A Change in Fate

By: Whatever-Man

It wasn't supposed to happen like this. They were the good guys, they were supposed to win. They were going to stop the Fire Nation on the day of Sozin's Comet. They were going to save the world and bring peace back to it. They had the Avatar on their side. They couldn't lose.

The Avatar had done the impossible. He had challenged Phoenix King Ozai. He had defeated him. The Avatar was Master of all Elements and the strongest Bender ever to have existed. Yet he was still a kind and caring young boy. In his victory, he took pity on the self-proclaimed Phoenix King and spared his life. He chose not to kill him and decided that a different action could just as well end the war.

No one thought that it was possible before. No one had ever dreamed that it could be done. But the Avatar believed in himself. He had stood tall for his age, wielding the very Elementals themselves as he sought to end the threat that would ever remain to the world. "Every century the Comet will return and threaten again the balance to the world," he had said. He lifted his hands and began to Bend.

The Comet in the sky slowed in its course. It stopped as if in defiance of its own passing. But then the Avatar put all his might into the Bending and the sky became brighter than the sun could ever shine. And for just a single solitary moment, the planet itself was completely silent. Then, the Comet cracked in the sky and shattered into innumerable pieces.

He had done it, he had destroyed Sozin's Comet and with it the threat that every 100 years the world would have an imbalance again. But it had taken so much from him. The Avatar hunched over in weariness and leaned against a rock that was by his side. The destruction of the Comet taxed him far more than he had planned. He rested a moment to regain his strength and energy.

And in that one moment, that one instance of respite and rest, the Avatar was betrayed. The very man that had spared his life was attacked from behind unsuspectingly by the Phoenix King. The Avatar was unprepared for it, and didn't even see it coming. The attack was swift and deadly. And in that moment of greatest triumph for destroying the Comet, he was slain by the man he had given mercy to.

The Phoenix King had killed the Avatar.

No one ever found the body. The Phoenix King returned as the one who killed the Avatar to his home in the Fire Nation. The war had been halted, the Fire Nation Air Fleet was decimated, Bah Sing Sei had been retaken by a group of rebels led by his own brother, General Iroh.

The Avatar's closest friends eventually learned of his death when the Fire Nation declared the day of Sozin's Comet a National Holiday in honor of the death of the Last Airbender. They were separated themselves and in dire need of aid.

Prince Zuko had succeeded in an Agni Kai against Princess Azula for ascension to the throne of the Fire Nation. Katara was only saved from personal imprisonment herself due to the newly crowned Fire Lord Zuko's personal protection. Sokka, Suki and Toph landed Earth Kingdom soil and eventually managed to reach Bah Sing Sei to reunite with General Iroh.

But now the followers of the Avatar were faced with an even greater task: To defeat the Phoenix King and save the world… without the help of the Avatar.