Earth and Fie, Water and Air, the final battle loomed overhead and the earth below, fire country earth, burned with elemental energy. Avatar Aang fought with a fury he had never know, a raging ocean of energy that blossomed out of him. It was limitless and seemed eternal, he remembered his lessons with Gatso and felt a deep connection to his childhood as if he was reliving it right then and there as he prepared to face off against the firelord.
"Be prepared to die, Avatar," said the Fie Lord, his eyebrows slightly singed as pure kinetic energy swamped around his body and exploded out of him - he breathed fire, he lived in it, bathed in it, and ate in it. He was fire incarnate, sweeping down at the avatar like a demon and the Avatar could only watch as his flesh burned, as despite all the water under his control he could not stamp out the flames. There was smoke and mist clouding his vision. The night thundered in the sky and a lightning bolt flew far too close to Aang's postion. They were flying now, wielding swords of water and air, and in the Fire Lord's case, a net of hot lightning clenched between two palms, sizzling with the potential of a thousand volt electric bomb that Aang had heard one of the resourceful in Earth Country had made.
The Earth countries were the engineers, the builders, and the architects. He wondered if he could use the earth elemental as the Fire Lord through the bolt of lightning, the vicious net of electric teeth at the Avatar. He called up earth, called up the mud and the rock, the mountain and the pebble. His spirits rose to take up the challenge, and he wielded Earth in his fist, wielded the strong and unyielding under his palms and met the awaiting challenge with both feet to the ground.
Earth. Lightning. Cascading energy - electrical and mechanical, chemical and potential, fire and mud creating an anomaly, an enigmatic discovery. On that bright day when history would be decided, a portal arose - the first one seen in the history of the world.
Aang screamed at the fire lord and ran to meet him in battle, jumping over the portal with his air element, water curled over his palms and across his forehead, cooling him and refreshing his spirit, bolstering his energy and mental acuity in that flighty time of fight, of blood racing and chest pounding, of eyesight keen and mind razor sharp as adrenaline surged and sweat beads rolled down his face.
The Fire Lord met him, and Avatar Aang unleashed his full potential. His eyes glowed with yellow energy, a dull yellow sickly energy that seemed to be infinite. It was an oozy diseased thing, the corrupt energy of a god. The portal was corrupting it, and the yellow - or was it white, no yellow, maybe white, the colours seemed to resonate in between - and the portal glowed sickly orange, sickly red and purple and hate filled.
Aang was too focused on his goal to feel the burning pain, the sickly nausea and the painful headache. He did not feel hair loss and did not see his skin turn a putrid black. He was dying. The portal's energy was twisting him. It was a portal made from pure emotion, pure hatred, the Avatar's spirit energy and Fire Lord's energy, combining in a miasma, in a monster, a nexus of the universe.
The Avatar unleashed his strength at Fire Lord Ozai, killing him in his last moments in the world. He was sucked in, the portal sucked in the energy of the Avatar, it was as hungry as a viper and just as sly. Aang fell, and he did not know time when he fell, nor did he taste food nor water on his tongue. He was drowning in yellow and black and evil oozing slime. He was sinking and suffocating, but he did not die. Avatars do not die.
They simply do not.
When he awoke he looked around and saw a flat dull country, as dry as a desert and as windy as Oka Bansai Island in the summer. He walked in that desert and summoned water when he thirsted, but he was weak and it was hard, like pulling his hand out of hot clay, quicksand. This whole desert looks to be hiding quick sand he thought grimly. But he ventured forth and came to a well, it was deep and black and the shade, the coolness of the promised water was alluring. He made it rise on his fifth attempt and drank his fill.
He was picked up by ninjas - that was what they called themselves, he would find later on when he learned the language. He told them his name was Aang, they did not listen. You're just a boy, said the tall one, the one wearing the wierd headband of a leaf. He did not know that the tall one was the hokage, the leader. He would remember the conversation and the words and hold it in his memory, the holes of blank understanding would soon be filled by the light of knowledge in time, so he waited patiently and watched.
He was scared, he could not admit it to himself but he had nightmares of yellow demons, sick slime and stinky demon smell burning his stomach. The ninja called it heart burn. From stress, perhaps. Hokage Sarutobi told the medic nin to fuck off, he wasn't stressed, he was just... changed, as one might be changed from a traumatic event. But getting eaten in a demon's stomach just to come to this world, to be adopted by the tall one wearing the wierd head band, that was sacrifice. He lived old and long, and his powers waned with disuse. But he learned new ways, and settled in and had a long and happy life.
Until he was killed by a snake in human form who might have been named Ozai in a past life.
Fire Lord Ozai.