castleinthemist | 02-- Things might yet turn around.

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02-- Things might yet turn around.

So he's taken to spending quite a bit at time in the common area of the residential chamber. Usually? Chilling out at the table or finding a nice little niche to settle in. Right then? He'd found a stone bench near a window that looked out onto the courtyard. On the opposite bench, a green-gray crate with numbers on it and a packing label. Someone got a package today. How? Probably a good question.

He'd gotten it the night before at the fountain while he was still restlessly awake. Didn't really take him long to figure out what had happen once he decided to throw a coin in and make a wish but he didn't think for a second that it would work. About two hours later? He asked again. Past midnight.

Now. It was late afternoon and he'd held off from indulging long enough. He settled onto the window seat, propped a leg up on the opposite stone ledge and plucked an apple from the crate of perfectly ripe fruit. Strawberries, mangoes, apricots, grapes, apples and pears. Perfect. He took a bite out of the apple, sighing contently.

So he'd lost his nerve for a spell. So those damn Shadows sapped a bit of his courage away. Didn't bother him so much right now. He'd just have this and enjoy his little birthday eating, drinking and being merry. Like you're supposed to do.

"Bottoms up." He said, drinking the last out of his flask before looking to the bottle to fill it back up.

[OOC: A window seat are common structures in castles. They look like this. Feel free to join Duo and have a drink, eat some good food, he's happy to share and plenty to go around. Also I may prefer prose but you can also respond in comment spam. I really don't care either way.]

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"Bending. Controlling the elements by way of mastering the flow of chi. I take it you're from somewhere else, too, then," she sighed. Oh, how she longed to have someone that she knew. Even Azula. It was that bad.

"I'm Toph," she told him. She'd spare him her usual bragging involving her Earth Rumble streak and relation to Aang.

"What's yours?"

When she finished her mango, she reached back into the crate, searching by feel as she was not a fruit bender and couldn't discern between them other than by touch and smell.

So he was expecting something else by way of explanation, but that had a distinct oriental vibe to it. And the elements? That meant more than just Earth. Whoa. Had to be some pretty interesting things to tangle with if that was the case.

"Got it. so.. Jeez. Just when I thought I had seen everything." He said with a small chuckle. "The name's Duo. Duo Maxwell."

He watched her reached in and relaxed into the stone behind him. "You been adjusting alright?"

She played with the new fruit in her hand. Oddly shaped, just a bit rough, and not-so-strong flesh. Pear!

"Oh," she started with a slight grin on her lips. "You haven't seen anything yet."

She took a bite and swallowed before making herself an arm rest and leaning on it.

"Find me a place with lots of room and not a lot of people to get in the way, and I'll really show you 'everything,'" she offered.

"The first day here was the worst. It's not so bad, now. What about you? How long have you been here?"

"There's a courtyard just outside. Hoow about you show me first thing in the morning? I'm taking the day off today. Birthday and all." Duo said, reaching in for another handful of strawberries.

When she made the arm rest he blinked, then grinned. "Oooor... maybe you can help me out explore once I finally get out to do it." Duo paused at her question, nodding even though she couldn't even see him do it.

"About two weeks." Duo replied. "And yeah. Headache. Nausea. All the bad, none of the good, right?"

"I'll go exploring with you," she told him with a grin. "I like exploring. I was planning on going, myself, but I heard some things about flying monsters and I can't say I feel like facing them on my own."

She had no trouble dealing damage to things, she just had to know where they were. As she'd learned in her travels with the Avatar, flying creatures had a large advantage on her. Good thing the others were good at aiming her.

"The headache was more annoying than debilitating, and I chalked the upset stomach up to being hungry... though, with what they feed us, I might start to blame it on having eaten alright, right?" She paused to smirk.

"That part wasn't so bad... but it's been a while since I've been that... vulnerable. I didn't like it."

She sounded scared just talking about it. Clearly, accepting help to make up for her disability wasn't an issue, but she did NOT like feeling helpless. Then again, who did? When she caught herself moping, she shook her head and lifted her eyes towards where she could feel his heartbeat through the wall.

"Happy birthday, by the way. I assume all birthdays are supposed to be happy across all the universe-iness around here, right? How old are you now?"

"Yeah. I don't care how many rocks you can... uh. Bend. But those things? Those shadows? I think they'd wisk you off even easier than they did me. You can't see em, can you?" Duo asked, a bit of worry in his tone.

"Listen, you make some friends and be sure not to go out alone, okay? I really do not wanna see a kid get hurt, even if you can take care of yourself. You got me?" Commanding tone now, he meant it. He had a soft spot for kids, and he was giving her the benefit of the doubt too.

He nods at the thought of being vulnerable and sighs. "Believe me, kid. that feeling is never fun. Pretty much been my life on and off for a while now." Him getting hurt those two times, or being without his gundam? Or that time he was stuck in a bunker for five days during a raid he could have prevented? No good.

"I'll watch your back. No worries. But fairs fair, I'm scared of em too." She didn't have to say it. "Be thankful you can't see them."

At her birthday wish, he smiled broadly. "Thanks, Toph. It's nice to hear. Makes home feel a little closer, y'know? I'm nineteen now." His heartbeat was steady against the rock, if a little elevated.

Toph turned her attention to her pear, toying with it before nibbling on the skin and basically doing a poor job of trying to buy a few seconds of spare time before responding to him. It wasn't that she was embarrassed of her blindness, she just didn't like telling people because it often turned into a case of them feeling sorry for her and treating her like an infant instead of the thirteen year old who invented - INVENTED - metal bending while on her way to save the world from the great and terrible Fire Lord Ozai with Avatar Aang and all the others. People tended to forget everything she'd done and how she'd proved she wasn't helpless and instead focus on her being unable to see their faces. It proved to be detrimental to otherwise amazing friendships.

But Duo didn't quite seem like that type, like he knew for himself how it was like to be underestimated.

"No, I can't see them. I can't see anything. I bet I can hear them, though, and probably a lot better than you can. I can beat them. I just need to know where they are."

She shifted into a better position and her stone footrest moved with her.

"I'm not that great at making friends. You're the first person I've actually talked to for more than a few minutes. There was some ghost and another sneaky fellow, but that's it."

It'd taken a while for her to become friends with the gang back in the day. If anything, she was more of a companion and teacher than she was a friend. She didn't remember when she started calling them friends and they returned the favor, but it certainly wasn't at first.

"We'll talk strategy, Toph. They snatched me up easily, and I'm a pretty strong and pretty elusive guy. So I'm thinkin' it's probably best to have a seeing eye stooge. If you get my drift." Duo laughed to hismelf, taking a sip of his flask, and chasing it with a strawberry.

He watched her move herself and the rock along with her and chuckled to himself quietly. All these powers were so impressive, and here he was. A normal. A normal guy who probably couldn't do much without his gundam.

"Yeah well. I'll betcha anything my friend's will get along fine with ya. If you ever happen to meet another guy who sounds exactly like me? That's my double. he's a little younger but you can rely on him to. Tell him I said so." Duo smirked at that, having the feeling that the girl might give his younger self a rn for his money.

"A ghost? You mean Danny? And you're gonna need to be more specific."

"Well, as long as we're exploring together, I guess you can be the stooge!" She pointed at him before relaxing her hands behind her head, fruit set in her lap for the time being.

"But don't worry, the little blind girl will keep the big strong elusive guy safe."

Oh, that smug little grin- she was so pleased with herself, wasn't she?

"I don't know what their names were," she replied after a contented sigh. "They might have told me but I had a bunch of other things on my mind at the time."

"I kinda just volunteered for that, didn't he?" He reached behind his head to scratch at his scalp, laughing at her comment about keeping him safe. She was a funny kid.

"What if they adapt to all your tricks? Learn to dodge? That's no good." Duo said, thinking over the possibilities. That would be bad.

"The only guy I know who was talking about ghosts was Danny, but I don't think he was one."

"Hey," she told him, adjusting her position again. "I have a lot of moves and tricks for them to adapt to and learn. If they're smart enough to do that, then we're all doomed. Like I said, I'll show you some at some point."

She turned her attention back to her snack.

"Danny sounds right. Like I said, there were more things on my mind than names."

"Probably more moves than I have. Course I've still got to manage to find something to use against them. Blunt objects seem to be the best way to go." Duo said, thinking back to what he remembered of the moment when he wasn't overwhelmed with fear. His double had beaten back those monsters, but it took a lot of effort.

"And it's not gonna be an easy thing-- but..." He shook his head. Yehknow? He just really didn't want to talk about those shadows much just then. He nodded at what Toph said about Danny and shrugged. He reached over and grabbed another strawberry from the basket. He really was running out of those.

"Why don't you just tell me about your world?" Why the change of subject? Because he just wanted to relax for a bit, let her take his mind off things.

That was probably a good idea. Much more unintentional goading and she might show him a few tricks into the wall where they sat.

"My world... when you say it that way, it's kind of weird. It's not every day you go somewhere and it's normal to refer to your home as 'my world.' Like, you never expected any others to be out there."

Enough philosophizing. She was starting to sound like Iroh.

"My world's... coming along, I guess. We're nearly into our second year of world wide peace after my friends and I ended a horrible war that lasted a little over a century. We've been trying to make everyone at least like each other. It's not so hard between the water tribe and earth kingdom, but no one can really seem to trust the fire nation yet. The new fire lord is working on it, and he and the other leaders are working with him and the Avatar to fix things."

She shrugged. That was the most recent news of the world- her world.

"World wide peace-- why does that sound familiar?" Duo's expression softened a bit. War. A little kid going to war, it was more than familiar, it hit close to home. Though he didn't understand what she was saying, the Earth Kingdom? Fire Nation?

It all fit with what she'd said before, and that meant she was from the Earth country naturally.

"What's the Avatar?" He was just letting the girl paint him a picture, and even though she wasn't able to describe the way things looked, he could still imagine it pretty well. And he was content in doing just that.

"The Avatar's the one who can bend all the elements. He's also the link between our world and the spirit world. He's supposed to protect us and keep the peace, but he's been gone for the past hundred years. It was only recently that he came back around. Luckily, though, he had a crack team of teachers to make him as good as he needed to be on very short notice," she smirked, looking proud of herself.

"Why does peace sound familiar?"

Enough talking for a moment. She wanted to finish her pear. That apricot was calling to her.

"I see." Duo said, listening to what she told him. Avatar. More mystic stuff, huh? Interesting enough.

"Peace? Because we just came off a three year war ourselves. It wasn't pretty either." Of course he wasn't going to confuse her with details about colonies or how the colony fell to Earth. No. He was just going to leave it at that.

"The war is over and it feels like piece is taking it's sweet time to take hold, but it's on it's way."

She listened as he spoke. She felt like she could relate to what he said.

"People don't trust each other instantly. Anyone who does is putting themselves in great danger, and most people know that. It takes a while for them to realize that the people who lived under the oppressive king are not oppressive on their own. They have to learn to accept and trust each other before peace sets in for good."

At least, that's what she'd learned.

"Yeah. I know. Back home where I live, everyone's pretty cool with each other, it was the political leaders that were the problem, and the armies. But you take any guy off the street and ask them if they got along with another country? More often than not it'd be yes. Like I said, we had more narrow issues to deal with."

Duo reached in for another of the pears and took a bite. "We were ruled under a dictator ship for a while, but they were defeated just a short time ago."

As he spoke, she rolled the apricot around in her hand. After a moment of inspection, she decided the texture of the skin wasn't to her liking. She pulled off the metal band around her forearm and molded it into a sharp blade to skin half the fruit. Her hold on the apricot and the blade would make sure she didn't cut herself to begin with, but a cut-free hand really was all to blame on her knowledge and sense of proxy in regards to her own body. She knew how close one hand was to the other at all times, even without seeing them.

When she was satisfied with the absence of the odd texture, she bit into the apricot, letting the knife mold back into her band and slipping it into place on her arm.

"Don't guess you had anything to do with that, huh?" she asked him. "Or is it just my world that didn't even bat an eye at a bunch of twelve year olds taking on the most fearsome enemy the nations had ever seen?"

She shot him a forced smirk and humorless laugh.

He was only curious of Toph's little trick with her armband, but he filed it under the same stuff she'd been doing before. It wasn't someting he understood easily, but he accepted it all the same. Had do. Denying it? He'd just go insane with all the crazy stuff that went on around here.

"Oh. No. We had something to do with it alright. Funny you say that, because after the Bartons took over? They passed a law throughout the colonies that kids my age were supposed to have curfews and be in school all day. I ended up having to take classes just to avoid detection. Ended up there for about a month before leaving to fight again." Subverted by a clever dictator. Oh, they batted an eye. They batted all of their eyes, and yet they still failed.

He said "colonies" and all that came to mind was the way the Fire Nation had taken over many cities and kingdoms and forced their ways on the people there. It didn't sound fun.

"Sorry about that," she frowned just a bit. "But it's over now, right?" Silver lining to everything.

"Yep. It's all over. Normal lives for once. No more wars, and we can finally start rebuilding. That the important thing, isn't it?" He smiled a bit, reaching over to pull out another pear.

"You want me to tell you where I come from?"

She moved positions again, now lying on the bench, propped up by a slight incline of stone, her feet ending just before the crate and one leg propped up on the other. She shoved a hand under her head and used the other to hold the apricot.

"I wasn't going to ask. It sort of sounded as if it might be a sore subject and I didn't want to make you divulge anything."

She flashed him a smile to break the concerned frown on her face.

"But yeah, if you wanna talk about it, go right ahead. I like listening to stories."

"Nah. Only what happened to my world is a sore subject. That's all." Duo replied, eyeing the scrappy little girl with a smirk. There was no way to express just how sleepy he was getting, but that was from the sugar high crash from the fruit and the alcohol.

"We're advanced. Technologically. We've got machines doing alot of the work, and we even live in outer space. In big vast metal cities floating in orbit around the Earth. Pretty cool, doncha think?"

As he spoke, all she could imagine were what she could "see" when they went to the inhabited Air Temple, or what she "saw" when they were fighting the Fire Nation, and what she could "see" when Sokka was building and designing things. She failed to see how any of those contraptions could do work, but alright. Whatever. Duo's world was different from hers, right?

"Big metal cities?" She imagined something like the Fire Nation's war balloons, but bigger. Toph had no idea how to fathom 'around the earth,' though.

"Sounds weird."

But her place probably sounded weird to him, too.

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