph was acting at the moment.

"Well are you just going to stand there all day or are you going to get into your horse stance already?" She said sighing before adding, "I thought you got over these problem of yours after I stole your staff and the whole mess with Meathead.

"Speaking of Meathead, why does he have boobs? And what's-" Toph stopped and shook her head, slowly reaching up to massage her temples. She blinked a few times before returning to her normal posture. "Huh! What's going on here?" She asked curiously.

"Toph, Are you OK again?" Ranma asked worriedly. Whatever just happened to her was far from normal.

"Of course I am fine. Why wouldn't I be? And what's the big idea sneaking up behind me like that," she growled angrily.

"You don't remember about the….yeah we barely noticed him ourselves. He really shocked us as well," Mousse said. He changed his original thoughts after seeing Shampoo's getting angry over what he was going to say.

"Whatever. Since your arms seem better now and you managed to find out about this, help me with the training I thought up. I need a real airbender to see where I can improve now that I got the basics of it down," she said.

'That move must have something to do with her past otherwise she wouldn't have frozen up or acted like that' Ranma thought, making a mental note not to use it again around her for awhile.

"Just what were you doing anyway?" Shampoo asked out of curiosity.

"Anti-Air Training," Toph replied.

"You're training to make moves for defending against air attacks? How?" Shampoo asked again, interested in how Toph could make up something to defend against moves she could not really see.

"Probably by closing her eyes while within a dust cloud or something," Ranma said as he got what was probably the basics of this training.

"You are blind, right?" Mousse asked knowing it was a dumb question but he just had to do it.

"Oh wow. I am blind. Guess that's why everything is so black. Thanks a lot Captain Obvious," she told him.

"Have you all noticed that for someone that's blind Toph never closes her eyes expect to go to sleep or when she's unconscious? She can not see with her eyes and normally blind people have their eyes closed, at least most of the ones that I've seen before did," Ranma pointed out.

To this everyone nodded their heads in agreement. Even Mousse did, despite having just run into Toph today.

"Thus Ranma suggested to me what would happen if I actually did close my eyes and apparently doing so increases my seismic sense. It seems that while I can't see with my eyes they still have their purpose in a way. The simple act of opening and closing them can effect how good my seismic sense is. So with my increased seismic sense I can actually tell where things are within a dust cloud, even if they are launched from the air. Though it's still a work in progress," Toph explained. "This could also help me become a better martial artist as well as increase my focus," she added.

"Better? You already can fight on an even level with Ranma," Shampoo said.

"Only in mixed fighting where bending is involved. If we were to fight with just pure martial arts Toph would match up with Akane. Toph and I are such good sparing partners because we're each others opposites, and not just as benders. Toph is the better bender and I am the better martial artist so by sparring with each other we improve upon our skills overall," Ranma explained.

"Well—now that is over—everyone out as I do not want a repeat of what almost happened to Shampoo. She was lucky I was able to prevent her from getting hit. The next time there's no guarantee I will be able to do it again," the blind bender told everyone, pushing them out of the door.

"I got this Ryoga so you can go. Besides there's something Aura wanted to show you. Something she thought up while she was working on healing my arms," Ranma said.

Ryoga simply nodded but with his eyes gestured over to Toph with a slightly worried expression on his face. To which Ranma replied with one of his own that said not to worry about her.

Both boys caught rocks that were aimed at their heads by the slightly annoyed Toph who was glaring in their general direction.

"I thought we agreed you all were going to stop doing that around me," she said rather pissed off. She could read a lot about a person with her seismic sense; however, facial expressions were beyond her range as she just could not effectively 'see' them clearly. Thus they developed this way to convey certain things to each other without her being fully aware of what was going on.

As Ranma and Toph trained he could not help but get the nagging feeling that the name Toph called him, and her mistaking Shampoo for a guy she called Meathead, were not going to be one time things. Apparently they had something to do with her past. The question was, what?
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I would like to thank:

Ryuus2, scabrera1234, OBSERVER01, Hanzo of the Salamander, and GraysonPaladin for reviewing this story

Echo Uchiha for reviewing Chapter 01-42 for reviewing this story

Monkeyrevenge for adding this story to their Story Alert List

Monkeyrevenge and Lord Mortensen for adding this story to their Favorite Story List