2. The Mission

So. If you're wondering (I know you're not. Shut up) a little while ago I asked the readers of my plot-bunny mess known as '100' for opinions on Zutara, and got some interesting answers. Mostly, it seems, the non-fans are extreme non-fans—am I surprised? Not really—but the actual shippers mostly said, "MOAR Zutara plz… you can even bash Katara if you want; just have it there." (I'm paraphrasing. You're much more eloquent than that ^_^)

So all I can say, really, is that you asked for this, Avatards. Duck and cover, Zutarians; Aang's learned what a backbone is.

Disclaimer: Don't own A:tLA or the Steam…

When the Avatar threw a hissy-fit, it was kind of hard not to pay attention.

Sokka awoke to sounds he'd say were battle were the war not a couple months over: earthquaking explosions that shook the ground and sent him jarring half an inch into the air with every crash. He scrunched up his face, tried to roll over and go back to sleep, but he was getting whiplash and it was kind of obnoxious. Couldn't even be six in the morning, and Aang had already snapped. Some vacation this had turned out to be. Spirits, was one quiet weekend away at Ember Island too much to ask for?

Well, apparently. So he wriggled out of his nice warm sleeping bag and into the not-at-all-nice daylight, rubbing at bleary eyes as he risked poking his head out from under the covers. It took his vision a moment to adjust, and when at last he was able to see, he almost wished he couldn't. Aang was a little way away near the waterfall, flinging boulder after boulder at the side of the cliffs as if hoping to start a landslide.

Next to Sokka, Toph smacked her lips and frowned without opening her eyes. "Sloppy technique," she mumbled, and rolled over, pulling the sleeping bag tighter around herself.

"Toph!" he hissed. She groaned loudly and retreated further into the blankets. "Toph!"

"Nooo," she groaned. "Quiet now. Sleeping."

"Toph, we should go talk to Aang."

"Nuh-uh."

"The sun'll be up in a few minutes anyway."

"And this affects me… how?"

"Just come?" he pled, abandoning tact. "I'm not good at talking to people about, you know… stuff."

"Stuff like, how your sister's totally playing tonsil hockey with Sparky right about now?"

With pleasure, she sensed Sokka's jaw grit. He clenched his fist, fighting the sudden urge to punch something. "Just think," she continued, "what they might do with the whole entire Fire Nation Palace to themselves…"

"Nothing," said Sokka. "Nothing at all."

"'Oh, Zuko'," said Toph loudly, her voice abruptly soprano and singsong, "'it's such a beautiful day for a little friendly sparring. Maybe you should take your shirt off so that I won't get it wet…'"

"Toph—"

Her voice plunged into a rough, husky baritone that was, unfortunately, an almost impeccable Zuko. "'Oh, Katara, you're so attractive when you're trying to kill me!' 'Oh, Zuko, you're so good at bending, I wonder what else your hands are good for?'"

It was hard to explain how, since she was hidden by blankets, he could hear her grinning. "Hey," she added, "you know what you get when you combine fire and water? Steam. That's kind of ironic, isn't i—"

"Don't," he interrupted through teeth so tightly clamped together, she was amazed they hadn't shattered under the pressure. "Do not even go there, Toph. Steam—that's so wrong, Toph—hey you know what?" he added suddenly. "It's not true at all. Iroh's going to be there to… to keep an eye on…"

He trailed weakly off, the sentence collapsing halfway through. "I'm screwed," he said weakly.

"Sucks for you," she replied, shrugging—at least, he thought it was a shrug; all he could make out was the heap of blankets twitching slightly. "But we can't really head back there with Twinkles having a breakdown, so since I can't do anything, I think I'm just going to go back to slee—"

Approximately thirty seconds later, Aang looked up to see Sokka tramping towards him with all the inescapability of a Fire Nation battleship. Toph was slung over his shoulder, sack-of-potatoes style. The Avatar glanced up as they came, slamming a boulder especially violently against the cliff. Sokka swung Toph down without a word, and she yawned, folding her arms. "Your form's gone to hell."

"So?"

Toph whistled, low and mocking. "Whoa. Slow down, rebel."

The next boulder slammed so hard against the mountain she couldn't even see for a moment, but she didn't give him the satisfaction of flinching. "Having fun?"

"No."

"Well, gosh, Sokka. He's not having fun—our camping weekend's a failure." She turned to her friend, stroking her chin. "Whatever shall we do?"

"Um," said Sokka weakly. "Why aren't you having fun, Aang?"

"She's talking."

That one stung. Toph's fists clenched. Okay, so she was being obnoxious, but that wasn't the point. Aang wasn't supposed to call her out on it. Aang's name was Twinkles! What gave him the right to insult her?

Or so went her train of thought; physically, she fought the urge to actually conjure the avalanche Aang had been tempting, instead twitching her hand and lobbing a chunk of rock at his back. It was almost satisfying, until...

"Ow!" he bellowed, head snapping around, and before either Toph or Sokka knew what was happening, a roar of flame exploded out towards her.

She got her wall up barely in time, and it glanced around a shield of rock, but as she jerked back her hands, the fingers were raw and blistering from being pressed against the now-burning stone. "What the hell?" she exploded, snapping them outward and up with a sharp rip of pain as the flesh tightened. A sheath of rock rose to envelop a suddenly pale and stunned-looking Aang up to his chest, pinning his arms, and then she flew at him. Her first punch connected with his jaw, her second his nose, and then Sokka got his arms around her and yanked her away, hissing and arching like an alley cat mid-brawl. Throughout it all, Aang didn't so much as flinch.

"What the hell?" she repeated. "Who are you, Sparky?"

His eyes flashed, and the rock around him hissed with fractures and shattered into a million pieces. "No!" he barked, face contorting like a gargoyle's. "No, actually, I'm not Zuko, because clearly he's got something that I frigging don't!"

Neither of the two had ever heard him swear before. It was the disturbing equivalent of seeing a teddy bear wielding heavy weaponry. "Aang," Sokka mumbled, "maybe you should calm down."

"Don't tell me to calm down!" snarled the Avatar. "It's always 'calm down, Aang! Relax, Aang! You're the Avatar, Aang, you're better than that!'" He turned away, running his hands across his bare scalp. "You two don't know how it feels. Loving someone who doesn't love you back… seeing them together…"

"I know," Sokka said. "You're right, Aang. Toph and I have never been in that position; we can't know how you feel right now."

Nobody noticed Toph's fists clenching as he spoke. Looking back, however, she would later recognize it as the moment she realized, one way or another, she had to help Aang.

"I don't get it," she said, tilting her head to the side. "What happened with you and Sugarqueen? I thought you guys had been a thing forever."

Aang let out an explosive sigh, sinking to the ground. Toph and, after a moment, Sokka flopped down on either side of him. "She said she was too confused," he said, face twisting as he spoke. Yep, she and Sparky seem real confused, thought Toph, but bit her tongue. "What we had reminded her too much of the war, and she wanted to put that behind her, and… he has hair!" he blurted, startling both of them. "Is that it? Do you think she liked me better when I had hair?"

"I'm pretty sure it's not the hair," said Sokka delicately.

He dropped his head into his hands, muffling his next words. "A month," he muttered. "It's been a month… I thought I could get over her, but… argh!" He slammed a fist against the ground. "I don't want to believe I've lost her," he murmured. "I can't lose her."

And no one noticed Sokka's eyes widen and fall to the ground, unable to keep Aang's gaze. For a moment it was too easy to let Aang and Katara fade, for the words to paint the picture of a white-haired princess and the warrior she'd left behind. He swallowed hard—it hurt like hell to do so—and later would recognize it as the point he knew he had to help Aang... even if it was his sister.

"You haven't lost her," Toph blurted. "She just needs some time to come around. You know how she is like that."

"No," Aang snapped. "No, I've given her time. She doesn't want me—you know it, but I thought you'd have the decency to tell me to my face!"

His voice rose as he spoke, and Toph's face darkened. "Great, get angry. That's a good idea. Want to burn one of us again; would that help?"

"You don't understand!" he burst out, leaping to his feet in a flurry of air. "I've already lost everyone once; now I'm losing her—!"

"Aang!" Sokka started, but Aang had turned away, footsteps quickening as he went.

"Leave me alone," he snapped. His glider was lying on the ground nearby, and he snatched it up as he passed. "I just need some time to—to think…"

His last words were lost as he launched himself into the air. The wings snapped open, and he was off, soaring up towards the smoky clouds. There was a short and rather stunned moment of silence.

"Okay," Toph murmured, working her fingers gingerly across the new burns on her palms. "Who's that bag o' hormones, and what in Spirits' names has he done with Twinkles?"

Sokka stared at the patch of sky that had swallowed Aang whole in just moments. "Damn."

"I know," she sighed. "Even I thought he'd take puberty better than this."

But Sokka was too deep in thought to laugh. He inspected the events of the past few minutes carefully, circling them mentally as a cat might do a suspicious new toy, batting at them lightning-fast to see what new sides they might reveal. "Toph," he said at last, "I'm concerned."

"For us?"

"And the rest of the Four Nations, yes."

"Especially the steam nation, right?"

Sokka flinched and dropped his head, taking a slow breath in. "Toph," he said again.

"Yes, Sokka?"

"We've got to do something."

"Such as?" She snorted. "Seems like the Talk didn't quite go as planned."

"No," he corrected, still watching the sea of sky into which Aang had vanished. "I didn't say we had to talk about something. I said we've got to do something."

"Ah."

"Something drastic."

"You don't mean…?"

"Oh yes I do."

"Ah." She nodded slowly. "Right."

"I think he'll thank us. In the end."

"In the end. So you don't think we should, you know, actually tell him we're screwing with lives and emotions, some of which are his."

"We don't have to. I… uh, I think he'd disapprove."

"Would he?"

A pause. "That's a fair point."

"So if we…" She broke off to cough loudly and pointedly, possibly because she was unaware whether Aang was nearby or not and possibly because she enjoyed it too much. "Instigated civil war in the steam nation—"

"—That's not getting any better, Toph."

"If we broke up the steam nation," she repeated, forging on, "then what it really depends on is Aang's sense of timing, right? Is he going to be there for Katara when she really needs him? Strike when the iron's hot?"

"…We are still talking about Aang, right?"

"I was thinking the same thing."

"So…?"

"So we're going to have to be good, Sokka."

"Good?"

"Better."

"Masterminds?"

"If you like."

His smile widened. "Criminal masterminds?"

"…I worry about you."

He chose to ignore the comment. "General Toph," he said, turning towards her and snapping a worryingly excited salute, "the war's begun."

The smile that spread across her lips was nothing short of fearsome. "Those two," she declared, "aren't gonna know what hit them."

… It begins.

Anyone who wants an image/metaphor, letting Tokka loose in Zutara's garden is like letting the giant monster loose on rampage in Tokyo. It wanders around flailing randomly, destroying crap and wreaking hell because it can, and then it gets stupid and lets itself get gunned down and tears down the entire city in its dying gasps.

Except then… it lives. And Tokyo—by which I mean Zutara—might as well never have existed.

Yeah. This is why I don't use metaphors.

Reviews are always appreciated!