Special thanks to The Narrator, attackfish, and Tar Irene for beta reading this fic!

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The Full Metal Bitch

Part 1 of 5

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"-the BLIND BANDIT!"

The knockout in the shiny green cheongsam raised the belt high. The crowd went nuts.

At first glance Sokka thought the lady on stage, flanked by two slimmer women in white dresses, was just another showgirl. It was only when the two attendants took away her sequined cape and the giant belt that it dawned on Sokka that this woman wasn't introducing the champion. She was the champion.

It was then and there that Sokka decided, Water Tribe pride be damned, if earthbending gladiators could show off legs that go up to there, then maybe the Earth Kingdom had something over his own nation.

"Please listen! I need an earthbending teacher, and I think it's supposed to be you."

The twenty-something laughed a touch bitterly. "I think you just showed you're pretty good already, kid." The Blind Bandit reached into the diamond-shaped window on her dress, pulled a small piece of paper out of her cleavage and handed it to him. "Come see me tomorrow, Fancy Dancer. I can beat whatever merchandising rights Xin Fu promises you - Toph Bei Fong deals in gross, not net, and anyone who says otherwise is a son of a bitch."

Aang pondered the warmth imbedded in the sweat-and-sandalwood perfumed business card for long enough that when he finally looked up, the Blind Bandit was gone.

Katara decided five minutes on that a 'business dinner' was the most horrible thing a human being could experience, and she'd been buried alive.

After they flashed the business card at the front gate, the three of them were relieved of their boots and given pedicures. Servants washed their feet but no indoor shoes or slippers were provided. Apparently everyone went barefoot inside the walls of the estate. It was because, as the maid scrubbing between Katara's toes explained, the mistress of the house had been raised to be 'a proper lady' and expected her guests to go barefoot too. "Lady Toph asked us to inform you," the maid added, "that the part about being pregnant is entirely optional."

That should have been a clue.

A guard escorted them inside to a dining room. There were three people waiting for them, an older, grey-haired couple sitting quietly at one end of the table and, dominating the opposite end, was Lady Toph Bei Fong.

She had ditched her napkin-sized dress for a form-fitting, high-necked mint green silk blouse and matching pants. A wide, dark green sash was tied around the woman's waist. Katara wondered who was in charge of dressing the blind woman, because while the colors were tasteful it was all a bit too tight and eye-catching for a woman's modesty.

There was certainly no need for Lady Toph to need to catch anyone's eye. It was hard to ignore a woman so large that she made her own dinner table look like a child's play set.

Lady Toph bid them a boisterous welcome and then kicked up her bare feet on the table. Her soles were soot black. Katara glanced at the elder Bei Fongs for their reaction, but they both simply stared at their table settings with expressions that went beyond resignation into some heretofore unexplored realm of ignominy.

The food was of a quality that Katara hadn't tasted since their group's welcoming feast at the North Pole, but the silk table cloth and general finery of the estate house were a step far above the austerity of the Northern Water Tribe's palace. Everything about the Bei Fongs screamed money and they weren't shy about it.

Their shiny dinner plates, for instance, looked like steel but were far lighter. When she asked about it, Lady Toph slurred that they were made of something called 'aluminum'. Katara had the sense she was supposed to be impressed by that for some reason.

"Just so you know," Lady Toph said between swigs straight from a massive bottle of rice wine, as she perilously tilted her chair backwards, "I don't want there to be any hard feelings between us, Fancy Dancer. I know I was a little bit of a bitch last night." She rubbed her red nose. "I don't like to lose. But itsh okay! I've been winning for too long. A challenge now and then helps keep even the meanest Saber-tooth Moose-lion at the top of her pack, y'know? Plus it'll make for great ticket sales next season when I stage my comeback! So practice hard for Earth Rumble VII - I'll be out for you!"

Aang smiled politely. "Actually, I won't be competing next season."

Lady Toph slowly lowered the bottle from her lips. "Oh?"

Everyone else in the dining room froze. The help paused mid-motion, holding bowls of soup halfway down to the table. Katara realized that their eyes were darting between Lady Toph's measured blankness and Aang's happy ignorance. Sokka squawked when one nervous server overfilled his cup, spilling wine all over his place setting and into his lap.

"I'm kind of going to be busy defeating the Fire Lord. See, I'm the Avatar." There was the usual round of questions and airbending performances, all of which ended with Lady Toph staring blankly at Aang as he declared, "...but first I need to find an earthbending teacher."

To which Lady Toph replied, "Huh."

The servants went back to their tasks and then quickly shuffled out of the dining room. Hidden beneath the cover of the table, Katara's freshly pedicured toes curled.

Aang rolled on excitedly, "This crazy friend of mine who's King of Omashu said I needed to find someone who waits and listens to the earth, a master of neutral jing. Plus I had a vision in a magic swamp where I saw you and a flying boar and then I recognized you at the Earth Rumble and your business card has a flying boar inked on it and-"

The noblewoman motioned for silence. "That's great. So, what, you want me to recommend a good instructor? Because I know a few. Hell, I own all the dojos in Gaoling. Give me a name and I'll comp you all the lessons you need. Toph Bei Fong supports the war effort one hundred and ten percent."

Katara blinked. "Really?"

"So, like, even Master Yu works for you?" asked Sokka. "Because Aang had a coupon for him and he kinda sucked."

A wolfish smile spread across Lady Toph's face. "Yu and I go waaaay back. See, I used to run away a lot when I was younger and my parents - " she gestured to the meek couple at the far end of the table " - would pay him to go bring me back. I got to thinking... my parents were paying him a buttload of gold to catch me. So I cut a deal with him to 'run away' a few times and be caught for a slice of the reward. I used that seed money to make my first fortune in the weapons trade and then secretly bought out my Dad's businesses. Now I don't need to run away from home - I own it! So yeah, Master Yu rocks."

"That's horrible!" exclaimed Katara. "How could you do that to your own mother and father?"

"With a smile." Lady Toph threw her head back and laughed, loud as a thundercrack. The porcelain teacups rattled in their saucers. "Oh yes, I'm a total bastard, aren't I?"

"Dear!" chided her mother, speaking for the first time that night.

Lady Toph shot her mother a dirty look, somehow fixing her a stink eye with the same precision targeting she used to battle the Boulder the night before. Her mother turned away. Her father reached out and took hold of his wife's hand. They held onto each other like they were both drowning and didn't want to sink down into the murk alone.

Katara pushed her dinner plate away, appetite lost.

"Although not a bastard in the sense I was born out of wedlock." Toph held up an index finger. "I want that to be very clear. My parents are many things, but morally lax isn't - well, they are, honestly, but not about sex."

Dinner went downhill from there.

Sokka wasn't sure what was better about dessert: the cake or the eye candy.

"It's just ahead," said Toph. "C'mon."

Aang followed. The woman led him to the rear of her family estate, to an extension that budded off the main compound. At first Aang thought the standalone building was a shrine or private study, but he was not twenty feet from the door when the wind shifted and a wave of heat and smoke washed over him.

Walking inside only confirmed his suspicion; it was a forge.

Toph led him into the middle of the metal workshop, then told him to wait. She went over to a far wall, one decorated with a range of metalwork spanning from swords, dishes, axes, helmets, to even what looked to be an arm and a leg.

The earthbender retrieved two sheathed swords.

Tossing the black-clad one onto a cluttered worktable next to her, she held out the other sword, sheathed in lacquered ebony-oak inlaid with an entwined double dragon motif. Even in the dim smoldering light of the forge's starved furnace, the scabbard's golden inlay gleamed. Intertwined blue and red dragons and stylized suns and tongues of flame rippled over its burnished surface.

Toph grasped the blade by its silk-cord-wrapped hilt and smoothly drew the sword out. She held the blade aloft, tip pointing towards the ceiling. "This is a genuine Piandao. Not ten years ago, you couldn't find a better piece of craftsmanship in the world if you were in the market for a sword. It has balance, flexibility and strength. In the Fire Nation, it's an elite status symbol to own a Piandao sword. That's why the scabbard's all flash. It belonged to a firebender who never relied on a sword in battle."

"If it belonged to a firebender, how did you get a hold of it?"

"You're asking a blind person to draw you a picture?"

Toph airily swung the blade around in flourishing circles to either side of Aang. He did not feel the least threatened. If the last few months on the road had taught him anything about fighting, it was the clear differences between a weapon used with killing intent and one taken out by a tipsy showboat for martial practice.

He'd still like to know how a 'blind' woman could do this without accidentally chopping his head off.

Toph finished her set and gently laid the Piandao sword aside on a nearby stone table. She picked up the other sword from the cluttered workbench and silently presented it to Aang. The sheath was a pebbly, lackluster black. The hilt was undyed ray-shark leather. Aesthetically, it wasn't even a novice's effort compared to the beauty of the Piandao.

She drew the blade. There were no elegant loops and twirls this time. She simply turned to the right, raised the weapon over her head, and, with a wicked scream that pierced the night, brought the sword down in a chopping motion. Both the Piandao sword and the three-inch thick stone table it was resting on were cut clean in half.

Aang stumbled back in fright.

"And that," Toph Bei Fong declared, "is one of my swords."

The noblewoman partially sheathed the killer blade and offered it to him. Aang stared at the gift, half-certain it would bite him like a rabid rat-viper after that performance, but tentatively accepted it.

Toph warned him, "Don't pull it out all the way. Don't touch the edges, either. It'll take a finger off."

Aang found the blade astonishingly lightweight. If he hadn't just seen it cut through solid stone, he would have guessed it was made of painted wood rather than steel. He balanced the plain black sheath across his palms, then warily gripped it by the hilt and pulled the sword out a little. The wavelike blue-and-black patterned steel jumped out at Aang. It was exactly the same kind of steel that the Blue Spirit had drawn across his neck at the Pohuai Stronghold.

Toph bent the stone table back into one piece. "Bei Fong swords are the finest in the world," she explained calmly. "There's not a man in the Earth Kingdom that doesn't wish he had one of my blades in his hands when he faces the Fire Nation in battle. And you can bet that the firebenders are afraid of them."

"Why?"

"Because this was the kind of blade that harassed the Fire Nation at the Siege of Ba Sing Se." Toph hopped up onto the stone workbench and crossed her legs. Flicking her long black hair over her shoulder, she said, "I was there, you know. On the Wall."

Aang returned the sword to its scabbard and held it out for the noblewoman. Somehow, she knew exactly where to reach. "Were you scared?"

"I was young and stupid and pissed at my parents." Toph shrugged. "I was sixteen. Go figure."

"You didn't answer my question."

"I don't have to," she said casually. "I'm a grown woman."

"I'm twelve. I'm scared a lot."

"Yeah, being a kid sucks." Toph smiled at some memory replaying behind her milky eyes. It was the first time Aang felt like she wasn't putting a show for the world around her, or for herself. "When I was twelve, I dreamed about running away from home. Even did it a few times. Kept coming back, though."

"How come?"

She chuckled softly. "Because there was nowhere to run to."

He thought back to that last night in the Southern Air Temple, of the burning desire to go anywhere and be someone else. At least he still had Appa. At least he found Katara and Sokka. "I'm sorry."

"Don't be," Toph said, her mirth draining away. "I'm not a kid anymore. I made a mint during the Siege of Ba Sing Se plying my metalwork and now I'm in control. I can do whatever I want, whenever I want."

Aang was impressed. "Wow! That must be really great. If I didn't have to fight the Fire Lord, I'd spend all my time with my friends."

Toph turned her face away from him. The motion grabbed Aang's attention because the blind woman hadn't yet bothered either way with line-of-sight between them. Feeling guilty at upsetting her, Aang reached out and laid a comforting hand on her upper arm. "Toph, I-"

"If I needed a friend, I'd get a poodle-monkey." She brushed away his hand. "Let's get down to business. You want me to be your earthbending instructor. Why?"

"My friend Bumi said-"

"No. Why do you want me to teach you, Avatar?"

Aang hesitated for a moment. This was one of Those Questions, the kind Gyatso used to slip into small talk during Pai Sho games. "I... think destiny wants us to work together, but that's not why. Not really. I want you to teach me because you're a great earthbender, Toph, and because you're the most earthbender-y person I know."

"That's not a real word, kid."

He spread his palms. "Well, what would you call it? You're loud, direct and - " hard " - proud."

"The term you're looking for," said Toph, a smirk gracing her heart-shaped face, "is 'badass'."

Aang smiled too. "Being the Avatar is more than just learning how to bend the elements, it's about understanding the ways of the Four Nations so you can bring harmony to them."

"And you think I'm the person to teach you about the Earth Kingdom?" When he nodded, she barked with laughter. "Not much to know, kid. Stand your ground to the people attacking from the front. Watch your back for knives from the people standing behind you. Never change, even when you need to. Rot from the inside of your heart out. That's the Earth Kingdom way."

Aang pondered at how a blind woman could 'see' him nod his head. Were the milky eyes just a trick? He crossed his own grey eyes at her and stuck out his tongue. Toph didn't take offense. Then how? She hadn't cut him with that sword and she had been coordinated enough at dinner to reach across the table and eat off Katara's plate when she had turned up her nose at the second course.

Toph was just so strange. There was something really off about her self-assuredness. It wasn't something Aang thought to connect with a blind person. And no earthbender he had ever met had such terribly filthy, well-traveled feet. Aang bet she could have rubbed her soles together to light a fire if she didn't have spark rocks handy.

...Feet...

Aang looked at Toph's feet.

Toph was a tall woman, and all the tables in this foundry had apparently been made to be extra high off the ground so she could comfortably use them. She had one foot pressed up against the leg on the stone workbench, but the other foot was halfway stepping off the ground. Toph had to really stretch her leg out to touch the ground. Aang didn't understand how she wasn't cramping up.

No, he realized with dawning awareness, that wasn't the right question.

The right question was: why make such an effort to touch the ground in the first place?

The answer burst from his lips so quickly that he didn't even give a first thought to holding back, "You see with your earthbending, don't you?"

Toph, who had been lazing on the edge of the workbench, snapped upright. The easygoing expression on her faces tightened into something unpleasant. She hopped off the workbench and took two steps over towards Aang. Towering over him, she stared him down with unblinking milky jade eyes and declared, "Congratulations. I'm impressed."

"...Thanks?"

"Let's cut the chatter. You want me to leave behind a lucrative business empire to live in the dust and eat wild critters... all so I can cram earthbending into your head before the end of the summer so you, a little twelve year-old boy, can take on the Fire Lord?"

Aang tugs at his collar. "Well-"

"No."

"What?"

"My answer. Is no." Toph tucked a strand of raven-crow black hair back behind one ear. Her unseeing eyes were hard, like jade buried deep within white diamonds. "I won't be your earthbending teacher."

"But you have to be!" cried Aang. "We all have to do our part to end this war. And yours is to teach me earthbending, I know it is!"

Toph's lips curled back, revealing gleaming teeth and spit-slick gums. "I was 'doing my part' on the Outer Wall of Ba Sing Se, fighting alongside good men and women who didn't come home. Tell me, where was the Avatar when the Fire Nation broke through the Outer Wall? Why wasn't the Avatar there to stop the Dragon of the West when he was ready to burn the heart of the Earth Kingdom to ashes?"

Aang blinked away tears. Voice throaty, he gave the only reasonable response - a question. "Why wasn't the Avatar there when his own people were wiped out? Because... because he ran away."

The noblewoman pivoted on one blackened heel, turning her back to him. Shoulders rigid, Toph sucked in a sharp breath, held it, and then said in a low voice that brooked no argument, "Get out. Before I say something I'll regret."

Toph waited until the kid was out of sight before she allowed herself to cradle her burning face in her hands. It had been ages since she had gotten good and angry. Toph left many things at the Wall, her temper among them. Or so she thought.

Little bastard, she thought to herself, grinding the heels of her palms into her eye sockets. How dare he? What right does the Avatar have to live with his mistake?

Rather than show her flushed cheeks and moist eyes to the help, Toph busied herself by picking up the broken Piandao from the floor. She knew an onlooker would be shocked by the brazen disregard she showed for her own safety, grabbing the edged weapon with both fists like it was a butter knife. It was why she didn't let anyone inside her workshop. Toph had to protect her trade secret.

Holding the two sword halves together, Toph concentrated on the metal. The cut edges of the Piandao steel bubbled and morphed, merging back together into a single piece. The job wasn't done yet. There were microscopic stress fractures in the metal, ones invisible to normal human eyes or hands. In time, they could grow and cause the blade to break. Toph didn't plan on swordfighting anytime soon, let alone with his weapon, but she respected good metalwork. With a thousand subtle manipulations of the refined Earth sprinkled through the steel, Toph repaired the fracturing. In less than a minute the sword was as good as new.

After she first held a Piandao, Toph had spent days running her fingers up and down the cool steel, committing every particle of the many-layered sword to memory. She still had yet to see anything as beautiful as the alignment of the refined earth elements in a Piandao: the high-quality steel, the absence of bubbles or major impurities, the endless folds and the lethal focus of its edge.

Earth Kingdom swords were, as a rule, crap. For all the mineral richness of their continent, Toph knew her people typically couldn't forge good steel to save their lives. How could they, when a decent industrial firebender could personally generate a far higher temperature in their foundry and with exacting precision? Earth Kingdom swords were all potential, no payoff.

Toph's secret was that she forged her own swords with more than just fire. The whole hammer and anvil set-up helped speed things along, synthesizing her secret alloy from base materials, but the hard work she did hands-on. Toph sculpted her steel with metalbending, creating swords impossible to duplicate by other means.

The ingredients in her steel were exotic ores that Toph discovered while wandering the Earth Kingdom as a vagabond youth. Most of her alloying ingredients didn't even have true names, like iron or gold did, but Toph had trained her sense to recognize each one's distinct feel. Toph alone could extract them from base rock. She had made her second fortune that way in the aluminum trade. Along with her metalbending, it was the secret to her success as a swordsmith. No one else could compete on her level.

Piandao came close, though.

People said Piandao was not a firebender. His parents had pawned him off to a state orphanage when he had proven not to be a bender. Toph often wondered how he forged his blades. A simple furnace like she herself supposedly used? Or did he have a secret bending technique too, one his parents had appreciated? Either way, he certainly folded over his steel like nobody's business.

Toph owned another Piandao, one hidden away in her private underground bedroom alongside her library of premium weapons, rock collection, metallic exotica and fossils. It was hers and hers alone, not like the second-hand booty she had showed Aang. Toph had obtained her original at great expense through a black market trader who ran a merchant ship through the Fire Navy Blockade via the colonies in the Occupied Provinces.

Sometimes Toph went to sleep with that Piandao sword just to hold onto something so perfect. It almost made her time on the Wall worth it, to have stumbled across such a wonderful piece of earth amidst so much carnage.

And then there was the rest of time, when she wasn't being a selfish dumbass.

Sheathing her battlefield prize, Toph set the Piandao and her own demonstration sword back on the foundry's far wall. It was late. She had a large order to fill for some general named Fong and a bad night's sleep always made the job that much harder.

Aang was stumbling through the dark garden when he bumped into Sokka. The Water Tribe boy got the first word in. Aang was worn out from his conversation with the lady of the house.

"Hey," said Sokka, looking past him. "Is Toph back that way?"

"Yeah. Why?"

Sokka twiddled his fingers together. "Oh, you know. I just thought we could have a little talk, warrior to warrior. Swap stories. Maybe have a friendly drink or two." He sighed wistfully. "Didja know she led some sort of special task force during the Siege of Ba Sing Se? I saw her uniform display when her old lady was taking us on that walking tour. Imagine that - rich, a looker, a class act and a war hero. Aside from me being dirt poor, we have so much in common!"

There were many things wrong with that statement. Before Aang could correct his friend on any of them, metal cages slammed down on him and Sokka.

An ominous voice growled, "I think you boys owe me some money."

Sokka gripped the bars of his cage and leaned forward. "I know, I know. You must get asked this a lot, but can I have your autograph?"

"SOKKA!" cried Aang from his own cage, slung over the Big Bad Hippo. "There's a time and a place!"

"The Boulder concurs," said the muscled gladiator, glancing up at Sokka. "Autographs must come from officially licensed Earth Rumble retailers during regular business hours."

"Aw! Come on!" Sokka stuck one scraggly arm out through the bars. "Just on the bicep is fine. I won't tell anyone! What do you have to be afraid of anyway?"

"The Boulder fears no man! Breach of contract, however..."

"Quit yer yapping," Xin Fu ordered. The ringmaster glanced back at his troop of professional earthbenders. "I want to get as far away from that crazy bitch's house as quickly and quietly as possible."

"Hey!" shouted Sokka. "How dare you insult a lady! You should all be ashamed of yourselves! Toph Bei Fong is the sweetest, most gentle creature to walk the face of the Earth!" Everyone exploded with laughter, including Aang, which confused Sokka. "What? Is basic chivalry too much to ask for in this day and age? And Aang - you're a hundred and twelve! Shouldn't you be charmingly old-fashioned?"

"I like to think of myself as a hundred and twelve years young, Sokka."

Katara knelt to the grass. Reaching out, she felt around in the broad grove carved into the ground where sod once was. "There has to be a clue. Something to lead us to Sokka and Aang!"

"It's not that big of a mystery," said Lady Toph, yawning. "Xin Fu took them, obviously."

"What?" Katara stalked over to her. A sharp odor of liquor cut through the cool nighttime air. Katara wasn't sure if it was stronger coming from the earthbender's breath or from the jewel-encrusted golden goblet pasted into her left hand. "Who's Xin Fu? How do you know him?"

Lady Toph's lips hovered over the rim of the cup. She smiled. "He's the scoundrel who runs the Earth Rumble. A little too prone to bypass negotiations and go straight to cracking knees, but otherwise he's been a good investment." She paused to take a sip. "I'm a silent partner in the Earth Rumble league but let's keep that fact between us girls, m'kay? I don't want anyone to get the idea we fix the matches. It's more like... a personal gym, with my own private collection of sweaty hunks and adoring cheerleaders."

"You do business with that kind of man?"

"I'll do business with anyone who doesn't bend fire."

"That's horrible!"

"That's business," Lady Toph retorted. "Xin Fu is a jerk, but the Earth Rumble he started employs dozens of people and makes thousands more happy. On the balance, it's a net positive. Didn't your parents ever tell you greed is good?"

Katara averted her eyes, disgusted with the wretch standing in front of her. "No, but I bet yours did, didn't they?"

"Yup."

"If Xin Fu runs the Earth Rumble, then he probably took Aang and Sokka to the arena."

"Fair bet. It's his territory. He knows all the ins and outs. Legally, he can do whatever he wants with anyone who trespasses. Fortunately you have me on your side, so that won't be an issue."

"Then let's go!" Katara started for the estate's front gate but was yanked backwards by a hand on her shoulder.

Lady Toph said, "Whoa whoa whoa! Hold up, kid. We can't just rush in there."

"...You're right," Katara conceded, almost choking on her own words. "We need a plan."

"I meant I need to finish my nightcap first, sweetheart." She saluted Katara. "Cheers."

Katara slapped the wine cup out of Lady Toph's hands. All the servants and guards floating around the edge of the scene shirked away, afraid. "Don't you care about anything? Sokka and Aang could be hurt or worse and you're just standing around getting drunker!"

The long, slim fingers on the hand that held her wine cup twiddled in the air, as if searching for their proper place. They found it when Lady Toph took hold of Katara by the collar of her white-trimmed robe and jerked her off her feet. Dangling over a foot in the air, Katara was brought eye-to-eye with the blind noblewoman.

Flatly, Lady Toph declared, "Let's get one thing straight, little girl. I don't need to help you. I don't particularly want to help you. I'd rather start sleeping off my burgeoning hangover. However, I will help you for the simple reason that Xin Fu has disrespected me and mine by attacking a guest in my house. That shit will not stand. No, no. So please try to get it through that thick Water Tribe skull of yours that if I won't tolerate disrespect towards my guests, neither would I tolerate it from a guest." Lady Toph shook her for emphasis. "Got it?"

With the unerring accuracy of a younger sibling used to effortlessly scoring cheap shots off her brother's weak points, Katara zeroed in on what she knew about Lady Toph and replied, "Sure do, Mom."

The noblewoman flinched. Katara grinned inwardly even as she was dropped and landed hard on her tailbone.

"Whatever." Lady Toph cracked her knuckles. "Let's go rescue the boys. Hopefully they're holding together all right."

"I had dinner with the Blind Bandit, was personally kidnapped by the Boulder and got a free pedicure." Sokka sighed against the bars of his cage. "This has been the best day ever."

From his own cage several feet away, Aang asked, "What about that time you foiled Jet's plan to destroy that village?"

"That was a good day too, but it didn't involve dinner with a-" Sokka cupped his hands in front of his chest. "Woman."

"So?"

Sokka smiled kindly on his friend. If their cages weren't hanging out of arm's reach of each other, he would have patted the kid on the head. "You'll understand when you're older."

"Shuddup!" snapped Xin Fu from the arena stage below. "Prisoners that talk don't get their juice box!"

"Aw," said Aang. "I really wanted a juice box."

Sokka said, "You know, buddy, you look like you could use a pick-me-up."

The Avatar brightened. "Have something in mind?"

"How 'bout a song?"

"What do you want to sing?"

"Well, I was thinking... we're inside a mountain."

"Yes?"

Sokka said, "And we're 'forbidden' from talking with each other."

"Yessss?"

"And we're in a large room under that mountain that might, under some definitions, be considered a tunnel."

The two boys stared at each other; then, together in chorus:

"SECRET TUNNEL! SECRET TUNNEL!"

It would have been child's play to throw the little Water Tribe bitch over her shoulder, ride a wave of bended earth to Xin Fu's arena, rip off the top off the mountain and then go in fighting. But Toph was more than vaguely in the sauce and a nice long walk would help sober her up. So rather than drunkenly bring down a mountain on top of the Avatar and the hormone ball that had been nursing a stiffy for her all through dinner, Toph walked in silence with Katara across Gaoling.

Well, mostly in silence.

They were cutting through town when Toph made them stop at a random back alley so she could stick her fingers down her throat. Once she spat the last of the bile out of her mouth, she mused aloud, "So the Avatar, huh? How'd you meet him?"

"Why do you care?" sniffed the bitch.

"I care." Toph pushed off the alley wall and walked back into the street, head now clear enough to feel the feather-pressure tug of the magnetic north and south poles. "The Fire Nation is kinda kicking everyone's asses up and down the street. The Avatar icing the Northern Fleet was the first good news anyone has had since General Iroh chickened out at Ba Sing Se... fuck, six years ago?" She shook her head. "A whole fleet wiped out," Toph murmured to herself. "Makes me wish I had working peepers, if only to watch."

She felt Katara's shiver through the earth. "No, you don't. It was horrible."

"I'll bet." It was strange, but Toph had never thought she would empathize with a fourteen year old brat who probably hadn't even had her first monthly yet. Then again, I am still kinda drunk. "Must have been a lotta bodies in the water."

(They bring in the Dai Li to soften up the enemy. It is the first and last time Toph ever sees one of those bastards on the Wall. They're the ones experienced dealing with obstinate prisoners. The Dai Li gather up the POWs the army has been collecting since the last exchange between the lines back on Day 405, picking out the unhealthiest men and women, the ones who aren't going to last much longer in those squalid prisons. They take them up to the Wall. There are hundreds of Dai Li there; even the Grand Secretariat is pitching in. People in the army joke there must be a celebration in the city that night because it is the first time in generations that the Inner Ring hasn't been occupied by an oppressive power. No one cracks that joke within earshot of the Dai Li. Not even Toph.)

(The Dai Li do it all at once. They push the POWs through the Wall to the other side, but not all the way. They only let them poke their heads and the upper halves of their chests out - breathing space, nothing more. Their bodies are otherwise anchored in the rock. There are five hundred and six-two total, one for each day of the siege so far, all overlooking General Iroh's encampment. The screams and frantic pleas for mercy must wake up the whole damn Fire Army. All the prisoners on the Wall are firebenders, because that way they demand a lot of attention when they panic and start screaming gouts of fire.)

(The Yu Yan snuff them all out before dawn breaks.)

(Toph feels each arrowhead slam into the Wall, followed by the prisoner's pounding heartbeats stopping, one by one.)

(General Chijiu leaves the bodies in place to rot.)

(Two days later, the Fire Nation builds an earthen platform just out of catapult range. They bring out wagons of their POWs, then start burning them alive, one-by-one, all day, every day, for a week. But when Toph leads Terra Team in the next midnight raid into the enemy's lines, there is a different tenor to their screams. The firebenders have never been afraid to fight them before.)

Toph rubbed her face. "I don't want to talk about this anymore."

"Fine by me," said the little bitch. "You were the one who brought it up in the first place."

"Can your waterbending heal a headache?"

"No."

"Then shut the hell up."

They walked the rest of the way to the arena in silence.

Sokka sang, "SECRET, SECRET, SECRET, SECRET TUNNEL! Yeah! SECRET, SECRET, SECRET, SECRET, SECRET TUNNEL! Oooo! SECRET SECRET SECRET SECRET SECRET SECRET SECRET TUUUUUNNNEELLLLL!"

"Through the mountain!" added Aang, punching a fist through the bars of his cage.

"Shut up!" Xin Fu pitched a rock at Sokka's cage. "SHUT UP! I'll give you a hundred juice boxes each if you shut up already!"

"No dice!" Sokka called back down. Grinning smugly, he said, "Just you wait! When the Blind Bandit comes to rescue us, you're going down!" Sokka pointed at Xin Fu. "Yes, you!" He pointed at the Big Bad Hippo. "And YOU too! And, oh yes, even you, Boulder!"

"The Boulder resents your disrespectful lack of a proper article before the Boulder's name."

"Don't be fooled, kid," said Xin Fu. "The Blind Bandit isn't hard on the eyes, but when she opens that mouth of hers the only thing that comes out is-"

"Well-timed verbal jabs?"

All heads turned.

Toph Bei Fong stood at the far end of the arena's stage, one hand stretched back behind her head, fussing with her ponytail. There was not an ounce of hostility in her body language. In fact, she was still dressed in the same tea green silk shirt and pants from their dinner. Sokka melted at the sight. There's nothing hotter, he thought, than a powerful, confident woman.

Oh, and Sokka distantly noted, his little sister was standing next to the earthbending goddess.

"Toph!" cried Aang. "You came!"

"B-Bandit!" said Xin Fu, giving the giant woman his full attention.

To the Earth Rumble ringmaster, the noblewoman said, "That's Lady Toph to you, bitch." She pointed to Sokka's cage. His heart leapt. "Let the Avatar go."

Sokka sighed at her willingness to sacrifice him. Putting the good of the world ahead of everything else. She really is a hero!

Xin Fu snorted. "I think the Fire Nation will pay a hefty price for the Avatar. Now, get out of my ring!"

"...Okay," said Toph, limbering up. "I was just going to take the brats back and kick your ass. Now I'm thinking I should destroy you, just for that. The world has no place for fools like you in it."

Sokka rubbed his hands together in anticipation.

"Oh yeah? Just you?" The ringmaster gestured to the half dozen earthbending fighters standing beside him. "There are seven of us and one of you, Lady Toph, and we've been battling you since the Rumbles began. We know every trick in your book."

"That was fighting for fun." Toph pinched the bridge of her nose. "I was putting on a show for the audience. You've never seen me go all out. Before I was the Blind Bandit, I was Major Bei Fong of the Terra Team!" She clenched her fists. "That means I'm six foot five inches of Fuck You. Now I'll give you one last chance, Xin Fu, for old time's sake. Hand over the kids and I'll try to forget you talked treason! Leave Gaoling and never return!"

"Very tempting offer," he said, crossing his arms. "And the alternative is what exactly? You're gonna kill me?" Xin Fu laughed.

"I will end you. Permanently."

From up in his cage, Sokka shouted, "Watch this, everyone! It's going to be AWESOME! And hot!"

Xin Fu gestured for the go-ahead. The Boulder and all the rest of the gladiators ringing him walked forward.

The blind noblewoman bowed her head. When she looked up, Sokka knew that it was the Blind Bandit that now stood before him. "Very well. You've brought this on yourself, Xin Fu!" She reached behind her back and whipped out one of her trademark killer swords!

Wait. No.

Sokka squinted.

That's... a scroll?

Unrolling it, she read out, presumably from memory, the following: "Under Section 6, Paragraph 3, Sub-section B of your contract with the Bank of Gaoling, I, as the Director of the Bank of Gaoling, hereby call in your mortgage on the Earth Rumble stadium! Failure to provide immediate payment in regards to the remaining balance on your outstanding loans will result in the seizure of all assets!"

"WHAT? Noooo!" Xin Fu fell to his knees. "I don't have that kind of money! I'm a thirty year lease! I'm ruined! RUINED!"

"Don't worry," said Toph, rolling up the scroll. "I'll forgive the rest of your substantial debt in exchange for all your personal savings and your share of the Earth Rumble business." She strode forwards.

The Boulder scratched his head. He looked first to the sobbing Xin Fu, then to Toph Bei Fong. "So... The Boulder works for you now, m'lady?"

Toph stopped by the muscled earthbender and affectionately patted him on the cheek. "Quite right, honey. You and your friends are now employees of a wholly-owned subsidiary of Bei Fong Enterprises." She smiled sweetly. "Now, please, throw that traitorous piece of trash out on the curb where he belongs. He's trespassing on my private property."

While the other gladiators dragged off their blubbering former boss, the Big Bad Hippo lowered Sokka and Aang's cages to the ground. Sokka stumbled out of his newly unlocked cage in a daze, blinking bleary-eyed as Katara engulfed him in a bear hug.

Only once his sister had thoroughly moistened his shoulder did Sokka's brain finish processing the full extent of the horrors he had just witnessed. "THAT'S IT?"

Aang looked to his friend, only to find Sokka staring in outrage at Toph. The blind woman, in turn, cocked her head to the side to present a three-quarters profile to them all. "What?" she asked, staring at nothing in particular. "You're free, aren't you?"

Vaguely confused and irritated, Katara stepped away from her brother. "Sokka?"

The Water Tribe boy pointed at Toph. "I can't believe I thought you were cool! You act all gruff and dashing, but beneath the surface you're not cool at all - you're The Man!"

Katara scowled. "Sokka! Show a little gratitude - the woman saved your life!"

"I know, sis, but it's how she saved me that grinds my gears."

Aang scratched the top of his bald head. "I thought being The Man was good?" Modern day lingo was so confusing.

"Not always, Aang," said Sokka. "You're thinking of 'Da Man'. Toph here is 'The Man'. That means she's a big fat boring phony - a sellout!"

Now Toph -did- turn to face him, and she seemed to Aang as if she had just been slapped. "I am not The Man."

"Yes, you are! You're totally The Man! You beat the bad guy by calling in his mortgage! If that doesn't make you The Man, nothing can."

Katara opened her mouth to object, closed it, thought for a moment, then said, "Actually... Sokka's right."

"What?" asked Aang. "Really?"

"I know." Katara rubbed her arms as if to warm herself. "I'm scared too."

"Stupid kids," muttered Toph. Her clenched fists trembled. "Stupid ungrateful brats." The noblewoman took a deep breath. On the exhale, she said, "Can't be happy without a little bread and circus, huh?"

Aang pressed his palms together and bowed towards Toph, knowing full well that the blind earthbender could track his movement and appreciate the gesture. "Thank you, Lady Toph, for resolving this conflict peacefully."

"Pfff," snorted Sokka. "How needs that? I wanted to see a little action!"

Toph said, "You little shi-"

Aang intervened. Darting between them, he again bowed to the earthbender. "Your wisdom is an inspiration to us, Toph."

Toph kicked him lightly in the shin to make him look up. "Forget it, Avatar. Your friend isn't the first pinhead I've ever had to deal with." The noblewoman deflated as she turned and walked away. "My house is still yours if you need a bed for tonight. Least I can do, I suppose."

Whacking her brother upside the head, Katara said, "Way to be ungrateful, Sokka!"

"What're you complaining about? You agreed with me!"

"Only because I haven't been blind to how horrible that woman has been all evening. Everyone in her house is terrified of her - the guards, the servants, even her own parents! And you should have seen her stumbling over her own feet on the walk over here." Katara wrinkled her nose. "She's a bully and not entirely right in the head if you ask me."

"But that still doesn't explain how you can be so... arrggh! Forget it!" Sokka rubbed his neck. To Aang, he said, "Sorry your hunt for an earthbending teacher was such a bust."

"I dunno." Aang thought of Toph's strange workaround for her blindness, the way she defused the standoff with Xin Fu and held in her temper when Sokka badmouthed her. All of that required waiting and listening. The rest was just... pain. "I have this feeling that she's the one."

Katara said, "I think you're feelings are wrong this time. She's a jerk."

"My girlfriend turned into the Moon." Sokka crossed his arms and inclined his chin. "You don't see me becoming a sad, boring drunk who'd rather sleep in a soft bed than help the world's last hope to defeat the Fire Nation."

Aang yawned. "Speaking of bed..."

Toph slept poorly that night. Even taking her prized Piandao to her turkey-duck feather bed didn't calm her restlessness. The silence of her underground, metal-walled bunker simply let her imagination run rampant replaying old memories. A handful of catnaps proved unrestful but, thankfully, dreamless. Irritated at nothing in particular, Toph threw on a thin silk robe and went upstairs to the surface.

The house was quiet. Toph felt the sedate footsteps of the kitchen staff preparing fresh bread and pastries for the Avatar's farewell breakfast. She stayed away from them. A quick detour to the front parlor on the way to the gardens found the levels of liquid mercury in the antique water clock confirming the time as a little before dawn.

The dew in the grass got between her toes as she walked across the lawn. Toph enjoys the simple sensation. An impish impulse had her momentarily consider ditching the bench and just rolling around bodily on the lawn. It would probably even make for a comfortable bed. Maybe that's why they call them 'grass beds', she thought.

Toph found a seat on a garden bench instead. Grass would stain her robe and she liked the intricate gold weave in the one she wore too much to disrespect the craftsmanship by soiling it. The only alternative would have been to set aside the robe and roll around naked in the grass, but if someone saw her it would cause a scandal and scandals were bad for business.

The view from the bench was sufficient. She always lost herself in the presence of good earth.

Reaching out with the fullest extent of her senses, Toph opened her mind's eye not just to the earth but Earth. The soft-footed steps of the kitchen staff faded away, replaced by the weight of her family estate on the bedrock below. Nearby, the city of Gaoling creaked and groaned with the 'sound' of earthbenders. By noon the city would be a clattering mess of benders groping the earth with their fumbling hands. For now there was no white noise. Nothing interrupted Toph's bid to calm her mind by immersing it in the planet.

She could feel the outline and mass of Gaoling's buildings, their structure and regular shape so odd atop the rolling surface of topsoil, clay and bedrock. Toph could almost trace the miles of paved roads in and around the city - the ones she herself funded and personally built; a peacemaking gesture to the local business council. They had been nervous after she came back from the Wall, the Bei Fong's most shameful secret turned war hero, and performed a hostile takeover of her father's mercantile empire. Toph knew the roads were built to last: she modeled them on the foundation of the Wall, and she smiled at the thought of children walking on them a thousand years in the future.

There were ghosts in the earth, ruins of a Gaoling from eons past. Toph had studied their curious architecture at length before. She paid it no heed that night. She did not want to think about the past.

Narrowing her field of focus to just the immediate area, Toph saw the estate garden and everything for hundreds of feet around: burrowing insects in the dirt, squirrel-doves scurrying along tree trunks in the hunt for bugs for breakfast, the dizzying geometry of the ant colony near her family's ancestral shrine, and something new - the deep and sluggish reverberations of a sky-bison's giant heart pumping blood through its ten ton body.

Some four hundred feet beneath the garden, at the very edge of her small-scale perception, Toph felt that small vein of copper in the bedrock that has delighted her for months. It would be child's play to burrow down to extract it, but Toph refrained from doing so. The vein was small and practically worthless. So Toph amused herself with a private challenge of coaxing out the metal from the surface, using just her toes. No hand and leg movements allowed.

In the seven months since first discovering the ore, Toph had only managed to move it a few inches, but every fraction of an inch was a triumph. She spent her days concentrating on metalbending, alloying exotic steels with only her force of personality. After six years of bending metal nearly every day for hours on end, simple earthbending was joyful play.

So focused was Toph on cajoling the bedrock around the ore to push the copper upwards that she didn't notice Poppy until the woman sat down next to her on the garden bench.

Toph splayed her toes wide for proper grounding. "What do you want?"

"I... couldn't sleep either," Poppy confessed. "I didn't want to wake your father."

Rather than reply, Toph gestured to one of the many other benches littered around the garden.

Poppy said, "I was hoping we could talk."

"So talk."

"About the Avatar."

Toph waited.

"He... he said that to defeat the Fire Lord, he needs an earthbending instructor. Why not you, Toph?"

"That eager to be rid of me, huh?"

"No!" Poppy insisted, though her heartbeat said otherwise. "You are my daughter, Toph, even if you scare me." That shouldn't have hurt quite so much to hear, but it did. "You are also the finest earthbender I have ever known." Poppy didn't reach out like she once did to brush the long bangs from Toph's eyes.

Toph didn't get the chance to bat her hand away in irritation. "Yeah, I bet you're real proud of that."

"I'm proud of you, of what you've accomplished with your gift."

"So what? I'm proud of a lot of things I've done that I shouldn't be."

"And you would do them again because no one else could do what was necessary." Poppy's hand hesitated over Toph's own, but then, quick as a thief, she darted down and interlaced their fingers. The older woman's smooth skin chafed against the calluses they found. "You've done so much in your life, daughter of mine, but you could be so much more if you didn't... didn't cripple yourself."

Toph squeezed those soft fingers. Hard.

"Toph," gasped Poppy, "Bei Fongs have a duty to the people they love."

"Endless pity. Open derision. Chi blocking specialists. Drugs. Metal cages." Toph almost broke Poppy's slender fingers. It would be easy. It would feel good.

The woman she used to call her mother whimpered.

Toph let go.

Poppy stole her hand back and cradled it against her bosom.

"You don't get to lecture me on duty," Toph said. "A real mother would have loved me for who I was. She would have let me earthbend in the open instead of hiding me away like some unwanted bastard child. She wouldn't have let me go to B-" Toph swallowed. Fuck. She wasn't going to give this bitch the satisfaction of crying in front of her. "Leave."

The matron scurried away.

Toph tilted her head back to point her blind eyes into the tree branches overhanging her garden bench. "Couldn't sleep either?"

"I wanted to check on Appa." The Avatar slipped off the tree branch and out of Toph's tremorsense. It took an unnaturally long time before his toes dusted across the ground several feet below. When he spoke, his tone was uneasy, "I don't understand. Why did you hurt her? She's your mother."

"So what?" Toph snapped angrily. He had overheard their conversation, hadn't he? "She had it coming, trust me."

"But... why?"

"What are you, dense? Poppy and Lao treated me like garbage for the first fourteen years of my life, and that was before they found out I was great at-" And here Toph stopped herself, cheeks flushing with self-aware embarrassment. Unloading my soul to a twelve year old. How pathetic is that? "Kid, it's none of your business."

"So that justifies taking revenge on them?"

Toph gritted her teeth.

The Avatar hopped up onto the bench, which would ordinarily be impressive since the bench was sized for her long-limbed frame. This time Toph heard the subtle shift in the air that signaled him airbending. Just to prove he'd been hanging around those Water Tribe kids too much, he slid up next to her like they were conserving body heat in a blizzard.

("It really gets cold up here on the Wall," says Lim, slipping under the covers as Toph chuckles in agreement... and to hide her nervousness.)

Toph earthbent the bench apart, creating a few inches between them. The Avatar took the hint and didn't try cozying up again.

It didn't stop him from trying to make conversation. "Hurting the Fire Nation hasn't ever made me feel better." And Toph knew he was telling the truth; his heartbeat never so much as fluttered. "My people have... used to have a saying. 'Revenge is like a two-headed rat-viper.' While you watch your enemy go down, you're being poisoned yourself. Toph, does hurting your mom help anyone?"

Toph didn't dignify his inappropriate question with a response. Nothing compelled her to, not even the weight of a thousand generations before hers demanding dutiful respect be showed to the Avatar. The only person she answered to now was herself.

He asked her, "If you hate your parents so much, why are you still living with them? Even if you weren't as rich as you say, you could just earthbend yourself a new house. Heck, you could make your parents a new house if you like this-" His shifting weight signaled he was gesturing to everything around them, forgetting that she was blind. "You could even turn them out onto the street if you really hated them. So why don't you?"

There was the soft pop of someone's knuckles cracking. Toph was alarmed to realize that it was her own fingers that had curled into tight fists. She quickly unclenched them, bile rising up in her throat.

"I," Toph said, voice wavering, "am not going to apologize. Now please leave me alone."

When he spoke, it was with a voice that was far too knowing to belong to a twelve year old. Toph was starting to realize it didn't. "...Y'know, your mother was right about one thing. We all have a duty to the people we love."

Her response came reflexively, "I don't love my parents."

"Is that who you think she was talking about?" Aang stood up off the bench. "A greasy swamp guy told me a little while back that we're still connected to the people we love, even when they're gone. Time is an illusion, Toph, and so is death."

On that note, the Avatar left her in the peace of the garden.

With the knot of acid in her belly, Katara was surprised there wasn't soot raining from the sky when she, Sokka and Aang went into the dining room for breakfast. Katara hadn't dreaded anything this much since those hours waiting for the Fire Navy to arrive at the doorstep of the Northern Water Tribe.

Lady Toph was again seated at the head of the table. Unlike the previous night, she was sitting properly in her oversized chair. She wore a green silk robe, embroidered with stylized badgermoles. There was no bottle of booze in sight but Katara wasn't betting against the noblewoman's milk being spiked.

Katara left her own glass of milk untouched. She had not forgotten the cramps and other unpleasantness when she'd first tried the stuff back on Kyoshi Island. There was no polite way to ask for water, and she wasn't going to ask Lady Toph for a favor... or talk to her at all if she didn't have to. So Katara ate her rice porridge, salted turtle-duck eggs and fried bread sticks without anything to wash it down with.

Aang, who had no problems digesting milk, quickly sported a white mustache along his upper lip.

"Look here." Katara leaned over and wiped Aang's face clean with her cloth napkin. Aang fidgeted under her touch but Katara's grip was firm. She soon had it all. "Better."

Lady Toph giggled. "Oh, if the Fire Lord could see this. The feared Avatar... henpecked."

Aang laughed awkwardly. "Katara means well. Don't you?"

"Gosh," said Katara, pushing her bowl away, "look at the time. I think we should get going."

"I don't see why," said Lady Toph, speaking as she gnashed on a mouthful of bread. "Stay in Gaoling. I can set you up with a house here, find you a respectable earthbending teacher. You've got a decent head on your shoulders, Avatar. I bet in a year or two you'll be set to learn firebending."

"Thanks," said Aang, "but staying in one place for too long is a bad idea."

To Katara's side, Sokka nodded. "Word gets around and then the Fire Nation comes charging in. That... that didn't work out well for anyone at the North Pole."

The blind woman pursed her lips. "Ah. Good point." She picked up her bejeweled goblet of milk.

"Besides," said Aang, stirring a pinch of dried chocolate into his bowl of porridge, "I don't have a year or two to learn earthbending with Sozin's Comet about to return."

Lady Toph's hand froze mid-motion. Drawing her lips off the rim of her goblet, she said, "Wait... what?"

"Sozin's Comet is returning at summer's end," said Aang. "Didn't you k-"

A sharp CRUNCH split the air. Milk sprayed everywhere. Katara's jaw slackened at the sight of the crumpled aluminum goblet in Lady Toph's hand. White milk streaked with the green dust of crushed emeralds dribbled down the noblewoman's fingers.

On instinct, Katara dashed around the table to Lady Toph's side. She pried open the unresponsive noblewoman's hand, ready to heal the deep cuts there.

Only there were no cuts.

Katara's eyes widened. "How in the-"

"The end of the summer?" Lady Toph jumped to her feet, knocking her chair back and pulling out of Katara's grasp. "Sozin's Comet is returning at summer's end and you didn't think that was worth mentioning before?"

A low tremor shook the house. The dining room chandelier rattled with the clanging of crystal. Dust fell like powdered snow from the ceiling.

Lady Toph raged on at Aang, "You of all people should know what the Fire Nation can do with the power of Sozin's Comet! Did it ever occur to you that maybe, just maybe, Fire Lord Ozai will use that same power to do to the Earth Kingdom what his grandfather did to the Air Nomads? Or to finally conquer Ba Sing Se when even his brother couldn't?"

Aang, skin chalk-white, shifted his eyes from left to right. "Um... no?"

"FUUKA!" shouted the earthbender. A haggard-looking servant woman slipped into the dining room. "Clear my schedule for the next six months. I've got a Fire Lord to help kill."

"You're gonna be a great teacher, Toph." Aang looked back over his shoulder at the woman slumped against the rim of Appa's saddle, a stalk of wheat dangling from her lips. "I just know it!"

"Whatever."

"And I'll bet we'll all be great friends really soon!" Aang looked past Toph to the Water Tribe siblings. They were sitting next to each other at the rear of Appa's saddle, directly opposite Toph. "Isn't that right, guys?"

Katara and Sokka glanced at one another.

"Sure," Katara said dimly. "Best friends."

"We just may be!" Aang turned back to face front. With good cheer and hope for the future, he whipped Appa's reins and shouted, "Yip yip!"

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