Chapter Four:
Feels like the raindrops on my skin. You reach me somewhere deep within. You make my body come alive.

After finishing up her packed lunch, Toph hurried down to the gymnasium. Aang gulped down his sprouts sandwich and raced after her. He knew she'd be fine on her own, but he also felt like he had a kind of responsibility.

Toph skipped across the polished oak floor, excited for her next class. The coach wasn't even in his office yet, but Toph didn't care. Aang slowly made his way across the gym, looking around at how large it was. He couldn't help but smile as he looked over at the crate of red, rubber balls. He was excited to play a sport the first day, though he didn't know what one it was.

He watched as Toph disappeared into the girl's locker room. Aang sighed with relief. He was expecting some cliché sitcom moment where Toph would have ended up in the boy's locker came back out with her long silky hair tied up into a ponytail and wearing the bland gym uniforms: a tan t-shirt and blue shorts. She grinned and crossed her arms, very already felt intimidated. He hoped Toph would be on his team for whatever they would be doing in class. As she advanced towards her friend, the obnoxious lunch bell rang, telling the students to hurry to their next class. Toph clasped her hands together, an evil, toothy smile taking control of her lips.

"Alright, let's get this on, eh, Twinkle toes?"

She managed to punch Aang in the arm, as if she could see everything just fine. He chuckled, but it was forced out as he rubbed his sore arm. That would bruise later, for 7th graders flooded into the gymnasium, splitting up to get dressed. Aang told Toph to stay where she was as he hurried into the locker room with the rest of the boys to rolled her eyes and found her way over to the bleachers where she sat down, bored, waiting for the games to begin. A couple girls returned in their blah uniforms and sat kitty-corner to Toph.

They studied her, concerned and intrigued. They whispered to each other slightly, questioning how Toph could possibly survive gym class since she was blind. Toph's ears perked up as she could hear the girls, not doing a very good job at whispering. She whipped her body around and faced towards the voices. She didn't say anything; she simply stared at them, knowing damn well the scowl on her face was all they young girl's stared into her vacant eyes and shuddered.

It was like staring at the face of a corpse. Even though they knew she couldn't see them, they couldn't help but feel that her eyes were observing everything about came back out and desperately looked around the gym floor for Toph. There were a couple groups of kids scattered around but none of them were as short as Toph. Finally, Aang spotted her on the bleachers turned ran over and hurried up the first couple of benches. Noticing the girl's to his left were terrified, Aang whipped Toph around to face him. With an apologetic smile he waved the girl's away.

"Toph, this isn't staying still."

"Oh, he's such a hero!"

The three girls swooned and giggled as they passed Aang, but they didn't stay for long in fear of Toph. Annoyed by Aang's passive sense of control, Toph rolled her eyes and exhaled.

"Don't sweat it, Arrowhead. I'm perfectly well."

They followed the rest of the kids down to the front of the gym where a tall man in frighteningly small shorts was twirling one of the rubber balls on his muscular fingers. His tight tank top was tucked neatly into his track shorts and an overused whistle dangled sadly across his broad a gruff voice that echoed throughout the gymnasium, he explained the rules and strategy of a game called "dodge ball". Aang listened intensively, but started to grow upset. The sport sounded way too violent for his liking.

He looked over at Toph, but her face was lit up as the coach described the brutality of the coach counted off the students in two teams. Aang was thankful to be on Toph's team. The children stood on opposite sides of a borderline created from dodge balls. Aang was taken off guard by the whistle, but Toph raced towards the weapons in the middle of the room, returning to her side, triumphant.

Aang helplessly and frantically dodged the lightning speed rubber spheres as Toph mercilessly got 12-year-old after 12-year-old out of the game. Her team was slowly disappearing as well when it was finally two versus four. Aang looked around for his teammates but could only see Toph. He was confident they were doomed. The four boys on the other side of the line smirked, convinced they had already won the perfectly synced, the boys threw their dodge balls at the cowering Aang. Toph leapt in front of him and caught two of them, the other two hitting the wall and rolling slowly away.

Upset by their defeat, half of the boys left the smiled and with all of her power, chucked the red orbs at the other two boys. One of them wheezed as the ball collided with his chest and the other fell over immediately, watery eyes and hands clenched to his ran towards Toph chuckling. He thanked and congratulated her while she simply wiped her hands off on each other. The coach applauded and warned the class that the period was almost up.

"C'mon, twinkle toes. Let's get ready for study hall."

Howell: Sorry, it was really lame.