#atla dnd

Then, the day came that they were to confront Dai Lee, who was trying to free the world of corrupt governments by simply taking over himself. Juno had just revealed herself as a mindbender, which sowed distrust among the team. As it would turn out, Dai Lee already had extensive intel on every member of Team Avatar--all their interpersonal conflicts, insecurities, and secrets--which he then used to turn them all against each other with murderous intent. This is not something most mindbenders are able to do. Nonetheless, Maika was forced to watch her teammates tear each other apart, and was then taken captive by Dai Lee while Juno was able to escape.

During the month Maika was captive, Dai Lee mindbent her almost continuously, trying to break her will. He also had her brainwashed with a sleeper phrase that, when activated, would supposedly make her obedient to him and allow him to execute his plan without her interference. Fortunately, Ephemeris, the spiritbender tasked with keeping Maika from entering the Avatar State, began to doubt Dai Lee's methods and found a way to contact Juno. Together, they hatched a plan to free Maika under the cover of a Fire Nation attack on Dai Lee's headquarters. They were successful, but the Avatar would never be the same. Though her spirit was never broken, her faith in humanity was.

As Juno and Maika returned to old villages where they had once resolved conflicts, they began to discover that those same conflicts had resurfaced, often in a worse state than they had originally found them. Maika, feeling that her fallen teammates' efforts had been in vain, gradually began to resort to more violent methods and "permanent solutions." After some time, she and Juno split ways over this. Maika sought out new masters, namely Xin Li and Laminar, who taught her more brutal and cruel bending techniques (unbeknownst to her, these masters were also allies of Dai Lee who had been asked to encourage this behavior in her).

At some point, she willingly entered a contract with the blood spirit Panggu, convinced she needed the extra power to truly scare the world's worst out of their evil ways. When Juno eventually caught wind of Maika's new methods of brutality, she tracked the Avatar obsessively until one day she found her (under Panggu's influence) surrounded by dead children as she attacked a school for some unknown reason. Shocked by this scene, Juno could not put off the inevitable confrontation any longer, and attempted to take Maika's bending. However, Maika, for all she'd been through, still possessed an iron will, and her spirit was unbendable, and so Juno's energybending failed.

Juno went back into hiding, but the incident served as a wake-up call for Maika. When she was alone again, she bled herself nearly to death bloodbending and spiritbending herself until she was able to forcibly remove the spirit that was tied to her blood.