What I Learned at SRU -111- (Part 1)

A/N: NOTE for DA readers: I had to split this update into two sections because of DA's word limit. There will be a link to the next part in the description!

God damn, this update has taken a lot out of me. I've had the core elements of these two scenes planned out for roughly a year now, and it's wonderful to finally have this stuff out of my brain and shaped into words, but damn, has it been mentally exhausting to lay it out. To be honest, I'm not really happy with this entire swath of the story, but the surrealistic corner I've painted the narrative into in order to get the more dramatic endgame stuff I have in mind has led me here, so...might as well follow through.

Just a WARNING: some violence incoming, so be wary if that sort of stuff is difficult to read.

Chapter 111 - When Extremes Meet
{Part 1}

- Sunday, May 29th, 2011 -

From backstage, the pounding sounds of the band playing out in front the crowd was muffled, the speakers projecting their blasting audio in the opposite direction from where Toph and Suki stood. The low strums of bass thumping into her eyes, Toph lamented for a moment on the fact that they had no bass player of their own today.

"Didja see any of 'em out there?" Toph asked, adjusting the strap on her bare shoulder. She was a bit worried that it might chafe, but it was way too fucking hot out to be wearing layers. A tanktop and shorts was simple, comfortable, and the way to go.

Suki had insisted on Toph having some kind of 'flair' if she was going to be presenting herself on stage in front of a broader audience than usual, and Toph had enlisted Katara's aid with this task. Katara had taken one of Toph's hairbands and glued on a couple of fluffy...puffy things on the sides. Big cotton balls? Toph wasn't quite sure what they were, but Katara had cited that Toph's puffball earrings had been the inspiration. Katara had also insisted that the look was oddly appropriate, and had gone on to attach long, flowing ribbons to the ends of the hairband, tying them around the back of Toph's head and scrunching her hair into a big, poofy ball. A ginormous hair bun. Toph wasn't so sure how she felt about it - she normally liked her hair to be wild and free, not all up in a bun. It reminded her of her old life, back with her parents, always bothering to keep up appearances. Katara had explained something about 'first impressions' and such, citing Toph's socially lacking freshman year as proof that a lack of attention to impressions wasn't going to help win her an audience. Toph had tuned out a lot of her roommate's chatter, ultimately deciding to just let Katara have at her hair. The bangs stayed, and she refused to have any makeup applied.

"I know Meng is out there," Suki replied. "She brought a few people."

"Ah." Toph was still trying to let Meng's socialite-seeking roll off her back. "What about the other guys?"

"Mm. No, I didn't see them," Suki lamentably informed. "Sokka said that he and Katara were spending the day with their dad before he goes back up north."

"Yep..." Toph sighed. She had been hoping that her roommate and her boyfriend would've been able to make it, but she had all morning to accept the notion that their family was more important to them than Toph's family was to her. She would live. "Korra's babysitting," Toph cited. "Aang's working at the snack desk..."

Suki tried to pick up Toph's trace of disappointment: "I mean, I...think I might've seen Jane out there, but...-"

"You just saw red hair in the crowd," Toph dryly guessed.

"Heh. Yea, pretty much," Suki confessed. "But she did say she was going to try and make it out today."

"Cool..." Toph pushed out a small smile and slid her fingers across the neck of her Les Paul guitar, savoring the sensation of each fret beneath her fingertips. The guitar was anticipating this just as much as she was - she could feel it. That was what mattered here: Toph and her guitar. In the end, that was all that was important, right?

"You OK?" Suki asked, prodding Toph from her evidently melancholic state.

"Yea," sad Toph, plucking a few warm-up chords on her unplugged guitar.

"You know...I'm sure they're all proud of you and support you."

"Mm..." As the music being played out on the stage came to a stop, the crowd burst into applause. Toph heard a stage crew guy chatter with Suki briefly. "We up?" Toph asked.

"We are," Suki replied with some spice in her voice. Toph appreciated her comrade's enthusiastic attitude.

"Awesome." Toph pulled up the pair of shades she'd had dangling from the collar of her shirt, and fit them over her eyes.

Within a couple of minutes, the two girls were on stage, behind a curtain. The event's host was out on the very front of the stage, recapping the previous performance and...some kind of anecdote, or something. Toph was not really paying attention, nor was she interested.

Toph could smell the outdoors just beyond the musty wooden stage now at her feet. The curtains flapped in the brisk wind. She didn't feel that familiar wave of heat from an overhead lamp, and was thankful they were playing outdoors on an afternoon. She heard Suki set down a wooden stool they had brought along, and Suki advised her partner that she'd set an open bottle of water on the seat. Toph, her electric guitar strapped across her shoulders, carefully set down her other guitar case beside the stool. She cautiously felt her way to the stool and grabbed the bottle of water, chugging down three large gulps. She sighed with relief, wiped her lips with the back of her wrist, and worked her way a couple of feet back to her left, where the microphone stood. She grabbed it, running her fingers along its smooth, metal pole and up to the ridged microphone. She tweaked its angle down slightly, adjusting for her height. Eh, more than slightly. Whoever had played lead from the last band was a fair amount taller than she was. Suki handed Toph the plug for her guitar before sitting down at the on-stage drums and readjusting them for her personal preference.

This process of pre-performance setup was always exciting, a rush of adrenaline oozing its way through Toph's veins at the sound of the gentle rumbling of the crowd.

Before she knew it, it was time to begin.

["-...the Bliiiiiind Bandit!"]

As Toph heard the curtains unfurl before her, Suki began pounding the drums. A few moments later, Toph jumped in on guitar for the opening rifts. She could make out a few cheers from the crowd at recognition of the song. Se belted out a raucous "Whoo!" before she began singing, Suki's dextrous drumming combining with backup singing. Their music billowed from the speakers, washing over the crowd like a tidal wave.

+ ('Without a Fight,' by Hoobastank) +

["~Wake up, our life is calling! We're smoking, but not on fire!
Give us a sign that we're alive!~"]

Amongst the throngs of attendees, Meng was clapping her hands together with the booming beat.

["~Step out of indecision! How we've been hypnotized!
To think that everything's all right!~"]

Douglas, standing at her side, looked at Meng's gleeful demeanor with some charmed confusion.

When Meng noticed his stare, she stuck her tongue out at him, bouncing up and down on her toes. Douglas was still adjusting to just how adorable the girl was in person. He stuck his tongue back in retaliation and joined in her clapping.

Meanwhile, Jane was standing beside them, slightly bewildered by the way The Duke was interacting with the girl. The thick hand of Pipsqueak prodded at her shoulder from her other side. She looked his way, watching his lips move, but the music and commotion was too loud. She raised a brow and leaned in.

"-said, they're cute together, huh?"

Jane's lips fell open in a light-hearted laugh of amusement. She turned her head back around, casting another glance at the two, who were now hopping in sync and clapping to the song's rhythm. She shrugged her head to the side at Pipsqueak.

"I guess," she spoke loudly, her apathy hard to convey through the forced volume of her words.

"So what's with Longshot these days?" Pipsqueak wondered, all but ignoring the current performance. Jane was a bit irked by his questioning - she just wanted to enjoy the one part of the show she was here for. She popped her shoulders up wildly, with some irritation. Her annoyance wasn't just at Pipsqueak, but also at the fact that Johnny hadn't been returning her messages recently. "You two still together?" Pipsqueak poked some more.

"Sure," Jane snapped back briskly. "Tryin' to see the show here."

Pipsqueak, puzzled by the nature of her response, took the hint and went quiet.

Hovering outside of the congregation, a dull-faced, gray-haired woman stood, a walkie-talkie in one hand, a cup of coffee in the other.

"No, stand down," she calmly spoke into her talkie, eyes glued to the clump of people in question. "They haven't done anything yet. Let's wait and see what happens."

She released the button on her talkie and received a reply.

["Roger that, Chief."]

With a tired sigh, Chief Jia took a sip from her half-emptied drink. A voice spoke to her from behind.

"I didn't know you were into this kind of music, Lin."

"I'm not," Lin sighed, her eyes sliding closed with impatience. She contained herself, but didn't give the man behind her a glance. "My source informed me that a situation might be transpiring here today..."

"Lin...Don't tell me you've gone back to working with that religious nut..."

"Hardly," Lin insisted, her word like a cold knife. "This is simply a mutual scratching-of-backs."

"...Right."

"The fact that you've bothered to make an appearance lends credence to the information I received," noted Lin, taking another sip of her drink.

"Perhaps."

"Unless, of course...-" Lin at last turned around to face the bald man in the suit behind her, his eyes veiled by sunglasses. "-...you're here to see me, Special Agent Feng."

Feng's already apparent smile widened a bit.

"Why, yes," he came back, "I'm just delighted by your radiant enthusiasm."

"Aren't we all...?" Lin murmured, her focus back to the crowd as the current song finished and applause broke out.

Toph was basking in the praise for their performance. She flicked her head to push now-sweaty bangs to the side in anticipation of chugging down some water. She unplugged her electric guitar and carefully stepped toward the stool, trying her best to look casual. She cautiously reached for the stool, located it, and grabbed the water bottle, sucking down some more.

"Before we get old, Grandma!" someone in the audience berated her lollygagging. While still chugging at her water, she flipped her middle finger up toward the voice, which elicited a few chuckles from audience members. She smirked in spite of her own thoughts, inevitably finding the irony in someone calling her 'Grandma' given whose steps she'd followed in getting here.

Toph proceeded to swap her electric guitar with the acoustic one in the case on the ground, and Suki improvised a few seconds of drumming to give the speakers something to do. Toph kicked off her sandals, letting them fall ambiguously near the guitar case. She dragged the stool across the floor, reaching out for the microphone. There was odd chatter from the audience, but Toph paid them no mind in that moment. She set the stool down by the mic. As she sat sat down at the stool, she set her water bottle between her legs, and readjusted the mic to capture her acoustic's sound best. She sucked in a deep breath and sighed pleasantly, appreciating all of the sensations around her. The windy afternoon air, carrying the scent of popcorn and corndogs. The clamoring of eager people, waiting for more music. The heat of the sun, caressing her cheeks. The feeling of wood all around her. The floor, her stool, the guitar in her hands...Gram-Gram's guitar. The instrument that Toph's Grandmother had taken on so many shows of her own, and passed down to her granddaughter. The slightly warped wood, the dents and cracks, the refinished fingerboard, the weathered stickers, the etchmarks...This instrument has seen a lot of action, and every time Toph wielded it to battle before a live audience, she could feel her grandmother's spirit lingering within.

She was brought out of her mind-wandering a few seconds later as the crowd began expressing their impatience.

"What's the hold up?"
"They're doing another one?"
"Where's the next band?"
"Are you actually blind?"
"Some one get these gook-eyes off the stage!"
"Racist!"
"Fuck you! You chinks can get outta our town!"

Toph sighed, pulling a guitar pick from between her guitar's strings. She used it to strum a quick, loud, one-two of noise from to try and get peoples' attention. Dissatisfied with the feedback, she fiddled with the mic again slightly. She then spoke to them, pushing her voice over the audience with the help of her microphone.

["Hey-hey-hey, whoa. Guys. People. I know you're all moved by our tunes, here, but ya don't actually gotta start literally fighting."]

-Crrsssh!-

Something made of glass shattered against the side of the stage, somewhere in front of Toph. She frowned.

["C'mon, you're not gonna throw shit at a blind girl, are ya?"] she taunted.

"Whatever, you're not fucking blind!"
"Get off the stage already!"
"Play something!"

Toph pulled off her sunglasses and let them drop to the floor beside her stool. She pointed a finger at her own pale eyes.

["Actually, yea, I am blind. Ya got a prob-bllpth!"]
She was interrupted by some kind of clothing colliding with her face. Based on the horrible stink and dampness of the article, it was some huge dude's T-shirt. Toph flinched her arms around wildly, flicking the grotesque article off of her.
"Oh, yea?" Toph grabbed her water bottle, still containing some liquid, and whipped it blindly at the crowd. Someone cried out in frustration from getting splashed by it, and there was another shattering of glass. ["Seriously! Who's throwin' shit? Get up here and I'll smack that grin off yer face!"]

The large, rotund, bearded man who had thrown his shirt at her crossed his arms over his flabby chest, a huge, dull frown cast across him.

"I'm not smiling," he bellowed.

["Then I'll...make you smile,"] Toph blurted into her mic.

"Blind Bandit! I love you!"
"Totally! We love you!"

Toph recognized a pair of voices to be her fanboys she'd interacted with back at the Jasmine Dragon not so long ago.

["Whoo!"] Toph cheered, her voice carrying across the lot. ["Yea, 's what I'm talkin' 'bout! Get rowdy!"]

Suki, a bit perplexed by what was going on, scratched the back of her head with her drumstick and wondered what would happen next. She slapped a cymbal and Toph hooped at the sound, beginning to strum chords of the next planned song in quick fashion. She heard a couple of gasps in the crowd, which sounded like it was getting a bit rougher. Some kind of shouting match was going down. She couldn't make out what it was, but her high on attention was mixing with her love of the rambunctious. She felt an empty drink can bump against her shin. She heard a bag of popcorn get spilled across the stage to her left. Another bottle collided against the wood on her right. She hopped up from her stool, giving her guitar an aggressive, rapid plucking.

["Yea!"] she cheered, flipping the wooden stool over with a -kathunk!- ["Let's break some rules!"] She kicked at the stool with her foot, and it slid off the front of the stage. She could hear it snap as it collided with the cement out in front of her.

From up in the distance, Lin had guzzled down the rest of her coffee and dropped it in the grass. She watched one of her officers break up a fist fight that had started. She spoke into her walkie.

"What's going on down there?"

["Phillips just took down one of our suspects. It seems like their goal is to create a scene here. No firearms spotted yet."]

Lin responded with another question: "Anything else?"

A different voice replied.

["One of Noah's guys just chased a suspect off."]

Lin's face wrinkled with displeasure as she noticed a pair of figures quickly fleeing the scene. She grunted.

"Fine," she spoke to her officers. "Let his people do their work. But focus on the Monsoons, everyone," she commanded. "That's our target. Permission to engage if you see a weapon drawn."

Lin kept a watchful eye on the increasingly boisterous audience. The performer at the microphone was yammering away.

["'Kay, people. I know our awesome just cut your faces off n' all that, but let's simmuh dun now."]

Lin glared at the idiot girl whose annoying voice was being blasted through the speakers. The guitar player seemed oblivious to the increasingly tense situation forming in front of her. She began playing another song.

+ ('All You Need is Love' by The Beatles) +

["~Love, love, love~"]

"What's the imbecile on stage doing?" Lin grumbled to herself.

["~Love, love, love~"]

Agent Feng, hands tucked in her suit's jacket pockets, stepped up to Lin's side.

"So the Red Monsoons and the Equalists are having some fun on our account?"

["~Love, love, love~"]

"It's been madness today," Lin groaned.

["~There's nothing you can do that can't be done~"]

Lin elaborated. "We managed to catch some of the Reds earlier at a drug bust."

["~There's nothing you can do that can't be done~"]

"There's been sightings of the Triple Threats today, as well."

["~Nothing you can sing that can't be sung~"]

"All these old names, together again." Feng mused, stroking his chin hair. "Sounds just like the Big Apple."

["~Nothing you can say but you can learn how to play the game~"]

Lin took a deep breath, her unpleasant memories taking over for just a second.

["~It's easy~"]

"Sounds like exactly what we don't need here," Lin sighed.

["~There's nothing you can make that can't be made~"]

"So, that's what you will receive," Feng chuckled. "Naturally."

["~No one you can save that can't-Uuaagh-!"]
Toph's singing was cut off as one of the men who'd been instigating trashtalk had reached out his arm across the stage, grabbed Toph by the ankle, and yanked her off her feet. She'd toppled over backward, falling on her and was dragged off the stage. Flailing her limbs out in defense, Toph struggled against her assailant before she was fully yanked off, a harsh landing on her back. Her guitar, still strapped around her, jangled against her abdomen.

"Toph!" Suki cried, bounding up from the drumset and hurling her drumsticks at Toph's attacker. One missed completely, the other smacked his shoulder uselessly.

The man, an unseen, unknown entity to Toph, grabbed Toph's guitar. In her stunned state, she couldn't figure out what was happening as the guitar was ripped from her, one end of its bands snapped.

"Give it...-!" Toph hissed, reaching out her hands for the object as she realized what had happened. Her body was firmly pressed down by the man's weighty foot. "Get the hell off me!" she growled, struggling to try and kick, scratch or bite him.

"Yea, see...now? Now I'm smiling," the shirtless man taunted her, lifting her guitar by its fretboard.

"Stop!" Suki shouted, hopping off the stage and shoulder-checking the man. Her agility was a bit useless against the guy's sheer girth, and he took a swing with the instrument, knocking Suki in the back. Toph was sickened by the sound of the impact and Suki's cry of surprise. Toph was attempting to scramble up to her trembling bare feet. She was wary of unseen glass shards strewn around her.

"You're some hotshot?" he goaded Toph. "Yea, I can make music, too."

-Thok!-Thok!-Crack!-Crunch!-Snap!-

Toph was paralyzed on the spot by the unsettling sound of wood striking wood. Bending, breaking, cracking, snapping from each rapid strike. She could feel bits of debris hit her from the impacts - splinters and shards. She knew what had just happened, and it felt like part of her soul was sprinkled across the ground in the splinters now strewn about.

Toph was brought out of her frozen, enraged stupor when the man grabbed her the hair and yanked her to the side. Her bun was undone, and she was tossed across the cement, her arms getting scraped and scratched by wood chips and glass shards from the broken bottles. As Toph scrambled through a mess of long, black hair and bits of glass to get back to her feet, Suki shoulder tackled the man.

"Get off her!" Suki screeched, her body check causing the man to stumble a few feet over.

"Toph!" Meng's shriek of fear and concern pierced through the now crazed crowd. There were multiple incidents of violence that had broken out by now, and the audience was in disarray. It was all a wave of sounds, distress and anger, senseless white noise. As Toph got up on her feet and her ears stopped ringing, it became apparent to her how much pain she was in - the impacts sustained from being assaulted, the scrapes and cuts across her skin practically lighting on fire in that instant of realization.

Before Toph knew it, the man who'd just shattered her guitar was wheezing and sputtering in pain off a few feet away.

"-your fucking problem?!" That was Jane's voice.

"Just makin' a scene," the man grunted out - Toph could detect some kind of weird amusement in his voice.

"Don't-!" -whump!- "Don't move." That was Suki.

Toph was jarred by Jane's hand on her shoulder, but coherent enough to recognize the girl's presence.

"Not dead, are ya?" Jane checked on her.

"Eh, just my eyes," Toph pushed out the words, gripping at her arm. "Nothin' new." Her bicep had been strained in her struggling - a pulled muscle, felt like. It was strangely comforting in that moment, her friend's arm across her back. Her whole body stung and ached, and the noise was all encompassing. The wind blustered, whipping Toph's undone hair in every direction.

"Hey! Hey!" Jane was snarling at what Toph presumed to be the attacker. "You stay the fuck down!"

-BANG!-

Shrieks, gasps, screams.

Toph's body was swiftly pushed to the ground, Jane's presence acting as a shield. Cement, glass, Jane's hot breath on her neck. It was a tense moment that dragged on for a small eternity. More gunfire rattled Toph's ears - two separate guns, she could tell.

-bang!-bang!-
-BANG!-

Jane's grip on her friend tightened at the noise, and Toph's body was numbed from pain and pressure and tension. Toph heard Jane grunt out a startled, "Fuck" amidst the chaos. Voices came from the distance. One was growling in agony, another screaming in terror. Then there were more steadied voices of what Toph presumed to be police officers.

"Officer down!"

"Drop your weapon!""Drop it!"
-click!-
"I said drop your weapon! If you don't-"
-BANG!-
-bang!-

Scuffling, shuffling, wrestling, running...Toph had never heard anything quite like it. Such a swarm of human activity but in such a horrible way. There was a heavy cloud of wordless fear that clung to the lot. It reminded her of the night Aang's presence had sunk into that wave of heat and smoke and ashen smell. A hot, heavy dread.

Toph could feel Jane's heart bumping against her ribcage, Jane's lungs taking in air in short, quick, panicked puffs through grit teeth. Jane was suffering from some kind of bout of mental trauma, but Toph was too dazed, lost, and bewildered to be able to comprehend the danger around her in the thick of that moment.

Minutes passed in what felt like a small eternity of quiet, motionless insanity as the dust gradually settled.

"Are you all right?" came a stranger's voice.

"Y-yea," Jane's raspy voice croaked. "We're good..."

Footsteps from the stranger trailed off as he attended others.

Jane finally got off of her friend, then helped pull back up. The two of them were shaky and startled, and Jane gripped Toph's hand tightly as if to reaffirm that the blind girl was still alive.

"Tophie..." Meng's whimpering voice approached before Toph's cousin hugged the two of them in relief.

"What just...-?" Toph mumbled out, still dazed.

"Shitcock motherfuck!" Jane seethed out in a stream of post-traumatic frustration, digging her nails through her hair.

"That's...one way of putting it," Suki blurted out. She was holding Toph's guitar case. "Let's...let the police do their jobs here..."

"Yes, can we leave please?" Meng winced, clearly unsettled by lingering in the area.

"Uh, sh-sure, we can do that..." Huh? Wait, wasn't that Douglas' voice?

"Yea, you guys get outta here, I've got Toph," Jane dismissed them. "Come on," Jane grunted under her breath, easing Toph up on her bare feet. Toph suddenly realized that her legs were rubbery and heavy, and she'd been leaving against Jane for support. She stood on her own two feet. It burned.

-ppafft-tt!-
The sound of Toph's flip-flops landing in front of her. It was a comfortable, familiar sound that offered just the smallest slice of reprieve in that heavy moment.

"I got your shoes after everything settled down," Suki explained. "There's...glass and things everywhere, you shouldn't go walking around barefoot."

"Thanks," Toph breathed out.

"You OK, Tophie?"

"Still in one piece," Toph replied to Meng.

"That was...not fun." This was a deep, weighty voice that Toph couldn't pin to a name, but she knew she'd heard it before. Someone Jane knew - one of Jane's little gang buddies, like Douglas. "There's cops everywhere..."

"Let's go," Douglas insisted.

"Please," Meng whimpered shakily. "I'll...I'll go wait by Suki's car for you," Meng called back as her presence drifted off. Toph knew that she had been the one addressed.

Toph's nose was slapped awake by a pungent scent - it was metallic. Copper, or iron? Metallic and...something else.

"So...so what went down?" Toph mumbled to Jane. She broke apart from her friend and groped her stinging feet for her simple shoes, slipping them on.

"I don't...even fucking know," Jane sighed in quick, quiet words. "Looks like those bullets that got shot hit some people, though..."

"This is a crime scene now," Suki puffed out in bewilderment, unsure of what to take away from what had happened. "Someone was just...killed right-...Just thirty feet away? What...-? Why would...-?"

Toph's brain wanted to crack a dumb joke:
Well, shit, I didn't realize our singing was sucking that bad...
She kept this knee-jerk thought to herself.

"Yea, n' we're prolly gonna need to answer some questions before we get shoved outta here," Jane lamented. "Cop's comin' our way."

A sturdy woman's voice with a sharp edge to it bellowed directly in Toph's direction, like a clean, polished nail.

"'Let's break some rules,' mm?"

Toph stood in awkward silence, her body disheveled. Toph didn't let the icy woman's harsh attitude phase her, though.

"What?! Pff! That…that wasn't me!" she casually muttered in reply. "I didn't say that!"

"Mm-hm…" Two firm footsteps brought this woman up close to Toph. "I know your type, little girl. Trust me: you don't want to lie to me."

"Chief!" came another voice - one of the officers.

Toph growled in meager dissatisfaction at this 'Chief's' words. "I'm not a 'little girl'," she pouted angrily under her breath.

"What was that?" the woman swiftly snapped back.

"Nothing, Ma'am," Toph babbled with stiff obedience.

The officer who'd gotten this no-nonsense lady's attention whispered in her ear. Toph could barely catch fragments of what was said. She definitely caught the word 'incident,' though, and the Chief's reaction was a slow, tired snort through her nostrils that Toph could plainly hear.

"You'd think there'd been a breakout at a goddamn asylum last night with the way today is going," the woman grumbled. "Get Jacobson and join the others there, I'll make sure the ball gets rolling here and catch up."

"Chief." The word was both an acknowledgment of the officer's orders and a farewell.

"As soon as you kids leave this place," the officer turned her attention to the girls in front of her. "you go straight home. You lock your doors. You stay inside for the night."

Suki gave an, "Mm."
Jane muttered a, "Yea."

"You were up in front of the crowd," the Chief cited to Toph. Toph could feel the woman's breath pressing against her skin. "Did you get a good look at the assailant that pulled you off stage? Can you point him out?"

"No, I can't," Toph snipped. "What's wrong with you fucking people?" she muttered in a huff. "I specifically said I was blind, that wasn't a joke, that-"
"O-OK, Toph, hey..." Jane gripped her tightly, eliciting the already near-manic girl to tighten up in a flinch. "Chill out." Upon realizing it was Jane, Toph's arms relaxed.

Lin scowled at the two of them, and Jane knew that face on this woman: it was a face that boiled down to them getting a bit of a tongue-lashing and being let off. Jane hadn't even had a month yet to distance herself from the last time it had transpired.

"So, not only were you encouraging disorderly conduct," Lin scolded Toph, "you also can't tell me a thing about what happened five feet in front of you. Well, aren't you just useless to me?"

Toph's teeth were grinding behind frowning lips, but Jane's tight grasp on her shoulders reminded her to keep her cool - this was a police officer.

"He threw her to the ground," Jane burst out formally. She gestured an elbow to Suki. "Me and my friend here got him to back off." Suki was being quiet through this conversation, and Jane couldn't blame her. Jane finished her explanation. "Someone in the crowd popped a round off n' when bullets started flying, guy drew a gun, n' then your guys...-" She swallowed. "Uh...pretty sure you passed the dude back there..."

Lin whipped out: "So you can confirm that the deceased initiated force, drew his weapon, and did not relinquish his firearm when instructed to do so?"

Jane blinked at the officer with startled eyes.

"Wh-?! I-I'm not...gonna have to go to, like, testify this shit, am I?"

"Wouldn't that be ironic?" Chief Jia sighed. "To be frank, Ms. Fitzpatrick, I'm not sure your testimony would be worth much, given your reputation. Between you and your Canadian cohort, it seems like one of you two always shows up at the wrong place at the wrong time."

"No. I didn't have anything to do with this," Jane firmly defended herself.

"Right. And I'm sure your-" Lin daintily flicked out her wrist in a mocking gesture. "-Freedom Fighters...are no where to be seen?"

"They're...-" Jane paused, her lips tightening as she controlled herself, ensuring to not look in the direction The Duke and Pipsqueak had escorted Meng. "I already told you, Ma'am: the Fighters are outta commission. We're done. We got nothin' to do with this shit."

Jane endured Lin's studious, sharp stare for a moment.

"Fine," Lin dismissed, evidently satisfied. "I'll find more useful witnesses. One of my officers will take your account down on your way out. Take your irresponsible friend here and get out of my sight."

As Lin stalked off to the hub of attention, Toph could feel Jane's grip loosen, a puff of air escaping her friend's nostrils. This act in turn allowed Toph a sense of relief to let her own tension dissolve.

"So that's the creepy psycho-bitch police chick you n' Korra mentioned before," Toph quietly muttered to Jane as they stood in their confused state.

"...Yea," Jane mumbled back.

There was a strange pause of consideration.

"She's terrifying," Toph concluded. "...I like her."

"...You would," Jane moaned under her breath. "Suki, hey," she tapped Suki on the shoulder to stir her from a stupor. Jane's eyes were wide as she exchanged a bewildered look of relief with the girl.

"Let's get out of here," Suki insisted, reciprocating Jane's dire expression.

"Don't gotta ask me twice," Jane agreed, tugging Toph to follow along. Toph was staunch and didn't budge. "Wh...-?" Jane was puzzled.

"My guitar," Toph blathered out, one hand smacking itself into the side of her face. The thought had just hit her like a sack of bricks. "Where...-?!"

"Toph, I've got it," Suki quickly replied as she tapped her fingertips on Toph's guitar case. Suki was quite eager to get the lot of them out of this scene. "Let's go."

"N-no," Toph coughed out, her eyes quickly pooling with water. The pain of that sack of bricks was dizzying. "My...guitar...Where is it? I need it."

"Uh, y-yea, Dead-Eyes?" Jane jiggled Toph's shoulder, glancing over to the stage, where shattered pieces of wood were strewn about. "It's an ex-guitar now..."

"But that...-! That was-...My Gram-Gram gave that to me, I can't...-" Toph's hands were now plastered to her face, trembling. Her voice cracked with desperation and rage.

Jane and Suki glanced at each other. Jane's lip curved down disparagingly on one corner, while Suki flashed bared teeth of doubt. Both faces read: 'Yikes.'

Suki looked back over to the stage, and her eyes lit up with a moment of determination. She unloaded Toph's green electric guitar from the case she had scooped up, and handed it to Jane, who slung it over her back with its strap. With the carrying case in hand, Suki deftly flew back to the stage and went about collecting wooden shards of Toph's heirloom that had spilled onto the ground, stuffing them into the guitar case in as stealthy a manner as she could.

She couldn't take the entire thing, especially with the thinning crowd giving way to investigation, but she had collected enough pieces to suffice, she figured. With a case half full of broken pieces, Suki regrouped with the other two.

"C'mon, girls. Time to go."

"Wh-?! But-!"
"Toph," Suki snapped. "I'm really sorry, OK? But someone just got shot. We should leave. Right now. Let's go follow where the other people are, get...get processed or...whatever...and leave."

As a pair of tears fell down each cheek, Toph reluctantly allowed Jane to pull her along. As the three of them made a quick exit from the scene, Jane felt awkward - not just because of the obviously violent event that had transpired. In some strange way, this hadn't been hard to deal with. Instead, the most traumatic moment of all of this for her was that last part - as they left. Toph's normally snarky, witty, childish tomboyism had disintegrated into a sniveling, shaking, panicky state. Jane couldn't recall having ever seen Toph quite like this before. At least not in some long while.

It was discomforting, to say the least, most of all because Jane had no idea what to do. This was Katara's job, the comforting and the supporting and the touching and hugging. Jane decided she'd try and act on what she'd learned from Kat's lead, and rubbed Toph's shoulder as they walked. Toph sighed out a heavy breath and wordlessly entwined her fingers between Jane's. With her other hand, Toph wiped tears from her face, pushing her bangs to one side.

Toph whimpered out two words of despair.

"She's gone..."