A/N- Hey guys. Here's the new chappy. Expect the next update on Wednesday next week, and know you could skip the wait and read the next two chapters as well as continuous updates on Pa-treon right now. Since I now qualify as an unemployed member of society, all subscribers on my pa-treon are much appreciated. If you enjoy my writing, then please don't hesitate to support it if you can. For Pa Treon, you can remove the hyphen between Pa and Treon and Google it, then search for my username—Oghenevwogaga. Or you could copy the link in my bio and remove the spaces before pasting it in your address bar.
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It was quite impressive, in the end. That Kinvara felt so loyal to his friend that he was going to refuse the chance to get away scot-free. Of course, he would not have. The offer was a smokescreen because I would never really have allowed the attempt against my life to go so unpunished, but the fact that he could say no to that almost made me want to keep him alive. Almost. I nodded at the guards on the Compound's outer walls and made my way within.
Looking up at the sun for a few minters told me it was only an hour or two past noon, so that meant I would probably be interrupting lunch. Just as expected, I walked into the Manor and ended up being guided by a servant to the family's dining room.
"Major General Natsu of the Fire Nation, Governor of Gaoling" the servant announced as I walked in, and I inclined my head at her in thanks as she skittered away. Even the serving class here knew to fear the Fire Nation. Hopefully, that would change in time.
"Major General Natsu. What a surprise. Please come join us, come join us" Lao Beifong looked almost like he did in the cartoon. A thin man with a long moustache and no other facial hair to go with his long black hair. The composure he'd worn with ease in the cartoon was nowhere to be found. Just like with Kinvara, I'd had his guards replaced with Fire Nation soldiers, and that seemed to be a state of affairs that affected him more severely than his counterpart.
By his side, his wife remained quiet, but she had put both arms around their young daughter, Toph. I gave the young girl an assessing look. A powerful bender. She would be the Avatar's tutor in a different life, maybe even in this one, if my plans failed.
"Thank you. I do hope you are adjusting properly to the changes".
"Yes, Major General. Poppy, please take Toph and excuse us" He answered me, and then turned to his wife to deliver orders. The woman made to leave but I coughed deliberately.
"Please do not let me interrupt your lunch. I won't be staying long, so there's no need for that" I said.
"But please General Natsu. Let them leave so we can discuss," he was practically begging.
"No. Whatever we say will be said in front of them." I said to him.
"Now sit" I turned to the woman, Poppy, as I spoke. I could already see Toph's fists tightening. She could attack me here, I realised. It would be stupid, though. I'd kill her if she tried it, and kill her family as well. She had potential to be a great tool for my purposes, but I had no use for one without the brains to identify a lost battle.
"Whatever you want, I will do it. I promise. Please. Just don't hurt them" Lao said next after I allowed the awkward silence to stretch for a few seconds. I was beginning to feel sorry for him.
"I have not come to kill non-combatants" I said, with my eyes on Toph's clenched fists. I had to make sure I was ready to move the moment she did. Letting her get the first attack in uncontested could mean my death because of the surroundings we were in.
"Please. I will do anything." Of course, my words did little to convince him.
"I gave Kinvara an offer. I will give you a similar one. You will publicly confess to the assassins you sent for me-" Poppy, his wife, interrupted my words with the way she wailed on hearing them. Even Toph looked shocked. I guess she hadn't seen that one coming.
"And you will confess the Mayor's involvement. You will lie and say that it was all his idea, and you were pressured to using your finances to secure the assassins. He will be sentenced to death, and you will prevent any rebellions, uprisings, or anything of the sort from the general populace using your influence, and you will forfeit two-third's of your wealth to my war effort" I told him.
It said a lot that it was only the last demand that made him shake.
"Of course, you could always say no" I said, eyes still on Toph. I knew exactly what he would interpret my actions to mean so it did not surprise me that he was falling over himself to say yes in no time. Especially when his wife turned to him with fire in her eyes.
"Now, go start writing your speech. I want to speak with your daughter"
"No, no. Not my daughter. She is frail and blind and cannot even understand what is going on here. She can't offer you anything. Please." There was real horror in his face. His wife's arm had tightened around Toph so much that if the girl were truly as frail as they thought, then she would have already been screaming in pain. But she took it all with nary a flinch.
"I do think she can offer me quite a lot. It is not your place to tell me either ways" Almost impossibly, Poppy's grip tightened, and she let out a sob. Lao looked both scared out of his mind and disgusted at the same time. I replayed the sentence in the context again, and I realised just what it seemed like I was requesting. I resisted the urge to facepalm, but just barely.
It made me shudder at the thought of the the kind of rumours being spread about my people across the Kingdom if they were so willing to believe I'd be interested in defiling a blind child with literally no evidence to support the assumption either. Even the way Toph had stiffened showed that the concern felt by her parents had begun to bleed into her. I took a deep breath so none of my aggravation would leak into my voice when I spoke next.
"Lao, Poppy. I have no intention of harming your daughter. I do just want to speak with her, and I feel that your presence here would be Counterproductive to that goal, but if you do want to stay, then I will not push the point" I said, yielding the point to them after thinking for a bit. Even the whisper of a rumour that I did things like that could taint my honour for decades. The worst part was that there would always be those, even among Fire nation nobility, who would believe such a rumour without a second thought. Sure, the taint would be a minor one, but it would one persistent.
Even till date, tongues still wagged of what exactly Admiral Rensuke had done to the water bender women he captured. The fact that the rumours had come to me through word of mouth, and I'd just taken them as fact and allowed them to soil my opinion of the man showed me just how careful I had to be.
"Then we will be staying, Major General" The man spoke for both himself and his wife.
"Toph. The name is Toph right?" I asked her.
"Yes. She is named after my-"
"Shut up, Lao. You are here for your peace of mind, but do be silent. This is a conversation between benders" I said.
The man wanted to reply instantly, probably going to spout some shmiel about how she was barely a bender, but he thought better of it.
"Like I was saying, Toph. Do you know I was around your age when I first bent lightning for the first time. I used it to kill a man. He had paid a grave insult to my family, and had caused me a severe injury that even threatened my life. We fought in Agni Kai, and I won. That was when the Fire Nation acknowledged what I'd known for years. I was a master fire bender. More talented than the lot of them, and just plain better" I said.
Her body language was still. Almost like she could barely hear the words I spoke or didn't care for them, but that was only on first appearances. I knew what a bored Toph look like. The conversation before word had turned to assassinations had bored her. No, she was enthralled with my speech. That was why she did not move.
"Of course, I've only gotten better since then. Just as you'd call yourself the Greatest Earthbender in the World, I'd call myself the Greatest Fire bender in the World. Except unlike you, it wouldn't be a mere boast." Her head snapped to mine. I smiled. Bait taken.
"You have no idea what I can do" She instantly riposted. She hadn't even bothered attempting to deny being as good as I presented her as. Of course, she could probably read my heartbeat and tell that I was certain about her.
"I don't. You're right. But I did fight the greatest Earthbender in the world, and I beat him. I can already tell you don't compare. Not yet, at least" I said.
"I'm the greatest earthbender in the world" She asserted.
"From this little shithole of a city? Of course you are, kid. Let's be honest with ourselves. You haven't fought the best. You haven't crushed the rest of the world beneath your feet. Me, I fought the best the world has to offer, and came out not just alive, but victorious. That is what separates the two of us." All the while I spoke, I pinned Lao to his seat, making sure his foolish mouth did not open and remind her that he and his wife were here and that she had a persona to uphold. I wanted. To speak to the real Toph Beifong. The girl who had been tamed by Avatar Aang was just as much a caricature as the one she played here. No, she was just like me. I could feel it. I could feel the ache in her blood. I could hear the drums. I could her her blood cry out to mine.
"I know what I can do, fast heart." She finally said.
"Care to make a wager then?" Hook, line, sinker.
"What type of wager?" She asked with an eager smile on her face.
"I beat you, and you join my army. You report to me. I take you all around this Kingdom, and we get to see how you stack up against some of the best of the best and if after that, you find yourself victorious, I will personally crown you as the greatest earthbender in the whole world-get you a championship belt.
"And if I win?" She asked. It was clear she didn't care much for the first possibility. Probably didn't see it as likely.
"What do you want?"
"You and your people leave Gaoling with no resistance. You leave Dad and Uncle Kinvara alone as well." She spoke, and I inclined my had to show her my agreement. It was an easy deal to arrive at. Why? Because I would not lose. I could not.
"Time and place?" I asked.
I watched the way she turned her eyes to her parents who sat shivering with fear as we spoke. Whether it was far of this jew side of their daughter that they'd clearly never seen before, or fear for the blind one they'd loved from birth, or even some unholy combination of both of them.
"Here and now, Fast heart" She said, and I smiled before standing up as well.
"Good to see we think alike. I have heard tell of quite an impressive garden along the lines, and it's been a short eternity since I last got to see one. We shall cross fists there" I said, as I took her hand and pumped it twice.
XXXXXXX
I had no idea what I expected in the end. Okay, that wasn't wholly true. I did know what I expected. I expected a fight with one of the greatest benders in the world. But in the end, that was not what I got. Watching the show had clearly made me underestimate just how much Toph had gained in the fighting pits of Gaoling. Fighting pits that had been closed for months in response to my actions in Omashu and waning interest in the face of the wolves at the literal door. Instead, she'd gotten only a few fights under her belt.
I leaned out of the way of a massive pillar that threatened to smash me into paste and then cut a boulder in twain with a neat kick that sent forth an arc of superheated flames, as I reconsidered my assessment. She was still a good earthbender. Great, even. What she lacked, wasn't bending related. No, it was even more fundamental than that. She was a great bender, but a middling fighter. Good instincts, but little else. In the face of a person who had spent years sharpening himself against the best of the best that the whole world had to offer. First at the academy, and now for close to a year on the march. She just felt, blunt.
Blunt. That was a good word. I skated across the ground with my fire jets and neatly avoided every pillar she raised in my way until I was forced to shatter through the whole thing when she gave up and just formed a fence around me. The massive obelisk she tore out of the ground hinted at her rising frustration, but got little more than a raised eyebrow from me as I ran right at it as she sent it flying at me. Right before we clashed, I jumped into the air and began to run across the stone structure and right at her. Her blind eyes gave nothing away, but I could see it in the way she stilled. She lost her connection with things when they left the ground. That meant she could not feel them anymore. A failure.
I sent out an arcing flame punch that produced a fireball that curved through the air, bending around everything to take the long away around to her. I kept a close eye on her as I noticed she knew none of what was coming for her. Just as the fireball was about to hit, I shot off the obelisk with a blast of flame and landed right next to her and caught my own fireball in my grasp after being sure she felt what had almost happened.
"Surrender?" I asked with an involuntary smirk and chuckle. Stubborn as the element she wielded, she rejected the opportunity to yield with aplomb and burst into movement. I jumped into the air for a second and then separated my feet to land on either side around the spiked top of the earth she'd raised where I just stood.
Snarling, she punched at the spike I stood atop and sent it flying deeper into the garden. A simple backflip later and I was standing safely atop a set of hedges. I turned to look at her father, Lao Beifong, and watched him watch the fight with a panicked expression even as his wife watched with narrow eyes. Bingo. I knew a personality such as Toph's could not have come from thin air. Once She noticed my attention, her expression shifted to a suitable amount of panic but it was already too late. I tapped my nose even as I was. Forced to run along the hedge to avoid more of her daughter's attacks.
"Do you truly believe there to be some point to this?" I asked as I backflipped off the hedge to avoid another boulder and thanked her for the opportunity to practice my flexibility since there was little place for such on the battlefield.
The more attacks she sent, the greater my excitement grew as I backflipped, cartwheeled and otherwise acrobatically contorted myself to avoid each and every attempt she made to turn my body into paste. Even her attempt to turn the ground around me into mud failed in an instant as I cooked the mud into a solid clay with fire from my feet while barely stopping my movement for a second.
In the end, the fight stopped on my terms and not hers. A second. All it took was a second out of step for her. Breathing in to rest for a second too long. The next attack coming in a second too slow. And I was in her space. I lashed out with my feet against hers and dropped her to her back with a muffled scream and then forced her to yield when I pressed the heat of my fire blade against her neck.
Once she did, I wasted no time in standing up and helping her up as well. "You're good. But I wasn't even trying just now. There are dozens of people in the world on my level. If you can't stand at that same level then you have no right calling yourself the Greatest Earthbender," I told her seriously and relished the flame that seemed to build beneath empty eyes.
"And if I join you, you'll train me?" She asked.
"Toph Beifong, if you join me, you and I will make history together." I stretched out my hand for a handshake.
A/N: Progress. Like I said earlier, you can either wait till Wednesday for the next chapter or skip the waiting and read the next two, as well as continuous updates as I write on pa-treon (same username as up here- link in bio). Both are equally valid actions, so no rush. For Pa Treon, you can remove the hyphen between Pa and Treon and Google it, then search for my username—Oghenevwogaga. Or you could copy the link in my bio and remove the spaces before pasting it in your address bar.