I would like to thank my only reviewer Cycochics321 and my constant readers should thank them (is a joint account) to, because if they didn't review this would have been cancelled.
This is the longest thing I have ever written, 2,981 without the authors notes, it is 7 pages long and took me probably a total of 30 hours of writing and perfecting, even then I am not completely happy with some parts of the story. Just giving you guys some idea of what went into this story and how I can be slightly annoyed when you guys won't take 5 maybe 10 minutes to review.
No avatar isn't mine, would you stop asking me!!!
Takes place during boiling rock
The Hot Boulder Part 1
"8 hotsquats, 9 hotsquats, 10 hotsquats," Aang had just finished another set hotsquats as Toph appeared with a wide grin on her face, "what are you so happy about?" Aang asked, before starting his 20 firefists.
"No reason twinkles, I am just enjoying watching you do some hard work, without having to do any myself."
"How about we change that? You up for some earthbending practice?" Aang countered now halfway through his firefists.
"Are you a glutton for punishment because the bullfrogs have basically been croaking non-stop," Toph smiled inwardly, knowing why they have been strangely loud this morning, "and now you want to challenge the world's strongest earthbender?"
"Firstly Toph, I know that you have had something to do with the bullfrogs. Secondly I know the terrain and the perfect place for a duel," Aang replied.
"Aren't you supposed to practice firebending?"
"What, are you afraid of someone that has already been training for half the day?" Aang tried to taunt Toph into training.
Toph contemplated this for a little while, just as she was about to speak there was a croak over in the distance. Aang shot Toph a death glare, knowing that it wouldn't have any effect. Toph just shrugged and acted offended, "wasn't me this time. I guess I could give you an ass-whoopin'."
"With you in a moment, just going finish this set," Aang started on his firefists but was quickly launched into the air and was forced to earthbend himself a hole in the roof above him so that he didn't hit it before sailing back down to the ground through the same hole, making sure to close it as he landed.
"I guess that you don't want to wait," Aang said before walking off to find the training area that he used over 100 years ago, Toph following behind.
"So how much longer until we can start training?" Toph asked impatiently.
"It is not much longer, it is just down the end of this hallway."
"What, that flat ground out in the middle of no-where; it doesn't look like the sturdiest of things," Toph replied, sounding slightly nervous and with good reason.
"Well it was originally designed for airbending duels, but with a few support beams it will be study enough for earthbending," Aang pondered aloud, before looking in Toph's direction, "you reckon that you can make it sturdy enough for two wrestling saber-tooth moose-lions."
"You make it sound like a challenge," Toph countered back with a smirk on her face and after several large thumps Toph made her way onto the platform, Aang following close behind.
The training ground was rather large room, measuring about 50 meters wide and 100 meters long. The room was situated in the furthest tower from the edge of the cliff, but it was also the closest to the surface. The roof was very high and able to be removed with airbending as to let in some light or to give the young benders and easy take-off platform and to allow some sunlight into the room. Due to the removable roof all of the walls had some drainage holes that after 100 years were clogged up with leaves, sticks and a few dead insects, the walls themselves had windows in them at 5 meter intervals, allowing pressure release during an airbending fight.
Toph made her way into the center of the room and took a brief moment to check the supports that she had just created, and with very little movement on her half the four supports double in size. While Toph was doing that Aang launched into the air and started scaling the walls, earthbending steps as he rather acrobatically flipped and spun from wall to wall. When Aang reached the roof he immediately started to work on removing it, the 100 years spent stationary had caused the rock to join together, making it just a normal roof.
Aang slowly made his way around the perimeter, separating the roof from the surrounding rock, after a minute of doing so Aang quickly bent the roof onto the surrounding grass on the surface, noted the blackening sky and then jumping back down. When Aang returned to the ground Toph was tapping her foot impatiently.
"Wow that was quick," Toph commented sarcastically, "well now that you have had your rest would you now put your blindfold on."
"Why are you making me do this?" Aang asked, slightly confused.
"Because if you have your blindfold on it will stop you from prancing around and force you to stay on the ground while fighting me," Toph answered, Aang just sighed and put his belt around his eyes.
Just as Aang had covered his eyes Toph jumped into action launching several boulders in his direction, of which Aang narrowly dodged.
"Nice try Toph," Aang taunted before sending a volley of rapid fire rocks in Toph's direction.
Toph saw them coming and brought up a wall to shield herself from the attack, once the rocks had stopped coming towards her she launched the barricade at Aang who split it in half and went back into his stance. Both Toph and Aang stood still, waiting for their opponent to move and trying to find a weakness in their stance. Aang was the first to move, turning and sprinting at the wall behind him, leaving Toph confused causing her to drop out of her stance. Aang took several strides up the wall, until he made it to the more solid earth drawing a small platform out and took a few more steps upwards before turning around and jumping on the now extending platform.
Aang surfed the platform as it kept extending towards Toph, who was just standing still, Aang hesitated for a moment, not feeling right to attack Toph in this circumstance, Toph immediately took advantage by stopping Aang's platform causing him to launch into the air, effectively blinding him, so Toph just waited to feel the thud of Aang face planting but instead she felt a pillar rise up underneath her and shooting her into the air.
Aang landed on the ground heaver than usual, took off his blindfold and caught Toph just as she was about to land. "You can let me down now twinkles," Toph said, almost immediately after Aang caught her.
"What, no thanks for catching me ," Aang replied sounding slightly offended.
"Ok, fine, thanks. Now lets try this whole training thing again so put the blindfold back on and keep it on this time," Aang put his blindfold on and settled into his stance, "now lets do something different, we shall try to push this pillar," Toph continued, bringing a large pillar out of the ground, "into each other," Toph finished and dropped into her stance.
"Ready?" Aang called out.
"Lets go," Toph called back and started applying pressure to the pillar, not really trying at this stage but she could feel Aang putting in some sort of effort.
After several minutes of Toph just toying with Aang the pillar had slowly became denser, so far the size had decreased by half and it was still slowly disappearing. After another bit of Toph relaxing, allowing Aang to move the boulder slightly towards her and then pushing it back, with a bit more difficulty than usual Toph felt small vibrations start to hit the ground.
"What do you reckon about ending this now, so that you can go and splash about in some puddle," Toph called out, the rain getting slowly heavier.
'I would rather finish off our training session, I am surprised though that you want to finish with me winning the only match," Aang yelled back over the echoing rain.
Toph immediately applied all of her strength into the pillar, causing it to fly straight towards Aang, who decided against dodging it but instead he split it right down the middle with three well placed earth spikes that split it in half (see 'The Storm' for general idea).
"Okay, we are now one each. Let's finish this!" Toph yelled before continuing her assault by launching Aang into the air and peppering where she thought he would be with as many rocks as she could upon feeling them hit the wall behind him with an Aang shape missing Toph smiled.
Aang's blindfold had fallen off when he was launched in the air, not giving him enough time to dodge or stop all of Toph's rocks. Aang hit the ground hard, causing Toph to laugh, what she didn't notice is that when Aang landed he sent out shockwaves that clogged up all of the drainage holes, now causing the increasing rainfall to pool in the bottom of the training grounds.
Aang got up and started to attack with some fire bending, however most of it was fizzled out by the time it got to Toph, the ones that didn't simply required for her to take one step to the side. When Toph had gotten tired of simple dodging she fired a large boulder into one of Aang's attacks. Aang felt the boulder coming and rolled to the left, leaving the boulder to hit the now ankle deep water with a hiss causing steam to fill the room. Aang took advantage of the steam and the rainfall and started to attack Toph from all angles with the water, now disorienting her as she got hit from several different directions pushing her off balance.
Toph tried to shut the roof but only managed to get halfway before she sensed another attack from Aang and immediately launched an attack at him, catching Aang off guard and knocking him onto his back, cushioned by the rising water. Aang got back up and started to freeze the water at Toph's feet, causing her to jump backwards onto the ice and then onto her ass.
"Could you at least make it fair and not freeze me to the ground!" Toph yelled after finally finding some earth to stand on.
"You're talking about fair, I have to wear a blindfold thus eliminating how I usually fight while going against the world's greatest earth bender, what part of that screams fair," Aang replied equally as loud.
"you need to learn to feel what your opponent is doing, it will most likely save your life sometime,' Toph finished her statement by sending a pillar out of the ground hitting Aang square in the midsection knocking him backwards into the water with a large splash, winding him in the process.
Aang staggered back to his feet taking in deep breathes however Toph didn't let up sending wave after wave of boulder's, pillar's and quicksand. Aang easily dodged these, using the water to aid him and putting Toph on the back foot, her attacks now only out of desperation as Aang's ability to attack and defend was increasing with the water, and it didn't feel like the rain was going to slow down anytime soon.
"So are you going to give up?"Aang taunted, sending another wave at Toph.
Toph sunk her feet into the ground so that she didn't get knocked over, "you should know that I never give up," Toph yelled back wishing the water would stop and the nerves had started to appear in her voice.
The water continued to rise and slowly Aang took over as the dominate fight. As the water rose to Toph's knee's Aang was getting close to winning so Toph started to panic, she couldn't lose to Aang in this situation so Toph immediately sought to get rid of the water from the area. Toph continued to dodge every Waterbending attack Aang could throw at her, "come on, I thought you wanted earthbending practice not to splash around in a puddle," Toph taunted, trying to get Aang to give her some earth to work with.
Aang feel for the taunt and with his next attack he quickly shot a large rock through the water like a boat. Toph smirked as she felt the boulder coming towards her and just as it was about to make contact with her she bent it with full force into the nearest wall, creating a large hole for the water to finally escape.
Aang felt the water escaping to late to stop his attack from hitting Toph square in the chest and knocking her off balance and into the water that was rushing out of the room.
Aang immediately pulled his blindfold down and took off for the nearest window, launching himself into the canyon, just as Toph was driven out of the room with the water. Aang took a brief moment to look into the cavern below, this would be the one moment that he would admit to himself that he was afraid of heights.
Back at the camp Katara was looking over the cavern, having been left behind by Aang and Toph doing their training and teo, haru and the duke still exploring she just found it comforting to look out into the cavern fluently bending the falling rain into patterns. Suddenly she was drawn out of her thoughts of what Sokka and Zuko where doing by an ear-splitting scream and two figures off in the distance falling through the sky. Immediately she ran towards Appa and took off as they disappeared into the abyss.
After Aang refocused and took a moment to realize how stupid he was Aang airbent himself closer to Toph. Toph's eyes were wedged shut, not that it would help but the wind was starting to hurt her sightless orbs, her raven black locks falling behind her looking almost serene, if it wasn't for the fact that her arms and legs were flailing around, looking for something to grab hold of. Aang grabbed onto one of her hands, calming her down a little bit, enough so that he could grab a tighter hold on her body without getting beaten up in the process, Toph just curled her arms around his neck, almost choking him in the process. Aang moved Toph to his back as quickly as he could while trying to slow their decent.
Slowly Toph's screams became audible to Aang, as the slowed down, so Aang slowly changed their direction and headed closer to the cliff wall, pausing for a moment to fin the best spot to enter the rock and to slow down a bit more before bending them into it. Aang kept bending the cave deeper until they finally stopped moving in a tangle of arms and legs. Toph's screams had started to get quieter as they slowed down, but they didn't stop until she realized that they had just crashed into the cliff, which was a good 5 seconds after they did so.
"Thanks twinkles for saving me," Toph said while sitting up, "even though it was sort of your fault that we are in this mess."
"How is it my fault, you were the one that broke the hole in the wall."
"But you did launch me into it," Toph countered back, not knowing why she was arguing.
"I didn't have to jump out after you into the canyon without any means of getting out. I risked my life to save you and all you can do is say that it is my fault" Aang replied his voice getting louder with every passing second.
"Well, why did you then?" Toph yelled back.
"Because I couldn't stand to see someone that I liked fall to their death because of something that I was involved in," Aang stormed off to the entrance to look for how he was going to get out leaving a shocked Toph behind.
It took Aang several moments to realize what he had said
After a minute Aang thought it would be best if he went to the entrance to see how hard it will be to get back up to the temple leaving Toph in deep thought. When Aang reached the entrance to the cave he spotted Appa circling 500 meters above with Katara on his head so Aang drew in a large breath and yelled out to them, the shock of it almost caused Katara to fall off.
"Toph, Katara is here to get us back to the temple," Aang yelled back into the cave for the third time.
"Do you know why she isn't coming out?" Katara asked, starting to get nervous.
"I do, but I don't want to talk about it," Aang replied, looking away from her.
"Come on Aang, if it will help you have to tell me," Katara walked over to Aang and tried to get him to turn around.
"Well, when we were training we started fighting and yelling at each other because I was taking advantage with the rain. Toph tried to get rid of the rain but her plan backfired and she got sent out of the room so I just jumped out after her but when we landed Toph thanked me for saving her and then decided to blame this whole predicament on me, I got angry and yelled at her and then I think I told her that I liked her," Aang flinched when he mentioned that last part.
"Ok, Toph is just probably shaken by such a confession, also it may be because of that thing she has with Sokka," Katara replied back, trying to be as sympathetic as possible.
"I didn't know about her and Sokka, but at this point I just want to get back to camp right now," Aang spoke with almost no emotion Katara thought she had stepped back to the serpent pass, Aang turned to the cave and yelled, "Toph, we are going back to camp, I am sure you can come back on your own, if not Katara will be back tomorrow," before hopping onto Appa, Katara soon followed after receiving no reply and they rose into the sky.
------------------
Alright, i know their alot of taang fics about them fighting, just look at the series, they do do it alot, this may be used by alot of people to show why they are not fit for each other but the fact that they are still friends show that it is most of the time just in good fun.
i will admit that toph is ooc in this story... i will try to make it better with the next chapter
Yes there will be a part two, I just have to write it, may take a while because between working full time, being hassled by my parents to find a better job and the fact that I never get some time to myself. I will try as hard as I can for you guys, some reviews WILL help speed up the process.