Mai couldn't bend. She did, however, have a few scrolls' worth of knowledge on the assorted uses of anything sharper than her baby brother's teeth. She knew a fascinating variety of ways to slit a man's throat, all the folds in her garments that could hide the knives that otherwise hung just above her fingertips, which way to angle her wrists to strike a target smaller than the Fire Lord's crown in a storm. Sitting in her dour prison cell, though, she was having a hard time denying the benefits of being able to fling around fire like a whip.

Of course, they had precautions against that sort of thing (she'd overheard the prisoners saying the cells were crafted from metal than not even molten lava could melt, and if she didn't have to lunch with them on a daily basis she would've asked how they thought their home away from home was forged), so being able to bend was about as useless as having all your knives stripped away. Still, she couldn't help but think it would've been nice.

Ty Lee was three cells over, hands bound in a mesh of wires that had turned her fingers bloated and sallow. "You won't be using those against me anymore," Azula had said with a grin so wide it nearly swallowed her eyes. When Mai realized exactly what the princess had in mind, she had to fight to swallow the bile at the back of her throat.

They weren't even her hands, and she found herself rubbing a dull sting in her palms when she saw the wire digging into Ty Lee's skin. But then Ty Lee tossed her the sort of freakishly sun-bright smile that made Mai want to shield her eyes, and it was just enough. This was worth it. She'd gotten her sleazebag of an (ex)boyfriend off this pointless rock, and besides, at least she could figure her way out of a prison without getting anyone else hurt.

...

It wasn't so bad, Ty Lee thought. Yeah, her hands kept switching from a tingly numb to a needle sharp burn, and her mom wasn't going to be too happy with the way their family had maybe sort of been kicked out of the palace court, but, well, ever since she'd wound up one of the youngest members in a maximum security prison, she'd managed to get awfully popular. Everyone wanted to talk to her, including a bunch of people who knew that even with the new security measures, the warden couldn't possibly have patched every chink in his armor.

Maybe if she'd been the magic lady in her old circus troupe, she would have thrown dust at the cell doors till they sprung open, but the magic lady had pulled Ty Lee to the side one day and whispered that most of her act was staged anyway and would she like to know how you really got out of a box with more locks than bars?

So what if she was circus freak? She'd walked away from it with more than a few tricks up her sleeve-not the least of which were a few ways to break out of a cage.

...

In a melancholy sort of way, Kuei noted that it had taken twenty five years for him to feel truly hungry. A part of him thought it a monumental event, something that he ought to write down if he weren't stranded in a village with nothing more than a bear, a map whose accuracy was currently under serious examination, and nary a vial of ink in sight. The other part of him felt like apologizing, but to who, or for what, he couldn't quite say.

"Well what do you think, Bosco? Should we ask someone for help?"

The bear chewed thoughtfully on a few blades of grass before heaving a contented grumble. Kuei chose to take that as a yes.