TDBB: Earth's Guardian #2.
The smoke from the cooling engine of the drill drifted over the edge of the pit.
Toph didn't turn around to face the man behind her because her feet were already telling her everything she needed to know about him.
He stood with his weight distributed so perfectly that he barely made a ripple in the gravel and his boots were lined with a dense, spongy material that swallowed most of his vibration before it could hit the earth.
"Angry people tend to escalate," the man said. "Why don't you calm down. Walk away before you cause any more damage."
Toph reached up and dug a finger into her nose, twisting it around with a focused indifference while she leaned her weight onto her left heel.
"Walk away?"
She flicked her finger toward the pit.
"I'm just getting started." She said, slamming her foot into the dirt.
A pillar of compressed soil shot upward from the edge of the pit, shattering the floodlights overhead and plunging the site into a darkness that meant nothing to her.
She felt his calves coil as he launched himself into the air.
He didn't fall like a normal person and Toph realized there were wings or some kind of fabric stretching out from his arms as he caught the wind.
She didn't wait for him to land.
She swept her arms in a wide circle and the earth at the bottom of the pit rose up in a massive wave of silt and stone, crashing toward the shadow in the sky.
He twisted in mid-air and she felt the brief, sharp vibration of a small metal object leaving his hand. It was a tiny, winged shape made of high-carbon steel and it whistled through the air toward her throat.
Toph tilted her head by an inch and caught the metal projectile between two fingers, feeling the cold bite of the edge against her skin. She squeezed her hand and the steel liquefied between her fingers, dripping onto the ground as a useless puddle of slag.
"Nice try, Grumpy-Gull," Toph said. She dropped into a low crouch and placed both palms on the bedrock. "I think I’ll call you that since you seem so fond of skulking around in the dark and looking for things to complain about."
She sent a massive pulse of energy through the limestone and the entire construction site began to hum. The reinforced steel bars inside the concrete foundations of the half-finished condo started to vibrate, singing a high-pitched note that shattered every window within a block.
She felt the Grump hit the ground on a pile of lumber. She didn't give him a chance to find his footing. She pulled her hands back and the steel rebar inside the condo walls tore itself free from the concrete, snapping out like a dozen metallic whips. They lashed through the air toward him and he tumbled backward, his movements a blur of calculated evasion as he jumped over the sweeping metal.
He was fast and he was quiet but he was still made of meat and bone. Toph could feel the blood rushing through his veins and the way his lungs were working harder now. She realized he wasn't trying to hit her anymore because he was busy pulling something from his belt.
A sharp hiss of pressurized gas filled the air and a thick cloud of chemicals rolled over the edge of the pit. Toph held her breath.
She stomped her foot and a wall of stone rose up to seal her into a small, airtight dome. The gas hit the outside of the rock and she listened to the muffled sounds of the Grump moving through the mist. He was searching for her, his boots tapping lightly on the stone.
She could feel his confusion through the vibrations of the dome. He didn't understand how she could move the earth without seeing it and he didn't understand why his toys weren't working.
She waited until he was standing directly on top of a patch of loose gravel near the dome's edge. She didn't break the stone. She just reached out with her mind and grabbed the metal buckles on his boots.
The Grump let out a grunt of surprise as his own footwear turned into an anchor. Toph pulled the metal down, dragging his feet into the ground and locking the dirt around them until it was as hard as diamond. She collapsed her dome in a shower of pebbles and stepped out into the clearing, her arms crossed over her chest and a smug grin on her face.
"You spend a lot of money on those gadgets just for a girl to turn them into paperweights," she teased.
She walked toward him, her bare feet finding the quietest paths between the broken debris. "You have a lot of discipline, Grumpy. I can feel the way you’re trying to slow your heart down even though your legs are stuck. It’s cute."
"This isn't a game," the man said. His voice was lower now, vibrating with a tension that felt like a bowstring about to snap. "There are lives tied to these foundations."
Toph stopped five feet away from him. The "eyes" of his mask were fixed on her but she was looking at the way his shoulders were shifting. He was reaching for something behind his back.
"I’m aware," she stated. "But everything will be better when I'm done."
She felt the click of a mechanism in his hand.
A flash of blinding white light exploded in the pit but Toph didn't even blink. The Grump had assumed she was using her eyes and the realization of his mistake sent a ripple of genuine shock through his heartbeat.
"Did I mention I was blind?" Toph used that moment of hesitation to slam her fist into the palm of her other hand.
The earth beneath the Grump erupted. A massive hand of stone formed from the bedrock and scooped him up, lifting him into the air before slamming him against the side of the tilted condo. The impact was heavy and she felt the air leave his lungs, but his suit absorbed the brunt of the damage. He was tough. He was much tougher than the thugs in the alley.
He didn't fall. He used a grappling hook to snag a protruding beam and swung himself onto a higher floor, disappearing into the shadows of the skeletal building. Toph could feel him up there, crouched on a steel girder, his mind working through a thousand different strategies. He was trying to figure out her range and her limits.
He didn't realize she didn't have any.
"You’re thinking too much!" Toph shouted. She grabbed the two main support columns of the condo with her seismic sense. These pillars were massive, filled with high-tensile steel and tons of concrete. They were the legs of the giant that was stepping on the earth.
She began to twist them. The metal inside the columns groaned as she forced the molecules to slide past each other, creating a sound like a thousand car crashes happening at once. The entire building began to scream as the frame warped. The Grump was forced to jump from the shifting girder to a crane standing nearby.
She followed his movement and felt the crane’s counterweights swaying. She gave the crane a little nudge, just enough to make the metal cable snap. The heavy hook swung through the air and the Grump had to dive into a roll on a narrow platform to avoid being crushed.
He was breathing hard now and she could feel the heat radiating from his body through the cool night air.
"You’re starting to get the idea, aren't you?" Toph asked. "This city is just a collection of things I can break. Every wall you build is just another weapon I can use against you."
She felt him pull out a small device and slap it onto the side of the crane.
A massive electrical surge rippled through the metal. It was a high-voltage shock designed to fry anyone touching the structure but Toph wasn't touching it with her skin. She was touching it with her will. She felt the electricity dancing over the surface of the steel and she simply redirected it.
She forced the current into the ground, grounding the entire crane through the bedrock and sending a feedback loop back into the device until it exploded in a spray of sparks.
The Grump stood on the platform and looked down at her. She could feel his gaze, heavy and calculating. He realized that as long as she was standing on the ground, he couldn't win. He needed to get her off the earth.
He didn't say a word. He just stepped off the platform.
Toph waited for the impact but it didn't come. Instead, a massive black shape roared over the edge of the pit -- the black car she had sensed earlier. It wasn't just a car. It was a tank.
The Grump landed on the roof of the vehicle as it tore through the construction fence, its tires spinning and throwing gravel into the air.
The vehicle was a massive dead spot in her vision. It was made of the same synthetic, high-density materials as his suit and it moved with a speed that felt unnatural for something so large. Toph felt the weight of the car as it accelerated toward her and she realized he was trying to ram her.
She didn't move. She waited until the front bumper was close and then she dropped into a horse stance. Then she reached out and grabbed the iron in the engine block.
The car didn't stop because of the brakes. It stopped because the internal components of the engine suddenly turned into a single, solid mass of iron. The momentum of the car forced the rear wheels off the ground and the entire vehicle flipped over Toph’s head, sailing through the air in a slow, heavy arc.
Toph didn't look up as the multi-ton tank crashed into the dirt behind her. The impact shook the entire block and she felt the stone beneath her feet vibrate with the force of it. She turned around and "saw" the car resting on its side, the wheels still spinning and smoke pouring from the ruined hood.
The Grump crawled out of the wreckage. His suit was torn in places and his movements were sluggish, but he was still standing. He looked at the ruined car and then he looked at Toph. She could feel his heart beating like a drum, a steady, rhythmic thrum of adrenaline and a growing realization that he was outmatched.
"You’re a stubborn one, Grumpy-Gull," Toph remarked. "Most people would have stayed in the car."
"I have faced gods and monsters and men who could tear apart worlds," he said, reaching into a hidden compartment in his belt and pulled out a small, glowing green vial. "You are just one girl."
Toph tilted her head and felt the liquid inside the vial. It wasn't water. It was something heavy, something that vibrated with a strange, radioactive energy. It felt like a poison.
"Is that supposed to scare me?" she asked.
The Grump crushed the vial in his hand and the liquid began to glow with a sickly light that Toph could feel as a low, irritating hum. He began to move toward her again, but this time his footsteps were different. He was lighter, faster, as if the liquid was enhancing his nervous system.
He hit her before she could raise a hand. It wasn't a punch she could track through the earth -- it was a strike that came from the air, a spinning kick that caught her in the shoulder and sent her skidding across the dirt. Toph rolled and came up on one knee, her shoulder throbbing with a sharp, hot pain.
"Oh, so we’re playing for real now," Toph muttered.
She spat a bit of dust out of her mouth and slammed both fists into the ground.
She moved the entire street. The road and the pipes and the foundations for blocks in every direction began to heave upward like the back of a giant beast. She felt the Grump try to stabilize himself but there was no stable ground left. She was turning the entire district into a storm of stone.
"Stop!" he yelled. "You’re going to kill everyone in these buildings!"
Toph froze. She felt the heartbeats of the people in the apartments nearby -- the frantic, terrified pulses of families waking up to a world that was literally falling apart. She felt the fear through the walls and the way the children were crying in the darkness.
The noise of their fear hit her harder than any punch. It was a different kind of scream, one that didn't come from the earth but from the things living on it.
She let the pressure go. The ground settled with a heavy, bone-jarring thud, and the buildings stopped their terrifying sway. The dust began to clear and the silence returned, heavier and more oppressive than before.
Toph stood in the center of the ruins, her chest heaving and her hands shaking. She looked down at her feet and felt the earth weeping beneath her. It was still there, the pain and the cage and the suffocation. But now, it was mixed with the terror of the people.
The Grump was standing near her, his arm hanging limp at his side. He didn't attack. He just watched her. He saw the way she was looking at the ground and he saw the hesitation in her shoulders.
"You can't save the earth by destroying the people who live on it," he said. "That's execution."
Toph didn't answer. She felt the Parliament of Stones rumbling in the back of her mind, a cold, distant sound that didn't care about heartbeats or fear. They wanted the cage gone. They wanted the breath back. And they didn't care who got stepped on in the process.
She realized then that the Grump was right about one thing. This wasn't a game. And what she wanted to do was never going to be taken well by a world that had built its life on top of a scream.
But as she felt the deep, agonizing ache of the bedrock again, she knew she couldn't stop. She wouldn't stop.
"I’m still going to do it," Toph said. She turned away from him and started walking toward the edge of the pit. "You can bring your tanks and your gadgets and your glowing green juice, but the earth isn't going to stop crying just because you want to keep your buildings."
"Next time," she said, her voice carrying over the ruined street, "I won't stop for the heartbeats."
She didn't wait for him to respond. She stepped into the shadows and moved with the earth, disappearing into the foundations of the city before the first police sirens could reach the site.
The Grump stood in the crater and watched the place where she had been. He looked at his ruined car and the tilted condo and the fused drill. He knew she was telling the truth. She was a force of nature and he was just a man trying to hold back the tide.
He tapped a button on his ear. "Alfred, I need a full scan of the seismic activity in the Diamond District. We have a new problem. And she’s not like anything we’ve ever seen."
Toph moved through the sewers, the cool, damp air a relief against her skin. She could still feel the Grump's vibration in the distance, a quiet, steady pulse of a man who was already planning his next move.
She smiled to herself in the dark. He was interesting. He was a lot like Twinkle-Toes -- full of rules and big ideas about saving everyone. But he was also a fighter.
"I’ll see you soon, Grumpy-Gull," she whispered. "And next time, I’m bringing the whole mountain with me."