Chapter 115 - Parental Concern

[One Hour Earlier]

Nuwa and Lady Pea play chess in the throne room. It doesn't exist in the Avatar Record, but she introduced it to her mom as a teenager, and they've taken a liking to facing off against each other since they're around the same level of skill. They're not amazing; they would be listed at around 1900 in a typical chess rating system. Pretty good for not playing much or studying the game deeply.

Neither tend to make major blunders because they both prefer stable play with each of them looking several to a dozen moves ahead depending on how far along the game is. Nuwa favors trading pieces to simplify the game, while Lady Pea prefers complicating it. They are in the middlegame with Lady Pea up a pawn, but Nuwa having slightly better piece positioning, when a Dai Li agent politely interrupts, "The Beifongs are here, Lady Nuwa."

Nuwa groans and gets up, "Urk.. it's a good thing they don't know who I am. Mom, will you handle them for now?"

"Sure, dear. If I recall your retelling correctly, you swindled Toph out of their clutches in the guise of providing safety with Appa?"

Nuwa nods and chuckles as she goes to her room to hang out with Azula and Tulen, "Something like that.."

Lady Pea shouts, "I win, then!" to which Nuwa shouts back, "No, we adjourn!"

"Hmm.." Lady Pea looks at the board and feels tempted to mess with some pieces, but she knows Nuwa will notice. Her thoughts wander as the Beifongs come in. Lady Pea sighs and thinks, 'It is times like these where I wish I could show off my adorable grandson. Well, at least I can bring over their granddaughter to help them calm down.'

She calls a Dai Li agent over and says, "Call Haru and tell him to bring Lin."

Currently, Lady Pea is sitting on a sofa and table set at the side of the central pathway to the throne. The Beifongs, seeing that the Earth King is absent, sit on some sofas at the opposite side of the central pathway. They aren't waiting for Kuei anyway; they're waiting for Toph. They happened to be in the Inner Ring and heard rumors of Toph coming down from the palace, so they figured she should be back soon.

Lady Pea elegantly walks over and sits on a sofa across from them while offering a less personal salutation of a hand over her heart. "Pleasure to meet you, I am Tyra Pea of the Fire Nation."

Lady Beifong's original agitation habitually calms down seeing the perfect noble mannerisms demonstrated by Lady Pea. She offers a similarly polite hand over her heart and greets, "Pleased to meet you, I am Poppy Beifong of the Earth Kingdom."

Lord Beifong does the same but keeps it short to not interrupt the ladies' conversation, "My pleasure. Lao Beifong."

Poppy asks, "If I recall correctly, your Pea family was our ally during the Capital City invasion?"

"Correct," replies Tyra, "We were dissatisfied with the 100 years of war and our family precepts lean more towards peace-seeking and free trade. Once the Avatar emerged, we knew that change was coming, so we put all our weight behind him and it paid off well."

Narrowing her eyes, Poppy asks, "What sort of role did our daughter, Toph, play in the war? We have some reports, but they all seem somewhat.. exaggerated? After all, she's such a delicate young girl and not more than a year ago, she was entirely blind! You must understand that we, as parents, find it hard to handle when people call our daughter an 'invincible killing machine'. We did not raise her that way!"

By the end Poppy's agitation was back up and Lao was rubbing her back, while also focused on the answer they would get from their acquaintance. Tyra obliges and soothingly says, "Toph is not a rampant killer, don't worry. She prefers to incapacitate in battle. The largest role Toph played in the war was serving as an inspiration for the Earth Kingdom military for her powerful earthbending and unique metalbending. Other than that, she helped neuter several airships during the invasion of Capital City. You should be very proud of your daughter for playing such an instrumental role in ending the war. Her name will surely go down in history once more accurate recordings of how the events went are written."

Lao's eyes light up, but Poppy is not very affected. She doesn't want to make a scene in front of her noble lady acquaintance though, so she keeps her mouth shut. Before Lao can ask for more details, Haru enters with Lin sucking on some milk in a makeshift bottle. He stands curiously next to Lady Pea, wondering what she called him here for and the identity of the couple opposite them.

Lady Pea continues in stride, "Few people know of this, but the reason your daughter couldn't come back earlier was because she wanted to give birth first. Congratulations, you are grandparents!"

Haru widens his eyes at the realization that these are Toph's parents, the heads of the famous Beifong noble family. Their eyes widen in shock too as they stare at the newborn baby girl sipping on her milk. Lin is dressed in a small green and yellow onesie reminiscent of Toph's usual earthbender robes. She stops sipping and yawns adorably in front of the bottle still held up by Haru.

He quickly recovers his bearings, puts down the bottle, and brings Lin over to Lady Beifong's outstretched hands. While Haru passes her over to his mother-in-law, he quietly says, "Her name is Lin."

Sensing that the tone he spoke in was full of love, Lord Beifong looks up and asks, "Are you the father? The man she pulled out of the army in a scandalous manner?"

With slight hesitation and plenty of embarrassment, Haru answers, "Yes." on both counts, even though it wasn't quite biologically accurate. Despite attempting to follow Toph around during her time in the army, the reality was that the Beifongs had a hard time keeping up with her constant movements. Toph also didn't spend that much of her time with Haru back then, other than during booty calls, so her parents had never actually met him. Looking at him now, they see the appeal. He is particularly handsome.

Lady Pea has an especially good impression of him noticing how much of his attention is on Lin. She is reminded of her own overprotectiveness of Toph seeing the way that he looks at Lin. "It's lovely to meet you, Haru. Shall we set up a meeting with your parents? Maybe hammer out the marriage details?"

Smiling awkwardly, Haru says, "Um.. my family isn't well off." Typically, marriages would only be done between two high class noble families or those of high status to represent a union between two business conglomerates. The tradition of marriage as a formal ceremony does not exist on a widespread scale in the Avatar world among the less affluent. Often, an engagement promise and token are sufficient to declare that a couple is married.

Unfortunately, Lady Beifong can be pushy about these things. "No matter, no matter. The day of my marriage was one of the happiest days of my life! Toph and you deserve the same thing."

Haru looks towards Lord Beifong only to receive an exasperated shrug in return. Obviously, Lao was one of those grooms who felt his marriage was a chore and even though he still had his reservations about Haru, he couldn't say anything to stop his wife now. Lady Pea smiles pleasantly at the change in atmosphere. Poppy's mood has significantly improved as she happily chats and plays with her infant granddaughter.

At least until Toph walks in. Lady Beifong spots Toph first and screams, "Toph!" which causes Lin to start to whimper and Toph to jolt. Quickly returning her attention to Lin, Lady Beifong quietly apologizes and tries to soothe her before she can begin to cry. Thankfully, it works.

Normally, Toph would avoid her parents at times like these, just like she had back when they chased her after her military scandal, constantly lecturing her about how girls should behave when it comes to getting into a relationship, all of which she entirely disregarded. This time though, she wants to improve her relationship with her parents.

Toph feels bad when Haru and her always have to ask for Nuwa to feed Lin directly or provide them with milk when her own breasts run out. Firstly, she wants her parents to recommend a trustworthy wet nurse, and secondly, she wants them back in her life to help create a family setting for Lin. Due to the current circumstances, she'll have to tour around encouraging the people of the Earth Kingdom to give up on their war hungry ambitions and the Fire Nation colonies, occasionally beating them into submission. She will not be able to spend that much time around Lin.

"Hey mom and dad." says Toph as casually as she can.

Poppy looks up from Lin and sarcastically states while keeping her voice down, "So you finally remembered us elderly folk? You could have wrote."

Lao nods and repeats with some disappointment, "You should have wrote, even if only to assuage your poor mother's heart. We had to utilize our spy network to even know you were still alive."

Toph grumbles and says, "Sorry." with a fair amount of insincerity. Haru offers, "I'll write on her behalf next time."

With great enthusiasm, Lady Beifong holds Haru's hand and gushes, "I knew I liked you for a reason."

Lord Beifong, on the other hand, shows displeasure at Haru covering for all of Toph's faults. Before he says something to turn it into a husband and wife argument, Lady Pea argues on Toph's behalf, "Toph is an independent-minded and busy young lady just like several of my own daughters. It is normal for youths to get excited about their new lives and forget about their parents until they need money or whatnot. Now that she's a mother, she'll soon come to appreciate the love both of you have for her."

As both of the Beifongs are still trying to wrap their heads around the fact that their immature little daughter is an actual mother, Toph tries to figure out if Lady Pea is defending or lecturing her. In the end, she shrugs and tells her mom, "I will have lots of work to do on pacifying the Earth Kingdom for the next few months at least. Can you help Haru take care of Lin?"

Although she is displeased with Toph's perfunctory behavior and tone, Lady Beifong is eager to spend as much time as she can with her granddaughter. "Humph. I suppose I could. When's the marriage?"

Toph coughs. She never thought about getting married. Zuko and Mai were married in a fancy ceremony 3 months ago and it was the most boring shit she's ever had to sit through. She prefers being bored in an area with fewer people around so that there's less feedback from her earth sense. "Whose marriage?"

"Yours!" her mom replies.

"Um.." she's about to ask what the point of it is, but then she looks at Haru and sees that he seems to look forward to it. Sighing, she says, "I guess we can have it when the commotion ends."

Following that, Toph is interrogated by her parents about all the things she's been up to. She makes no mention of Gunner. The last thing she wants is for them to find out she's keeping a male concubine. Actually, she's not that excited anymore to find a very tall man to complete her collection. She really has mellowed out since having Lin.

~ ~ ~

Instead of Kuei getting together with one or all of the younger Ty sisters like Nuwa had wanted, he skips town with Bosco. So now the Dai Li let the younger Ty sisters take care of the duties involved in running the Earth Kingdom with guidance from their mentors, their mom and Nuwa.

Toph and Lord Beifong leave on the airship to stop in major cities in the Earth Kingdom and spread the ideology of recuperation and peace. Haru and Lady Beifong stay to take care of Lin in the palace. They call over a family servant to serve as a wet nurse from Gaoling.

In the meantime, there's plenty of upheaval occurring in the Fire Nation colonies. Ganglords and corrupt nobles rise up and are killed or captured on a weekly basis now that people have begun to see the United Republic of Nations as the up and coming industrial and trading hub of the entire world. The Order of the White Lotus members head over to the colonies to try to convince the three Nations to send their most cooperative troops to reclaim the area from corrupt third-party factions. Hearing of the chaos there, Aang is obligated to do something about it, so he heads off on Appa, leaving the once-again pregnant Katara in the Southern Water Tribe to take care of Bumi.

Yue kept Katara company up until now, but after she delivers her baby, a boy named Yasuke, she has to leave with Yasuke back to the Northern Water Tribe. Sokka is not pleased about being on the other side of the world from his wife and son, but he's needed in the Southern Water Tribe given the dire lack of manpower for reconstruction.

There's also too much bad blood between the Northern and Southern tribes for them to get properly married. Even Yue's insistence that she bring Yasuke back with her wasn't received well by the old men in the Southern Water Tribe. The isolationist Northern Water Tribe did not render any assistance to the Southern Water Tribe during the 100 years that it was at war with the Fire Nation and had almost all of its waterbenders wiped out.

Nuwa continues her meditation routine, but her synchronization doesn't go past 20%. She hit a spiritual bottleneck. Still, this will not halt her progress towards her Side Mission, so she continues nonplussed. It is Azula who has greater changes. As she meditates and comes to understand her Phoenix Dao more, the tips of her hair gain a blood red tinge, reminding both of them that she's becoming a demi-human, albeit in a gradual manner, unlike Tulen, who is already a Dragonkin demi-human.

(A/N: Sorry for swapping between Lady Beifong/Poppy and Lord Beifong/Lao constantly.. Tried to include the context of who was talking to them when I gave their full noble title or not. Anyway, no big deal. They don't play too big a role in the story going forward.)

(A/N: https://discord.gg/VD3C2BFPAu)