AN: I didn't want to ruin the moment with a note at the end of the last chapter, so I'm doing it now.
Like I said, steamy, but still within the rating guidelines.
And yes the chapter title was a reference to Blue Oyster Cult's "Burnin' For You." The title and lyrics were just fitting.
Also I think it was a review from Spenge who said it, "Based," in regards to Azula and Connor's love for each other. And yeah that about sums it up.
Connor's from a time period where like 90% of the world wasn't ok with interracial marriage, falling in love with someone who's clearly Asian.
Azula's country is at war with everyone and is on the racial supremacy BS, and Connor is from a completely different world. He's a freak to everyone, even people from the other nations (except Ty Lee because there is not a prejudicial bone in her body,) but still, Azula's come to love him.
And history, from which I draw inspiration, is stranger than fiction. My great grandfather, a half German, half English, American born sailor, married a Japanese woman while abroad in the early 1930s, and I've actually used her name in this Fic. Azula assumed her name, Akiko, when infiltrating Ba Sing Se. I thought it would be a nice little nod to her...
Anyways...
Chapter 7 Catch Me If You Can
In the early morning, after breakfast, Aang had requested to face both Katara and Toph in a spar. He would, however, be blindfolded, as per Toph's instruction. "OK, I'm ready!" Aang said, as he turned towards his teachers.
Toph could feel Aang's next two steps, the second, coming down harder than the first giving the ground a slight bit more of a shake. It was one of the little tricks she'd taught him to help him see with earth bending. Toph smirked. "Time to test him." She thought, as she raised an arm to pull a pillar of stone out from beneath the ground where his foot had landed.
Aang sidestepped the attack, then the next pillar Toph pulled from the ground, and the third, before he turned away from her, and tilted himself back, no doubt to avoid one of Katara's water tendril attacks that Toph could only hear swishing through the air.
On his recovery, Aang pulled a ball of earth from the ground, and sent it flying at Toph. She held her hand out, and caught the projectile mid flight, the stone too easy to feel. "Good job Twinkle Toes. React, then act." Toph said, as she punched the ball of rock back towards him.
For a moment Toph felt Aang leave the ground, before he fell back to the earth, and sunk his body into, ducking below her attack, causing the rock Toph sent flying into Katara's gut. The water tribe girl got up, and put her hands on her hips. "Maybe you should do a little less reacting, and a little more thinking. That rock could have knocked me out." Katara said.
"What's the matter? Scared of a little dirt, madame fussy britches?" Toph asked smugly, before Katara splashed her with a wave of water.
"Oh, I'm sorry did I splash you, Mud Slug?" Katara asked.
Toph's eye twitched at the racial slur, before she created a wave of earth to charge Katara with, just as Katara created an ice block to slide towards Toph. The two collided beside Aang, and as Katara was the larger of the two, she sent both of them flying into the muddy creek bed behind them.
Once the two had untangled themselves, Toph shoved Katara. "Take that name back!" Toph said, as she kicked at the taller girl's shins.
"Take what back?! Mud Slug?" Katara asked, as she shoved Toph onto her back.
"You foul mouthed bitch!" Toph said, as she kicked a splattering of mud up into Katara's face.
Katara wiped the mud off her face as Toph got back up. "I'm the foul mouthed one?" Katara slapped at the mud with her water bending, smacking Toph in the side of the head with mud of her own, which didn't do much. "Have you heard yourself lately?"
"Oh, I'm sorry, is my usual colorful commentary too much for you, pussy?" Toph asked, before she kicked the earth up beneath Katara, sending the girl flying back into the mud.
Toph got a running start, and jumped up on one leg, ready to land the world's greatest elbow drop on Katara before Aang's voice caught her attention. "Uh, guys, aren't you two supposed to be training with me?"
Tohp slid on her feet for a second, as both her and Katara stopped moving. Katara sat up, and cleared her throat. "Very well, pupil. I think we've had enough training for today." She said, before getting to her feet and walking off to clean herself up.
Toph puffed a stray hair off her nose as she walked over to where Aang and Sokka were standing, using her bending to pull the mud off her as she went. She was willing to forgive Katara for her derogatory name calling, but she didn't want to be near her for a while. "Come on you two, let's go have some fun."
Fire Fountain city wasn't too far away. In fact it was close enough that Aang, Sokka and Toph were able to walk there within the hour. Toph's opinion of the place was pretty low. The air smelled acidic, the sounds of steel mill machinery droned on in the distance as an annoying background noise, and the warm air was still without the westward winds since the city was nestled in a valley. The roads felt pretty smooth against her feet though. There wasn't much in the way of tourism, being a steel factory town, but there were plenty of shops and more than a few back alley vendors to see.
As the three walked, Aang happened to bring up that they only had one silver piece left, and was wondering what they were going to spend it on, to which Toph felt was the perfect opportunity to point out a game she could feel being played in the alley below them. "We can get more money." Toph said with a smirk. "A jade rock hidden under three cups. This is gonna be too easy." She thought.
And easy it was.
The three friends were laughing all the way back to camp with all of the goods they were able to purchase with the forty silver pieces they'd made from their scam, laughing Katara took notice of. The second thing she took notice of were the three full bags.
"Where did you guys get the money to buy all this stuff?" Katara asked.
Aang bit into an apple before answering. "Toph got us some money, by scamming one of those guys in town that moves shells around all sneaky-like."
"She used earth bending to win the game." Sokka said as he sat down. "Brilliant."
"So cheating?" Katara asked, not upset with the method used, so much as the potential that it had for getting them all caught.
Toph shrugged. "Hey, I only cheated because he was cheating. I cheated a cheater."
"I'm just saying that this isn't something we should be making a habit of." Katara said, before she could give a real reason as to why, Toph cut her off with a question.
"Why? Because it's fun, and you hate having fun?" The blind girl asked.
Katara's head retracted back. "I don't hate fun." She said defensively.
"Whatever." Toph said, before Aang stood up.
"Katara, I'll make you a promise that we won't make a habit of doing these scams." Aang said with a bow…
The next morning, Aang, Sokka and Toph all went into town and made a habit of scamming people… To be fair the scams were being done to people of ill repute. Four sided die players that had rock weights in their playing pieces to create a heavy side, a high striker where the cannon ball in the center was being pulled downwards by magnets, some nobel that everyone in town hated for buying up all the surrounding farm property… Ok, they didn't so much scam him as they did defraud and extort him, by having Toph pretend to be run over by the nobel's carriage, and Sokka pretend to be a corrupt city guard.
Their scamming for the day complete, the three return to camp. Katara was less than pleased. "Ok you guys, I think the scams have gone far enough." She said. "You have me worried that something bad is going to happen."
Toph ran her hands through her hair as she heard Katara complain. "Could you for once just pull the stick out of your ass, and lighten up?" Toph asked, as she flicked a silver coin up to Katara.
The water bender caught the coin, and pocketed it as she looked down at Toph. "Oh, I'm sorry, would you prefer it if I acted more like you?" Katara asked.
"Yeah a little! Maybe you'd see how great we have it that way." Toph said, kicking her feet back. "We're world travelers, making easy money, having fun doing it, with no one to tell us what to do."
Katara raised an eyebrow. "Oh I see. You're acting this way because of your parents. They were super controlling, and since you ran away, you've just done whatever it is you want without a care in the world." Katara crossed her arms.
"Whatever." Toph said as she stood up.
"No, not whatever. Your behavior, just going out and doing these scams face to face with people is going to get us all in trouble that we don't need right now." Katara said. "I mean, we've already got that third eyed freak after us, we don't need the law coming down on top of us too."
"Oh speaking of." Sokka said. "I've got a name for him. Sparky-Sparky Boom Man."
Katara disregarded her brother to speak to Toph directly. "We have more than enough money. You need to stop with the scams."
Toph got up in Katara's face. "I'll stop when I want to, and not when you tell me." She said, before kicking her bag of coins up with some assistance from her earthbending, and then storming off to create a rock tent.
The fighting between the two young women of the team had only worsened. Sokka brought a wanted poster for Toph back to camp, (having bought a messenger bird of all things) and a few hours later while Sokka and Toph went out scamming, Katara had searched through her belongings, finding said poster. The two exploded at each other, and stormed off to separate. Aang and Sokka tried to de-escalate things, but didn't take Toph's blindness into account when they had Sokka's new hawk deliver Katara an apology message.
Deciding to be more direct, Sokka pulled Toph aside.
"So let me guess…" Toph said, as she sat on the edge of a cliff outcrop situated above the nearby river. "You brought me out here to tell me your sister's not as much of a cunt as I make her out to be?"
Sokka sat beside Toph. "Na, she can get like that sometimes." He admitted. "She's gotta be right about everything, and she gets all bossy, and involved, and in your business."
Toph nearly chuckled. "I don't know how you put up with her."
Sokka looked out to the nearby waterfall. "Actually… I kind of rely on it." He said.
"How?!" Toph asked.
"It's complicated." Sokka said, rubbing his neck. "In the South Pole, it's sort of expected that the oldest woman in the family who isn't an elder is the family's keeper. My family was really small, and in one of the raids, Katara and I lost our mom. It was the hardest time of my life, but it was worse for Katara."
"She became the oldest girl in your family." Toph surmised.
"And a few years later my dad left to go and fight." Sokka added.
"So this entire time, she's, in a way, been acting like your mom because she was forced to be." Toph said.
"She took on so much responsibility, and really did everything she could, not just for me, but for the village… And This is going to sound crazy, but… Honestly…" Sokka rubbed his palm with his thumb. "I don't even remember what my mom looked like… Katara's always been the one looking out for me, and now, when I try to think of my mom, Katara's is the only face I can recall. And I know that might not mean a lot to you, but it's like trying to remember what someone sounds like, and the only thing you can hear is another person speaking."
"I guess I never thought of her like that… When I think of my mom, all I can do is think about every time she's kept me away from the world because she never took the time to understand me. But Katara's not my mom. She's compassionate, and kind, and she cares about people… And I guess I'm kind of an asshole for not realizing that she's been such a bitch lately because she's worried about me, and she cares." Toph said, thumbing a tear out of the corner of her eye.
Unbeknownst to the two, below them in a cove on the river, Katara sank into the water, silently crying.
Later, Toph and Sokka returned to camp, and were met by Katara. "Toph I…" The water bender started before Toph held a hand up.
"Stop. Katara, you don't need to apologize, I was being a dumb ass, and I get it, we probably shouldn't be drawing too much attention to ourselves when we're this deep into the Fire Nation. We made our money and I'm done with the scamming." Toph said, hanging her head.
"Actually. I wasn't going to apologize… Well I mean, I was going to after Aang told me what Mud Slug meant… But My point is, I want to pull a scam with you." Katara grinned as she leaned in.
Sokka's eyes bulged out of his head.
"What?" Toph asked, in doubt, though having felt Katara's heart speak it's truth. "I never took you for the criminal type."
"I've had my moments. Grand theft, a little bit of aggravated assault." Katara said as she looked at her nails.
"I'm listening." Toph said with a smile, as Katara put an arm around her shoulder, and walked with her back to camp.
"The plan's really simple." Katara said. "That wanted poster you're on says you're worth three hundred gold ban, ten times what you've profited so far. I'm gonna turn you in, collect the reward, then you metal bend yourself out of jail later at night, and we leave town before morning."
"Short, sweet, easy money." Toph said as she rubbed her hands together.
"And the best part, the one getting victimized is the Fire Nation treasury." Katara said with a grin.
When Toph was free from the net used to capture her, and unceremoniously tossed into her cell, there was a moment of sheer panic when she couldn't feel the ground beneath her vibrate. The expected cold stone or metal floor was absent, and in its place was one made of wood. Crawling forward on her hands and knees, Toph felt the door that had been slammed, and found it too was made of thick planks of wood. "Oh fuck." Toph muttered, as she crawled along the cell door, and found the wall was made of wood. Tracing the room, Toph found that the cell was entirely constructed of wood, and that the nearest piece of metal was well out of her grasp, and the earth far beyond her range of detection. "Fuck, fuck, fuck!" Toph said, as she stood up against the back wall and felt for the nearest window, finding none, and nearly twisting her ankle on the bucket in the corner. "Shit, shit!" Toph said, taking her golden hair dress off, attempting to crush it with her bending so that she might be able to make a saw or blade, only to find the metal unresponsive to her will. "FUCK!" Toph shouted, tossing the hair piece at the wall. Sitting down Toph ran her hands through her now loose hair, and groaned.
Not twenty minutes later Katara was brought into the same cell kicking and screaming about her rights as a Fire Nation citizen. The cell door slammed closed again, and Toph looked at her friend with crossed arms and a pout. "So they busted you huh?" Toph said.
"Busted? The three eyed freak was waiting for me." Katara said, as she sat beside Toph against the back wall.
"And it's just our rotten luck that this prison is like fifty years old and still uses mostly wooden cells." Toph said.
"That or they figured out you're an earth bender and didn't want to stick you in one with a stone floor or walls." Katara huffed as she put her chin in her hand. Toph sighed as she leaned against the wall, and closed her eyes. "Guess, we just wait here until Aang and Sokka realize I've been gone too long." Katara said, causing Toph's eyes to open again as she realized something.
"It's a trap." Toph said.
"Oh, really? No kiddin?" Katara said sarcastically. "Is that why we're both in jail?"
"Not for us, dumb ass. It's a trap for Aang. Sparky boom face knows who we are." Toph said.
"Then why not attack us at night again? Or tell the Fire Lord Aang's alive, instead of hunting us alone?" Katara asked.
"He knows that won't work again, and he's not going to tell anyone Aang's still kicking because if I'm worth three hundred gold ban, imagine what kind of pay day this guy can haul in if he captures Aang alone?" Toph asked rhetorically.
Katara thumped herself in the head. "This is exactly why I was against the scamming in the first place."
"Yet this was your idea." Toph said with a raised eyebrow.
"I know." Katara said as she slumped her head forward onto her knees. "I just wanted to show you that I can be fun."
"Katara, you are fun, or at least fun in your own way. If nothing else you're fun to annoy sometimes." Toph said, before pausing. "I shouldn't have blown up at you yesterday."
"No, it's mostly my fault. I have been kind of a jerk lately." Katara said, as she put her head back against the wall. "Things have just been so tense lately with the invasion coming up, and hiding in plain sight, and everything else… I could just use a spa day or something.
"Yeah, or something, like a long, and hard massage." Toph said with a snicker.
"Oh get your mind out of the gutter." Katara said, swatting Toph's shoulder. "How do you even know about that stuff at your age, Miss. Sheltered Childhood?"
"I see with earth bending…" Toph wiggled her toes. "Which means that I feel pretty much everything that happens within almost a mile of me if it happens on the ground. Why else do you think I sleep with my feet up?"
"Oh…" Katara said, her cheeks growing red, as she fiddled with her hair. "So when you say everything, do you mean like… Everything?"
"Relax Katara, you're not the only one who jills off when they think everyone else is sleeping." Toph punched her friend's shoulder. "But you could stand to cut back a little, unless you're trying to join the club and go blind."
Katara chuckled shortly. "Ok, well you still have a few things to learn. For one, that's a myth, or I would be blind by now."
"Whatever you need to tell yourself, sister." Toph said with a giggle.
Outside, Sokka and Aang walked through the seemingly empty streets of Fire Fountain City. Sokka adjusted his musket slung across his back. And turned to look behind him. "Where do you think they might be?"
Aang shrugged. "Where do you think everyone else is?"
As the two walked out into the city's central plaza, the namesake fire fountain statue of Lord Ozai beside them, Aang's ear caught the sound of someone inhaling deeply. Not bothering to even check over his shoulder, Aang tackled his friend beside him into cover beside the fire fountain, as a second later where the two were standing exploded.
"Oh, it's the sparky-sparky boom man." Sokka said, as he pulled his musket off his back, while Aang poked over the base of the fountain to see their attacker standing on a rooftop.
"You know, I don't think that name really fits." Aang said, before the two took off running, as Sparky sent another blast at them, Sokka firing his musket as he ran.
From their cell, the two captives could feel the rumbling of the explosions outside in the city. "I guess you were right about the trap." Katara said, as Toph got to her feet and tried simply lifting the locked door.
"Stupid cheap fire nation prison." Toph said, as she pushed herself off the door. "We need something we can bend with."
"Wait, don't you have your meteor bracelet?" Katara asked.
"Took it off so it wouldn't get stolen. Which in retrospect was a stupid idea." Toph said as she sat down both in frustration and exhaustion. "Would it have killed them to at least put a small window in the wall, I'm sweating my ass off."
Katara at the mention of sweating, ran the back of her arm across her forehead, and her eyebrows shot up in realization. Getting up, Katara started running in place, much to the confusion of her friend, who could only feel footfalls against the wooden floor.
"Uh, Katara? What are you doing?" Toph asked, as she stood back up.
"You said we needed something to bend with, so I'm getting us something to bend with." Shoving her hands into her armpits, Katara pulled away a stream of sweat from her body, and created a single cut in the door with it.
"Sweat bending? Fuck yes! Katara, you're a disgusting genius!" Toph said, as she dropped to the floor and started doing push ups to provide Katara with more water. "Man, we're going to smell when we get back to camp."
"Would you have preferred I piss myself?" Katara asked with an irritated eyebrow raised, as she sent another slash into the door.
Meanwhile, Sokka and Aang ducked into a side street before the corner of the building they ran behind was blown to pieces. Sokka began the process of reloading his gun with a solid ball. "How are we supposed to fight this guy? He blows stuff up with his brain! I can't out-shoot that!" The young tribesman asked, as he cocked the hammer of his gun back fully.
"We split up, he can't chase us both. When he's distracted, one of us can land a hit." Aang said, before pushing Sokka into an ally, and jumping up onto a roof with his airbending, the ground between them erupting a fraction of a second later.
Aang ran along the rooftops, and their attacker turned his attention on the boy, sending another explosion at the rooftop he occupied. Sokka was given enough time to peek out from the alley he was in, and aimed his gun at the tall prosthetic adorned man. Sokka fired his gun, and though he'd hit the man he aimed at, the solid lead ball had veered low, and skipped off of ol' sparky's metal leg, making a high pitched ring. The three eyed assailant looked down at where the ball had ricocheted off him, finding a dent, and then over his shoulder at the tribesman, before turning back towards Aang. "Oh come on!" Sokka shouted.
Just as the exploding man approached Aang, Katara and Toph came running around the corner covered in sweat, joining Sokka, as he pulled out the spare pistol he'd bought to make his sword with. With the water from a nearby dragon-moose trough, Katara sent a wave into the large man's head, and froze it around him.
Running past their blinded attacker, Katara pulled Aang to his feet, and the team took off running. As the man with no name thus far smashed the ice that encased his head, before preparing to blast the fleeing group of kids, Toph pulled a stone up from the ground and sent it flying to meet an incoming explosion. As fate would have it, a pebble had survived the blast, and continued along its trajectory, to impact Sparky in his third eye tattoo.
Grunting in pain, Sparky-sparky boom man inhaled, before unleashing another blast, only to find that explosion unable to travel further than a foot, which blew him backwards into the nearest wall.
As the team ran away, Sokka piped up. "Hey I got the perfect name for that guy now…"
Days later, on the road to Ba Sing Se, a brigade of Fire Nation soldiers marched along between two wheat fields, en route to bolster the units in maintaining order over the Earth Kingdom city.
The march came to a halt, as an abandoned wagon, missing its front left wheel, blocked the path. The forward element began to move the cart off to the side of the road, and as they worked, unseen eyes observed from afar.
As the formation began to march again, a crow-jay cawed from overhead. From the wheat fields near the rear of the formation, three loose lines of men at the front and left of the formation stood up, creating an L shape ambush. They fired their captured or home made muskets and hand cannons, and after the volley, the gurilla's ducked back into the tall grass, as the soldiers of the Fire army formed their ranks, letting off shots in the directions the attack had come from. More men popped up from behind the formation, and to its right flank, creating another L three men deep. The new ambush fired their volly, before ducking down again.
The fire benders of the brigade acting without orders, used their flames to set the field of dry wheat alight to burn their attackers out, only for the flames to create the perfect cover of thick white smoke for the militia men to retreat under the cover of, disappearing into the surrounding hills and forests without a trace.
Six more times would the brigade be attacked on the road to Ba Sing Se, in fields and thick forested ways, and Six more times would they lose men without so much as taking a single captive, or knowing if they'd killed an enemy in battle.
By the time the brigade had reached their destination, their strength had been reduced from five thousand, to little over three and a half thousand, and their commanding officer, Brigadier General Kang, had fallen.
Author's note.
The Gaang gets mostly filler canon adjacent content. I know, I know, I'm a hack writer.
I wanted to do a few things though.
Get used to writing a non-Nick friendly Toph, (we all know she'd have the most swears per minute) and take a break from the Fire Nation kids for a moment. It's exhausting how emotional the past 6 chapters have been, we needed some action.
Still keeping up on the war away from home sections though. And yes the opening attack in the last scene is in fact inspired by the cover image.