It was a long and valiant effort but, just over a week before the wedding, Toph realized that she couldn't put off buying her dress any longer. Sure, Katara had already picked it out, so all she had to do was allow them to fit it, and she'd managed to talk her out of making her wear heels, but nevertheless, Madame Rin's House of Dresses and Gowns, with its snobby tailors and clerks, suffocatingly thick layers of perfume saturating the air, and irritating little harpist playing delicately in the corner, was not Toph's preferred place to spend the afternoon. And unfortunately for her, that was exactly where she and Teo found themselves.
Toph was standing on a raised platform with her arms outspread, a strapless dress cutting tightly above her chest yet hanging loosely the rest of the way down to her knees, as an old, plump tailor woman kneeled down by her waist, pinning the dress precariously close to her skin.
Another thin, boney woman was walking around her with a piece of rope in her hands, running it through them to measure Toph in various places and scratching down numbers on a stack of parchment. The woman wrapped the rope around Toph's chest and tisked. "This needs to be let out up top," she said to her companion nasally.
"These measurements are all wrong… did the woman ordering the dress even meet this girl?" she muttered as she wrote down more measurements.
Toph sighed and blew a stray hair out of her face, shooting Teo a bored look. She shifted from one foot to another and slouched slightly.
"Hold still!" the skinny woman shouted, trying to wrap the rope around her waist. She tugged at the fabric, which was quite baggy in that area, stretching it closer to Toph's skin. "Another one here," she said to her squat partner.
The old woman grunted and proceeded to work on pinning the side of the dress.
A shark prick stabbed Toph in the hip, and out of instinct she went to shoot the ground up beside her, but caught herself in time, only giving the fat old lady a jolt. "Watch it!" she snapped, resisting the urge to rub her side, which was stinging.
"If you would just stand still, you wouldn't get pricked," the woman complained gruffly.
The tiny woman had put away her stack of parchment and was now tweaking with the dress. She halted the tailor and stood back to admire her work, returning to place another pin here and there, before finally clasping her hands, smiling broadly.
"There," she exclaimed," just one more touch."
She walked to the other side of the room and pulled a thing strip of a wispy material off of a small rack. When she came back, she wrapped the silk around Toph's back, draping it over her arms in front. Toph's upper lip furled in disbelief; really? A dress scarf?
The woman beamed, and turned to Teo. "Well, young man, what do you think?" she asked.
Teo made some sort of incomprehensible noise, his mouth agape. Toph slouched again impatiently. "Really? Is it that bad?"
Teo stammered. "Wha…no, its...guh…"
The skinny woman chuckled and walked over to Toph, grabbing her shoulders from behind and leaning into her ear. "Oh my, he's speechless," she said, her spiteful voice laced with the fake, syrupy tone of a giggling teenager.
Toph rolled her eyes. "Whatever. Now, could you get me out of this thing?" she complained, gesturing sharply downward at the dress, which was beginning to itch.
The woman's act flattened again. "Fine; follow me," she said bitterly, grabbing onto Toph's arm, her bony fingers digging sharply into her bare skin, and yanking her off of the platform.
"Seriously, what is with you people? Watch it!" Toph yelled again. "I don't like being handled!"
Oblivious to her complaints, the woman led her to a small room at the back of the shop.
"Here," she said, thrusting Toph's own clothes into her hands, shoving her into the cramped changing room and shutting the door.
Toph sneered; could that lady be any more of a prick? She quickly tried to wriggle out of the dress, which, she noticed, was not the easiest task, considering it was nearly skin-tight. In her struggle to pull it up over her head, she felt a pin fall out and hit the floor, echoing with a small "tink".
The woman pounded on the door. "Careful in there!"
Toph sighed, and tried to change slower, but to no avail. By the time she got the dress off, at least four more pins had worked their way out of the fabric, rolling under the short bench against the back wall. She knew exactly where they had gone, but she didn't bother to retrieve them, wanting to spite "Miss Priss" out there.
When she had situated herself back in her own clothes, she gathered the dress from its heap on the floor and exited the cubicle, where the woman was waiting.
Toph smirked as she dumped the crumpled up article into her arms, satisfied at the horrified sound of disgust the woman had just emitted.
"Happy?" she asked.
The woman simply shook her head and stalked away.
"So, does that mean I can go?" Toph called after her. With no reply, Toph just shrugged and assumed that it meant "yes".
As she headed back towards the front of the store, where Teo was waiting, the bell chimed on the front door, and she felt a large, burly man enter the shop. She almost laughed; he seemed about as out of place in a dress shop as she felt. He was followed by two more men of equal stature, and the vibrant chatter of the society women fell to a hush as everyone stared at the door, the only sound being the mindless plucking of the harpist in the corner, who too was intrigued by the men's sudden appearance.
Toph quickly weaved her way through the racks of clothing and over to Teo as the men stood inanimate in the doorway, surveying the shop.
"What's going on?' she whispered.
"Uh, Toph?" Teo stammered. "I don't think these guys are here for gowns…"
As if on cue, the man in the front of the posse thrust a fist diagonally, sending a wave of stone through the length of the shop, causing a few blouse racks and jewelry stands to go flying across the room. A few onlookers screamed shrilly, and the harpist fainted, falling limply over her large instrument.
The man paced slowly through the center of the store, and Toph pulled Teo behind a wooden shelving unit, concealing them from his view.
"Sh…" she pressed a finger to her lips and put both hands flat on the ground where she was crouching, trying to amplify the vibrations.
The man had stopped just feet away from where they were hiding, and his cronies were now blocking the exit. The chuckled mockingly. "Come out, come out, wherever you are, little girl," he sang. "I know you're in here. Your daddy is very upset that you've run off again." He grinned mockingly, daringly.
Toph tensed. No, he couldn't mean…
"Little girl," he called again, "don't be afraid, we won't hurt you." He laughed coldly, and a wave of hot adrenaline rushed through Toph's veins.
"Toph, don't!" Teo cried, but it sounded as if she were underwater as she jumped up to face the man.
"Afraid?" she laughed. "Ha! Anything but." She spat on the ground at the man's feet, and he sneered down at her.
"Finally… we've been lookin' for you for a while now, little lady. You thought you had it off easy, didn't 'cha?"
The crowd gasped as the two cronies at the door suddenly charged forward, heading toward her. In one swift movement, both other her arms shot up, and the men were flying into the air, crashing into walls on opposite sides of the room before slouching, partially stunned, on the floor.
The man in front of her grimaced. "We're bringin' you home," he growled, lunging forward.
Toph ducked. "Over my dead body!" she mocked.
The man tried several times to encase her in stone, each of which Toph easily counteracted, sending rubble flying into his face. His heart rate increasing from the frustration of trying to catch the agile girl, he grunted. "Can do."
He shot a series of rocks from different spots around the room at random. They were easy enough to dodge, but after a while it was becoming more and more difficult to tell where they were coming from; at one point, a jagged stone grazed her arm, tearing her sleeve. She focused harder as the speed of the assaults increased.
The man made a sharp cutting motion, and in her concentration she didn't notice the earth moving beneath her until she was whipped off center, falling face first onto the ground. She could feel Teo suddenly move into action, grabbing a strip of the airy material and coming up behind the man when he wasn't looking, pulling it over his head and wrapping it around his torso, splinting his arms down at his sides. Toph felt a boulder the size of a moose-lion smash down into the ground not even a yard away from her; she realized that he was going to use it to kill her.
The two men on the ground were on the move again. One was heading right towards where she lay on the floor. She sprung up and momentarily detained him by sinking his him into the ground. The other assailant, however, was running in the opposite direction, seemingly back towards the door.
"Now!" the man Teo had been holding back yelled, ripping the dress scarf binding him and knocking Teo out of his chair. The agent at the other side of the room suddenly tossed the small harpist woman aside, taking over the instrument and playing a series of strings.
Toph heard Teo gasp. "No…" he muttered. "Cover your ears!" he shouted, trying to warn the crowd. But it was already too late; they were already intoxicated by the melody, and began to drop to the floor.
Toph tried to cover her ears, but the man in front of her had reached around with lightning fast reflexes and had grabbed her from behind, pinning her arms behind her back. She tried as hard as she could to refrain from listening to the tune, but it fought its way into her ears like those damn dress pins. She noticed that slowly, her struggling against the agents had begun to weaken, until no matter how hard she tried, she couldn't move.
The contour images sensed from the earth faded away in suit, and she could barely do anything but listen helplessly to the scene surrounding her.
"Toph," she heard Teo cry, his voice, too, sounding weak. Within seconds, the tune was all she could hear, and she slipped unconscious.
According to the MLIATLA calendar, happy Official Toph Day!
Haha, the first cliffy! And so the plot thickens...
You know the drill, review review review!