Chapter 34.5- And so the Dragons Danced

XXXXXX

“I told you there was nothing here.” He said as we walked into the gorge that held one of the city’s many internal lakes. Ba Sing Se was not a city. Not by any definition of the world. I had no idea why we had to stick with the convention that it was. For all intents and purposes, this was a kingdom on its own. That’s why Iroh’s siege had accomplished nothing. They had farms that spanned miles as well as nearly a dozen internal lakes to ensure that all the water and food needs of the city were satisfied for the long and short term. Even when it came to trade, the city was self-sufficient. As Kai told us while we made the walk, almost everything needed in the city was produced within the city itself. In fact, the only things not produced in the city were the things that the Earth King had banned and that was where “Pirates” like him came into the picture.

The man spoke a lot and that gave me a good picture of the city I was about to take. Especially because he’d been very useful for explaining how the city’s walls worked. They were one single large mass of rock that was nigh-impossible to bend in any area that did not include the designated gates. But on the brighter side, Ba Sing Se had been in a period of de-escalation and disarmament since the Siege so the actual guardsmen were few.

“Toph, if you would” I said to my little apprentice and she stepped forward and slammed her foot on the ground, lifting up a little land bridge that led up to a hatch.

“And you were saying?” I asked with a smirk back before we moved to the hatch.

Even for the headquarters of the earth kingdom’s secret police, the lake laogai base was quite dreary. The place was barely lit by a sort of luminescent crystal that had been spread along the space in sparse qualities. Enough to see where one was going, but not enough to qualify as well lit. Of course, the darkness worked to their advantage as much as it did to their detriment. While Kai and I were essentially blind, none could compare to Toph in terms of visibility in this space. We walked past a corner and the blind girl merely drove her foot into the ground with vim and a man that neither Kai and I had been able to see before then sunk into the ground up to his head. I smiled at her before walking forward and stomping down on his head with my full strength while he was still struck mute by shock. I was unaware if he was unconscious or dead, but the lack of reaction from Toph hinted at the former. The rest of his body sunk into the ground a second later, to avoid someone running into him and sounding the alarm.

I nodded at her in pride and it might have been a trick of the sparse light but I could have sworn she sent a full blown smile my way in return.