Title: By Chance – What are You doing here?

Summary: Our girl Toph decides to take matters into her own hands when she sees what’s going on.

Disclaimer: Avatar – The Last Airbender belongs to Nickelodeon. I don’t own any rights to the characters, places, or ideas of the show.

Warning: This story will probably eventually be mildly slashy (of the girl kind). Jeez, what is my deal with writing this stuff?

Chapter 2

Well, this is just great.

Looking around from the place where she’d tumbled, the girl slowly stood up and checked herself for injuries, sweeping one hand through her long, dark hair. Oh goodness, where in Ba Sing Se was she? Somewhere underground obviously.

“Alright, whose brilliant idea was this?” She brushed the dust off her clothes and looked around again, hoping to catch a glimpse of the Earthbender who had done this to her. It didn’t take a brilliant mind to realize what had happened.

She wasn’t exactly sure what she’d been doing out so late at night – and alone? Ha, she should have known something would happen. She’d just needed some time away from the others to think she supposed. Azula was so cold sometimes it was downright depressing. Still, the Fire Princess led an exciting life; certainly more lively than life back in the fire nation. She understood why they were following the heir of the Fire Lord so dutifully. Well, that wasn’t completely true – she knew exactly why she was here.

Azula’s fiery spirit had always been so raw and untamed, ever since they were kids. The young woman sighed as she sank to her knees on the cavern ledge she’d found herself spirited away to become a prisoner; she had always wished that Azula’s fire would calm. She didn’t hope for it to become tame or safe, but she wanted her friend to be someone she could relate to, someone who was approachable, and not someone she had to just follow without question. But no, as they’d grown older, Azula’s inner fire had only grown hotter with her ambition. She’d become more and more like her father with every passing month, and Zuko had borne the brunt of the heat. He’d suffered the most for being the “weak” child, and she’d suffered with him in silence, watching helplessly as her Princess stepped farther down the dark path that her father had led her down.

Shifting a little so she could sit more comfortably, she thought back to the first night the three of them had been back together. After seeing how dark Azula had become – how monstrous and devious her ambitions had become, they two had agreed to a silent pact. No words had been exchanged between Ty Lee and Mai; they hadn’t been needed. They simply understood each other, and they both saw that Azula’s Fire would consume her if it were left to smolder and feed with only her father’s teachings as fuel.

The two friends had decided that it was up to them to make sure the Princess’ sense of humanity survived all this. It was up to them to keep it safe until the Earth Kingdom had fallen so they could preserve the human being, the woman, the young girl that was their best friend and keep her from being consumed by that monster – the daughter of Ozai.

And now she was trapped way down here.

Just how did that work anyway?

She thought back again to those very last moments before plummeting down here. She actually hadn’t been thinking about Azula then; she’d been thinking about the Avatar and his friends

She had been thinking about her.

Well, not her so much as what she represented – how she was able to keep the four of them together with only a few words and her own heart. That was something she missed from the old days. The kind of camaraderie that existed in that group was incredible and she wished she knew its secret; she wished she could somehow get it to work between the three of them.

She wished she could have a real friend for once.

That must have been it.

It must have been the moment she’d had that very thought that her hidden captor had seen their moment to attack. That was the annoying thing about Earthbenders. She was faster than lightning and smooth as ice, but the Earthbenders had a way of throwing things in the way with a consistency that was just infuriating.

Who could it have been?

The Avatar had an Earthbender, but it seemed more likely for the blind girl to capture Azula than it did to kidnap her. Honestly, didn’t it make more sense to cut off the head of the serpent rather than its tail? Azula had said something when they had first come into the city, something about secret police – the Dai Li. She wasn’t sure why they would want to shuttle her down to this empty, echoing place, but they weren’t here to stop her from leaving, were they?

Standing from her place on the floor, she glared mildly at the rough circle of disturbed rock on the wall. What could she do against that, she must have traveled what – half-a-mile through solid rock? There was no way was she was digging herself out that way. She’d have to find another way out – one that didn’t require bending. Now here was one of those times when she didn’t envy Azula her fire-bending. It was one thing for her to be stuck down her, but if she had that much power and still been unable to do anything to save herself? That would have been maddening.

She looked around at the cavernous chamber. It was huge – it even had a few small buildings on the ground below her ledge. A stone-lined canal wound its way through the chamber from the wall below her to the opposite end of the chamber, passing through a barred culvert at the far end of the cavern, almost right in front of her. She couldn’t see a single beam of daylight; all her vision came from the light of some strange green crystals that were pretty much everywhere. She finally saw a path that cut from her ledge down to the ground, passing right along the cavern’s wall. With a frustrated sigh, she started walking down.

This was going to be so boring.

“Ow…what a strange dream.”

Katara lifted her head from her pillow and swept the hair out of her eyes. That really had been a weird dream – it must have been the stewed mystery meat that Sokka had cooked for the evening meal. Yeah…monsters were one thing, but coming up out of the floor and eating her? That was just-.

She caught sight of the pitch darkness around her.

Crazy?

“No!” Without thinking, her mind still half-asleep, Katara shot to her feet and smashed her head into the ceiling. “Nn…” With a groan, she fell back down onto her bedroll, her hand pressed against the crown of her head. What was this? Some kind of trick? Standing up more carefully, Katara reached above her head with one hand to feel for the low ceiling. “This isn’t very funny Toph!” She finally spoke upon making contact with the solid stone above her. The tallest she could stand was on her knees so she sat back down with an irritated huff.

After a few long, silent minutes, she realized that Toph wasn’t coming to let her out. Did she even know she was trapped down here? Where was here anyway? From what she’d felt in her dream, she must be stuck deep underground or somewhere like that. She had dreamt of being swallowed by a monster from underground, so she supposed that would have to have come from the real-world experience of someone kidnapping her from their home on the surface.

Cautious of anymore surprises, Katara reached out one hand and felt around in her bedroll for her flask of water. If Toph wasn’t playing some evil joke on her, then there was only one other person in her mind who could have done this to her and she felt a small flash of rage fill her mind as the smug, arrogant little face floated up from her memory.

Long Feng.

Oh, why couldn’t that snake just leave them alone? Wasn’t it enough that he’d made their lives a living nightmare by thwarting their every attempt to speak to the Earth King?

Popping the cork from her flask, Katara drew out a thin stream of water and formed it into a long, slender dart of ice. It was time she broke out of this prison.

With an abrupt forward thrust of her hands, Katara sent her dart flying out into the darkness. Almost instantly, she heard a quiet crack of stone and a tiny, rounded hole appeared in the pitch darkness in front of her, allowing a thin beam of light to shine through. Smiling with relief, Katara drew her dart back into her stone-walled jail cell and hurled it forward again, aiming just a little to the left so she could extend the hole to one side slightly.

She was so out of here.

Five minutes later, Katara dug herself out of the rubble and rubbed the top of her head gingerly, glad for once that she had been alone. “Okay, that wasn’t very clever.” She made a mental note to be more careful the next time she was cutting through the walls that supported the ceiling above her. “That’s the last time I make that mistake.”

Brushing her unruly, sleep-tousled hair out of her eyes again, Katara looked around at her surroundings with growing amazement. “Where in the world…?”

It looked like she was in the middle of a deserted city street, but there was something just a little off about it. The Waterbender looked around more slowly and realized that it was the light; it wasn’t right at all. It was supposed to be night time wasn’t it? Katara cast her gaze up to make sure and gasped, her eyes widening at the sight.

Rock.

Nothing but solid rock hung above the city. There was no sky, no stars, and no moon…only a solid, uneven ceiling shrouded in shadows.

An underground city.

Katara couldn’t see where the light was coming from but she realized now probably wasn’t a good time to marvel at the wonders and mysteries of Ba Sing Se. She had to get back to the surface and make sure the others were still okay. Long Feng had probably done something awful to them and Katara wasn’t there to stop him!

Spurred on by that thought, Katara snatched up her water skin, replaced its cork, and started jogging down the dimly-lit street, her eyes constantly searching for anything out of place.

Yet, for all her wariness, she must still have been tired from her interrupted sleep because the next thing she knew she had stepped out over nothing and fallen into a canal of clear, ice-cold water.

Shocked out of her wits, Katara broke the surface with a shrill gasp and thrashed her way to the stone wall of the canal, swimming through the deep water to grab onto a crack in the brickwork.

After a quick breath to calm herself, Katara reached out to all the water around her and used her bending to lifted herself up onto the bank of the canal. “Okay, I’m awake.” She glared at the flowing canal.

“Good thing too.”

Katara whipped around to face the voice and her foot slipped of the straight edge of the stone wall, causing her to start falling backwards into the canal, spinning around as her body toppled over the edge.

“Whoopsie!”

Small but strong arms grabbed onto Katara’s shoulder and easily counterbalanced her fall, setting the Waterbender securely and safely back on her feet even as the body on the other end of those arms spun around her, bouncing lightly from foot to foot as her would-be rescuer danced around her with a fluid and smooth grace that could only belong to one person.

“Ty Lee,” Katara’s eyes widened once again at the realization. First Long Feng and now this?

A grinning, bright-eyed face slid into the Waterbender’s sight only inches from her own. “That’s my name!”

A/N : Hope you enjoyed this new chapter. Whether you liked it or not, I’d appreciate some reviews to let me know how I’m doing with this new story. Thanks for reading it, and I’ll be back.