"…But my favorite was that little toddler—the one that kept running off and getting into trouble!"

"I remember him!" said Agri. "What was his name again?"
"Tomi," said Nysa. "I spent that entire trip just watching him. Took every bit of my Kyoshi warrior training!" she laughed.

"How cute!" Ty Lee gushed. "Mai, that sounds like your little brother, doesn't it?"

Mai sat a little apart, her knees drawn up to her chest. She threw a pebble at the wall.

"Yeah, his parents weren't much help, right?" Agri said darkly.

"Why's that?" Ty Lee asked.

"They were always arguing," Li Yut said. "Isn't that so? I think the father wanted to join the Earth Kingdom military once his wife and son were safe in Ba Sing Se, and she didn't want him to leave."

The five girls sat in a corner of the yard compound, four of them leaning against the wall, but Mai sat facing the adjacent wall. She threw her pebble again. With a small ping it struck a smudge on the wall and rolled back down to her foot. She picked it up and threw it again.

"I remember them," Nysa said sadly. "I felt so bad for poor Tomi. He didn't know what was going on."

"Why wouldn't she want him to join the military?" Ty Lee asked.

"She thought he was betraying their family," Nysa said. She blushed. "I can't help remembering the whole argument—it wasn't hard to hear them."

"We all remember," Agri said darkly. "She said he was being selfish, trying to be a hero and thinking about his honor."

"He said, 'That's not how I see it,'" Nysa intoned. "'This isn't about you.' And she said," Nysa continued in a voice thick with affected sarcasm, "'Thanks, that makes me feel all better.'"

"That's so sad!" Ty Lee exclaimed. "Poor little Tomi."

Mai's pebble pinged off the wall again.

"It's the Fire Nation that's responsible for stories like these!" Agri said furiously, slamming her fist into her leg. Ty Lee flinched.

"Did he leave?" Mai said suddenly over Agri.

"What?" said Agri.

Mai threw the pebble and struck a bull's-eye on the smudge again. "Did he leave?" she repeated. "The man."

"We don't know," said Nysa. Ty Lee stared at her, her grey eyes wide, as Nysa continued, "We just help refugees get to Ba Sing Se; we don't ever get to find out how they do."

"But Ba Sing Se fell soon after that," said Li Yut. "So if he left, then she and Tomi are stuck in Ba Sing Se, more trapped than protected. And he's outside, exposed to any kind of brigand, Fire Nation or no, that might attack him."

"Yeah," Agri said, her face darkening once more. "And wasn't it you two who helped bring Ba Sing Se down? By disguising yourselves as us?"

"I didn't know—" Ty Lee said suddenly. She sat with her legs bent on either side of her hips, her shoulders hunched and her hands pressed into the ground. "I would never have left the circus if I knew what was going on in the world—"

"Yes you would," Mai snapped. Her pebble pinged off the wall again.

"Excuse me?" Ty Lee turned on her.

"You would have left anyway, because Azula didn't really ask you," said Mai coolly. "She ordered you."

"Are you going to say Azula ordered you too, then?" Agri laughed cruelly.

"No!" Mai threw the pebble again; it missed its mark and rolled away. "Ty Lee had almost escaped, and Azula caught her and dragged her back. But I was still at the center—shut up with my family's ambitions—everyone's phony honor—but I was always quiet about it, because if I said anything they'd shut me up even tighter—and then they sent me to Omashu," she said with venom, "where I could barely even leave my room. I was glad when Azula showed up! I wanted to escape!"

"You didn't escape, though," snapped Li Yut. "Did you? You're still trapped in the Fire Nation, except now instead of being a victim you're one of the criminals. Your parents did a pretty good job on you."

Before she knew it Mai was on her feet, her fists raised and her nostrils flared. Ty Lee stared at her in blank shock; Nysa and Agri looked wary. Li Yut remained seated, one eyebrow arched scornfully.

"You're not the only one with problems," she said. "And now Ba Sing Se is a part of the Fire Nation, and Tomi's just as trapped inside it as you are. Anything that happens to Tomi is on your conscience, too."

Mai froze. Then she turned away, scooped up her pebble, and stalked off through the yard.

"I can't believe you're friends with that," Agri said from behind her.

"No," came Ty Lee's distressed voice. "Mai's not really like that, she's just—"

What Mai was she didn't hear. She pushed her way through a group of prisoners and continued walking through the crowds until she had almost reached the other side of the compound. What she would do when she reached the wall Mai had no idea. She walked faster, a strange pressure building in her chest—

"Leave him alone!"

"'Course I will, if you do what I say."

Mai stopped. A guard stood in the shadow of a watchtower, half-obscured from the compound and the other guards. He had a boy—who seemed far too young to be in the Boiling Rock—in a painful headlock, and he was leering at a pale young woman who stood wringing her hands, tears dripping down her face.

"You can't do this…!" she said in a choked voice.

"Can't I?" the guard smirked. "Now are you gonna help your brother out or what?"

"Don't do it," said a second young woman to the sister. "Think of your honor—you can't do this—"

The boy let out a whimper of pain. His sister squeaked in horror.

"Make up your mind," the guard leered.

"Don't—" said the second woman.

The first girl's shoulders sagged. She bowed her tear-stained face.

"All right—all right—I'll—"

The guard suddenly screamed in pain; he released the boy and clapped both hands to his eye, as behind him a pebble clattered to the ground.

"What—?"

Mai stepped in between the guard and the sister, her long black hair rippling as she raised her fists. "Leave them alone."

The guard sneered and reached for his belt. Mai's eyes narrowed—the girls screamed as the guard drew a long knife and rushed forward. Mai smirked.

She sidestepped the guard, caught his wrist, and bent it backwards so sharply that he cried out and released the knife. He fell to one knee with a curse.

Mai stepped back, the knife held lightly in her hand, as the guard staggered backwards to his feet. He drew a second, identical knife.

"I wouldn't do that if I were you," said Mai with a small smile. The guard raised his knife and hurled it at her head.

Mai dropped into a squat, her hair flying behind her—but she raised one long arm and caught the knife by the handle as it flew over her.

The guard's jaw dropped as Mai, a knife in each hand, sprang forward. Two swift kicks drove him backwards, and then an elbow to his chin left him against the compound walls, and Mai plunged both daggers beneath his upraised arms and into the walls.

Mai stepped back and surveyed the pinned guard. "Don't ever touch them again," she said sharply. "If you do, I'll find out. And by the way?" She brushed her bangs aside. "You're better off not bringing knives."

The guard gaped in horror. "H-help!" he screamed. Mai glanced over her shoulder just as two of his fellows tackled her from behind. She hit the dirt with a grunt.

"A prisoner attacked a guard!" one of them shouted from behind her as another tied Mai's hands behind her back.

The whole yard had gone quiet; all the prisoners stared as the two guards forced Mai to her feet while another began tugging at the knives pinning the first to the wall.

"You're going to the cooler," Mai's guards snapped.

"Thank you!"

Mai looked over her shoulder. The pale girl was there, one arm around her brother, a surprised and grateful expression on her face.

The corners of Mai's mouth lifted. "Likewise," she said. She caught a last glimpse of the girl's confused face before the guards marched her away, across the courtyard and past the wall where Ty Lee and the Kyoshi still sat, staring.

"Mai?" Ty Lee gasped. She jumped to her feet. Mai smiled at her, then raised her eyebrow at Li Yut. Ty Lee clapped her hands together and beamed.

Her smile widening, Mai looked forward again, then down at her feet. The toes of her right foot were curled as tightly as she could hold them, but she managed to disguise the sound of the pebble clacking against the iron floor as the guards marched her through the prison.