10. Never a dull moment
As far as Mai was concerned, there were few things in the world worse than boredom. Unfortunately for her, it seemed that much of her life had been practically nothing but boredom.
When she was a child, there were the obligatory deportment classes. Boring.
In due time, she was shipped off to the Fire Academy for Girls, which meant even more deportment classes, along with teacher after teacher who was nowhere near as smart as she was. Also boring.
But then, just when she thought she might perish of ennui, classes were shuffled around and school finally brought her Azula.
At first, Mai had dismissed the other girl as just another species of boring. After all, Azula was pretty, smart (but not so much that it was a social handicap), a superb firebender, and granddaughter of the Fire Lord on top of it all. Whoop-de-do.
In theory, Little Miss Perfect should have bored Mai to tears, or at least to an ill-concealed yawn of contempt. Still, even on that first day, there was something there, some little... something that didn't quite add up, and Mai thought that maybe she ought to keep a close eye on Little Miss Perfect. She also thought that maybe, just maybe, school had gotten the tiniest bit more interesting.
Observation finally paid off barely three weeks later. They were in calligraphy class (not just boring, but utterly pointless, which was even worse). Mai was fighting to stay awake, entertaining herself by adding barely visible extra strokes to her characters in order to twist the meanings to something a bit more morbid than "love" and "flower" and "grace."
They had just five minutes left in class when Mai noticed Azula reach out ever so slightly and flick her hand towards the girl sitting next to her. The next thing she knew, the other girl had leapt from her seat and was swatting at the back of her neck and screaming in pain. A tiny wisp of smoke drifted up from her hair.
"Now, that's kind of interesting," Mai whispered.
The teacher was quick to ask Azula what had happened (Azula was the only firebender in the class, after all, and therefore the most likely culprit), but her voice was unsteady, and she wrung her hands in front of her as she spoke. She wrung them so hard that her fingers were patched red and white. Mai raised one eyebrow. From the woman who was quick to go across someone's palms with a ruler for simply coughing out of turn, this was very odd behavior indeed.
What did their teacher know about Azula that the rest of them didn't? why was she so scared? Wait a moment... Mai blinked. Their teacher was scared of Little Miss Perfect? Huh.
Things had just become very interesting.
Mai raised her hand. When the teacher called on her, Mai responded in a voice that was at its don't-bother-me weariest. "Ma'am, Lady Azula was working on her calligraphy when Ling started screaming like a stuck pig." Ling squawked at the editorial comment, but Mai pretended not to hear. "I just happened to be looking up at the time, and..."
She shrugged as if she couldn't be bothered to continue. Ling looked utterly betrayed, but Azula had turned halfway around in her seat and was giving Mai a cool, speculative look.
Later in the class, while Azula was doing an exercise at the front of the room and was therefore nowhere near her former victim, Mai pulled a pin out of her reticule, and with a sharp snap of her wrist, sent the pin sailing with tidy accuracy right into the nape of Ling's neck.
"She really did squeal like a stuck pig," Azula said to Mai after class. She even did a pretty good imitation of a squealing Ling. What she didn't do was ask Mai why she'd covered for her, not just once, but twice.
"I think I'll keep you around," Azula said, musingly. "I imagine you'll come in handy, one of these days."
"Cool."
Yes, life around Azula would very likely prove to be anything but boring, Mai thought. In fact, she probably ought to figure out what to do if things threatened to become a little too interesting.
Author's note: Even though Azula appears in this story, she gets a story of her own later on.