Zuko Mows the Lawn
In the heat of the day, Zuko mowed the lawn.
So rich the grass of the lawn had once been that the lawn mower turned out to be crying, silently, its traditionally black tears, to cut it. The mower, in fact, found itself frighteningly sociopathic, hoping to maintain its ties to mowerdom while also remaining fond of the grass what died in its blades. The moral conflictions proved far too much for the mower, and it turned to explode upon the revelation that it, the mower, simply couldn't mow grass like its father could, like its grandfather, in fact, could!Thus Zuko questioned why there were remnants of an exploded mower on his lawn. Believing it to be an assassination attempt, an attempt to force Mai into the position of Fire Lord (and how!), Zuko went to the solitary pub in the entirety of the Fire Nation, attempting to find who the assassin was, as well as the man by whom said assassin was hired. In this pub, the vaguely feminine aura Zuko's disguise took with it led to the frequent mistaking of Zuko as a woman. Giving into his less-than-traditional sensibilities, Zuko let a man fondle him, convincing himself it was for the greater good of the search for the assassin of the day. Upon said fondling, said fondler, upon finding out the clearer specifics of Zuko's anatomy, ran out of the room, crying for a woman named Hopo. Believing this could only be a clue as to whom the assassin was, Zuko took on a search for the woman who went by the name of Hopo. It occurred that Hopo was, with difficulty marrying the processes required to process the information in regards to Zuko's discovery of said information, a harlot, common among Earth Kingdom politicians. An exclamation of denial found itself the beginning of the search for how she related to the attempted assassination, and a pipe appeared to leave the way, Zuko allowing himself to, for once, embrace the traditional smoking items of his ancestry. As he continued his futile search for the assassin who, unbeknownst to him, never was, Zuko ignored the proceedings occurring in his palacial construct, or, in terms watered down so as to appeal to the most common of Fire Nation peasantry, a fortified alcazar, proceedings akin to Mai's believing herself to be a fine housekeeper. As these events occurred, in fact, Mai believed beyond any doubt that her house-keeping skills proved the strongest of any wife in the Fire Nation. A woman, she was due to faint at any time in the day, too womanly to see the world as any man saw it, yet she overcame these odds, keeping the fortified, palacial alcazar construct as tidy as possible. Winds would flow through individual locks of her hair, almost bringing her to a state of unbearable unconsciousness with their strengths compared to her's (she being the strongest woman in the world!). Due to the Fire Lord [who, if we've been following this tale from beginnings beyond beginnings (or perhaps, endings of beginnings beyond beginnings), went by the name of Zuko] being in a state of absence, searching with unsubstantial futility the world for his alleged assassin, Mai found herself keeping the house clean as possible in hopes that the house's cleanliness would possibly distract from their violent urges. Were she a man, able to fight, she would probably have found herself defending the fortified, palacial alcazar construct as much as any good man would, though her womanliness led to her inability to defend, her naive hopes that the attackers and rioters would be distracted purely by the shine of the leather on the armchair, the clarity of the window near the dining hall, or perhaps the window near the clean bedroom of her beloved, and, ultimately, the smoothness of the desk on which Zuko had, prior to his absence, written messages through the media of scrolls. Through this cleaning she would destroy the integrity of spiritual ties to the Fire Nation, inadvertently ruining a certain spirit of Fire's portrait with which it spoke to the current Fire Lord. Disturbed by this, an Avatar, or, as of then, the current Avatar at the time of then, known only as Aang, came to the Fire Nation to see only riots and violence, as well as the destruction of the painting making note of the spirit of Fire. Aang, forced into a state of nigh-omniscience in which he would take spiritual minds, predecessors to his own, and pool them together to form an unstoppable being, allowed the rioters to kill Mai, and thus, all was good.