#an unstoppable force not to be fooled ( toph beifong )

[empirelead-a]

tag #1

[lightdancer1]

That same deconstruction of the super-soldier idea underpins my Avatar stories

One of the key elements, though not explicitly noted as such is that Zuko is not 1:1 as powerful in Firebending as Azula is, but they are both products of that experiment. Zuko, as a Firebender, has his main advantage as a super-soldier in that he learns the basic of a technique more swiftly than Azula does....but because he doesn't put in nearly the work that she does into it his Firebending lags at multiple levels.

Azula is far more powerful than Zuko in raw terms and puts in all the work to get there.

At the same token there are people who are not products of the experiment at all who match the most powerful Firebender of her generation 1:1 in raw power terms. Toph and Katara, and ultimately Tenzin when the Airbenders have a non-Avatar example. Toph and Katara within the spheres of Earthbending and Waterbending are unstoppable forces, and when the three face off against each other they tend to stalemate because it's a case of an unstoppable force versus an immovable object.

*Zuko* needs surprise and luck to beat Azula in sparring, let alone real combat. Katara or Toph, OTOH, have a 50:50 chance to do so by brute force and equally so by smarts/sneakiness. The very reality that people who have no equivalent program whatsoever, and in the case of Toph Beifong the first Earthbender in a family in some 350 years, a complete absence of (known) Avatar-ancestry, and in the case of Katara having the improbable combination of 'sole surviving (known) example of a category *also* being the most powerful exemplar of that type of Bending is its own deconstruction of the idea.

Azula never registers Zuko as an equal as a Bender because he isn't one, Katara and Toph, OTOH, absolutely do get this and more to the point, even absent the mental breakdown, at least as I write the scenario Katara would have beaten Azula in a 1:1 match given she very nearly did so under Ba Sing Se in the prior season. Katara is Azula's equal in skill and raw power.

In various AUs the two (and ultimately the three when Toph shows up full-time) become a combination that brings the war to a very rapid finishing point as having the Avatar, who masters all four elements, and the three most powerful of the next generation in three elements on the same side makes Team Avatar the equivalent of a very big army and something where only fools rush in where angels fear to tread to face.