tushanshu_logs | Extreme Makeover: Keeliai Edition

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Extreme Makeover: Keeliai Edition - March Log

Characters: Everyone who's interested in pitching in!
Date: Throughout March, until the 21st
Location: The Palace of Landed Sky and surrounding environs
Situation: Let's tear this bitch down.
Warnings/Rating: Drug addiction/withdrawal references in the Dust threads, most likely

The demolition is now in full swing and will last until late March, largely run by Zanru and the Metalworkers (as part of the deal), though individual Foreigners can be hired to help (and the help would likely be appreciated, as the Foreigners are going to get some of this too). Hired Foreigners will report to Xuiyu, as Zanru herself is too busy to be on-site. Gene can be found helping with the destruction, in his armor more often than not, over the course of the demolition project, and answering questions and taking suggestions from Foreigners and kedan about what to do with the newly freed land.

However, from the 4th to the 11th, there is Dust contamination, which is sickening some of the workers - Foreigner and kedan alike. It's not too much of a hindrance, and the demolition seems to be on track to finish on-schedule, by March 21st.

OOC Note: If you need a big-name NPC, please contact the mods directly! Kedan workers can be NPCed by anyone. If you want Gene specifically, please make a note in the subject line and I will throw him at you! (Also, I apologize for not getting to last month's starters; February got away from me. Please feel free to reuse them!)

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Wan adjusted to the sudden slip with a surprised yelp and a quick air gust to lift him up and over two feet to a more stable section of ground. As he landed he studied the earth where he'd just been at, frowning and confused. He could have sworn it felt like the earth moved away from him on it's own. But it looked and felt fine now.

The girl hadn't moved as far as he could tell and she was obviously blind. Between how milky her eyes were and how she couldn't quite follow him, he'd figured it out a little while after she joined him. He suspected she'd probably heard him moving about and was curious. But for the moment, his focus was on the earth, not her.

Totally innocent blind girl over here. Nothing to see. (Pun intentional.) For her turn, Toph kept her face schooled in the blankness she'd learned from an early age with her parents, wandering through as though she'd satisfied her curiosity.

When really she was waiting for him to start back up again.

Wan dismissed the girl as soon as he was certain she hadn't experienced anything strange - or at least wasn't acting like anything was wrong or out of the ordinary.

He walked over to where he had been and knelt down, touching the dirt with his hands and trying to get a sense for it's stability. Once again, it seemed fine. Maybe he had just hit a soft patch of dirt? Frowning, and still distracted, he went back to his bending practice. His feet moving in the spiraling and circling steps of an airbender.

Good thing he'd turned away, because Toph could barely contain the snicker at that point -- only barely turning away herself before breaking into a full-fledged grin.

She let him find his rhythm again, ease back into things . . . before yanking the ground again, this time from behind him. Again, if he wasn't careful, he'd find his foot going out from under him -- backward.

Wan's eyes widened and though he once more hopped up into the air to give himself stability, this time he knew it was the earth moving out from under him. It wasn't his imagination.

"Aang? Is that you?" he asked, suspicious and worried both. He didn't think Aang had been put in quarantine, but what if he had?

No answer -- though if Wan was attentive, just a bit of a snicker on the breeze. The blind girl seems to have vanished -- though in truth she's not far away. There's plenty of debris in the area to hide one small girl . . . and Toph is taking advantage of it.

She hasn't gotten the chance just to play in some time. Especially not with a decent victim.

Wan did catch the snicker and focused his senses on the air, trying to track it's location.

"I know you're out there," he called a bit more cautiously, though less annoyed. He figured it must be Aang playing games with him. "Show yourself."

Not a chance. Not while she's ahead. Toph shifts position, moving amongst the debris, picking out her next spot with seismic sense. Another snicker, resounding off the stones.

Careful, Wan . . . for her next trick, the ground reaches up to eat your feet.

"Hey! Not fair!" Wan called out as he put a lot more effort than expected into pushing the ground back down. He wasn't used to actively fighting against another earthbender.

Okay. That makes her stop. Pause, startled. Because an airbender shouldn't be able to do that -- move earth.

Bend it.

Her brow furrows slightly, now testing. One foot shoves across the earth, her fist coming down. The ground splinters in a jagged arc towards Wan's feet, sending rock and dust flying into the air.

The sound of the earth cracking drowned out any chance of him hearing her punch the ground. But he took the direction it came from was a big hint.

"Aang, come out! Whatever game you're playing, I don't want to play it," he called out, with a bit more force to his words. He was addled enough by the Dust that he didn't remember he should be able to feel Aang physically close by if it was him. Their connection to Raava would have given him away. But Wan couldn't focus on details like that so well and didn't even realize it.

He held his ground, though, and took control of the earth, forcing the damage to stop a full four feet in front of him before he turned the power back around and sent it right back where it came, trying to knock the culprit into the air.

The force slammed into the debris in front of her, flinging a rain of dust and fragments into the air. Before the dust even cleared, however, Toph made her move, snatching half of the shield she'd gathered around herself and sending it streaking towards Wan.

That was not an attack Wan was going to hold his ground for. A gust of wind launched him skyward and another cleared the dust while he was still in the air so he could see the battlefield more clearly. The silence that followed was a long one as he stared in shock at the sight of the blind girl from earlier in a fighting stance. She was clearly the one earthbending but... she was blind.

"You're not Aang," was all Wan managed to articulate when his feet finally returned to the ground.

Cheating. Airbenders always cheated, especially when faced with an offense they should counter. So it was that Wan met an uplifted brow as once more Toph tugged the earth out from under him for good measure.

"Yeah, and you're an Avatar," she replied, settling the dust in between them.

Wan landed on his butt with an undignified 'oof' and didn't bother to get up.

"...are you Toph?" he asked cautiously, remembering a couple of conversations he'd had with the others about a certain earthbender from their time.

About time. Toph smirked with the impact of his butt to the earth, heading forward, weaving between the pieces of debris as easily as though she could see exactly where they were.

"Yeah, I'm Toph." Her shoulders lift. "So who are you?"

"I'm Wan," he answered as he lifted himself up on his hands, still laying there for the most part. "Why did you attack me like that?"

The question sparked a smirk that verged on a grin. "First off, for fun. Then mostly to see what you could do -- especially with the earthbending." She settled on the ground opposite him. "There aren't exactly a lot of people from my world. . . . Or there weren't, anyway, until I got tossed off Mr. Flipper's back for a year or so. So when I find one, I pay attention."

The smirk sharpened. "Plus I'm Aang's earthbending teacher. Messing with Avatars is kind of standard."

Wan cautiously pushed himself up a little further, until he was sitting up properly and could pull his legs in and cross them.

"Oh. Aang's lucky to have you, then," he said, still obviously unsure about the conversation and if she was going to keep up the whole pulling the earth out from under him thing. "I had to teach myself."

One of Toph's brows lifted. "Avatars are supposed to seek out masters for that kind of stuff. No wonder your forms kind of stink. I was kind of expecting you'd shoot that back at me -- not cheat like an airbender."

"You under quarantine too?"

"Well, sorry," he said sarcastically, finally succumbing to a bit of grumpiness at her attitude. "But some Avatars didn't have masters they could see out. And I didn't realize I was only allowed to use earthbending when you came at me while I was airbending."

IT WASN'T CHEATING. NYAH!

"...yeah. I am."

Well, in fairness, she's more than earned the grumpiness at this point. Not that she realizes it. For Toph, it's all just straightforward pragmatism, delivered without much extra regard for feelings.

Meanwhile, that eyebrow is telling you that you so didn't win this argument, Wan -- and that you probably couldn't if you tried. "Or you don't because you're better at airbending and your earthbending sucks? How far back do you come from, anyway?"

She settles back, legs stretching out. "Tell you what. We're stuck here a while, anyway, and I don't know about you, but I'd rather do something than sit around. If you want, I'll show you a few things."

"My earthbending does not suck!" Wan crossed his his arms and ~~pouted~~ frowned at her. "And I was doing something. I was practicing my airbending. Until you came along and decided to try and make the ground swallow me."

He went to stand up, not answering her question about how far back he came from because he was just sick enough to not be able to focus on more than a couple things she'd been saying. He'd heard the question, it just wasn't sticking out as important.

"Do you do that to every airbender you meet?"

"No." Her face sombers abruptly at that, voice losing its cocky edge. "In my time . . . Aang's the only one."

Wan blinked in surprise at the change in her demeanor. That wasn't how he'd meant his words and the sudden reminder of what Aang had suffered was like a splash of cold water to his face.

He looked down, shoulders hunching up in shame, "...sorry. I didn't mean it that way."

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