Tales of Uncle Iroh's Tea Shop
Azula and the Parking Fines
Azula hated mornings – not just a simple dislike – a deeply held loathing. She resented creation for making the morning. In her mind the existence of mornings made a convincing case for the non existence of God and a good argument for the idea that the Universe had sprung out of the minds of a deranged committee. Azula had a rotten disposition in the mornings and had committed her most heinous evil acts early in the morning. She had tried to kill Zuko at the Western Air Temple mainly because she had to get out of bed at six am to complete the task. She heard a quiet knock at the door and the muffled voice of Katara.
"What do you want you loopy haired murderer of all pleasure?" Azula rolled onto her back and saw the sunlight shining through the window making a bright pattern of squares on the ceiling.
"Are you decent?" Katara shouted through the door.
"Never! But if you mean am I clothed then yes." Azula lay under the covers and stared at the ceiling. "Do I have to get up?"
"If you don't mind?"
"I do mind." Azula thumped her feet on the floor and thumped to the door and winced as she opened it and witnessed the sight of Katara silhouetted in the morning light. "Have you got something important on your mind or do you merely wish to annoy me?"
"Do you know it is almost lunchtime?" Katara crossed her arms as if preparing to deliver a scolding.
"I do now." Azula glowered at Katara. "So do they breed annoying traits into all water tribe women or is it just you?"
"You badly need to clean this room." Katara pushed past Azula who stood in her red night robe and balled her fists. Katara thought that if she had set out to annoy Azula she should do a decent job and she inspected the room. "Mold in a teacup? Why do you have this?"
"A house pet. I had this idea that I would let evolution work on the mold and see if it developed language and stereoscopic vision." Azula shrugged and began working her hair. "Maybe one day I can train it to do calculus."
"Iroh sent me to check on you." Katara poked through a stack of books laying in no particular order. Azula had shelves and shelves of books in no order and for some reason Katara could not fathom she had a rather intriguing set of scientific toys – a steam engine made of brass, a radiometer that had begun to spin in the heat and all kinds of clockwork mechanisms. "After your visit last night with the Earth King he thought you might have some issues you might wish to talk about."
"Feh." Azula made a dismissive gesture. "Issues? Why would I talk to you anyway?"
"Have it your way." Katara put a book back on the table. Azula gave her a condescending look as she combed her hair. "I will let Iroh know you seem fine."
"See you in a while." Azula closed to the door and mulled the possibility of having a shower.
* * *
"I have this sneaking suspicion that we live on a second rate planet." Azula sat down at the Pai Sho table with Katara and Aang. She poured tea from a white tea pot emblazoned with delicate blue flowers. Uncle Iroh enjoyed things that had a nature theme but Azula regarded them as an indication of appalling taste. "I have this theory that they produce planets in huge factories but the Earth didn't come from well managed factories run by content employees using the finest materials available. Some days I get up and I think the world must have come from the really crappy factory – the one with all the safety violations and staffed by really pissed off prison labor."
"I didn't mean to wake you up but Iroh grew concerned because you slept in so long." Katara had her hand on Aang's shoulder.
"Will you ever learn to enjoy life?" Aang refilled his cup from the tea pot. He had one of Azula's graphic novels with the title of 'Star Wars' – he didn't really like the story but he hoped it would make Azula's pop culture references more comprehensible.
"Is it necessary?" Azula wrapped her hands around her cup. She glanced at a rather ugly water color scene of some landscape that probably didn't exist. Iroh enjoyed kitsch and the tea shop had a collection of mass printed landscapes painted in the dull dreary unsaturated hues of water color.
"You didn't start another war with the Earth Kingdom when you met with the Earth King." Katara smiled at Azula who glanced away. "Actually he admired your candor."
"Don't confuse ranting with candor." Azula sipped her tea and spoke distantly. Momo chirped as he sat on the table and licked his genitals then jumped across the table to climb onto Azula's shoulder. Azula looked seriously at the lemur who looked at her and chirped as if to say something. Azula knew Momo served no useful purpose other than a pet for Aang and insect population control. He looked cute but for Azula that completed his list of virtues – except that in Azula's mind 'cuteness' was no virtue. She thought he looked like the sort of thing a deranged toymaker might have brought to life and his markings could have come out of the mind of the sorts of artists who paint while looped on cheap rice wine. At the very least he had impeccably clean genitals.
"This came for you yesterday." Uncle Iroh handed a letter to Azula who turned it over in her hands.
"I thought I had thoroughly intimidated that clod-hopping dung-heap of a by law enforcement officer." Azula growled as she read the letter which bore the stamp of the Head By Law Enforcement Officer – Fine Collection Department. It stated quite bluntly that Azula had to pay a two year old parking fine plus accrued interest by a date no later than a week from yesterday It had several veiled threats of legal action.
"What on earth do you mean?" Katara watched Azula grip the letter tightly.
"During the occupation Ba Sing Se functioned pretty much as it always had. This meant by law enforcement officers issued tickets for parking violations." Azula placed the letter down on the table with a solid thud. "We assumed that no by law officer would dare ticket a tank for the almost inevitable parking violation. Tanks tend to park illegally as a matter of course: they take too much space, make far too much noise or hang around far too long. Military planners like my dad had not contended with Ba Sing Se's army of by law enforcement officers. They issued tickets to tanks as if thirty tons and angry fire benders didn't pose a threat. Since the soldiers lay inside thick sound proof metal armor they didn't know they had received a ticket until the shift changed. Since I commanded the Fire Nation forces in Ba Sing Se all the tickets filtered up the chain of command to me and so naturally I incinerated them in my hands and never paid them."
"Oh.....and they have found you?" Katara found the whole idea of the mighty Fire Nation having to pay parking fines very amusing and her grin told Azula that at the very least Katara found this entertaining.
"They plan to sue me if I do not pay in a week." Azula grumbled and pondered the amount. Even for a princess with access to a royal treasury the miracle of compound interest made the fines add up to a mind boggling sum. Azula concluded they had decided to collect in order to pay for a rather expensive new park replete with a grandstand, wading pool, botanical garden and a playground for children.
"Plead insanity." Katara replied sarcastically and Azula bore no sign of finding such a cheap shot amusing.
"This amount isn't a sum of money it's the mass of a major planet." Azula shook the bill as she pondered her options. The fine scared her since she couldn't afford it on her pension but the very prospect of sucking up to Fire Lord Zuko made for more terror and then most terrifying of all - inevitably she had to explain it to Mai who cut the checks.
One advantage of evil came down to the ability to cop out of any important obligations without pangs of conscience. Azula stood up and left out the back door of the tea shop. She returned a few moments later with writing implements, a candle and a seal. Momo remained sitting on her shoulder while Katara watched her address an envelope to her brother. Strangely enough the address did not share the normal format of Fire Nation addresses – Name, House Number, Street, City or Town and a five digit number. She wrote 'Fire Lord' and then below that 'The Palace' likely because anyone who didn't know where the Fire Nation palace was or who the Fire Lord was probably had suffered some war time brain injury. She wrote a simple note which struck Katara as passing the buck. She stuck the bill in the letter with the note requesting that the Fire Nation pay the fines. With a small amount of fire bending she melted wax on the lip of the envelope and then pressed her seal on it.
* * *
The letter had no return address but Zuko knew his sister had sent it because she had the kind of horrid handwriting that some might have mistaken for a brilliant attempt at encryption. Zuko had trained himself to decipher her writing during the days of the war to properly interpret her orders, threats or ransom demands. Her awful handwriting arose out of a combination of laziness and her hatred of the Chinese written language which she regarded as a complete pain to read.
"She wants money." Mai came around the corner and found Zuko pacing the throne room.
"A good deal of money because the city of Ba Sing Se wants to take her to court for parking violations." Zuko handed Mai the short note while he examined the demand for payment.
"How did that happen?" Mai looked over Zuko's shoulder and read the letter.
"The City of Ba Sing Se used to ticket our tanks but she never paid the fines. They must have tracked her down." Zuko put his arm around Mai and squeezed her shoulder.
"Will you pay it?" Mai remembered Ba Sing Se without a single gram of fondness. It smelled terrible and she found it disturbingly like a Petri dish for humans. She formed the opinion that one only need visit Ba Sing Se once and then only if the visit could not be postponed or canceled. Zuko had made several visits as Fire Lord and Mai had dodged them all by becoming insufferably cranky and miserable to be with.
"She doesn't have that kind of money. I will have to bail her out." Zuko handed the note to Mai . Mai understood Zuko's reasoning – Azula had a pension – not a fortune and most of her plunder had gone back to those villages she had pillaged. Zuko had important affairs of state to deal with and this amounted to a matter of little importance compared to finding the vile person who kept sending dead lemurs to the palace through the mail.
"Very well." Mai had an unpleasant smile on her face. "I have an awful feeling I will get shipped off to Ba Sing Se to take care of this."
Zuko nodded apologetically and decided that he should have put a real doghouse in the back of the Fire Nation garden.
"Don't expect me to like this and you have just wound up in the doghouse as they say." Mai began devising insidious ways to make Zuko suffer and stew in guilt.
Lady Ursa had to admit the roof badly needed repair but the endless rhythm of hammers over her head had begun to take their toll on her. She had a headache and an evil desire to see one of the roofers fall off the roof. She reminded herself that the roof needed repairs due to neglect by her late husband. Other wives had to worry about their husbands deciding to renovate their house – her husband had wanted to renovate the world. Other mothers had to worry about their children breaking the fine china or busting a clock but she had two children who had fire bending prowess so she had to worry about them breaking the world. Things had turned out for the best she realized. Zuko had a patient and kind nature and led the nation drawing on his uncle's wisdom and Mai's strength to rule with compassion. Azula had become less of a monster and fallen below fifth place in the list of people most likely to unleash Armageddon upon humanity.
"Azula?" Lady Ursa had the spark of an idea as she reeled between hammer blows as she lay in bed letting the headache pills take effect. "Maybe! I haven't seen Iroh in quite some time."
* * *
Katara and Aang had left and the week had proven another slow week at the tea shop. Azula sat at her table reading 'Journey to the Center of the Earth' and drinking tea. Iroh had a religious representative at the door of the tea shop who held out a pamphlet and tried to convince Iroh that the world would end in a few years and someone important would return in a wheelbarrow. Iroh had the look of someone who had no interest because at his advanced age he likely would die before the anticipated event. Azula had a genuine apathy toward religion but she decided to help the polite Iroh disentangle himself from the religion peddler because the open door let in a draft.
"Can I help you?" Azula walked slowly up to the pamphleteer with her own style of grace, feminine beauty and menace.
"I came to give you the message of salvation." The pamphleteer answered politely and out of some concern that Azula had a crowbar concealed somewhere. "The Lord Almighty will soon return to Earth and rid the world of the wicked unbelievers. If you look around with an open mind you will see the signs of the impending doomsday."
"Potholes? Plagues of bad smelling cats? Badly sung show-tunes?" All plagues in Ba Sing Se but not the real signs the man had in mind. Azula crossed her arms in a defiant gesture. She had her own theories about the nature of God which she had dubbed 'The Great Committee Theory'. God consisted of a committee of deranged beings who designed and built the Universe on a lark. She had suspected the flaws in things had arisen out of compromises or badly thought out decisions. "Of course I want to know 'Why return now?'"
"Who can fathom the mind of the Almighty?" The pamphleteer spoke confidently as if his answer actually contained logic.
"How many of you wander the streets of Ba Sing Se trying to deliver your message?" Azula decided she would accomplish nothing arguing with a religious fanatic but she did want a gauge of the true scale of the infestation.
"A few dozen?" The pamphleteer stood to one side as Karo entered the tea shop. "We have come to bring enlightenment to the city of Ba Sing Se."
"And you found this enlightenment where?" Azula gestured with her hands as if inviting further information.
"Our leader found himself lost in the vast Seewong Desert and as he neared death he came across a cactus." The pamphleteer stopped theatrically. Azula began to wear a face that seemed to send the message 'you are the newly crowned King of the Kingdom of Cretins'. Karo and Iroh watched the debate and looked at each other. "The water from the cactus sustained him and he had a vision of God – the First Cause and Mover of All Things."
"Very good. You may go now." Azula waved her hand dismissively and derisively. "You can leave us a pamphlet because we may read it or run out of bog rolls."
"I thought he was delivering mail." Iroh smiled apologetically at Azula.
"Why do such unhappy people invent such stories to comfort themselves?" Azula walked calmly back to the table where she normally sat and sat down to talk with Karo.
"I have no idea." Karo and Azula found the idea that the Earth would stop completely rather weird – kind of like how people react when they first learn of the bizarre nature of Quantum Mechanics. Eastern philosophy thought of the end of the world as a cyclical thing – kind of like the theological equivalent of a computer system restart. The Avatar reincarnated – although like a large malfunctioning computer network – the memory of his past lives got lost and could only be retrieved with obscure and hard to use tools. Somehow in Eastern philosophy the world would either 'go down' for maintenance or suddenly restart without warning – some thought this would occur when a preset time had expired or after humanity had done something vastly unwise. Others held that the world would end in stages – like a computer with flaky software – it would become slowly unlivable and then either reboot on its own or the Gods would stop it and repair or rebuild it.
Zuko held the 'flaky software theory pushing the computer over the edge until it became useless' theory. He feared the Fire Nation would somehow push the world out of balance and humanity would kill itself off in a series of wars until the race ceased to exist – at which time the Gods would presumably rebuild the planet anew or the Gods would decide the world had become so flaky nothing could be done for it but to pull the plug, start from scratch and hope it didn't misbehave when you turned the power back on.
Reincarnation provided some kind of comfort for some people but closer analysis showed that you didn't get much out of reincarnation and neither did the Earth. You had no clear idea of past lives so you didn't have the sense of continuity real immortality conferred. If the Gods decided to restart everything your fate rested on the divine backup and restore policy. What if they lost your files? What if the data that controlled thermonuclear fusion in the sun had a mistake in the sums and the new sun blew up? What if the minor deity in charge of backup drive had used a bad batch of blank DVDs? What if he badly munged the backup command syntax? What if he had overwritten the backups with old episodes of Yu Yu Hakusho or porn? He might get a reprimand but as with real world computer systems the users – in this case all of Creation - invariably got screwed.
Azula knew nothing about computers of course but she had the evil genius and the analytical mind required to develop commercial operating systems. Azula knew of the flaws in reincarnation and so didn't hope for much to come of it. She held the Universe as a Big Complex Infinitely Complex Machine built by Committee theory – rather she created it. She held an idea similar to the concept of a computer held by a modern person of this world but she imagined clockwork not silicon. She expect all of it to eventually fail in a massive way and thus give rise to a new Universe which would also expire shortly after the warranty had expired.
"You have a letter." Uncle Iroh interrupted the Pai Sho match briefly and handed a letter from the Fire Nation palace. Azula wished the Universe would stop and restart or at least for her life to stop and restart anew. She sometimes felt she had worn the old life completely out and wondered what a new life might be like. She had visions she failed to comprehend which depicted a life in a strange city called Seattle. She worked for a large commercial software concern developing anti piracy measures to prevent those who couldn't afford the software from getting their grubby little hands on it without paying through the nose. It rained in Seattle a good deal.
"You don't look happy. You're winning as you always do." Karo saw Azula break the seal on the letter and read it. The letter had the simple address of the Fire Nation Palace as the return address and the longer address of Uncle Iroh's tea shop written in neat characters on the front. The paper of the letter had a crimson hue – not quite that of blood but close enough to tell the recipient that this letter did not bear good news.
"Oh Crap." Azula sounded less happy than usual. She had always wondered why the Fire Nation denizens chose to write black characters on dark red paper. One could read this script only in the brightest room lighting and a long letter made for a terrible headache due to eyestrain.
"Bad news?" Karo had forgotten what move he had planned on the Pai Sho table but he knew the game had tilted out of his favor.
"I have a theory that the idea of family forms a safety mechanism used by the Gods to prevent the human race from achieving our full potential." Azula placed the letter on the table and gave serious thought to burning it to ash. "My mother plans to visit but it gets worse."
"I thought you would want to see your mother again." Karo made his move and realized the game had not only tilted out of his favor but had pitched over completely in Azula's favor. Like any sorry soul stranded in a blizzard beyond the reaches of the Northern Water Tribe his only hope for survival consisted of a miracle.
"You should treat family like toxic waste – keep it as far from you as possible." Azula made a move and peered over the board at Karo. "You suck worse than usual. As a child did you get struck in the head by a lawn dart?"
"Sorry." Karo scratched his forehead. "I got distracted. Why do you think your mother's visit is such a bad thing?"
"She will shower me with hugs and tell me she loves me and things like that." Azula grimaced. "I could put up with that but it gets worse."
"How?" Karo decided to resign the game because he had completely lost track of anything pertinent to his moves and Azula would soon trounce him soundly.
"Mai – er I mean Lady Mai the wife of my brother will also come with her." Azula sneered and then bowed to accept Karo's defeat. "Fire Lord Zuko and Lady Mai.....did I tell you I came from Fire Nation royalty?"
"The spiky hair decoration and the fact you are Uncle Iroh's niece gave it away." Karo answered in a self assured manner that struck Azula as odd for him. "The world lost all track of you after the war. And rumors had turned up that you had fled to the Northern Water Tribe or your brother had you banished after he took the throne but no one really knew."
"I had hoped for more glamorous rumors." Azula sighed and decided to remain quiet about the details of her lost years. She had taken Ba Sing Se and yet the imprecise record of history meant that she received little blame.
"We could start some."
* * *
"I came to make certain that no diplomatic problems arose between the Earth Kingdom and the Fire Nation." Mai stood tall and proud and regal in her robes. She now outranked Azula and made sure Azula received the message with all of the subtlety of a mallet blow to the stomach. Mai had robes of fine red silk fabric in the Fire Nation style with gold trim and fine gold buttons. Mai had mastered the ability to walk like royalty and she walked in the tea shop and stood over Azula as if preparing to deliver a lecture on some boring topic like how plumbing works to someone who was passionately apathetic about plumbing. "Fire Lord Zuko has agreed to pay the fines demanded by the Earth Kingdom."
"Why involve me in all this then?" Azula remains sitting and she moved Pai Sho tiles in a pattern that vaguely resembled a raised middle finger. "Cut the by law office a check and tell them that next time we invade we won't park our tanks so carelessly."
"Don't make this difficult Azula." Mai sighed as she always did and stood over Azula. "We have to meet up with the head of the By Law Enforcement Department and apologize. We have to do this in an ethical manner."
"Since when the hell did I become ethical all of the sudden!?" Azula toyed with the idea of headbutting Mai into unconsciousness but decided the plan had two flaws. Mai might have an abnormally thick skull and headbutting her could lead to the kind of brain injury that would leave her drooling and most importantly of all: Mai would eventually regain consciousness. "I do not apologize! Good grief if I apologize for one thing I did in the service of the Fire Nation I will end up apologizing for everything."
"I spent two days on an airship with no safety features watching your mom knit socks and reminisce about how cute and beautiful you looked as a child. I kept having airsickness and I am in a very bad mood. I hate this city because it smells like sewage or burning cats – I can't decide - so try not to test me!" Mai stared at Azula and glared into her amber eyes. "The man Liu Shen who heads the By Law Enforcement Department awaits our visit."
"Can't I nip into my room and take a whole bottle of my medication at once?" Azula felt Mai gripping her collar and she coughed. "I will donate my body to science where my skeleton can spend eternity collecting chalk dust in the back of a science classroom. I will pass away of a instant cardiac arrest from the overdose so I won't suffer. No wait – public figure dressed in military attire dies suddenly – the tabloids would be all over that wouldn't they?"
"You don't sing so no one would care!" Mai gritted her teeth and worked out how much of an effort it might be to drag Azula out of the tea shop by her collar. "Maybe the meeting will take a really long time and you can avoid your mother for a few more minutes."
"Where did my mom get to?"
"Diplomacy. She had to pay the Earth King her respects." Mai kept her hand on Azula's collar so she wouldn't bolt and began to frog march her toward the door and a waiting carriage outside the tea shop. "She will arrive soon."
"I have to apologize to some high ranking knob for something I didn't do two years ago?" Azula felt anger and humiliation as Mai marched her to the door like an irate state trooper trying to get an uncooperative, drunken suspect into his cruiser.
"You still have a quick mind Azula." Mai had made it halfway through the door and Azula had not done anything which filled Mai with a fully developed sense of dread. She began to wonder what Azula had planned – parking tickets caused enough problem – Mai did not want an important civil servant to get decapitated by a lightning strike from Azula. "And if you must know I have come to enjoy this very much."
"Prison made you bitter." Azula sneered.
The carriage proved as classy as Mai's dress and had four ostrich horses pulling it. Mai had shown up Azula one more time – Azula had a palanquin – Mai had a real stagecoach. It had four corner posts gilded in gold and the sides had the same kind of deep red finish that distinguished high class guitars from the cheap ones. They made the carriage look elegant outside and it had sweeping curves and a varnish on it that made it reflect the mid afternoon sun. Azula might have called it garish but it required only one driver not four bearers as the palanquin had needed so perhaps it offered some advantage. The driver swung open the door. Azula felt Mai push her inside and she saw lush velvet seats finished in red and windows of glass which cranked open to let in the breeze. The entire thing almost reflexively forced people to say 'Dear Lord that must have cost a lot.'
The By Law Enforcement Department occupied the west wing of the massive city hall complex. A spidery building that looked to Azula like someone had taken the most delicate Chinese architecture and slammed it into a quarry at terminal velocity. Like all public buildings in Ba Sing Se this one had a massive front that conveyed the message 'Important things take place here and that explains why we take half your income each year.' The building had grown over the years and metastasized like a tumor over many acres. A less than useful map stood in the foyer to tell citizens where to pay property taxes, obtain tags for a poodle monkey, where the lawyers worked and where to pay fines. Azula looked up and saw a huge dome with windows that stood over the main foyer and looked like it didn't belong. At one end of the huge room a group of receptionists handled the day to day business of the city behind a large counter made of dark green marble which made a hideous match to the pinkish brown stuff used everywhere else. The floor had marble tiles that formed a polished map of the world as known to humanity many centuries ago – it looked rustic but proved the point that marble maps did not lend themselves to updating as new information about distant lands reached Ba Sing Se.
Mai still had a sulking Azula by her collar as she approached the large counter to ask for directions. She had to wait in line as a man dressed in very fine clothes argued with a woman about the fact the building inspector would not issue a permit to let him double the size of his house, fortify it and add a turret. The receptionist tried to reasonably point out that his lot did not permit that due to size and showering his neighbor with rocks could violate the law. He argued that he had a right to earth bend and would not be denied at which point two burly guards waiting behind him carried him off.
"Hello? How may I help you?" The receptionist wore a standard kind of uniform that consisted of a green ribbon in her hair. Mai bowed and Azula made a small 'gack' sound as Mai pulled on her collar.
"I am Lady Mai of the Fire Nation and this is Princess Azula. We have a meeting with Liu Shen. May we have directions to his office?" Mai sounded sickeningly sweet and overbearingly polite. Azula tried to make a gagging gesture but Mai elbowed her and she winced. The receptionist produced a brush and a crudely printed map of the vast halls and made an arrow as she explained how to find the office. Mai bowed and thanked her and with a tug took Azula along.
"I could kill you for your abuse." Azula growled as they followed the map down a hall with many heavy wooden doors.
"You won't." Mai countered. "You know Zuko would hunt you down and lock you away in the asylum until you died. You want to spend your life there?"
"I don't have to like this."
"I don't like this but public service forces us to do things we may not like."
"I'm not in public service." Azula found the hall hot and stuffy and disagreeable so she decided to grumble. "I have no desire to serve the public. I hate the public."
"So do I but they pay taxes and your brother wants to have good relations with the world."
"Ah dear Zuzu." Azula spoke in a way Mai recognized as her best expression of contempt. Azula had hoped to find a clever way to flee through a vent but none presented themselves. "Even in Ba Sing Se he manages to annoy me like some kind of obscure skin disease."
The door of Liu Shen's office had a simple bronze plaque which bore his name and an ornate facade that translated into importance. A large gold door knocker stood in the center and Mai struck it three times. Two did not seem enough to arouse the civil servant's attention while four sounded impatient – at least that was what she recalled from her training at the Royal Fire Academy for Girls diplomacy. Azula regarded diplomacy as the untactful use of threats to intimidate those around her into doing what she wished done. She had slept through the lecture on diplomacy.
"I warn you I plan to sing the 'Fire Gummie Song'." Azula heard a squishy, squelchy walking sound, a huff and a puff of an overweight man struggling to maintain a fine balance between staying alive and over exerting himself and suffering a brain hemorrhage.
"Oh....can't you make this easy." Mai uttered. The door opened and a gelatinous mass of a bald man in fancy tan robes appeared and bowed.
"I'm a fire gummie...." Azula saw a man with a mass that gave the wooden timbers under the floor a real engineering stress test.
"Azula." Mai whispered. Azula felt a sharp kick to her shin.
"Lady Mai....a pleasure to see you." The man exuded sweat and not charm but controlled a rather substantial civil service empire. "Princess Azula – a pleasure." He said less sincerely.
"You promise not to eat us?" Azula whispered to Mai. Another kick to the other shin and a yelp.
"We come to apologize for the problems our tanks caused during the war and Fire Lord Zuko has given me the funds to make good on the debt and then include a generous tip for your department." Mai walked in the office as the man retreated behind his desk and the office chair groaned. She handed over a gold bordered check with a huge sum written on it and bowed. Azula remained quiet.
"Thank you for your kindness." The man smiled and revealed crooked and yellow teeth and stamped the check as he placed it in a small wooden shelf behind his desk. Azula had her arms crossed and a look of utter disgust on her face. Azula found the man had a neat office and a taste for ceramic animals that he had set about the room. In one corner a clock with a group of small birds carved on it sat above his desk. The man waved dismissively at the two girls and they retreated with some relief through the door.
* * *
"I guess my mother needs only a 'two ostrich' coach." Azula noticed the less ornate but still ornate red coach in front of the tea shop parked with the ostrich horses tied off neatly. She had sung four stanzas of the 'Fire Gummie' song on the way over. She sang them all out of tune and in a stuttering, halting manner engineered to annoy Mai and make her wish she could choke Azula and discard her in a shallow, unmarked grave.. When Azula started to speak she quit singing which came as something of a small relief until Mai heard the words come out. "You have four because - a few too many puff pastries from the Royal Chef adding a little weight around the midriff?"
"Sod off and die under a rock." Mai said with a heinous sound to her voice. The driver coaxed the ostrich horses into parking the carriage. "I spared you from having to utter an apology so I own you. I spent an afternoon and you have proven far more irritating than I can recall from our past. You could coach venereal diseases on how to annoy and cause pain!"
"I wouldn't have apologized." Azula walked into the tea shop and saw her mother, Karo and Iroh chatting pleasantly. Iroh and Karo had pairs of red socks in their hands. "Didn't have to sacrifice my principles."
"You can't teach a pig to sing – it wastes your time and annoys the pig." Mai smiled slightly which struck Azula as a rather unnatural act for her. Azula could sense the seething resentment in Mai unfolding in a manner akin to those nested Russian dolls."As for you.....your punishment has just begun."
"I sing perfectly well." Azula couldn't hold a tune if someone glued it to her hand which served her perfectly well as she could threaten to sing and Mai knowing the kind of howling which would ensue usually acquiesced to her demands. This technique never had worked on Lady Ursa who believed her daughter had deeply troubling psychopathic tendencies but a beautiful voice.
"Ah my little Azula!" Lady Ursa rushed out of her seat to deliver a hug to her daughter and then proceeded right away to say something humiliating as she handed Azula a pair of thick red socks.
"Did I ever tell you how much I love you?" Lady Ursa kissed Azula fondly on the forehead.
"No.....is it something you urgently need to say?" Azula had trouble accepting affection since she had no idea how to reply. Lady Ursa decided to change to another topic although as she knew she almost always picked one that made Azula feel awkward.
"I see you have met a perfectly charming young man and he tells me his father was well placed in the Fire Nation as a lawyer." Lady Ursa gave a calm but gentle smile in the direction of Karo.
"Oh dear God." Azula heard Mai laughing in delight as Azula enjoyed a hug and caress from her mom which did not show any signs of ending. Azula did not know if Karo was perfectly charming or merely charming since she didn't think of him as more than a friend. She did know that compared to anyone well placed in the Fire Nation her conduct would rank as almost saint like. She had lied, cheated and stolen, engaged in coups and other evil act to further the cause of the Fire Nation. Lawyers – she knew – did all of that to serve their own interests which struck her as a bit dodgy.
The hug finally ended.
"I didn't know your father was a lawyer." Azula sat down across the table from Karo.
"I have no plans to become one." Karo fidgeted and then felt the need to add. "You never asked what my dad did for a living while you crushed me at Pai Sho. I warn you that your mom wants to set us up."
"Mom? Is this true?"
"Azula you know it is unnatural for you to remain single all of your life. You need to meet nice boys, date and fall in love." Lady Ursa heard Mai pull up a chair and suppress her snickering.
"Do you remember when we used to go to the summer house. I brought the picture of Azula when she turned four." Lady Ursa did not notice the blush falling over Azula's face as her mother handed the picture to Karo who tried his best to say nothing fearing anything would be inappropriate or downright harmful..
"Aww she was so cute." Mai spoke with a sickening, cloying saccharine voice as she added her own opinion. Azula left momentarily to fetch the 'Tips' jar on the counter which she decided badly needed tallying and emptying. "What do you think Karo?"
"I can say nothing at the point which won't end with a punch to my face." Kara fumbled with a pair of red socks and placed them on the table. He thanked Lady Ursa as sincerely as he could possible fake. "Thanks again for the socks."
"It says 'Tips' but almost no one ever puts money in this thing." Azula dumped the contents of the large glass jar onto the table. A white glass marble rolled across the table and Azula began sorting the coins from the assortment of dead bugs, paper clips, dust and other detritus. "You can see the landslide of humiliation and shame my life has become."
"You have done well. I hear you attend Ba Sing Se University and take an interest in science." Lady Ursa made it quite hard for Azula to counter with sarcasm. Azula found a note and carefully opened it – most notes she found in the jar commented on the fine quality of the tea or made suggestions. This one made an obscene suggestion and Azula crumpled it.
"What did the note say?" Karo picked up the crumpled piece of paper and opened it. "Not to debate this but if you did manage that wouldn't you suffocate?"
"And mom! Meet Karo who has the same awful sense of social timing I have." Azula finished counting out the money and placed it gently in sorted piles on the table.
"Lady Mai has a room in the finest hotel in the city of Ba Sing Se but I have decided to stay here at the tea shop and enjoy the company of my daughter." Lady Ursa hugged her daughter's shoulder tightly. "Iroh has offered to put me up in the spare bedroom so we can spend time together and catch up on things."
"If you will excuse me. I have to ready the room for our guest." Uncle Iroh bowed, scooped up the money from the 'Tips' jar and left.