Short prologue. More to come soon. The MC will not instantly be the most powerful firebender ever. He'll have to work for every bit of power he gets. I know most people tend to avoid SI stories and I get why. I'll try not to make this some annoying piece of wish-fulfillment.

Hope you enjoy! Reviews are appreciated even though there isn't much to review right now. :)


Chapter 1: Prologue


I was twenty-one years old when I died. Contrary to popular belief I didn't see the pearly gates of Heaven or the burning ones of Hell, the only thing I saw were the two front headlights of a bus and the honking of his horn as it crashed into me and killing me almost instantly. And that was the end, or at least that should have been the end.

Because after that, I woke up.

I quickly raised up my hands in a feeble attempt to stop the bus or at least try to protect my face from making direct contact with it only to find there was no bus. In fact I wasn't even on the street I was less than a fraction of a second before. Instead I found myself in what appeared to be a giant forest. I frowned as I looked around, trying to figure out just where the hell I was and how to get out of there only to find nothing but more trees that seemed to go on forever in every direction.

Well, that and what appeared to be a meditating, human clothes wearing baboon.

When my brain finally caught up to what I just saw, my head turned back so fast towards the odd sight that I could feel my neck pop. What was even stranger than the fact he was wearing clothes was that for some reason, I felt like I had seen the baboon before. Calm as I was, I managed to mutter out the three most logical words for a situation like this, "What the fuck?".

"Quiet," It snapped at me.

"You can talk." I stated as I felt my jaw drop.

He raised up one of his eyelids and looked at me with disinterest. "Obviously," he quipped back before closing his eye again and seemingly trying to continue his meditation.

"And you're wearing clothes," I continued in my observations.

"And you seem to have an uncanny ability to state the obvious," he spat back, irritation creeping into his voice, "Now leave!"

That's it, I'm losing my mind. The accident must have caused me some serious brain damage and this is all just some strange dream or hallucination, all I have to do is wake up. I decided that was the only logical explanation, so I closed my eyes, counted to three, took a deep breath, opened my eyes and shouted at the top of my lungs, "Wake up!"

Of course that didn't happen, I just stood there like a full blown lunatic screaming at himself.

"I'm not sleeping!" the monkey-man screamed back, thinking I was yelling at him. "I'm meditating and I would very much appreciate it if you would just leave me alone!"

I'm going mad, I thought to myself. And could you really blame me? Here I was, where here was I didn't know, talking to a baboon who didn't actually want me around.

"Yup," I mumbled, "Definitely going crazy."

"Just go that way," the angry monkey told me, pointing his thumb behind him, "You will find all the answers you seek there," he finished with a slightly unnerving grin.

Seeing as I probably wasn't going to get any more out of him, coupled with the fact that I really had no idea what else to do, I followed the monkey's directions. And so I walked, and walked, and walked… There seemed to be no end to this barren, dark land that seemed to be devoid of any life other than the strange being I encountered hours before.

Well, that and the occasional howling of a wolf in the distance. The only comfort was that the howling never seemed to get any closer, in fact it seemed like it was moving away.

Considering the shitty chain of events I counted that as a win. So I kept on walking.

'I wonder how long I've been walking' I thought to myself after what seemed like hours or even days. I really couldn't tell. What baffled me most wasn't the strange place I was in, I had already gotten used to that, but the fact that I never got tired, hungry or thirsty. I always prided myself on keeping my body relatively fit but come on, there was no way I could keep going for so long.

"RRRRRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH," I shouted in frustration. "Where am I, what the fuck is going on?!" I let it all out as I fell to my knees. That was when I saw it -

The thing that made me recognize where I was, it was standing so close to me, tall and twisted, every branch ending in a point sharp enough to stab a man.

How did I not notice it until I was so close?

"Oh," was all I managed to say in this state of disbelieve.

"Actually," a voice to my right said. "It's Koh."

Every fiber of my being was shouting at me not to look, but I couldn't stop myself. So I turned my head, to face it.

Then, there was nothing but darkness.