A/N: I thought this up when I wrote Chapter 60. Just some nice, wholesome sibling bickering with bonus Maiko thrown in.


"Thank you," Zuko gasped out as he and Azula accepted the proffered towels from the training ring attendants after their grueling session.

Azula rolled her eyes as she turned towards him. "Thanking the servants, Zuzu? How common. What, are you planning on also thanking the komodo rhinos after riding them?"

Zuko rolled his eyes right back at her, but was too tired to protest other than a token "Azula." He had just been the recipient of a thorough ass-kicking from Azula, and knew it. This had been their first sparring match since Azula had come home. While she was in the hospital, her skills had gotten rusty, and her flames had even reverted back to orange for a couple of years. But now she was living at the palace again, had worked things out with Ty Lee, and after several intensive weeks of solo practice, her fire burned bluer and hotter than ever. She was back, and she wanted every single person in the Caldera to know it.

(Zuko had improved as well, but she would never admit that out loud.)

However, it had not merely been a thirst to prove herself that had propelled her during this bout. There had been something else eating away at her lately, and she decided she might as well bring it up now.

"Doesn't it bother you, brother, that there were only nineteen Battles of the Mo Ce sea?" she inquired as she wrung the sweat out of her topknot with her towel. Just as she had hoped, Zuko's one eye that wasn't already in a permanent squint narrowed in confusion.

"What? No. Why would that bother me?" he replied. Azula smiled a little. He had no idea what was coming for him.

"Because it was so close to being twenty," she explained. "Twenty is such a nice, even number, but now it's stuck forever at ugly nineteen. Unless…"

Silence. Her dum-dum brother did nothing but blink for close to half a minute as he tried to figure out what she was getting at. Then comprehension dawned on his face.

"No, Azula, we are not having another battle so it can be a number you like," he sighed.

Azula pouted. "Awww. Just one measly battle? It doesn't have to be long or anything."

"No."

"Pleeease?"

Zuko finally snapped.

"No more battles, and that's final!" he shouted at her. Then he had to take some deep breaths while muttering things about "calm, supportive environment" and "setting clear boundaries." He was obviously expecting this argument to continue, only to be surprised again as Azula dropped the matter entirely.

"Very well," she said as she turned and started walking towards the shower facilities. A vicious smirk crossed her face. The seeds had been planted.


"Zuko? What are you still doing here? It's four in the morning!" Mai scolded. She set her candlestick down on Zuko's table so she could stifle a yawn. "You need to come back to bed."

"I told you to go on to sleep without me," Zuko said without looking up from his scroll. A sizable number of scrolls and books, having proven useless in his quest, had been discarded in a heap next to him.

"I did. And then I woke up, and you still weren't there. What, exactly, do you need to know so badly that you have to stay up till all hours of the night in the library to figure it out?"

"It's nothing," Zuko answered automatically. That proved to be the absolutely worst thing he could have said in that situation.

"No, Zuko," Mai said. "We are not going to do this thing of you not telling me stuff again. We have already discussed that at length. You barely touched your dinner, then you shut yourself up in here all night. Obviously, it is something important."

He finally looked up at this. His newly rebranded fiancée was standing there in her bathrobe, arms crossed over her chest. Zuko's vision was somewhat blurry from nearly ten straight hours of reading, but even so, he could tell that she was glaring at him. As he looked at her, though, her expression softened. She added, "And I wanted to see if there was anything I could do to help."

"All right. I'll tell you," he conceded. "But it's kind of stupid."

"Try me," Mai replied.

"I was just wondering…is there any way to have a battle without hurting or killing anyone?"

Mai's eyebrows rose so high that they were completely obscured by her bangs. "What."

"I told you it was stupid," Zuko retorted. With a groan of dismay, he flung the scroll he was reading away to join its companions in the discard pile.

"Well, it sounds like something that can wait until tomorrow," Mai said. "Maybe you can send a letter asking your uncle about it. Right now, though, you are not going anywhere but to bed, and I will make certain that you stay there. There will be incentives for doing this if you want them."

That did sound tempting. But all of a sudden, Zuko was realizing how exhausted he was. It was clear that once he got back to his room, he would be able to do nothing except crash and get some much-needed sleep. He rose, and let Mai place a guiding hand on his back.

"Why did you need to know that thing about the battle anyway?" Mai asked as she retrieved her candlestick with her free hand and they started walking.

"Does it ever bother you that there were only nineteen battles of the Mo Ce sea instead of twenty?" he ventured.

"No. I never thought about it. Should it bother me?"

"Azula reminded me today, and now I'm never going to be able to unthink it," Zuko grumbled. He was only now starting to realize that perhaps Azula had never really wanted a twentieth battle after all; she'd just thought that if she was going to be tormented by this idea, he had to be as well. If so, her plan had been a complete success. Damn her.