Nuwa struts back to her room while reviewing the events. Jet, surprisingly, passed both tests. Not with flying colors, but a pass is a pass. If he put his dick in her, then he could say goodbye to Ty La forever. They have to make sure he’s not after Ty La just for their money or to find a way in as a spy within the Fire Nation. In order to do that, they’ll continue to test him. It is also much more fun than getting Aiwei involved, at least for Lady Pea and Nuwa.
Seeing Azula in meditation, Nuwa checks on Tulen. He is still asleep. Finding that she’s still turned on from earlier since she didn’t get to cum, Nuwa lays down next to where Azula is sitting on the bed and begins fingering herself. Azula notices right away in her meditation, but she’s fine with allowing Nuwa’s frustration to build before giving her the D. Patience is a virtue when it comes to satisfying sex.
A few minutes later, Azula opens her eyes and turns to face Nuwa, “What happened back with Ty La? That was so unlike you.”
Still masturbating, Nuwa mumbles, “I’ve always.. listened to my big sis. She was.. so cute as a serious little kid!”
Azula does not really understand, but she doesn’t feel jealous, so she shrugs and gets to work on satisfying her lover.
Nothing major occurs for the rest of the trip. Jet and Ty La spend lots of time together with a distinct focus on education rather than kissing, much to his chagrin. Two weeks later, after a resupply in the colonies, the airship tries to land in Ba Sing Se only to be met by a large military response.
+630k LEE, Total: 9970k LEE
Obviously, Kuei and the remaining Dai Li are not enough to keep a tight lease on the large and battle-hungry military of the Earth Kingdom. Hundreds of troops throw rocks up at the descending Fire Nation airship, but none are strong enough to overcome gravity and land a hit. They fall back down, causing various damages to structures and roads instead. The captain of the airship pulls back up and lands over at Lake Laogai instead of within the city.
Toph is not pleased by the idiocy shown by the army, so her small frame, fully cured of pregnancy stretching and damages, exits the airship in a hurry towards the barracks. Haru, who is carrying Lin, doesn’t follow since it will be a mess there. They unpack what they need from the airship and head into Ba Sing Se through the catacombs at a leisurely pace. After an hour of walking, they are allowed through the underground secret entrances to the palace by the Dai Li guards.
The Dai Li do not recognize Nuwa and Azula without their Stella and Zulrath identities, so they had to bring up their past encounters along with a short demonstration of lightning bending from Azula to jolt their memories enough to click the old identity and old voice to the new face. Once they realized, they began treating Nuwa and Azula with utmost respect since they knew that they, along with Toph, were the reason they won the war.
They are brought into the throne room to meet a haggard Kuei, who perks up immediately at the sight of Nuwa and Azula. He doesn’t even need reminding, since he recognizes Nuwa from her boobs rather than her face. Rushing at them and hugging Nuwa’s legs, he pleads, “HELP! I CAN’T HANDLE THIS ANYMORE!”
The Dai Li agents look down with mild shame at the pathetic display of their Earth King, but considering who he’s groveling in front of, it is understandable. Nuwa looks at Kuei, at the throne, and then at her younger sisters. “Mom, wouldn’t it be a good idea to make Ty Lo, Ty Lu, and Ty Ly secretaries to Kuei? He could use the help.”
Despite the total lack of forewarning, Lady Pea comfortably pawns off her younger daughters, “Wonderful idea! It’s about time they learned some responsibility.”
The sisters in question were curiously observing Bosco the bear who is copying Kuei by groveling in front of Nuwa. They start paying attention when Nuwa says their names and reluctantly accept their new job assignments after their mom agrees. Their boss, Kuei, is sort of handsome and scholarly-looking, plus he’s the Earth King, so there’s major points there as far as nobility goes. What they don’t understand is why he’s begging Nuwa for help, but since Nuwa is pretty smart, they imagine she helped him out a lot during her stay here.
Kuei gets up and gratuitously thanks Nuwa, then goes straight to bed.
Nuwa addresses her sisters quietly, “Mom and I will help you get started, but you’ll have to work hard since this relates to your future independence. If you do well, mom will let you guys out from under her thumb!”
This gets the trio excited. Wanting freedom from their mom is one of their primary motivators.
~ ~ ~
Toph makes a straight march towards the military barracks as people begin to recognize her while passing by. There’s various exclamations by onlookers.
“Look! It’s Toph Beifong!”
“Toph is back!”
“She’s sort of short for the title of Supreme Commander.”
“No, you idiot. She keeps herself from growing so that her body is extra dense for better earthbending!”
“Uh.. I don’t think that’s how it works.”
“The invincible Toph is back!”
Normally, Toph would feel her narcissistic ego inflate due to her surroundings, but she’s become less concerned about the opinion of random people lately. More of her attention is placed on Haru, Lin, and Gunner. It started when she began breastfeeding Lin. She didn’t notice, but the excess love she had for herself drained into love for Lin and the gang.
Crowds begin to follow her as she approaches the barracks. She has been missing for months since the invasion, so they are wondering what developments will take place now that she’s back. A few bold pedestrians rush towards her, perhaps for autographs, but she cages them in earth walls if they get close enough. They’ll have to be earthbenders or get help from an earthbender to get out.
Now giving Toph a wide berth, the crowd gathering in front of her parts as she approaches. Arriving at the barracks, Toph shouts, “Attention!” to which a few starstruck soldiers snap to salute. “Where is the highest commanding officer? Who ordered the attack on the airship? I was in there you dolts!”
The soldiers wince, look at each other, and shrug. It seems that catastrophic meltdowns in military discipline are commonplace without a proper leader enforcing the chain of command. “BLOCKHEADS! You’re soldiers! You don’t get excited and launch attacks blindly at a nonaggressive entity! Don’t you know the war is over?!”
Disregarding the irony of Toph being known for her battle-thirst and also being literally blind, the soldiers begin to feel ashamed. She points at one of them and says, “Get me a megaphone.”
He soon comes back and with the crowd mostly undispersed, she starts speaking into the device. “Citizens of the Earth Kingdom!” The crowd cheers and starts chanting “Toph, Toph, Toph!”
Toph gestures from them to quiet down and gives them her hot take, “The war is over! You have money, food, and proper nobles working for your benefit! Shut up and be happy! Stop trying to go back to war!”
The faces among the citizenry and military drop their smiles.
“Do you all want to go back to poverty so badly?! That’s what war will do! All of your current prosperity is because the Fire Nation was waiting for Sozin’s Comet and too distracted by building airships to launch a full force attack before we landed a sneak attack on their Capital! Even now, we still haven't beat them. We replaced the evil Fire Lord Ozai with my friend, the benevolent Fire Lord Zuko.”
“Their military is just as strong as it was before! It took the Northern Water Tribe, Southern Water Tribe, King Bumi, all the soldiers in Omashu, and many powerful firebender allies for us to conquer Capital City, which was only defended by a small portion of their military! Compared to them, our military might as well be a ragtag group of ruffians!”
“Do you get it? Zuko revamped their leadership. They don’t want to conquer us anymore and we shouldn’t want to attack them! The western land that used to be part of our kingdom can be a place of trade and mingling for individuals from all Nations. My pal Fire Lord Zuko has assured me that there will be no military acts of aggression from the Fire Nation as long as we can keep our cool. The only way for the war to end is to befriend them and put down our hatred!”
The citizens and soldiers who lost their friends or family members to the war start to make a ruckus, the moderates begin to feel swayed, and the peaceful folk nod with agreement. There’s a clear three-way split in opinion between hawks, moderates, and doves.
Toph shouts over the clamor of the crowd into the megaphone, “Go find a husband or wife, have some babies, and raise them with love! That’s the best way to be patriotic to the Earth Kingdom. Shut up with your warmongering!”
The doves cheer wildly while the hawks spit on the ground, clearly disillusioned by the Supreme Commander they once idolized. Toph points out a particularly venomous looking individual among the army and says, “Oi! You! Shady hoodlum guy over there. You got something to say? Somebody give him a megaphone too.”
Another soldier gets him a megaphone. He walks up to the raised earthen platform looking ready to throw his megaphone away and fight Toph to the death. Toph scoffs and says, “Calm down. We’re just talking up here. What’s your shtick?”
Hoodlum guy looks warily at Toph then at the crowd with excitement over being given a platform to speak his views. He screams, “I HATE THOSE ASH MAKERS! GRAAAAHHH!”
Toph winces as a surprisingly large section of the crowd cheers with agreement at that barely intelligible screaming. Gesturing for them to calm down, Toph asks into the megaphone, “Fine. WHY do you hate them?”
Hoodlum guy looks at her with fanatic hatred and says with less screaming, “They killed my best friend and burnt down my village! My aging parents didn’t survive the trek to Ba Sing Se!”
Sounds of agreement come from the crowd again, even among the moderates and doves. Toph takes a deep breath and says calmly, “We’re all sorry for your loss, but do you think going back to war will bring your friends and family back?”
“You might not care about your own life anymore, but continuing the war will only lead to more of our friends and family dying! For some misplaced sense of revenge, will you kill innocent citizens of the Fire Nation colonies that are as innocent as your family? If you do, then you’ll enflame hatred on the opposite side. It will become an endless cycle of nonstop war and hatred! This is the perfect chance for us to put down our grudges and focus on our economic development.”
Nuwa drilled these talking points into Toph’s head pretty well during the airship trip and Toph does a good job on the delivery. This time the doves and moderates seem mostly convinced. They all heard of the horrors of what the war did to the Earth Kingdom or were personally affected. At some level, deep down, all but the most bellicose of those afflicted by war want to move on. The hawks that are just following the pack start on the road to changing their views.
Toph shouts into the megaphone with genuine excitement now, “Come up and fight ME if you’re so eager for war!”
Several angry warmongerers can’t help but be driven into a rage and attack Toph, who seems well on her way to ruining their chances at going on legal killing sprees in the Fire Nation. There’s too much crowd for Toph to hone in on those who are attacking her with earth sense, but she can sense their rock throws coming at her with Nuwa’s hearing aid. She smacks the rocks away casually and hops up onto a higher raised earthen platform so that her attackers can be separated from the crowd enough for her to earth sense them.
They recover their wits slightly after the initial attack. The attackers hide their faces by turning excess clothing into face-scarves and launch themselves at Toph. There’s a huge crowd so they can easily slip into the chaos after they take her down. The military falters because some of the attackers jump out of their ranks. To some degree, no one wants to attack who they think is their own comrade. Toph is fine handling the 15 who go after her all by herself.
She hops up on the roof of an earthen house as the attackers launch themselves with earth pillars after her. Amused at how they are so eager to take her down that they forget who has the high ground, she decides to take full advantage of their blunder. Toph does a quick dance and three metal links fly like frisbees at the three who are in midair.
One snaps itself around a man’s head covering his eyes, one cuffs a man’s ankles together, and the last cuffs a man’s hand to his belt. All three of those in midair land badly and the first two links put them out for the count as far as earthbending goes. Toph snaps her arms together and tightens, making all the metal links collect together. This causes the third man, who had just removed his belt, to be dragged by his metal link into knocking heads with the first two men hard enough that all three are taken out for the count. Toph begins a back and forth rock throwing contest with the other 12 before the military finally catches up and they rapidly disperse with only another two of them ultimately being caught.
In fact, there will always be radicals so soon after a war ends and it’s impossible to simply jail them all or else they will become sneakier and resort to terrorism. They have to be slowly convinced otherwise through cultural, economic, and emotional means. She might have been able to catch them all if she put more effort into her metalbending, but that would set a bad example and reveal too much of her power.
This is what Nuwa had told her earlier. Getting attacked wasn’t part of the plan, but it was discussed among the contingency plans, so of course, Toph instigated them to attack her for the kicks. Now they can collect some information with Aiwei’s help. She admits that she’s not a great planner, but she likes executing plans successfully, like now.
Toph has the attackers given to the Dai Li and goes back to the palace. While approaching, she feels uneasy. As she comes closer and sees the source of the menace, her anxiety spikes. In front of her eyes is an opulent carriage with the Beifong symbol of the Flying Boar on its side.
(A/N: Nuwa be casually dealing with the proles from the shadows.)
(A/N: https://discord.gg/VD3C2BFPAu)
