TDBB: Tuff Wars 2.23
The ground started vibrating beneath Toph's feet, and it was not her doing. The chaotic pulse ran in patterns too complex for bedrock, too organized for aftershock. She tilted her head and let her sense expand, reading the frequencies that moved through the earth.
The vibration shaped itself into sound.
Toph. Toph. Toph.
A whisper carried through the stone, distant, female, repeating her name. It came from the northeast, from depths her seismic sense had never reached.
Then from the opposite direction, a male voice, heavier, grinding against the stone like tectonic plates shifting.
"Let the green girl go, Toph."
Another wave hit her feet, rolling through the bedrock in a pattern that carried a third voice, younger, a boy's tone that vibrated with satisfaction.
"She's doing well."
The first voice returned, closer now, the female whisper pressing against her soles with intimate familiarity.
"Make her your companion."
Toph ground her teeth together and her fist clenched around Ivy's arm, her knuckles whitening as the pressure built behind her eyes. She felt the earth shudder with each syllable, the stone itself becoming their mouthpiece, their instrument, their cage.
"Show yourselves, you cowardly rocks!"
Her legs lifted boulders from the cracked street without her conscious command, the bedrock rupturing around her as her rage answered their intrusion. Stone split in jagged lines that ran toward the sources of the voices, pillars of rock shooting upward in search of targets that were not there, that had never been physically present.
A sharper voice cut through the chaos, greedier, vibrating from a new direction with a malicious chuckle that made the air in her lungs feel heavy.
"You still have a mission to complete, Toph."
The ground shook harder. The waves hit her feet in a rattle that climbed her shins and entered her spine, and where the vibration touched her soul it became a scream, a high-frequency shriek of stone against stone that tore through her concentration and made her vision swim with shapes she could not name.
Toph let go of Ivy immediately. Her hands rose to her ears and she lifted her feet from the ground, balancing on a pillar of stone that rose beneath her, trying to escape the contact that had become torture. The screaming followed her, resonating through the pillar itself, finding her no matter how high she climbed.
Another wave struck, worse than the first, a fracture line that ran through her mind and split her will into fragments. She felt her resistance crumble, the adult strength she had reclaimed folding under pressure that came from inside her own bones, from the earth she had trusted.
Her face changed. The exhaustion drained from her muscles and her jaw set, the grin that pulled at her mouth carrying nothing warm. Her hands dropped from her ears and found the stone beneath her, and she began to ram the earth repeatedly, her fists driving into the pillar, her feet stomping in patterns that sent shockwaves through the bedrock in search of the voices that hid below.
She made a sound in her throat, a hehe that built into something hungrier, and her hands found a density in the stone, a pocket of resistance that squirmed when her sense pressed against it.
"Hehe. Found you."
She stomped on the cracked ground and sent a shockwave that threw a boulder high into the air, the stone spinning as it reached its apex. The boulder twitched, trying to change its trajectory, angling toward a crack in the bedrock where it could escape into deeper stone. Toph moved her hands and sealed the crack, the earth flowing like clay under her will, and the boulder hit the surface and rolled, gathering speed toward a gap in the ruins.
Toph's grin pulled tighter, pain lacing the expression as blood ran from her nose and dripped onto her chest, the vibrations from the Parliament's assault still hammering at her feet even as she pursued her prey. She bent the earth and threw the boulder skyward again, her arms tracking its arc, and as it fell she hit it with another stone, and another, a series of impacts that cracked its surface and made it cry out in a frequency that shuddered through her hands.
The whispers turned panicked, overlapping, losing their measured cadence.
"What are you doing, guardian? Release it at once!"
Toph did not release it. She rammed the boulder against the ground and lifted it and rammed it again, her muscles standing out in her arms and shoulders, her adult frame straining with the effort of each blow. Blood ran from her nose and mixed with the sweat on her face, and she laughed as she drove the stone into the earth again and again.
"I tell rocks what to do."
She stomped and the boulder shattered, disintegrating under the final impact, and the cry that came from it was a physical thing, an explosive shockwave that tore through the air and threw dust and stone fragments in every direction. The boy's voice went silent, scattered.
"Not the other way around."
The other voices screamed, their harmony breaking into discord.
"No! Son, no!"
Toph focused on the ground again, her feet reading the retreating vibrations, the boulders that fled underground, sinking lower and lower into the crust. She stomped and sent pillars after them, cracking the bedrock in pursuit, her hands tearing at the stone as she tried to catch one, to hold one, to make one face her.
Her fingers closed on empty earth. The bleeding had weakened her, the Parliament's assault leaving her trembling despite the rage that still burned in her chest. She tried again and her legs folded, the effort too much, and she sat flat on the cracked ground with her legs splayed before her, her chest heaving, blood and mucus running from her nose and mouth.
She wiped her face with the back of her palm and spat red onto the stone.
A shadow fell across her. Toph tilted her head and felt the shape above her.
"Can't catch a break," she muttered, and she smirked despite the blood on her teeth.
She felt Ivy's blood pressure rising, the anger building again in her veins, and Toph chuckled, a wet sound that turned into a cough.
"Relax. Your heart has stopped fluttering."
She wiped her face again and let her hand fall to her knee, her head turning toward Ivy's position.
"It was probably those stupid rocks that let you out of the cone. Amplified your rage so you'd tear Gotham apart for them."
Ivy's voice came back raised, edged with the fury that had not fully drained.
"You're making assumptions."
"I'm not." Toph's smirk held, though her shoulders sagged with exhaustion. "You're still angry at me. Only less clouded without their influence whispering through your roots."
Ivy limped, her weight shifting badly, and she coughed, the sound tearing from her chest. She stumbled and caught herself on a vine that rose weakly from the cracked stone, and Toph felt the bruises that covered her, the damage that ran deep beneath the skin where her fists had found their marks.
"You're tougher than I expected," Toph said, and she laughed, the sound carrying genuine appreciation.
A vine lashed out and wrapped around Toph's torso, the grip tight but faltering, and Ivy's voice came strained.
"Stop laughing."
The vine loosened as Ivy coughed again, her body folding, and Toph raised a boulder from the ground and shaped it into a seat that pressed against Ivy's legs, supporting her weight. Ivy held it and then let go, her pride warring with her need, and she glared toward Toph though her eyes could not meet the blind gaze.
"Parliament or not, you still betrayed me."
Toph's jaw tightened. She looked toward the sound of Ivy's breathing, the rapid pulse that still carried anger and hurt in equal measure.
"I was wrong." Toph's voice came rough, scraped by the blood in her throat. "Shouldn't have apologized before if I'd known you'd be such a crybaby."
She felt Ivy fume, the temperature rising, and vines twitched at Ivy's feet as she spat the words.
"Why you--"
"We don't have to get along." Toph cut her off, her hand rising to stop the words. "But I like you enough to help you escape from the bats."
She tapped the ground beside her and the stone opened, a passage dropping into darkness, the earth swallowing itself to create a tunnel that ran toward the city's edge.
"Follow me if you're still reasonable."
Toph dropped into the hole without waiting, her body sliding down the earth she had shaped, and her voice echoed from below.
"Or stay and explain the garden to Grumpy-Gull. Your call."
Ivy stood above the opening, her vines dead around her, her body aching with every breath. She looked down into the dark opening, her mind tracking the logistical reality of her situation.
Batman would be here within minutes. Her body was too broken to fight, and without her vine-armor or her full connection to the green, she would be completely defenseless against his countermeasures. Returning to Arkham Asylum after he used her own synthesized pheromones against her was an outcome she couldn't afford.
Toph, the infuriating brat, wasn't giving her a choice, and no matter how much it irritated her to admit it, the earth bender was her only way out of the perimeter. She needed to escape first, find a secure location to recuperate, and retake control of Gotham once her energy had fully recovered. Ivy gritted her teeth against the pain in her ribs and dropped into the dark opening of the tunnel.
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