Sozin's Bay: Chapter One -- Business Trip
Title: Sozin's Bay
Rating: PG-13
Characters: Mai, Zuko, Iroh Pairings: Mai/Zuko
Word Count: ~28,000, sixteen parts. Chapter One: ~1,300.
Summary: Mai and Zuko run into each other in the colonies. She's accompanying her father on a business trip. He's having his ship outfitted for a voyage to the South Pole in search of the Avatar. This chance encounter stirs up long dormant feelings and leaves both of them wondering if they'll ever see each other again.
Notes: Chapters One and Two are up.
One: Business Trip
Mai arrived at the teashop where her father said he would rendezvous with her after the meeting of the Banking Subcommittee of the Colonial Trade Commission ended. The name "Mr. Tea" was written in glittery gold paint on a wooden sign over the door, above a drawing of a muscular young man triumphantly hefting a teapot that was almost as big as he was. The large window was lined with lanterns in a multitude of colors, as were many shop fronts in the town. She could see the docks from this spot, near the top of the steep hill leading up from the harbor. There were several Fire Navy ships in port.
She sighed and entered, prepared for a long wait. She couldn't remember her father ever getting away from a meeting on time. Even on the rare occasion the event ended on schedule, he would inevitably be pulled aside to talk privately with one of the participants. It was his curse, being known as the man who got things done in the Ministry. That was why he'd been dragged off to this colonial tourist trap to spend a week in endless meetings with the bankers, guild officials, and colony administrators of the Trade Commission. When the Fire Nation captains of industry wanted someone from the Ministry to pose for a public appearance, they called on the Chancellor. When they wanted someone to actually do something, they called on her father.
She ordered oolong tea, musing that she could add another name to the list of boring colony towns she'd visited. Before arriving, she'd had some hope that Sozin's Bay might be interesting because of its reputation for licentiousness. The town was famous for its dance and gambling halls, known in the local lingo as "social clubs" (the polite term) or "go-gos" (the slang term). All kinds of salacious activities were supposed to take place in the go-gos, including naked dancing. Her mother was angry about her father being sent here, especially since she could not come along to keep an eye on him. Tom Tom was only three months old, too young for such a long journey, and she refused to leave him home with his nanny. The woman had been torn between wanting Mai to go to keep her father from getting into trouble and wanting Mai to stay home so she wouldn't get into trouble herself. She decided Mai needed to go after a particularly heated argument between the two of them following Tom Tom's formal naming ceremony. The tension between mother and daughter had only gotten worse since the birth of the family's utterly unexpected second child and they both needed time away from each other.
Her mother's fears about the family being corrupted by this den of vice were unfounded. Mai's father had too much work to do to have time for anything shady. Almost every moment he wasn't asleep in bed he spent meeting with officials eager to gain his support for their pet schemes. Mai herself found the infamous Sozin's Bay boring, under the veneer of titillation. Once she became accustomed to seeing what her mother called vulgar appetites on display (which took surprisingly little time), she realized that life here was not fundamentally different from life in the capital. In both places, most people seemed to devote much of their lives to trying to get more for themselves--power, money, glory, whatever. The list of things people could always want more of was apparently endless.
When she and her father met the Governor, they got a local history lesson, although she did not particularly want one and she didn't believe her father wanted one either. The town had long been a major Earth Kingdom port and shipyard and acquired countless bars and taverns over the years to keep sailors, traders, dock workers, and travelers entertained. When the port was captured seventy years ago, the first Fire Nation governor realized he could make his job much easier by allowing the social club owners to keep their lucrative businesses in exchange for political support. His successors saw no need to change a mutually beneficial arrangement, so the town continued on much as it had under Earth Kingdom rule.
Her tea arrived and while it cooled she glanced around the shop, which was not busy at the moment. The place was decorated in the distinct Sozin's Bay style, which was "random jumble of stuff in eye-searing colors": red carpet with gold dragon designs, yellow, white and pink striped wallpaper, paintings in wildly different styles--soft watercolors, charcoal sketches, dark oils. The tables almost matched, since they were all square and dark, but they were different shades of black and brown wood and had different styles of leg. The entire town was a mishmash, with streets that went from wood to brick to cobblestone from block to block. Buildings had odd-angled roofs, or were painted a different color on each side, or had doors that opened on to nothing or misshapen windows. If this was what the place looked like after over a half century of Fire Nation rule, she couldn't imagine what it must have been like before.
Worst of all were all the lights covering almost everything everywhere. Once the sun was down, the entire town lit up like it was on fire. Her first night here, she got a headache from all the clashing, flashing colors. There were lamps that spun like tops, an invention she never wanted to see in the Fire Nation. As much as the colors and lights irritated her, they were not nearly as unpleasant as the sounds and smells: loud jangling dance music, screaming drunks, and of course puking drunks. The smell of urine and vomit would occasionally waft by while she walked down the street, despite the sharp sea breeze.
Despite all this, she wasn't surprised that Sozin's Bay was chosen as the site for the Colonial Trade Commission's first conference. The idea was that if a bunch of politicians and administrators from all of the colonies and the Fire Nation spent a week together, some of the lingering squabbles over taxes, tariffs, and regulations could be resolved. The publicly stated reason for holding the conference here was that the town was halfway between the Fire Nation and the easternmost colonies, but there were other reasons that were not publicly stated.
No one at home wanted to admit it, but the military was stretched so thin that security in the colonies was a serious problem. Her father's Ministry colleagues occasionally grumbled among themselves about the dangers they and their families faced while traveling, but no one dared complain publicly. Sozin's Bay was much more stable than most colony towns because the long-standing alliance between the Fire Nation government and the Earth Kingdom club owners did help keep rebels out. Conference attendees might get their pockets picked, but were unlikely to be attacked by resistance fighters. A few weeks earlier, a Fire Nation mine north of Omashu had been attacked by Earth Kingdom guerrillas, the sixth significant assault this year. But here in Sozin's Bay, there hadn't been any hint of trouble. The conference goers and their guests hadn't even been assigned guards, for which Mai was grateful. Guards spent most of their time telling her she couldn't do things and she had proven she was a better fighter than many of them, despite not being a fire bender.
There was another unspoken reason the conference was here, aside from security--to give a bunch of overstressed bureaucrats a chance to let their hair down in a place where their families and friends back home were unlikely to hear about it. There was a saying, "What happens in Sozin's Bay, stays in Sozin's Bay."
She sipped her tea slowly. Her stay was almost over--she and her father would return to the Fire Nation the day after tomorrow. She was relieved to be going home. Home was boring, but at least it wasn't ugly, loud, stinky, tacky and boring.
--End Chapter One
Chapter Two: Port of Call
Rating: PG-13
Characters: Mai, Zuko, Iroh Pairings: Mai/Zuko
Word Count: ~28,000, sixteen parts. Chapter One: ~1,300.
Summary: Mai and Zuko run into each other in the colonies. She's accompanying her father on a business trip. He's having his ship outfitted for a voyage to the South Pole in search of the Avatar. This chance encounter stirs up long dormant feelings and leaves both of them wondering if they'll ever see each other again.
Notes: Chapters One and Two are up.
One: Business Trip
Mai arrived at the teashop where her father said he would rendezvous with her after the meeting of the Banking Subcommittee of the Colonial Trade Commission ended. The name "Mr. Tea" was written in glittery gold paint on a wooden sign over the door, above a drawing of a muscular young man triumphantly hefting a teapot that was almost as big as he was. The large window was lined with lanterns in a multitude of colors, as were many shop fronts in the town. She could see the docks from this spot, near the top of the steep hill leading up from the harbor. There were several Fire Navy ships in port.
She sighed and entered, prepared for a long wait. She couldn't remember her father ever getting away from a meeting on time. Even on the rare occasion the event ended on schedule, he would inevitably be pulled aside to talk privately with one of the participants. It was his curse, being known as the man who got things done in the Ministry. That was why he'd been dragged off to this colonial tourist trap to spend a week in endless meetings with the bankers, guild officials, and colony administrators of the Trade Commission. When the Fire Nation captains of industry wanted someone from the Ministry to pose for a public appearance, they called on the Chancellor. When they wanted someone to actually do something, they called on her father.
She ordered oolong tea, musing that she could add another name to the list of boring colony towns she'd visited. Before arriving, she'd had some hope that Sozin's Bay might be interesting because of its reputation for licentiousness. The town was famous for its dance and gambling halls, known in the local lingo as "social clubs" (the polite term) or "go-gos" (the slang term). All kinds of salacious activities were supposed to take place in the go-gos, including naked dancing. Her mother was angry about her father being sent here, especially since she could not come along to keep an eye on him. Tom Tom was only three months old, too young for such a long journey, and she refused to leave him home with his nanny. The woman had been torn between wanting Mai to go to keep her father from getting into trouble and wanting Mai to stay home so she wouldn't get into trouble herself. She decided Mai needed to go after a particularly heated argument between the two of them following Tom Tom's formal naming ceremony. The tension between mother and daughter had only gotten worse since the birth of the family's utterly unexpected second child and they both needed time away from each other.
Her mother's fears about the family being corrupted by this den of vice were unfounded. Mai's father had too much work to do to have time for anything shady. Almost every moment he wasn't asleep in bed he spent meeting with officials eager to gain his support for their pet schemes. Mai herself found the infamous Sozin's Bay boring, under the veneer of titillation. Once she became accustomed to seeing what her mother called vulgar appetites on display (which took surprisingly little time), she realized that life here was not fundamentally different from life in the capital. In both places, most people seemed to devote much of their lives to trying to get more for themselves--power, money, glory, whatever. The list of things people could always want more of was apparently endless.
When she and her father met the Governor, they got a local history lesson, although she did not particularly want one and she didn't believe her father wanted one either. The town had long been a major Earth Kingdom port and shipyard and acquired countless bars and taverns over the years to keep sailors, traders, dock workers, and travelers entertained. When the port was captured seventy years ago, the first Fire Nation governor realized he could make his job much easier by allowing the social club owners to keep their lucrative businesses in exchange for political support. His successors saw no need to change a mutually beneficial arrangement, so the town continued on much as it had under Earth Kingdom rule.
Her tea arrived and while it cooled she glanced around the shop, which was not busy at the moment. The place was decorated in the distinct Sozin's Bay style, which was "random jumble of stuff in eye-searing colors": red carpet with gold dragon designs, yellow, white and pink striped wallpaper, paintings in wildly different styles--soft watercolors, charcoal sketches, dark oils. The tables almost matched, since they were all square and dark, but they were different shades of black and brown wood and had different styles of leg. The entire town was a mishmash, with streets that went from wood to brick to cobblestone from block to block. Buildings had odd-angled roofs, or were painted a different color on each side, or had doors that opened on to nothing or misshapen windows. If this was what the place looked like after over a half century of Fire Nation rule, she couldn't imagine what it must have been like before.
Worst of all were all the lights covering almost everything everywhere. Once the sun was down, the entire town lit up like it was on fire. Her first night here, she got a headache from all the clashing, flashing colors. There were lamps that spun like tops, an invention she never wanted to see in the Fire Nation. As much as the colors and lights irritated her, they were not nearly as unpleasant as the sounds and smells: loud jangling dance music, screaming drunks, and of course puking drunks. The smell of urine and vomit would occasionally waft by while she walked down the street, despite the sharp sea breeze.
Despite all this, she wasn't surprised that Sozin's Bay was chosen as the site for the Colonial Trade Commission's first conference. The idea was that if a bunch of politicians and administrators from all of the colonies and the Fire Nation spent a week together, some of the lingering squabbles over taxes, tariffs, and regulations could be resolved. The publicly stated reason for holding the conference here was that the town was halfway between the Fire Nation and the easternmost colonies, but there were other reasons that were not publicly stated.
No one at home wanted to admit it, but the military was stretched so thin that security in the colonies was a serious problem. Her father's Ministry colleagues occasionally grumbled among themselves about the dangers they and their families faced while traveling, but no one dared complain publicly. Sozin's Bay was much more stable than most colony towns because the long-standing alliance between the Fire Nation government and the Earth Kingdom club owners did help keep rebels out. Conference attendees might get their pockets picked, but were unlikely to be attacked by resistance fighters. A few weeks earlier, a Fire Nation mine north of Omashu had been attacked by Earth Kingdom guerrillas, the sixth significant assault this year. But here in Sozin's Bay, there hadn't been any hint of trouble. The conference goers and their guests hadn't even been assigned guards, for which Mai was grateful. Guards spent most of their time telling her she couldn't do things and she had proven she was a better fighter than many of them, despite not being a fire bender.
There was another unspoken reason the conference was here, aside from security--to give a bunch of overstressed bureaucrats a chance to let their hair down in a place where their families and friends back home were unlikely to hear about it. There was a saying, "What happens in Sozin's Bay, stays in Sozin's Bay."
She sipped her tea slowly. Her stay was almost over--she and her father would return to the Fire Nation the day after tomorrow. She was relieved to be going home. Home was boring, but at least it wasn't ugly, loud, stinky, tacky and boring.
--End Chapter One
Chapter Two: Port of Call