"The avatar returns"

Aang and Azula walked back to the village, the young Avatar fanning himself with small gusts of air from his fingers to cool the both of them. The absurdity of the situation got to him and he couldn't help but laugh at himself while his previous nemesis stayed silent, staring at him completely perplexed.

As they passed the village border, Aang looked around, wondering where Zuko and Iroh had gone off to. Some of the children waved shyly to him, but most of the older children resisted, trying to uphold their proud demeanor as they cast their fishing rods in the stagnant pond on the far side of the village. An awful smell, something sharp and almost fishy, assaulted his nose and he followed it to see some adults dyeing fabrics in a bucket, washing them in and out and staining their arms with all sorts of colors. Beyond them, Aang spotted Iroh playing a string instrument along with another older man who played a flute. Life bustled here in a way Aang hadn't expected and he couldn't help but be impressed with his brain for imagining all these details.

"There are a lot more people here than I thought there would be," Aang said to Azula.

"Well, that is a strange observation," she said, staring at him again with a look that indicated she didn't know what to make of him yet. "But there used to be a lot more of us. All of the able adults went off to help fight in the war, including our father and a cousin."

Aang felt a chill go down the back of his neck despite the oppressive heat. "Your father..."

"Zuzu, what are you doing now?" Azula asked with a hand on her hip, pulling Aang away from his train of thought. Aang followed her gaze, seeing Zuko on top of one of his crude wooden watchtowers overlooking the village with a moody glare.

"I think someone's approaching the village," he said, squinting. "All I see is blue sails... Wait, they're the Water Navy!"

Some of the villagers gasped and everything changed all at once. The elderly gathered up the children and shepherded them inside. Older kids did the same with the village's meager livestock, herding them into a hut on the village outskirts. Some even found weapons - blades like Zuko's or wooden spears dipped in snake-ferret venom.

"Is Iroh here? Can he help us?" one of the villagers asked, hands clasped together in panic and worry.

Zuko jumped off of the watchtower, drawing one of his swords and pointing it accusingly at Aang. "You! You called them with that light!" he yelled, jabbing it repeatedly at Aang.

He threw his arms up in defense. "No! I didn't do anything!"

"Get out! Get out of our village before you cause any more trouble!" Zuko shouted at him. Aang bubbled with fury. Zuko was trying to banish him from the village and he did nothing to deserve it. He wanted to call him a dirty hypocrite.

"Wait just a moment, Zuko," Iroh said, approaching after extending his calming presence to the other villagers. "This nice boy has done nothing wrong. I find him to be a very interesting individual. Let us calmly speak with the Water Navy and see what they want."

Now Azula spoke up, angry. "Are you out of your mind? Don't you remember what they did to us, what they did to mother?"

Iroh was effectively silenced.

"Fine, forget it, I'm leaving, since you want me to go so badly!" Aang yelled back to Zuko, unable to bottle his anger up any more.

Azula bit her lip. "Aang, wait," she said, turning to him. "We need your help. Please, stay."

"Azula, he's siding with them!" Zuko yelled at his sister.

"I'm not taking orders from you, Zuko," she said, her voice edged with danger and her eyes hard. Aang's eyes widened. That was closer to the Azula he knew. "He's staying." Now Zuko was silenced. "I... I suppose I'll try to come up with a plan."

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Prince Sokka prepared for a battle, expecting the Fire Nation rabble to try and fight against them, as wild as they were. He was willing to keep the village unharmed as long as they gave him the Avatar. The Avatar himself was going to be a formidable enemy.

He outfitted himself in wolf armor of the toughest leather available. The men accompanying him wore the same armor, but wielded bone weapons and durable shields made from shell and bone and coated in a hard resin. Sokka himself was unarmed except for two pouches of water on his hips. Finally, he put on his wolf-like helm, the creature frozen in a menacing growl. He was ready to face the Avatar, his destiny.

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  Aang was safely hidden away in one of the small huts, as Azula wanted him to. He was going to be kept their little secret, for now. It was unknown what the Water Navy would do to one of the Air Nomads who were supposedly extinct for the last hundred years. Azula stood proudly at the gate of the village, while Zuko stood on guard on top of his makeshift tower. The catamarans approached from the south side beaches, a stretch of the island mostly uncovered by the jungle from village to shore. One man in the leading boat stood erect, his hands clasped behind his back. Zuko gulped, but went down to meet his sister, readying his swords.

Once the small boats hit the shore, the Water Tribe men unloaded their buffalo-yaks off the vessels and rode toward the village. The enemy dressed like wolves reached the village shortly, looking very imposing and dangerous on their steeds. Only one had forgone the use of armor - an old woman who trailed behind them. Zuko and Azula took a step back.

"Where is he?" their leader asked them, looking out behind them. Zuko realized that the rest of the village was there, backing the two of them up - brave men and women, even children, who refused to give up without a fight. Not again. But who was 'he?' Were they looking for their spy, Aang? The man stepped forward, walked right past the two siblings and stopped in front of the villagers. He grabbed Iroh. "Is this him? Are you the master of all elements?" Nobody said anything. "Take him away," he said to his soldiers.

"Get away from him!" Zuko yelled, running up to the Water Nation man with both of his swords. He swung them both erratically, but the soldier did easy work of him. The waterbender ducked under his blows and sent a sphere of water into his gut. Zuko fell back onto the ground. He rolled backwards, clutching his stomach in pain, but quickly regained his bearings and ran toward him again. This time, the water struck him twice in the face before Zuko could even get to him and slapped him to the ground again.

Azula's voice rang out, pointing at the soldiers with a command. "Now! Shoot the darts!"

The villagers pulled bamboo tubes from their pockets, blowing on them as one. Their blow darts launched in a flurry toward the line of enemy warriors - many missed or failed to pierce their leather armor, but some struck true. The darts, coated in a poison made from the skin of a cobra-frog, induced heavy sleep a few minutes after striking. Zuko had to give his sister credit for coming up with the strategy in a matter of minutes. Most of the time the blowguns were used for hunting, but the first time he tried it he accidentally stuck himself with a dart, slept for a whole day, and swore them off ever since.

"Fire Nation trash," the leader snarled, and from the growl of his voice, somehow he seemed kind of young. Azula threw herself forward and punched him right in the jaw before he could retaliate against the villagers, her fierce gaze a force to be reckoned with. The Water Tribesman seemed like he was about to attack her, too, but a blast of air threw him off of his feet and into the thin wooden wall of sticks bordering the village, crushing it. Zuko was dumbfounded as Aang jumped into the scene, his staff pointed at the waterbender.

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"What are you doing?" Zuko asked Aang, his tone furious. "We don't need you!"

The waterbender beckoned for his soldiers to surround the airbender. Aang stared at the man's fierce, blue, one-eyed gaze. The other eye seemed to have been cut out, as there was a thin, nasty scar going right through it. Even with the scar, the face seemed oddly familiar.

Before the soldiers could make a move, the Avatar flung his staff at the soldiers to his right, which twirled and threw off shockwaves of air, hurling them into the ground. The others moved to attack him, but he held both of his hands at his side, gathering a circle of wind. He thrust both of his hands forward, unleashing a horizontal tornado which threw them all into the other wooden wall.

The leader seemed shocked. "You're... the Avatar? No way," he growled.

Zuko and the villagers gasped.

"He's the Avatar?" Azula asked of nobody in particular, just as shocked as the waterbender.

"I don't believe it," Zuko said, and now his tone had switched to awe.

"You better believe it," Aang said to the Water Tribesman. "I'm the Avatar."

"I've been waiting for this day, training constantly. You won't defeat me, you're just a child," he said, getting into a stance. Aang narrowed his eyes. Who was he? Did the Water Tribe turn into the Fire Nation he previously knew? Were they hunting for him for the last century? He shook his head. It was just a dream, brought on by his journey to the Spirit World. It didn't matter. "Grandmother." He glanced back at the old woman, but she snoozed away on the back of her buffalo-yak, a dart sticking out of her arm. "Ugh, seriously?"

The enemy was the first to attack, pulling long streams of water from each pouch at his side, joining them together in front of him and immediately turning them into ice spikes. Each of them flew at Aang, but he deflected them with a swing of his staff. He swung it again in an air uppercut to the man, but he rolled out of the way. Zuko and Azula moved to help, but the Water soldiers held their weapons out at the villagers. A small handful of them faltered, the poison beginning to take effect, but not enough to truly make a difference.

"Come with me, or they die," Aang's opponent said to him. Aang narrowed his eyes. He was playing dirty. It didn't matter to him—he was still dreaming, right?

"I'm your opponent, leave them out of this," he snarled.

"Aang, let us help," Azula ordered, pulling Zuko up to stand by her. She tried punching a fireball at a soldier but he blocked it with his shell shield and two others grappled them to submission, holding machetes at both Zuko and Azula's throats.

"These are your friends, aren't they?" the troop leader asked the Avatar. When Aang didn't answer, he took it as a yes. "Take them aboard," he ordered of his men. "The Air Nomads were friendly, weren't they? They'd never leave their friends in trouble."

"I told you to leave them out of this," Aang said to him. Zuko and Azula tried to fight back against their captors, and Aang was about to help them, but Iroh held him back. He looked up at the old man, silent cursing his height reduction, with a questioning gaze.

"Now is not the time to fight back. You can get the element of surprise later, and save them," Iroh said to him. Aang could appreciate the wisdom in that. "You'll save them, I'm sure of it. But you have to be patient and think this through. As the Avatar you have that capability, don't you?" He grinned. Aang met the gaze of Azula, who nodded once without fear in her eyes. "Give that poor boy what he wants, if only for a moment. I'm not too worried for my niece and nephew - they're both tough kids."

Aang nodded to the old man and turned to the waterbender. "Take them," he said, trying not to look at Zuko, Azula, or Iroh. "We only just met." They were only a dream, they didn't matter. It would be fine.

Heeding his old friend's advice, he unfurled his glider and went to seek out Appa, as the Water Tribesmen galloped away with a bound Zuko and Azula. Several of them had slumped over their mounts, asleep.

Iroh pressed his hands together as if in prayer. "I have faith that you'll look out for them, Avatar. Always"

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"Come on, boy. Let's go. We're going to help Zuko and Azula," Aang said to his bison, who grazed in one of the few clearings a short way from the village. Chills went up Aang's spine as the realization of his words hit him. Shaking his head, he tugged on the sky bison's reins. Appa let out a low groan but turned around slowly. "Okay Appa, yip, yip!" The creature took a running start, and then jumped up into the air... and maintained it. Aang smirked triumphantly as he steered Appa into the direction of the Water Tribe ship.

It turned out that the ship didn't even leave yet. He didn't really expect them to—after finding the Avatar after a hundred years, someone who turned out to be eerily like Prince Zuko wouldn't just leave Aang behind. The person in question spotted him from the crow's nest, but the young Avatar didn't care for him at the moment. He easily batted aside some of the soldiers on deck, and then gracefully slid below to where they presumably kept the prisoners. More soldiers awaited him below, pointing their bone headed spears at him.

A huge gust of wind ripped them all off of their feet and the airbender continued down the hall, passing woven tapestries in designs of blue and white hanging on the walls. Animal skins and layers of furs covered the floor and other parts of the walls. Some of it stretched over a frame made of bone and wood, like a drum, with crude designs painted on them that may have been stick figures going to war or a school of oddly pointy fish; he couldn't say for sure. Either they had a strange sense of decorating or whoever had made them had no talent for art and the other members of the crew were too polite to say so.

"These guys are just as weak as Fire Nation soldiers," he muttered to himself. He was surprised that firebenders weren't able to defeat the tyrannical Water Tribes—this ship, as the others probably were, was made of wood. He crinkled his nose when he smelled smoke. He followed the trail, seeing waterbenders frantically trying to put out the flames that were definitely not naturally produced. Azula was at the source, hurling small fireballs at the wooden ship, apparently following the same line of thought that Aang had. One of the waterbenders had enough and had been about to pin her to the ground with ice. Aang chose that moment to step into the panic, throwing the man to the wall with a blast of air. Zuko tried his best to defend his sister, recklessly attacking the waterbenders and fending them off with haphazard sword swings. Aang intervened again, easily knocking them all out. "Let's get out of here," he said to them. He skidded around the corner into the small main hallway, nearly bumping into a blue-armored many

"With the way you dismissed us so easily I wasn't sure you'd be coming for us," Azula said. "Thanks, I guess."

It was Aang's opponent from before, furious over the escape of his prisoners and the burning of his ship. "Firebender scum," he said. "I underestimated you." His one eye glared at the Avatar, and before he could draw his water, Aang swung his staff, sending him rocketing down the hallway. The Avatar sped to him ruthlessly, hitting him again to send him up and above deck. Behind him, Azula kept throwing her fireballs, causing as much damage to the ship as she could. Occasionally, she stumbled, but her brother was there to help her along the way. The effort was getting to be too much for her.

Aang jumped up into the air again, ready to attack the persistent waterbender, but was taken by surprise when a sharp icicle from his enemy cut through his side, below the right arm. Aang stumbled back, registering the spike of pain. Pain. Reality. This was... real? The icicle didn't pierce him; it was a lucky shot that he just barely avoided the worst of.

His mouth fell agape, and everything seemed to be in slow motion as he gradually fell back, the dark blood flung into the air from his wound. He finally fell to the ground after what felt like minutes and he looked up at his enemy. His heart beat loudly, painfully. The waterbender he fought against took off his wolf helm, revealing a shockingly familiar face, a blue eye, and warrior's wolf tail.

Sokka

Something inside of him snapped, and time rushed again as he felt the unimaginable power flow through him. His eyes and tattoos glowed pure white, blinding and burning behind his vision, and the air rushed around him, expelling powerful winds that slowly brought him up into the sky. He saw but he did not feel anything except the overwhelming numbness. A single flick of his wrist threw the waterbender off of his feet with a surge of air, and at the rise of both of his arms, torrents of water rose to his fingertips. His wound glowed and then healed over. The water came rushing down around him, throwing all of the enemy waterbenders off the ship.

Zuko and Azula crouched in the stairs leading below deck, speechless.

When all threats were gone, the glow in Aang's eyes and arrows died out and he gradually descended to the ship's deck. He stumbled slightly but regained his balance, only slightly groggy from the rush of power. Azula ran to his side.

"That was an amazing power," she said, squeezing his shoulder. Zuko, on the other hand, looked a little fearful.

"Come on, we have to get out of here," Aang said, his voice weak. Appa flew over to them and even Zuko let out a gasp. The Avatar grabbed his staff and stumbled onto his bison. The Fire Nation siblings followed, eager to leave the burning ship behind. Zuko clutched the saddle so tightly that his knuckles turned white while Azula's head constantly turned in every direction as she made no effort to hide her excitement.

"Finally, I get to leave home," she said, as Appa took off into the sky.

Unfortunately, it turned out that the waterbenders weren't done yet. Several of them, led by Sokka, bent a huge wave to follow after them. Aang urged his bison on, and he ascended just in time. He leaned back against Appa's fur, a countless amount of thoughts running through his head.

That was the first time he had entered the Avatar State in over three years - undeniable proof that the cycle hadn't been broken, that he hadn't failed as badly as he thought he did.

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Kanna ran out onto the deck, her sense of panic overriding the grogginess that had started to wear off with the aid of some healing. "What happened?" she asked, looking up at the burning ship. Sokka and the other waterbenders used their bending to douse as much of the flames as they could.

"It was the Avatar and his friends," he replied scathingly, throwing a tower of water onto the wooden steerhouse, which thankfully did not collapse. Kanna rushed to help. "That kiddid this much damage to my ship!"

"A child, eh?" she asked. "That is good news for the Water Tribes—our greatest threat is merely a boy."

"Get every man out on deck to help quench the flames!" Sokka shouted to one of the soldiers. His voice suddenly got lower. "He had power, but I