Mai had wondered why Sokka of all people was becoming such a close friend. Yes, he had his own appeal, but her sights had been fixed on Zuko since before hormones was anything but a word you giggled about, so it wasn't that. He could be funny, but it was a bit of a gamble between that and his falling completely flat-though the gamble alone had its appeal to a girl who spent seeming lifetimes waiting for something to happen. The man who was smart even before his recent bout with-eccentricity, she told herself, always eccentricity-was also the man who was apt to have pastry-eating contests with Toph and Iroh.
"The time has come to stop this! It's already gone way too far as it is."
She gained a partial insight when, minus a palace-bound Zuko, the new expanded group had spent a week seeking out the escape routes that Zuko's mother might have taken, all those years ago (not that many in the counting, but lifetimes in the heart). Recent notes found in Ozai's work quarters (as opposed to his vastly more palatial-looking private quarters, where *no one else* went), indicated that the new Fire Lord had turned on his wife with a speed that might have surprised even Azula. There were soldiers looking for her almost as she made her devil's deal with the man she once loved, to spare her son's life. The nearly-almost Fire Lady had been exactly that good in making her getaway, and arguments began to erupt between of all people, Aang and Katara, over what to do and how to search next.
"There are still forces seeking to disrupt a very new and very fragile peace. A fight like this could embolden them."
While the pair that were sometimes like lovebirds and all the time like the strongest of friends fought it out like armadillo bears, Sokka merely sat and checked off all the routes they had already gone over. When the pair inevitably demanded that he choose a side, Sokka chose his own and commented how sad a thing it was that this petty bickering meant that, on this one occasion, he was the most mature of the original trio. Properly shamed, the other two relented and the search resumed, for all it really brought.
"How are you going to explain this to our friends, especially Aang? Why don't you call him? He found a way to keep Ozai's sorry hide alive. He could solve this."
But Mai had learned something during that fruitless search. Sokka was her friend and ally because he was utterly self-aware. Except for his accidentally-improved drawing skills, he was never *I'm Not Like That* about his flaws. To a girl raised in a world of social denial for advancement, self-aware was a good way to be, and if he kept Zuko that way by influence, all the better. But sometimes, self-aware was admitting when you had found that proverbial stone wall.
"Blast it, Toph! You're not some egoist showboat who needs to lash out on tiny issues of pride and place. That's not you!"
Toph stopped her frenzied practice session long enough to walk over to her lecturer.
"I am a former Professional Bend-Grappling CHAMPION! I come from the most ostentatiously wealthy, image-obsessed family in the entire WORLD! I joined with the risen Avatar and saved said entire world, and I can say that my ears were among the first to hear Ozai grovel like a whipped-errr, former tyrant-darn, Sokka makes that sound so easy. ANYWAY, what part of all that makes you think ego and pride are unknown to me?"
Maybe Toph was not quite as self-aware. But she spoke straight, and nothing in her fighting Bumi, in victory or defeat, would have her speaking the truth with quite the verve she did now.
"What he did was low. What he did next was even lower. Royal privilege should not be invoked to cover up a blunder. But maybe you, in the midst of three or five levels of upset, shouldn't be challenging a master of his experience. You've seen he's no paper tiger."
Toph threw a huge disc-shaped slab into the air, let it fall directly above her, and kept it suspended for fifteen seconds with one finger and all will before smashing it.
"Somehow, somewhere, someone in this world or the next decided it's okay to put the brave little blind girl off and pat her on the head while dismissing her. That ends here!"
Mai was beginning to get sickly worried. All of her friends, old and new, cared for *the brave little blind girl*, especially her crushes Zuko and Sokka, who, once slapped into awareness of her feelings, now felt responsible for her. The possibility that she could get hurt or hurt Bumi on her watch, so to speak, was not allowable.
"She was never a friend, let's face it. But watching Azula dissolve into madness was not how I would have liked to see her brought down-"
The little girl was a titan by comparison to the skilled warrior. But still Mai spoke truth to power.
"You're losing it, Toph. And what you're losing is hard to get-"
Mai was not harmed, but a virtual escalator of Earth quickly guided her well away from Toph's practice grounds.
"-back. And I know you can still hear me-jerk."
Mai knew it was a fair hike to Bumi's practice grounds - each combatant had taken pains to put the other as far away as humanly possible. So Mai applied a principle that the briefly mad/brilliant Sokka had put into her head. Firing off her blades at the main wall, she allowed her cloaks to charge from the static she built up while running, till ascending that same wall was almost like gliding up. Unfortunately, her absent-minded friend and ally failed to mention that it might be an idea to have a way to safely discharge all that power. A corner of the highest wall, buttressed by metal and wet from light rain nearly fried her till she leaped away.
"Dope-not to mention the dope who heeded his advice."
Still, it had been a kick, and it seemed like kicks just kept getting harder to find. She ran along the edge of the wall, surprising sentries and guards till she reached sight of Bumi's practice area. Wisely, she gave the guards some relief by dismounting outside the entryway and explaining herself. While not delighted to see anyone from the Fire Nation, their attitude was surprisingly practical.
"Lady Mai, if you can talk him out of this madness, more power to you. But be warned : Your mother tried her best as well, to no result."
"Yeah? Well, I'm not my mother. I'm not even sure I like the guy."
"There's-quite a bit of that going around. In your father's name, please enter."
That sort of comment disturbed Mai more than she cared to admit. It seemed like a good portion of the city was rooting not for their king, but for the girl who had so brazenly challenged him. Mai knew this tendency. Bumi had left Omashu to save the entire world, but to his subjects' eyes, he had chiefly left them behind, without even instructions on how to run things in his absence. It could not have sat well with some that it was the imprisoned former Fire Nation colonial governor who had acted decisively to save them all from his own people's insanity.
"Save your speechmaking, woman-I'm playing in the sand!"
Indeed he was, though his grip on his playground seemed nowhere near as sure as his work with stone and other earth, even metal.
"I don't do speeches. And I guess it is a good strategy."
It had struck Mai, as she made her approach, that she had no standing to chastise Bumi. She would gladly do it, but what would it accomplish? Her mother had been this man's palace caretaker for months, and had likely failed to get him to so much as delay the challenge. Even with Zuko, she occasionally had to remind herself that she was dealing with a crown-level figure, and that was with a deep childhood connection.
"Hmph! So what strategy am I using?"
Mai had walked around two massive royal egos in her time, so she knew that getting Bumi to ask the questions was not only the logical way to go - it was perhaps her only hope. On a very basic level, the man had the power to banish or even kill her with just a few words.
"You've heard, probably from Sokka-love the guy but he can never shut up-that while Toph may have mastered metal, she still has major problems with sand."
Bumi almost imperceptibly raised his control level over the shifting piles around him.
"Wrong sib. It was Katara told me that, while asking me about the water content of rocks and boulders. She even claimed she can do the water in a body's blood. For real?"
"All too real. Just ask her brother. And while you're at it, ask both of them about Toph's tendency to work doubly hard at controlling anything that seems beyond her."
Bumi stopped playing in the sand, and bulked himself out. He practiced moving about in this top-heavy form, so to increase his speed when he did use this form.
"Seems like I could just as easily ask you. You know them all by now. What made you decide to jump ship?"
Mai had two easy answers for that one.
"My love for Zuko. My contempt for Azula. As to knowing them all well, if we are friends, then we're still new friends. My connection to these heroes is not fully formed, just yet, though we're getting there."
Bumi deliberately rose up on one very uneven column of rock, with his other leg dangling out as he fought for balance.
"Define-getting there."
She did just that.
"Aang has my gratitude for taking down the man who hurt my man. Katara is the kind of sister-in-law-ish type I would have wished for, the kind of sister Zuko deserves. There's a bit of flirt under their eyes, but nothing I can't handle. Sokka is the only other person on Earth who recognizes that this new celebrity Fire Lord is really another teenager who needs to rest, goof off and eat junk food. I'm actually scared that we're both away from Zuko right now."
Bumi kept right on re-training his balance, with not even a glance at Mai to complete her take on the Avatar's bunch.
"Toph I think I actually feel closest to, strictly by circumstance. A lot more common history than I would have imagined. I think my family wanted to be the Bei Fongs at one point, though its only now, when everything they had wanted is gone, that I see my folks happy. I feel sorry for Toph. I doubt her parents could ever wake up from their problems. She's been hurt a lot. I'd prefer that she not be hurt anymore."
Mai made her plea.
"Please call off the challenge."
"I'm not the one who made it!"
"But you are the King. You can declare it invalid for any number of reasons."
Bumi turned away while making a left to right slicing motion with his hand.
"Not gonna happen. I don't back down."
"What will this battle prove? What do you need to prove, that battling a girl ninety years your junior will accomplish it?"
Bumi's face puffed, and he cried out. As he did, the earth around him seemed to lend him a sheen of energy, and the sound of an engine louder than that of the Ba Sing Se Drill.
"THAT I AM KING BUMI, AND WHEN IT COMES TO THE EARTH BENT, EVEN THE AVATAR HAS GOT ALL JACK ON ME!"
The sheen and the sound did not fade quickly, and Mai stood stunned while Bumi smiled and quipped.
"Just sayin'."
Finally back at her parents' chambers, Mai was ready to admit defeat. She saw her little brother sit up in his crib, smiling at her presence. She almost smiled back.
"Tom-Tom, when it comes to playing peacemaker, I stink worse than one of Suki's attempts to talk trash."
And few things, it was known, stank worse than that, though a couple of Iroh and Sokka's puns, and one of the Mechanist's mathematical jokes, came awfully, awfully close.
"Trying to outdo your old mother, eh?"
Mai didn't look up.
"Yeah, well, I figured it beat trying to stab you with a trowel."
"Huh?"
"Sorry, Mom. It's from one of Ty Lee's tales of the 'Walking Chi-Less'."
Lady Shira picked up her son.
"I could never get into those."
Even this simple conversation took all the enthusiasm Mai could muster.
"They're not for everyone. A little vivid, even for my tastes."
"It's not the gore, my dear. It's the people in them. They panic so easily, and make the worst sort of choices based on that panic. Logic seems to be suspended, not only in the Chi-Less Ones' very existence, but in all the advantages the tellers of these stories seem anxious to give them, both in terms of abilities, and the foolishness of the living."
Mai actually found herself wanting to lightly chuckle.
"Sadly, Mother, a story that goes 'They all learned to overcome their differences, cooperated fully and survived the monsters' onslaught' wouldn't draw much of an audience."
For the record, Mai saw the irony in her words even as she spoke them. But for her, the fact that the one she despised most in the world would one day be her sister was all the irony she cared to deal with on a day to day basis.
"But Mai, isn't that what we all have to do? Isn't exactly that the grandest and most savage lesson of this ruinous war?"
Mai wasn't being chastised for lying down while her mother spoke, but specters of chastisements past finally roused her and she sat up.
"And what if you and Father hadn't been ruined by the war?"
Shira seemed to gain a thoughtful look her eldest would have once sworn she couldn't even fake.
"I honestly cannot conceive of life other than how it has gone. When Bumi freed this city, he freed us, whether he wanted to or not. Running the-uhhm-running-of this palace is something that suits me, as being back to Inventory Control suits your Father. To answer your question, Mai : If I met some manner of parallel Shira who lived in a world where Avatar Aang had never returned, I would wait for her to mock my position-I used to be very good at that. I would then ask her how many requests she receives from Azula and Ozai on a weekly basis. Because if, in war, that number merely overwhelmed me, for that other Shira, in final peace, I think it would make her bald."
Mai looked in her mother's eyes.
"You really are happy now, aren't you?"
Shira pulled her girl close.
"Happy enough to risk the Fire Lord's ire and ask that my daughter move back here with us, until he decides to make you his bride. So what's the delay?"
Glad to push thoughts of whiny Earth-Benders out of her mind, Mai almost cheerfully answered a question most young women she knew cringed at.
"The world. Zuko is its ruler, thought that's the last thing he ever wanted. Kuei may simply never return to the Enduring Throne in Ba Sing Se, some former colonies you'd think would want us out now don't want to be left without protection. Then there's the merchants, who all worship the free land access that only endures so long as Zuko's decrees hold sway over all lands. Aang is doing all he can - shoring up a needed dam here, tearing down a less-than-helpful one over here. He and Katara have cut so many irrigation ditches, sea levels could drop. Even before his-weird injury-Sokka had some ideas that probably kept us from facing a military mutiny, and also prevented any ready-made armies for the next Ozai/Azula wannabe. And Toph? Before her idiot parents sent those scrolls of doom and gloom-yes that's me saying doom and gloom, go figure-she 'reformatted' the Boiling Rock into a trade center-that your brother now admins. He said he prefers crooks to traders - more honest."
Shira showed her joy at having such a simple conversation.
"You wrote that he aided your release from prison. But I had been told that his rank had been taken from him, after you aided Zuko's escape."
Mai opened a carafe of tea. It was barely warm, but it soothed her throat.
"Good. Well, it was a lot like here with Father. With Ozai and Azula down and away, the guards needed an able administrator. Unc-he tried not to hold a grudge when Zuko came to claim the throne. In between all that, he ordered me and Ty Lee let go. But once it all fell into Zuko's lap, it was a lot like it all fell into his lap. So-we want to delay any royal wedding till we see if the kingdom can hold together. Does that make sense?"
Shira had been changing Tom-Tom while listening.
"Better sense than you know. I'd read that, before this age of war, the marrying age was actually rising, even in the most remote areas of the world. If we truly have peace, why rush things?"
Mai began to feel sleepy, and let her consciousness slip on a characteristically cynical note.
"If...we truly have peace."
She rose after not much sleep, as she sensed an intruder and caught a blade not unlike her own, using candle-lighters for safety against poisons.
"A note?"
But the blade was not poisoned, and was in fact an invitation to spar in her own learned style.
"Lady-what are you up to?"
Mai emerged into Lady Telen's house and was greeted by about a dozen blades. She dodged nearly all of them, blocking the few that remained with her long sleeves.
"You can do better than that, so why bother?"
Telen emerged with a young woman in tow. The younger woman's face was partially covered by a battle-mask.
"I just wanted to see if Blade-Mistress Anka still taught only the best, my dear."
Mai nodded.
"She-will never retire. My knuckles still feel her fan rapping them."
Telen held up the back of one hand.
"She never lets anyone forget that, Mai. But that little show aside, I didn't bring you to fight this old hen. Oma-remove your mask."
The younger-though hardly truly young any longer, despite good looks-woman did just that, revealing a pleasant face, with hair that seemed slightly off-kilter and one eye that seemed just a bit larger than the other. Mai had no doubt who she was looking at.
"So when did all this occur-and why I am not addressing her as Princess Oma?"
Oma smiled.
"Because my father can be a stubborn idiot."
Telen had the three sit down for tea.
"I was Bumi's third or fourth cousin, and even with forty years on me, he still looked so good. Given his legendary flightiness, I knew if I held out, I could live my dream and be his bride. The bride part I got. The dream? I stopped waiting for that to come true when our daughter turned sixteen."
Oma nodded.
"He was my best friend growing up. But there are times when a girl-well, this girl-wants a father, not a BFF. My mother laid down an ultimatum about his role in my life-and well, you've seen how well he takes ultimatums. I knew his being the King might get in the way of things. But so much of his psyche was invested in remaining the boy who played on the mail chutes with the Avatar. Respect to Avatar Aang, but as his daughter or as his friend, I was tired of competing with a dead boy for his attention. I said as much."
While Mai deeply sympathized, she felt compelled to bring up a recent subject.
"Lady Telen, I saw you smile when Toph made her challenge. Is it your plan to take the throne for your daughter if Bumi gets beaten?"
Telen shook her head.
"As part of the separation agreement, Oma can never be queen. That was-that was Bumi's ultimatum in response to mine, and I've never been very good at backing down myself. You want to know my sinister plan, Mai? I want Toph Bei Fong to take my man's big toy away from him. This will accomplish several things. One, we will have a monarch all can respect, a member of the Avatar's group who saved this world. Two, despite their own mythic stubbornness, the Bei Fongs will have no choice but to finally acknowledge their child, breaking Omashu's long standing as a second rate colony. Add that to the practical elevation the city has since the fall of Ba Sing Se, we will become the new center of the Earth Kingdom, to the extent that matters."
Mai felt a bit confused at those words.
"How can that not matter?"
Oma shrugged.
"Mai, your parents now live here, by choice and by decree. That means you will at least visit here regularly. And you being here means that, as boyfriend, fiancé and eventually husband, so will the guy who rules the whole world. That will mean Omashu will have to make a place for the Fire Lord and Lady to stay-maybe in a second world capital?"
Mai was running around the bases to emotion, this time with suspicion.
"And if not queen mother or queen regnant, what do you two get out of it?"
Telen explained in terms not sinister at all.
"All those what-if's are wonderful, and I am a fierce advocate for my city. But if Bumi is just a man, then Oma and I can tell him-be a man with your family once again."
Mai had seen the tears in Telen's eyes, and had by now judged them to be real.
"Still? After all he's done?"
Oma chuckled, and in that was a faint echo of a royal cackle.
"You're asking us that? The girl who went to call her deserter boyfriend out, and that same day, betrayed your nation's lunatic rulers to see him go free, at the expense of your own freedom-for all you knew, your life?"
Telen moved to finish the impromptu get-together.
"Mai-stop trying to get those Earth-sized egos to stand down. I've seen Toph fight. She can take him, and in that path, so many good things will follow for us all. Let it be. Please."
Oma looked a decade or more older than Mai, and she was likely older than that, doing the math. But the plea in her eyes was from one teen girl to another-*let me know my Dad at last.* It also didn't escape Mai's attention that Bumi had formed a bond with her little brother, perhaps indicating a man who missed having a family. Her wanderings were part of a daze after that.
Mai was back at her parents' quarters in time to find her father flipping a fried wolverostrich egg for breakfast.
"Making your own food?"
Valtin cracked another one for his tired-looking daughter.
"Your mother had the servants supervising the food needs of the observers of the upcoming ego-fest between Bumi and your friend. Besides, I can make a fried egg myself. I'm told you made the rounds as well-even to Telen and her daughter."
"You know about Oma?"
"Most everyone does-but saying it out loud is a good way for a former governor to lose his cushy parole. None of them budged?"
Mai put obscene amounts of pepper on her egg as it was served.
"Sorry-wolverostrich eggs have an aftertaste. Yeah-if anything, my bumbling locked their positions in even tighter. Father, I know I'm not the queen of social graces - but my best got me less than nothing to show for my efforts."
Valtin grated a little cheese on his cooling egg, and then onto Mai's.
"The world is in a sorry shape because of our people-yet we did in effect conquer the world. Part of how we did it was not merely brute force but patience. Sozin knew the Air Nomads would be a target, so he readied his armies to go to all those places the Nomads said we never could reach. Same with the two biggest cities in the Earth Kingdom. I will no longer brag about all that in quite the way I once did. But it remains a fact - we Fire Folk have a way of beating obstacles that everyone says cannot be beaten."
Mai knew all the qualifiers her father was placing on such grim subject matter. That was not what bothered her.
"You don't have an army, and you don't have scientists. So how do we end this?"
"We don't, Mai-at least not our entire family, though we'll all play a part."
Valtin looked into her uncharacteristically wide eyes.
"Only one member of our clan can stop this pointless fight."
