Disclaimer: I do not own Avatar: The Last Airbender. Although I seriously wish I did.

Eleven years had passed since anyone had last seen the Avatar. It was said that Fire Lord Sozin had killed him, meaning that it would be another five years before anyone would know who the next one is. But there was another rumor going around- that Avatar Roku had been killed while in the famous Avatar State. This, it was said, had broken the reincarnation cycle. The Avatar was gone forever.

Ori didn't believe them. He couldn't. Fire Lord Sozin had already spent the last eleven years expanding the Fire Nation little by little, enough to make it clear to everyone that his goal was to make everyone Fire Nation. So far the Water Tribes hadn't seen many firebender invaders- though Ori imagined the Fire Lord was simply biding his time. As one of the best waterbending students in the Northern Water Tribe, Ori made it his personal goal to make sure that when firebenders did come knocking, he would be able to help drive them off.

He spent this particular afternoon the same way he had spent most of his afternoons for the past month- training. Daily lessons were over, of course, but he had to practice on his own if he was to compete with the three other star pupils in Master Kengen's class. The old waterbending master did his best not to make it a contest, and praised all four of them equally well (mostly because their abilities were almost completely equal), but Ori knew this was how they did it. So, not wanting to fall behind, he kept pace with them. His arm motions were as fluid as the water dancing around his body in an elegant stream, a stream that curled itself into a sphere of water as Ori whirled his hands in closer to him. Several more motions and the sphere hovered above his head and became a large, slowly spinning disc of ice. Ori performed a throwing motion and the disc flew in front of him, neatly slicing the head off a snowman he had formed a few moments ago.

A muffled clapping came from behind him. He turned to see his girlfriend Kai's gloved hands applauding him. She smiled teasingly. "Good job, Ori, but I bet even I could do that."

"Oh yea?" Ori bent his knees and made a scooping motion with his hands, then pushed them both to one side. A snowball hit Kai cleanly in the cheek, bursting into powdered snow on impact. "If you're so good at this, why do I always beat you in snowball fights?"

"Because you're at an unfair advantage," Kai laughed. Both of them knew Kai didn't have an ounce of waterbending ability. "But I came here to tell you something I learned last night. I think you'll be interested."

Ori groaned. "If it's another funny-looking constellation, you're getting another snowball." Kai hadn't the slightest interest in Ori's waterbending. For reasons he couldn't explain, Kai had always been fascinated with the stars. She'd found an astronomer with a passion to match, and the two of them spent their nights studying the skies. She'd only just woken up, and probably hadn't even eaten anything. They'd long ago taken it for granted that the afternoon was their first opportunity to spend time together- she stayed up until just before dawn, which was when Ori's waterbending lessons began. She slept until the afternoon when his lessons were over, then they parted again when it was time for dinner. Perhaps not the best of circumstances, but other couples had it little better- girls weren't allowed to study waterbending combat anyway, so nobody else in his class who had girlfriends could see them until the end of the lesson either.

"No, this is different, I promise. It's exciting!"

Ori sighed. "Ok, I'm listening."

Kai lowered her voice as though she were telling him a secret. "There's going to be an eclipse soon. The ninth day of next month, to be exact. We've been watching the moon, and two weeks from tomorrow it's going to blot out the sun."

"A what?" Ori couldn't believe it. His mind started racing. The Fire Nation had set up a small camp some miles southwest of their tribe, on an island a little warmer than up here at the pole. It housed only a dozen people or so, all firebenders, and wasn't intended to be seen as a threat. But Ori and the other students always talked of taking it out someday, before a full-scale invasion could begin. The post, they knew, was built as a stakeout to keep an eye on the goings-on of the Northern waterbenders, and one of these days someone was going to have to do something about it.

He always had a feeling that he would know when the time was right to strike- well, here was just such an opportunity staring him in the face. "You're serious? An eclipse?"

Kai smiled. "Yep. Isn't that great? I've never seen one!"

"Uh, yea, great. I've never seen one either." Ori had mentioned to her exactly once that he and the others wanted to take out that Fire Nation post. Kai stayed mad at him for a week for even thinking about it. "That's not funny, Ori," she had said. "How can you even think that? They're minding their own business, and if anything you'll only make them want to attack us. You can't go through with this." After a week, Ori had begrudgingly promised to her that he wouldn't- a promise he never really intended to keep.

That evening, he went to visit one of the other students under Master Kengen. Kuku was the oldest of them, named after Avatar Kuruk, and he and Ori had been friends since the day they met. "I have some big news," Ori told him in a hushed tone. "Get the others together. Two weeks from now, we attack the Fire Nation."