cyclicality | Open to all! Dated before the barrier goes funny.

The girl making her way through the city probably wasn't anyone's image of Toph Bei Fong, and certainly not the image of the statue standing near the police station. She was small, verging on scrawny (an effect compounded by oversized clothing), face marked with at least a couple of layers of dirt. In that clothing, her features obscured, she might even have been taken for a boy -- were it not for the heavy braid trailing down her back.

Frankly, Toph didn't mind the whole arrangement. The makeshift disguise let her explore the city pretty much as she pleased -- or at least the parts she was currently interested in seeing. No one paid much attention to a street urchin, and there were some benefits to being blind; it tended to make others look away, and by the time they thought something of a blind girl wandering around the city by herself, Toph was gone.

So far, she had a good thing going, except for the lack of idol worship.

((ooc: Pick a setting option. Feel free to pose in with whatever your character is doing in that area, and I'll pose back off of you with whatever Toph is up to. Glad to work out anything in advance -- just PM me or poke me on Plurk!))

A. Toph is in the less well-off parts of town, taking stock of the area and probably noting the triads with interest. You might even catch her at a scam. (Hey, new place, money is necessary, and she has to test the limits.)

B. Up near the bending arena. Maybe it's just a practice day; maybe there's a game going on. She's just as likely to come either time. It's enough like Earth Rumble that she'll be interested.

C. Taking a break somewhere in the city (though likely not in the upper class districts). The satomobile vibrations are still a little rough on her, and a girl's gotta eat.

D. Wildcard -- have an idea? Poke me on PM or Plurk!

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"Got it." Well, he sort of got it. He had no problem calling Toph whatever she wanted, but it seemed risky to call her by her real name unless they were 100% alone or with Aang and the others. But even then, people could overhear.

Satoru smiled warmly at her as she stood up and—she said his name again—lightly pounded a fist into an upward-facing palm. "Right! Right...." He took a breath and promised himself to not overwhelm her with details. Short version only. "Well, as you know, my name is Satoru. Before all... this... I used to work as an engineer in my uncle's and his business partner's refinery. What we did was basically process ore, and it was terrific. Not because of the potential profit, but because it was the very first joint business adventure between the Fire Nation and the Earth Kingdom."

Satoru paused. Wait, that was going off track, wasn't it? "A-Anyway. We were only supposed to use one stable, safe mine, but my uncle... decided to try his hand at mining the rich ore in another, incredibly unstable mine. Which, as expected, ended up collapsing with you, me, Katara, and a few other people inside."

Then came a heavy sigh. He imagined she'd figure it out one way or another, so he felt he might as well tell her now. "Before the mine collapsed, we'd had an argument. It was... really stupid, and entirely my fault. I'd spent all this time defending my uncle and what a great guy he was when I didn't even look at the whole picture. And then look what happened: my uncle's actions put so many lives in danger. You tried to set me straight, but I didn't want to listen at first. But... I eventually got your point. And... I just wanted to tell you that I'm sorry. You were right. I really was acting like a sniveling flunky."

. . . Completely weird, hearing an apology for an older version of yourself, for an argument you know nothing about. It was like hearing an apology to a stranger, and just about as uncomfortable. Not to mention she'd never really been comfortable with apologies anyway.

"I know you probably want me to forgive you and all." Frowning, she scratched at the side of her nose. "And honestly, it does sound stupid. But I'm not the one who was getting hurt."

Pause. "Your uncle doesn't sound like that great a guy if he was doing all that. What were you clinging so hard to that for, anyway?"

"My uncle..."

Even now, Satoru found it difficult to be angry at his uncle. Betrayed, sure, but not very angry, despite almost being killed.

"He did a lot for me. My parents worked for Ozai's government when he was Fire Lord, and even after Fire Lord Zuko took his place, my parents were only supportive of Ozai. I couldn't stand the fact my parents supported the man who killed so many people for the 'sake of the Fire Nation.' Someone who was trying to raze the entirety of the Earth Kingdom."

He shrugged his shoulders and threaded his fingers behind his head.

"So I had this brilliant idea to run away from home because of that. My next brilliant idea was to go to Ba Sing Se. But the war had just ended and me being Fire Nation... things didn't work out. I ended up in the lower ring begging for food. And a few months after that, my uncle found me. He took me off the streets and gave me an engineering job at his new refinery that he opened with your..."

And he wondered if it would at all be possible to take back those last two words. Maybe she wouldn't notice, or maybe if he was lucky, she'd already tuned him out.

Nope, he wasn't lucky. "My what?"

Honestly, she was expecting him to cite a thing. Your money. Your help. (Though it didn't make sense, either; hadn't he just said they'd only met each other later? And what would she have ever cared about a factory, anyway?)

Him and his big mouth. Why did he have to ramble so much? He could have just said 'Yep, I sure did work in a refinery and it was great. The end.' Ugh. Why did he let it slip?! He doesn't want to be the one to upset Toph. Sure, if she and her father actually had a chance to talk, Satoru was positive they could work things out but... well... He was pretty sure Boss Man Lao wasn't anywhere in this city. Maybe if he wasn't here to pretend Toph's not his daughter then she wouldn't be so upset.

"Your... father," he said simply. There wasn't any fancy way to put it, after all.

There's not a single quiver of untruthfulness going through the ground.

"Lao Beifong. He opened the refinery together with my uncle Loban."

His assessment was accurate. After all, it wasn't the fact that her father lived and breathed in the world that would ultimately hurt Toph; it was the fact that he would deny her existence, refuse to call her his daughter, and turn away.

It would be the fact that after all she'd done, he still couldn't see her.

And didn't want to.

"Oh." She took this in a moment, turned it over . . . and her shoulders lifted. "He's good at picking out stuff that'll do well in the future. So in a way, if he got involved with you guys in the first place, it's probably a good sign."

Pause. ". . . He didn't know about the unstable mine, right?"

Satoru immediately shook his head. "No, no, of course not." He held up his hands in a display of what he hoped was honesty.

"It was... actually my uncle who brought in people to work in the iron mine." His voice was quiet and ashamed. "Your father told my uncle right from the start that it was far too unsafe for workers and that any mining would be done in the crystal mines instead."

He wrung his hands together and coupled the movement with a sigh. "Even as it was collapsing, my uncle threatened to fire everyone... said they were replaceable. I wish... I wish I'd known about the mine. Despite how much I used to respect him, I would have done something to make sure no one's lives were at stake. But... no. Your father was always a good man and very fair to his workers. He wasn't willing to let them risk their lives just because it was an easy way to make ban."

A tightness that she hadn't realized that was in her chest subsided. While she'd never known her father to be a dishonorable man . . . the idea of facing that possibility struck harder than she'd realized.

"Why are you telling me all this?" she asked after a moment. "We just met, and you're pouring all this out when -- no offense -- it doesn't mean nearly the same thing to me as it does to you."

"...You're right. I'm sorry; I suppose in the end it really does seem like it's more for my benefit than for yours. Which wasn't what I meant."

Satoru stopped a sigh from escaping. He knew it was weird. It was weird for him; imagining how weird it was for Toph was beyond him right now.

"I thought you might like to know, though. About your dad. I'll... try to lay off about the other things."

Open to all! Dated before the barrier goes funny.

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