Mai's weapons



In battle, Mai uses different kinds of weapons to fight. Mai developed the skill of throwing knives when she would throw knives and darts at her bedroom walls out of boredom. Mai usually hides her weapons beneath or inside the sleeves of her robe, effectively using the element of surprise and stealth to her advantage. With her reflexes, duplicity, precision and accuracy, Mai can best a single powerful bender or a multitude of armed or bending capable opponents despite not actually being a bender herself.

Stilettos
Mai carries spring-loaded holsters on her wrists and ankles hidden in her sleeves and robes which carry her stilettos, small arrow-like darts that she can fire off at will with a single gesture. These have the potential to pierce wood in her battle with Katara in "Return to Omashu". Unlike the rest of her arsenal, Mai's stilettos have the unique ability to pierce ice without causing it to shatter. Mai often uses her darts when the need arise for speed, maneuverability and surprising the opponent with smaller objects when she is otherwise unable to properly use knives in episodes like "Return to Omashu", "The Chase" and "The Boiling Rock, Part 2."

Knives
Mai carries around red tinted dagger-like knives which she hides inside and beneath her sleeves and robes. These are her weapon of choice and has used them in almost every battle she has been involved in.

Mai also has a different variety of knives to choose from that's based on use and size. Mai has skinny long bladed knives for speed and added lethality shown in "The Drill", single bladed knives in "Return to Omashu", and double bladed knives that Mai throws in a fashion similar to disks in "Return to Omashu" and longer, thicker knives to better immobilize a foe in "The Boiling Rock, Part 2". Several of Mai's knives are actually strong enough to pierce and puncture stone, metal and wood. Mai has shown the most skill with her knives, throwing many knives at one time in single or multiple directions. In "The Day of Black Sun, Part 2: The Eclipse", Azula adopts Mai's practice of carrying throwing knives and the concept of hidden weapons, as she taunts Sokka to charge at her so she can stab him, but he is saved by Toph's timely intervention. Unlike Mai's, real world stilettos can only pierce wood and bones.

Sai
Mai also has miniature sais at her disposal that appear like a very sharp dagger with a studded handle except for the fact that they are retractable, able to go from dagger to sai in mid-air or within her grasp. Mai doesn't use her sai's often, usually resorting for them for an almost guaranteed kill such as in "Return to Omashu" against a powerless Katara and "The Crossroads of Destiny" against Toph. Like her double bladed knife, Mai can use her sai as a cutting edge disk as shown when she sliced through all the tapestries in Chan's home in a single throw in "The Beach".

Other
While Mai does not normally use materials outside her shuriken set, in the comic, Going Home Again, after meeting Jin and hearing Zuko's lame cover up, Mai uses icicles to impale a fish on top Zuko's head several times over.

Pictures of most kinds of Mai's stilettos and weapons can be found on nick.com, on the Gear & More section of the episode Return to Omashu. It also shows her spring loaded holsters, her robe design, and the back of her hair. However, it lacks a picture of Mai's sai, and has a picture of a type of knife only seen in The Boling Rock, Part 2, which is one of the first knives she used in the episode. She holds this exclusive knife with her arms in an X-form, along with another one, which is the more commonly seen knife that she uses in many episodes. This part of the episode fails to show much detail on the newly-seen knife, which most detail must be seen by watching the brief moments it is seen frame by frame. However, on nick.com, full detail is shown. It is possible that Mai uses this knife a few seconds after the first one is thrown, however when this one is thrown - along with yet another commonly seen knife - the knives are very deformed, probably because they are being thrown so fast and only seen for a moment. It is difficult to tell if it is, however there is the same type of button-like circle and long, thin, hole coming out of both sides of the circle. There is also some illegible words written on this diagram on nick.com.