Leaving the fallen admiral where he lay, I continued my search.
After five minutes, fortune finally smiled upon me. I found Toph asleep in the corner of one of the rooms. Hmm… Why wasn't she in her own bed? Why was she sleeping on the floor of one of the sitting rooms? Where were the servants? No, forget the servants. How could Suki have allowed this?
Carefully carrying the girl to a proper bed, I resumed my investigation, already feeling an irrational desire to punish the innocent and reward the uninvolved.
The search eventually led me to my own quarters. Besides Suki, who had every right to be there, I found the rest of the Kyoshi Island girls as well.
Judging by the aftermath, they'd recently held some sort of celebration.
Further experimentation in the dark arts of necromancy—raising an alcohol-soaked body, restoring it to life, and interrogating it—revealed that a celebration had indeed taken place.
My funeral.
Slightly stunned by this discovery, I began digging for the full truth. As always, the truth turned out to be somewhere beyond the reach of my understanding… somewhere in the realm of female logic.
Though, honestly, I was partly to blame. I'd grown used to my orders being obeyed without question in battle, so I had issued a set of instructions and gone about my business. The fact that those instructions had sounded more like a request, and that women were creatures whose curiosity rivaled that of cats, somehow hadn't occurred to me.
The results were obvious: a will opened ahead of schedule, a lovestruck girl working herself into a state of panic, and a full-blown epidemic of hysteria among the female members of our crew.
And judging by Suki's somewhat incoherent explanations, my father had also poured a generous helping of kerosene onto the fire in his usual fashion. He was accustomed to dressing down his subordinates and rubbing their noses in their mistakes, and apparently he'd done the same here.
Which meant I'd have to have a talk with him as well.
I didn't know his exact motives, nor how the argument had developed. Suki kept avoiding my eyes whenever the subject came up. But regardless of the details, these were my people. I was outside his chain of command, and if anyone needed a dressing-down, I would be the one delivering it.
Interfering with them was disrespectful toward me, an attempt to "teach a lesson" to the Fire Herald , and by extension to Lord Ozai himself.
Had this happened somewhere public rather than at home among family, I would have been obligated to challenge the admiral to an Agni Kai to preserve face.
Spirits above, what had that idiot even been thinking? Though… Right. They had all believed I was dead… And then there was the text of my will… Ahem. Fine. We'll skip the fistfight. But a conversation with my father was definitely necessary.
As was knocking some sense into these girls. I had a strong suspicion they'd worked themselves up past all reason.
That said, for purely technical reasons, that conversation had to be postponed until the following day. A girl worn down by nerves, thoroughly drunk, and then been brought back to awareness by vigorous shaking… Well, let's just say she looked absolutely miserable.Taking pity on her, I decided to postpone the execution until evening.
***
Toph was the first to wake up, though that was hardly surprising. Unlike the others, she hadn't spent the night pretending to be a professional drunk. And so, as any normal child should—even one who had thoroughly exhausted herself the previous evening—she rose with the daylight, ready for another active day of life.
Naturally, she set off in search of someone capable of providing the Great Her with a breakfast worthy of her exalted person.
As a result, we met in the kitchen.
I was sitting there trying to gather my thoughts. Why the little menace had appeared was already obvious. Unfortunately, a minor technical complication arose.
"Hm. And who are you supposed to be? One of the servants?" the adorable child asked instead of greeting me.
"Good morning to you too, squirt."
"Hey! I'm not little!" the young Beifong exploded out of habit. But then... "Chan...? Is that you?!"
The expression that twisted her face was an indescribable pantomime of shock, complete with a slightly open mouth.
"Do I look that different?"I asked.
Strange as it might sound, the earthbender seemed to take a rather perverse sort of pleasure in jokes about sight, appearances, and related subjects.
"Judging by the stupid jokes, it really is you," the Blind Bandit smirked.
Then she walked over and poked me with a finger.
"Hm... Warm and reasonably soft. Seems alive enough. You do know some people already buried you, right?"
And then she narrowed her eyes suspiciously in my direction.
"Yeah, I figured that out already. I should've given the will to one of the guys and simply told him to deliver it when the time came. Didn't think it through. Hm... Toph, you can stop feeling me up now... And seriously, what's with these tendencies of yours? First voyeurism, now outright groping. Just so you know, I was raised with strict moral principles! I do not seduce girls under fifteen!"
"Pfft. Like I'd want you." The little menace remained completely unfazed. "Besides, the collective has already decided that you'll be part of my harem, and not the other way around."
She continued poking and prodding me, eventually graduating to light taps.
"Seriously, what are you doing?"
"Trying to figure out what's changed about you. And why."
"Changed?"
"Chan..." Toph let out a dramatic sigh, then blew her bangs out of her face with a sharp puff. "I can identify a person from over fifty meters away, no matter how well they hide or disguise themselves. Breathing patterns, heartbeat, the way they move, even how they stand or sit still. But I only recognized you when you spoke—by your voice. The way you feel now..." She frowned. "I can't even describe it. I've never sensed anything like it before."
And the groping continued.
There was really no other word for it.
(End of Chapter)
P@treon: /SadRaven
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