AI-assisted content.
TDBB: Tuff Wars 2.25
Toph dug her fingers into her hair and scratched while she leaned against the tunnel wall with her weight settled to the side. She let her head loll back, her mouth open, a sound escaping that was almost a groan.
Ivy knelt a short distance away with her palms pressed flat against the dirt and her spine curved forward, her breath coming in sharp pulls that made her ribs stand out beneath the skin. Green light moved behind her eyes, pulsing in waves that brightened and faded, and her fingers curled into the soil as she tried to push her will outward.
Roots pressed against the ceiling overhead, threading through cracks in the stone, and Ivy's hands rose higher, weaving patterns in the air that should have called the green to her. The vines pushed through the gaps and then stopped, their tips writhing against the rock, blocked by the density of the stone, and Ivy's breath hitched as she forced more of herself into the call. The roots strained and held fast, refusing to break through, and she grunted, the sound tearing from her chest as her hands shook. She muttered. She snarled. The green refused to answer.
Toph dragged her hand down from her hair and let it fall against her leg with a soft slap. "You look constipated," she said. "Stop that already."
Ivy's shoulders bunched and she threw her hands upward, her whole body rising with the effort as she tried to tear the roots through the stone in a final surge. The vines shuddered and held, and she stayed there with her arms raised, her chest heaving, before her knees buckled and she hit the dirt with her palms splayed.
She hung there, her hair falling around her face, her breath coming in jagged bursts. "I have a city covered in my children," she said, and her voice came out scraped raw. "A city full of green that answered me before I spoke. Now I reach and find only stone and interference remains."
Toph watched her through the dark, her feet reading the tremors that ran through Ivy's body and into the floor. "Something similar happened to me," she said, and she pushed off the wall, her arms folding across her chest as she leaned back against the stone. "I normally feel every piece of earth I shape. The constructs stay with me. But the cone I built around you vanished from my sense."
She let her head tip back until it rested against the wall, her hands still folded. "This has to be the parliament messing with us," she said. "Breaking the connection to our abilities."
Ivy's teeth pressed together and she drove her fist into the dirt beside her knee, the impact sending a small shock through the stone. "What is their deal," she said, and the words came out slow, each one bitten off at the end.
"Tearing down every city in the world," Toph said, and she shrugged. She let a small laugh escape her. "Not the worst goal if you ask me," she said, "but they are terrible at making friends. You would think creatures made of stone would know how to ask before they take."
Ivy's hands found her knees. "How could this happen," her voice rose. "I finally did it. I wrapped Gotham in green until it could not breathe. But I had no joy in it because those freaks crawled into my head and turned my victory into noise. Now I cannot even call my own vines back to me because something in the dirt refuses to let me through."
Toph's mouth pulled to one side and she pushed off the wall, her right fist crashing into her left palm with a sound that echoed in the chamber. "Makes you want to smash them, does it not," she said.
Ivy looked up, and her eyes had stopped flickering. "Crash them," she said, and her voice dropped. "I will obliterate them. I will pull them apart until they scream through every crack in the bedrock."
Toph's grin widened. "Then let us find them and make them pay," she said, and she raised her hand, the fingers curling into a fist that she held before her. Ivy's hands stopped trembling as she pushed herself up from the dirt, her spine straightening until she stood at her full height.
"That means leaving Gotham," Ivy said.
Toph tilted her head. "Is that a problem?" she asked.
Ivy did not answer at once. She stood with her arms hanging loose at her sides, and her head turned toward the dark. "All my life," she said slowly, "Since that day, I have wanted to see this city in ruins. Becoming the Poison Ivy should have made that simple. But Batman always won, every time, until you came."
"Now," she continued. "My dream is lying up there in the wreckage, and if I leave now, I give him time to undo everything."
Toph raised her hand and smacked it against her own forehead, the sound sharp in the quiet. She opened her mouth to speak, but Ivy cut her off.
"I know what you are going to say," Ivy said, and she turned back toward Toph with her chin raised. "I have done it once, and I can do it again. Gotham will fall when I return, and it will fall harder than before."
Toph dropped her hand from her face and gestured toward the wall she had sealed behind them. "So stop complaining and start moving," she said. "We have boulders to break and rocks to punish." She turned and drove her palm against the stone, and the wall groaned and split, opening a passage that led deeper into the dark. She stepped through and kept walking.
Ivy stood in the chamber for a moment longer, her eyes finding the green that still pulsed weakly in the vines around the exit, and then she followed, her feet finding the path Toph had made. "Do you even know where you are going?" she asked.
Toph did not slow. "Nope," she said, and she pointed into the blackness ahead with one finger while her other hand gestured behind them. "The Bats are back that way. The parliament went this way. So this way it is."
Ivy caught up to her, her hand brushing the wall for balance. "If they are a parliament like the parliament of trees," she said, "the easiest path to finding them is through the other parliaments."
Toph stopped walking. "There are more of them?" she asked. "More evil parliaments sitting in circles and telling each other what to destroy?"
"Some are different," Ivy said, and she hesitated. "Technically."
Toph turned back toward the tunnel and her foot came down hard, the impact sending a shock through the bedrock that cracked the floor ahead of them and opened a new passage in the wall. "Sounds like they are all bad news to me," she said. She broke into a jog. "But nothing can hide from me," she called over her shoulder. "I will find them by myself."
Ivy ran to keep pace, her ribs aching with each step. "I am not running the entire way," she said, and her breath came short.
Toph slowed enough for Ivy to catch up, and she turned her head with a look that Ivy could not see but could feel in the set of her shoulders. "Where am I supposed to find a sky bison?" she asked. "Or one of those metal birds your people use."
Ivy shook her head, though the gesture was lost in the dark. "We could find a car," she said. "There are enough of them buried in the streets above."
They moved in silence for a stretch, and Toph felt the vibrations above them growing stronger, the low rumble of engines and the sharper impacts of distant explosions moving through the stone and into her feet. The noise had been building for some time, explosions coming in waves that matched some manic tempo she could almost hear. The earth around them shook harder with each impact, and the sound of laughter traveled through the rock, high and broken, mixing with the detonations until the two sounds merged.
"This Joker guy is fun only when I am watching him from a distance," she said, her hands rising to press against her temples as she tried to push the noise back. "Up close he is so noisy."
She stopped walking and her hands dropped to her sides, her right hand curling into a fist that she drove upward into the stone. The impact sent a crack racing through the bedrock, and a boulder above them shifted, punching toward the surface. She struck again with her left hand, and another stone followed, and then she was hitting the ceiling with both fists, each blow sending rock upward until the surface above them buckled and the rumbling stopped, the silence filling her ears until they rang.
The laughter did not stop. It filtered down through the cracks she had made, and the tune continued, notes reverberating against the stone. Then the explosions started again, moving toward them along the tunnel they had been following.
Toph set her feet and drew her fist back, aiming for the point where the next explosion would come through, but Ivy's hand found her wrist, the fingers cold and tight. "Wait," Ivy said, and her voice carried an urgency that made Toph pause. "I have an idea."
Ivy's other hand rose to her own chest, and vines pushed out from her palms, thin and pale, and she aimed them at the ceiling where Toph had cracked the stone. The vines punched through the weakened rock, tearing a hole that let light spill down in a thin shaft, and Ivy began to climb, the green carrying her upward while her other hand reached for Toph.
"Are you trying to expose us?" Toph asked.
"I am getting us a faster way out of here," Ivy said. "Grab on."
Toph grabbed the offered vine and felt herself pulled toward the opening. They broke through into open air, the light hitting Toph's face and she closed her eyes against it, her other senses expanding to map the space around them.
She felt the shape of a man standing nearby, his heart beating fast and light, his breath coming in giggles that shook his whole frame. He turned toward the sound of their emergence, and she felt his arm draw back, the weight of something small and heavy in his hand.
"Ivy," he said, and his voice shook with delight. "I have been looking everywhere for you. You wrecked my factory, you naughty weed, and now you owe me a replacement." His arm came forward and Toph felt the object cut through the air toward them, spinning, its contents shifting inside the casing.
Toph's hand found the ground and she pulled, stone rising in a curved wall that wrapped around them both, and the bomb struck the outside face and detonated, the force shaking the wall but holding, dust and fragments spraying over the top.
Ivy's vines shot past Toph's shoulder, heavy ropes of green that found the man and wrapped his legs, his arms, his chest, and she twisted her wrists. The vines tightened and lifted him, spinning him in the air before they threw him against the remains of a nearby wall. She threw more vines after him, pinning him beneath a tangle of thorns, and she turned away before he could rise, her hand already reaching for something else.
Her vines found a shape in the wreckage, a box of metal and glass that Toph felt through the roots, and Ivy lifted it, the green straining as the weight came clear of the ground. Toph felt the mass of it, the engine and the wheels and the hollow space inside, and she understood that Ivy had found them a way to move.
"Get in," Ivy said, and she was already moving toward the floating metal box, her vines lowering it to the ground. "It will carry us out faster than your feet."
Toph bent the earth beneath her and rode a wave of stone toward the vehicle, her feet sliding across the surface until she hit the side of the metal box and her hands found the frame.
The engine roared to life before Ivy could reach the door, and the box lurched forward, throwing Toph against the side. A voice came from within, high and sing-song, carrying a laugh that bubbled at the edges. "Oh, Ivy," the voice said, and Toph felt the vibration of it through the metal. "Love what you have done with the place. But you should not have redecorated without Mr. J's permission." The vehicle spun, its wheels screaming against the ground, and Toph felt it turn toward her, the engine revving as it charged.
Toph stomped her foot and the ground in front of her became a ramp, tilting upward as the vehicle hit it, and the metal box sailed over her head, its wheels leaving the ground, and crashed down behind her with a sound of bending metal.
Ivy was already moving, her vines carrying her through the air toward the driver's side, and Toph felt her reach the window, her hand extending inside. The voice inside laughed once, sharp and surprised, and then the laugh changed, becoming slower, softer, and Toph smelled something sweet and heavy in the air.
"Road trip out of Gotham," Ivy said, and her voice slowed, each word dropping into the air with a sweetness that made Toph's nose itch. "With Joker's permission. Drive forward. I will clear the path."
The engine answered, and the vehicle straightened, but Toph felt the man she had thrown against the wall already rising, his hands finding explosives from his clothes, his giggles returning as he threw them. The blasts came in a chain, fire and pressure that made Toph duck behind her stone wall, and she felt him moving, throwing more, aiming at the van, at Ivy, at everything that moved.
Ivy's vine snapped around Toph's wrist and pulled, and Toph felt herself dragged toward the vehicle, her feet skating across the stone. "Leave that clown," Ivy shouted, and her voice rose over the explosions. "Catch this and help me clear the way."
Toph grabbed the vine and let it haul her upward, her hands finding the roof of the moving box, and she crouched there with the wind tearing at her hair and the explosions shaking the ground beneath the wheels. She reached down with her free hand and tore at the stone ahead of them, raising walls to block the debris and dropping them to clear a path, her body swaying with the motion of the vehicle as it swerved around the remains of the city.
Ivy rode beside the window on a wave of green, her hands weaving patterns that tore aside the wreckage that Toph's walls had not caught, and the vehicle drove through the gap they made, its engine roaring. Behind them, the man in the purple suit shrieked curses that dissolved into laughter, and more explosions followed, each one closer than the last, until Toph raised a final wall of stone behind them and felt the blasts strike it, held, and fade.
Thanks for reading. I also have advance chapters if you want to read ahead.