06 - Assassin/Target/Bodyguard
"I am so confused," Ty Lee whined.
Mai agreed completely, but she wasn't about to say it out loud. "It's simple. They're assassins. We need to defeat them. Which we already have."
"Liar," the Waterbender Girl snarled, tugging at the blades that were pinning her sleeves to a tree.
"What my sister means to say," the Dangerous Water Tribe Boy managed from his spot on the ground where his disabled limbs had left him, "is that we think you have things mixed up. We're bodyguards. You're the assassins."
Mai gave a snort. "How do you figure?"
"Well, you're trying to kill the Aang, right? (He's the Avatar.) And we're protecting him. So it seems like a pretty straight-forward assassin/bodyguard dynamic to me."
Ty Lee stroked her chin. "That does make sense."
"Only because you don't have the whole picture." Mai crossed her arms and glared down at the Dangerous Water Tribe Boy. "The Avatar isn't here, is he? So how are you protecting him? And anyway, the Avatar and these two tried to kill my mother and baby brother in Om- New Ozai. They're assassins."
"Aw, that's terrible." Ty Lee came over and patted Mai's shoulder. "That must have been so stressful for you."
The Waterbender girl groaned. "We did not! Aang saved your family from the Omashu rebels! And we took care of your brother when he followed Momo into our camp!"
Mai looked down at the Dangerous Water Tribe Boy. "Momo?"
"Flying lemur. And no, I have no idea how your brother got hold of him. I figure it was a completely unbelievable series of unlikely events. Those happen to us surprisingly often."
Mai considered that. "So, what, you're some kind of a team of wandering bodyguards? Bodyguarding anyone who looks like they need help, whether it's the Avatar or Fire Nation colonizers? And Ty Lee and I - and Azula, I guess - are the cruel assassins who keep forcing you to act?"
"Yes!" the Waterbender Girl crowed triumphantly. "Especially you two, with your knives and Waterbending-stealing punches!"
Mai decided that this girl was enjoying things too much. But at this point, pulling a tri-blade out as a threat would just reinforce this whole 'assassin' narrative that the Water Tribals were pushing. Of course they would try to justify their terrorism and make themselves into the heroes, casting their enemies as 'assassins' who deserved nothing but death.
Ty Lee sniffled. "I don't want to be an assassin."
Mai sighed. "Oh, don't pretend that you're upset. You enjoy punching people a little too much, sometimes."
Ty Lee dropped the act and put her fists on her hips. "Well, if they're being mean to me, then yeah! Otherwise, I'm very peaceable."
"And really," the Dangerous Water Tribe Boy put in, "the whole assassin/bodyguard thing is kind of childish. I mean, I don't personally have a problem with assassinating people. Effective tactics like that have nothing to do with morality and can even save lives in the long run. Like, assassinating the Fire Lord would be pretty okay with me."
Ty Lee gasped.
Mai, however, had to stop herself from nodding along with that particular notion. Best to get more general about things. "The whole narrative pushes a false moral dichotomy on a world that's far more complex than people want to admit. Dualism is a mechanism to exploit a human preference to attack the 'other,' which of course is fundamental to the ability motive a populace to wage war."
"Um," Ty Lee responded, "but we still have to do what Azula says, right?" She was twisting her braid and looking around.
"Obviously," Mai reassured her friend, "because she is our beloved companion and we don't want her to kill us."
The Dangerous Water Tribe Boy made a sound that was close enough to a laugh. "So you're the smart one, huh?"
Mai smiled. No one ever noticed that.
"Oh, please, Sokka. Knock it off." the Waterbender Girl interrupted. "She's not so smart. She's saying there's no such thing as Good or Bad, because she's bad. Obviously the Fire Nation is bad."
"That," the Dangerous Water Boy said, "is also a good point. And as much as I'd like to take the time to, you know, reconcile all these interesting viewpoints, I think there's something no one else has really considered."
Mai leaned over him. "What's that?"
"All of this was just a delaying tactic. APPA SNEAK ATTACK!"
And that's when the sky bison landed nearby and blasted Mai and Ty Lee with another tail-powered Airbending attack just like in Omashu that sent them skipping and sailing into the river.
When they eventually got back on dry land, far downriver, Ty Lee squeezed her hair dry and said, "Was it just me, or was that guy kind of cute?"
Mai threw a glare at her friend. "His name is Sokka. And he said I'm the smart one."
END