Saturday, May 25th, 3021
The Wilderness North-East of Omashu, Earth Kingdom
11:12 AM
Entrenched within the arms of an enormous mountain range littered with a mass gathering of thick forestry was a curvaceous, winding path that sliced its way through the dense trees. The earth was rough and gravelly throughout the region, but especially so at the worn path wrapped in the boughs of overhanging trees and pervasive branches—constant use of the trail had hewn sharp scars into the land and crushed any of Nature's attempts to retake the soil.
Vibrating carpets of life and their vivacious sounds abounded the environment, omnipresent and enchanting in the eternal symphony of the natural world. Birds and small animal life twittered and cried from their unseen perches, their individual sounds blending together like an orchestra of nature.
Towering above them all, titanic mountains hovered even higher in the distance, their jagged peaks stretched up beyond the cover of the clouds and into the heavens themselves. Their weathered visages were testaments to the obstinate nature of stone as they stood proudly even after the ravages of time and the elements.
She could feel it.
She could feel every single breath of air taken in by the animals around her, the pounding of tiny hearts, swift and furious as they engaged in the eternal struggle for the right to exist. For all the peaceful tranquility imbued into their surroundings, she could feel the fierce undercurrents of the most ancient of all competitions thrumming on the earth beneath her feet.
This was freedom. True freedom.
Not the festering sore of pollution and degradation that the corrupted city of Omashu had presented her. Nor was it the forcefully tamed and subdued nature, brutalized by human hands, which had visited her in the gardens of her home in Gaoling.
It was wild, untamed, and unfettered—just as how she always longed to be.
She smiled, a simple expression that struggled to express the triumphant exhilaration rushing through her.
All because of him, the little fleet-footed curiosity that lagged behind her.
Toph cocked her head curiously, her victorious smile morphing into an impish grin.
'Come to think of it…He's kinda slow.' She thought, reaching her senses behind her and trying to sense her distant companion.
Pound. Pound. Pound.
The flicker of a branch—shoved aside, discarded, disposed of…
The swift, blazing path of sprinting feet, a zephyr treading up a cloud of loose dust into the air.
Panting.
Harsh panting.
…
"Stop lazing around and HURRY UP, Twinkle Toes!"
Huff Puff. Huff Puff.
An irritated glare of gray eyes burning against a figure dressed in green and black.
"I am, Toph! Maybe you should slow down a bit!"
A disgusted snort emitted from the figure running ahead at a steady, rapid pace, followed by a sarcastic retort.
"Me? Slow down? Weren't you the one complaining about going too slowly earlier? Or is this blind little girl too much for you?"
Aggravated grinding of teeth.
"…Yea, well…It's not my fault I didn't know where you wanted to go! You never told me!"
A devious smirk fluttered across those pink lips as Toph turned her head back at the lagging figure behind her, with his face sweating bullets and a blazing heat emitting like an aura around him.
"Hehehe, it's not my fault you airbenders finish up so fast, quickshot."
A stunned, disbelieving silence, broken only by the steady pounding of feet against rock.
"Wha—Was…wait, uh, I—w-w-WHAT?"
Aang felt like he could die of embarrassment right there, he could feel the steaming blood shooting up his head and making him rather faint. 'Quickshot? Is she…Did she really just SAY that?'
Toph slowed to a stop in front of him, gifting him with a sly smile that tried—but failed—to look even slightly innocent. Aang quickly caught up to her and leaned heavily on a nearby tree, desperately trying to catch his breath.
"What? I was just saying that you took off sprinting so fast and burned out, you gotta pace yourself better, you know?…" She said, lifting her hands in a mockery of innocence.
A mischievous grin suddenly burst out at those lips, revealing pearly teeth that seemed to gleam menacingly in the broad, late morning light.
"…Or did you think I was saying something else, hmm, Twinkle Toes?"
She leaned in accusingly, her mischeivous eyes gleaming with repressed laughter.
"A—uh…erm—Aa-err…"
Toph snickered, this kid was pure gold. He was so easy; she'd never heard anything's heartbeat pulsate so rapidly in her entire life.
Aang was speechless, his mind had just been completely blown to pieces and he couldn't muster anything up to say anymore. He could feel his head getting even hotter, if that was possible at this point, until it felt like his head was a blazing furnace.
Toph waited for Aang's response as he began to calm down but Aang remained too flustered to even attempt to muster a response and the silence stretched out awkwardly between the two friends as they stood pointlessly in the rocky wilderness.
Toph, as usual, was the first to break the uncomfortable stillness that had settled between them, by slamming her fist into Aang chest and sending him tumbling onto the floor.
"HEY! Oww!"
"Come on, Twinkles, stop slacking off. You got the break you wanted, so hurry up—let's go!" She admonished, her voice cutting off Aang sudden protests of pain.
Grumbling about overly bossy earthbenders, Aang stumbled to his feet and took the lead, trying to ignore the steady burning of his legs and the enormous bruise no doubt forming on his chest.
Then an odd revelation settled over him, followed by a sense of uncertainty.
"Hey…wait. Toph, where are we supposed to be going, again?"
An exasperated sigh.
"You know, Twinkle Toes? It's times like these that I wonder how you can even find the bathroom in your own house."
"Oh, really? Wh—HEY! What's that supposed to mean!"
"We're here!" Toph shouted, a brilliant smile making its way onto her face as she gazed into the brilliantly illuminated tunnel just in front of them.
Well, 'brilliantly illuminated' for her, at least.
Aang looked at her oddly, his normal eyes unable to pierce through layers upon layers of solid rock.
"What're you talking about? All I see are a bunch of rocks…"
And indeed it was.
Ever since they escaped the streets of Omashu, Toph had been leading Aang through a winding dirt road that cut a swath straight through the dense leafy wilderness and into the large mountain range that backed the city of Omashu. It had led them into an earthen pathway guarded on both sides by two towering cliff sides that shadowed the valley-like dirt road. Toph had claimed the path made an easy shortcut straight through the Omashu mountain range, but said path was now entirely blocked off by an enormous barricade of broken boulders—no doubt the result of some sort of avalanche that had collapsed on the path.
Toph rolled his eyes at him,
"Don't be silly, Twinkle Toes. I'm an earthbender, remember?"
With that, Toph shoved her fist straight through the craggy pile of rocks, as easily if she was merely pushing her hand through a thin film water. The staggered pile burst apart at her touch, the rocks tumbling around them like a waterfall of rolling stones that curved and flowed around her gracefully.
A sudden gust of bitterly stale air blew over them as the air within the cave depressurized.
Aang shivered anxiously, they were going into the mountain? The idea of being surrounded on all sides by stifling rock, with the potential threat of the entire mountain collapsing at any moment, send a thrill of irrational fear jumping down his spine.
Or, as Toph would say, his spineless back.
"Why are we going in there? It's waaaay too dark, and cramped. No thanks, I'm perfectly fine here in the open air, thank you very much."
Aang found himself slamming onto the rocky floor again, painfully, as he felt Toph's annoyed glare burning into his back.
'For the Spirit's sake, why does she always do that?'
"Stop whining. The place is awesome! I can feel the vibrations of everything here, so it's not like we'll get lost or anything." Toph enthused, her eagerness to delve into the heart of oppressive darkness infectious to anyone who wasn't Aang.
Aang grumbled from his spot on the floor, but couldn't put up much of a fight as Toph grabbed him by the hand and dragged him across the floor and into the darkness.
"Butbutbut…Whyyyy hereeee?"
Sigh.
"Because we're being followed, moron."
A large circle of twelve men dressed in emerald robes and a large conical hats covering their faces stood on a cliff side overlooking much of the mountain range, their green uniforms blending in with the dense underbrush of the wilderness.
One of the robed men, completely identical to rest of his colleagues except for a tiny bronze eye embossed onto the emerald Li that rested on his head, stepped forward into the circle, snapped off a practiced salute and spoke in a cool, but urgent tone.
"Sir, it is as Sir Long Feng suspected. The Bei Fong girl and the boy are entering the Cave of Two Lovers as we speak."
Another agent in the ring, this one baring a small silver spiral on his headgear, snorted derisively,
"Of course, Long Feng is correct. It's basic psychology. The Bei Fong girl has been here before, so it is inevitable that she would choose to hide where she feels most comfortable. She believes it to be her 'home-turf', so to speak."
The agent beside him, having nothing more than a simple gold triangle stamped on his Li, chided the spiral-bearing agent,
"Relax. He's not paid to think, or analyze. His job is just to report, there's no need to dig into him. In fact, it would be most unprofessional for him to color his observations with his own theories."
The admonished man stiffened almost imperceptibly, the silent jab having not gone unnoticed.
"So? What's the plan?" spoke another agent impatiently, this one with a bronze fist imprinted onto his Li—the most common symbol out of all of the men gathered in the clearing.
The agent with the golden triangle glanced sharply at all of them,
"Division C, I want you to follow them into the caves and do your best to force them toward the main exit—don't let them escape through any other way.
At his command, four men with bronze fists imprinted onto their Li's sunk into the earth, disappearing entirely in a few short moments.
"The rest of you, come with me. We've got a trap to set up."
"So, Toph…Why were those guys looking for you, again?"
Aang felt the tiny hand grasping his arm stiffen uncomfortably.
They had been wandering the tunnels of the cave in total darkness for a while, since both of them had neglected to bring flashlights or glow sticks in their harried escape from Omashu.
For the past hour or so, Aang had been filling the air with mindless chatter and pointless conversation—anything to get his mind off of the choking pitch-black darkness he found himself surrounded in—and Toph had obliged him by answering his small talk, letting them grow into full-blown conversations and allowing him to feebly try to distract himself from the fact that he was walking in complete darkness and guided by nothing more than a single hand held by a blind little girl.
Well, a blind little girl who could crush him into pulp with a flick of her wrist and who's vibration vision allowed her to constantly 'see' in a three-hundred and sixty degrees radius and was fully capable of observing every square inch of the cavern no matter how far they were from it or what stood in the way.
And thus could navigate the caves far more adeptly than even the most experienced tour guide navigating through a flat, empty patch of dirt in broad daylight.
But that was a minor, irrelevant detail.
Anyway, what was I asking Toph again?
Oh right. Those weird sunglasses guys back in Omashu.
Aang couldn't see anything, but he could practically hear the frown that made its way onto Toph's face.
"It's none of your business, Aang." She said stubbornly, her voice becoming rigid and leaving no room for argument.
Aang frowned uncharacteristically, his usual upbeat mood soured by the stifling stone walls and the blinding darkness that encaged him.
According to Toph, they had run into these horrible caves because they were being followed, most likely by the same people who had confronted them in Omashu.
These would be the very same people who were looking to return Toph 'home'.
If he was risking being stuck in these caves, he at least wanted to know why, damn it.
"I think it becomes my business when they're chasing after the both of us." Aang pointed out, a hint of annoyance creeping into his voice.
Toph scowled, forgetting that Aang was depending on her guiding hand, pulled her hand from his to cross her arms in agitation.
In this darkness, however, Aang couldn't see that—all he knew was that Toph's hand was suddenly gone, and he was stumbling in the darkness without direction.
He couldn't help it—Aang panicked. The idea of wandering around these cavernous halls, alone, blind, and lost in a place where he could never feel the liberating breath of a passing breeze of fresh air nor see and experience the vast, incomprehensible heights to which the cerulean sky stretched was an unimaginable fate for Aang—it was his own personal Hell.
He would rather kill himself than stay in these tunnels forever.
"Toph? TOPH! Toph, where are you? I can't see!" He cried, all vestiges of his pride and composure evaporating into pure, adulterate panic as he flailed uselessly in the shadows, hoping to bump into her by chance.
Toph, only a few steps ahead of him, blinked in confusion, and then nearly slapped herself in shame.
'How could I have forgotten? This is a cave, Twinkles can't see in caves…'
A bitter, far more vindictive part of her felt like just leaving Aang in the dark—see how long he lasted in her world for once, and then maybe he'd stop prying into her life—but she shut it away without bothering to even consider it.
Aang was her friend, and friends don't abandon each other like that—no matter how annoying they were.
"TOPH! Please! Toph—!"
She reached out and grabbed Aang's arm again, ignoring the violent twitch of fear and paranoia that had suddenly erupted in Aang's body, and sent his already rapid heart into erratic spasms.
"…Sorry about that, Twinkles. I forgot…" She apologized, embarrassed and slightly shameful at the treasonous thoughts that had arisen in her mind, even for a brief moment.
'What kind of friend am I?' She thought sorrowfully. She knew what being blind felt like—heck, she had spent every moment of her short life being blind, trapped in her own personal darkness—but being blind without her vibration sight?
That was Hell.
Toph remembered what that felt like, she had just felt it on the bus just yesterday. It was a desolate world, something not worth living in—complete isolation from everyone around you, no matter how physically close they may be, and absolute dependency on those few people kind enough to lend a hand.
She wouldn't wish it on anyone, not even on her worst enemies—not that she had any, really, but that wasn't the point.
For Spirit's sake! This was her first friend, damn it!
'What's WRONG with me?'
Toph, distracted with a bubbling well of guilt and remorse, was thus entirely unprepared when she felt Aang wrap her into a sudden, desperate hug. His heart, which had been pounding itself into a maddened frenzy, suddenly slowed into a much more normal pace as Aang clung to her, seemingly trying to convince himself that she was really there.
Toph, despite the blood suddenly rushing to her head and the terribly awkward feeling of being hugged, allowed him to cling to her for a while longer.
She understood his need to reassure himself of her presence—she'd done the same thing in the bus too.
"S'ok, Toph…just promise me you won't do that again…" He was murmuring quietly into her hair and…
'Is he…crying?' Toph wondered, thinking she felt some pinpricks of water grace her bangs.
Squashing the instinctive urge to tease him for it, Toph pulled him a little closer to her. She was the one who'd made him feel like this, so she should have to deal with the consequences.
"I promise, Aang."
They stood there for just a moment more before Toph gently pushed him away, the pressure from all the blood rising to her face was becoming too much for her to bear—not that Aang could see it, luckily.
Toph grabbed him by the wrist and started trekking down the cave tunnels again but this time they walked in silence, Aang being too scared of annoying her to continue with his line of inquiry.
…
"I ran away from home." She answered, not really knowing why she was suddenly deciding to answer his question but only knowing that it helped ease the guilt in her.
"Why?"
Aang couldn't imagine it. Why would anyone run away from the place where they were loved by their parents, and had all their needs and wants cared for?
'Why?' That was a good question.
"My parents, they always…I don't know. They cared too much." She fumbled, trying to explain her reasoning to such a simple, but penetrating question.
'They cared too much? How can someone ever care enough?' Aang thought, frowning.
Toph scowled at herself. Her explanation was stupid, pathetic even. There was no doubt in her mind that Aang wouldn't understand a word of what she just said—he would hear it, there was no question about that, but he wouldn't understand.
She scrambled to express herself adequately, trying to consolidate all of her fragmented and contrasting emotions into something tangible.
"They would always treat me like this helpless little girl who couldn't do anything, could never accomplish anything in her life. Someone who always needed to be looked out for, cared for, and constantly watched over."
Ah. Now, Aang understood. Toph was fiercely independent, and it riled her to no end whenever people thought she needed help just because she was blind. From what he knew of her, anything that would imply that she needed help was humiliation, it was scorning all the strength she had worked so hard to earn and ignoring especially her gift of vibration sight.
'No wonder,' Aang thought, 'That kind of pity must've constantly driven her over the edge. She probably couldn't stand being in there any longer.'
The silence stretched out a little longer as Aang mused over what she said, trying to understand everything from Toph's point of view, but, as it dragged on, she took his silence as incomprehension.
'Damn it, I'm not good at mushy stuff like this.' She grumbled internally, annoyed at her apparent inability to express herself, 'Well. I tried. If Twinkles doesn't get it, that's his problem, not mine.'
Thump. Step. Step.
Aang turned suspiciously at the sound suddenly echoing in the once silent halls.
"What was that?" He whispered to Toph.
Toph hushed him, slowing to a stop and focusing on the gentle whisper of the earth beneath her. She stretched her awareness as far as she could, trying to ignore the pounding Aang's beating heart pulsating just beneath the warm skin of the hand she was holding.
The earth vibrated lucidly to her once more, painting a picture of overhanging walls of stone and a nigh-endless labyrinth of shifting corridors teaming with small animal life. She felt the clinking footsteps of a battalion of ants crawling beneath the soil and the heady pounding of the hearts of an entire colony of wolfbats beating in unison.
The vibrations rang out further, bringing tidings of a sole exit on the far side of the mountain, past a chamber of sculpted rock, smooth and unnatural but beautiful all the same with its gracefully twisting forms and inscriptions, which lay not too far away from where they were.
And…there!
Four human heartbeats thrummed with a quiet power and grace as they crawled on the ceiling and walked on the walls of the cavern, their footsteps almost imperceptibly stealthy.
They had snuck up on them, and were already uncomfortably close.
It was a chilling thought, she wouldn't have felt them if she hadn't been entirely engulfed in her own element.
Aang saw it too—tiny little orbs of green light glowing far away in the distance like twinkling stars in a sea of darkness, and felt a thrill of fear shudder its way up his spine.
He had no idea how their pursuers could see in this pitch-black darkness with such scant light, but they were closing in surprisingly rapidly and he knew that if it ever came to a confrontation in these halls, he would be severely impaired—if not entirely defenseless.
Toph turned, grinding her foot into the stone floor and lifting her arms—bringing Aang's right arm up as well—towards the ceiling before bringing her arms crashing down.
The cave walls trembled at her motions, the once sturdy tunnel ceiling collapsing into a rockslide as stalactites and jagged boulders broke loose from the ceiling and came crashing down onto the space between them and their pursuers—forming an enormous barricade of crashing stones that separated the two parties. The crushing rocks kicked up a thick, choking dust cloud that stifled the air around them.
'Follow us through that.' Toph thought smugly, smirking at the mountainous pile of rocks that blocked the tunnel way.
She pulled Aang forward again but stopped momentarily in shock when the ground behind them suddenly trembled threateningly in the tell-tale signs of earthbending. Suddenly, boulders were being violently ejected from their positions on the barricade, smashing into the tunnel walls and narrowly missing the two rogue Benders.
Toph felt a flash of horror jolt through her tiny body.
These were earthbenders. Enemy earthbenders.
And there was only one agency that had access to fully trained earthbenders.
The Dai Li.
Toph swore virulently, prompting Aang to glance at her with a kind of surprised stupor.
The plan that she had quietly constructed in her head on their escape from Omashu was suddenly shattered into a thousand pieces. She hadn't accounted for the possibility that the Dai Li would already be on their trail so soon after their escape—didn't they have anything better to do?—and had banked on the hope that their pursuers would be her father's agents, the Bei Fong guards.
Guards that would have been easily disposed of when surrounded by her element.
But now, it wasn't their enemies that were surrounded in Toph's element—it was Toph and Aang surrounded by the element of their enemies.
Suddenly the Cave of Two Lovers, once what she considered to be her own impregnable fortress against their pursuers, felt like a lethal trap slamming shut on her.
Toph pounded down the hallway with Aang in tow, determined to lose the Dai Li agents in the winding halls of the cavern.
She hated the idea of running away, like some pansy little girl, but she knew she couldn't fight them all, not with Twinkles blind and useless in this place. These were the Dai Li, one of the Earth Kingdom's most elite agents and were both highly trained and heavily armed.
But she would be damned before she would let the Dai Li subject them to whatever plans they had in store for rogue Benders like the two of them.
The slab of rock, seemingly obstinate and immovable, felt like a tender seedling ready to be shredded by a stiff wind.
He pushed, and the obstructing wall of stony debris exploded before him—sending the large stones bouncing off the rock walls like a game of pinball, creating a horrid cacophony of ringing sound as the racket echoed agonizingly within the restraining walls of the tunnel. However, even amidst the wall of sound, his trained ears picked out the sound of feet fleeing the scene.
He smirked and touched a button on the communications device hanging from his ear.
"This is Division-C leader to Command. We've just made contact with the targets, and they're on the run."
A crackle of static hissed at his ears before,
"Good. Proceed with the plan."
"Yes, sir."
He turned to the rest of his squad, his night-vision visor allowing him to easily pick them out even amidst the near pitch-black darkness. He stretched out his arms to direct them towards the two smaller tunnels that branched out left and right from the main hallway.
"Spread out and herd the rogues down the pathway and out the main exit. We have to prevent them from exiting by any other threshold by any means necessary, otherwise the entire plan is ruined."
His squad rushed to follow his orders as he smiled smugly. He had his orders—keep the Bei Fong girl and her little boyfriend on their toes for now. Make them think they were just barely getting away, before…
A nasty grin slowly made its way on his face.
They were closing in.
Like a legion of awakened revenants, the agents ghosted through the cavern halls, the whispers of their shifting robes becoming eerie voices shouting in their ears—declaring certain pain and destruction. Their ephemeral presences floated just behind the two Benders, lying so just barely with the borders of her perception
The earthen tunnels twisted and twined, branching off into a plethora of labyrinths that spiraled off into oblivion.
Toph knew them all.
The racking, dissonant sounds of wolfbat talons raking against stone, the clicking of ants crawling on the floor, the creaks and groans of shifting and straining stone. All of this, everything, was clear in her mind—the presence of wildlife, every crook and cranny of rock was plain and evident in her sight.
Except…
Except for them, the Dai Li. Something about them, whether it was just their training or their technology—something made it impossible to figure out just exactly where they were. The robed agents were flitting in and out of her vision, their vibrations cornering the edges of her perception one moment and then appearing alarmingly close in the next.
Despite only there being four of them, their signatures seemed to multiply before her, crowding the dusty, hallowed corridors of the ancient cave and engaging her sporadically, each time cutting off multiple avenues of escape—but, in every close encounter, there was always one exit they had failed to block, always one last avenue of escape for her to take.
She didn't know if they were being herded into a trap, or if her vibration sight allowed her to keep one step ahead of them every time.
'Unlikely,' She figured. As much as she wanted to believe that her skills were keeping them one step ahead, Toph got the sense that the Dai Li were merely playing with them.
That realization sent a jolt of anger blazing through her and Toph narrowed her unseeing eyes at her enemies, a growl rumbling its way through her throat.
There was no way she was going to let her and Aang be herded into a corner like a flock of sheep.
Her sight screamed at her, and suddenly there were two Dai Li agents materializing out of nowhere—but right in the middle of their path.
Toph just slammed her hand into the stone wall of the linear corridor and the earth roared at her command. An enormous chunk of stone, easily twenty feet long and half as thick, swung out from the rest of the wall and at the Agents like a giant revolving doorway.
Toph didn't bother stopping to watch its trajectory and slipped through the gaping hole in the wall into an adjacent corridor that branched off into two smaller avenues.
She darted to the right, still dragging Aang behind her, but a Dai Li agent emerged in front of her, blocking the way.
'What? All four of them were just behind me! They still haven't gone through the wall!' Toph snarled, her thoughts whirling into a dizzying spin as she tried to figure out what was going on.
The three vibration signatures of the three other Dai Li had suddenly vanished from behind her and were now flying all over her mental map of the cave region—some of them roaming in circular patterns and others merely blinking in and out of existence.
Toph almost darted for the left route, but her mind suddenly threw up a warning flag in her head.
It was too coincidental.
Again, they only managed to block all but one avenue of escape, and the rest of the agents were nowhere to be found.
They were being herded. Like cattle.
Glaring virulently, Toph struck the air in front of her with her free hand, the swift movement causing an eruption of earthen spikes to leap out from the floor at the lone Dai Li agent.
The Dai Li swung his right arm out in response, sending out a disruptive shockwave in the ground that shattered the rows of emerging earthen spines, and reached into his robe with the left arm—retrieving an assault rifle from its voluminous depths.
Click.
The safety was pulled down with a snap and the sharp sound rung into Aang's panicking mind, his fear compounded by his sheer helplessness in the dark halls. It echoed within his unconsciousness, rippling through forgotten memories and lost pasts.
The wild panic suddenly stilled and slowed, stomped down by a pervasive feeling of frigid calculation that burst to the forefront of his mind. Moving instinctually, as if having done it thousands of times, Aang pulled Toph flush against him, shielding her with his body, and spun the stale cavern air around him into a defensive shield.
The cave hallway was suddenly filled with a violent maelstrom that swirled around the two in a protective cocoon, kicking up a thick cloud of dust and rock and lashing out at the Dai Li agent with buffeting winds just as a hail of bullets came screaming down the tunnel.
The bullets spun and twisted through the air, their trajectories thrown off as the raging winds battered the lead shells and sent them flying into the cave walls. The shards of flying death ricocheted off the walls, bouncing around in the confined tunnels with lethal power as they choked the air with screaming metal.
Amidst the raging winds, a vicious wave of desperation gripped Toph.
They were going to get themselves killed. And it was because of her idiotic assumption that their little stunt at Omashu wouldn't bring the Dai Li swarming at their position as soon as they could.
She had underestimated Dai Li, and, if she wasn't careful, they were going to pay the ultimate price for it.
The violent winds, unbound by Aang's direction, took a life of their own and blasted the Dai Li agent into the caustic darkness that haunted the cavern hallways, before dying down entirely.
Toph dragged Aang down the left hallway, unknowingly breaking the trance that he had fallen into as she sprinted down the halls.
With her desperate feet stomping into the stone floor, Toph's vibration sight rung out into the darkness, illuminating the presence of two agents about a corner linking the tunnel to another one perpendicular to it.
'Shit!'
They couldn't see her just yet, but they soon would be able to.
She spun around, grinding her earth beneath her in a frantic attempt to find an escape path.
Another vibration pinged back at her like sonar, brightening the presence of a small entrance hole to an equally miniscule chamber within the walls. They slipped into as quickly as they could without making too much sound.
Toph grunted as she quietly shifted a wall of earth to close the threshold behind her, sealing off the chamber in hopes that the Dai Li wouldn't notice the makeshift door.
The door moved into place, fusing with the corridor walls without even a whisper.
Toph crouched to the ground, placing both her hands and feet on the floor as she attempted to pinpoint the Dai Li agents, who seemed to have a nasty habit of appearing out of nowhere.
The last thing they wanted was to have a bunch of them pop up right in front of their faces, after all.
Toph regulated her breathing, trying to calm her mind as she tried to listen to the rumbling voice of the earth beneath her fingers. The rock was pulsing, thrumming beneath her and she felt its every shift, and tasted every rumble, translating it into information that illuminated the perpetual darkness clouding her world.
She sought for the heartbeats, the footsteps, the breathing patterns—everything that made someone a living being in the eyes of her feet—of the Dai Li agents, and she frowned.
The Dai Li agents they had just encountered had become untraceable to her vibration sight, their signatures seemingly flying all over cavern halls. They were everywhere and nowhere, disappearing and reappearing at a moment notice.
Toph grunted in effort, her hands grinding the rock between her palms into dust, trying to pinpoint their position amidst all the interference. The wild signatures stabilized, becoming nothing more than jittery blobs of motion to her perception, a sharp contrast to the pristine clarity that she saw the rest of the cave in.
She couldn't tell exactly where they were, but their general positions hung around at a comfortable distance.
'Thank the Spirits…' Toph sighed in relief, wiping the sweat from her eyes.
They were safe, for now.
Suddenly she found herself collapsing onto the floor wearily, as the sudden lull pushed out the adrenaline from her system and left her exhausted. She only vaguely registered Aang doing the same, mimicking her actions in order to get a better of the ceiling.
Aang whispered gently from his position on the floor,
"Hey Toph, look at that!" He whispered cheerfully as he pointed upwards, giving her an expectant look.
Toph only replied with a deadpan stare.
Aang blinked curiously at her expression before it hit him.
'Doh!'
"Right. Sorry, I forgot." He apologized sheepishly.
In all the chaos that had just occurred, he had forgotten Toph was blind. She just seemed so…capable, so confident—nothing like anyone he had ever met that her blindness seemed incongruous.
"…Well, Twinkles?" Toph asked, breaking Aang's musings and the silence that had fallen on the hidden chamber.
"Oh! Um, the ceiling is glowing. It's got these bright patches of light all over the ceiling. I think it looks like some kind of fungus, or plant thing…" Aang trailed off, forgetting again that Toph was blind and couldn't understand the concept of light or glowing.
"…So?" Toph replied uncaringly, her temper drawn a little short by stress and exasperation at Aang.
"I think it's marking a pathway to the exit..." Aang replied, a bit of smile creeping into his voice.
She nodded absently, only half listening to his words as she considered her options.
They had locked themselves in a rather small chamber with a pathway that led directly to the main exit. It was a clear path straight out of the most obvious exit out of the mountain range, with no obstructing Dai Li agents or any bothersome cave-ins.
And, well…
It seemed a little too…convenient.
Toph had overheard a lot of things about the Dai Li, especially when her father met with some of the more…questionable people in his line of business. If there was any one recurring fact about the Dai Li, it was that they were particularly crafty and never directly engaged without setting the outcome entirely in their favor.
There simply was no way the Dai Li would be careless enough to just leave the main exit without any guards or a trick of some sort. But, there wasn't much of a choice really.
The Dai Li outside weren't too far away from their position. In fact, the agents were close enough that they would be able to tell exactly where she was if she decided to tunnel her way out. And she didn't fancy her chances with trying to take on one of them either, even with Aang now being able to see.
The horrid sound of exploding gunpowder and screaming bullets rung in her ears even now, and the memory sent shivers down her spine. She didn't really like the idea of being turned into Swiss cheese, thank you very much.
And no, Toph Bei Fong wasn't scared, damn it. She was just being smart.
There was a big difference.
Anyways, they didn't have much of a choice. Not with the Dai Li agents practically lurking right outside their door, so they would just have to chance with the suspiciously unguarded exit.
'No sense in looking at the gift horse in the mouth, I suppose'
Toph sighed almost tiredly, bringing Aang's quiet concern.
"What's wrong Toph?" Aang asked, prompting a flare of irritation to fire up in Toph's weary body.
"You mean, other than being less than a few yards away from some heavily armed and well-trained men bent on killing you?" Toph snarked, her temper fueled by her frustration at having to choose what felt like the wrong decision.
Aang winced, "Hey, no need to bite my head off or anything…"
She ignored him and rose from her bed of earth, motioning toward the long hallway illuminated by the glowing infestation of mold and algae.
The two Benders burst into the open air, leaving behind the stifling cavern tunnels and emerging into the sunlit freedom of the outside world.
Aang gave a huge sigh of relief, taking in a large gulp of fresh air that wafted up to them like a gentle fragrance. He lifted his arms up into the air, relishing in the gentle feel of sunlight pouring down from a cloudy sky and the whispering touch of the breeze—free and untamed.
"Aang—!"
A sudden cry of panic. Toph.
'Huh?'
Click.
"Don't. Move."
'Shit.'
The unnaturally calm voice from behind him rang out into the open silence again.
"Keep your hands in the air and, slowly, turn around. No Bending or any funny business, or the girl dies."
Aang, as slowly and passively as possible, obeyed the voice and turned around to face the voice behind him.
Immediately, his blood ran cold.
The cavern threshold opened into a long earthen pathway that stretched out toward the horizon, and was ensconced on the right and left sides by a monumental wall of stone that soared up to the horizon, easily twenty to thirty feet high.
There were two Dai Li agents in front of him, both of them struggling to restrain Toph from breaking herself free while keeping her feet from touching the ground, and six Dai Li agents lined the tops of the walls, training the black metal barrels of their assault rifles on the struggling girl caught in the arms of the two Dai Li below them.
One of the Dai Li agents holding on to Toph spoke again to Aang,
"You will come with us, quietly. Or else, we'll kill you and the girl."
Aang glanced for moment at Toph, and was taken back by her large soulful eyes gazing at him.
Even whilst struggling against their arms and the muffling hand closed tightly over her lips, Toph shook her head.
Aang blinked curiously at her motion, prompting Toph to slam her free elbow into the chest of one of the Dai Li agents trapping her. The man grunted, absorbing the blow stoically, and tightened his grip on her, making sure to entangle any limb she could use against them.
Toph glared into Aang's eyes, and jerked her head at the sky.
Run. She was telling him to run and leave her.
'Unacceptable. I can't do that.'
Aang shook his head at her.
He couldn't do that. He couldn't just leave his friend in the hands of the Dai Li.
Running wasn't an option here.
Aang glanced up at the Dai Li agent, his face a myriad of conflicting emotions—fear, anxiety, resignation.
"Alright. I'll go with you."
Toph screamed her protest, only slightly muffled by the hand over her mouth, and spun her body in a desperate maneuver—almost breaking more than a few bones by forcing her body into contortions it was never meant to endure.
The one of the agent's grip on her slipped for a just a second and, in that second, Toph broke one her feet free and slammed it into the ground.
The earth beneath them crumbled into a large crater, and a flurry of earthen spikes burst from the ground, slamming into one of the Dai Li agents and sending him crashing into the far wall. The earthen spires kept moving, lurching for the other agent, who barely had a second to let go of Toph to shatter the deadly spikes.
Immediately, Toph broke free from the grip of the other agent, landing onto the floor with both feet—her feet whirling and spinning on the ground, kicking up a thick cloud of dirt as the ground spun beneath her, and—!
BANG
An explosion of gunpowder blasted from one of the agents overlooking them, and Toph fell onto the floor with a blood curdling scream, clutching her shattered foot as she tried to stem the crimson blood oozing out from the wound.
The blades of rock forming around her crumbled into dust, useless and formless without her direction.
A snarl grounded its way out from the Dai Li agent standing over her.
"Shut up."
The last Dai Li agent on the ground below pulled out a Glock .44 and fired another bullet into her other foot.
Toph writhed on the ground, screams pouring out from her gaping mouth as her perception was engulfed in a bloody haze of pain. The world dimmed and turned black, and Toph fell still on the ground.
Aang watched her bleeding form twitching on the ground with the singularity of mind of a man who could see nothing more. The world dulled around him—sound held no more meaning, drowned out by the incomprehensible whisperings of hundreds of voices ringing in his mind, and the colors of his sight faded into shades of gray, the once vibrant colors of the world utterly sucked out from his eyes until it held no appeal to him.
Shades of gray. And Red.
Crimson Red.
Red that bled all over the sandy dirt, roughshod and speckled with rocks, dyeing it a similar crimson of death and spilled life.
His face twisted together, fists clenching in fury—
They shot Toph in both feet, the means through which she saw the world.
It was the Toph equivalent of gouging out someone's eyes. And she might never recover, ever.
A ghastly storm of rage was thrashing in the confines of his mind, an indomitable fury that frothed violently—refusing to be suppressed and screaming for expression.
The voices, usually mere whisperings of hundreds of voices, clamored in his mind—their voices reaching a crescendo of screaming, rasping voices that spoke in unison, their words vibrating with wrathful intensity.
KILL THEM.
Aang eyes slipped shut, his face contorting as his eyes clenched—his fleshy visage twisting and warping—
A typhoon of deathly, raging energy erupted in the crammed confines of the rocky clearing, its vicious azure light filling every nook and cranny of the pathway as it seared the eyes of the Dai Li agents—its light burning through their eyelids and clawing at their eyes.
Long Feng stood in a darkened room, the lights turned off in order to maximize the effect of the luminescence given off by an enormous screen displaying a kaleidoscope of video feeds.
Brilliant azure light was pouring through the screen, drowning out all other colors and all shapes and forms. Nothing more than the searing, eye-piercing light of the Avatar State. It was even interfering with the signals from cameras and, as the light rushed at the screen, thick static began to sizzle and crackle on the screen's feed.
Long Feng snatched a microphone from its resting place on the primary operation table,
"Striker Team 00158, mobilize a tactical retreat. Target has reached an unknown threat level. Repeat: Mobilize a tactical retreat."
But his words, calmly spoken with an undertone of steel, fell upon deaf ears—drowned out by the sound of bursting gunfire and grinding static.
The liquid flames were flowing through his veins once more.
He could feel the pounding light of the sun beating against his back, and the violent thrums of the lifeblood of the earth rolling tumultuously under miles upon miles of solid rock—the volcanic streams mimicking the crimson fire running through the veins of his own body.
He never thought he would live to see past that day, that day when thick clouds of sulfur strangled the air and hellish fire and brimstone rained from the heavens onto the devastated battleground below.
But here he was again, awoken to partake from that bitter cup, to savor the addictive taste of battle once more.
Zhong swore virulently, a rather vicious barb that insulted one's deceased great grandmother for some rather promiscuous activities engaging in bestiality, as the whole mountain suddenly buckled at their feet—the curvature of the Earth rearing up around them like the gaping maw of some voracious beast.
He, and all the agents on the cliff above, slipped his finger into the ring and pulled the trigger, their guns spitting out a maelstrom of screaming bullets, but even the roaring, ear-piercing sound of bullets being fired at full automatic was drowned out by the creaking and groaning of the earth beneath them.
Earthen blades were suddenly bursting up everywhere, sending up enormous chunks of debris into the air from the force of their arrival. Their stony edges formed a forest of lethal blades that soaked up wave upon wave of screaming bullets even as they continued to pour out from the muzzles of a dozen fully automatic machine guns.
The garden of blades flourished, their rampant growth undeterred by the repeated gunfire—consuming large tracks of land at an alarming rate and forcing the Agents to slowly back away or else be eviscerated.
"Operative Z-15 reporting, what's status on the target?" He questioned, speaking into the tiny microphone attached onto the visor of his head gear.
The feedback buzzed and crackled with static. No response.
Zhong ground his teeth in frustration,
'Useless piece of shit. It's always when most important shit is going on that it blows up on you.' He thought, scowling at the microphone of the ear piece on his visor.
A rush of something whispered to his ride, and he turned quickly—his gun immediately at the ready.
"What?—"
Crimson gouts of flame suddenly roared to life before his eyes, and the target was suddenly upon him, its body wreathed in a crimson cloak of raging flames with cold, glowing eyes that glared at him with inhuman hatred.
The Dai Li agent turned and swerved, dodging the initial blasts of flame as the muzzle of his gun flared with bursts of exploding gunpowder and lead.
It moved. The Target flashed across the distance between them with unnatural speed and suddenly he saw the ludicrously massive drill of pure wind that had engulfed target's right arm—its razor point now directed straight at Zhong.
He gaped, it was as if the Target had harvested the screaming and wrathful length of a tornado and crushed it into the tiny space of his arm. The drill swirled, trashed, and raged against the Target's will but, even with such insanely powerful winds compressed into such a relatively small space, it could not escape.
He could only marvel, at such Will, such Control.
The Target moved again, the hurricane on his arm nearingnearingneari—!
Zhong leapt away to dodge—
'Too slow, fu—!'
The cacophony of mercilessly raging winds screamed into his ears. Indescribable agony wracked his entire body and the last thing Zhong saw was his chest cavity flipping inside-out, his flesh and bone pulverized—!
Black.
A plume of dust burst into the air, creating an earthy smokescreen that settled lazily over the battlefield.
The Avatar stood up from where he had been crouched on the ground, and unclenched his right hand.
Its Hunger slaked, the Wind's presence burst from his arm, suddenly let loose of all restraints. It shouted its freedom, kicking up powerful wave of Wind that sent him flying into the air—dissipating the dust plume as it did so.
Molten fire coiled into his arms, a nebula of writhing flames swirling into existence.
He came down with the force of a descending meteor, crashing his palms into the ground and the nebula of flames exploded around him—billowing out into a curtain of crimson death that engulfed the mountain side in a titanic fireball and rocked the continent with an explosive shockwave.
The earth roared and trembled, enormous chunks of rock breaking off from the ground and sent flying into the air as everything burned.
The mountain was crumbling around him, unable to withstand the strain of the explosion.
The labyrinth of the Cave of Two Lovers was filled to the brim with an ocean of swirling flames, its tides licking and melting away at the rock as the cave structure collapsed from the shockwave that had blown apart its walls like toilet paper. Rumbling rock and smoking ash blew out from the cavern threshold as the mountain above it began to crumble like a house of cards, enormous ledges of rock breaking off and sliding onto the ground in a mass of shattered debris.
The pathway outside, the epicenter of the blast, was engorged in a funeral pyre of burning death, leaving nothing but an enormous crater in the ground, composed only of blighted, ashy dust—the walls of rock that had once contained the pathway entirely obliterated as well as the pathway itself.
His enemies were gone. Nowhere in sight.
Dead.
He relaxed, and the small puffs of fire that still lingered on the ashy plain died out.
Aang gasped for air like a drowning man enthralled in the arms of a violent sea.
His mind was fuzzy, sluggish—He couldn't think. Everything was confusing, why couldn't he understand anything?
What happened?
He…He couldn't remember anything.
Only the choking smell of burning flesh. Of green burning black from vibrant oranges that clawed, and consumed everything.
And…a scream. Toph.
Toph?
Aang opened his eyes, and was greeted with the sight of complete desolation. The ashen crater, blackened and scarred with the marks of fiery destruction, had no alikeness to the rocky, forested region that he had beheld before. The soil, once moist and cushy beneath his feet, was now fine black ashy that tainted the soles of his feet with the stench of death and charcoal.
He spun his arms in a spiral, whirpooling them towards an invisible point between his palms before thrusting them out.
A harried whirlwind blew from his palms, kicking up enough ash and charcoal to blacken the sky and make the air abrasive to the lungs.
Nevertheless, Aang plunged on, kicking up ash from the ground in a desperate attempt to see if something—anything—remained of his friend.
Did I kill her too?
Aang tried to shove the stray thought away from him, Toph was still alive…she had to be.
Another gust of air blew from his palms, parting the ash on the floor like the Red Sea as it took to the sky and began swirling back at him as a wall of grainy darkness, a cloak that nearly obscured a slip of green poking out from the dust.
Aang leapt onto the spot, frantically plunging his hands into the dust and clawing through the ash like cartoon dog digging a hole to bury its bone. His hands eventually met flesh, and he dragged the whole body out from the pit—his attempts to be gentle entirely ruined by his desperate haste.
"TOPH!"
She was a mess; a bloodied, battered, and bleeding mess.
Her clothes were singed from the intense flames, the green material of her shirt turned flaky and tainted black by fire damage and smeared ash while her nylon pants had several large holes where it was simply burned off. Toph's skin smeared black in a thick coating of charcoal, dark as the night, and her skin beneath the black slough was raw and pink—but even crimson in some places.
She was still bleeding from her blackened feet, the skin cracked slightly from the intense heat and blood oozing from the bullet wounds and tricking down the crevices in her singed flesh to drip ominously on the floor.
Aang gazed hopelessly at her limp body, before Toph, in her indomitable manner, coughed weakly and blew out a cloud of ash from her lungs.
'Toph…'
He was at a loss for words, conflicting feelings of joy and grief clashing. Joy that she was still alive, that she hadn't succumbed yet, but pain and grief that he was the one who caused it.
She needed medical attention as soon as possible.
Aang gathered up her small damaged form into his arms and his form blurred, urged on by swift winds pushing at his back, as he leapt out of the ashy crater and down the broken remains of the mountain pathway.
Holy Shit. It's been a year since I've last looked at this final draft.
This year's gone by so fast, I never even realized how long I've put this away…Nothing I can say can really justify my slacking, but dang—it's been a crazy year.
Hopefully, as the summer comes again, I can get crackin'.
Thanks goes out to WOLFBOY and Pretty-in-Green for getting my ass in gear.