TDBB: Tuff Wars 2.15
Ivy watched Toph come through the air with stone gathered around her fists. The girl's bare feet had left the pillar in a leap that carried her toward the tower of green Ivy had raised from the ruin.
The tremor from before had torn through her root network, left her vines swaying like severed nerves. Now the earth was moving again, shaping itself into a ramp that brought Toph level with her perch.
Ivy let the vines she had been sending toward a half-collapsed office block go slack. They hung in the air, waiting, while the girl landed on the stone lip of the tower and straightened, her chest rising and falling, her face turned toward Ivy with an expression Ivy had not seen before -- something between the rage that had carried her through the last hour and a stillness that cut deeper.
"Stop the vines, Ivy."
Ivy looked at her. The green still hummed in her chest, the network alive and hungry beneath the broken street. She could feel the fear of the people trapped in the hollows she had grown.
"What's gotten you so worked up, Toph?"
Toph didn't answer. Her hands opened at her sides, palms toward the dirt, and Ivy felt the root mat around the tower shift. The vines pulled back from the nearest building as though the earth itself had drawn breath.
Ivy's eyes narrowed. She sent tendrils behind Toph, around her, searching for the shape of the Bat-family regrouping in the dust below. She felt the green rise to her call, the chlorophyll brightening in her veins until the world took on the edge-glow she used to track movement through the canopy.
Toph's head turned toward the sound of the vines moving.
"Don't."
Ivy blinked. The glow faded, her eyes returning to their ordinary color. She looked at the girl standing on the stone with her fists half-raised and her jaw set in a line that Ivy had learned to read as trouble.
"I've regained clarity," Toph said, "now that the world isn't constantly screaming at my feet."
The words landed on Ivy's chest, heavy. She looked at Toph, at the bare feet planted on the rock, at the hands that had shaped the earth into weapons and were now hanging loose at her sides, and she felt something cold settle behind her ribs.
"What are you saying?"
Toph's fists unclenched. She looked at Ivy with an expression that held no mockery, no edge, none of the performance she had worn since the tunnels.
"It's something to do with a bunch of rocks poisoning me because they couldn't manage to successfully order me around," she said. "But that stops now."
She took a breath. The air between them had gone still, and Ivy felt her own heartbeat in her throat, fast and sharp.
"We've done enough damage," Toph said. "Hurt a lot of people. I'll take the blame. But we have to stop now."
Ivy looked at her. The cold behind her ribs spread, numbing her fingers, settling into her voice when she spoke.
"You're telling me you've had a change of heart?"
"Take it how you will," Toph said. "You'll get over it."
"Get over it?"
The laugh came out too high, edged with something that hurt her throat. Ivy felt the vines stir at her feet, responding to the spike in her pulse, and she forced them still.
"You've made me glimpse at what I could accomplish," she said, "and now you're telling me to get over it?"
"I don't have time for this."
Toph turned from her and dropped into a stance. The earth answered with a groan that ran through the tower and into the bedrock below. Ivy felt the root mat shudder, the deep connections tearing as Toph pulled, and she watched the girl's arms move in arcs that threw vines into the air, that caught them on shards of rock and metal and shredded them before they could fall.
"No."
Ivy sent her own vines after them, regrowing what Toph had torn, and she felt the green surge through the soil, racing to fill the gaps.
"I won't let you."
The vines found Toph's wrists and wrapped them, pulling her hands from the stone, and Toph turned her head with a patience that made Ivy want to scream.
"I get that you're upset," Toph said. "But don't pick a fight with me."
"You don't get to change your mind and take the high ground on this one."
Ivy rose on a column of green that lifted her above the tower, her hands weaving patterns that called the root network back to life, and she felt the vines spread beneath her, covering the ruin, swallowing the broken stone.
"You wanted to make the city green," she called down. "Stop this nonsense and let's finish our mission, Toph."
Toph looked up at her. The smirk that pulled at her mouth was familiar, the same expression she had worn in the tunnel when she called Ivy a knucklehead, and Ivy felt the word before it came.
"You really are a knucklehead."
Toph's hands moved, and the metal of her armor bloomed outward, the shoulder plates sharpening into edges that cut the vines from her wrists. She landed on the stone and turned, and Ivy saw the rock beneath her shift, felt the bedrock answer her call.
"I can see why I've grown to be fond of you," Toph said. "I'm sorry to break your trust, but this was never my mission."
She drove her foot into the stone and the tower split, a wave of earth rising from the base that threw Ivy's vines outward, that tore the root mat from the soil and left her standing on bare rock with nothing green within reach.
Toph's hands came together and the stone rose around Ivy, trapping her in a cone of packed earth.
"I don't expect you to forgive me."
Toph turned away.
She moved her hands, tearing roots free, shredding vines on metal pulled from the collapsed buildings, the damage reversing itself. The green network died in patches as Toph moved through it with a speed that spoke of years of practice and a fury that had found its correct target.
Below, through gaps in the stone, Ivy felt her vines slacking and withdrawing, while thorns got pulled from throats. She felt her own vines dying from the vibrations, her connection severed by the stone pressing around her.
Toph's betrayal pressed down harder than the earth.
"That little piece of shit thinks she can feed me rats and nonsense for a month and get away with it?"
The words came out in a whisper that tore her throat. She twisted her wrists against the stone, felt the skin break, and the pain was distant, swallowed by the heat building behind her eyes.
"I'll show her."
She kicked at the cone's inner wall. Her heel struck packed earth and rebounded, sending a jolt up her leg that made her teeth click together. She kicked again, higher, and her knee struck the angle wrong, a bright flash of pain that made her hiss.
"No."
She closed her eyes. The image of Toph rose behind her lids -- the girl in the tunnel, crouched in the dark with her feet in wet soil, picking something from her ear while Ivy stood in the dump and pretended not to notice how alone she felt.
The memory shifted. Toph's voice, the first time they had fought, the words cutting through the chamber's dark.
You are forcing it when it prefers being asked.
Ivy opened her eyes. The evening was coming, the light through the gaps in the cone fading to a color that reminded her of the swamp Toph had described, the place she had gone to stop being anything other than herself.
"What is the point of remembering that if I can't get a hold of my vines?"
She looked at her legs, her arms.
"If there's something that little brat taught me," she said to herself. "it's how to remain tough even in the most impossible situations."
She looked at the cone's wall and drew her fist back.
The punch landed with a wet crack. Her knuckles split, blood spotting the earth, and she felt the shock run up her arm and into her shoulder. The stone held. She punched again, same spot.
She tried a kick. Her knee struck the wall and the stone answered with a wave that traveled back into her leg, a rebound that made her hip sing with pain. She tried again, higher, lower, searching for the angle, and each time the stone returned what she gave it, doubling the force into her joints.
Ivy stopped. She held her bleeding hand against the wall and breathed, forcing the air through her nose, counting the beats of her heart until she could hear past them.
She thought of Toph's stance. The wide base, the weight dropped into the hips, the way she had moved not against the earth but with it, asking rather than forcing.
Ivy drew her fist back and struck the wall again, but this time she did not follow through. She let her hand connect and withdraw in the same motion, a soft strike that sent a vibration into the stone rather than trying to drive through it. The wave traveled outward, and she felt it return, weaker, diffused by the density.
She struck again. Same soft contact, same withdrawal, and the wave traveled deeper, the return slower. Her knuckles bled. She struck again, and again, and the stone began to hum, a low frequency that she felt in her teeth, in the bones of her hands.
The return came harder. The stone rejected her, sent the wave back with force that blistered her palms, that tore the skin from her fingers and left her hands shaking. She struck again, and the rejection came again, the stone answering her will with a violence that was not quite sentient but was something close.
She struck with her fists, her elbows, her knees, her feet, each blow soft, each withdrawal a request rather than a demand, and each time the stone answered with pain.
The light through the cone's gaps had gone to full dark when it finally happened. The cone cracked and exploded in the same breath. The debris earth fell around her and some on her. She fell onto her knees, her hands held against her chest, her legs trembling.
The evening air was cold against the sweat and blood that covered her.
Above, the stars were coming out. Behind her, the city was a garden of ruin, and somewhere in it Toph was tearing down what they had built together.
Ivy pushed herself up on her knees. She stood and looked at her ruined hands.
She held them before her and waited for the green to answer her call.
"I'll show her," she vowed.
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