To let everyone know, I've announced on my deviantArt account a "Maikka Week" from September 20th to October 3rd. For a full list of prompts and explanations, check it out (I'm loopy777 there, too, so my address is loopy777 dot deviantart dot com). Add the end of the fun, I'll be posting the long-awaited Maikka ramble as the last (for now) update to this series.
Mai on... Bumai!
"Nothing seems to give the crazier fans of Avatar: The Last Airbender more pleasure than promoting pairings with major age discrepancies. I am the victim of one of the worst of these, with the mad King Bumi.
"As horrid a regime as the Fire Nation could be back in the day THE NIGHTS ARE A LOT QUIETER one good thing about it was that something was always going on that could be called 'interesting' by someone with low standards and as much life experience as Katara had before her mother bit the biscuit and she ran away with an Avatar. Of course lots of people were getting lit on fire and we had that power-hungry tyrant running around who felt the need to declare a death duel whenever someone so much as burped in the same cafeteria as him during lunch hour and we also had his power-hungry daughter who didn't even feel the need for either excuses or formal death duels when she wanted to commit homicide so there was always something amusing going on if you had permission to wander the Royal Capital and Palace WHICH I DID NEENER NEENER ANYONE WOULD BE JEALOUS AFTER A DESCRIPTION LIKE THAT. Usually I hung around with Princess Azula as dangerous as that often was because her brother was hot EVEN IF HE NEEDED TO START SPENDING TIME AWAY FROM HIS MOTHER MORE BECAUSE HOW WAS I SUPPOSED TO MAKE OUT WITH HIM IF SHE WAS ALWAYS THERE and Azula herself fed the part of me that enjoyed bullying people and causing pain and feeling superior to our victims THE THING ABOUT AZULA IS THAT SHE HELPS YOU BE WHO YOU REALLY ARE so when I was hanging out with them OH YEAH AND TY LEE TOO SHE'S A BLIGHT ON HUMANITY BUT WE HAVE THAT 'IN THE TRENCHES TOGETHER' BOND GOING I was actually not bored and maybe kind of interested in what was going on around me. Then Zuko burped at his dad and was sent to a military camp on a boat where he outranked everyone and Ty Lee ran away to join the circus and my family was given the 'reward' of moving to the Earth Kingdom colonies to govern the barbarian city of Omashu.
"I'm not really sure how my dad got that job as governor because I'll admit I was kind of taking a tantrum FOR ME THAT MEANS I GLARE WHILE RANDOMLY SNARLING AND I WALK AROUND WITH A KNIFE ALWAYS IN MY HAND so I wasn't paying attention to any details beyond asking my parents how they could ruin my life like that and even then whenever they tried to answer I would declare that no one understood me WHICH IS PROBABLY TRUE EVEN ZUKO IS GUESSING HALF THE TIME BUT AM I THAT MYSERIOUS THAT A NOTE REALLY SEEMS LIKE A GOOD WAY TO BREAK UP so I found myself in the odd position of learning the name of my new home city only after I had been there for six days. My father was an upwardly mobile politician though so maybe he just struck the Fire Lord as a really capable guy HA OKAY I'M SORRY I'LL STOP MESSING WITH YOU NOW or maybe my family was being rewarded for producing a nice little friend for Azula who didn't run away to circuses or maybe my dad was so annoyingly incompetent that the Fire Lord figured he'd send us to another country to be killed by rebels WHICH ALMOST HAPPENED AND I FIND IT INTERESTING THAT AANG FELT THE NEED TO PREVENT IT SO OBVIOUSLY THERE'S A CONSPIRACY GOING ON. But regardless of how I got there I found myself trapped in Omashu with lots of dust-covered peasants and only my family to hang out with and not one thing going on besides random assassination attempts but there were all so quick I barely had time to feel my heart starting to pump blood again before it was over KIND OF LIKE ZUKO'S KISSES HA HA JUST KIDDING and there was also the old king hanging around cackling at everyone.
"King Bumi himself is an odd story I have no desire to hear as he started out a hundred years ago as a normal kid who just happened to hang out with the Avatar YET SOKKA AND KATARA STILL HAD A MORE PATHETIC CHILDHOOD and he apparently earned some kind of reputation as a 'Mad Genius' because he was so bored by life in Omashu he was driven to things like riding the mail slides down the whole city for excitement HE SUGGESTED IT TO ME BUT I DON'T LIKE IT WHEN MY HAIR GETS ALL FRIZZY FROM THE WIND and I can sympathize with being so bored by that city that you want to do something interesting or die trying but it seems that Bumi wasn't completely satisfied by those shenanigans so he pulled some tricks and wound up being crowned King. Personally I think getting out the city and into a civilized land would be a better option but Bumi is a MAD genius with the visible emphasis on the MAD so sensible ideas are not among his specialties and he thought it best to just hang around Omashu for forever and get what excitement he could from messing with his staff and subjects and completely undermining the justice system for kicks and giggles ACTUALLY I KIND OF LIKE THAT IDEA ONLY I'D BEHEAD ANYONE WHO THREW OUT PERFECTLY GOOD FIRE FLAKES and that apparently lasted him a hundred years until he met up with Aang again and the Fire Nation came a' conquering on his heels.
"By the time I got there Bumi had surrendered without a fight WHICH MAKES HIM THE SMARTEST PERSON IN THE WHOLE EARTH KINGDOM REALLY YOU BARBARIANS WE CAN SPIT FIRE AT YOU JUST GIVE IT UP and been locked up in this big metal coffin thing that was initially kept in the basement but that was really annoying because if Bumi wasn't entertained he'd start singing and those caves running under the palace really let sound carry and that was a big problem because my baby brother couldn't nap if someone was making noise AND THEN HE'D BE CRANKY AND BELIEVE ME A CRANKY TOM-TOM MAKES A CRANKY AZULA SEEM LIKE NOTHING so we had guards and various people constantly dropping by to keep the ex-King occupied and a couple times I took a turn on the off chance that something interesting might happen but Bumi was too busy alternating between being crazy and reciting pretentious platitudes that were supposed to make him seem wise or something but he had nothing on the nonsense Zuko's uncle used to bubble through his tea so eventually I got bored WHAT A TWIST and went back to taking walks with my mother and hoping someone would try to assassinate us.
"Eventually Aang came back and tried to rescue his OLD friend and to do that he kidnapped Tom-Tom and no one asked me what I thought about the proposed trade so the decision was made without me and then I was put in charge to take the fall in case something went wrong OH HEY THE FIRE NATION POLITICS ARE BACK AND THINGS ARE INTERESTING AGAIN. The whole affair turned into a fight and I got to pick on Katara a little but in the end it was a draw with Aang and company running away and Azula and Ty Lee and me left with the Bumi In A Box who thought the whole thing was great fun and wanted to do it again. We left him hanging on his little crane since he that kept him happy enough not to sing and I followed Azula out of town to hunt down Zuko and the Avatar's companions WOO HOO and ironically enough around the time Zuko broke up with me and left me to rot in prison Bumi was making his escape and liberated his city from the evil tyranny of my father. While he was on his way to meet up with his friends and free another big Earth Kingdom city do you think he remembered his old friend Mai who brought him some Fire Flakes that one time and could have used a powerful Earthbender to get her out of jail? You get three guess. It obviously wasn't meant to be between us.
"It's not that I don't appreciate a nonlinear mind with a good sense of humor and the ability to fight like an entire army. It's just that I'd prefer someone closer to my age, who isn't afraid to act sane when appropriate. Oh, I also already have a boyfriend, I guess."
