A/N: Did you know that it went up to 102 degrees today where I live? I didn't even want to go jogging this morning because it was so hot and humid (secretly hates weather above 40 degrees). But it at least left me time to think of a one shot for today.

Notes: AU, though Toph is still blind.

Disclaimer: Again, no.

OOO

Day 2

Marker

OOO

When Aang woke up that morning, he already had the feeling that something was wrong.

Now, what that thing was, Aang had yet to quite figure out.

He checked his alarm clock that was still blaring on his night table. It read 6:30am just like it was supposed to. So that couldn't have been it. In a state of paranoia, he still checked over the alarm clock to make sure that it wouldn't explode or something because he knew that something like that would happen to him today. He could feel it. But luckily for him, it seemed to be normal. No glue, no loose screws, no cheap firecrackers. It was totally safe.

He checked under his bed, in his closet, behind his television, just outside his window, around his desk, and even on the ceiling. But nothing. Nada. Zilch. The bedroom was deemed a safe zone and Aang could now proceed with caution through the rest of his house to see if anything else was amiss.

Like he was infiltrating a building filled with mines and traps, Aang carefully creaked the door open and was met with the sight of a quiet hallway with a seemingly innocent façade. There was the bathroom to his left, the stairs leading downstairs directly in front of him, and the bedroom belonging to his father, Gyatso, on his right.

Oh that's right. He left already for an early shift at work, he mentally reminded himself. But that wasn't good since it meant he was home alone and was even more prone to an attack.

This was bad. This was so bad.

Aang thought that the hallway looked safe enough. There wasn't much you could do to it to make it dangerous. But as he started to walk downstairs, he noticed something on the banister. Admittedly, he flinched and thought it was some kind of trick and didn't want to touch it. But upon closer inspection it was…

…a yellow post-it note.

Huh. I don't remember putting that there…

He plucked the note off of the wooden banister. Written on one side of the note in careful handwriting was a message.

If you are reading this message, it means that you are under attack. Proceed through the house for further instructions.

-T.

Aang frowned.

How did he know that she was behind this somehow?

It was far too early in the morning for this. He still had to go get ready for school, have breakfast, finish his world history paper, and make it to class on time. Then after school, he would have to go to the Bei Fong house to tutor her. There was so much on his plate today and he was stretched so thin, that this wasn't the ideal ingredient that he wanted to add to his already hellish day.

But if he wasn't careful, she could pin some stupid practical joke on him.

Ugh. I guess I have to play along now, don't I?

He looked at the note again and noticed that it was scrawled in a familiar color. He stared at it harder and then gasped sharply. Aang darted back into his room, shuffled through one of the drawers in his dresser, and pulled out his pack of Multi-Colored Sharpies. He recounted the contents, and scowled.

His dark green marker was missing.

"Toph, what the hell do you think you're doing?" Aang shouted out of his room, knowing now that she had used that lock picking kit she had gotten for her birthday to sneak into his house…

…again!

He grumbled to himself as he exited his room and made his way back down the stairs again. This was ridiculous. This was going to be worse than the time when Toph bleached all of his black school uniform pants and made him walk to school looking like an idiot, or the time she planted a fake arrow tattoo on his forehead while he was sleeping and didn't tell him about it until the school day was over and half the school laughed at him.

If this was her way of thanking him for going out of his way to help her afterschool every day, he didn't want her gratitude.

Upon entering the living room, he noticed with a growl another yellow note stuck on the back of the couch. Reluctantly, he pulled the note off of the couch and read it.

One of the doorways leading out of your living room is safe. The other two aren't. Pick the safe path if you don't want to be embarrassed XD

-T.

He frowned.

She must have thought she was so cute, even adding in a little emoticon like she was so clever.

He supposed this was sort of his own fault. He was the one who offered to put up with this girl.

Toph was a new student at his high school this year and came from another city. She also happened to be in the same grade as Aang. Despite the fact that she was blind, she was actually pretty smart and got decent grades in school. The only drawback was that she couldn't write. Her assignments were typed out on computer using a laptop with a Braille keyboard, but the school insisted that penmanship was an important skill for her to learn.

And because Aang was part of the peer tutoring program at school—and also because he was incredibly nice—he offered to help the girl out as much as he could.

So for the past few months, he had been going over to the Bei Fong house every day after school and acting as both her study partner and her writing teacher.

Now that she had gotten exceptionally good at it, it seemed as though she was practicing by being a smart ass.

He looked at the three doorways. One led to the kitchen, the other to the dining room, and the other to the den. Aang walked to the doorway that led to the den first. He was about to step inside before he looked down at the matt that was placed at the entrance. He lifted it up and looked underneath it for anything suspicious. Sure enough, he found it.

Marbles. Dozens of marbles.

Trying to make me slip, huh? We'll see about that.

Aang, feeling proud for avoiding the first trap, proceeded to the doorway leading to the dining room. This trap was easier to spot than the other one. If anything, it was sort of obvious. She had spilled olive oil all over the hardwood floor to try and make him slip again. Although he did note with exasperation that it would be an absolute nightmare to clean up, and he would demand her help in the endeavor later, it seemed too…

…predictable.

Toph was more creative than this. This meant that she wanted him to advance.

That was a little intimidating.

Aang quickly made his way over to the kitchen and found another note on the kitchen counter. He took a breath, sighed, and forced himself to read the next message.

Good job, Twinkle Toes. Now pick a door—any door!—and see if you can find me. Hurry or we'll be late for school.

-T.

He needed to take this marker away from her. It was proving to be dangerous.

Already into the swing of just playing along, Aang saw that his options were limited to the basement and the backyard. Figuring that Toph was more likely to go hide in the basement then to run out into the backyard, Aang immediately proceeded to the door to the basement. He didn't think that she would put any tricks here. She would have warned him right? After all, he already passed through the kitchen without anything happening to him. What could she possibly do to him now?

He reached for the metal doorknob and…

…BZZZT!

"Ow! Dammit!" Aang screamed. He held his hand to his chest and cursed the pain that was shooting through his hand. He inspected it closely, seeing that no real damage had been inflicted and looked closer at the doorknob that he had tried to open up. He scrutinized it—being careful not to touch it again—and looked on the underside of it.

Sure enough, there was a buzzer placed on the bottom, and it was set on high.

She had gone and freaking zapped him.

Alright. It was official. This marker—this demon girl—was dangerous.

He tried to remove the zapper from the doorknob, but as he fiddled with it, the doorknob fell out of the hole in the door and landed on Aang's foot. Being that he had just jumped out of bed, he had no shoes on to stop the heavy metal doorknob—which was obviously loosened on purpose—from landing on his toe.

And it was then that Aang proceeded to spew curses that would make a sailor very very proud.

He growled and pulled at his hair. He had enough. This was so stupid and he just wanted to go to school. He stalked over to the door to the backyard, pulled open the door (after of course checking it for traps) and walked out into the backyard.

Had he not been so angry, he would have commented on the nice weather. But he was angry, so he instead glared at the birds chirping in the trees who were clearly having a better morning than he was. Aang looked around the back porch and noticed another post-it note on the arm rest of the porch swing. His eyes darted across it quickly. And this note was strangely very short.

Look up.

-T.

Aang did so, and deeply regretted it.

Not even a moment after his head lifted, he had a face filled with water.

The pressure from the stream of water was so sudden and so strong that it actually made him stumble backwards and fall onto the porch with a loud thud. A good amount of it had gotten into his mouth, and he started sputtering and spitting out all the water in annoyance. Aang scowled as he looked towards the source of the attack, prepared to give whoever was behind this a piece of their mind.

Sure enough, there was Toph, in her black school skirt and pressed white oxford shirt, holding his garden hose.

"Good morning, Twinkles!" she said brightly. "I thought I'd do you the favor of cutting your shower time in half this morning. Now you have more time to get ready."

Aang was wiping water off of his face and wringing out his shirt as he snapped back at her. "Don't you have anything else better to do than to sneak into my house and make it a war zone?"

Toph looked affronted. "How rude! And I woke up extra early just to prepare all of this for you. Talk about consideration…"

"Considerate? How can I be considerate? Just look at me!"

"Um, are you an idiot? Remember? Blind. Can't see."

"Oh you know what I meant!"

Toph laughed her loud and exuberant laugh and her cloudy eyes still managed to sparkly with mischief. She dropped the hose and proceeded over to her friend to help him up from the floor. He accepted the help and stood to his feet, his whole body feeling heavy from his drenched clothes. He was annoyed. He was angry. He was about to turn to her and yell at her and ask her why she was being such a brat…

…before she handed him a stack of papers stapled together.

Aang looked down curiously at what she offered him. "What is this?"

"Your world history paper," she told him. "I did the endnotes and the bibliography for you since you suck at it so bad."

Aang brought his eyebrows together and gave Toph a genuinely confused look. "When did you do this?"

"This morning. I brought my keyboard over, took your flash drive, finished it, and set all this up." She sounded incredibly proud if herself since she did manage to do all of this in only an hour and a half.

Aang stuttered for a moment and didn't know what to say other than a small thank you. Toph shrugged and patted him on the back hard. "You're welcome. After all, friends help friends, right?"

Aang nodded. "Right. And then they drench them with garden hoses two minutes later."

The girl smiled brightly and laughed. "See? You're finally getting it! Oh, by the way…" Toph dug around the pocket of her skirt and pulled out a green Sharpie. "Here's your marker back."

The boy took it into his hands with a roll of his eyes which thankfully went unseen by Toph. He saw her as she walked back up the stairs and felt her way back into the house and into the kitchen. She had been here so many times, she memorized where everything was and was able to make herself bowl of cereal without asking for any help. As he heard her rummaging around his kitchen and complaining about the math test they had today, Aang couldn't help but smile.

Yeah, she was a nightmare and sometimes she made him want to bash his head through a wall. But she was still his friend through and through, and he wouldn't trade that away for the world.

OOO

A/N: This could fall under the theme of marker, right? Ah, whatever. I still like it. Let me know what you think, and I'll be back tomorrow!