CHAPTER 27: Time to roll
"If you cannot walk, then crawl. Whatever you do, you have to keep moving forward."
Back at the Air Temple, Toph and Sokka were growing impatient.
It had been quite some time now since Aang, Katara, Zuko and Nii had left them, and they were getting concerned about whether something had happened to them.
They waited restlessly in the meditation garden, their surroundings enveloped in an uneasy silence.
Toph kept scanning the vibrations in the earth around them, but they offered no clues about the activities of their friends.
Sokka, on the other hand, kept scanning the horizon, squinting his eyes against the sun's glare, searching for any movement or activity out there.
As the moments ticked by, uncertainty gnawed at them, fueling their sense of restlessness by the second.
Should they stay put and wait for them to return or venture out and find them?
"I hate waiting," Toph muttered under her breath, her tone gruff and impatient.
Sokka nodded in agreement, his brow furrowed in concentration.
"Yeah, me too," he replies, his voice tinged with a hint of anxiety. "But we can't just sit here forever. We need to figure out what's going on."
Their exchange was punctuated by a heavy silence, the weight of their indecision pressing down upon them.
"And you still think you can find Nii's village?" Sokka asked again.
He had only asked her that question a thousand times today.
"Yeah."
Another moment of silence went by, before Sokka with a determined nod rose to his feet, his resolve palpable.
"Well, let's go find them, then," he declared, his voice full of determination.
But before he could take his first step, Toph rose to her feet too, holding up a hand to stop him.
"Hey, wait," she said as she suddenly sensed unfamiliar vibrations in the ground.
She crouched down to press her hands against the warm grass, sensing even deeper into the ground below them.
"What?" Sokka exclaimed in a breath as he crouched down beside her.
She sensed a rhythm in the distance that she soon recognized to be footsteps approaching, the subtle vibrations traveling through the earth with each step.
She detected the shifting weight of their bodies, the rustle of their clothes, and the vibrating murmur of their voices.
"Someone's coming," she breathed, focused on the vibrations traveling slowly towards them. "There're a lot. About 15 people."
She could hear Sokka's breathing in her ear, seemingly louder than ever, and it caused irritation to rise in her chest.
"Could you shut up for one second? I'm trying to concentrate here!" she spat at him, trying to hold her focus on the movement of the footsteps.
"But I'm not saying anything?!" Sokka whined.
Toph just growled at him and put all of her attention back on the footsteps. A lot of them had a weird rhythm. A rhythm that she had sensed before. Like cat deer. Light but grounded.
"I think they're from Nii's village," she strained, narrowing her eyes a little as if to sense even better. "Twinkletoes is with them too. And Katara."
She could sense the texture of the ground beneath their feet.
They were walking on the soft earth of the bison grazing field, and many of them were rather heavy compared to their size, so she guessed they must be carrying stuff with them on their backs.
Two of them were also managing a heavy cart of some sort, its wheels digging into the earth along their way.
"Where are they?" Sokka asked.
"Bison field," she stated, before she felt him leave in their direction.
She wondered what had happened and why Aang and Katara had brought them here.
And where was Zuko?
Toph tried to ignore Sokka's Water Tribe rhythm pulsating loudly into her hands, as he trotted loudly towards the group of oncoming people, and she searched for Zuko's unique rhythm between the many footsteps.
He was not there.
And neither was Appa.
As the group advanced closer towards her, Toph started to be able to tell parts of the conversation they had with each other.
She could sense Katara explaining something to Sokka about their village.
Had it been burned down?
Toph furrowed her brows and dug her hands even deeper into the ground.
Aang had invited the villagers to come to the temple, and many of them had accepted his invitation. Others had chosen to stay as they wanted to rebuild their home in the jungle instead.
Toph exhaled a loud gasp that almost surprised herself from the sudden loud vibrations.
Had she sensed right?
Had Katara said something about the Phoenix King?
Toph tried to connect the dots.
That would explain why Zuko was not there. Aang had probably lent him Appa to go back to the Fire Nation.
Had Ozai escaped his prison cell?
She furrowed her brows once more.
It did not make sense to her.
How could Ozai have escaped his cell?
She herself had personally helped secure it, and she had made sure that no one could ever enter nor leave without Zuko knowing about it.
Also, why would Ozai come this close to the Eastern Air Temple only to burn a small village in the jungle near it?
Surely, he would want to take revenge on the Avatar, and on his son. On all of the people who had fought against him and helped end The War. And not on some random jungle town in the middle of nowhere.
Toph's thoughts raced with lightning speed.
Unless…
Unless it was not Ozai at all.
She pulled up one hand to touch her chin, trying to keep pace with her rapid stream of thoughts.
What if there were still people out there who were loyal to him?
Rogue Phoenix King loyalists?
The thought of it made her tighten her lips into a thin line. Her thoughts immediately raced to Suko and the Kyoshi warriors in Ba Sing Se.
If this were true, which she certainly did not hope, they would have to warn them immediately.
Toph rose to her feet as she felt the group of people coming close.
Their voices were clear to her now, but their footsteps were too loud for her to tell the vibrations apart.
"Lay it on me," she growled as Sokka, Katara and Aang were close enough for them to hear.
And while the three of them told her everything that had happened, and she shared her own thoughts with them, the rest of the villagers including Nii started to find spaces for the tribe members to put their stuff.
As soon as they were traveling up the stairs to the dormitories, Toph revealed her plan.
"We need to go to Ba Sing Se immediately," she gritted between her teeth. "Sokka, I can count on you to come with me, right? We need to let Suki know as fast as possible."
"I should come too," Aang rushed.
His heartbeat was quick and his voice nervous.
"No," Katara said in a high-pitched voice, and Toph felt her turn to him and cup his face with her hand. "Aang, they need you here."
"But I'm…" he tried, but Toph cut him off.
"Yeah, yeah, you're the Avatar, we know, Twinkletoes," she said in a stern voice. "But I think Katara's right on this one. You need to stay here. If it's true that there are Phoenix loyalists out there, the world needs a safe place to go, if…"
A moment of silence filled with tension thick in the air passed between the four friends.
Aang nodded his head.
"Pack up, Snoozles," Toph said in Sokka's direction. "It's time to see your girlfriend."