"Stand up straight, Mai! As if you were really going to attack me!"

Mai grimaced at Ty Lee, who stood two meters away from her in a defensive stance. Along the compound wall to their right the three Kyoshi warriors crouched, watching them.

"Look how I make a fist," Ty Lee was saying to the Kyoshi. "I keep my middle knuckle higher than the rest. That's because pressure points are small; you have to hit them with a small but forceful blow. The next step is to analyze your opponent." She lifted her fists and looked at Mai. "Now, I know Mai, so I know how she attacks, but we'll do it slowly for you. Mai, make a motion like you're about to throw a knife at me."

Mai lifted her arm; Ty Lee sprang forward but Mai only made a feeble flicking gesture with her wrist.

Ty Lee stopped short, her fists raised. "Mai! Come on!"

"I know what you're about to do," Mai grumbled.

Nysa and Li Yut laughed.

"Come on, Mai, play along," Ty Lee said. "You know it won't hurt for long."

Mai sighed.

"Thanks, Mai!" Ty Lee cheered, and backed up to her original position. "Okay, now pretend to throw a knife at me for real."

Mai lifted her right arm again and swung it forward as if tossing a knife. Before she had completed the motion, however, Ty Lee had jumped forward; she caught Mai's forearm in her left hand and dug her thumb so fiercely into Mai's wrist that she gasped, and with her right hand she jabbed the inside of Mai's upper arm. Mai staggered back and Ty Lee released her now-limp arm.

"Did you see that?" Ty Lee asked the Kyoshi. "The side-sweeping motion Mai made activates these muscles right here—" she indicated her own inner arm—"and she throws by flicking her wrist. I offset her by pressing on the tendons in her wrist—that's not chi blocking, that's just trying to disrupt her aim—then I hit her pressure point with my knuckle, as that muscle was most extended. It's all about knowing your body. You just look at what your opponent's doing and hit them where their energy comes from!"

Even scowling Agri looked impressed. Ty Lee beamed. "You'll get it! Watch my next move on Mai."

"'Next?'" Mai repeated.

"Yeah," said Ty Lee. "I'm going to demonstrate a full take-down—Is that okay?"

Mai sighed again.

"Okay!" Ty Lee said brightly. "Well, since I already know Mai's attack patterns so well, I know what she'd do next if this were a real fight and her right arm were incapacitated. Mai would feign an identical attack with her left hand, and when I move in to do the same to that arm, she would lift her left leg and shoot at me from an ankle holster she'd have attached there, right, Mai?"

"Probably," Mai muttered. The Kyoshi laughed.

"Well, when she extends her left leg, I'm going to slide down and strike right above the back of the knee—there'll be an extended tendon sticking out, and if I bruise that, she won't have the strength to keep lifting her leg and balancing. Then I'll hit her sciatic nerve on her back to finish her. Ready?"

The Kyoshi nodded.

"And Mai—just do what I said, okay? We can spar for real later."

"All right," Mai sighed again.

"Okay! Here we go!" Ty Lee said.

Mai lifted her left arm and arced her wrist; Ty Lee circled around to her left side but Mai leaped away, then threw her upper body backwards and extended her left leg, before her, toe pointed at Ty Lee.

Ty Lee was already charging forward, however; she threw herself to her knees and slid beneath Mai's pointed leg. Before Mai could twist away, Ty Lee grabbed Mai's ankle with her right hand and forced it upwards. Mai's torso fell backwards and she raised her hands behind her head as if to flip away, but Ty Lee jabbed the back of her leg so hard that Mai gasped. She toppled sideways and Ty Lee leaped forward to strike her exposed back. Her knuckle struck Mai in the lower left side and she collapsed in a heap on her already-numb right arm.

The Kyoshi clapped. Agri cheered. Mai spat hair out of her mouth and glowered.

"Now she can't move from about the waist down," said Ty Lee. She bowed elegantly. "Thank you! Do you guys want to try it now?"
Nysa and Agri leaped to their feet, and Ty Lee set about correcting their fists. Li Yut approached Mai.

Mai glanced up at her, then looked away. Her eyes snapped back again, however, when Li Yut extended a hand.

"What?" Mai snapped, looking at Li Yut out of her left eye.

"I'm offering to help you," Li Yut said dryly.

"I can't move," said Mai. "Remember?"

"You aren't even trying," Li Yut retorted. "Do you want help?"

A shrill whistle blew before Mai could respond. She felt pounding on the ground behind her, then suddenly two guards had seized Li Yut and pinned her arms behind her back.

"No fighting!" the guards shouted; more of them dragged Nysa, Agri and Ty Lee into Mai's vision. "It's the cooler for you four!"

Another guard knelt by Mai. "Are you all right, Lady Mai?"

Mai looked from the guard's helmeted, blank face to Nysa and Agri, already handcuffed and being lead away, to Ty Lee's frightened face. Their eyes met.

"Did they attack you, Lady Mai?" the guard asked, as someone knocked into Mai's knees. She jerked in pain and saw Li Yut, handcuffed and glaring at her.

Before Mai knew it, she was being lifted by the red-armored guard. Her muscles twitched and her face screwed up—and when her eyes opened again, Ty Lee was gone.

The guard carried her down the prison halls back to her cell.

"Don't be afraid to inform the guards if they hurt you again," the guard was saying. "You are the warden's niece. Prisoners should know to treat you honorably."

"I'm offering to help you."

Mai said nothing.

They reached her cell and the guard deposited her on the floor. Mai's cramped lower back twinged so painfully that she nearly screamed, but no noise came out of her throat.

The guard turned his back and left the cell.

"I was a rich only child who got anything I wanted…as long as I behaved…and sat still…"

"It's not about you, Mai!"

"Get off of me!"

The cell door closed with a clang. Mai flinched.

She lay on the cold metal floor, hardly breathing, her throat constricted. The numbness in her right arm, left leg and back seemed, if anything, to be spreading. Her limbs felt heavy and thick, like tar or drying cement. Mai twitched the fingers of her left hand, then opened her clenched fist. The pebble tumbled out of her palm. She reached for it—but the motion sent jolts of pain through her shoulder and down her spine, so with a choked sigh Mai let her arm drop limply again, the pebble inches from her fingertips.

"We can spar later, okay?"

Ty Lee's frightened face rose before Mai's eyes. She closed them and turned away, but Ty Lee's face remained, her grey eyes wide and fixed on Mai's face as the guards led her away. The Kyoshi, too, strode past her, anger in Nysa and Agri's faces, and fear, too, and—disappointment?—in Li Yut's.

She stared up at the dark ceiling, and remembered the stars above Ember Island as she lay on a rock and said, "…As long as I behaved…and sat still…"

And Zuko's voice, the light of the fire flickering on his pale face: "I wish you would be high-strung and crazy for once, instead of keeping all your feelings bottled up inside!"

For a moment, Mai thought she felt a cool ocean breeze on her face—but the next, her cell felt smaller, stuffier, and hotter than ever.

"Ma'am, there's a riot going on! I'm here to protect you!"

"Prisoners should know to treat you honorably."

Honor. She hated that word.

Mai tried to rise, but her body would not respond. She could neither see nor feel her toes. Her stomach rumbled. A bead of sweat dripped down her forehead. Crowds of people pressed in around her, teenagers with made-up faces and thin, revealing clothing, talking and smiling about nothing at all, as miles away, Ba Sing Se burned and burned—and Zuko stood among them, sulky and glaring. One of the partygoers touched Mai and Zuko screamed at him. Mai wanted to get out, to escape the beach house and feel the ocean breeze on her skin, but she found herself coming to the defense of the idiots who had thrown the party. And Zuko rounded on her:

"Well at least I feel something! As opposed to you—you have no passion for anything! You're just a big blah!"

The guard flung himself into her, and she boiled with rage. "Get off of me!"

Zuko, back at the beach, as Ty Lee and Azula looked on, uncomprehending: "I like it when you express yourself."

"As long as I behaved…and sat still…"

"Did they attack you, Lady Mai?"

Mai thought of Omashu and its suffocating iron walls. She stirred restlessly—and a blinding pain shot through her body again. She lay still, drained, as in her mind's eye Azula's palanquin approached the gates to Omashu's palace.

"Count me in." she had said to Azula."Anything to get me out of this place."

And Zuko, weeks later: "You don't believe in anything!"

And then the Avatar stood before them, Mai's baby brother cradled gently in his arms, and before Mai could speak Azula bared her teeth in a smile. "We're trading a two-year-old for a king. A powerful earthbending king. It just doesn't seem like a fair trade, does it?"

"You want me to express myself? Leave me alone!"

They had lived at the top of Omashu, in a palace meant for earthbenders, with few doors and no windows, in the shadow of a newly-erected statue of the Fire Lord.

"We're trading a two-year-old for a king. A powerful earthbending king. It just doesn't seem like a fair trade, does it?"

"My mother said I had to keep out of trouble," she had explained. " We had my dad's political career to think about."

"You're right," said Mai. "The deal's off."

Mai's throat constricted even further. She tried once more to rise, but her body felt impossibly heavy, as if her limbs had turned to stone.

Her eyes closed.

"You brought my brother?"

"He's here," the Avatar called back. He stood alone at the base of the Fire Lord's statue, a baby in his arms. "We're ready to trade."

Azula stood beside her, shining in her gold and black armor, her arms crossed imperiously and her index and third fingers extended to rest against her elbows. Her fingernails gleamed like lightning.

She was speaking to Mai.

"…Do you mind?"

Mai could not respond. She stood beside Azula, unmoving, her eyes on the black-haired baby wriggling and cooing in the Avatar's arms.

"It just doesn't seem like a fair trade, does it?" Azula said. She moved forward, as smoothly as a chess piece sliding across a board, and pointed at the plaque on the pedestal beneath Mai's feet.

"'You're right. The deal's off,'" Azula read from the plaque. Mai tried to speak, but her leaden lips would not open. She did not even gasp as Azula extended one gleaming golden arm to point her two fingers at the Avatar and her brother.

Blue lightning arced across Azula's body toward the Avatar, and bolts scattered off her in all directions, but the blue sparks brushed harmlessly across Mai's grey face. The Avatar jumped delicately away, Tom-Tom in his arms, but did not run. "Wait!" he called across the platform. "Let's talk!" Mai saw the lightning gleaming on Azula's white teeth as she moved again.

The lightning shot down Azula's extended arm and across the platform. The Avatar tried to shield Tom-Tom, whose little eyes widened as he stared at the bright lights—

Zuko leaped onto the platform. He threw himself in between Azula and the Avatar, and suddenly the blue lightning redoubled; bolts crackled across the platform, over Mai's stone body and Azula's golden armor.

Azula's armor shone as the lightning sparked around her. Across the platform stood Zuko, shaking out his arms, and the Avatar, hopping lightly from foot to foot as Tom-Tom wriggled in his arms.

Azula did not move; she only smiled wide, her sharp teeth gleaming, and Mai saw the flames start behind her teeth before she burst into flame.

The blue fire struck Mai first, but she felt no heat—Mai was a statue, she was untouchable—Zuko spread his arms as if to catch the flame, and the Avatar tried to jump away but it was still Azula's turn, still Azula's move—

Mai watched as the flame consumed them. First Zuko, his scarred face torn with despair. Then the Avatar fell back to the burning earth, screaming, as Tom-Tom slipped from his arms and into the flames with a wail—

Mai's eyes snapped open.

The sun, the flames, Azula's gleaming armor, died away instantly and Mai gagged on the dark, stuffy air, her eyes wide and darting about the cell. She tried to rise but she could not move, and a spark of panic stabbed her.

To be unmoveable, unmoved, had always been her defense, her rebellion, but now—She had frozen herself and they had taken her stone-cold body and placed her on their chessboard. She tried again to move but her body only trembled viciously, and every tremor sent a jolt of pain through her stiff and aching muscles.