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120AG

The skies were clear and the sun high when the brand new Earthen Fire Airship was ready for its maiden voyage from Gaoling to the Fire Nation Capital. The Air ship weighed over 25,000 tons with the fuel capacity that held enough gas to last a flight from Ba Sing Se to the Fire Nation Capital, or from the North Pole to the South Pole without landing. It was supposed to be the first of a line of airships that would revolutionize travel and connect the Four Nations for the rest of eternity.

The Airship was armored with the latest battlements just in case it made contact with the airships of the fragmented factions of the New Ozai Society or the Dai Li that raided sky travelers every so often. It was equipped with enough brand new quick-inflating air balloons for everyone to evacuate in the event of an emergency. It had already flown shorter test routes from Gaoling to Republic City, Gaoling and the South Pole, and Gaoling to Ba Sing Se successfully on partial tanks of fuel.

A collection of engineers, designers, and assembly workers that participated in the construction of the gleaming flagship of Earthen Fire Refineries' first airship venture, were all invited to join it on this first trans-oceanic voyage with the genius inventor, Satoru, and his wife, Toph Beifong. Toph invited the original Team Beifong as a thank you for staying by her side for so many years through conflicts with friends, nations, and even spirits along with so many other different adventures, ventures and endeavors.

It was the first time Toph Beifong "saw" any airships from her husband's new line that he had spent countless hours perfecting and testing .

"What do you think, Love?" Satoru asked draping an arm over the steel uniform that she wore even when outside city limits and on vacation just to remind people of her rank, authority, and reputation.

"It's a bloody big blimp. Why isn't it floating?" Toph asked unimpressed as always.

"Because I wanted you to see it before we took off in it, together," Satoru replied kissing her cheek.

"Hmph," the first metal bender grumbled folding her arms and walking towards the machine's gangway reluctantly with a sour pout on her face. Satoru jogged to catch up.

"You'll love the stabilizers in the first class cabin! And the metal floors. It will be so much more quiet than walking on earth!" Satoru added, looping an arm around her waist which even with the armor was lithe.

The ascent was smooth and slow. A hundred and seventy nine people gathered along the panoramic windows of the first class lounge of the airship.

"Would you like to join us, Love? By the windows?" Satoru called to his lady wife.

"Eh. If you've seen nothing once, you've seen it a thousand times," Toph replied sitting cross legged in one of the chairs picking at the dirt under her toe nails, flicking it onto the carpeted part of the floor carelessly.

"Oh yeah. Well, I'll be over in a few minutes, once we've reached cruising altitude." Satoru shrugged with a smile.

They were just above Fire Fountain City when the entire airship jolted.

"Everyone remain calm!" Satoru yelled running to a crew door, yanking it open.

"Sir! Mr. Satoru!" The ash covered man gasped wiping his face on his burnt sleeve. The pungent smell of burning flesh filled Satoru's nostrils as he nudged the man back into the crew hallway so his guests wouldn't see.

"What happened, Minho?" Satoru asked the engine worker.

"Fire. There was a gas leakage and engine four exploded. The fire walls and fuel doors have been shut per cautionary procedute, but they're not a hundred percent impervious to the gas diffusing throughout the airship. We need to evacuate, Sir. The ship, WILL go down," the engine worker informed the designer.

"You get the remainder of the crew evacuated off the port side of the air ship. Let me get the guests all evacuated off the starboard side, then I'll come back and try to help. I promise!" Satoru said reentering the first class lounge, running straight for Toph who was telling her former students, Hotun, The Dark One and Penga about a time when she and her old friends won a fortune on the Fire Nation gambling by scamming scammers.

"Actually it was in the city were flying over right now. Fire Fountain City, right, Satoru?" Toph asked reaching up with her left hand to squeeze his arm affectionately as he kissed her head. She felt his heart though his bare arm.

"What's wrong?" Toph deadpanned, frowning again.

He placed both hands on her shoulder as if to steady himself or keep her still.

"You're scaring me Satoru," Toph expressed through gritted teeth.

Satoru cleared his throat. "Will Everyone please listen to me? I need all of you to make your way to the promenade deck on the starboard side where some of the crew will have readied the air balloons. We need to evacuate calmly but swiftly!" Satoru said.

"WHAT HAPPENED?" Toph demanded jumping to her feat, turning to face her husband, clutching onto his forearms, desperately with a feeling of dread forming a pit in her stomach.

"There was a fire. I need to get you to safety."

"But I HATE those air balloons. I can't see, in the things! I'm staying with you, and I can tell already, you're not leaving," Toph told him firmly.

"Toph, I NEED to know exactly what went wrong, where the leak was so I can remedy it on the next airship before it takes off!" Satoru insisted.

"Then let me go with you! It will be faster. I can feel every gap in the metal with my bending! Remember when I fixed your forklift years ago? It was so easy! Satoru, we're partners remember? You can't leave me!" Toph asked, a tear slipping from her eyes. Why did this feel like goodbye.

"Toph, listen to me. If things were different, I'd let you come, but now, it's too dangerous. There's a fire down there. Your feet will burn and you'll be just as blind as you will be out there! But at least out there you'll be alive. If not for me, for her," Satoru said placing a hand on Toph's lower abdomen pressing firmly on the small mound beneath as Toph whimpered. He pulled her into his chest and squeezed, then picked her up, sweeping her off her feet, armor and all.

"What are you doing?!" she screamed.

"Team Beifong, I need your help!" Satoru called to Hotun, The Dark One and Penga as he kicked open the door of the lounge to the promenade deck where everyone was boarding their assigned air balloon.

"Make sure she doesn't try to reboard!" He ordered clicking her own platinum cuffs onto her wrists behind her back as he placed her into the air ballon.

"Satoru! No!" she yelled lunging at him as Ho Tun blocked her path. She bounced off his belly and fell back into the basket of the air balloon. The Dark One and Penga jumped in quickly as Satoru closed the door. The young engineer cut the tether and pushed the basket of the air balloon off the promenade deck of the airship.

In an instance of sheer frustration and pain, Toph yanked her wrists apart breaking the platinum chain of the cuffs and jumped up grabbing onto the edge of the basket, rocking the entire vessel causing Penga to stumble and Hotun to fall down.

"Satoru!"

"I need to find out what went wrong!" he yelled.

There! Toph deployed her cables in the direction of his voice but they were already too far and the cables couldn't reach.

"Sifu Toph!"

"Chief!"

"This stress is not good for the baby!" Penga yelled as Hotun and The Dark one tried to hold Toph's arms back.

"Satoru!" she screamed again, freeing her hands from their grip, again, blindly shooting the cables from their spools on her waist towards the air ship.

"Go! I'll get on the next war balloon! Save the baby!" he yelled. Penga took control of Toph's pen cables and wrapped them around her teacher for her own safety.

As the balloon drifted away, the three seeing people watched as Satoru, ever the knowledge-seeker disappeared into the crew entrance on the starboard side of the airship.

Only moments later, the Chief Of Police's screams for her husband and lover were drowned out by a series of explosions as the air ship was engulfed in flames.

The metalbenders in each balloon protected the Their vessels from the oncoming shrapnel hurling through the air and the firebenders kept the wicker baskets from catching light.

Soon, the only sound left in the sky was the slow burning and cracking of the metal frame as it tumbled down into the channel of water just beyond Fire Fountain City.

The balloons all rode the air currents the rest of the way to the Fire Nation Capital where the Fire Lord and a team of healers received them in the palace courtyard.

"Where are Toph and Satoru?" Zuko asked the occupants of the nearest basket.

They pointed back to where Hotun, the Dark One, and Penga stood around a deflating air ballon, pleading with the person in the basket. Zuko and Mai ran over.

"Toph!" Zuko called. Hotun and the Dark One stepped aside.

Toph sat in the basket with her knees tucked up under her chin and her arms covering her face.

"Toph?" Zuko looked down at his old friend.

Nobody moved at first until Mai bent down beside the Esteemed Chief Of Police Of Republic City. "Time heals all wounds, come on," she said hoisting Toph up by the arm, leading her out of the basket and to the palace, away from everyone.

Zuko and the original team Beifong watched in awe as Toph went willingly with the Fire Princess with whine no one had ever seen Toph Interact.

"Satoru, he didn't make it, did he?" Zuko asked the three.

Hotun hung his head, Penga shook hers with tears in her eyes and the Dark one closed his eyes.

"Darkness hath robbed us of the great mechanist,
The mortal was decimated, consumed by conflagration,
His greatest strength became weakness in our airborne plight,
Despite protest from his lady wife he insisted she save their life,"

"What the Dark One is trying to say is that Satoru wanted to find out what was wrong that caused the fire, on the airship and when Toph tried to go with him, he refused because,-" Penga paused, unable to finish.

"Toph is with child!" Ho Tun announced.

"What?" Zuko exclaimed.

"That's why she took leave from the police force in the first place to go to Gaoling and be with Satoru. He wanted to share this experience with her and-" Penga added.

"She told you and not me?" Zuko asked a little offended.

"She didn't really tell us. We're metalbenders and she trained us to feel out people's heartbeats and we all picked up a second small one within her," Hotun explained turning to the Dark One and Penga who nodded in agreement.

"Poor Toph," Zuko pinched the bridge of his nose in frustration.

"Do you want to talk about it?" Mai asked standing with Toph on a balcony overlooking down at a six year old boy and a five year old girl firebending at each other in the courtyard below.

"No. Maybe if I never hear his name again, I can forget the pain, the hole that he has left in my soul."

"What about your son?"

"He didn't want me anyways. If I take him now, he'll hate me. I can't teach him to control his inner fire. I can't teach him restraint. I want him to be strong AND happy. I don't want him to feel like he's suffocating under me, like I felt living with my parents because they didn't understand my ability," Toph said feeling the pitter patter of little feet on the courtyard below and the heat of the two powerful young children firebending.

"I understand completely, that fear. You don't want him to run away from you like you did from Lao and Poppy," Mai said understandingly.

"Yes," Toph replied as a tear slid down her face from her unseeing eyes.

"But Toph, he already has,"

"Maybe if I never hear his name again, I can forget the pain, the crater that that he has left in my soul."

"You cannot forget a son like a husband,"

"I can try can't I? What do you know- you've never lost either-"

"You don't know that," Mai replied with a heavy sigh. Toph turned to her, curiously.

"Our first child was stillborn boy. He was so small, so light yet so heavy in my arms as I held him, searching for signs of life. I was in denial for hours, refusing to let go of the fact that my child, my darling boy, my little prince would never open his eyes or breathe an but of air let alone spit a blazing fire, the Fire Lady revealed. "Zuko kept all of it a secret out of fear the Fire Sages or the Old Lords might replace me if they believed me infertile. Our next child was a miracle baby born after years of struggle, but alas, she was a girl. I bled. I bled so much that the healers said I could have no more. So Zuko convinced the courts to officially let Izumi be Fire Lord, since I could not bear Zuko anymore heirs. Reluctantly, they agreed after he showed his father's blood still ran through his veins and threatened to burn down the entire capital city if they didn't see clearly," Mai released a sad giggle as tears rolled down her cheeks. She looked at the little girl in the courtyard, chasing her friend.

"Look, 'Saru! I learned something new from Aunt Azula!" the little girl said with a high pitched little girl voice. She twisted and moved her arms in a flowing motion then pointed two fingers at Masaru. Toph held her breath upon hearing the sound and Mai's eyes widened in fear as lightning escaped the five year old girl's hands and charged towards the six year old boy's.

But the six year old boy had his mother's reflexes and strength and he received the lightning as if it were as harmless and painless as rain splashing against his small body. Then he pointed two fingers at the sky and redirected it in a blinding, magnified blue display of splitting light.

"Excellent work, Mister Masaru," an old, raspy yet warm and familiar voice said entering the courtyard.

"Thank you, Uncle Iroh," the boy said.

"And you, Princess Izumi. Your form is improving. Just one hair out of place," Iroh chuckled holding his massive tea belly.

"Awww man!" the little girl whined flopping down on the ground on hr little round bottom.

"Though I'm sure neither of your parents would appreciate you playing with lightning unsupervised. It is a VERY dangerous technique," Iroh said.

"Hmmmm," the little girl sighed.

"My parents don't care, they wouldn't understand anyways. You've taught me control and restraint! I can control my inner flame!" the little boy said to Iroh.

"Your confidence reminds me of very much of my nephew, when he was in exile. He always thought he was ready to learn the advanced set. He thought he was ready to progress when he was not. The greatest asset any bender can have is patience, Masaru. It is a skill I believe to this day only your mother has TRULY mastered."

"But- I don't understand. She's just an earth bender,"

"Your mother is the greatest earthbender in the world, Masaru. She was born blind into a family that didn't understand earthbending. They too thought it was dangerous if not contained. She learned to see from the badgermoles who taught her how to wait and listen before moving, bending, and fighting. Those badgermoles taught her how to wait for opportunity. You too must learn to wait. Do not rush your lightening, for if it passes through your heart accidentally, it could destroy you," Iroh said.

Masaru frowned and also flopped down beside the Princess, Izumi, and sighed. "Yes, Uncle Iroh."

Mai turned to see Toph's reaction but she was gone.

"Toph?" Mai found her just a few feet away in a hall way with her feet up, her "eyes" closed.

"I NEVER want to hear EITHER of their names again!" Toph cried sitting with her left hand on her belly and her head resting against her knee, covering one ear while her right hand covered the other, drowning out the sound of the children playing, feeling the heart beat of her second baby.

Four Months Later

Republic City's formidable and esteemed Chief Of Police lay looking rather weak and fatigued on a bed in the Avatar's home with the master healer, Katara tending to the newborn baby girl in her arms.

"She's strong Toph, just like you," Katara said with an optimistic smile.

"Yeah yeah, Sugar Queen. Can you just help clean her off? She still feels all pasty in places. Then, I'll be on my way,"

"Toph, the vernix is good for the baby's skin. It moisturizes and protects against airborne bacteria and pathogens-"

"Yeah yeah, don't need to get all gushy on me," Toph interrupted impatiently.

"And you can't leave so quickly. You are still dilated, your stomach is still receding, and there was a significant amount of bleeding. You will heal, but you NEED to rest if you want to return to full strength!"

"Hmph," Toph grumbled blowing a lock of hair out of her face, feeling the baby's face blindly.

"What will you name her?" Aang asked.

"Lin,"

"It's a short name," Aang commented.

"Eh, I'm done with three-syllable names," Toph explained briefly remembering the conversation she had years ago with Satoru when they chose Masaru's name. "No offense Sugar-Queen," Toph added as an afterthought.

"Sugar Queen is three syllables," Katara replied with a frown.

"But it's two words," Toph replied.

"Well I'll let you get some rest with the baby. If you feel any MORE pain than you're already in, call for me, okay? At this point all you can do is rest,"

"Yeah yeah, it's not like I haven't done this before," Toph grumbled with a bittersweet hitch in her voice as she rested one hand on her forehead while the other cradled her new baby.

Katara glanced nervously at Aang.

"Sleep well, my friend," Katara said before leaving with Aang.

"Let us know if you need anything," Aang added.

"I WILL! SPIRITS! I HEARD YOU THE FIRST TEN THOUSAND TIMES! JUST LEAVE ME ALONE, PLEASE!" Toph yelled at at the top of their lungs, before clutching her head.

"Toph, calm down! You could hurt your baby!" Katara berated the Chief.

"Eh, she can handle a little yelling. You said she was strong. And maybe this pasty stuff will help her grow a thick skin. She is going to need it if she's going to be my daughter. Definitely," Toph grumbled stroking the baby's cheek and, feeling its heart beating against her bare skin.

Katara sighed with worry and stepped outside, closing the door behind Aang.

"I'm worried for Toph and Little Lin," Katara whispered to the Avatar.

"Me too," Aang said. "Why don't we go check on Tenzin in the nursery?"

"Sounds good. When he and Lin are a little bit older, we should introduce them. Maybe if Lin has a friend on the island in him, we could steal her away for a few hours at a time and give Toph some space, some time to cool down maybe," Katara suggested.

"Good idea," Aang said pecking Katara on the cheek as they headed off together.