The Silver Crystal

[muppetwriter]

Just thought I'd share with everyone this YouTube video of Toph Bei Fong, the blind Earthbender with an attitude as hard as the rocks that she throws.


The Best of Toph

 

[BeakerSqueedom]

I love Toph--however, Sokka earns my admiration.


*Clicks the link*

 

[muppetwriter]

Chapter Seven​

Reed’s lab once again hummed with activity. The ruins of the attempted wedding were still scattered across the roof deck and were now being blown around by a lazy and uninterested wind. The media down on the street had long ago dispersed. Pieces of chairs and tables lay where they had all day, fallen victims in the field of battle. A flower or two decorated the space before they also bowed their heads and fell silent. Sue couldn’t look at it any longer. She steered clear of the windows and their view.

Ben stood motionless in the corner of the room. He had been that way since the electrical storm, his mind likely replaying the sight of his precious Alicia in the path of the helicopter.

A crowd had once again gathered, this one starkly different from the wedding guests that only hours before had filled the space. The military had flooded the lab, eager to learn as much as they could about the team’s close encounter with the silver being. But not all of them were present at the time. Johnny had yet to return from his chase, and everyone was just as worried over him as they were of Will, Caleb, Matt, Pepe, and Robin, who had yet to show up to the wedding event at all.

General Luft stood by Captain Raye and Jack Crichton (the retired astronaut father of John Crichton), listening closely to what Reed was telling them. “Whatever this thing’s physical appearance is, it had the ability to convert matter and energy.”

Luft cleared his throat and spoke up. “So it caused the anomalies?”

Reed nodded his head. “It seems to radiate cosmic energy when it exerts itself, randomly affecting matter. Evidently, this entity doesn’t want to be detected. It destroyed the sensor.”

“It knew it was being monitored?” Jack asked.

Reed nodded again. “And tracked it back here. We’re dealing with something highly resourceful.”

“You can say that again, man!”

A voice outside of the group caught their attention immediately after they heard it. Heads turned towards the doorway leading into the lab and noticed the surprise arrival of John Crichton, Johnny Storm (who felt worse for wear), Aeryn Sun, Ka D’Argo, Dominar Rygel XVI, Chiana, Noranti, Jen, Kira, and Fizzgig.

Jack Crichton’s eyes nearly jumped out of his head as he looked upon his son, who he hadn’t seen for a long time. “John?” He was about to walk up and hug him, but the agents and soldiers flanking Jack, Luft, and Raye were quickly alarmed by the sight of the aliens accompanying Crichton and Johnny. Their firearms instantly went up and aimed directly at Aeryn, D’Argo, Rygel, Chiana, Noranti, and the Gelflings, and the weapons Aeryn and D’Argo were carrying went up as well.

“Whoa! Whoa! Whoa! Hold it!” Crichton yelled. “They’re not here to hurt anyone! They’re just here to help! Put the guns down!”

General Luft was a little hesitant to comply with Crichton’s demand, seeing as how these were creatures that he had yet to tap into and discover how intelligent they were, what their intergalactic origins could do for humanity, or whether they were hostile or not. But he complied nonetheless, because there will eventually be a time and place for just that.

“Lower your guns.” Luft ordered, and his men did as they were told, leaving Aeryn and D’Argo to do just the same.

“Should’ve expected these ‘worthlings’ to be so frelling jumpy towards another species.” Rygel uttered.

Luft’s ears perked up as soon as he heard the first three words in Rygel’s comment. “You can speak English?”

Crichton and his companions exchanged bewildered expressions. “No, he can’t…I mean, he’s not supposed to…err…you’re not supposed to be understanding what he’s saying, because you haven’t been injected with any translator microbes.”

“Translator what?” Jack remarked with confusion. “John, what the h*ll is going on here? Where have you been?”

“It’s a long story, Dad.” Crichton answered. “But, right now, the important thing for us is to find the ‘Silver Surfer’.”

Luft raised an eyebrow over the name. “Silver Surfer?”

“The thing that I’d chased just an hour ago.” Johnny said. “It looked like a man, but it was completely covered in silver. And it was flying on top of a…a surfboard-type thing.”

“We’ve been following it across the galaxy.” Aeryn stated, feeling the need to address the Earthlings, since they could understand every single word she uttered. “We watched it kill a planet before our very eyes.”

“And if we don’t do anything as soon as possible, it could kill ours, too.” Crichton added.

“Well, what do you propose we should do?” Luft inquired.

Johnny tried to follow the conversation but still wasn’t feeling like himself after his encounter with the Silver Surfer and even a short but interesting tour around the alien ship John Crichton had been trekking through the stars in. His stomach was in knots and he couldn’t shake the feeling of being suspended in the outer reaches of the Earth’s atmosphere, where it was cold—cold enough to extinguish his flame. Where he felt so helpless and alone.

Sue walked over to him. She went to place her hand on his shoulder but he flinched and pulled back. “Johnny, are you okay?”

He looked at his sister’s face. Concern etched lines into her brow. She looked so tired. He wanted to tell her all about it, his encounter with the silver thing, how it made him feel, and the way John Crichton rescued him and took him to his alien ship. But he couldn’t.

“Yeah, I think I just need to walk it off.” He turned and walked slowly toward the elevator banks.

Crichton was staring at General Luft, answering his question. “Now I don’t give a d**n if you guys feel the need to capture and study something like this, but we need to destroy that thing before it attacks again.”

“I can find another way to track it.” Reed said.

“In the meantime, we’re going to try and find out where on Earth it is right now.” Luft said, before pointing a stern finger at Crichton. “And you and your ‘friends’ are going to tell us everything you know about it.”

Crichton chuckled. “So you can run some freaky tests on them? I don’t think so, dude!”

“John…” Jack began.

Crichton refused to let him finish in defense of his companions. “No, Dad! I’d feel much safer with my friends here than with these lunatics and their weapons of mass destruction!”

Luft just rolled his eyes in disgust over the way Crichton was defending his alien friends. But it was to be expected, considering how close he had been with them in his long journey across the galaxies. So, instead of making a useless attempt to convince him that the C.O.V.N.E.T. headquarters was much safer than any other part of the world at this time, he just let him go along with his decision.

“Have it your way, Crichton.” Luft stated. “Just know that the fate of the world lies in your hands from this moment on.” And with that said, General Luft and the rest of the military left the laboratory, his words leaving quite a stinging sensation on John.

The words apparently left an impression on Reed as well. He walked over to Sue, who still seemed to be avoiding the wreckage of their wedding. “Sue, I’m so sorry.” Reed said. “I had no idea the sensor would bring that thing here. The only reason I didn’t tell you about it is because I didn’t want you to worry.”

She reached out and touched his cheek. “Reed, I’m not mad that you built the sensor. It was the right thing to do.”

“Oh, then great!” he said. He started to walk away from her and back to his work, but she threw a force field in front of him. He slammed right into it. Then he felt another field right behind him. Sue pushed the two fields together, trapping Reed, exerting such pressure on him that he started to thin out his body. She spun him around so he was facing her.

“I wasn’t finished,” she said calmly, a fire in her eyes.

“Oh, sorry,” Reed said. “Please, continue.”

The eyes on Aeryn, Rygel, D’Argo, Noranti, Chiana, and the Gelflings nearly escaped from their sockets, as they watched how bizarrely the couple was bickering. They had only been on Earth for an hour, and already they began to question to “humanity” of its inhabitants. Crichton, meanwhile, was just as taken aback by the ways physics was being bent right before him—it went against everything he believed in.

Ben could sense a storm coming. He wanted to get himself, the Guardians, the Muppets, and Crichton’s group the heck out of there. “I think we’ll just grab ourselves something to eat,” he said, escorting them all out of the room quickly.

Sue ignored Ben and the others, focusing all her energy on Reed, keeping him trapped tightly between the two fields. “This just proves what I’ve been saying all along.”

“Would you drop the force fields, please?” he asked. After a moment’s hesitation Sue complied, and Reed quickly reformed his body to his normal shape. “Thank you.”

Sue’s anger was undiminished. “We can’t even get through a wedding without it turning into World War Three. How can we possibly raise a family like this? Face it—we can’t do what we do and lead normal lives. You know it’s true.”

Reed looked at her, slightly stunned.

Out of the corner of her eye, Sue thought she saw a sudden flash of color through the large windows. A blur of orange and red. Her brother? She said, “I’m going to check on Johnny.”

Sue pushed through the revolving doors of the Baxter Building and out onto the street. She spied her brother, obviously dazed, keeping his balance by holding on to a nearby lamppost. A small crowd of worried onlookers was beginning to gather around him, keeping a safe distance. Flames shot upward from his body even though he was not ignited.

“Johnny!” Sue yelled out to him, concerned at the strange sight. “What’s wrong?”

It wasn’t long before Crichton, his companions, the Guardians, and the KMUP crew stepped out to see what was happening, causing the crowd to increase in size. Clifford seemed slightly perplexed as he stared at Johnny and said, “Hey, man. I thought you were upstairs.”

Johnny looked at his sister and friends, fear staining his face. “I don’t know. I’ve been feeling weird ever since my run-in with Surfer boy.”

“Might be some sort of radiation he was giving off of him.” Crichton assumed.

“And you brought the frellin’ human on our ship?” Rygel shouted with caution. “We might’ve caught something from him! You know that?”

Ignoring what Rygel was saying, Sue attempted to take control of the situation. “Maybe we should take you to a…”

Before Sue could complete her sentence, Johnny looked up at her. He grabbed her arm and she jumped at his sudden and rather fearsome grip. His eyes burned silver. As Sue started to scream, a wave of cosmic energy leapt out of her brother and bathed her in its radiant glow. The powerful energy bombarded Sue, flooding her entirely with strange sensations and emotions, and was soon refracted back at Johnny, the two held captive by the ethereal bioluminescence.

Sue stepped back from her brother, dazed and confused. Suddenly her entire body burst into flames. She started slapping at her arms, trying to extinguish the fire.

“Johnny,” she yelled. “What did you do that for?”

But Johnny looked as confused as his sister and the rest of the people looking on. He could barely speak. “I didn’t do anything!” he stammered. “Stop, drop, and roll, Sis!” Sue did as he said, but could not extinguish the flames. Strangely, she could not feel the heat on her skin. She watched helplessly as the flames burned brighter, hotter, making her body rise off the street.

“Good God!” Crichton exclaimed.

“Now there’s something you don’t see quite often.” Irma uttered.

“There’s something you shouldn’t be seeing at all!” Clifford remarked.

“What’s happening?” she shouted, her body just reaching the top of the lamppost.

“Hang on,” Johnny said. “I’ll get you! Flame on!”

But instead of igniting his body, Johnny’s efforts turned him invisible. A passing stranger walked into him, knocking Johnny down. “Hey, watch it!” A few others passed by quickly, bumping into and tripping over him. It took him a moment to realize what had happened. He held his hand in front of his face and saw the light ripple against nothing. “What the h*ll…? This is so not right,” he said, his voice sounding small as he watched his sister rise away from him.

~~~~~~~~~~~​

Upstairs in his lab, Reed had pushed aside his doubts about Sue to focus on finding the Silver Surfer, with help from Bunsen and Beaker. Luft was right—it was crucial to find this thing in order to protect everything they loved.

“The odds are not as stacked highly against us as you believe, Reed.” Bunsen told him. “With the technology we have here in the Baxter Building and at Muppet Labs, we’ll find him sooner than expected.

Reed was typing into his PDA as he listened to Bunsen, trying to figure out another way to track the silver being. “I hope for the sake of the world that you’re right, Bunsen. All that we have depends on everything.”

“Mee moo meep mee mee!”

“Beaker, it would do us a great deal of help if you focused on the situation at hand.” Bunsen said. “We have no time to worry about…” He stopped as soon as he saw a flaming figure floating outside the window. “Jonathan?”

Reed turned to see what Bunsen and Beaker were staring out the window at and jumped back, a bit surprised. “Johnny, you scared the h*ll out of me.”

“I’m not Johnny!” the figure shouted.

Reed, Bunsen, and Beaker recognized the voice. “Sue?” they all said unison, startled. The figure started to descend and the three scientists did the same, taking the elevator down to the lobby. They ran out onto the street, where he found the flaming Sue Storm hovering just above the ground. Reed, Bunsen, and Beaker could also see passerby bumping into something unseen and a voice that sounded like Johnny’s repeatedly saying “Ouch.”

The pedestrians pointed up at Sue, as if a person on fire was a familiar thing to see in New York City. “Hey, it’s the Human Torch,” one yelled. Another exclaimed, “No, it’s a girl!” and yet another said, “He’s so cute.”

“No,” Sue protested, waving her flaming hands in the air. “I’m not. I mean, I am, but…look, just go away!”

Johnny was eager to greet his fans but no one could see him. His protests couldn’t change that fact. “Over here, ladies!” he yelled fruitlessly. “Look at me, over here!” His exclamations fell upon deaf ears. Johnny gave up, defeated. “This is my worst nightmare.”

Reed, Bunsen, and Beaker went running at the sound of Johnny’s voice. “Sue? How did this happen?” Reed asked.

Sue floated down toward him. “I have no idea. I touched Johnny, and then this!”

“Where is Jonathan?” Bunsen inquired.

“Here.” Johnny walked toward him, fading in and out of sight, a ripple in the air. “What’s happening?” he asked.

Reed rubbed his chin, thinking. “You said your powers switched when you touched? Try it again.”

Johnny reached up to touch his sister. As soon as he made contact, a wave of cosmic energy leapt out of him and once again bathed her in its radiance. The powerful energy bombarded Sue and was soon refracted back at Johnny, as before.

Johnny became visible again and ignited his hand to prove his point. “Cool! Hey, I’m back!”

He looked to the now staring and confused crowd for support, but all eyes were locked on his sister. Her body had lost its flames, but in the switch all of her clothes had been burned off. Without the benefit of her special suit, she was left naked in the light of day.

“What do you know? Another nude moment, and Pepe’s not here to enjoy it.” Irma commented.

It took a second for Sue to realize what had happened. She turned herself invisible once again to hide from the prying, wide eyes of the crowd. “Why does this always happen to me?” she asked no one in particular.

Reed, Bunsen, and Beaker herded their friends back inside the Baxter Building. They were now faced with yet another facet of the silver entity’s strange effect on this planet and its inhabitants. It has the ability to manipulate their powers? They feared what was to come next. For if even their special abilities were at the mercy of this Silver Surfer, they feared they didn’t have a prayer of defeating it.

END OF CHAPTER SEVEN​

 

[The Count]

WOOT! Yeah, Johnny was right to say his sis was hot back then. Great update, just what I needed about now. Hope more gets posted when you can get it done buddy.

 

[BeakerSqueedom]

EEEE! XD This was fun to read...

I swear.

 

[The Count]

Hee... Squeeky, you should probably read Sean's previous story in this series, Four Plus Two Over Five. It'll give you insight into how the team was formed, including your screwy scientist roomies.

 

[BeakerSqueedom]

I've read his stuff already--thank you for telling me, though.

 

[muppetwriter]

Chapter Eight​

Later in the day, the team and their friends somberly gathered in Reed’s lab, their collective minds clouded and concerned. The events earlier—the ruined wedding, their encounter with the Silver Surfer, and the unexpected switching of their special abilities on the street—made for a sorrowful mood. Sue kept to the comers, watching Reed, Bunsen, and Beaker at work and still trying to avoid the sight of the wedding mess outside. Ben stood solidly by the sides of Reed, Bunsen, and Beaker, the way he always did. Johnny was very fidgety, more than freaked out after the fight with the Surfer and his time spent invisible. No one would say it out loud, but everyone was keeping a safe distance from him, fearful of another unexpected transformation, and that compounded Johnny’s lingering feelings of isolation.

Reed, Bunsen, and Beaker were too busy looking for an explanation for the power switch to notice the brooding, moody demeanor of their teammates. They placed their faith in science, not in feeling, and they knew there had to be a plausible explanation as to what had happened. They felt it had to have something to do with the Surfer, since that was the only new element in the mix.

Reed peered into the electromagnetic telescope. He had been comparing samples from Sue and Johnny, looking for clues. He pulled back from the scope, rubbing his eyes. “All of Sue’s results are normal,” he said finally, casting a glance in her direction. “But Johnny’s…”

“But Johnny’s what?” Johnny asked, his voice laced with panic.

Reed swallowed hard and looked at the impetuous young man, whom he already thought of as a brother. “Your encounter with the Surfer must have affected you somehow. Your molecules seem to be in a constant state of flux.”

“Is that bad?” Taranee asked.

Neither Reed, Bunsen, nor Beaker was sure. “It caused Jonathan to temporarily switch powers with Susan. We should do a test and see if it happens again.” Bunsen stated, then turned his attention to his assistant. “Beaker, would you do the pleasure of being our honorary volunteer?”

“Meep mee?”

“No, no. Stay back,” Johnny protested, putting his arms in front of him. “We don’t know what might happen if the switch occurs between a human and a…”

“Oh! I need to see this!” Ben interjected, right before giving Beaker a slight push against the lab assistant’s back, causing Beaker to reach out for Johnny. As soon as they touched, a wave of cosmic energy leapt out of Johnny and covered Beaker in its furious glow. The powerful energy bombarded Beaker and was soon refracted back at Johnny, as with Sue earlier. At first, after the switch, nothing appeared to have changed.

And then, Beaker spoke…

“Just like always, Bunsen, nothing special happened!”

If there were eyes on Bunsen Honeydew, they would’ve been bulging out as far as the others’ were, as soon as they heard something other than “meeps” come out of Beaker’s mouth. “B-Beaker…y-y-you’re speaking perfect…English?”

“Well, of course I…” It only took Beaker uttering four more words to realize that he had been speaking English and not “meeps.” “Hey, I am! I’m talking! I’m talking like some guy with bushy eyebrows named Richard! This has got to be the coolest thing to ever happen to me!”

Listening to Beaker talk, Sue couldn’t help but to direct her attention towards Johnny, who hadn’t utter a single word after the switch. “Johnny?” she said, “Are you…okay?”

“Meep mee moo mee!” Johnny answered, sounding much like Beaker, only with a deeper tone. “Meep moo? MEEP MOO MEEPING MEE!”

“What the frell is he sayin’?” Chiana asked.

“You don’t want to know.” Beaker responded.

Reed and Bunsen watched the interchange, a bit fascinated by the impressive display of cosmic energy if not by their rapid transformations in speech. It only slightly occurred exactly as he’d thought it would. The only difference being the effect it had between a human and a Muppet.

“Man! With all this weird stuff happenin’, we ain’t gonna be the same Muppets that people want us to be after all these years.” Clifford uttered.

“Oh, I wouldn’t say that, Cliff.” Johnny Fiama said. “I’d say that Beaker has quite a good singing voice there. Who knows? I might have some competition here.” Then Fiama stopped and realized for a minute what he just said. “Oh, dear God! I’m gonna be upstaged by a man with light bulbs for eyes!”

“Do you guys still have your individual powers?” Hay Lin asked.

Johnny tried to ignite his hands, but they didn’t. And instead of being engulfed in flames, they started to shake uncontrollably along with the rest of his body. He reached for Reed’s lab table for support, and it immediately fell victim to his remarkable quaking, turning into one big pile of ash in seconds, and its contents crashing to the floor.

“Whoa!” Beaker said. “Guess that means I’m with the one with the…” He snapped his foamy fingers, causing them to shoot out a small flame in a split second. “Awesome!” The rest of his form then began to ignite, turning him into a living flame. “Check it out! Fireproof foam!”

Before Beaker could utter another word, Johnny reached out and grabbed his flaming arm. The physical contact once again triggered the transformation of powers (and speech), the illuminating switch lighting up the lab. After the switch, Johnny said, “Can I talk? Testing one…two…three! Oh, thank God!”

“Meep mee moo mee.” Beaker sadly uttered.

Johnny didn’t know what Beaker had just said (he wasn’t even certain what he said himself a moment ago), but he wasn’t having any more of it. “I can’t keep switching my powers or English with you guys. I like my powers. And your powers suck!”

“Johnny, just calm down.” Reed said.

“Screw calming down!” Johnny snapped. “What am I supposed to do in the meantime?”

“Just try to keep your distance from us,” Reed responded.

Ben spoke up. “You and me are going to be spending a lot of time together, pal!” Johnny grimaced at the remark and took a few steps back from the laughing pile of rock.

~~~~~~~~~~~​

After the excitement inside the Baxter Building, the everyday madcap shenanigans at the KMUP station didn’t seem so bad, as Clifford returned there with his crew and the Guardians. They were all quite exhausted from the events of the day, but not so much to worry of the disappearance of Will, Matt, Caleb, Robin, and Pepe. As soon as they were inside the station, Hay Lin used the payphone to call Susan Vandom and ask of her daughter’s current whereabouts.

Once an answer was given over the phone, Hay Lin hung up and turned to her friends. “Well, Miss Vandom says that she hasn’t been home since last night. She thought Will might’ve been with us for a sleepover. Guess I should’ve told her that she was.”

“Did she sound upset when you told her she wasn’t?” Irma asked.

“If sighing and grunting is considered being upset, then yeah.” Hay Lin sheepishly replied.

The group sighed themselves over the situation, feeling as if they had a missing person case on their hands. But before they got to finding photos of their friends to make flyers with, in came Will herself with Matt, Caleb, Pepe, Elyon, and Robin in tow. However, it wasn’t just them. Aang, Sokka, Katara, Toph, and Momo soon followed them—Appa, the flying bison, was elsewhere.

“Hola, mi amigos!” Pepe greeted in Spanish.

“Hey, guys.” Will said in plain English. “What’s up?”

Just as soon as the others heard their voices, they stood up from wherever they were sitting (or jumped up from wherever they were standing) and looked in their direction. Clifford was the first one to address them. “Where the heck have ya’ll been?”

“We were in outer space, h’okay.” Pepe replied.

“Technically, we were in Meridian, talking with Elyon about the dreams she and Will have been having.” Caleb said.

Cornelia gazed in the direction of Elyon, before looking towards the unfamiliar characters near her. “Well, that’d explain why you’re here and not there. But would one of you want to explain who your friends are? If you want to call them ‘friends’, that is.”

“Relax, Corny. They’re cool.” Will said. “In fact, if it weren’t for them, our butts would’ve been toasted on Meridian by Azula.”

“A-who-la?” Irma puzzlingly asked.

“Azula, the evil princess of the Fire Nation.” Robin said. “She came to Meridian with two other girls to overthrow Elyon and take that crystal the agents of C.O.V.N.E.T. are keeping in their headquarters.”

“Yeah, she’s a dangerous sexy girl, h’okay.” Pepe added.

“And she has to be stopped at all cost.” Aang stepped in and said. “If she gets that crystal, we’re all doomed.”

Hay Lin looked up and down at Aang, noting the uncanny arrow markings on his hands and head. “Wow. Cool tattoos.”

“Thanks.” Aang said with a smile. “My name’s Aang.”

“I’m Hay…” She started to say, before she suddenly felt a sneeze coming on. As soon as she let it loose, a massive gust of wind blew through the entire room, blowing off any loose items off their current positions. The only thing that had kept its place during the small but brief windstorm was Aang, who smiled brightly as the wind blew past his bald scalp.

“You’re an Airbender!” He shouted excitedly. “W-What tribe do you hail from? Where are your arrows? How did you end up here and not on our home world? Are there others? What do you…?”

“Aang, hold it!” Katara interjected. “I don’t think she’s an Airbender like you. She can control the element of air, but she’s not from your tribe or our world for that matter.”

Aang lowered her head in despair. “Oh.”

Seeing the distraught look on his face made Hay Lin feel bad for him, even though she didn’t know the exact reason he was so upset that she wasn’t an “Airbender” like him. She responded to his despairing attitude by telling him, “It’s okay. I guess you can say I’m sort of like a…what did you call me again?”

“Airbender.” Aang said. “And it’s alright. I know I shouldn’t have expected too much from the moment I noticed your ability to bend the air. But it is great to meet someone just like an Airbender.”

“You’re gonna see that we all have abilities just like you guys.” Will stated, before pointing to her friends and fellow Guardians one-by-one. “Taranee can control fire just like Azula—only less violently. Irma can control water just like Katara can. And Cornelia controls the earth much like Toph.”

Toph chuckled. “I beg to differ. Nobody can control the earth like I can.”

“Oh, really? Like you’ve seen me pull a fifty-foot rock out of the ground, without using my bare hands.” Cornelia told her.

“For your information, I can’t see anything at all!” Toph exclaimed in frustration. “I’m blind!”

Cornelia’s face turned red in embarrassment over her failure to take notice of Toph’s disability. “Oh. I’m sorry.”

“Yeah, you’d better be!” Toph remarked.

“Hey, what’s your problem anyway?” Cornelia angrily inquired, no longer letting Toph’s blindness stop her from setting her straight. “I said I was sorry. What else do you want from me?”

Toph viciously pointed directly at Cornelia, which was a bit surprising to Cornelia herself, since Toph wasn’t supposed to know exactly where she was standing. “I want you to admit that I’m better at controlling earth than you!”

“Why is it so important to you?” Cornelia retorted.

“Because I don’t want people goin’ around saying you’re a better bender than me!” Toph said. “You don’t even sound like a great bender! You sound like someone who doesn’t even know how to pick up a pebble!”

Cornelia just scoffed at the blind, feisty girl in front of her. “Is she for real?”

“Sadly, yes.” Sokka uttered, before Toph roughly elbowed him in the gut.

Shortly afterwards, they heard a loud, inhuman moaning noise that was slightly muffled from above. Hearing it, Toph turned towards Sokka, with a curious and yet concerned look on her face. “Wow. I didn’t pick the wrong time to punish you, did I?”

“My stomach’s empty, but it’s not me.” Sokka clarified.

“It’s Appa.” Aang said.

“Whatta?” Clifford asked.

“His flying bison.” Will replied. “We left him with Vathek and Blunk on the rooftop of the building.”

“You’ve got a flying bull sittin’ on the roof plain in sight for everybody to see?” Clifford asked with a very alarmed expression on his face. “Girl, what is you thinkin’?”

“Well, it’s not like he’s going to be there for very long.” Robin told Clifford. “Once we stop Azula from threatening the world, he’ll be back in outer space with the rest of our new friends.”

Taranee was listening closely to what Robin was telling them. “The rest? You mean there’s more of you?”

“Technically, yes.” Katara answered. “We came to this galaxy with a man named Crichton and his crew of the living Leviathan ship known as Moya.”

“Not to mention two small creatures called Gelflings that are named Jen and Kira.” Aang added.

The others then exchanged surprised looks with each other. Will caught their glances and grinned. “You guys have met them, haven’t you?”

“Yeah.” Clifford said. “But it was anything but a pleasant acquaintance.”

“General Luft and the agents of C.O.V.N.E.T. were there,” Hay Lin said, “And they almost took them away for study, if Crichton hadn’t intervened.”

“C.O.V.N.E.T.?” Toph uttered, remembering what she and the others were told about the organization. “Those are the guys that want to perform tests on us, right?” Will nodded in reply, although Toph could not see her nodding. “Uh…hello? I’m asking a question here!”

Will caught herself off guard, once she realized that she was answering a blind person’s question. “Oh, uh, yeah. That’s them.”

“And they’re the ones that have the crystal.” Aang said. “We have to get it away from them and this entire planet, before something really bad happens.”

Taranee thought carefully over her idea, before she shared it with her friends. “Well, the others are helping C.O.V.N.E.T. in stopping the Silver Surfer. Maybe we can take advantage of that if it comes to leading us to the whereabouts of this crystal.”

“Good idea.” Will said, before turning her attention to Aang and his group. “But it might also be a good idea to keep them from knowing about you guys, in order to avoid any urges to capture any of you for study.”

“Okay.” Aang acknowledged. “How do we do that?”

“Well, for one thing, we have to get you all some new threads, because you look more alien in appearance than my boyfriend.” Cornelia said, and Caleb gave a little sheepish look. “Give me a few minutes to take your measurements, and I’ll hook you up with some down-to-earth clothes before you can say ‘stylin’.”

“I just have one question though, before we do this.” Toph said, with her hand up in the air like a first-grade student in a classroom.

“What is it, Toph?” Katara asked.

“What exactly is a ‘Silver Surfer’?”

END OF CHAPTER EIGHT​

 

[The Count]

Vonderful! The Guardians and the Benders... And then everybody's coming together... And Johnny and Beaker... Oh, please post more!

 

[BeakerSqueedom]

HAHAHA!
This was a wonderful chapter.
Full of giggles and fits.
XD Poor Beaker!

Toph....Cornelia....HAHAH!

XD Please.....post....more....now