Chapter Nine

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Enter Stonehenge

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Toph laughed in their faces when they came to her door, begging for her help.

"You guys are having girl problems, and you're coming to me?" she crowed. "Oh, this is just too good!"

"Look, will you help us or not?" Aang asked, slightly perturbed as Sokka seethed next to him. "We're coming to you as friends. Friends who need your guidance and training so we can be successful in the pursuit of love, and—"

"Okay, okay, okay, Twinkeltoes, no need to get your panties in a twist. Of course I'll help you. If nothing else, I'll have get several good laughs out of it."

"Great! Thank you so much! Now let's go!" Aang enthused, taking her hand and turning to leave.

"Go where?" she asked, yanking her hand back.

"To the bars! The clubs! Wherever the women go around here!"

"Calm down there, Aang. The only place I'm going tonight is to the ring. I've got a fight with The Boulder's so-called prodigy in an hour, and the bets are high."

"Hoohh," Aang complained, countenance drooping. "But I wanted to get busy tonight."

"Trust me, Twinkletoes, I will never ever teach you how to 'get busy.' But come to the fight tonight, and maybe afterwards we'll go out," Toph offered.

"Oh, thankyouthankyouthankyou!" Aang exclaimed, seizing her hand in both his and shaking it rapidly with his enthusiasm.

"What about you?" Sokka asked Toph. "You want to go out right after a fight? You'll be dirty."

"So? I'm not the one who needs to snag a date, now am I?"

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"Crush him!! Crush him!! WOOOOOO!!" Sokka howled, cheering on the fighters in the ring.

"When's Toph's fight? Is it soon? I hope it's soon. It's almost nine o'clock. Think about all those girls out there tonight. Surely one of them is willing to date me and isn't a complete loon. And with Toph's help, it could happen, right, Sokka? Don't you think tonight's the night I finally get a good date?"

"Oh, you're going down! DOWN!! Woah, and now you're going up!! YEAH, Exploding Rock to the Back Attack!! Kick his butt out the ring!"

Sighing, Aang tried to pay attention to the fight and take his mind off everything else, but it proved near impossible. He just couldn't stop twitching impatiently.

"Well, that guy's taken care of! He'll be in the hospital for a week, I bet! Hey, I'm going to make a run for popcorn, you want anything?"

"Nah, I'm good," Aang declined.

"Suit yourself," Sokka said, jumping down the stadium seating steps two at a time.

Aang scratched the side of his nose in boredom. Hearing a pair of giggles to his right, he turned to see a couple of girls some feet away bent together conspiratorially, snickering behind their hands. Slowly Aang realized they thought he was picking inside his noise, and he quickly began to explain himself.

"It was just the side! The side!"

This caused them to erupt into another fit of giggles, and they turned away from him, still laughing.

"Hoooohh," Aang complained again, pouting. "I hate being awkward."

The next two contestants entered the ring, and Aang felt slightly better about the world and Lady Fortune to see that Toph's round had finally come. He didn't feel particularly peppy, but he made a show of it for Toph's sake.

"Wooo, Toph! Take him out!" he shouted.

Amidst all the catcalling and cheering, Toph discerned his voice and presence in the surrounding crowd and gave him the thumbs-up, which she then held out to her opponent, holding it still upward for a moment before then turning it decisively downward.

"Yeeeaaahh!" Aang yelled.

"People may call you an Earthbending prodigy in the ring, Stonehenge, but I'm the original!" Toph shouted her smack-talk for all to hear. "I guarantee the next thing you see will be the sun shining after the widdle nap I'm gonna tuck you in for!"

From behind his bear-shaped facemask, the rock-hard figure of Stonehenge shouted back at her. "Go ahead! Tuck me in all you want! I'll try not to enjoy, sweetfeet!"

Toph never wavered to other fighters' provocations, but this one really got her.

"Don't. Call. Me. Sweetfeet!"

And completely ignoring her usual method of operation, she attacked first.

She sent a chunk of rock flying at him, but he dodged it and volleyed one back at her. Moving away just in time, the projectile merely grazed her sleeve, tearing a slight hole in it. Toph knew the hole was there, even if she didn't have time to feel for it, but just the knowledge that he had come within millimeters of her skin on the first attack infuriated her, and she quickly prepared to strike at him again.

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"What, is it Toph's fight already? Why didn't you tell me?" Sokka cried, rushing back up the steps to join Aang.

"Sorry," Aang mumbled, only half-listening as he intently watched the fight.

"So'd I miss anything? The guy's not down yet, must have just started, huh?"

"I don't think he's going to go down so easily," Aang muttered, absorbed in the battle.

"Huh? Really? What kind of fighter can stand up to Toph?" he asked shoveling popcorn into his mouth.

"I don't know, but he got Toph pissed."

"Seriously?" Sokka turned his full attention to the fight now.

"You're right," he realized. "She's all over the place, and he's just jumping out of the way. Man, he's fast for a big guy! Woah! I can't believe she just missed! That was such a clear shot!"

Toph couldn't believe she'd missed either, and it enraged her all the more.

"You want me to tuck you in so bad?!" she shouted. "Then get over here, so I can put you down to sleep!"

"Tuck him in? What does that mean? The only tucking I'm seeing is the tuckering her out he's doing," Sokka couldn't resist the joke, but he wasn't laughing. "Come on, Toph! Knock him out of the ring already!"

Toph discerned this, too, and gave Sokka a gesture as well, though entirely different in intention and meaning from the one Aang had received.

"Hey! Did she just do what I think she did?!" Sokka cried, affronted. "I was just trying to help!"

"This ends now, Pixieshit," Toph growled, preparing her next attack. With a great sweeping motion, she flung an arc of debris directly at him as he landed from yet another evasive jump five yards away. Stonehenge easily deflected the attack, grabbing a larger chunk and pitching it back at her. It struck her in the chest, and she dropped to her knees—but as she did so, she swiftly brought her arms upward. A pillar of rock slanted up from the ground behind Stonehenge, catching him in the back of the head and instantly knocking him out.

"And the winner is The Blind Bandit!" shouted the announcer, running out to grab her arm and raise it victoriously in the air. Toph's other arm gripped her chest painfully as the fans screamed and screamed and the announcer put a bag of money into her hand.

"Toph! Toph!" Aang and Sokka yelled, racing to the side of the ring, preparing to dive into it.

"Stop!" Toph told them sharply, and they did.

She lowered her arm from her chest and rose to her feet. Wincing, she then held up both her arms as her fans cheered around her. She then quietly walked over to the perimeter of the ring where Aang and Sokka stood, staring at her anxiously, and she proceeded to climb down and exit the arena. Aang and Sokka followed, not sure whether to say anything or not, but refusing to let her leave alone.

"Toph," Aang tried.

"I'm fine," she snapped.

She breathed for a moment before saying, "I just need to change, and then we can go."

"Go where?" Aang asked.

"Out."

"We're not going to go out! You just—"

"You wanted to." Breath. "So we're going to."

"Toph, not if you're—"

"I'll be right back," she said finally and disappeared into the locker room.

"Sokka, we can't let her do this! That was a really hard hit, and she never gets hit! We need to take her home to rest!" Aang cried, worry and anxiety evident on his face.

Sokka broke his silence until this point and said, "Wait here, Aang. I'll go talk to her."

And he went into the locker room, leaving Aang to pace back and forth in the hall.

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"Toph," Sokka called, knocking along the walls as he entered to alert her to his presence, even though she could surely sense him already. "Toph, I'm coming in."

Receiving no response, he turned the corner and found Toph seated upon a bench, stuck half in and out of her shirt.

"Don't look at me!" she said harshly as he approached, trying to worm her way back into her top, but struggling with the pain it caused her chest.

"Here, let me help," Sokka murmured from beside her.

"No. I can do it myself," she choked. "I'm fine."

But anger, frustration, and humiliation clawed at the defensive walls she had constructed within her, even as she tried to mask the hurt.

"Let me help you," Sokka said, gently taking her shirt in his hands.

"I had to do it. I had to take that hit to beat him," she explained, chokingly. "That's why."

"I know," he said, and her resistance broke. He lifted her shirt off her.

Beneath the shirt her body cowered under his gaze, smaller than he expected and her skin innocently pale. The beginnings of a very nasty bruise smoldered just above her chest bindings, bleeding slightly where the rock's rough edges had torn the skin.

"Oh, baby," he whispered, bringing her to him in a gentle hug.

Toph bit her lip to hold back her tears, but the walls inside her shattered as something entirely different from the anger and frustration and shame joined the cyclone and ripped its way through.

Losing her long fought for and prized sense of control, a sob escaped her lips, and she collapsed into his protective embrace, pressing into and muffling her sudden wrenching of sorrow with Sokka's chest.

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Aang waited patiently for them in the hallway, his fit of pacing now quelled. He was no longer concerned about hitting up the nightspots and tracking down a date; as soon as Toph's knees had hit the ring, his only concern became taking care of his friend and seeing her get well. He knew that he and Sokka both would stay at her side for as long as it took, no questions asked, no complaints made. He just hoped (though he did not expect) that Toph would accept and concede to their help.

"We'll need to buy duckotter broth. It's probably best she just have something easy on her system. That's what Katara always says when we get hurt…" he fretted to himself.

"Aang? Oh, I thought it was you!"

Aang turned to see a girl with short unruly hair and a pretty, hopeful face smiling widely at him.

"Do I know you?" he asked, confused.

"What, you don't recognize me?" she said, tugging at two imaginary ponytails on the sides of her head.

Aang stared at her.

"…Meng?"

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To be continued…

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A/N:

Is it snotty of me as a writer to say I adore this chapter? I sat down to write it, intending for it to go one way, but again, inspiration redirected me and here we are! I hope all of you are as pleasantly (dare I hope ecstatically?) surprised as I am! And for those of you who care to know, Stonehenge will make another—if not several more—appearances in this fic!

And yes, 'Pixieshit' shall be his nickname from Toph. His Tophname, if you will.

Yee! I'm so psyched to know what you all think! X )

Squea!

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P.S.

I own Stonehenge.

The character, I mean.

Not so much the thusly-named prehistoric monument in southern England.

Oh, and I don't own Avatar.