Chunks of Worm Chapter 24: Fresh Air, a worm fanfic

Author's Note: Another odd one this week; for those of you who know of Intercession, my Harry Potter / Worm crossover, this entry might seem oddly familiar despite being a different crossover. In actual fact, when I was first developing the ideas behind Intercession the actual Worm/HP setting was one of two concepts playing off the same general themes. I chose to develop one and let the other sit since they were so similar.

This is the exploratory pilot episode equivalent of the other possible story employing those concepts. There won't be any continuations any time soon, because I chose to develop Intercession instead of this one and I don't want to retread the same thematic ground, meaning I have no idea where I would want to go from where this leaves off. That in mind, I still like this enough that it's worth posting…

Fresh Air

(An Avatar: The Lost Airbender Crossover)

Let it never be said that the honorable Lao Beifong did not care for his daughter. His little Toph was precious, more precious than chest of gold or lucrative trading contract. From the moment she first drew breath to wail incessantly for the next six months, she was a pure, unsullied light in his otherwise complicated life.

But she was so fragile, and after six long years of hope and anxiety, could no longer stand it. Her blindness, as devastating as that was, only served to highlight her other difficulties. She was weak and small, and her latent talent for Earthbending utterly useless in the face of her frailty. He had hoped she would grow out of it. That her eyes would heal, though the experts he brought in and swore to secrecy said otherwise. That she would grow, though she seemed determined to stay small and seemingly on the verge of shattering should she trip and fall.

Barring any such improvement, he had hoped to at least keep her safe. But she had run away at the age of five, blind and fragile and helpless. Run away and disappeared for three long weeks, three weeks in which he had Gaoling scoured, covertly but thoroughly, three torturous weeks of fear for himself and his wife…

Only for her to come back, caked in mud with fanciful stories of playing with Badgermoles, all but oblivious to their panic. Even now, they didn't know what had really happened. All they had to go on were Toph's short, often petulant childish explanations, and her miraculous lack of grievous injuries. How she had disappeared was still a mystery.

The current state of things could not be tolerated. No longer. He had no answer to his daughter's frail, vulnerable nature, and he was at his wit's end. She was as safe as his gold and manor and guards and anonymity could make her, and yet she had slipped out of his protective grasp once. It could happen again.

Where gold and influence were not enough, he turned to more nebulous things.

The swamp to the West of Gao Ling was a spiritual place. He himself made a yearly journey out into the reeds and looming trees to meditate, to keep his head clear and his thoughts grounded, but this was different. He left his wife and daughter behind at the manor, left his guards at the edge of the swamp, and continued onward alone, his head bare and carrying nothing but the clothes on his back.

It was dangerous. It was foolhardy. But he could stomach danger to himself, if need be. If it served even the slightest chance of granting him an audience with something that could bless his daughter. She needed more protection than he could provide.

He had never before seen a spirit. He barely knew anything about them. The swamp was a place of odd lights and noises and eerie coincidences, not the realm of any one spirit that he knew of… But it was a place where such things could be.

One moment he was parting two vines to step forward, and the next he was falling. Down into the muck, twisting to land on his back, the water shallow and stagnant. His gaze drifted upward to the canopy as the mud and muck settled around him, and there he saw it.

Pale. Luminescent, reflected starlight though no stars could be seen in the gloomy light of afternoon under dense foliage. Long, flowing hair like vines, white eyes, a warm but subtly incorrect face atop faded shoulders. Nothing else. Just an upper torso, floating above him, looking down.

He opened his mouth to speak, but found that words would not come.

"You seek something," the spirit said, its voice otherworldly in its low, fluting tones, breathless because the speaker did not breathe. "Not for yourself."

"My daughter…" He gasped the words, his purpose the only thing he could cling to. "She needs protection. I cannot do enough. Please."

"Give and take," the spirit said solemnly. "What you ask is not simple. She cannot be given any more power. No blessing will help her where she goes. No curse will keep her from danger."

"Something," he pleaded. "Surely there must be something."

"There is… something." The spirit's gaze bore into him, a look that made him certain that he need not have bothered speaking at all. "A guardian. Chance is on your side. It could be done. Do you wish her to have a guardian?"

"She has guards," he said, the objection wrung from him against his will. He had come for something he could not provide on his own. Something more.

"The guardian is human, only human, but were she given cause the spirits themselves would be wary of her. A simple guard could not rend the sky itself if need be. Do you wish for your child's wellbeing to be that cause?"

Hearing that, he very much wanted what he was being offered, even if it terrified him in equal measure to his desire. "What must I offer in return?" he asked, because there was no other option. No matter how high the price.

"House her. Heal her. Let her do as she will. Do not demand anything else of her." The spirit drifted closer, a pale translucent face filling his vision. "Do not demand her secrets. Do not demand her obedience. Do not demand her allegiance. Give her hospitality, and every year at this time allow her to come to this place for three sunrises. Do these things, and no other price will be asked of you."

Such a small price… "I will," he swore. "I will do as you say, if she will protect my little girl."

The spirit smiled, its hair drifting in an unfelt breeze. "A deal is struck, Lao Beifong. Go home now, and go quickly."

Lao blinked, and the spirit was gone.

By the time he made it back to his guards at the edge of the swamp, he was half convinced he had dreamed the whole thing. He said nothing of the encounter to his men, but bade them to make all possible haste on the way back.

He greeted his wife with a harried smile and assurances that his trip went well, but that he felt it best he return quickly. She did not know his true reason for going, and if nothing had happened, if he truly had dreamed the whole thing, she never would.

"Lao, a strange thing happened while you were gone," she said as he changed out of his travel clothing in their room. He looked up, and he saw that she was frowning. "Strange and worrying."

His heart beat fast, faster than it had any right to when his wife was likely about to tell him of something completely normal. "Yes?" he prompted.

"The guards found a half-dead young woman in front of our front gates yesterday morning," his wife said, and he knew that it had been real. His precious daughter would be safe.

Poppy Beifong was no fool, not when it came to her precious Lao. She did not initially suspect anything of her husband, but neither did she miss the signs that he knew something of the unknown events that had seen a young woman deposited on their doorstep with no warning and for no discernable reason.

The stranger was, to all outward appearances, simply a sick young woman with no particularly interesting qualities. Her hair was black and fell into rough curls once washed. Her lips were thin, and in her sleep it looked like she was scowling, but her deathly pale skin made her look ill, not angry. Her limbs were corded with muscle, entirely unladylike, all but her left arm, which was curiously atrophied, all bone and hard angles. She ran a fever for the first four days, sweating and tossing without ever fully waking.

Poppy plied the girl with herbs and cold compresses and blankets, throwing everything her own mother and grandmother had ever taught her into the mix, and the fever broke, but the woman still slept.

She did not feel safe in her own home. Not because of the woman, but because someone had dumped a sick person on their doorstep without a word, without ever being seen by the night guard, and without any care for the wellbeing of the person they left behind. The woman had been naked when found, completely devoid of clothing, and it all had the feeling of a twisted threat or show of power.

She had expected Lao to leap to the same conclusions as her, to scour Gaoling for answers, to double the guards, to keep both eyes firmly on Toph every free moment he had… And he did do these things, for a short while.

But he didn't throw himself into the investigation, always holding back, imperfectly feigning interest. Like he knew what had happened, or he knew that he would never know. And the way he looked at the woman the one time he had come in to see her…

He thought Poppy didn't see his appraising stare.

He thought she didn't know that he knew more than he was saying.

He thought wrong, but she held her silence. Let him dig himself too deep to back out, before she revealed that she knew he was hiding something. It would not be anything unforgivable, she knew her husband. Perhaps this was a personal threat from a scorned business partner, and he didn't want to worry her. Something of that ilk.

She bided her time, chasing after little Toph – who was showing more blatant signs of Earthbending ever since returning from her still-unexplained disappearance – and gardening, on occasion passing the afternoons watching over the comatose young woman.

She was there by the woman's side when she first truly woke. There with cold water and warm tea and kind words, ready to coax the truth out of her so as to more fully understand what was happening…

Only to realize that the woman had no idea what she was saying.

Poppy refused to let that deter her, but what she had thought would be a simple conversation turned into months of slow teaching and an even slower physical recovery.

Still, she discovered a few things about their mystery guest. Taylor was her name. She did not know where she came from, or was unwilling to discuss it. She hated being bedridden, and never let any pain she felt show. She was not used to her left arm being atrophied and crooked, though it looked as if it had been that way for years. All little things, almost nothing said directly.

Each of these things she presented to Lao, casually, bringing them up in conversation without warning. His reactions often gave away nothing, like he truly did not know any of these things, like they meant nothing more to him than they did to her.

His actions, on the other hand…

She caught him sitting by the woman's bedside once, only once. He had brought little Toph along, something Poppy herself had never done out of fear for her fragile daughter's safety in the face of the unknown, something she would not have thought him willing to do. He feared for Toph just as she did, if not more so.

But she walked in on him showing Toph to Taylor like one might show a young child to the family Deerdog. Toph was having none of it, of course, pouting and rubbing dirt into her father's robes and occasionally struggling to get off his lap, but Taylor…

Taylor looked at the little girl with a frankly unsettling intensity, her dark, round eyes fixed on Poppy's precious child. It was not the look one would give one's host's petulant but otherwise unremarkable child.

After that, she dragged answers out of her husband… and the Beifong home gained a more permanent guest.

"Master Yu, please come in." Poppy bowed deeply, and Yu bowed back, respectfully following her into the luxurious Beifong manor. "I understand my husband has hired you to evaluate our daughter, and perhaps to teach her as well?"

"Yes," he confirmed. He had not known the Beifongs had a daughter until the patriarch of the family walked into his workplace, and thanks to a large bonus that knowledge would not spread beyond him. He was always happy to take extra pay for no extra work. His dojo wouldn't prosper and someday be a profitable household name if he turned down such things!

"While you are here, a family friend will be sitting in on the lesson." Poppy smiled lightly, the picture of upper-class grace as she led him over an arched stone bridge. "We don't think she has the talent, but if you could evaluate her as well, that would be wonderful."

His desire to be fairly paid for double the agreed-upon teaching warred with his need to remain polite and reputable, and after a moment he settled on the side of reputation. This time. "As a favor to you, my fair lady, I can include her. Where would our city be without the Beifongs' patronage?" Probably exactly where it always had been, they were an isolated, tiny family who did more business outside the city than within it, but a bit of flattery never hurt.

"Oh, likely in the same place but with less fresh produce and fewer quality tapestries," she said lightly. "Here they are. I hope the East garden will do as a location?"

They walked around a few neatly-trimmed trees and he saw a grassy expanse, brightly lit by the sun. A tiny young girl ran across the field, bare feet slapping the ground. That would be the Bei Fong heiress, and she was much younger than he had been led to expect. "How old is she?" he asked, forgetting to couch the inquiry in politeness.

"Seven," his gracious host said.

He revised his opinion of the girl. Not quite so young, but small and definitely sickly. He would be the king's pet bear if that child could do more than shake a pebble with a stomp. Still, pay was pay and he would be paid no less to go through the motions. Perhaps the other would be worth his time…

The other. He didn't see another. "When–"

Something moved in the corner of his eye and he jumped as a wiry young woman brushed past him. "Where did you come from?" he blurted out. There was nowhere for her to have been, unless she was hiding behind a tree or something equally ridiculous.

"Trees," she said, pointing behind her. "Toph. Lesson."

The young girl stopped, spun around to look off to the newcomer's left, and scowled. "Don't wanna."

"If you need my help with either of them, I will be watching from here," his host said, her voice wry. "Be gentle with Toph. She is blind."

Well, that was not necessarily a problem… The crooked, bent-inward left arm of the older girl was another matter. He had been brought in to test two cripples?

Pay was pay, and if either of them could bend this might be a profitable continued venture that required little effort on his part. "Of course," he said soothingly. "Truly, I see nothing I cannot help them work around, should they be able to bend. Others might have problems with their particular needs, but I can teach anyone." Whether they would be able to use that teaching was another matter, and one mostly out of his hands.

The girls – Toph and Taylor, if he remembered correctly – were waiting for him, and he wanted to be home by sunset, so he bowed to his host and set off across the grass, stopping just in front of them.

Toph glared sightlessly at him. Taylor… He wasn't sure what it was he saw in her eyes. No matter. "I am Master Yu. We will begin with meditation…"

Some time later, Yu had the answers he had been paid to obtain, though not without much stubbornness and disinterest on the part of the younger of his two potential pupils. Thankfully, the older was a dream student who took to keeping the younger from making a complete mess of proceedings. It was too bad that of the two of them, only the younger showed any sign of the talent. He would much rather have had the older in his classes.

"In, hold, then out," he intoned. The earth did not shake again, but only because Toph had given up listening to him and was fidgeting around. Taylor was breathing perfectly, but not a single tremor could be felt in time with her heartbeat. Disappointing. The one time Toph really tried, he felt it clearly, but nothing at all from Taylor. She was not an Earthbender, that was for sure.

Taylor exhaled, and a breeze brushed against Yu's face, touseling his mustache. The wind had been bracing throughout the lesson, a balm against the onslaught of the sun. Lao Beifong had joined his wife in watching them from afar, and Yu had finished his testing, so he stood, his knees cracking unpleasantly to remind him he was not as young as he used to be. "That will be all for today. Miss Taylor, you are a wonderfully quick student, but you are not an Earthbender."

"What about me?" Toph demanded, her sightless eyes fixing on a point just over his head.

"I will speak to your parents, but you have potential," he assured her. Not a word about her being a good student; if the Beifongs wanted him to continue instruction, it would be one-on-one tutoring and at a high price. She would ruin his carefully-planned classes with her antics, and he deserved to be compensated for his suffering.

"Ha!" Toph yelled, spinning around to point at Taylor. "Told you!"

"You did," Taylor said with a small smile. Her smile slipped to something more calculating. "You did…"

Yu left them to go speak to the Beifongs. "You were right to consult me," he said to them both. "Your daughter does indeed possess some ability in Earthbending."

"Not Taylor?" Lao asked, clearly surprised.

"No, and I am certain of it." He wondered why Lao had expected it. "She is remarkably disciplined, but if she wishes to manipulate earth it will be with a shovel or a pickaxe, not her chi. I can come weekly to teach Toph."

"Will every lesson be like today's?" Poppy asked. "It was very calm. Not what I expected."

His typical answer would be 'no, not at all,' but he knew how to tailor his services. "Would you like them to be? There is much to be learned through breathing exercises, and sometimes they calm children down like nothing else."

Lao glanced over at Toph, who had taken to running around in aimless circles in the grass under Taylor's watchful gaze. "Yes, I think that would be perfect. Taylor will sit in, of course, though as she cannot learn you will not be teaching her."

Yu could have argued that anyone attending would count as a student, with the associated fees, but truthfully having a minder for Toph would only make his job easier and he doubted he could successfully convince the Bei Fongs otherwise. "Of course. I can start next week, if you pay in advance."

Toph Beifong was seven, but everyone treated her like she was three. Her father, her mother, the guards, the servants, even the weird minder her parents had picked up off the road and then for some inexplicable reason kept more than a year ago. They all acted like she was helpless!

She scuffed her heel on the ground, frustrated with everything. Stone yielded to her angry jabs and punches, crunching back to open up more of the tunnel she was digging.

Her father kept her inside, insisting she never leave the manor. She hadn't cared so much about that before, but after her first trip outside and meeting the Badgermoles she couldn't stand not going back. She had asked, repeatedly, to go outside. Just to go into the forest or climb a mountain or something. But he said no. Even on her seventh birthday, he said no.

Her mother was worse. All those lessons on sitting straight and fancy outfits and hair decorations and sipping tea… She took up whole days with doing nothing and acted like it was fun! Toph knew her mother enjoyed gardening, but even when Toph was allowed to help with that she was made to wash so thoroughly afterward that all the fun was sucked out of it.

The guards weren't so bad, but they all acted like she was a thing, not an awesome Earthbender. Not that she had shown anyone what the Badgermoles taught her… They still thought she was totally blind, when she had been able to see vibrations in the earth for more than a year. Still, they never let her touch their weapons or try on their armor or even talk to them.

The servants… She had a special hatred for the one who dressed her on the mornings her mother was busy, and the cook was always making disapproving noises whenever Toph refused her extra-large portions, but they were mostly a backdrop. Warm bodies Toph was forced to avoid and plan around whenever she wanted to do something fun.

Then there was the new irritation. Taylor, the weird lady who was always around. She sat in on Toph's Earthbending lessons, every time. She couldn't even bend, but Master Yu answered her questions every time she asked them, while totally ignoring Toph's attempts to get him to teach something other than breathing.

She was always there. Not always close, but always watching. She didn't seem to have a life beyond 'see what Toph is doing'. It was creepy. Most people wouldn't stay forever with the family who nursed them back to health, right? Taylor was different, and Toph didn't understand.

Not that Toph had asked her. Taylor talked weird. She was weird. She moved weird, like a two-legged stick insect, always folding her limbs in and crouching and not looking where she was obviously looking. Toph was still learning to interpret the little details of the vibrations she could sense, but Taylor, she was distinctive. Always there. Always on the edge of Toph's awareness if not closer.

They were all so suffocating, and Toph couldn't stand to be swaddled any more. If she couldn't go outside the manor walls with her parents, then she would do it alone. Again. Without them knowing this time. If she was tired from playing with the Badgermoles all night, well, Master Yu would probably be happy she was 'meditating' like she was supposed to. Until she started snoring.

She felt at the earth as she tunneled, keeping track of her position relative to the manor. She was under the outer wall now, and her tunnel stretched all the way back to her room…

Taylor was moving. Why was she moving? She didn't sleep much, but she never left her room at night. Now she was up and walking through the house. Towards Toph's bedroom.

Toph turned and ran, her bare feet slapping the smoothly-shaped stone. She didn't want to get caught so quickly, she couldn't close the tunnel quick enough to hide it if they found the entrance, then they would know and they might figure out a way to stop her–

She ran, but Taylor moved quickly, with purpose. Her weight hunched to the side as she smacked her crippled arm on a wall, but she kept going. Toph ran. Taylor walked.

Toph reached the little slope up to her bedroom just as Taylor came down the hallway. She propelled herself upward with stone, pulled a door-thick slab out to cover the entrance to her tunnel, and leaped into bed.

She lay, faceup, eyes closed, blind to the world now that she couldn't feel anything but the soft wood and cloth of her bed. Sleeping on the floor would have been better.

Her door creaked open.

A few long, blind moments passed.

Her door creaked shut again.

She waited for a while, ears straining to hear any sign of Taylor, but aside from the low rustle of a breeze going through the room she couldn't hear anything.

That was close. But surely Taylor wouldn't check on her again tonight.

She sat up, swung her feet around, and firmly planted them on the tile floor of her room.

Taylor was right there. Sitting on the trunk she keeps her favorite rocks in, hidden under some girly clothing she outgrew years ago. Her feet were on the floor, and that was enough for Toph to 'see' her.

Toph had no idea what to do next.

"How long did it take you to make that tunnel?" Taylor asked, picking each word carefully, like she wasn't entirely confident they meant what she thought they meant. She wasn't as bad with it as she was a year ago, but it was still noticeable.

Toph squirmed guiltily. She still didn't know what to do. "I don't know what you mean," she lied.

"It wasn't here last night," Taylor said.

"How do you know?"

"Secret for a secret?" Taylor offered.

Toph frowned. That… That was tempting. "I can make it as fast as I can walk. And I'm getting faster."

"Really?" Taylor whispered. "That's… amazing."

"I'm a great Earthbender," Toph blurted out.

"I believe it." Taylor stood, her shoes scraping on tile as she pushed herself up. "But your parents won't. Earthbenders break rocks with their hands, their heads. Not something a… fragile little girl does."

"I can." She would complain, but it sounded like Taylor was… agreeing with her? About how stupid it was. How her parents were the blind ones. "You won't tell them?"

"Secret for a secret," Taylor offered. "You're an Earthbender. A real one, a good one."

Taylor shifted, moving her good arm.

A breeze gusted through the room.

That wasn't right. The window was closed. She could feel it set in the sill. There was nowhere for it to be coming from.

"Keep mine and I'll keep yours."

She didn't know anything about Taylor, did she?

The crowds roared. Their feet stamped the stone. They cheered for the Hippo as he gut-checked the Gecko out of the ring. Each of his mighty steps felt like a small meteor strike to Toph, shaking the very ground even when he wasn't bending. He was a massive, hulking beast of a man.

"But what is this?" Xin Fu, the announcer, yelled. "A new challenger enters the ring! Who dares stand against the mighty Hippo?"

That was her cue. She gathered herself and drove a slab of stone out of the entrance tunnel, spearing across the gap. Then she walked out, into the open space of the exhibition cavern.

The crowd stilled. They went mostly silent, too, but for her the lack of movement was far more noticeable.

"Who is this?" Xin Fu asked, playing up his feigned surprise. "Did someone lose their child tonight? Parents, please step forward to–"

He had said he would exaggerate her small stature, but she still itched to shut him up. "I'm here to fight," she yelled as she walked. "Hippo, prepare to lose."

Hippo grunted as she stepped onto the platform. "Ha," he growled.

He stomped, and the ripples spread outward, presumably to unbalance her. She planted her feet firmly in the ground, forcing the stone beneath her to hold perfectly still, and waited just long enough for everyone to notice she wasn't stumbling around.

Then she attacked. Two rectangular slabs jutting out of the ground to strike Hippo in his massive gut, then two more under his feet to shove him backward, then a final rock ripped out of the ground and kicked straight at him.

The first hits took his breath. The movement under his massive feet set him stumbling backward, taking his balance, his solid connection to their element. The final rock hit his chest and leveled his massive bulk, sending him tipping over the edge of the ring with a mighty thud and then a second, even larger crash as he hit the ground.

Five heartbeats, from his stomp to his defeat.

She lifted herself up on a pillar of stone, rising high above the floor of the arena. "I am the Blind Bandit, and I see no better Earthbender than myself!"

The audience exploded into applause.

"Take that, Xin Fu," she muttered as she basked in their applause. He had doubted her. He wouldn't do so again.

She returned to the ground and left the arena, pulling her temporary bridge back with her as she went. Xin Fu started announcing the next week's matchups, which she didn't bother to listen to as none of them would include her, and then she was in the tunnel.

Taylor was there, waiting just out of sight of the still-cheering crowd. She hadn't been when Toph left it to go fight. "I didn't need saving," Toph remarked.

"I worried he would fall on you while you were kicking him around," Taylor said, falling in behind her. "You bend earth, not flab."

Toph snorted indelicately. "He was a pushover." Also, she doubted Taylor could do anything about the Hippo if he did somehow pose a threat. Airbending in front of a whole crowd would be… bad, and Taylor was not exactly a master airbender to begin with. She didn't have any badgermoles or other airbenders to learn from, and her arm further limited her.

No, Toph was definitely the muscle of the two of them. At least Taylor readily admitted to that.

"Never underestimate people," Taylor warned.

"I estimated him perfectly." And she could do without the cryptic wise-woman advice. Taylor was here because she stuck to Toph like a shadowy secret limpet whenever Toph was outside the manor. That was their deal so that Taylor wouldn't say anything to her parents. Advice wasn't part of the deal.

Sourceless breezes wove through Toph's hair as they walked, air lightly swirling around. It was usually too subtle to notice without forewarning, but underground it stood out to Toph's primed senses. Taylor's good arm was swaying rhythmically as she walked, seemingly an innocent, meaningless movement.

Toph would never say so, but she found it eerie how quickly Taylor had developed a version of her earthbending sight with airbending. That was her trick… But she couldn't very well complain about Taylor stealing it, not when it was the only effective thing Taylor could do with air.

Besides, unlike Toph's method, Taylor's would never be perfectly undetectable and required she constantly move her arm, stirring the currents of the air around herself, or something. It all went over Toph's head. Literally. Over and around and against her face and through her hair.

Xin Fu was three tunnels to their left and an annoyingly long way away if they stuck to the existing passageways, so Toph bent a connecting tunnel and led Taylor right to him.

"Blind Bandit," he greeted, turning away from a table and a pile of coins. "You did well."

"Hippo's gimmick only works on benders who let themselves be unbalanced," Taylor replied.

"He's a big target." Toph held out her hand. "My cut?"

"Try to make the fights last longer," Xin Fu remarked as he handed over a small pouch. "I can slot you in two weeks from now, against Fire Nation Man and then the Gopher. Play it up, make a show of it, and you'll get the same pay as tonight."

"Can do." Showing off was most of the reason she signed up for these fights in the first place. That, and facing other Earthbenders to judge exactly how amazing she was compared to them. Master Yu was not exactly a high bar to pass. He still hadn't moved on from breathing exercises after years of teaching.

"Oh, and Bandit?" Xin Fu added. "Do your parents know you are doing this?"

Toph smiled in his general direction. "They know what they need to know," she said. Which was to say they knew nothing.

"You won't make any money off of changing that," Taylor added.

Toph hadn't even thought about that, but she pretended otherwise, nodding sagely. Xin Fu shifted his weight, looking toward Taylor.

Taylor turned away, outwardly unconcerned. Xin Fu's weight shifted again, but he did nothing.

Times like this reminded Toph of how much she sometimes missed, even when she was able to 'see' the people around her. It was definitely a good idea, keeping Taylor around. She had her uses.

Taylor was starting to think it was best just to not ask questions when it came to animals in this world.

"Truly, I don't think I've ever heard of a horse," Bao, one of the Beifong's guards, mused as they rode. "What does one look like?"

Taylor glanced down at the Ostrich Horse she was riding, and contemplated asking whether he had ever heard of an Ostrich, but she soon decided against it. She would just get the same answer.

"An Ostrich Horse but without the Ostrich?" she offered, answering his question with a light laugh. Like it was a joke, though it wasn't. Not to her.

He laughed, long and loud. "You have strange ideas," he said. "Perhaps they do exist, somewhere, but I have never heard of either."

"Perhaps." She noticed that the trees were getting thicker around the dirt path their steeds were running down. "We're almost there."

"Yes, almost to where I must wait with the Ostrich Horses while you venture out on your own into the swamp for three days of fasting and communing with spirits," Bao said dryly. "Because that makes so much sense. I would never have taken you for a spiritual person."

"What did you take me for?" she asked.

"A scholar, perhaps, with all of your questions about everything and all the scrolls Lady Bei Fong procures for you," he said.

"There is a bit of scholar in me," she allowed. The same scholarly inclination anyone pulled into a totally new world would exhibit. She knew nothing, and she had been told next to nothing about what to expect. She had only learned last year that the Earth Kingdom had an actual King in some distant city elsewhere in the world, several years after she nominally became one of said king's subjects. Not knowing things could get her killed.

She had died once. She didn't want to repeat the experience.

The path ended up ahead, blocked by three old, wild-looking trees.

"This is where we part ways," she told Bao. She brought her Ostrich Horse to a stop, dismounted, and stretched her good arm out, shaking her cramping hand. It would have been a lot easier to have both hands on the reins, but…

She would do her best with what she had. Like she always did. A crippled, twisted arm was better than no arm at all.

"I will have a fire waiting for when you return," Bao promised. "And food. Do you have water?"

"Don't need it." Three days without water should be nearly lethal, but there was plenty of water in the swamp, and some of it was even clean, if one knew where to look. Not that she would bother.

More importantly, she wasn't meant to bring anything in with her.

Bao squinted at her, and for a moment she thought he would insist. But then he shook his head. "Your choice."

"I will be back." She ventured around the three trees blocking the path, then began her trek out into the wild untamed expanse of swamp before her.

The sounds of Bao and the Ostrich Horses disappeared far too quickly. The swamp was silent around her, not even the wind stirring the trees and vines. Her own footsteps, squelching in the mud and creaking as she put her weight on massive roots jutting out of the ground, were muted and distant.

She didn't go far. She didn't need to. Even if Bao came in right after her, he would lose his way within a dozen steps. The swamp was not a place one could map. She didn't bother stirring the breeze; the one and only time she had tried the currents of air that came back made no sense at all beyond the bounds of what she could see with her eyes.

All of this could be attributed to some sort of Shaker effect, a Shaker-Stranger field… But those classifications were from another world, and she had found that applying them here gained her nothing. There were no powers here. Not from Entities.

Her yearly visits to the swamp kept it that way.

A root arched out of the ground in front of her, immobile but almost certainly not there a moment ago. Before it, a wide patch of undisturbed mud lay in a hollow, deep enough to reach her shins.

It seemed like a place meant for stopping, so she did. She stripped her clothing off, laying her travel robes and close-cut underthings on the root, dry and out of the mud. Her shoes went on one side, caked in mud that would be gone when she stepped out of the swamp in three days.

Totally nude, she carefully lay down in the mud, facing the sky. It covered her, up to her chin and forehead, leaving only her nose and mouth unobscured.

Every year it got easier. She was not a spiritual person – whatever that meant in a world where the spirits definitely existed – but she knew enough to know that any healer should be obeyed when they set out the conditions for benefitting from their efforts. As things went, a full-body mud bath wasn't so bad.

Time slipped away from her as she lay there. She didn't sleep, but neither was she fully awake. Her bad arm tingled occasionally, and within her mind…

She couldn't feel anything. It was subtle. But the absence of her power was akin to a hole in her senses, and here, she could almost envision it.

The entities were not meant to be here. Not in this world. They were hungry, thoughtless things, and the spirits did not care for them at all. The humans of this world never came to the attention of an Entity. There were no monkey's-paw powers here.

How she had come to be here… She didn't know. Only that she had been found, and that the spirits here had seen fit to place her in their world.

But she carried one end of a connection. She was marked, even in this new body. That could not be allowed. The connection had to be sundered anew every year, severed and the edges dulled and smeared with whatever conceptual Stranger power kept the Entities away. Or so she understood. The mechanics of it all were very vague. The consequences, the results, those were clear.

Every year, she made a trip to this swamp, where the spirits were more present. Every year, they made sure that her power wouldn't find her, and that if it did it wouldn't be able to reconnect. In the gap, in the opening, they placed their own kind of power, and in the meantime worked to fix her body and spirit of the lingering injuries. In exchange, she held to the bargain they had made with Toph's father, and served as a protector for his precocious child, however she saw fit.

The spirits were tight-lipped as to why Lao had requested a blessing and instead received a former warlord to advise his daughter. Specifically, one who was outclassed in every physical respect by said daughter. Knowing Toph, it was because no amount of magical blessing would keep her out of danger, and that nothing short of a superior master of earthbending could keep up with her at all times, let alone best her. Good advice from someone she trusted, someone who knew how to use power, on the other hand… That any pre-teen bender could benefit from.

Taylor remained there in the mud, feeling no pain or discomfort, for a long time. Her thoughts drifted, pleasantly unconnected.

Then she felt it was time to get up, so she did. The mud sloughed off her, slipping away like water, and she felt refreshed. It was quiet in her mind, so quiet, solely herself.

The air played across her bare skin, and she waved her good arm, swirling it to feel her surroundings even as her eyes adjusted to the early morning diffused light. Her clothing was still there, of course, and the swamp was as uninterpretable as ever.

Something was different, though.

Her bad arm was no longer bad. It was skinny, atrophied, but her wrist and elbow moved as they should, and her shoulder didn't feel stiff anymore.

For the first time in years, she had full use of both arms.

She laughed, her voice echoing strangely through the swamp, and dressed herself. It was a short walk back to the path and Bao, and sure enough, he had a fire going and plenty of water and food.

His eyes bulged as he noticed her arm.

"It's easy to be spiritual when the spirits already play a part in my life," she said cryptically as she sat across the fire from him.

"I think I am spiritual now, too," he muttered, looking up to meet her gaze. "Do you think they can do anything for a rash?"

She stared at him. He stared at her.

"Because it's in an unpleasant place and I would rather not be the talk of the town, our resident herbalist is a gossip," he continued with a totally straight face.

Taylor glanced back at the swamp. "I think if you went in there for a cure to your rash you would walk out with another rash. A spiritual rash."

"But the spirits would not gossip," Bao reasoned.

Taylor laughed, and Bao grinned at her. All was well.

Her trip only took five days. One to travel out to the swamp, three spent in the swamp, and one more to travel back to Gaoling. It wasn't a lot of time to make trouble in a pre-industrial society. Not in a sleepy little town like Gaoling, out of the way of the world and the war Taylor had yet to personally see any real evidence of. The sixth annual Earth Rumble tournament had the bad luck to be scheduled smack in the middle of her trip, but that was just supposed to be Toph defending her title against all of the pro-wrestling-equivalent Earthbenders she defeated to gain it in the first place. Not a challenge.

Taylor expected to come home to find Toph waiting to regale her with tales of easy victories and maybe a few new bending techniques. Nothing would be said in public, of course, but in the night, out by the Badgermole caves where they trained, she would be a veritable chatterbox. Maybe, at worst, she might have expected to come back to face some very stern questions from Lao and Poppy in the event that one of their servants snuck out to watch the Earth Rumble and then for some reason snitched on both themself and Toph. But that had never happened before.

Instead, she returned to a Beifong manor roiling like a kicked anthill – they did have normal ants here – and had to face a frantic pair of overprotective parents before she had even washed the grime of travel off herself.

"Speak slowly!" she demanded, her ears ringing from Lao's yelling and Poppy's loud sobs. Her comprehension of their language was not complete or effortless, and she was still working every day to grow more comfortable with the finer points, such as interpreting the words of a man overwrought with emotion.

"You were supposed to keep her safe!" was the first thing she fully understood, once Lao calmed down enough to talk to her, instead of at her. "You were gone!"

"Unless she is dead, I have not failed yet," Taylor said roughly. "What happened?"

"She was kidnapped!" Poppy wailed. "Twice!'

"You have been taking her to the fighting rings," Lao accused. "Xin Fu told us everything!"

"Do I need to go break Xin Fu's neck?" she asked. If that seedy con man had decided he could make more money off of Toph if he kidnapped her, well, The Boulder could take over running the Earth Rumbles. Permanently. Protecting Toph was her spiritually assigned task, but she would have left years ago, spirits be damned, if she hadn't quickly grown fond of the brusque little girl. And her parents, though they were getting on her nerves right about now. Thus, the talk of snapping necks.

Lao jerked back, and Poppy's wails ceased. "Why?" he asked.

"Did Xin Fu take Toph?" she pressed, thankful something had gotten through to them, even if that something was her own brutality.

"No!" Lao exclaimed.

"Yes!" Poppy said, at the same time.

Lao opened his mouth to object, but Taylor pointed her newly healed arm at him, savoring the fact that she could without any pain or resistance from her joints. "You after her." If only because he needed more time to cool off and remember that blaming her wouldn't get him anywhere. "Poppy. What happened?"

Poppy spilled out a tearful, but thankfully brief, recounting of how the Avatar had come to visit for no apparent reason, and then been kidnapped off the grounds along with Toph. The Beifongs had immediately conceded to the ransom note, going with Master Yu and the Avatar's… water tribe child companions… as their protection to the 'uncouth underground fighting ring' to make the trade. They got Toph back, but Xin Fu had decided to sell the Avatar to the Fire Nation. Then the Avatar's companions convinced Toph to free him, which of course she did, working her way through all of the earthbenders Xin Fu had roped into his scheme. Later, Lao told Toph off for sneaking out to the Earth Rumbles, and then the Avatar left on his flying bison… But the servants noticed that Toph was gone later that night.

"Understood." She clapped her hands. "Lao. What do you have to add that Poppy did not already say? Anything that might be relevant."

Lao told her more about the Avatar and his companions, three children, the Avatar the youngest of them with massive arrow tattoos. He told of the bison, which was known to have left Gaoling by flying to the North. He reported that the Avatar spoke of needing an Earthbending teacher, and of how two teens were found frozen within solid blocks of ice up to their necks the previous day.

"The Avatar and his companions kidnapped my daughter," Lao concluded. "I was set to call upon Master Yu and Xin Fu to search for her and bring her back, if you did not return soon enough. She has already been gone a whole day!"

"Time isn't on your side regardless," Taylor told him. "They have a flying bison." She didn't know how fast such a thing would fly, but in a world where the next best transportation was a hybrid horse or one's own feet? It could fly at walking speed and still escape pursuit by ducking into the clouds and then crossing a mountain range. "Why those two?"

"Their silence and their services can be bought," Lao explained. "I can send them with you as assistants, you will need benders."

"Master Yu might be useful, and I could work with Xin Fu, but you must make clear I am in charge." She was iffy on both of them, but any port in a storm. Lao was right, she would need muscle. She had no desire to be frozen from the neck down and left for dead. "Have you offered a commission to the Boulder or any of the other Earth Rumble competitors?" She would much rather work with the Boulder, or the Gecko. Fire Nation Man, maybe, if he was any good as a bender when he wasn't throwing fights for a laugh. Their skill was comparable, and their personalities were much less likely to cause problems.

"There was no time…" Lao looked away. "And most are still nursing their injuries from the first kidnap attempt."

Injuries Toph inflicted, on her own, when pitted against all of them at once. Taylor was proud of her, and also worried about the quality of her new foes, if they had taken her down without half the town feeling the earthquake of the battle.

"I'll take them both and any other earthbenders you can have here and ready to go by daybreak," she concluded. "A few guards would be good, too. More eyes and ears, more defense for when we bring her back, more protection from any other dangers along the way." More for her to work with, beyond her own hidden airbending.

Airbending… There was an idea there, something that tickled at the back of her mind. She would think about it later. She had things to do tonight. "I'll also need a map, someone who knows how to care for Ostrich Horses, enough Ostrich Horses for all of us plus supplies, and a reasonable amount of funds to resupply when those run out."

"Surely you can find her in a few days?" Poppy asked.

Taylor shook her head. "Flying bison," she said again. "This isn't going to be easy."

Poppy sobbed, and Lao put his hands on her shoulders reassuringly. "I have… complete faith." It might have been more convincing if he didn't hesitate to say it, but as he spoke he seemed to draw strength from his own words. "Taylor can find her and bring her back. She will succeed."

"I will." That was why she was here.

She went to her room, to pack. With everything that needed to be done before daybreak, she suspected nobody in the Beifong estate would be getting much sleep. Toph stolen out from under their noses, an entire rescue party to be assembled, supplies to be obtained from Gaoling, Earth Rumble participants to find and offer to pay… It would be hectic.

First, though, she needed to pack her own clothing and tools. A few minutes of silence wouldn't go amiss, either. She hadn't even had time to process her own emotions on the subject. The light curtains over her window fluttered in the increasingly strong breeze she had stirred up as she walked through the building.

She needed to get a lid on that. Her crippled arm had not been able to move with the fluidity necessary to effectively bend air before, but now even casual gestures tickled at her fingertips. Was this what being an airbender was supposed to be like?

She would have to find out once they were on the road.

Bonus Alternate Ending:

The gist of it, gleaned through Poppy's hair-tearing worry and Lao's brooding anger, was that the Avatar had come to Gaoling, shown up at the Beifong manor for an unclear reason, and then kidnapped Toph.

This, of course, made absolutely no sense. But Taylor wasn't given any time to question it. Lao had assembled a retrieval team, and they were only waiting for her return to get on the road following the Avatar's last known heading. Less than an hour after arriving home she was on the road again with a bag of supplies, a very incomplete understanding of what the hell had actually happened, and two well-paid assistants.

She shifted in the saddle of her Ostrich Horse, twisting to look back at the two men riding behind her on their own steeds.

They knew more about what had happened. There was a reason Lao had chosen them to ply with gold, when he had guards and servants by the dozen, and she had been assured that they could fill her in on the details on the road.

Master Yu, riding on the right side of the road, sat uneasily in his saddle. He still wore his teaching robes, and his thin mustache was greasy with old sweat. Xin Fu rode on the left, his muscular frame hunched over, and he met her searching look with a sneer.

She knew that look. There was a man who was chafing under the command of someone he didn't think deserved to order him around… And she had yet to give an order. That would have to be dealt with. Ideally now, so that if she had to be rid of him, she could make him walk back to Gaoling and keep the Ostrich Horse to carry supplies with.

"Tell me," she said, taking a stab in the dark. "Xin Fu. How much money did you expect to make off of revealing Toph's nighttime excursions to her parents?" She didn't know what had happened, but Xin Fu was not a public person. For the Bei Fongs to have hired him, they had to think he would be more effective than any other Earthbender in Gaoling. Master Yu's presence was obvious, the man was an Earthbender, knew Toph, and was willing to go to great lengths if he thought the price was right. Xin Fu was the same… But the Bei Fongs would have had to know he knew Toph to know that. They were only connected in one way.

"None of your business, girl," Xin Fu growled. "You're all bark, no bite, now that you don't have the Blind Bandit to escort around."

"He kidnapped her and the Avatar to sell to the highest bidder," Master Yu offered. "Taylor, you know this… ruffian?" Taylor felt him hunching his shoulders as Xin Fu glared at him, her control over the breeze strong and unnoticeable as they rode. Moving in the open was the perfect setting for her trick adapted from Toph and her experiences on Earth Bet; nobody noticed an errant breeze when they were riding into the wind already.

"Obviously, she was there every step of the way with her cheating Earthbender friend," Xin Fu said. "She's never contributed anything meaningful, the little girl's seeing eye servant."

"He's sore because Toph would have made a quarter of what she was worth if I wasn't there to coach her in negotiating." She knew exactly what she was doing, poking at the Earthbending conman. Xin Fu was a known quantity. One did not deal with a person every few weeks for years without getting the measure of them. Useful in his element, but outside of it?

Taylor would bury him if he forced her to. The Avatar had kidnapped Toph, or something similar. She had no time for backstabbing, conniving tagalongs. She only needed one of them to be her guide in this foreign land.

"I'm only here for the reward," Xin Fu growled. "You can go home. We don't need or want you around. In fact, if you don't turn back now, I'll make you go. You can't fight me."

Taylor pulled on the reins of her Ostrich Horse, turning to one side to let the two behind her by on the road. "Maybe so."

She waited until Xin Fu was passing by, leering at her. "Ha!" She struck the reins, drove her Ostrich Horse forward, and pulled up beside him in a matter of seconds. He steered right at her, trying to call her bluff, but she had never intended to ram him. Instead, she whipped the reins of her Ostrich Horse up, looping them over his arm and neck, kicked her mount, and dove off.

Her fall was rough, but Ostrich Horses were only fast in comparison to walking, and she knew how to fall. Her good arm slapped the ground as her side hit.

Xin Fu knew how to fall too, but there was a world of difference between purposefully bailing off an Ostrich Horse and being yanked off one with the force of two panicked Ostrich Horses running in different directions. His reins were torn out of his hands as he was forced horizontal to the ground.

For a normal human in her world his fall, or indeed the opening yank, might have been lethal. In this world, however, people were much more resilient to all kinds of force, benders more than non-benders. She rose with no more than bruises, and though Xin Fu struck the road and rolled, he was up with bare feet buried in the packed ground, unbroken. He would be feeling that fall, but it wouldn't provide her with more than a minor advantage if they came to blows.

They faced off, with Master Yu's startled Ostrich Horse taking him in a wide arc around them. He turned away to chase after the other two mounts, taking the excuse to not involve himself in the fight that was about to erupt.

"Make no mistake," she called out to Xin Fu, "I don't like you. I don't need you. You're in this for the pay. I'm in this for Toph. We can work together, with better chances than either of us alone…"

She lifted her hands, her newly restored arm functioning properly for the first time since she had been reborn. Both hands were open palms, because she had never gotten anywhere with closed fists when attempting to airbend.

"Or you can get out of my way," she concluded, sweeping her arms down, to her sides.

The air stilled. All around them, the breeze stopped dead in its tracks, partially opaque to her eyes. The air itself resisted movement, for just a moment. Her breath came shallowly, and Xin Fu's did too. Master Yu's Ostrich Horse shrieked fearfully, caught on the outskirts of the effect.

A tremor in her weak arm dispelled the effect, as she lost her grasp on the air she had purposefully seized.

Xin Fu did not know exactly what had happened, but his gaze was drawn to her arm, which was visibly less crippled than it had been last he saw her. He was coming to a conclusion, one of two that could be said to be correct.

"I will do whatever needs to be done to see her safe, spirits willing." She smiled at him, a cold, hard smile. "And the spirits are willing, make no mistake."

An airbender could be understood, fought, anticipated. A known, if extinct, quantity. One who acted with the spirits behind them, unknown and inexplicable?

Xin Fu straightened up, carefully abandoning his steady stance in favor of a less confrontational pose. He still sneered, but behind that sneer… Fear.

Fighting the unknown was a scary thing.

"Save your backstabbing for the Avatar," he growled.

Much better to loose one dangerous unknown on another and run away with the prize while they were fighting each other.

That night, their group of three gathered tentatively around a single campfire.

They had not asked, and she had not answered. The wordless conclusion Xin Fu had come to was not expounded upon, and if Master Yu had caught her implication, he was doing a very good job of hiding it. Her declaration served to defuse the tensions between her and Xin Fu, but only in that it suffocated them in even more ambiguity and the added confusion of spiritual interference.

"Please tell me about the Avatar," she requested. Xin Fu might be silent for now, but he would bristle anew if she tried to take control.

He and Master Yu spoke of a child. A powerful child, accompanied by two foreign children older than him. Xin Fu accused Toph of conspiring with the Avatar, the child, to throw her exhibitory post-victory match, but Taylor knew better than to believe it. He said the Avatar had not bent Earth, but that Toph was thrown out of the ring anyway.

Taylor was reminded of her earlier trick with stopping the air, and how neither man had recognized it as airbending. The Avatar was a bender of all four elements. Perhaps Xin Fu was simply seizing upon an excuse to justify his greed.

From there, their story was simple. Xin Fu apprehended the criminals to obtain fair remuneration, of course by selling them to the enemy army instead of simply confiscating Toph's victory belt or anything remotely reasonable. Master Yu spoke of going with the Beifongs to negotiate Toph's release, and of how Toph laid waste to the entire Earth Rumble roster in front of her parents. They spoke of how Toph was returned, and then, only hours later, kidnapped by the Avatar. No reason was given, and their only lead was that a massive creature had been spotted flying away from Gaoling shortly after.

She made the appropriate noises of surprise and consternation, but only because calling them biased liars to their faces would gain her nothing. Toph may have been kidnapped. The Avatar may have been there. But there were holes in their story and the underlying reasoning of all involved big enough for her to ride an Ostrich Horse through.

Her skepticism was proven correct the very next morning.

She had moved off the road and into the forest to change her clothing in privacy. In her rushed packing, she had thrown most of her wardrobe into a bag, and had to sort through it to find a clean, no-nonsense tunic for the day's travels.

Inside that tunic, taken from her room in the Bei Fong estate, was a parchment. Toph wasn't fond of calligraphy or writing except when absolutely necessary, and Taylor still sometimes struggled with the more archaic turns of phrase of the written language of this world, but those two problems canceled out.

'Parents don't understand,' Toph's note read, shaky and near-illegible. 'Avatar needs Earth. Plans in the air. Back someday. Toph.'

For all that she was an incredible Earthbender, she was still only twelve.

"In what world," Taylor asked rhetorically, "did you think I wouldn't follow you?"

At least she didn't have to worry about fighting the Avatar anymore. That would have been a terrible misunderstanding. She recognized Toph's handwriting, Toph had remembered to use the key word – any reference to or mention of air, something nobody but she and Taylor would recognize as significant – and this neatly explained why Toph had been taken, something conspicuously absent from Xin Fu and Master Yu's story. This was almost certainly the truth of the matter.

No, they would not be chasing Toph down to rescue her from the Avatar. From the trouble she could get into with an Avatar urging her on, perhaps, and they were flying into a war, one Taylor assumed was being waged with the same ferocity as wars back on Earth Bet…

Her smile faltered as she reconsidered exactly how much danger Toph was likely to be in, even with the Avatar on her side. Toph didn't know the truth of war, and perhaps her new friends were avoiding it for the time being, but if it caught up to them?

She still needed to reach Toph as quickly as possible. From there… They'd see where the winds took them.

Author's Note: I chose to go with the HP version of the base idea mostly because I had a lot more of a plan for where it would go, and how, whereas an Avatar crossover was much harder to plot. Harry Potter has a far more contained world. (And I also have a purely ATLA story I want to write, whereas I didn't have anything else HP that was calling to me, so I figured I'd go with the universe I otherwise wouldn't write in at all.)

This still works well enough on its own, though. Too much canon-railroading if I were to want to make an actual story out of it, this was my first attempt at the idea and I stuck with the obvious way of creating an 'existing relationship, child stolen' dynamic, but fun even so. As a real multi-chapter story I would probably expand the pre-Earth-Rumble-Six parts, then set them off the beaten path well before that, butterflying away Aang's earthbending teacher for a bit to see what happens there (maybe they'd swing back around and pick up Haru or something for lack of an obvious better option). Play with being an airbender in a post-airbender world, how the spirits see the obvious lack of one fourth of the elements, expand upon little things the show glossed over but I found interesting. There'd be an eventual meetup between an Aang trained in earthbending by someone else, and Taylor, a violent, self-taught airbender playing advisor to Toph the terror of everyone who pisses her off…

I need to stop throwing around plot ideas for this story, I have enough to write already! Specifically, things with endings; this one has gotten away from the point of this collection being conceptually complete stories, instead of the 'chapter 1 of x that will never be written' prompt havens a lot of similar collections consist of. Whatever's next will be a return to form on that front.