SUMMARY:

During the war Aang recruits are wreaking havoc while he takes on the big guys. The kids from the Northern Air temple are taking the skies, setting bombs on the nation. Unfortunately when Teo steps down for a reload, he runs into two deadly assailants...

AUTHOR NOTE:

I was actually going to do a Ty Lee/Teo story but I couldn't do it. I think Ty Lee is really a Haru girl. So that leaves, the crazy one with no heart... Mai... come on down... :D They do look perfect together - Teo and Mai. Ahhh... great pairing.

I own nothing.

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"You're fire nation"

"You're observent." Mai said, and looked the boy up and down in the wheelchair. A crippled boy - in the middle of a war? Now she'd seen everything. It was almost as funny as the blind girl training the Avatar. "but you've got nowhere to run."

The boy let out a laugh. "That's funny. I don't have to run." He started to wheel his chair off the cliff and the glider took off. He waved at the girls from the air.

Mai was infuriated.

"You know... was it just me or was he kinda cute?" Ty Lee said with a grin - even though her whole nation was under attack by the Avatar's misfit army from the leftovers of the nations, and they were losing badly, she could still think about boys at a time like this.

Mai looked at her. "Must you think every friend of the Avatar's is cute?" She asked peeved.

Ty Lee was dumbfounded. "Well, only the cute ones..."

Although it irked Mai, she had to admit, Ty Lee wasn't the only one who found he was cute.

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She thought about him since that moment. And it bugged her. He was the one that got away.

She was the one imprisoned for what it would seem to be the next twenty years of her life and every time she heard his wheelchair screetch on the floors of the concrete enclosure it sent a shiver clawing it's way up her spine.

"It's ironic isn't it?" The boy said, placing a plate of food beside her. "My life was torn apart by the fire nation and here we are." He rested his hand in his lap.

Mai traced her nail in her skin wishing it was a knife, but of course no one would be stupid enough to give an asassin skilled at throwing knives any sort of combat weapon.

She wondered if he'd ever weilded a weapon. Felt what it was like to have power in your hands, if only for an instant. She stopped herself. What was she thinking? This boy was earth nation. He probably had never even thought about power in his life.

That's how the earth nation got taken down so easily. Although if the Dragon of the West could have done his job right - it would have been taken down a lot easier and maybe they wouldn't even be in this position right now.

Maybe he'd be the one encaged and she would be his master.

"You know, I'm sure Aang will get you out on good behavior" he said pleasantly. Mai looked into those friendly eyes. He wasn't afraid of her.

That made her dislike him all the more.

Though Ty Lee was right. He was cute. A slight dimple formed on his cheek as he smiled and looked around her enclosure. "It's not very comfortable is it?"

Mai got up and touched the bars. "If you're trying to make me regret who I am, it's not going to work."

"I don't know who you are" he said shyly and looked away.

It was hopeless. Ty Lee was encaged for less time. She would be released to the circus soon. They didn't know what they were going to do with her.

"But I think maybe you're not who you want to be" he added.

The funny thing was, that she didn't deserve his hope, his optimism... but he gave it anyway. He didn't know anything about her but he just assumed deep down that she could be good, she could be normal - if she'd got a new start like he did.

He got a new life. She needed a new life.

Mai's eyes were hollow. She knew nothing else. Hate, impaitence, the desire for power. She almost forgot what it was like to be that little kid with a crush on Zuko and had all the hope in the world for the future. This boy never stopped hoping. Some new feeling touched the pit of her stomach.

It was something like envy. She pulled at a strand of her black hair and angrily yanked it out. It was all she could do to stop the esculating of anger from this feeling.

"I don't want to be anyone."

"You don't need to be anyone. That's why I live in the sky. I glide. I fly. And I don't have to think. I don't have to be anyone. I just am."

Must be why he is so happy all the time. It was then that a tear escaped Mai and she was broken. Funny that the shell, so hard and firm; the essence of her... no feeling, no love, nothing could be cracked by someone who had never weilded a weapon, never killed a man and almost never left his father's side.

Gentleness was a weapon that she'd never heard of before. Mercy was a smack in the face so hard that she almost didn't feel numb anymore.

The first step was enabling her to feel and the last step would be to bring the fire nation girl home to live with the rest of the outcasts at the Northern Air temple.

She grew from hating the sound of rusty tires on the floor, to waiting paitently for it each day.