The Daily Shit-post

A/N: These are snippets, so expect that I'll post a different timeline next time hehehe. I swear I should be doing my Python activities, yet here I am. Here's a Harry Potter AU no one asked for. Also, I changed a lot of stuff here hehehehe

I.

When Toph was ten years old, she realized she wasn’t a conventional witch.

Her father used magic as part of his business — talisman work, precise and methodical, the kind that warded off bad spirits and kept accounts clean. People said he had a good hand for it. Her mother could speak to flower spirits and coax gifts from them, which made her arrangements the most sought after in their district. Elegant magic. Appropriate magic. The kind that fit neatly inside the Beifong name.

Toph’s magic didn’t fit anywhere.

She felt the earth. Not the way her tutors described earth affinity — not the controlled, deliberate drawing of power from soil and stone. She felt it the way she felt her own heartbeat. Constant. Alive. Like the ground was breathing beneath her and she was the only one who could hear it. When she pressed her bare feet to the dirt of the garden, the world opened up around her — the moles tunneling three feet down, the roots of the old elm reaching toward the east wall, the faint tremor of a cart passing on the road outside the gate.

She could see everything. Just not with her eyes.

She started sneaking out when she was seven. A small gap in the eastern wall where a root had buckled the stone. She found a forest half a mile from the mansion, old and dense and completely unbothered by Beifong propriety, and she practiced there. Wandless. Instinctive. Things her tutors would have no framework for.

Her mother caught her one evening coming back through the gap, dirt on her robes and bark dust in her hair.

“You know you’re not allowed to leave without permission.”

“I was practicing magic —”

“Without maids? Toph, you cannot see. What if something had —”

“Nothing happened.”

“That isn’t the point.” Her mother’s voice had that particular quality — the one that was grief dressed as anger. She turned away, the way she always turned away when she looked at Toph too long. “You are the heir to this clan. You cannot afford to be reckless. You’re only a girl.”

Toph stood in the garden and listened to her mother’s retreating footsteps.

Only a girl.

That night, she packed her favorite clothes, emptied her savings from the carved wooden box under her bed, and left through the gap in the eastern wall. She didn’t look back. The earth told her everything she needed to know about what was behind her, and none of it made her want to stay.

II.

The nameless sect didn’t ask her where she came from.

That was the first thing she liked about it. The outer disciples were a collection of people who had wandered in from various edges of the world with various kinds of power they hadn’t known what to do with. Nobody’s family name meant anything there. Nobody presented themselves as heir to something.

She learned. Faster than anyone expected — faster than she expected, though she’d never say so. The sect’s approach to magic was older than Hogwarts, older than the international standardization that the wizarding world had decided counted as civilization. It was drawn mostly by magic, a talismanic work that made her father’s business application look like a child’s sketch. Complex layered workings. Ancient scripts.

She learned the theory through the carvings given by the master, and then she stopped relying on drawing.

The first time she produced a talisman without the written form — holding the working purely in her magical sense, constructing it through vibration and intent — the sect master went very quiet.

“That should not be possible,” he said.

“And yet,” she said.

He was quiet for a long moment. Then: “Don’t tell anyone.”

She didn’t. She kept practicing in the same secluded spots she always found, pressing her palms and her feet to whatever surface was beneath her, learning what the earth knew and what it was willing to teach.

She was almost happy.

She was thirteen when the letter arrived.

An outer disciple found her in the courtyard, fiddling with a handful of stones that she was encouraging into geometric patterns through pure magical suggestion. His footsteps were nervous — she felt them from thirty feet away.

“Martial Aunt.” He cleared his throat. “A letter came. I wasn’t sure whether to bring it.”

“Read it.”

He read it. She listened with her stones still moving in slow circles above her palm.

Hogwarts. International enrollment. A very formal phrasing that was nonetheless absolutely a threat about what would happen to the sect if she declined.

She closed her hand. The stones dropped.

“Tell the sect master I need to speak with him.”

That afternoon, she sat across from the sect master, and they talked for two hours, and left the sect the same way she’d left the Beifong mansion — traveling light, looking forward.

She apparated to the edge of the grounds, walked through the eastern gap one more time out of something she refused to call sentiment, and used the Beifong floo network to reach Wizarding England.

She had a feeling it would be interesting.

She wasn’t wrong.

III.

She met the boy from the prophecy on the Hogwarts Express, which was not how she’d imagined meeting someone from a prophecy, but then she hadn’t imagined meeting someone from a prophecy at all.

He was eleven, and he talked like the world was a fascinating place that kept offering him good surprises. She’d met very few people who talked like that. Most people who’d had difficult things happen to them came out the other side either guarded or brittle. This boy came out the other side wondering.

She decided she didn’t mind him.

“So you’re a first year?” She’d heard his footsteps before he sat down — light, quick, the bounce of someone who wasn’t sure yet which surface could hold him.

“Enrolled late,” he said. He introduced himself. Aang. She’d heard the name connected to the prophecy but the prophecy hadn’t mentioned that he’d be this enthusiastic about everything.

“What about them?” She tilted her head toward the two she’d felt earlier — a girl with careful footsteps and a boy with loud ones.

“Oh, Katara and Sokka. Katara’s a second year, Ravenclaw. Sokka’s a third year, Gryffindor.” 

He said it the way people said things they found genuinely exciting. “They’re halfbloods.”

“Okay,” she said.

“I’m — well, I’m muggleborn actually.”

“Okay,” she said again.

He blinked. She got the impression he’d been waiting for a reaction.

From further down the compartment she heard Sokka explaining something at great length to someone who had not asked. Katara’s footsteps entered — measured, deliberate — and there was the sound of her telling Sokka to stop whatever he was doing.

“The sorting,” Aang said. “Are you nervous?”

“No,” she said. She was curious. There was a difference.

IV.

The Sorting Hat was older than anything she’d felt in the sect, older than the Beifong ancestral wards, and its magic pressed against hers the moment it settled over her head with the particular interest of something that had never encountered quite this configuration before.

Fascinating, it said.

You sound like a scammer, she told it.

A sound like rustling parchment, which might have been laughter. Blunt. Direct. You see more than people assume you do. A pause. You feel more.

Are you putting me in Slytherin?

She felt a familiar magical signature register at the edge of her awareness. She’d known it since she was eight years old — the sharp heat of it, the particular controlled burn of Fire Nation noble magic. Zuko was here. She hadn’t known Zuko was here.

Interesting, the Hat said.

Don’t you dare.

You’d do well there —

I said don’t.

Ah, it said, with the satisfaction of something that had just understood something. Well then.

“GRYFFINDOR!”

She walked to the table through the noise and the candlelight and felt his gaze track her across the Hall like a beam of heat. She didn’t turn. Didn’t acknowledge it.

She sat down and reached for whatever was closest and ate it and thought about the fact that her only prior friend in this country was currently sitting at the Slytherin table radiating the specific magical signature of someone who was profoundly displeased.

Good. She was profoundly displeased too.

They could be displeased in different directions.

She walked toward the noise. Someone grabbed her elbow to steer her — a prefect, she thought, the footstep weight of someone used to authority — and she let herself be steered because she was still cataloguing everything, the candles overhead casting heat she could map, the magic signatures of four hundred strangers all at once.

V.

By the end of her first week, she had detention.

This was faster than even she had expected.

The incident began during Transfiguration, which should have been simple enough — the professor was demonstrating a third-year technique that Toph had already worked out the underlying principle of before she left the nameless sect, and she was listening with the patient expression of someone who was being courteous about already knowing things.

Then a boy two seats to her left said something. Quietly, not even to her, to the boy beside him — the kind of thing said in the register of someone who has said it so many times it no longer sounds like anything.

What’s the blind girl doing in a magic school.

The professor hadn’t heard. The class continued.

Toph waited until they were given independent practice time. Then she waited another four minutes. Then she turned the contents of his ink bottle into mud — not a Transfiguration spell, just a wandless working she’d developed in the forest — and when he went to write his notes and found his quill dragging mud across the parchment, she had already turned back to her own work and was doing it perfectly.

She knew he suspected her. She knew the professor suspected her. There was no proof.

The second time he said it — at lunch, to a Slytherin boy who laughed — she was less subtle.

Hence the detention.

Professor — she didn’t have the Scottish one’s name yet — sat across from her and looked at her with an expression that was not quite angry and not quite impressed.

“The spell you used,” she said. “That’s fourth-year work.”

“Is it,” Toph said.

“You’re a first year.”

“Yes.”

A long pause. “You’ll serve detention on Thursday and Friday. And Miss Beifong.” She waited. “Next time, come to me.”

“Will you do anything about it?”

The pause this time was different. “Thursday at seven,” the professor said.

Toph went to detention. She went on Thursday and Friday, and she served it without complaint because she had, in her judgment, got reasonable value for the cost. She did not promise to come to the professor next time. She made no commitments about future behavior.

She sat at lunch the following Monday and felt the boy across the hall recalibrate his trajectory so it didn’t bring him near her.

Good.

V.

She heard him before she saw him — which was always, she saw no one, but with Zuko it was different because his magic preceded him by several feet and she’d known the shape of it since she was a child.

He was walking ahead of her on the path toward the greenhouses, talking to another Slytherin, and she heard him say something in Japanese that she understood because she’d spent years near enough to his family’s functions to have absorbed more than she was supposed to.

The word he used was one she recognized. Not the version most people in Hogwarts use— the version she’d heard from other pureblood students, and it landed badly enough. It was the version her father said at a formal dinner when she was nine, his voice low and casual, the way people said things they’d never had to examine because they’d never been asked to.

She’d asked her mother what it meant. Her mother had changed the subject.

She knew what it meant.

She listened to Zuko say it and felt something cold settle in her chest. She cast the spell without breaking stride — wandless, clean, surgical — and his robes caught. Not dangerously. Just enough.

The Slytherin first year screamed. She heard Zuko’s magic flare in surprise and then in recognition.

She kept walking.

VI.

He found her in a corridor near the charms classroom after dinner, with the specific intensity of someone who had been looking.

“Why,” he said. Just that. Like the question was so obvious it didn’t require elaboration.

“You know why.”

“You cast a spell against me.”

“You’re not burned. Stop being dramatic.”

“You were with them.” He said them with the particular emphasis of someone who had been raised to say it that way. “Toph. You know what they —”

“What do I know, Zuko.” Her voice was flat. “Tell me what I know.”

His jaw tightened. She felt it in the shift of his weight. “Your family has standards. The same as mine. You know what associating with —”

“With what? Say the word again. Say it to my face.”

He was quiet.

“I thought so.” She turned toward the window, which meant nothing to her but gave her somewhere to orient that wasn’t him. “I left my family’s standards in a gap in the eastern wall when I was ten. You can have them.”

“We were friends.”

“We were.” She said it without inflection. “You know what you’re saying and you know it’s wrong and you’re saying it anyway because your father —”

“Don’t talk about my father.”

“His voice or yours, Zuko. Pick one.”

She heard his breath change. Sharp. She’d landed something real, she felt it, and she didn’t take it back.

“We’re not friends anyway,” she said. “So it doesn’t matter.”

She left before he could answer. She knew the particular quality of his silence — she’d known it since she was eight, sitting beside a pillar at a diplomatic function while he was figuring out she was someone worth talking to. That silence was the one that meant I have no counter because some part of me knows you’re right.

I WANT A KUSURIYA NO HITORIGOTO-INSPIRED ATLA FANFIC WHERE ZUKO IS JINSHI AND TOPH IS MAOMAO. BUT THERE ARE THINGS TO CONSIDER!!

- First, the emperor != fire lord. No explanations. Let's put Iroh instead.

- What happens to Azula? Another point to consider. (Am I going to create this now knowing I still have "A Crown of Dust"?)

- The Gaang (You know what, I'll just think of it and add the details later)

I think it fits tho:

- Zuko as the son (nephew) of the emperor (the fire lord is A VILLAIN, so we put some other stuff) who manages the Imperial court. In ATLA, he's the next in line, so he's Jinshi equivalent.

- A woman thirsty for knowledge (who's the champion again? ), who happens to be blunt and brutal (our blind bandit likes to call people names), who's from a noble family but chose their own path (hey, isn't that Melon Lord), who excels in a specific thing ("I am the greatest earthbender in the world!", who said that?), and is a bit emotionally unavailable (yeah).

- Powerful, secretly burdened royal boy + blunt, non-nonsense girl who won't be dazzled by him (take that!)

THE PARALLELS:

THE NOBLEST OF THE NOBLES: Jinshi and Zuko

- Both Jinshi and Zuko were part of the royalty. Only that Jinshi thinks he's the emperor's brother. Zuko, on the other hand, has to hide the fact that he's royalty because of his mission.

- They also have this certain persona: Jinshi hides that he is the emperor's brother (son but he doesn't know) and takes on the persona of a eunuch. Meanwhile, the Blue Spirit is the persona Zuko has that is outside of his father's expectations: through this masked identity, he expresses qualities like justice and freedom that have been suppressed throughout his upbringing.

- Both didn't want the throne. This is apparent to Jinshi as he has strongly opposed the Emperor's plans to make him the crown prince ever since he was a child. In order to avoid this fate, he made a bet with the Emperor to work as a eunuch. On the other hand, Zuko's was a bit debatable since all he ever wanted was for his identity to be restored, but when he had it all, but he wasn't happy. He ultimately abandons all of it voluntarily, walking away from his father to join Aang.

- Let's go back to their "masks". Jinshi use his mask of charm as his armor. He is described to be captivating that a mere look at his face is enough to cause most girls and men to swoon (poor maomao has to witness this everyday hahshshsh). This inevitably makes people go far away from him. Zuko's mask was of anger and intensity (hey there, Sparky). Zuko's chief emotions in the first season are shame and anger. He doesn't know what to do with all of his rage, and he channels it into his pursuit of the Avatar (his hair was terrible too, unfortunately HAHA).

- Jinshi has Gaoshun, Zuko has Iroh. Both men have been the pillars of these two noble princes. Both guided the two to become a better person (I love them so much).

THE GENIUS GIRLS: MAOMAO AND TOPH

- First of all, both girls are always underestimated. Especially during times where people don't think they'll do something unexpected. Maomao grew up in the red light district, so most of her knowledge where self-cultivated and came from Loumen. She was fascinated with medicine, poisons, and as long as she puts her mind to it, she can do the impossible (that blue rose episode was so exciting, I feel like we're doing science experiments HAHAHA). She can put the puzzle pieces back into its place while only being given a hint (that episode where she got seriously injured, I swear to god Maomao's too extreme). Meanwhile, our underground champion started her earthbending when she got lost and was taught by the badgermoles. Because she was sheltered, no one knows that she has an affinity for earthbending because she's a fragile, little girl (have you seen her crush her opponents, Mr. Beifong? Is that what you call fragile?). She even discovered metalbending because she doesn't like the fact that other people told her she can't (they're both petty HAHA). She's underestimated because she was blind, Maomao was underestimated because her socioeconomic status.

- Bluntness leads to trouble. That's what the girls do. Maomao is usually deadpan. She's sarcastic and snarky sometimes. She's not warm like the usual shoujo character, most of the time she's cold and tends to be by herself. As she worked in the imperial harem, she doesn't flatter people (that episode where she slapped that maid because girl you're poisoning Rifa-sama!) . Toph was often brutally honest when criticizing others, especially her friends (twinkletoes HAHA). Even when she grew older, she tends to make people uncomfortable with her snide remarks (older Toph Beifong in LOK needs to appear more). Neither girl has the instinct to modulate her honesty based on who she's talking to. The Avatar, the Fire Prince, the Imperial eunuch-prince, the court official — none of them get softened feedback.

- While this bluntness was established, we all know that they're shells of both girls. Toph's defensiveness cane from her parent's overprotection, lack of parental belief (I'm so sorry Suyin and Lin), and infantilization. Maomao's stem from her lack of parental guidance, her early exposure to how the world is because she grew up in the red light district, and her way of survival. Underneath is someone who experiments on herself to save strangers, who risks her position again and again out of that "secret sense of justice."

- Another parallel that's easy to miss: both Toph and Maomao come from privileged or notable bloodlines that constrained rather than liberated them. Toph was so sheltered that people didn't even know her identity (hence the persona of "Blind Bandit"). Maomao, on the other hand, is an illegitimate daughter of the La clan. Though she didn't technically grew up there, the clan is a burden to her in a sense that she's vulnerable to other factors (haven't read far enough of the book).

A Crown of Dust - Chapter 1

Author's note: I haven't watched the movie yet, but good lord, Zuko and Toph looks so good. This story was heavily inspired by a light novel by Stir-fried Mushroom called "The Empress's Livestream". Also, love the baozi, Toph! PS: Cross-posted it here cause why not. But feel free to check it out on fanfiction.net hehehe

Chapter 1: The Lord in the Mud

"The mountain does not bow to the storm; it simply waits for the sky to run out of rain." — Uncatalogued journal entry, recovered from the East Wing of the Palace of Quiet Embers.

The rhythmic clatter of hooves didn't sound like a march; it sounded like a heartbeat returning to the soil. Behind the vanguard, wide-eyed soldiers clad in scorched Imperial red appeared. They looked battered, tired, and hollow—an intentional mimicry designed to deceive. They had used the Emperor's own colors to infiltrate the city's defenses, turning the Empire's pride into a Trojan horse.

Beyond them, the land showed only the jagged traces of a battle finished hours ago. The true statement of victory, however, hung from the city gates: a grim row of severed heads, the former Imperial garrison, suspended in silence to signify that the old order had been decapitated. The symbolic green-and-gold flag of the revolution fluttered above them, telling everyone they were conquered.

From the shadows of the dilapidated houses, the city's poor watched with bated breath.

"Look at 'em," a man whispered, his voice gravelly and low. "Wearing red like the Emperor's dogs, but they move... different. They ain't kicking down doors for coin."

"Shut it, Lao Feng," a woman hissed, pulling her shawl tighter. "You see the gates? They took the garrison's heads like they were harvesting gourds. They're demons, I tell ya. Red demons."

"Demons or not," another voice croaked from the mud, "they didn't burn the grain stores. The Empire's lot would've torched 'em just for the spite of it. Look at the monk... he's laughing. Who laughs after a slaughter like that?"

At the head of the line rode a monk, a figure that seemed to vibrate with an eerie, youthful light. He sat backward on his mount, spinning a wooden staff with a casual grace. To the commoners, he was a saint; to the Emperor, he was a calamity. Five years ago, he had stood in the Imperial Court and prophesied the rise of a new sovereign who would grind the palace to dust. When the revolutionary army tore through the prison gates of Pohuai Stronghold, the monk had simply walked out, whispering to the corpses of the eunuchs: "…the heavens have deigned her worthy."

The whispers of the crowd died into a suffocating silence as a second wave of dust parted, revealing an ornate blue carriage draped in lapis lazuli and sea-leopard furs.

"The South-folk," the old man Feng breathed, sinking further into the alleyway. "The ones who bring the tide."

The commoners pressed themselves against the walls, watching the white stallion pacing beside the carriage wheels. Ridden by General Sokka, a man from the Southern Tribes whose armor was caked in the frost of the Northern Pass, he looked like a wolf amidst sheep. Through the sheer silk of the carriage windows, they caught the silhouette of Lady Katara—a woman of the Southern waters who looked like a portrait of ancient virtue, yet radiated a frost that made the humid air turn brittle.

As the procession rolled deeper into the conquered streets, Sokka leaned down slightly from his saddle, his voice carrying through the thin silk curtain.

"The Northern Pass was a meat grinder, Katara," Sokka said, his eyes scanning the ruins of the street. "General Zhou's army thought they held the high ground. They didn't realize the shale beneath their boots was waiting for a command."

Inside the carriage, the scent of sandalwood was thick. Katara didn't look up from her scrolls, her brush moving with lethal precision. "A convenient landslide. Efficient, if a bit... dramatic."

"The earth just decided it didn't like them there," Sokka grunted. "Clean sweep. We didn't even have to engage the vanguard."

Katara finally paused, her frosty expression shifting. "And the Lord? The reports suggest the maneuver was 'inspired' by her presence. Yet, her tent was conspicuously silent this morning. Is she catching up on sleep, or is she currently 'patrolling' the local taverns again?"

Sokka let out a dry, short huff. "The tent's been empty since midnight. She said the city's air felt 'too quiet'—she likes to feel the dirt of a place before she officially owns it."

"She needs to stop sticking out," Katara whispered, her grip tightening on her brush. "If the people realize the Lord is just a girl who likes to eat greasy baozi in the mud before the official announcement, the propaganda loses its teeth."

The carriage rolled onward, leaving the fearful whispers of the street behind. But the tension didn't dissipate—it simply moved indoors, settling into the cramped spaces where the conquered city's poor gathered to make sense of their new masters.

Inside a nearby tea shack—a dilapidated sanctuary where the cheap tea somehow tasted like a noble's secret blend—the air was thick with steam and dissent. The owner, an old veteran who had seen too many kings rise and fall, poured tea in silence, his eyes fixed on the door. The same debate that had whispered through the alleyways now echoed louder here, emboldened by walls and the false security of anonymity.

"I don't like it," a man muttered, slamming his cup onto the splintered wood. "Heads on the gate? Red armor? They're just a different breed of wolf. You think a 'Bandit' is going to care about our taxes any more than the Emperor did?"

"At least the Emperor kept the roads clear," another argued, though his voice wavered.

"This lot... they bring a monk who talks to ghosts and siblings who freeze rivers. It ain't natural. We're trading a tyrant for a coven of demons."

"Demons?" A younger man scoffed, his eyes bright with a dangerous hope. "The Emperor's garrison took my brother for the labor camps. These 'demons' just put the garrison's heads on a spike. I'd say they've got a fine sense of justice."

"Justice? Please. They look like they're playing house in a conquered city rather than actually ruling it."

The voice cut through the debate like a blunt blade.

In the corner sat a woman in yellow and green robes, her boots caked in fresh mud. She was aggressively biting into a greasy baozi, the juice staining the corner of her mouth. Her long hair spilled over an ochre wrap, but it was her headpiece that drew the most stares: a sleek metal visor that curved over the top of her face, devoid of eye slits. Even without seeing her eyes, she exuded a lazy, dangerous arrogance.

"Hey, kid, watch your mouth," the first man hissed. He was a low-level revolutionary soldier who had sneaked away to drink, his red uniform unbuttoned. "Those are the leaders you're talking about. They've killed more men than you've seen in your life."

Toph swallowed a massive bite and grinned. "Oh, I'm sure. But what's the gossip? Is the leader ten feet tall yet? Does she eat jade for breakfast? Or is she just a girl who realized the Emperor was too old to chase her? I've seen better discipline from a pack of street dogs than from that lot marching in. They're amateur, especially the one leading them."

The crowd gasped. The soldier's face turned a deep, bruised purple.

"What do you know, little girl?" he snarled, towering over her. "In no time, the palace will fall. You think your Emperor will save you?"

She chuckled. "Oh, I know things. For example, I know you were actually supposed to be guarding the southern gates right now, but you're staying here because you're a slacker. If the 'Bandit' knew her soldiers were this lazy, she'd bury you herself."

"You arrogant brat!" The soldier's pride snapped. He raised his hand to bend, but Toph's foot twitched. The floor buckled, and he slammed into the mud. As he scrambled up, he saw her tilt her head to drink, the visor shifting to reveal her milky, unfocused eyes.

"She... she can't see," the man whispered, his anger turning into cruel delight. "A cripple! Hiding behind a piece of tin because you're broken! No wonder you're bitter—you can't even see the army you're insulting."

He reached out to shove her seat. "Go find your mother, little bird, before you trip on—"

"Oops," Toph said, her voice dropping to a low, tectonic hum. "Must be a lot of 'unseen' obstacles today."

The man screamed as the floorboards suddenly swallowed his feet up to the shins. He began thrashing, his bellows of "Witch!" and "Traitor!" echoing out the open windows and into the street.

Outside, the blue carriage had ground to a halt. Sokka, still mounted on his stallion, leaned over his saddle, his head tilted toward the loud, rhythmic thumping and yelling coming from the dilapidated shack. He exchanged a look with Katara, who had pulled back the silk curtain of her carriage window.

Sokka let out a long, weary groan, rubbing the bridge of his nose.

"I recognize that sound. She's at it again."

Katara pushed aside the silk curtain, her brow furrowed as she took in the dilapidated shack and the panicked faces of commoners scurrying out of the door. She didn't groan or make a joke; she just looked tired.

"We have a city to stabilize and a formal declaration to make in twenty minutes," Katara said, her voice like cracking ice. "The city is in shambles, her people are starving, and she's pickling in a tea house. If she buries one more of our own men before we've even set up the provisional court, we're going to look like a mob, not an Empire."

"I'll go drag her out," Sokka muttered, already reaching for his sword hilt out of habit.

"No, stay with the men," Katara commanded, stepping out of the carriage. Her boots hit the mud with a decisive snap. "If you go in there, the two of you will just start a bigger brawl. I'll handle the lord."

Katara marched toward the shack. She pushed the groaning wooden door open just as the trapped soldier was shrieking about "heretical magic" and "Imperial justice."

The shack went quiet as her shadow fell over the room. Katara didn't look at the crowd; she looked straight at the girl in the corner who was currently licking grease off her thumb.

"The city is ours for less than an hour, and you've already managed to break the furniture," Katara said. There was no humor in her voice—just the flat, biting tone of a woman who was done for the day.

The girl in the visor didn't even look up. "The chair was already wobbly. I'm doing the owner a favor."

"My Lady!" the soldier yelled from the floor, his face pale. "This blind brat—she's slandering the High Command! She said the Bandit was an amateur!"

Katara finally looked at the soldier, her eyes cold enough to kill the momentum of his words. "She isn't slandering anyone. She's being a nuisance."

She turned back to Toph, her voice dropping to a dangerous whisper. "Sokka is losing his mind out there. He says if you don't show up for the formal surrender at the palace, he's telling the quartermaster to stop buying your favorite baozi. Now, move."

The shack went deathly quiet as the girl stood up. The soldier's eyes dropped to Toph's waist, finally seeing the heavy platinum seal of the High Commander tucked into her belt.

"The... The Bandit?" the soldier stammered, his voice failing him.

Toph stretched, her joints popping with the sound of grinding stone. She walked past the soldier, intentionally stepping on his unbuttoned red sleeve.

"Tell the gossips they missed a detail," Toph said, her voice dropping the playfulness for a cold, imperial weight. "The Blind Bandit is almost there to see the emperor off."

The shift in the room was instantaneous. As the weight of Toph's identity crashed down on the occupants, the air grew thin. The commoners, once bold enough to debate the revolution, found themselves paralyzed. One by one, they began a frantic, silent exodus, slipping out of the shack like shadows. They moved with ghost-like care, terrified that a single heavy footfall would draw the attention of the girl who could command the very ground beneath them.

In the midst of the retreating crowd, one figure remained.

He sat in the deepest recess of the shack, tucked behind a pillar of rotting wood. He wore a heavy, travel-worn cloak of charcoal grey, the hood pulled low enough to cast his face into shadow. Only a sharp, sun-bronzed jawline and a faint, jagged line of old scar tissue were visible. He didn't move with the frantic energy of the peasants; he sat with the stillness of a predator, watching the scene unfold with a slow, chilling focus.

He lifted a chipped ceramic cup, sipping the bitter tea with a grace that was entirely too refined for a ruin. His eyes—a piercing, golden amber—never left the trio. He wasn't just observing a conquest; he was measuring the strength of the new masters.

Toph didn't turn her head, but her posture shifted from lazy to lethal. She felt him—a heartbeat too steady, a weight on the floorboards that was too balanced. He was a mountain standing in a room of pebbles.

She turned her attention back to Katara, her brow furrowed beneath the metal visor, her tone turning audibly grumpy.

"Yeah, yeah, the 'Establishment of Order,' the boring speeches—I get it," Toph muttered, tossing a crust of bread onto the table. She stood up, brushing mud off her yellow and green robes with an irritated flick of her wrist. "And tell Sokka his threats are getting predictable. No baozi? Really? That's the best the 'Great Strategist' can do? It's boring."

She stepped toward the door, but as she drew parallel to the shadowed man's table, she stopped. She didn't look at him, but the air between them seemed to vibrate. She tilted her head, her voice dropping into a low, tectonic hum that carried a jagged warning.

"Some people think they can just sit in the dark and watch the world change," she said, her voice loud enough for the stranger to hear but directed at the room. "But the earth still feels your weight. If you're here to watch the show, fine. But if you're here to ruin our first night in the city, you're going to find out how deep I can bury a secret."

The man didn't flinch. He simply set his tea down with a quiet, deliberate clink.

Katara placed a firm, guiding hand on Toph's shoulder. "Enough, my lord. We have a garrison to organize."

As the two of them—the Lady of the South, and the Blind Bandit—left the shack and re-entered the street to finalize their hold on the city, the place fell into a haunting silence.

The man in the charcoal cloak remained. He reached into his robes and placed a single gold coin on the table—a currency far too valuable for this district. He stood up, his movements fluid and silent as he walked to the window. He watched the blue carriage disappear into the dust of the ruined city, headed toward the provisional headquarters.

The gold of his eyes reflected the flickering light of the dying hearth. He had heard the warning. He had seen the new masters. And as he pulled his hood over his head, vanishing into the grey light of the afternoon, it was clear that the revolution's new stronghold was being watched by a very uninvited guest.

________________________________________________________________

The formal surrender ceremony came and went in a blur of green-and-gold banners and carefully scripted speeches. Toph stood on the steps of the Provincial Manor, her metal visor reflecting the dying sun, while Aang spoke of balance and Katara outlined the new order. The commoners watched from a distance, their faces a mixture of hope and terror. Toph said nothing. She simply stood there, a silent monument to the revolution's power, while her mind was already elsewhere—in the dirt, in the labor camps, in the places where the real work would begin.

The city was a jagged masterpiece of ruin and rebirth. It had once been the Northern Provincial Seat, a playground for the Imperial elite who flourished under the Emperor's iron-fisted "Order." For a century, the Empire had expanded like a slow-moving lava flow, consuming independent territories and outlawing any power they couldn't chain. To the Emperor, Bending was a heresy of the old world—a chaotic wildness that threatened his centralized control. He had spent decades hunting benders, turning them into labor slaves or executing them to ensure that the only "divine" power was his own.

For seventy-two hours, Toph had been the heartbeat of the reconstruction. She didn't just give orders; she hunted. She spent her mornings in the labor camps and the breadlines, her feet "listening" for the specific, rhythmic vibration of untapped power.

Faster, she thought, the vibration of her intent pulsing into the ground. Stop treating the stone like glass. It's been here longer than the Emperor, and it'll be here long after his palace is dust.

She could feel the laborers watching her—a mix of awe and pure, unfiltered terror. They saw the daughter of the Beifong Clan, the wealthiest family in the Empire, standing in the mud and breathing life into the ruins. Her parents were likely at that very moment sitting in their jade-walled estate, sipping tea and calculating how much of their fortune to "donate" to the Emperor to ensure their safety. They had chosen the tyrant; Toph had chosen the dirt.

On the third morning, as she was guiding a young earthbender through the fundamentals of foundation work, the rhythm of her concentration was broken by a new presence—light, hurried, and nervous.

"Lord? My Lord?"

The vibration of a messenger broke her concentration. Toph didn't turn. She felt the boy stop three paces away, his heart hammering a frantic rhythm against his ribs.

"Lady Katara and the General... they're requesting your presence in the War Room, my Lord. They say the strategic council is waiting."

Toph let out a breath that was half-sigh, half-growl. "Tell them I'm busy actually building the city they're so worried about ruling."

"They were... very insistent, my Lord. Lady Katara mentioned something about 'diplomatic necessity'."

Toph kicked a loose stone, feeling it skip across the marble. "Necessity. Right."

As she began the long walk toward the provisional headquarters, the grit of the city changed beneath her feet. The soft, shifting silt of the commoners' quarters gave way to the rigid, arrogant jade and marble of the administrative district. She hated this part of the city. It felt hollow—like a beautiful mask covering a rotting face. Every step toward the manor was a step away from the real work, from the people who actually needed her, and toward the suffocating world of strategy and compromise that her friends seemed to think was necessary.

Her relationship with Katara and Sokka was a jagged thing. They were the only ones who treated her like a person rather than a god or a weapon, but that came with the price of their constant, suffocating worry. Katara saw the revolution as a moral crusade, a way to wash the world clean with the tide. Sokka saw it as a grand game of Pai Sho, where every life was a piece to be moved.

To Toph, it was simpler: the Emperor was an obstacle in the path of the world's natural growth, and she was the force meant to break him. But the more they tried to polish her into a "Sovereign," the more she felt the metal visor pressing against her skin. They wanted a Lord in silk; they got a Bandit in the mud.

Toph felt the War Room before she entered it. The air was thick with the scent of sandalwood and the suffocating tension of people who had been whispering about her before she arrived. Through the floor, she felt Sokka's pacing—a restless, military march. Katara's heartbeat was a steady, freezing rhythm.

And then there was Aang. He was the most unsettling. He sat cross-legged in the center of a sunbeam, hovering an inch above the marble. To the commoners, he was the "Bringer of the New Age," but to Toph, he felt like a storm held behind a dam—unnervingly calm and dangerously detached.

Toph kicked the gilded doors open, her boots leaving thick, grey harbor-mud across the previous Lord's white marble.

"The Northern Merchant Guild is offering iron reserves," Katara said, her voice sharp. "In exchange for amnesty."

"No." Toph dropped into a spirit-wood chair, propping her muddy heels on the mother-of-pearl table. "I want their coin and their heads. Same as the garrison."

"Their heads ran the tax system!" Sokka slammed his hand on the map. "You execute the clerks, the grain stops—"

"Good. Let it stop." Toph's visor caught the dying sunlight. "The people in the shipyard know how to move grain. They've been doing it their whole lives while these parasites—"

"The people in the shipyard can't read the ledgers, Toph!" Sokka's voice cracked. "You think revolution runs on good intentions? We need their infrastructure or the city starves by—"

"Then let them learn!" The marble groaned beneath her feet. "I'm not keeping snakes in the garden just because they know where the shovels are."

"You're not thinking—"

"I'm the only one thinking! You want me to sign a decree that says 'your crimes are forgiven because you're useful'? That's exactly what the Emperor—"

"Don't." Katara's voice cut like ice. "Don't compare us to him."

Toph stood, her chair scraping back. "Then stop asking me to act like him."

The silence stretched. Katara's jaw tightened, her hands curling into fists. When she spoke again, her voice was low and deliberate—the kind of tone that preceded something irreversible.

"You're acting like a child with a grudge instead of a Lord with a continent to rule."

The air in the room turned brittle. Toph's head snapped toward Katara, her body going utterly still.

"Say that again."

Katara didn't flinch, but her heartbeat spiked—Toph felt it through the floor. She'd crossed a line and she knew it. But she didn't take it back.

"If you execute everyone who kept the old world running, you won't have a new world. You'll have a mass grave with a flag on it."

"Then I'll build on the grave." Toph's voice dropped into a tectonic hum. "I'm going to my room. If I hear one more word about amnesty, I'm leveling the noble district myself. Don't follow me."

She turned and walked out. The doors didn't close—they cracked off their hinges.

The silence that followed was suffocating.

Sokka sank into a chair, his armor clanking. He stared at the map, but he wasn't seeing it. He was seeing the blizzard, years ago, when Toph and Aang had appeared like spirits. Back then, her certainty had been a fire. Now it felt like a wildfire, and he was trying to hold it back with his bare hands.

"She's going to get herself killed," he muttered. "And she'll take the whole city with her."

"She's terrified," Katara said quietly.

Sokka looked up. "Of what? She could drop this manor into the sea."

"Of becoming her parents." Katara's voice was soft, almost fragile. "Every time we talk about 'using' the nobles, she hears her father calculating profit margins on slave labor. She thinks we're trying to make her into another Beifong."

"We're trying to keep her alive."

"I know." Katara closed her eyes. "But I just called her a child. In front of everyone."

Aang finally touched down, his feet silent on the marble. When he spoke, his voice carried a weight that made the chandeliers shiver.

"She feels every hungry person in this city through the stone. Every heartbeat. Every breath." His eyes opened—milky, glowing, ancient. "She doesn't see nobles and peasants. She sees the ones who stood on necks, and the ones whose necks were stood on. To her, there's no middle ground."

"Then we've already lost," Sokka said.

"No." Aang's voice was soft, but absolute. "We just have to let her break what needs breaking. And catch her when she falls."

Katara adjusted her furs and turned toward the door. "I'll go talk to her."

"Katara—"

"I know." She didn't look back. "I'll apologize. She just needs to remember we're not her enemies. We're the ones who stood with her when all she had was dirt and a dream."

________________________________________________________________

Toph walked through the corridors of the Provincial Manor, each step taking her further from the War Room and deeper into the residential wing. The argument still echoed in her bones—Katara's cold logic, Sokka's frustrated pragmatism, Aang's serene warnings. They meant well. She knew that. But their well-meaning felt like a noose tightening around her neck, pulling her back toward the world she'd spent her entire life trying to escape.

The grit of the shipyard fell away beneath her feet, replaced by the smoothness of polished limestone and high-thread-count rugs. The manor felt like a trap designed by a ghost. Through the soles of her feet, she felt the rigid, geometric perfection of the architecture—the same soul-crushing symmetry of the Beifong estate. The air here sat stagnant, smelling of expensive jasmine and the faint, metallic tang of silver polish. It was the scent of being "the blind little girl" again, tucked away behind silk screens while the world happened elsewhere.

She reached her room and kicked the door shut. The jade floorplates groaned in protest. Toph let out a jagged breath, her hands trembling not with fatigue, but with a simmering, tectonic rage.

She wasn't being controlled—she was far too powerful for that. If she wanted to, she could drop this entire manor into the sea with a single tilt of her heel. What grated on her was the fragility they projected onto her. She hated the way Katara looked at her like a project to be refined, and the way Sokka looked at her like a volatile asset that needed constant hedging. They were trying to wrap her in diplomacy, treating her like a porcelain doll when she was the earthquake that had brought them this far. She could kill thousands before they even drew their first breath, yet they spoke to her as if she were a candle one breeze away from flickering out.

She walked toward the balcony, seeking the salt of the sea air to cut through the jasmine. For a moment, she stood there, letting the evening breeze cool the heat in her chest. The city sprawled below her—a patchwork of ruin and reconstruction, of old Imperial grandeur crumbling beneath the weight of a new order. Somewhere out there, in the labor camps and the breadlines, were the people she was actually fighting for. Not the nobles. Not the bureaucrats. The ones who had been ground into the dirt by the Emperor's boot.

She took a deep breath, trying to let the anger drain out of her and into the stone beneath her feet.

Then, she felt it. A heartbeat. Steady. Calm. Tucked behind the heavy silk curtains. It wasn't the frantic pulse of an assassin. It was a rhythm she recognized—strong, controlled, and laced with a heat that didn't belong in this cold manor.

Her entire body went still. The anger that had been dissipating suddenly coalesced into something sharp and focused. She'd felt this presence before—in the tea shack, watching her with that predatory stillness. The stranger who hadn't flinched when she'd warned him. The one who'd left a gold coin on the table like it was nothing.

"You always this angry after your friends try to save you?" The voice came from the shadows, dry and gravelly.

Toph didn't turn. The metal in her gauntlets hummed, vibrating in sync with the tectonic irritation radiating from her heels.

"You've got three seconds to tell me why you're in my room before I make the floor your coffin."

The man stepped into the moonlight. The charcoal cloak was gone, revealing a man who moved with a heavy, deliberate grace. He didn't just walk; he displaced the air, a radiator of intense, controlled heat that made the stagnant jasmine in the room curl and die.

"They see a girl who needs protecting." He took a step closer. The temperature spiked. "What do you see when you look at yourself?"

"I don't look at anything." Toph's stance widened. "And I don't need philosophy from some freak who breaks into bedrooms."

"No. You need someone who doesn't flinch." Another step. "Your water tribe friends—they're building you a cage and calling it a palace. They think if they pad the bars enough, you won't notice you're trapped."

"And you're different?" Toph's voice dropped, dangerous. "You're here to set me free?"

"I'm here because you already are." His voice was quiet, but it carried weight. "The nobles you want dead? They're already hiring mercenaries. Your friends are negotiating with corpses. They just don't know it yet."

"How do you—"

"Because I've lived in enough palaces to know how they fall." He stopped just outside her reach. "You want to burn it all down. They want to renovate. Which one of you is lying?"

Toph's jaw clenched. "Get out."

"Make me."

She anchored her weight, her center of gravity dropping as she connected with the deep foundations of the manor. With a sharp, explosive snap of her hips, she drove her heel into the floor. The stone didn't just crack; it buckled in a violent, rolling surge, sending a wave of jagged rock snarling toward his shins.

Through the soles of her feet, she sensed him react before he even left the ground—a sudden, light shift in his weight, the friction of leather against stone. He moved with a fluid, practiced grace, rolling over the crest of the rising earth-wave like a spark dancing over a log. As he went airborne, his hands ignited. Toph felt the air ahead of her superheat an instant before a whip of flame whistled past her ear, the roar of the fire singing the curtains behind her.

Toph grinned, a feral, predatory thing. She punched the air, and two massive slabs of marble ripped from the walls, flying at him like a closing vice. He dropped low, spinning in a sweep of flame that shattered the stone into white dust, but Toph was already closing the gap. She dived through the settling grit, her hand catching the rough iron weight of his collar.

They collided with the force of an avalanche. Toph's momentum carried them backward, her weight slamming into him as they tumbled across the floor. They skidded over the limestone in a chaotic tangle of limbs and heat until they hit the far wall with a bone-jarring thud.

Toph reacted first, the stone responding to her touch the moment they stopped moving. In one fluid motion, she pinned him. Her left hand slammed into the wall inches from his ear, the force of the strike shattering the decorative molding and sending a spiderweb of cracks through the masonry. She used her right knee to pin his chest against the cold stone, locking his movement entirely.

The room went deathly still.

The heat was overwhelming. Toph was inches from his face, her metal visor reflecting the embers still glowing in his palms. She couldn't see the jagged mark across his eye, but through the contact points of her hand on the wall and her knee on his chest, his internal rhythm was a roadmap.

His heart was a steady, heavy thud—not the frantic gallop of a man in fear, but the deep, resonant pulse of someone who had looked into the sun and didn't blink. It was a rhythmic, burning heat that radiated against her skin, cutting through the stagnant chill of the manor.

The stranger didn't struggle. He looked up at her, his golden eyes unblinking, watching the way her jaw set in a stubborn, jagged line.

"Your heart," Toph whispered, her voice dropping into that low, tectonic hum. "It's not lying."

He said nothing. Just watched her. Waiting.

The tension in the air was so thick it felt like it might ignite. For a heartbeat, the "Lord" and the "Ghost" were the only two things left in the world.

THUD. THUD. THUD.

A heavy fist hammered against the oak door, the vibration traveling through the floor and up Toph's legs, shattering the moment.

"Toph!" Sokka's voice bellowed, laced with panic. "I heard an explosion! If you don't open this door in three seconds, I'm breaking it down!"

Toph didn't look back. With a flick of her fingers, she sent a pulse of seismic energy into the doorframe; the stone flowed like liquid, fusing the wood and iron into the masonry until the entrance was a seamless, unyielding slab of rock.

"Stay out, Sokka!" she yelled, then turned back to the man beneath her. "Now. Talk. Who sent you?"

The stranger's jaw tightened. When he spoke, his voice carried that same gravelly confidence, but something in it felt rehearsed. "Nobody sent me. I'm here because you're the only one in this city who isn't lying to herself." He paused, and the words came faster, like he was trying to convince himself as much as her. "Think about it, Toph. With your strength and my knowledge... we wouldn't just take this city. We would own the horizon. No more scripts from the siblings. Just the world as it should be: shaped by those strong enough to hold it."

The pitch hung in the air between them, hollow and brittle.

Toph stared at him for a beat. Then, she let out a sharp, jagged laugh.

"You're good," she chuckled, her metal gauntlet biting into his collar. "The 'dark strategist' offering the world on a silver platter? I've heard better pitches from street vendors. You think I want to own people? I want to be able to walk across a floor without smelling the rot of the people who built it. I don't want a throne I have to share, Sparky. I want a floor I can clean myself."

The stranger went still. Not the predatory stillness from before—this was different. Through the contact points of her knee on his chest and her hand near his throat, Toph felt his heartbeat stutter. Just once. A single, fractured rhythm that didn't match the confidence in his voice.

She shoved him back, and he stumbled, catching himself against the ruined wall. They reset, circling each other in the wreckage. Toph raised a jagged spire of earth, poised to crush him.

"One last chance," she rasped, her voice dropping to a tectonic whisper. "What do you actually want? Because if you say 'power' again, I'm going to drop the ceiling on both of us."

The stranger looked at her, and the mask of the strategist cracked. His shoulders sagged, just slightly. When he spoke again, his voice was quieter, stripped of the revolutionary fervor.

"I came here to help you burn it all down," he said, and the admission sounded like a confession. "That's what I do. I find the tyrants, the rot, the structures that deserve to fall—and I light the match." He looked away, his golden eyes reflecting the dying embers in his palms. "But you're not just burning, are you? You're building something. And I—"

He stopped. His jaw clenched. The heat radiating from him flickered, dimming for just a moment.

"I'm terrified," he whispered, and the words came out jagged, like they'd been dragged from somewhere deep. "That if I stay, I'll burn what you're trying to build. That I'll become the thing that puts the fire out. Or worse—that you'll build it without me, and I'll be the one standing outside watching it rise, knowing I could have been part of something that didn't end in ash."

He looked back at her, and for the first time, his eyes weren't calculating. They were raw.

"I don't want the horizon, Toph. I want to make sure you don't burn out before you finish what you started. Because if you fail—if we fail—there's nothing left but the Empire's cold."

"Who are you?"

Prelude

The world was a cage made of silk and silence.

Young Toph sat at the center of the Great Hall, her small hands folded in her lap. To the outside world, this was the pinnacle of the Earth Kingdom's old wealth—a palace of jade pillars and fountains that wept rosewater. But to Toph, it was a tomb of static air.

Above her, the elders of the Beifong clan spoke in hushed, frantic tones. Their voices bounced off the high vaulted ceilings, brittle and thin.

"The reports from the Northern Rim are confirmed," an elder rasped, his silk robes rustling like dry leaves. "The Emperor's Red Guard has moved again. Three more masters taken. They don't just kill them; they erase them. They turn the soil against the sower."

"We must increase the guard," her father's voice, Poppy Beifong, was a low rumble of terror. "Toph must not leave the inner sanctum. Not even for the garden. If the Emperor's dogs catch even a whisper of what she can do... if they feel the earth move under her feet..."

"She is a Beifong!" a grandmother hissed. "She is a lady of the court. She has no need for the 'wild heresy' of bending. We will bury her power under layers of etiquette and lace. It is the only way she survives the purge."

Toph sat motionless. She could feel the earth beneath the foundation of the house—deep, ancient, and screaming to be moved. But here, in the "safety" of her home, she was forbidden from even a stomp. She was a delicate porcelain doll in a world of hammers.

One afternoon, she had slipped away to the edge of the estate's forbidden wall. She pressed her palms against the rough, unpolished stone of the outer boundary. Beyond this wall was the real world—a world where the status quo was a suffocating shroud, where the Emperor's "Order" meant the slow death of everything that breathed.

She felt a tremor in the distance. Not a natural one. It was the rhythmic, heavy march of the Imperial Legion passing on the high road. They moved with a geometric cruelty, their iron boots bruising the soil.

Toph's small face hardened. She didn't want to be protected. She didn't want to be a secret kept in a box while the world turned to ash outside.

She felt the heat of the sun on the stone, and for a moment, she let a tiny pulse of her will slip into the ground. A single, sharp crack echoed through the garden. A marble statue of a weeping willow—a symbol of "graceful submission"—split cleanly down the middle.

"Toph!" her mother's voice shrieked from the veranda. "What have you done? You'll bring the fire upon us all!"

Toph didn't answer. She just felt the jagged edge of the broken stone. It felt better than the silk. It felt like the beginning of an end.

“The Empire fell to a girl who treated the world like her sandbox. They called her the Blind Bandit—a title suggesting she couldn't see the crowns she crushed. Amidst the ruins, Toph felt a thousand surrendering pulses, but one didn't flutter. A prince, in the silks of a dying empire, watched her with a terrifying, quiet devotion.”