TGA 02

The Greatest Avalanche 02

Master Yu

“You may call me Master Yu.”

That was my first introduction to a proper earth bender, and a rare introduction to a new person. I disliked him immediately.

“It is unfortunate you are blind. I will, however, see what I can do,” he said, with such a smarmy tone I wanted to puke.

Not even the chirping of blue jays in the background made it better. If anything, it made it worse as he was intruding on one of the places I actually liked; the family garden.

I’d been woken that morning by my Father, who was positively giddy with excitement about a new “teacher” he’d found for me to teach earth bending. Ever since the incident with Dr. Ming slapping him over trying to keep me from the Earth, Father had been looking for a teacher for me so I wouldn’t hurt myself. I was already wishing he hadn’t bothered.

I tilted my head slightly to the right, roughly where I’d last heard my father. “Father?” I ventured, trying to convey what I felt in that moment.

“Oh my sweet Toph, don’t worry! Master Yu is the foremost earth bending teacher in all the lands! He will instruct you so you don’t hurt yourself. Now, I have some business contacts I must see to, but Master Yu will be here for the next two hours, so please, enjoy your birthday present!” Father said, steps echoing away.

“Indeed. Your father paid for a full year of lessons in advance, with room for contract renewals well into your teenage years. You should be blessed, to have such a fastidious father willing to look to your education in these matters,” Master Yu said. I didn’t know if he had a moustache. I imagined he was swirling it and smiling right now. In fact, I heard a certain rustling sound like hair shifting. That might’ve be him.

I sighed.

Master Yu began walking around me while I waited. “The most important part of earth bending is the foundation. It is the platform upon which you will learn everything on, and that starts with breathing. We will do nothing further until I am satisfied you are capable of breathing properly.”

“Lay flat on the ground.” He did not wait for me. His hands touched my shoulders and he firmly forced me down. If I hadn’t already been going to sit down he would have knocked me over.

“Now,” he said, walking once more. “Place your right hand on your upper chest, while your left hand should be over your belly button. Breathe deeply, as deep as you can. This is the foundation upon which we will build everything. Now, repeat after me.” With that, Master Yu… presumably breathed. I’m not sure he remembered I was blind.

“Er, right, now do so yourself,” he said after a moment with an embarrassed tone.

Called it, I thought.

I breathed, deeply, as he’d tried and failed to really instruct. I imagine if I didn’t know the basic concept of belly breathing from my first life and a failed attempt to emulate Jackie Chan when I was young I probably wouldn’t have done it properly.

“Very good,” Master Yu said with a pleased tone. “Now repeat the exercise 500 times.”

…

“Five-five hundred times?” I clarified, incredulous.

“If you are not up to triple digits yet, you may simply breathe until I say you are ready for the next step. Now chop chop! Get to breathing,” Master Yu said, and somehow, I could hear the smirk in his voice.

…

I think I hated this man.

~~~~

Five. Lessons.

It took five lessons of two-hour sessions of just breathing for him to conclude I was… “passable”.

I heard him flipping pages in a book during the sessions.

I really hate this man.

“Your breathing form is… satisfactory, for now. Could use improvement, we will come back to it every third session,” Master Yu said.

Joy.

“Now, the next layer of Earth Bending is stance,” Master Yu said.

I raised my hand.

“Yes, my student? I am busy lecturing, but I will grace you with one question,” he said.

“Shouldn’t I learn some fundamentals? Like…Chi? Energy? How to feel it?” I spoke, feeling they were important. All had been mentioned around me at one point or another. Lan Lan had explained earth bending to me and that I could do it, explaining Father getting me a teacher, but this felt incredibly awkward.

“Oh good heavens no. That is advanced material and I would reprimand whoever taught you those terms this early. Your foundation needs much more firming up before we can even think of looking at Earth Bending theory,” Master Yu scolded me, sounding as if I was the dumb one for asking.

“Now, Earth is a stubborn element that plays hard to get. It requires a delicate approach for it to listen to you at all. Stand straight, feet together, calves touching,” Master Yu said, guiding me into a very stiff stance.

“Brute force, pushing, will just see the Earth reject you. Wide stances in particular are brutish, and will see the Earth laugh at your approach like an unsolicited advance. Instead, you must be like a lover courting it, convincing it to your side, and only then may you properly earth bend and feel its firm touch, the kiss of its presence along your skin, the…” Master Yu laughed.

I raised my hand again.

“Oh look what you did now, you broke your focus? We already had your one question, what else could you have to ask?” he grumbled.

“Master Yu? I’m five,” I said, plainly.

Master Yu did not say anything for a long time. Finally, he spoke, “Right, right. You are a bit young for that sort of dialogue. Blame my youthful days writing poetry. I could have gone professional, you know, if teaching had not been my true calling.”

I would say I stared blankly, but I was blind.

“Anyway!” he clapped. “Right, but all earth bending begins with a proper stance, and your feet are far too wide apart. Come, back to it, legs together, small profile,” he said, ‘correcting’ my stance to be stiff and thin.

With that, the lesson continued another hour. I heard him take out the book a few minutes in. Again.

~~~~

The light felt warm. I couldn’t see it, but I could feel it, sitting in my chair with a bathrobe. Lan Lan had opened a window so I could listen to birdsong.

Lan Lan tsked, lightly running her fingers through my hair.“How you manage to get your hair in all these knots, I will never know,” Lan Lan scolded, but there was no malice. Just a warmth in her tone as she straightened my hair out.

I liked to imagine she was smiling. I could even ‘see it’. Not a literal sight, but I did know her face, had even felt her smile. It was a very different mental map of someone compared to what I’d known in my first life, but something I treasured all the same.

I leaned into her touch, enjoying the feeling of her hands massaging my scalp and working out the knots in my hair. “I don’t know. Just happens,” I casually lied. I sometimes wondered if she knew I sometimes messed up my hair just so she would brush it straight again? It was a bit manipulative, but…

It was one of the few things I could say I genuinely enjoyed in my ‘home’.

Honestly, it was funny.

While it’d become very obvious the tech of this world was inferior to my old one, I lived a life that, relatively, could be said to be comfortable. I had my fill of good food, good clothing, shelter, a comfortable home and bed, parents that were at least only overprotective and not abusive, Lan Lan, and lived in a compound with actual guards to protect and maids to care for my needs. On paper, it was a good life, especially according to the alternative.

Poor. Starving. Famine. Refugees. Disasters.

I’d pieced together the Earth Kingdom I’d been born into was, effectively, Medieval China. Life could be way worse and far harsher for me.

Yet…

It all just felt hollow. I was restricted to the Family Compound. Visitors never saw me, and I never spoke with them, outside rare exceptions. Maybe I could cope if I could read, but I was blind and nothing was fixing that, which hurt. I loved reading in my old life, and now I couldn’t here. They didn’t seem to have braile, either.  New activities, new things, were so heavily scrutinized I usually didn’t even get to see them. Hell, they’d only reluctantly let me try to learn the Pipa, which, as it turned out, I didn’t even have talent for.

If it wasn’t for Doctor Ming slapping my father for keeping me from Earth, I wouldn’t even be able to enjoy the garden and the feeling of wind on my face or chirping of the birds.

It felt like a prison and I was just an unusually well treated ward. All except Lan Lan.

“Doves by the water…” Lan Lan begin singing, having worked out the last knot in my hair and was not just brushing it. I don’t think she needed to. But she wanted to.

Lan Lan seemed to understand I was losing my mind. Hell, sometimes she’s the only one who seemed to realize just because I was blind didn’t mean I couldn’t think or have wants. She played with me. Sung to me. Read to me.

“Lan Lan?” I asked, quietly, not wanting to disrupt the nice atmosphere, but there was a question I’d been turning over for a bit.

“Yes Toph?” she answered, switching to a comb now. I didn’t purr, no matter what she said.

“How do earth benders stand?”

Lan Lan’s combing froze. “I’m not quite sure? I’m not a bender, but—”

“But you can see. And you go into town. Do earth benders stand really thin, feet together?” I finally asked.

Master Yu was a shit teacher. I’d decided that on the first session. I’m pretty sure I’d have known this even if I didn’t another life’s memories, but the fact I had been a teacher made his actions just insulting.

The man wasn’t qualified to teach how to make a sandwich, nevertheless tutor a student. The sheer number of times he forgot I was five or started rambling about his poetry, or just seemed to think I wouldn’t notice him reading rather than instructing me, was infuriating. But, up to this point, I’d assumed he had a plan of some sort, that he was building toward something even if he intended to drag out my teaching for literal years so milk my father for all he was worth.

Yet, now I was wondering. Was he just lying to me?

Lan Lan slowly resumed combing my hair. “No,” she said after a long moment. “It’s always feet wide spread, I think. I’ve never really looked, but—”

“Could you?” I jumped on the opportunity. “When you next go into town, I mean. Could you watch an earth bender and tell me? Or ask?”

Lan Lan was quiet. “Master Yu’s not teaching you anything, is he?” she ventured.

I slumped. “No,” I admitted. I could have lied to her, reassured her. But I didn’t want to. I wanted to be honest with Lan Lan.

“I see. Well, I don’t know how much help I can be, but I know a few earth benders who might appreciate a cute girl like me watching them train next time I’m in town,” she said, speaking with an exaggerate, near self-deprecating tone tone when she said ‘cute’.

I didn’t gasp or cheer. I didn’t really have words for what I experienced in that moment as my heart felt ready to burst.

 I just turned and hugged her, burying my face in her side.

She stiffened, before slowly hugging me back tightly.

We stayed like that, listening to the bluejays’ song a while longer.

~~~~

My foot wouldn’t stop bouncing.

Every time I thought I had it stopped, it would start up again the moment I was distracted. Which was often.

“Toph, dear? What’s on your mind?” Mother asked from my right, stopping her sewing with a clank of needles in a pot.

“I’m just excited for when Lan Lan gets home,” I said in her vague direction, adjusting my seat on the cushion a bit.

Lan Lan had departed for town the previous day to run errands for my mother in town. She’d always said it was ‘boring’ stuff, but I think she half kept the whole house running as she was the one who contacted lots of people for deliveries to the Bei Fong compound, like food, or ink, or building supplies, etc. Mom had sent her out to pick stuff up in Market, but it always turned into a full day.

Mom was silent. Briefly I feared she realized I’d gotten Lan Lan to sneak around Master Yu and Father.

I honestly didn’t know what they would do. But my worst fear was them taking Lan Lan away. Firing her, just like that.

“Say…” Mom began, a teasing lilt in her face. “’Lan Lan’ didn’t happen to say she would be getting you some candy, did she?”

I didn’t say anything. In part, this was because I felt like my heart skipped a beat when Mom began only to suddenly resume normal operation as she got a completely different, if still correct idea.

Lan Lan did indeed sneak me candy sometimes.

Mom patted my shoulder. “Shh. It’ll be our little secret. But daughter, let’s try to focus for now. I know you can’t see, but can you feel the pattern embroidered on this cloth?” she said, passing a sort of brooch, to me.

I nodded, absently, feeling the cloth and the raised, sorta of spiral web pattern on it.

Mom was trying to teach me to sew, even blind and it was a work in progress. I don’t think I’d ever be good at it like she seemed to be with silk for the family, but it was something I could try to do, so I accepted it for what it was, even if I would admit my interest in sewing was non-existent.

It was, at least, something to do that neither of my parents thought would make me shatter. Shame it was just mind numbingly dull.

~~~~

Lan Lan returned that night and spoke to me in my room.

“Toph, stop bouncing, I’m right here!” Lan Lan laughed as, well, I was. I’d been looking forward to her coming home. Being a kid left me with a lot of energy and sometimes I just bounced.

“What’d you find out?” I immediately asked.

Lan La took a moment to answer. “The earth bender boys I talked to said they use a wide legged stance, a horse stance, as the basis for almost all bending. Like this,” Lan Lan said, guiding me into a stance completely unlike anything Master Yu had shown.

No, it was worse. It felt like the total opposite. Steady, strong, and ready to catch the world where the previous one he’d shown would have me tip over in a strong breeze. It felt right.

I stilled as the realization came over me.

“Toph?” Lan Lan asked, concerned, hand on my shoulder. She gently touched my cheek and guided me to face where she was.

“I don’t think Master Yu deserves to be called Master,” I said, slowly, but that wasn’t what bothered me.

It was a dark thought, an insidious one. He could just be a charlatan. But I think I’d felt him earth bend. Plus, it’d be kinda hard to fake being an earth bender when they are evidently common enough to be around.

Which left another possibility.

My father had paid Yu to lie to me.

~~~~

AN:

HiddenMaster: And we have a chapter two of this lovely story commissioned by MosAnted.

The timeline is a little unclear from what I’ve seen whether Toph could bend at all before the badgermoles or not. Master Yu was stated to only show her the basics, as well.

Thing is, she evidently fled the household and ran away multiple times which could be a bit difficult for a blind five year old without bending. Current thought is, at least for this fic, Yu was teaching her intentionally wrong and just pocketing the easy cash from her father and just laze around the rest of the time reading lewd poetry. So yes, he is pulling a Kakashi, just without any of the style.

On top of that, a bit more development of her relationship with her family and Lan Lan, plus a bit more of home life.

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