Disclaimer: The following chapter is entirely fictitious. Any similarity to the history of any person living or dead is entirely coincidental and unintentional, except when specifically noted otherwise in the cast and crew credits. All celebrity voices are impersonated and no celebrities have endorsed any aspect of this fic.

Chapter Twelve: Attempted

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"Wait, they're here right now?" Mai exclaimed. She clutched her wrist where her holster was and pulled out all the knives to prevent any more surprise triggering.

"Mai, go get help!" Zuko yelled at her again. It did not happen right away but he was suddenly overcome with nausea and dizziness from the unexpected loss of blood. The periphery of his vision was fading black ever so slightly as his head became heavier, but he would not allow himself to pass out. Mai had not moved from her spot and he assumed it was some sort of manipulation not of her own. "Mai, try and get help!"

"I can't!" she snapped at him. "I can't move!" Zuko picked his head up and indeed Mai was being dragged to the floor by an invisible hand. His eyes darted around, looking for the force behind the hands. He watched Mai fighting whatever it was that was holding her down, grabbing onto the walls next to her and trying to pull herself up, but it was then he realized that whoever it was, they were not very good if the two were able to fight their bending.

"Where are you?" Zuko bellowed to whoever was in the shadow. "You fucking cowards! If you're real fighters you'd come out and kill me yourself!" He received no verbal response, only a physical response in the form of his arm attempting to wiggle its way from underneath him. "You're cowards and you're weak!" Zuko repeated loudly. "You can't even keep us under your control!"

"Zuko, what are you doing?" Mai snarled at him when she finally managed to drag herself to her feet. "Stop antagonizing them!"

"Get out here you damn Water Tribe peasant!" he yelled loudly, sure that there was a waterbender among the attackers because of the unusual amount of blood he had lost. "You're pathetic and weak!"

"Stop it, Zuko!" Mai hissed, but Zuko may have been onto something.

"Nayeli, get back here!" a male voice hollered from above them and from the roof above came a pale woman with jet black hair, black lips, and thick make-up around her piercing violet eyes, landing like a cat in front of Zuko and Mai. She hissed like one at Zuko and swung her arms in a circular motion to draw the ocean water to her. She froze it into a skate ramp and bended the blood on the floor into a weapon against the two of them. Taking the shapes of large shards, the girl flung the new weapons quickly in their direction, but the shards were melted by Zuko, who jabbed the air several times to create a shield of fire for them. Though she had removed all the arrows from her holster, Mai stepped in front of Zuko and shot the arrows she had in her hand at the girl, but the purple menace managed to take control of her arm at the last second.

"Water beats fire," the girl cackled in a voice that matched her cat stance. "And Resistance beats you!"

"Nayeli, you dumb bitch!" a teen back flipped from the roof. "Make a move already!"

"You take the chick!" she hollered at him. "He's already bleeding!"

Zuko was not up for fighting at that moment, but he had no choice. At the risk of dying from a normally menial flesh wound, Zuko charged after the girl with an upper cut of fire, but to his surprise and relief, she did not try to bend him, but instead dodged his attack with the ocean water she had bender earlier.

"Take him out already!" the other bender commanded at the girl who managed to get Mai under his own control. "Quick lollygagging!"

"He's harder than it looks, Peng, you ass!" the girl snarled at her partner. She attempted once again to bend the blood out of Zuko's arm, but he reacted quickly enough to cover the wound with the palm of his hand.

These people are ridiculous! Zuko thought to himself. It was so pathetic Zuko wanted to laugh in their face, if he was not already forcing himself to remain conscious. Since Gingitsune had warned him the Resistance would be after them he made it a habit to keep the gun he owned with him at all time. "Let go of Mai!" he growled at the man holding Mai against the wall. "You're only after me."

"How stupid do you think we are?" the guy said softly. "We're not just here for you. The girl knows, so she goes, too."

"The girl?" the waterbender giggled. "She's six years older than you!" The two began to bicker, but they were distracted. Zuko glanced over to Mai and she returned a look that they could both agree they were not in any danger, especially if these kids did not use themselves to their full potential. He carefully watched to two of them pay no attention to him as he cautiously slipped his hand into his robe, sliding his finger into the trigger. He believed he only had one chance to make any move, for if he was not successful then they might stop messing around. With as much accuracy as he could muster he shot at the guy twice in the abdomen. The girl shrieked and immediately took control of him and was ready to throw him off the side of the ship but Mai, who had finally been released from the guy, quickly shot up and threw the remaining daggers she had directly at her, landing most of them in her torso and only two in her face.

Zuko walked over to the man who was still alive and stood over him. "How stupid of the Resistance to send fresh meat out to kill me. I honestly expected better."

The man snorted and spat a blood coated loogie at Zuko's feet. "Casse-toi, Zuko. Il n'a pas d'importance parce que la Résistance toujours gagnera." Whatever he said, Zuko did not care. He pointed the pistol directly at the man and shot him pointblank. He remembered that Mai was still standing next to him and although they had to she was still staring in what seemed to be shock at what they had just done.

"Mai, are you alright?" he asked her quietly, quickly turning to see if she was okay, but as soon as he did his entire head began to spin and he suddenly found himself losing his balance and falling into the railing.

"Zuko, are you okay?" she reciprocated the question, rushing over him to attempt to pull him up. "You're freezing! And you're really pale! How are you feeling?"

"Not good," he grumbled, rubbing his available hand on his face. He began to feel a lump in the back of his throat, the kind that he knew meant that he wanted to throw up, but he forced himself not to, holding his breath and attempting to keep his head from getting any heavier. He let himself slide to the ground so he laid flat on his back, which ameliorated most of his nausea, but it did not stop his head from allowing his eyesight to swirl in all directions. "Mai, they're dead, so don't worry about them," he reassured her. "But you need to go get someone, anyone, please. Those two were amateurs so they couldn't have kept it too quiet. See if anyone may have woken up."

'-'

He heard a bang echoing outside his room. Zuko's assistant shot up from his slumber and looked around to see nothing. It's fricking Zuko fricking Mai, he grumbled in his mind. "Shut up, both of you," he mumbled out loud, violently rotating his body and slamming his head into his pillow. "I have to wake up tomorrow." He closed his eyes again and heaved a deep breath in an attempt to fall back asleep but a sudden surge of adrenalin rushed through his veins when another bang echoed loudly down the hall. That came from upstairs… Something's not right… He kicked his covers off his legs and quickly threw his robe on. He reached for any sort of weapon he could get, which happened to be a small glowing monkey statue, and cautiously opened his door to make his way down the hall. He saw nothing just yet, but he made his way down the hall and up to the entrance where he saw the door to the deck open. "This ship is armed!" he croaked loudly. He coughed to clear his throat and said in a deeper tone, "So you better surrender now! You can't reach backup!" He jumped out the door, monkey in hand and was ready to strike but the only thing that was standing outside was Mai hunched over. "Good lord, Miss Mai, you scared the shit out of me!" he hissed, dropping the monkey, but suddenly his eyes caught on to a frozen ramp, large dents in the side of the ship, and a dark puddle of something he could not recognize.

"Get help!" Mai barked at him. "Zuko needs help!"

"OH! Oh god, what the hell happened out here!" the assistant exclaimed, feeling a twinge of nausea at the sight of what he assumed was blood because of its proximity to two dead bodies of people he had never met before.

"You, go wake up the physician!" he heard Zuko say slowly. "Right now!" He could not hold it any longer. Risking more dizziness, he rapidly pulled himself to the ledge, his stomach releasing all its contents into the ocean below.

"Geeze!" the assistant exclaimed loudly. "Yes, physician! Right!" He stumbled slightly for he had to remind himself what he was supposed to do and ran back into the ship, shouting loudly for the physician who was on the second floor.

"I am so sorry, Mai," Zuko apologized to her while trembling uncontrollably. "I shouldn't have dragged you into this. It was stupid of me, and they could have really hurt you—"

"Zuko, save your energy," she cut him off. "Besides, if I wasn't here then who knows what could have happened."

"They wouldn't have killed me, that's for sure," he mumbled quietly.

"It would have been two against one, and you got the weaker one," Mai frowned. "And you lost a lot of blood from a cut that would have never bled that much, and so quickly."

"I think I'm going to be sick again," he muttered under his breath, bracing himself as his throat began to contract, but nothing came.

"If you're going to throw up again, I'm going to leave," she said jokingly. "Lay back down, Zuko, you'll feel better."

"I'll wait here until the physician gets here," he responded. Mai did not bother to protest Zuko's refusal. Hesitantly, she placed her hand gently on his back, unsure of how he would respond, but he did not protest. In fact he enjoyed the comforting rub; it made him feel cared for.

"What are we going to do with those two?" Mai asked quietly, gesturing her head to the two bloodied corpses sprawled next to them. "Do we wait until we get to land and give them a proper burial?"

"No," he responded roughly. "They don't deserve it. Don't touch them. Let someone else take care of them."

"They're going to begin to smell. Shouldn't we take care of them now?"

"It won't matter, they'll be fine."

"OKAY, YOU, I'LL BE OKAY!" the angry voice of the physician echoed loudly from the corridor entrance. "I'm a doctor, I think I can handle dead bodies!" The two of them rounded the corner and the physician quickly made his way to Zuko without even batting an eye at the two strangers lying next to him. "Face me," the physician commanded quickly. Zuko slowly turned himself around and the man quickly grabbed his wrist with two fingers, muttering under his breath as he watched his small stopwatch. "Your heart rate is slow, but your heart is pounding hard! Did you cut an artery or something?"

"It was them," Zuko answered, flicking his finger to the cadavers behind him. "It came from the cut on my other arm."

"That diminutive wound?" the man gasped. "That cut could not do this much damage if it went all the way through to the other side! What happened?" Zuko and Mai exchanged looks and both knew they could not say anything, for if they did, they might not be as fortunate the next time, nor would they be the only ones who will get hurt in the process.

'-'

"What? NO! I was told I didn't have to kill him anymore!" Kurogane exclaimed to the woman at the desk who had called her in. "What happened?"

"I'm sorry, Marks Kurogane, but the two didn't make it back," the secretary said calmly. "Not everyone can kill the Fire Lord for their entrance project to the Marks Program." Her last words were seasoned with a hint of bitterness. Kurogane rolled her eyes in exasperation and slammed her fist on the counter.

"No! I was told I didn't have to kill him anymore!" she barked. "You don't understand! He's heading south right now and he's going to ruin my next mission! I was under the impression that I didn't need to worry about him! What happened?"

"I don't know," the secretary shrugged. "All I was told was that Gai-Nayeli and Tǔ-Peng sent in their application reserving the Fire Lord as their entrance project but the two did not come back."

"Who the hell approved their admittance request?" she snarled. "I had to jump through fucking hoops of fire to get the Fire Lord as my admittance assassination! Why the hell would they give it to fucking amateurs?"

"I don't know!" the lady said slowly but sharply. "I don't go over the admission requests, I'm just the secretary! The Marks Program committee takes care of it, go take this up with them."

"No! How hard can it be to kill someone!" she continued to yell. "It's okay if it's someone insignificant but it's the goddamned Fire Lord! They should have taken care of this."

"Ma'am, I'm sorry, but I don't know what to tell you—"

"No, this is exactly what happened the last time! I spent years trying to find Hiashi and what do they do? They give her assassination to four freaking other wannabe assassins who couldn't kill a fly who was stuck to the wall!"

"Which is why they told me to tell you that you're supposed to take care of Fire Lord Zuko and Mai."

"Yes, but now there's not enough time to get them all! I had it planned out before they told me I didn't have to kill the two but now, ugh!" She slammed her fist into the counter top again and grunted loudly in frustration. The secretary rolled her eyes and grabbed several papers from the cubby next to her.

"Would you just fill these out?" she sighed histrionically, handing her a quill. Kurogane snatched the feather from her hand and quickly filled out the paperwork.

"Damn kids," she mumbled as she handed the quill back to the secretary.

"By the way," the woman said stiffly, "High Master Keme wanted me to give this to you." She handed her an envelope with a wax seal, imprinted with the symbol of the Resistance. "He said for you to read it as soon as you could." Kurogane hesitantly took the letter.

"Okay," she said slowly, turning to the door of the office and exiting as quickly as she could. No one was coming down the hall and she had been the only one in the office so she knew there would be no one to see her, leaning against the cold grey stone and with a trembling hand, she tore open the envelope to read what was inside:

Kurogane,

I know you do not want to go through with your assassination of the Southern child and I have to say, you have to do it for the sake of the world. And I will also add you will best follow orders, for if not, you will suffer for your disloyalty. You would not want a repeat of last night, although I would not mind in the least bit.

Keme

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EPICALLY LAME, this chapter was. No, nothing happened, mostly this was all fluff and filler, but it's mostly to finish off what I left off yesterday. NEHO, like always, please review, I have a deviant art page, and if you have any drawing suggestions… Until next time, Signing Off.