Chapter 161 – Outcasts
Naruto coughs several times in order to clear his throat enough to speak. The gruff man says, “Take it easy, pal!” Naruto wheezes and manages to say, “Help.. please..” then he looks up, only to let out a silent scream and fall on his butt in fear.
The man standing in front of him is tall, muscular, and extremely attractive. If it were not for his extremely intimidating black scales, horns, and wings, he would look like a god among men. Naruto cannot help but feel his own body, which he formerly believed to be above average, is effeminate in comparison to the sheer Chadliness of this man’s presence.
Despite his initial fear, Naruto begins shedding tears of remorse and relief at how gentle and warm the man’s red eyes are. ‘He must be a Spirit! I forgot I was in the Spirit Realm! He looks so scary and powerful, but his aura is so gentle! I am saved! Thank Kami, I am saved!!’
“Please.. friend.. save me!” says Naruto while choking down tears.
“Fear not, friend. I, Tulen, will assist you.” says Tulen, somewhat moved at how quickly the human in front of him recovered from his initial fright. He had never met a blonde haired human before. When meeting human strangers, his first impression is always terrible. His scales manifest across the entirety of his muscular torso and body as if they are an elaborate dragon tattoo. The intricate scale designs only end before reaching his face, groin, forearms, and shins. Tragically, his past three girlfriends who did get over their initial fear of him became enamored by his natural body art and almost invariably went crazy, either actual insanity or the yandere kind.
He rarely exposes his body now, except for when he comes here to train. Tulen pulls Naruto up and is surprised to feel how difficult it is to pick him up. Out of nowhere, he feels a kinship with the blonde boy. After all, ever since he was young, he had too much strength. Now, he has found a friend who is not scared of him and might even share the same problems!
“Hey kiddo! Hands off the yellow guy. I’m training him.” shouts Toph.
The first thing Naruto notices is that Toph’s voice is noticeably more gentle towards his savior than it is towards him, indicating they already know each other. Sure enough, his worst fears are confirmed when Tulen stops supporting his body and says, “Oh, hey Auntie Toph. Sorry about interrupting your training. I didn’t see you back there.”
Naruto flares his Gate of Opening and wraps his arms around Tulen. He lets out an agonized wail, “No.. please.. HELP..”
Tulen looks at him curiously and yanks the poor guy’s arms off with some effort. He states, “My Auntie Toph is the best trainer in the World, so if she decides to train you, then she sees something in you. Your only choices are to get stronger or die. Hey Auntie, can you take it a little easier on him? I want him to be my friend.”
Toph rejects in a teasing tone, “First of all, no. Secondly, you have terrible taste in friends. Third, go train.”
“Ok Aunty.” replies Tulen. He then picks up a few stems of giant banyan leaves and starts dragging them out of the mud. His footsteps leave dried and cracked mud due to a combination of firebending and weight.
Toph startles. She is slightly confused about why Tulen did not make a fuss. He does not show any signs of moral struggle. After Tulen went on adventures with his Uncle Aang and Uncle Iroh, he took after each of their values. Normally, he is an excessively righteous person who would rather attack her than see her torture someone to this extent. She had been excited to have a friendly spar over their disagreement and teach him who is boss!
Despairingly, Naruto gazes at Tulen walking away and finally draws the connection to the Ring on Toph’s finger. His enlightenment has made him a little brighter, but not enough to be subtle while excessively fatigued as he is now. So of course, he glances at the Ring. Upon seeing Naruto look between Tulen and the Ring, Toph realizes that something strange is going on.
Toph smirks and says, “Hey blondie. Tell me what you know about this ring and you can have a break.”
Naruto immediately collapses upon the ground in glee. This is his chance! As a human deprived of all comforts, he immediately reaches for a foot when given an inch! “I want a break, clean water, a civilized meal, and a soft bed!”
Toph glares at him and capitulates, “Alright, but ask for anything more and I’ll take one of them away.” She is too worried about Tulen’s abnormal actions to be bothered to haggle. “Oh, and remember that I can tell if you’re lying.”
She stands up, grabs his arm, and teleports them to the entrance of Azula’s seaside cave dwelling. Toph earthbends off the stone weights on Naruto and walks him in. She breaks a lock on a cabinet and pulls a bright fruit out, then places it on the table. “Start talking.” she states.
Naruto had entirely forgotten that he is in the Spirit Realm and can teleport around if he wants to. He also learned in school though that Spirit Realm teleportation is not at all immune to tracking. ‘There is no way this devil lady doesn’t know how to track teleports.. I shouldn’t stoke her ire.’
Upon biting into the large fruit and tasting how splendidly succulent it is, Naruto once again sheds tears at what he feels to be the best meal of his life. In total honesty, Naruto explains what he knows about the Ring and how it works, without going into details on how he had used it.
Hearing Toph say nothing at the end of his monologue, he once again returns to his meal. Toph teleports away and returns seconds later with a basin of clean water and bread, both of which she drops on the table. She then attempts to take the Ring off and sure enough, it is stuck.
Toph hates mind games the most, so she already has a severe dislike for this powerful mind-tampering artifact. She attempts to charge the Ring with chi and finds that it can suck up her chi like a sponge. Sitting down, Toph looks at the Ring upon her finger, and asks, “How strong were those who were unaffected by this Ring’s effects?”
Naruto answers while munching on the tasteless, dry bread, “Only the strongest people I know in my town weren’t affected.”
Toph gives him a cheeky smile and asks, “So where are you from blondie? You’re clearly not any place I know of in the Fire, Water, Earth, or Air Nations.”
Naruto jumps slightly and cannot help but fumble his words, “Umm.. well..”
Upon noticing Toph’s hardening face, he further panics due to his trauma and blurts out the truth, “That’s a secret.” Even he can tell that Toph has not an ounce of chakra in her and therefore cannot be from the Shinobi World.
People from Shinobi World are taught to respect each world’s fate. Invariably, the ambassadors that Shinobi World sends to other worlds are much stronger than the most powerful that world can offer, but nevertheless, Naruto recalls horror stories of ambassadors who tried to meddle in fate by doing large-scale experiments. For example, introducing technology or lording over civilization as emperors, only for the scientist to be killed by weapons created with that same technology or for the emperor to be killed by his own son. Bad endings! Both with a healthy dose of dramatic irony to boot!
Despite the strength of the ambassadors, the subsidiary World’s Wills can find a way to kill them if they attempt to disrupt a fated path. For example, if Li had truly fallen in love with Iroh and tried to take him away, then the Fire World’s Will would have found a way to kill her. The most crippling circumstance is that shinobi cannot recover their chakra as quickly when far away from the source of chakra somewhere in Shinobi World.
Toph narrows her eyes causing Naruto to shake in fear and practically grovel, “No.. I mean it! I really cannot say!”
Sensing that he is feeling sincere fear, Toph backs off. “Alright. Give me an idea then. Do you know the Avatar?”
Naruto nods his head. “Yes, ma’am.” His mom had him read up on subsidiary worlds because they had to be good hosts for Azula.
Toph continues her line of query, “How would the strongest in your town compare to an Avatar at the peak of his or her power in Avatar mode?”
Gulping, he is not sure if this is considered meddlesome, but it is just information, so he can’t find a reason not to answer in order to get more food. He regurgitates the information he learned in the books, “Only the strongest Avatar in history would be able to survive against my town leader for more than 15 minutes.”
Toph stands up with a gasp and feels heat spread through her body. ‘Avatar Kyoshi, someone who can break apart a continent and move it out to sea, is barely on par with his town’s leader!’
It has been long since she felt this degree of battle fervor! When she had first sent her earth sense through Naruto’s body upon meeting, she had been prepared to meet some powerhouses, maybe even for his seniors to go looking for him, but she had not expected the degree of power to be so high. She shouts, “That’s what I’m talking about! Hahaha! Good boy! You get another day off just for that!”
Naruto starts laughing maniacally along with Toph at that news! Midway through his belly laugh, he runs out of energy entirely and he passes out. His head drops directly onto his half-eaten piece of bread. His sleep is so deep that Toph ends up having to double check on his heartbeat with her earth sense to make sure he is not dead.
~ ~ ~
Toph teleports back to the swamplands surrounding the World Tree. She observes Tulen’s training routine and wonders how she should take off this Ring. She has a rare moment of introspection on her life starting with all the reasons her self-imposed isolation in the swamplands had come to be.
First, she had slaughtered many people in cold blood following Aang’s death. She was a wanted criminal in Republic City and Lin had become the new Chief of Police, despite heavy opposition for being Toph’s daughter. It was a fact that Haru and her daughters looked at her differently following that incident. She would never admit it, but Toph found it painful enough to leave for that reason alone.
Second, life without a satisfying battle was no fun. The best she could do was reminisce on her former glory with her friends and Gunner, who was no longer her concubine, but still a good friend nonetheless. If she wasn’t so wound up at not experiencing a proper battle, she doubts she would have gone as crazy as she did when she started her killing streak.
Lastly, she felt the earth calling her, or maybe it was the World Tree calling her through the earth. In any case, she had come here to answer that call and it was worth it. Only here in the swamplands surrounding the World Tree did she feel close enough to earth that she could finally sense a breakthrough after her strength stagnated 5 years ago.
Looking at the Ring, her first thought is to return to Republic City wearing it and spending a normal day with her family. Imagining herself being able to spend time with Haru or hug Lin and Suyin without them having a moral struggle over flouting the law brings a slight smile to her face. In the end, she decides that is just not her style. ‘Fuck, if I can’t solve this problem head-on, I’d rather not return at all. I’m Toph Beifong!’
She returns her gaze to Tulen exercising in the distance. When she first left, Tulen tracked her smartphone, directly came to fight her, and got beaten up, unlike her daughters who did not take the initiative to visit at first. After destroying her smartphone, no one can find her if she does not want to be found. Her earth sense is always watching. She avoids sentient Spirits and other members of the Gang who try to visit alike. Toph does not quite know why she had let Tulen find her, but he has become the only one she allows near her to keep her company in the vast and desolate swamplands surrounding the World Tree.
Perhaps it is because they are similar types of people that Toph always had a soft spot for Tulen. They both face a form of ostracization from civilized society. Tulen for his draconic features and Toph for her battle hunger. Well, that might not be the case anymore. It’ll be just her soon. She bottoms out her chi, takes one more look at the glowing Ring, and says, “It is normal for Tulen’s draconic traits to be entirely ignored.”
(A/N: Toph can be a softie sometimes :3)