4 The Avatar and the time-skip.

Last time on Avatar in the world of Shinobi

After Haruki landed safely on his but, Aino and Saisho immediately checked up on him for injuries. Shin, on the other hand, just stood there dumbfounded from what had just happened.

******************************************************************************************************

I let out a sigh of relief after returning to my room. "I am capable of elemental bending. I CAN BEND THE FUCKING ELEMENTS." I celebrated while muttering to myself in excitement the fact that I could use elemental bending over and over again. The fact that I had been practicing since I was three years old with no results had been bothering me for a long time, until now. I had almost started to believe that the Voice, whoever he was, had pranked me. I am sorry I ever doubted you, Mr. Voice. It didn't really matter whether the kids saw me or not. They were kids, no sane person would believe them.

I even started laughing all by myself. I was just so happy for having a chance to fight. I took a deep breath to calm myself down. Dad had gone off to an important meeting with the emperor and I had asked the caretaker to leave me undisturbed. There was no one who was going to disturb me.

I took a moment to remember the movements I had performed earlier that day and slowly tried to mirror them. At the end of the movements, I pulled my hand backwards before thrusting it forwards and.... nothing happened. I felt my heart sink but I tried staying optimistic. I tried the movements again, and again, and again, each attempt causing my heart to sink even lower and my optimism to grow fainter.

"Aargh! Why doesn't it work!" I exclaimed as I fell backwards on the floor with exhaustion. I had been trying the same movements I had performed to save Haruki's life, but for some fricking reason it just wasn't working.

"Young master? Are you okay?" the caretaker, Mrs. Suhi, asked from outside my room. She must have heard my whining and come to check up on me.

"Yes! I am okay," I answered to keep her from entering my room.

"Alright then, if you say so."

After she left, I sighed while staring at the ceiling. I tried harder to remember what had exactly happened back then. Time had slowed down for me, and there was a strange feeling of weightlessness, a feeling of peace and confidence in me. It was the first time in a long time that I wasn't worried about the future. In that moment, all I could think about was how to save Haruki from hitting his head.

I got back up and tried to recreate what I had felt before as I repeated the movements. This time when I thrusted my hand outwards, a strong gust of wind shot out of it.

"Yes!" I exclaimed in celebration, which was short-lived because what followed it was a loud, *crash*.

I turned around to see a broken earthen pot lying on the floor. It must have been knocked over by what I now call 'The Air Blast'. Seeing that it was quite literally a strong blast of air, it wasn't very creative of me.

"Young master? Is everything alright in there? I think I heard something break," asked Mrs. Suhi, who was once again outside the door.

"I accidently knocked over the earthen pot," I replied.

"You knocked over the pot?!" she asked worriedly. "I am coming in. Stay away from the shards. You might hurt yourself."

She entered in a hurry with a broom in her hand and started cleaning up the mess. After cleaning up the mess I made she asked, "How did you knock over the earthen pot?"

"I..." I had to come up with a lie. "I was practicing martial arts."

"You were practicing martial arts?" she asked doubtfully.

"Yeah, I was playing with a few friends I made today-" I was about to elaborate when she cut me off.

"You made friends?!" Her eyes sparkled with excitement.

"Ye-yeah?" I answered hesitantly because of her reaction.

She dropped the broom and pulled me into a hug. "I thought that young master was never going to make any friends and was going to be a loner after growing up," she said while crying with me still in her arms. "I am so proud of you for growing out of your moody phase, young master!"

My eye twitched in slight irritation. She thought that I was an loner! Yes, I didn't really have any friends before today, I did spend a lot of time alone with my own thoughts, I would also speak to myself sometimes, and preferred people left me alone because they had no idea of what future had in store for them... Oh God, I was an loner.

"Anyways as I was saying," I pushed her off of me and tried to get back to why I was suddenly doing martial arts in my room. "One of the friends I made really likes martial arts and I like it now too."

Okay, I will ask master to get you an instructor," Mrs. Suhi said happily as she clapped her hands in excitement and left the room.

I sighed and looked at my right palm. I gripped it to ready myself for the days of intense training that were to come. As I walked towards the door something pricked me in the foot. "Ouch! Mrs. Suhi! You forgot to sweep out the shards!"

******************************************************************************************************

I was standing in an open field with two others on both of my sides. We were all practicing martial arts according to the instructions given by the man standing right in front of me, Teisatsu-sensei.

"That's enough! Now run along kiddos. I'm sure ya got somethin' else to do," Teisatsu-sensei said and stopped our practice. Before we could leave he called me and shook my hand. "I heard that it's yer birthday today, happy birthday kid." Teisatsu-sensei was around my father's age. He had black hair, just like everyone else in the Land of Ancestors and was around 170 cm tall.

I thanked him and left the training ground with Saisho and Haruki. My father had asked them to join me in training back when I had started training. Well, I had told him that they were interested in learning martial arts which is why he asked them to join me in the first place. Haruki agreed readily while it had taken me some convincing to get Saisho to join.

While we were going back to our houses, we passed through the place where we all first met. I kept walking until I noticed that we had left Haruki behind. He was just standing there, staring at the tree where he had fallen from all those years ago.

"Haruki, is something wrong?" Saisho asked Haruki.

Haruki kept staring at the tree for a while, not answering Saisho's question. "Nothing, just walking past that tree gives me the creeps."

Saisho nodded in understanding. "It freaks me out sometimes too. I was afraid of the ghost of the tree for years after that incident," Saisho shared as his body slightly shivered with fright from remembering that incident.

This 'ghost of the tree' that they keep mentioning was an aftereffect of me saving Haruki's life through airbending. Saisho and Aino weren't looking at me when it happened, and Haruki was to busy falling to the ground. They hadn't noticed me doing anything. Plus, when Haruki finally came back to his senses, he claimed that he had been pushed by an invisible force when he was up on that branch.

This lead to the birth of the legend of the 'ghost of the tree'. I looked away in guilt as the two of them continued discussing.

Saisho turned to me, "That day was quite shocking wasn't it? To think that tree was haunted. It's a shame too, we used to play there all the time as children."

I looked away in guilt. "Yeah, that day was surprising to say the least." Though it was surprising for me for a completely different reason.

Haruki cut-in with a scowl, "I mean no one believed us too, no matter how much we tried convincing them."

"There, there big guy we gotta let it go. I mean, it never happened again, did it? And, no one believed us because we were a bunch of children." I tried consoling him with a pat on the back. "Anyways, Today is my birthday. Let's go to the lake to hang out afterwards."

"Sure I will convince Aino to come along too. I think she is free today." Aino had started working as an attendant for the Emperor, Haruki wanted to join the army and Saisho just wanted to help his father in farming. I was the only one left who hadn't really made a decision, but to be honest, as the general's son I pretty much had to join the army as soon as I turned 14. Especially since The Land of That had started messing around near the border.

The thing I was worried about was the fact that Kaguya had arrived around the time The Land of Ancestors and The Land of That were having little skirmishes on the border. The time of her arrival was nearing. After separating from the other two, instead of returning home I went to the lake instead.

While walking towards the lake giant tree, far away in the distance, caught my eye. It was the God tree. Somehow, I hadn't noticed it's presence until I realized that I was reborn in the pre-shinobi era. I stared at the giant tree for a while and left.

******************************************************************************************************

Now that I was at a clearing covered by forests near the lake, I made sure that nobody was around and got ready for practice. Saisho and the others were going to come a few hours later. What was I practicing? Elemental bending of course. I had started to integrate elemental bending to the style of martial arts I was being taught by Teisatsu-sensei. Now that I think about it, elemental bending could be said to be a type of nintaijutsu.

I took my position. I focused on imagining fire and it bending according to my desire. What I had realized was that movements only helped the bender focus, but wasn't necessary for bending the element itself after a certain amount of mastery over the element. That was my goal. To eventually be able to bend the elements without having to rely on movements and stances.

I took a deep breath, closed my eyes, and focused on my goal to master firebending. I started punching the air and after a while, started blowing fire jabs out of my fists. I kept practicing different kicks and punches with firebending added to the mix. In the end I fired one last huge stream of fire over the surface of the lake before collapsing from exhaustion.

The one thing I had to overcome to reach the level of firebending I was at right now was frustration. I would often get frustrated while training to use firebending. I wasn't able to control my emotions in the beginning and would often have outbursts of anger.

Although anger actually made it easy to use firebending, I didn't want to rely on it since I had seen the anime and how it could consume some people. It took me a while but I could now use firebending without relying on anger as a fuel. I moved on to use airbending with punches, low kicks, and high kicks.

After airbending, I started practicing earthbending by slowly raising both of my hands while a section of earth in front of me rose simultaneously, creating a small earth wall. I thrusted my hand forwards and made the earth wall break-off from the ground and fly into the lake. I kept repeating this for a while. After throwing some 15-16 huge 'stones' into the lake, I finally fell down from exhaustion.

"Only waterbending is left for practice," I spoke to myself. "But, seeing that Haruki, Saisho, and maybe Aino will be here after a while I should stop for now... And I am talking to myself." I stopped talking to myself and waited for my friends to arrive.

******************************************************************************************************

After spending the day with my friends, I returned home as the sky took on a shade of orange. I fell asleep, tired after a night of celebrating my birthday. I was awakened by the noise of hurrying footsteps and loud noises.

"What's going on!" I demanded grumpily, still half asleep. I got out of my room and bumped into Mrs. Suhi. "Mrs. Suhi, what's going on?"

"Your father is being called urgently. It seems that they have found some sort of star moving towards the forest?"

This rung a whole lot of bells in my mind. I didn't want my hunch to be correct. "Please let it not be what I think it is," I muttered to myself. As I left the house and looked towards the sky. There it was in the sky, shinning brightly and moving around here and there. The greatest threat to human life had arrived, and that too on my birthday.

Next chapter