The Avatar's Absence

"Water, Earth, Fire, Air.

Long ago the four nations lived together in harmony, then...everything changed when the Fire Nation attacked.

Only the Avatar, master of all four elements could stop them, but when the world needed him most, he vanished.

A hundred years past, and my brother and I found the Avatar, an airbender named Aang, and though his airbending skills are great, he has a lot to learn before he's ready to save anyone.

But I believe that Aang can save the world."

"Suffocating control, destruction, death and misery.

That is exactly what has come from the reign of the Fire Nation.

The world needs the Avatar, unfortunately I'm not him. I'm doing my best to find him, and doing all I can until then.

I've lived my last life fighting against this sort of evil, and I will do so again."

"Oh come on already, Zu-Zu." A young girl said in an exasperated voice, the girl in question was six years old, she had black hair that was done into a neat ponytail and she also had a pair of golden eyes. Her clothes were fit for royalty, which made sense since she was an actual princess.

Her name was Azula, she was the princess of the Fire Nation, the best nation in the world as far as she was concerned, daughter of Fire Lord Ozai and Ursa and younger sister of Prince Zuko. Azula was a talented firebender, she knew that, and everyone around her knew that as well. Her sharp wits and the fact that she was a firebending prodigy quickly made her Ozai's favourite child.

"Don't call me that!" Zuko, her older brother, growled as he followed after her. He had his hair in a ponytail as well, and much like Azula he was blessed with golden eyes. Azula grinned, loving how easily it was to irritate her brother when she wanted to. Her brother, the seven year old Prince Zuko, was technically the true heir to the throne since he was born a year before her. Despite that fact, Azula knew that her father liked her more than he liked Zuko because she was a better firebender than he was. They all knew that she was a better firebender than he was.

Sometimes Zuko was barely capable of making decent sized flames for someone of his age, other times he couldn't make flames at all. Azula on the other hand didn't struggle with firebending at all, in fact she was even able to achieve something that her own father had not been able to. The most notable feature of Azula's bending was her ability to create blue flames, which were much more intense than the red, orange, and yellow flames normally used by firebenders. Although admittedly Azula had only been able to do that once so far, most of her fire was the same colour as regular fire, but the fact that she had been able to do it at all showed just how much better she was then Zuko.

"I don't think that this is a good idea." Zuko said in a quiet voice as he walked besides her. Zuko frowned as he tried to remember exactly how this had happened.

The last thing he remembered was being in his room, playing with his toys when Azula came in like she owned the place and then used that silver tongue of hers to convince him to sneak out with her, which was why he was now with her and walking down a street without any bodyguards, and that was pretty much it. 'Great, how do I keep letting her get me into situations like this?' Zuko mentally wondered. The two of them were walking down streets where the common people of the nation would walk, thankfully so far the two kids have been mostly unnoticed and those few that had seen them haven't appeared to have recognised or realised who they were.

"Don't be such a baby." Azula said with a roll of her eyes. "We're going to be perfectly fine, nothing is going to happen to us." She said, making it sound like she thought he was being very ridiculous by even thinking of it being a possibility.

"How sure are you?" Zuko's frown got even bigger as he looked around.

"Very sure, nothing will happen to us. I pro..." Azula's words were cut off when at that very moment...something happened to them.

A hand reached out, covering Azula's mouth just as another hand reached out and covered Zuko's, the Prince and Princess of the Fire Nation found themselves roughly pulled into a nearby alleyway, the two struggled but were quickly pulled further and further into the alley. Azula had tried to fire bend but a third man had quickly tied both her and Zuko's hands behind their backs before tying their feet together. Azula still tried firebending at them despite this but she wasn't able to do anything good enough to help them and eventually gave it up as futile. The two children tried to scream out but the hands muffling their mouths prevented them from making much noise.

"Oh sweet Agni!" The third man - the one who had tied their hands and legs together - blurted out as he looked at Zuko and Azula. "These are the Fire Lord's kids!" He hissed to his two fellow kidnappers.

"What?!" The one holding Zuko hissed with disbelief. "Are you kidding me?!"

"You can't be serious!" Azula heard the words come out from the man who was holding her. "You have got to be wrong!" He said, sounding hopeful.

"No, that's definitely them!" The third man said, sounding very sure, and sounding horrified because he was so sure. "What the fuck are we going to do now?!"

"We can't sell these two!" The one holding Zuko said, sounding very, very ill. Zuko actually nodded quite quickly at that, though it quickly became a very fast head shake at the next sentence that was spoken.

"We've got to kill them then." The one holding Azula decided in a quiet voice.

"What?!" His two companions looked at him like he had just started doing limp left handed Lemur-bending with his right hand. Azula and Zuko started struggling even more after hearing that, sadly their efforts were in vain as the men simply increased their grips.

"We can't let them go!" He said in a defensive voice. "Do you know what happens if these two blab?! The Fire Lord would grant us a quick death if we're lucky! He'd make us suffer first before ending us! What if he sets the 'Dragon of the West' on us?! We need to get rid of them, we can't have this traced back to us!" The other two kidnappers looked reluctant but eventually nodded.

"You're right," The one holding Zuko said before he looked down at both kids. "sorry kiddies, this is nothing personal." He said in an almost apologetic voice. Zuko went deathly pale while Azula glared at him with such anger that she felt like she came close to burning him with her mind.

"Hey," A voice called. "let them go."

They all turned around to see who it was that the voice belonged to, Azula's eyes widened in disbelief as she saw who was walking towards them. It was a boy who was about her or Zuko's age, he had pale skin that looked like it had been tanned, he had hair that was black as night and eyes that were emerald green. Azula couldn't help but feel disappointed, their saviour was not a fully trained fire bender, it was just another kid who would also be kidnapped and killed, which would then leave them to still be killed.

"Crap, we've got another witness!" The third man hissed.

"Well…go get that one, we've got these two!" The man holding Azula hissed back. The third man nodded before he stepped past them and got into a firebending stance.

"Sorry kid." The man said in an apologetic voice before he threw a fireblast at the new arrival. The fire shot towards the boy, Azula expected to see him be burnt, what she did not expect was for him to jump to the side and rear his arm back to fire a fire blast of his own.

Fire shot from the boy's hand, but it wasn't your average red, orange and yellow fire, no, these flames were green! The third man had been so surprised - not just by the fact that the kid dodged and firebended back but also by the fact that his fire was green - that he didn't dodge in time and ended up crying out in pain when he got hit by a fireblast to this face, he fell to the floor, crying out.

"No, NOW you are sorry." The boy said in a cold voice.

Azula and Zuko joined the two standing kidnappers in staring at the new kid with disbelief, Azula herself couldn't believe it, another firebending prodigy?! And from the looks of it his skills were superior to her own, wait were his eyes glowing?!