Disclaimer: I do not own Avatar the Last Airbender nor Fullmetal Alchemits nor any characters related to it.
Chapter 03
Busting Out
Toph woke up in a hospital. Her head was aching. Her whole body was aching as if she was beaten up by twenty men. Her hand felt the heavy bandage on her head.
"How are you feeling?" a voiced asked. It was Sokka.
"What happened?" Toph said without answering his question.
"You were unconscious since the other day. We are so worried." Katara answered. "We learned from your students you were brought to the hospital when we visited you in your Metalbending Academy yesterday. Your students were quite worried, too."
Toph heaved a disappointed sigh.
"What happened to that guy?" She asked, anger began to grow in her voice. "That guy who was responsible for me getting hospitalized?"
"He's under police custody now in Yu Dao Police Station. He was arrested today so don't worry about it now." Aang answered.
Toph sat up straight, about to get off from the hospital bed. Her raven hair fell over her shoulders and her thick bangs framed her irritated face. It made her look more feminine.
"Toph, what are you doing? You need to rest!" Katara prompted.
"Don't try to stop me Sugar Queen!" Toph growled. "I need to face that bastard who did this to me. I need to make him pay! Nobody messes with Toph Beifong!"
Katara rolled her eyes and let out a heavy sigh. "You think you can face him with that condition of yours?"
"No." Toph replied, realizing she was wearing a hospital gown with fewer undergarments. Her back was bare and she was so close to humiliating herself by walking out of the room in such get up. "Where are my clothes!?" She retorted.
Five days ago, Gravity was hurriedly running through the cold night of Yu Dao city, not knowing where she was heading. All she knew was that she woke up an hour ago in a street corner of this place which was quite unfamiliar to her. Barefoot, with a baggy, brown cloak and bandages covering her entire body except her feet, hands and head of short, curly blonde hair and face of ruby eyes; she easily attracted people's attention.
She was clearly not from this place and in every turn she took, she earned suspicious look from people close by who were probably wondering what an unusual-looking girl she was. Judging her size, she was probably around twelve years old. She was searching for something, although she was not sure if she would find it anytime soon.
As Gravity stirred to another corner, she accidentally bumped against one of the teenage by-standers gathered beside the street.
"Ow!" The boy complained, "Hey watch it!"
Gravity just looked at him briefly then turned away and resumed to walking without saying anything.
"Hey, could you at least apologize!" The boy yelled at her irately but the girl continued to walk away without even glancing at him. This pissed him off.
The boy happened to be an earth-bender and he earthbent an earthen wall in front of Gravity to block her way. It surprised the girl and made her jumped.
"You're not going anywhere until I got my apology, you little brat!" The boy demanded and pulled an earthbending stance, ready to do another bending.
Gravity turned to another direction, ignoring the boy again. She was about to go around the earthen wall when another earthen wall rose from the ground; it made her looked like she was trapped in a perpendicular corner.
The boys walked towards her.
"Don't even try to escape, I'll just completely trap you with my earthbending if you try," The boy bragged and he and his friends had Gravity cornered while trying to intimidate her with their glares and arrogant poses.
Gravity glared back at them.
"Hey, you don't seem from around here. Are you from Water Tribe, or Fire Nation? You look really weird." One of the other boys asked while he examines Gravity's appearance. Her ruby eyes were giving him the freaky feeling. He had never seen such eye color in his life before. They had never seen such golden color of hair before, either.
"I'm not from anywhere," Gravity answered flatly. "Get out of my way."
"Ooooh…You think you're so tough eh?" The boy grabbed the collar of Gravity's cloak and glared at her closer eye to eye. She glared back without blinking. They had a staring contest for almost a half a minute.
"Okay, how about this? Give us some money and we'll let you go unharmed," the boy said finally with an evil grin. Gravity didn't answer but continued to glare at him silently which irritated the boy even more.
"That's it!" The boy snapped, "You won't apologize, you won't give us money, then I'll just break your face." The boy raised his fist and aimed at the girl's nose but it froze just inches away from Gravity's face as if it hit against something invisible-an invisible wall of force field.
In few seconds, the boy was suddenly thrown into the ground. The other two boys looked stunned and made several steps backward.
"Damn you!" One of them said and made a roundhouse kick in the air, blasting flames towards Gravity.
The fire didn't touch the girl one bit because there seemed to be an invisible dome protecting her.
The firebender boy's eyes grew wide in shock, unable to believe what he just saw.
The other one earthbent an earthen block from the ground and kicked it towards the girl. Gravity raised her palm and the earthen block froze in the mid air. She swung down her fingers and the earthen block flung back towards the earth-bender and knocking him off completely. The other earthbender who was just getting up from the ground jumped on nis feet, shook his head to clear his mind. He's ready for a payback. He bent his knees then and punched the air; a thick earthen wall ascended towards Gravity completely confining her against the earthen perpendicular wall that the earthbender boy previously created.
There was silence for half a minute and the boys concluded they had won.
"Yeah, that'll teach her!" The firebender exclaimed in victory. The other earthbender who just woke up from being unconscious, got up and walked to his friends' side.
"What happened?" he said groggily.
"We taught her a lesson is what happened." The other bender answered.
Suddenly, the ground started to shake. The earthen boulder and the perpendicular wall that confined the blonde girl exploded into pieces revealing Gravity with bruise on the right side of her forehead. She looked mad.
The ground beneath her feet collapsed and turned into a basin as if a meteor just crashed against it. Although the fact was it was Gravity's force field power's doing.
It was too late for the boys to realize that they had messed up with the wrong kid. After few minutes, one of them managed to get away and stumbled onto a patrolling police officer and asked for help.
When the police went to rescue his friends, he saw the boys being held up by Gravity's force field in the mid air and their body appeared to be forced to be twisted like they were being blood-bent. When the police screamed at Gravity, ordering her to freeze, and stop whatever she was doing, the blonde homunculus dropped the boys to the ground and ran.
The police officer chased after her and she ended up running in the middle of the road causing traffic jams. More police came chasing after her. Gravity was starting to get hungry and frustrated that time.
Soon, the big fight between her and the earth-bending police started. All she could do was throw cars at them to keep them away using her force field power, and then this blind earth-bending girl got involved. The more Gravity used her power, she got hungrier and hungrier and her father, Dr. Harlow, was nowhere to be found to feed her with philosopher's stones.
The blind earth-bender was really good. She managed to knock off Gravity twice during their fight. With the ability to earth-bend earthen walls and boulders against her, she thought Toph was an alchemist. Gravity thought she stumbled into the world where almost everyone was an alchemist.
She was getting more and more frustrated and she was starving and getting weak, so she put all her remaining strength to control the earth gravity and pinned everyone, except herself, against the ground so hard to the point that even the earth beneath them was sucked down and collapse. She managed to escape by flying into the darkness of the night sky of the city.
"Psst! Hey!" a voice called in a whisper.
Roy Mustang thought he must be hearing things. Being hungry and locked up in a cell for hours would do things to your head he thought.
"Hey!"
Mustang stirred to the side on his jail bed, and pretended to asleep.
"Mustang! Get your sorry ass over here right now you stupid Flame Alchemist!" The voice said angrily. It was one of those moments when Ed's face looked hilarious when he gets mad.
Roy got up and looked at the small barred window just above him. Edward Elric who was wearing a hooded cloak was looking down at him and looking livid. His hands clasped hard the metal bars of the said window.
"Ed?" Roy inquired. "Is that you?"
"Who else do you expect? Christina Aguilera? I'm busting you out of here." Ed retorted, "Speaking of busting out. You could have done it yourself, why haven't you?"
"Even if I did, I'll get caught anyway. And besides, I'm getting hungry, maybe they'll feed me if I stay here a bit longer."
Ed's eyes rolled and his mouth drew a lopsided sneer for finding Roy's excuse stupid.
"Also, I know you'd find me here somehow. It's a big city." Roy added. "Good thing you actually did.
"Well, I asked around and…?" Ed answered. "Gawd damnit!" he fumed. "No time for chit-chat, get your butt out of here already before someone caught us!"
"Hey!" Someone called from behind Ed. It was a police officer, but he didn't see Ed's face because he was wearing a hooded cloak and he was facing against the wall. Outside of the building, Ed was kneeling on a beam he created out from the wall of the building through the use of alchemy to support his feet so he could reach onto Roy's jail window. "What are you doing there?"
"That's it, Roy! Stand back! I'm busting you out!" Ed announced as he clapped his hand.
There was an electric sound of alchemy and smoke filled the air and soon Ed and Roy were on the run.
The sound of alarm resonated through the entire police station as a sign that a prisoner had escaped. Ed and Roy managed to run farther into the center of the city away from the police station and hid in one of the alleys of a street to conceal their selves from the police officers who were chasing after them. When everything quieted down and they were sure that the place was clear of the police, they stepped out and padded into the street cautiously.
Suddenly, an earthen mound ascended around their body and squeezed against them, trapping them and depriving them of freedom to move and freedom to perform alchemy.
Toph was standing in front of them just a few feet away, arms folded over her chest and not looking pleased. Behind her were Katara, Sokka, and Aang who looked rather anxious.
Toph stretched out her left arm and pointed a finger at Roy Mustang accusingly. "You ain't going anywhere, Sparky!"
"Sparky?" Mustang frowned. "That's not my name. You got the wrong guy."
"Shut up! I'm sure it's you, bonehead! Remember me? You blow me away! Well, literally the other day." Toph retorted.
"What had gotten into you, Mustang, using your flame alchemy against a poor, helpless, little girl?" Ed remarked. Hearing this, it hit an angry nerve on Toph.
"Shut up, Shorty? I'm not talking to you! I'm not a helpless, little girl!" Toph railed.
"Who're you calling Shorty?! Shorty! Who do you think you are!?" Ed bit back at Toph, quite annoyed for mocking his height.
"I'm Toph!" She said pointing a thumb at herself. "I'm the greatest earth-bender of all time! And I'm gonna make you pay for what you did to me, Sparky!"
There was silence. Ed and Roy looked at Toph apathetically; they were thinking that maybe what was in front of them was a crazy person so was so full of herself. Meanwhile, Aang, Katara and Sokka walked closer to their friend and stood behind Toph to check on the alchemists themselves.
"Nope. Never heard of you." Ed remarked disinterestedly.
"You guys are not from around here, are you?" Katara commented.
"Can't you tell?" Ed replied.
"Look, it was an accident." Roy explained to Toph reluctantly. "I didn't mean to blast you off literally when I thought you were one of those crazy people who wanted to beat me up and rob me the other day. So will you please, let us go now? We got more important things to do and it's a matter of life and death."
"My seismic sense said… that you're lying….but you're telling the truth at the same time." Toph said hesitantly.
A question mark popped on Ed and Roy's head.
"Well, you see I'm blind, but I can still see everything through my seismic sense with my earthbending, also, I can tell if anyone's lying." Toph explained further. "So don't assume that I'm a helpless, little girl, because I can kick butts, too."
"Impressive." Ed commented. "Okay, we believe you. So are you gonna let us go now?"
Toph hesitated at first. But then realizing that maybe what happened to her was an accident and deep down she knew a small part of it was her fault, too she said finally, "Fine." She stretched her arms and then swung them down. The mounds trapping the achemists' bodies pulled back down into the ground, setting them free.
"Wow! Dude, did you just die your hair yellow?" Sokka said noting Ed's hair blonde color when the hood of his cloak fell off his head.
"Of course not, dude. It's my natural hair color. Why? Haven't you seen blondes before?" Edward replied rather sarcastically.
Aang, Sokka, and Katara looked at each other and then looked back at Ed and shook their head.
"Seriously?" Edward said in surprise.
"No, they never did. Believe me." Roy said helpfully.
"Say…" Aang began. "Aren't you related to this person in the wanted poster then?" He raised a paper in front of the alchemists. Ed took it and looked at it carefully. The paper showed a drawing of a person's face, good enough to recognize that it was Gravity, Dr. Harlow's homunculus that they were after. "It said that this person has a yellow hair, too. Is she your little sister?"
Aang's latter sentence hit an angry nerve in him, "Little sister? NOT A CHANCE! We're not even looked alike!" He railed; his face looking funny as he pointed a finger at the drawing.
"But you do know her?" Aang inquired. "Someone told us that she's really dangerous. They say she could make things move and she caused a lot of damaged in one of Yu Dao streets four nights ago."
"Are you talking about this girl who got this special bending skill? I fought against her that night." Toph commented helpfully.
"You encountered her?" Ed asked Toph.
"So you do know her?" Katara prompted the question.
"Yeah. She's dangerous alright, and his father, too. And it's their fault why we're stuck in this world right now." Ed explained in a grave tone.
"And she's not our friend." Roy added. "Believe me, it's quite the opposite actually. We could explain it more to you but not here in the open."
….to be continued.
Author'r Note:
Somehow I managed to have a free time writing this down. Sorry again for some grammar errors. Not enough time to re-read and to proof-read this but I hope you enjoy reading this chapter. Please review, I really want to know what you think and it will help motivate me. XP