TDBB: Tuff Wars 2.22
Toph rolled and dropped under Ivy's vines. She stepped back, and the vines that followed her stabbed into the ground where she had stood.
She turned her heel and the stone beneath it liquefied, the surface collapsing into silt that swallowed the vine to its base. She hardened the earth around it and felt the root go taut, straining against the grip, trapped.
Ivy's voice came through the green. "You fed me rats!"
More vines rose, their tips splitting ito mouths that opened and snapped with teeth. Toph had never encountered plants that bit.
She bent her knees until her hips were level with her ankles, her back curving forward, her arms drawing in close to her chest with fingers curved like hooks. The mantis stance.
She completely ignored the air.
The mouths snapped shut where her head had been and she exploded upward from the crouch, her palms striking the ground in a double impact that sent her sense racing outward through the bedrock.
The vines were everywhere. Threading through the foundations of every building still standing, thick enough to contaminate her seismic sense.
She slid her right foot in a semicircle, her weight transferring through the ball of her foot into the earth, and the ground responded with a rolling wave that lifted the vines from the street and threw them backward in a crest of solid stone. They hit the facades of the leaning buildings and fell, slithering, regrowing, coming back.
Toph dropped back into the mantis stance and listened. The mouths snapped again and she threw another wave, and another, each one carving a wider clearing in the green, each one enhancing her sight.
She kicked the ground with her heel and a cloud of it billowed outward, fine particles of pulverized concrete and dried earth that filled the air between them. Ivy's vines moved through the chaos, their tips questing through the haze, chasing the displacement of Toph's body through the dust.
Toph slapped stone gauntlets on her fists as she moved through the cloud, tracking Ivy's position.
The uppercut found Ivy and caught her under the jaw with a crack that snapped her head back. The breath left her in a rush and before she could see through the dust another blow drove into her stomach, folding her forward, and a second uppercut lifted her off her vines and threw her into a pillar of rock that rose behind her with a crack that rolled through the bedrock. Ivy's connection to the vines went sluggish, the impact leaving her head light and her hands slow, and she could not summon the green to catch her before she hit.
She opened her eyes and saw Toph through the clearing dust, her hands still encased in stone, her face turned toward Ivy with no expression at all. The gauntlets dripped sap where the vines had tried to wrap them and failed.
Ivy's rage surged, overriding the pain that pulsed behind her eyes. She pushed off the pillar and the vines answered, weak but responding, reaching for Toph's legs. Toph felt them coming and she slid her toes an inch across the stone, shifting her weight, and the ground beneath Ivy tilted, throwing her forward toward Toph's waiting fists.
"You bitch--"
"Snap out of it," Toph said, and her voice was flat, exhausted, without triumph.
She threw both gauntleted hands forward and Ivy's eyes flared green, the last of her will pouring into the vines that rushed to intercept the blow. They wrapped Toph's fists, layer upon layer, cushioning the impact, spreading the force through the network until Toph's momentum stalled against the mass of green.
Toph's jaw clenched. She twisted her wrists and the stone gauntlets ground against the fibers, tearing them, pulling them apart. She pushed forward another inch and the vines shredded, exposing Ivy's torso. Toph's knuckles pressed against Ivy's ribs and she felt her heart beating rapidly, and terrified.
"You're not yourself," Toph's said.
She threw the vines aside and they whipped through the air, severed from Ivy's control, and Ivy fell to the ground at Toph's feet, her breath coming in shallow gasps, her eyes still glowing but dimmer, the green fading at the edges. Toph raised her fist and Ivy flinched, turning her face away, and Toph held the blow, feeling the tremor in Ivy's body through the stone beneath them, reading the fear that moved through her muscles.
She lowered her fist and reached down, her fingers closing around Ivy's arm, and she hauled her upright with a roughness that was not quite violence. Ivy swayed, her legs unsteady, the vine-armor falling away in strips that left her exposed to the cold air.
"I swear--" Toph bit her lips. "Snap out of it already!"
She threw Ivy down onto the stone and raised her foot to stomp and send a shock through the bedrock that would shatter whatever connection still held between Ivy and the network. Before her foot could fall, she felt something waiting in the earth, a root that had grown there in the seconds she had hauled and thrown Ivy.
She pulled her foot back and the vine snapped up from the ground where she had almost stepped, its tip splitting into a mouth that closed on empty air. The wind of its passage blew Ivy's hair across her face and she turned her head, her eyes finding Toph's, and she smiled despite the blood on her teeth.
"I know that move," Ivy said, and her voice was soft, almost tender.
Toph's jaw tightened. She stepped to the side, her feet finding new ground, and she felt for the next trap, the next root that Ivy had grown in anticipation of her path. The vine that had missed her coiled back, others rising around it, forming a ring that tightened slowly, giving Toph time to see what was coming.
"That too."
Ivy rose, her hand pressed against her ribs where Toph's fist had left a bruise that spread beneath the skin. She moved her other hand and the vines responded, weaving patterns in the air currents.
Toph stomped and sent a tremor through the ground to through her off balanced and displace the vines. Ivy swept her arm and the roots held her still while the vines spiraled inward, following the seismic pattern of the tremor.
"No matter how chaotic you want it to seem," Ivy said, "your control is always perfect. Your patterns predictable."
Toph shifted her weight, her knees bending, her hands rising. Ivy watched her stance and her eyes narrowed, reading the preparation.
"Sand," Ivy said.
Toph slapped the palms of her gauntlets against the stone and the surface beneath Ivy collapsed into fine particles that swallowed the vines' horizontal anchors. But Ivy had already anticipated and sent vines shooting outward in all directions, anchoring themselves to the buildings, the street, the remains of cars, creating a web that would held her in place while the ground turned to loose grains beneath her feet.
Toph threw her foot and kicked the earth in front of her.
"Silt," Ivy said, and she guided her vines, driving them downward, their tips finding the bedrock below the loose layer, holding firm.
Toph gritted her teeth and felt the stone around her, the rocks she could pull from the collapsed buildings, the metal she could shape into blades. She sent them flying toward Ivy, a storm of debris that filled the air between them.
"Rocks," Ivy said, and her vines rose around her in precision, striking the stones and obliterating them with efficiency and accuracy.
Toph threw her hands.
"Metal," Ivy said, and she released the vine-mass, letting it go loose and flexible, the fibers parting to let the metal Toph threw at her pass through harmlessly before closing again around nothing.
"I've studied you," Ivy said, "as you have taught me--"
Toph threw herself from a pillar of stone that rose behind her, launching into the air with her gauntleted fist leading, her body a straight line of force that crossed the distance between them before Ivy could finish the sentence. The uppercut caught Ivy under the jaw with the same force as before, the stone connecting with bone, and Ivy's head snapped back, her words cut off, her body lifted through the vines and falling off from the air.
She hung there for a moment, the vine-network spasming, and Toph reached out with her will and found the metal she had sent through the loose vine-mass. She pulled it back, the blades reversing course, and she sent them through the vines that rushed to catch Ivy's falling body. The metal severed them in a single pass and Ivy fell, hitting the stone hard enough to drive the air from her lungs.
Toph landed beside her, the gauntlets cracking against the ground, her face turned toward Ivy's still form. She reached down and pulled Ivy up by the arm, raising her fist to strike again, and felt the tremor in Ivy's knuckles. Her rapid heartbeat was fluttering.
She held Ivy upright, her fist hovering.
"Ivy," Toph said, and her voice was rough. "Don't make me do this."
~mimiclord
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