Author's Notes: So I was chilling out at CAPSLOCK ATLA, the crazy random Avatar community over on Live Journal, and somehow, one late night of yelling later, I found myself having promised to write a Victorian detective Zuko AU where Mai was a time traveler from modern times.

No, I don't know how I get myself into these things, either.

Pairings: Maiko, possible references to other undecided as of yet pairings later.

Mai Qiu was bored.

Then again, she'd always felt like that, so she figured it didn't matter much.

Today was one of those days that was frustrating for her. The sun was shining brightly through puffy white clouds that provided shade but promised no rain to spoil the warmth of the unseasonably good autumn day. Tree leaves took the opportunity to practically glow with dark green health and the squirrels were happy for the extra chance to stock up on food. Small children raced about in the park playing tag. Young couples spread out on the grass to display their love to the world. In short, the day was glorious, the kind of dog day of summer where a young woman should be out and about with friends wasting away time until Monday (and the monotony that came with it) resumed. There were hundreds of things she could be doing, places she could be, things she should be enjoying like normal girls.

Instead she watched it with the dull, unfeeling eyes of this person she'd become. Somehow she couldn't bring herself to care or to be happy. She couldn't force the smile that came so easily to everyone else around her. Mai didn't really understand this herself. She didn't want to be the gloomy token Goth or emo or insert subculture here child. Honestly, if she could have her say she'd be out there making an idiot out of herself. Idiots, after all, had the most fun out of any group on Earth. That was what she wanted more than anything, to be alive and stupid and making mistakes and real. Maybe that was her problem. Nothing had felt real or alive in a very long time. The sun might as well be cold for all she felt.

Perhaps that was why she entered the little shop. She could've sworn it hadn't been there yesterday, and that was the most overused plot device in the book, but had the shop unleashed eldritch horrors hellbent on destroying the world as she knew it that would've been better than her current life. Mai often felt like she was drowning in everyday life. She was suffocating, wilting, whatever dramatic word would be most appropriate, and yet she couldn't seem to fight her way out of it. There had been a time the stoicism was only a mask. Now she was the mask and underneath that there was only nothing. Sometimes she felt like her own actions – moving radically far away for college, refusing to be her parent's puppet, ignoring Azula now that she was free – were all her own ways of tempting fate to do its worst. Some part of Mai Qiu wanted things to go wrong so that she could have something to give a damn about.

The daughter of the current Vice President of the United States, Mai was both obscenely rich and utterly alone. So it was without even a second's hesitation that she put down the outrageous sum of money wanted for a 'magical, one of a kind book' because while one of a kind was probably a lie, that did mean it was rare. That meant the story wouldn't be something she already knew. Books were a comfort to Mai, something she could use to escape the emptiness of her own life. A more wary person might've asked why the book glowed, but Mai was willing to dismiss it as a trick of the light. She had been unyielding in her pessimism and coldness for as long as she could remember in order to impress daddy's friends with how world savvy and grown up she was.

She didn't feel special, or mature, or anything like that. All she felt was a cold, harsh apathy, an inner winter that allowed no mercy and endless silence. She had an affinity for death and was going into forensics. Mai wanted to help people, unlike her father. The press was willing to forget the Vice President's daughter existed in favor of fawning all over President Iroh's Lu Ten, who was probably going to be VP if he kept on acting as he did. Mai couldn't care less. That wasn't a bitter, sarcastic statement, she really thought Iroh was a good man and he'd do well with his kid by his side. She just couldn't share the press's excitement over it since she remembered Lu Ten's awkward gangly teen phase and the days when he still wore sweatervests.

Mai Qiu was ordinary enough to be boring, extraordinary enough to be ostracized by her peers, apathetic enough not to care about the latter and just non-apathetic enough to be annoyed with the former. It was a hard balancing between having nothing to do and not knowing what to do, but that was what Discovery ID was for. She went back to her dorm with the full intent of ignoring the glorious, perfect, radiant October day and watching yet another special on murder. She'd always been a fan of Mainstreet Mysteries. If one of her parents had killed each other, her life wouldn't be so dull, and she might actually have a reason to look at the politics section of the news for once. Ah, well. It couldn't be helped that the biggest thing to ever happen to her had been moving day. That was how things were when one was both dead inside and just alive enough to cling to pride and refuse to admit it out loud.

The book that would later turn out to be the plot device in the messed up daytime soap opera that was Mai's life was actually pretty interesting. Typical Sherlock Holmes rip off, with the Victorian setting and the detective who had a trusted companion, but the mystery described in it wasn't easily solved. Someone as bored as Mai was had read a lot of books. Anything she didn't deduce from the cover was considered literary genius to the sarcastic young woman. She put a bookmark in it and stood, stretching, to grab something from the mini fridge for lunch, and it was then that things began to get weird. All the white stitches of the gray leather book began to glower as it slowly rose above the desk, hovering ominously. Mai blinked and stared at it, waiting for either the camera man to jump out and tell her she was on TV or for some Lovecraftian horror to emerge.

Instead pale blue fog engulfed her, and then everything went black.

Before it did, she had to laugh. "Really, mystical fog? You went with this cliché? Quick, somebody call Time Warp Trio, they want their plot back."