A Day Out with Friends

The tracks led across the wet sand, a little line going straight up to the half-buried shipwreck.

Azula thought it was probably an Earth Kingdom vessel, or had been before it was beached and abandoned. Certainly, it was not one of the metal achievements of the Fire Nation, and it looked old enough that it might have been around back when the Earth Kingdom still had an official navy.

Now it was just garbage.

She turned to Mai. "And so the hunt reaches its ultimate destination."

"Are you sure he's in there?" The only expression on Mai's face was a slight squint that could have been skepticism or simply a reaction to the brackish air. "This one has delusions of cleverness."

"He's in there." Azula could admit that Mai wasn't wrong, exactly, but as always, she failed to bridge the gap between observations and conclusions. "He doesn't want to lose us. If he did, we might find his friends. He'd rather die than let that happen."

Mai snorted. "I can't even imagine being that fond of anyone."

"Of course not. That's what I like about you." Azula squared her shoulders. "Come, it's time to end this."

As they followed the tracks across the sand to the shipwreck, Mai was apparently still working through the situation. "So if he wants us to follow him, he's probably setting a trap in there."

Azula nodded. "Probably."

"And we're not worried because- ?"

"Because we are us." Azula shifted so that she was stepping right into the tracks, her own boots not quite reaching edges. "This one is dangerous, but he is just one person, and he obviously has no formal training."

Mai's long sleeves rustled in the breeze. "So if we brought Ty Lee, then our odds of capturing him would be even better."

Azula smiled at her friend's naiveté. "Correct. But we're not trying to capture him."

It was a moment before Mai found her voice again. "But if we capture him, we can use him as bait to draw out the Avatar."

They were almost to the shipwreck, now. Azula scanned it for egress points. Perhaps it was quite a bit more than half-buried, more extensive than it appeared. "We tried that with King Bumi, remember? We drew them out, but then we couldn't keep them from escaping. And then they eluded us even after we chased them through a whole night and day. No, they're too good at running away."

"So, why are we chasing this guy, then?"

This was why Azula was in charge. Well, this and also being royalty. "It's simple. We are going to run him down and kill him."

Mai might have made a noise deep in her throat, or else it could have been a gull making a dive at a crab on the beach. "We are?"

"As you said, he has delusions of cleverness, but I have come to the conclusion that he is the smartest of the group. And, despite his weaknesses, he has managed to perform well in combat against you and Ty Lee. You are better than him, but he does not go down as easily as most would."

"So we're going to kill him."

"We are. When we find the rest of the Avatar's group again, the loss of their clever one will make it harder for them to run, plus they will be down a fighter. Also, they will be grieving. Grief impairs the ability to think. Just ask my uncle." Azula waited for the wave of saltwater to recede before climbing up the side of the shipwreck to the main deck.

Mai followed. "I've never killed anyone before."

"I know." Azula grinned. "But you will now."

Mai gave a slow nod. "That's why you didn't bring Ty Lee."

Azula shrugged a single shoulder. "I know you both so well." Then she turned and headed into the darkness of the ship.

Mai, of course, followed.

Sokka listened as the sounds of two pairs of boots echoed through the corridors.

He was pretty sure he was meant to hear that.

Okay, so he had lured the two scary girls into the shipwreck. He had explored the massive ship while he waited, so he had an advantage in terms of the terrain. If he did this right, he should be able to turn the hunt around and stalk the stalkers, maybe picking them off one at a time. The knife-thrower wouldn't be able to get any range in the narrow passageways, and the Firebender wouldn't able to burn wood this damp and slimy.

Except he couldn't imagine that they weren't purposefully walking into his trap. These girls weren't like Zuko. Or Zhao. They actually stopped to think.

Sokka was having trouble martialing his own thoughts. His plans for jumping out of the shadows and shanking a girl in her kidneys were making him queasy, and not because he had any aversion to shanking or kidneys. As much as Suki and Katara had taught him about the faults of sexism, the idea of shoving a knife into a girl's body still turned his stomach.

He was also distracted by the usual self-recriminations. He hated those. They marched into his brain with a parade of questions like, 'Why didn't I just stay and watch Aang train with Katara and Toph?' or, 'What exactly made me want to go exploring by myself? and, 'It really would have been easier to just surrender when I realized they spotted me, wouldn't it?' And that parade crashed into his main thought-procession, getting everyone mixed up and throwing the music off time.

Right. Focus. Shipwreck. Fire Nation girls. Shank. Kidneys.

The sounds of the boots were coming from two places, now. Sokka listened, placing the sources in his mental map of the ship. Now, what were the odds that the girls had honestly split up to search for him, and weren't just trying to make him think that's what they were doing? Sure, they were probably separated right now, but if they were honestly expanding their search then he could count on them remaining separate long enough to take one out and then get away. If they were just pretending, then they would be listening more closely for trouble and would probably know the quickest route back to the other.

He could, of course, just decline this invitation, whether or not it was being made intentionally. He could sneak back out of the shipwreck and try to get away. But no, the girls wouldn't be fooled for long, and then they would be after him again. They had proven to be excellent hunters, so far - it cost him only a little bit of masculine security to admit that - and he couldn't risk leading them back to the others.

Right. Let's go shanking, then.

Sokka made sure to step only on the drifts of sand that littered the floor where it met the wall, both to muffle the noise of his travel and also to avoid slipping on the moldy wood with his bare feet. His boots would give him more stability, but they were currently dangling from his belt, on account of not wanting the whole shipwreck to know where he was.

He slipped through corridors, climbed up through ventilation shafts, dropped down through rotted holes in the floor, and after a long hunt found himself behind the Firebender girl in one of the lowest levels of the ship.

Sokka gripped his knife in his hands. He just had to point it at her kidneys and shove-

She looked like she was Katara's age.

-he picked up a handful of sand and said, "Peekaboo!"

She spun, not at all surprised, blue flames already gathering at her fists. A taunting grin was just starting to stretch across her face when the wet sand smacked straight into her face.

Then Sokka tackled her.

What followed was certainly a lot like wrestling Katara, except instead of biting and insults there was Firebending. Sokka couldn't even see the flames, so close was he grappling the girl, but he definitely felt them passing over him and around him and splashing against the walls and floor. Fortunately, there was no sustained heat, so he was right about the ship being too damp to catch.

Sokka prioritized twisting the Firebender's limbs so that she couldn't aim, and after the first time she tried to spit flames at him he shifted so that he was behind her. She was strong and nasty and admirably dishonorable, but he had lots of experiencing with wrestling little sisters (according to Aang, this one was related to Prince Jerk-Face), and soon he had her pinned in a sand drift with all his weight pressing her body down so that the grit would turn into molten glass if she tried anything at all scorchy.

It was nowhere near as fun as wrestling Suki had been. He wondered briefly where the Kyoshi Warriors were, and if they might not be dropping by to help him out any moment now.

Instead, a hand grabbed his hair-tail and a long knife slid between him and the Firebender to press against his neck.

Ah. So it was a trap. Good to know.

Sokka went still, but didn't loosen his grip on the Firebender.

For what seemed like an eternity, everything was motionless and quiet.

Then the Firebender squirmed beneath him. "Do it, Mai."

"Don't do it, Mai," Sokka said, noting that the knife-thrower was named Mai. "I have a blade of my own in my belt. Before you finish slicing I'll have shanked this one in a kidney. And before my slit throat actually kills me, I'll have gotten her second kidney, too."

"He's lying." The Firebender sounded amused

"That is certainly a reasonable opinion."

The knife-thrower (Mai!) sighed. "Well, this is annoying."

Sokka nodded as best he could with a wiggling Firebender beneath him. "I agree. This is easily the second-worst day I've had all week."

"Second?"

"I missed a whole night's sleep because of you."

"Oh, right. That."

"Mai," the Firebender groaned. "I don't like having a Water Tribe boy on top of me."

"And I don't like being sandwiched between Fire Nation girls. Times are tough all around."

Mai snorted behind him. "Sure you don't."

Sokka sensed that he was losing control of the situation. He risked reaching to his belt, tightening his lock on the Firebender enough to make her groan, and grabbed the pointy bone blade he normally used to pick food from between his teeth. He poked the tip against the girl beneath him. "That's about where your kidney is, right?"

The Firebender was a moment in replying. "And what if I said no?"

Was it Sokka's imagination, or was she really warm? He felt himself starting to sweat where he was in contact with her, which was a considerable portion of the front of his body. "Well, I'm about at the limits of my reach, so I guess I'd just have to try stabbing and then we'd all get a quick medical lesson together."

"Kill him, Mai."

"She can't."

Mai yanked at his hair again. "Pretty sure I can."

"Oh, well, yeah, you obviously can. But do you know how long it takes someone to die from a slit throat? Seriously, I don't care how fast you are with a knife, I'll still be here bubbling and leaking when I pull my poker out of the nearest kidney." Yes, the Firebender girl was definitely getting warmer. "Trust me, I typically eat dinners that are still breathing when I start getting hungry. Slit throats take forever."

Thankfully, Mai was not Zhao, or Zuko, or even Katara. She stopped to think about things. "I get the sense that you're not quite wrong."

"Thank you."

"Mai," said the Firebender, who by now was like cuddling the remnants of a campfire. But she didn't say anything else.

Mai's voice didn't seem to have any capacity for expression. It had none of the stress she had to (hopefully) be feeling. "There's no need to be hasty. We're at a stand-off. He can't hurt you without giving me a reason to kill him. I'm certainly not going to back off. You'd kill me if I let him get away, so telling me to let him go or he'll stab you won't work."

Sokka thought about that. "Are you sure?"

"Positive." Mai sighed again. "We'll just wait for his arms to lose circulation, and then we'll handle him."

Sokka's mouth felt dry. He tried to swallow without scraping the skin of his throat against Mai's knife. "Now, ladies, let's not get hasty-"

The Firebender grunted. "I suppose that plan will work. I don't like being in this position, but victory is the most important thing. He's alone here." He voice grew softer. "His friends aren't coming. No one has any idea where he is." She practically whispered, "It's just the three of us, unless there are any ghosts."

Sokka was growing to hate that voice. "Great. Just the three of us. And ghosts."

Well, there was nothing for it, then. He'd have to use his backup plan.

He hated his backup plan.

Not because it mostly involved waiting, although that was certainly an off-putting element. Sokka could wait very patiently for his prey when he had to, even with a knife against his throat and a body underneath him that was growing outright hot to the touch.

No, it was the fact that this plan might kill him.

He had no idea how long they all waited. He tried to say something a few times, to see if he could talk his way out of the situation safely or even just learn a little bit more about his opponents, but each time the Firebender cut him off and told Mai not to respond. Perhaps she knew that he found talking to be a comfort of a kind.

Or maybe she guessed that he was trying to distract her.

Either way, after enough time for his arms to indeed start losing circulation and his hands to grow slick with sweat from the heat of the body beneath him and his throat to feel sore like he had nicked himself shaving, they all heard the sound.

The Firebender said, "What was that?"

Sokka said nothing.

He heard the rustle of Mai's robes. "Sounds like water."

That's probably because it was indeed water. Seawater spilling into the shipwreck, specifically. Water from the risen tides that were now almost completely covering the ship and ready to drown anything caught inside.

Sokka didn't say that, though.

The Firebender figured it out anyway. "Mai," she hissed, "we have to get out."

Before Mai – who, it had been proven, liked to stop and think - could shift her mental framework in this new direction, Sokka threw himself backward. For the first time in an eternity, the knife was no longer at his throat, but that was because Sokka was crashing into Mai and falling on top of her. The motion also pulled him away from the Firebender, meaning that his attempt at stabbing her kidney didn't work, but he did give her a scratch that dissuaded her from getting up at just that moment.

Mai smashed down to the floor on her back. Then Sokka smashed down on top of her on his back. He had a moment to notice that she felt harder and more metallic than he would have expected of an unarmored body before he was bouncing back up and scrambling for the nearest ladder.

The Firebender and Mai weren't nearly far enough behind him for his taste.

They were right at his heels as he made his way to the upper decks, the sound of the rushing water growing louder and more insistent, and he expected a blade or a fireball to find his back at any moment. The fact that quite a few moments went by without either burnings or stabbings truly puzzled him, until he realized that there was indeed a sound strategy behind it.

He knew how to get out of the shipwreck.

The girls weren't quite so sure.

They were following him.

Huh.

That got his own sound strategies spinning, and it occurred to him that trading his life to get rid of this new implacable foe (and Mai) might just be a fair deal, adjusted for inflation.

He took a wrong turn (or a right turn, from a certain perspective, but a left turn from a more objective view) into a dead-end and ducked.

The girls reached the wall before they realized the new level of trap that they had passed into.

Sokka had enough time to cringe before the rushing water filled their deck.

Glub.

Mai was alone in the world for a moment, the single living thing in a spot of the world otherwise empty of anything but sky and sea and sand. She breached the surface of the water long enough to fill her lungs with oxygen again before being pulled back into the sea.

Gravity was such a bother.

Still, Mai knew how to appease the people and things she loathed. As she sunk, she shed even more of the weapons strapped to her body, until at last for the first time in years she was wearing nothing but clothes. Even covered from head to toe, she felt exposed.

But she also felt light enough to float back to the surface, so she decided that she could deal with the situation.

She got her head above water again, confirmed that she could keep it above water this time, and then proceeded to paddle to the new shoreline. She transitioned from swimming to wading to stumbling to falling onto the sand, and let gravity have its way with her for a moment.

As she was lying on the beach, it occurred to her that this was the second time this week she had nearly drowned chasing these yahoos. It was hardly the kind of excitement she had been hoping for when Azula arrived.

But then, Azula was dead and drowned now, so she probably deserved something approaching a charitable thought. Alas for Princess Azula, who wasn't as boring as an empty city. Fair thee well in your next reincarnation, ya nutjob.

Then a spot of the sea in the distance exploded with steam and blue fire.

Oh, well, that was fine, too.

Mai watched as Azula swam her own way to the beach. The princess was panting by the time she staggered ashore, and was steaming so hard that she was almost certainly due to flop down on the sand and think some silly thoughts for a minute.

Instead, Azula remained standing and glared at Mai.

Mai sighed and got to her feet.

Azula's eyes narrowed as water dripped down her face. "You didn't kill him."

Ah. She was still mad about that. "No."

"I told you to."

"And I raised additional concerns. You didn't contradict them, so I thought we were in agreement."

Azula breathed in.

Azula breathed out.

Azula said, "Next time, I expect your best effort."

Mai bowed her head and ignored how her escaped hair slapped her damply across her face. "Of course, Princess. I will do whatever it takes to bring that Water Tribe boy down for you, if he survived."

That was a lie.

There were certain things that Mai didn't do. Roll in mud, for example. Smile on command. Change Tom-Tom's nap-nap.

Killing people was one.

Getting herself killed going up against some kind of deranged Water Tribe master of war was another.

Azula nodded. "Good." Then she stepped forward and lifted her arms, a horrible parody of what Ty Lee looked like when coming in for a hug. "Here, let me help you dry off."

Mai stood in place and endured the embrace. It was nothing like Ty Lee's hugs, but lasted just as long. Azula's body was feverish even through her wet clothes, and the water trapped in Mai's robes boiled and steamed and burned.

Bite your lip. Ride the pain. Let the mask slip for a moment so that a delicious expression of agony spread across your face. Pleasing Mai's parents took one kind of act, and pleasing Azula took another.

At the point where the skin had cooked to the point of a sunburn, Azula let go. "Come along, then. Ty Lee will be worried."

Mai took a moment to catch her breath and then, of course, followed. There were some things that were non-negotiable.

Besides, who wanted to be left alone in an empty place like this?

When she heard a sound above the lapping of the waves, a sound like a large fish - or perhaps someone with delusions of cleverness - breaching the surface of the water, she didn't turn around, didn't say anything. She just followed her princess in body, if not in spirit.

END