Chapter One – Arrival
Aang rose from the ground slowly, breathing deeply as he moved. He finally understood what it meant to be the avatar; what it meant for everything to be connected.
I am the most powerful person in the world.
The monks would have frowned on such thoughts, but he decided a little ego never hurt anyone. He looked up at the blue sky, so close it almost seemed he could touch it. He reached up, feeling the heat from the sun, the sway of the breeze, the pull of the earth, and the tickle of the clouds that were just barely close enough for him to feel the water inside. He was one with the elements and they were one in him.
"This feels great!" he cried. He was smiling as he looked at the scroll that he had kept beside him for so long.
Aang, we will be waiting for you the day after the solstice. When you arrive in Ba Sing Se come directly to the Jasmine Dragon for our first meeting.
The note was in Katara's writing and he was eager to see how she had changed in five years. Five years. It had taken him so long to master what he now saw as so simple.
Aang fell into a low crouch with one foot slightly forward and the other slightly back. He closed his eyes and reached for his bond with the earth, with gravity itself. When he found it, he began moving his hands slowly as he formed lightning on his fingertips. When the lightning reached its peak, he tenderly pushed away the pull of gravity, releasing himself from the earth completely and redirected the lightning so that it was travelling along every inch of his skin.
Aang jumped. Without the pull of gravity and his natural ability as an airbender to negate wind resistance, he was better than weightless. The power of the lightning shot him across the sky with such speed it was almost like he was teleporting.
The technique was particularly dangerous due to the chance of losing control of the lightning, but as he flew across the sky he continued to circulate a thin layer of water over his skin to prevent the lightning from burning him.
He was one with the elements and they were one in him.
As he slowed down, he would simply conjure more lightning and push himself forward with a mixture of lightning and airbending. The result was a deafening boom after every movement and speed like he had never felt before.
On the other side of the world in Ba Sing Se, Katara sat in the Jasmine Dragon with Sokka. She sighed as her brother caught sight of his reflection in a teapot and smiled at his own image. Toph had arrived only to be called away instantly, but she promised to return within an hour. Zuko and Aang were nowhere to be found.
"Katara!" Sokka yelled despite the fact that they were barely more than a foot apart. A nearby guard who happened to be taking a short break in the teashop eyed them angrily.
"What Sokka?" Katara snapped. "And keep your voice down."
"I just realized," he said as he held up his hands for silence. "I'm-,"
"Save it," Toph said, appearing from nowhere. She punched Sokka in the arm and sat next to Katara.
"How did it go?" Katara asked her. They had both already forgotten that Sokka had been speaking and chose to ignore his disappointed stuttering.
"I eventually gave up and told the Earth King that if he wanted Bumi to stop terrorizing Bosco, he would just have to name me as his heir and be done with the whole thing."
"How did he take that?"
"He ordered me to lead an attack against Bumi," Toph replied simply as if attacking a friend was the most normal thing in the world.
"You're crazy!" Sokka shouted. They all ignored the determined cough from the nearby guard.
"What did you do then?" Katara stammered. Toph grinned in the direction of Katara's voice.
"I turned to my men, told them good luck, and I walked out of the room. I'm pretty sure Bumi will have put them all into steel coffins by now."
"Yeah," Sokka mused. "Teaching a psychopath how to metalbend was not your best call."
At that moment a guard ran in, nearly swearing in distress. He ran to the guard sitting a few tables away and slammed into his table.
"We need help," he wheezed. "Something's coming!"
As the two guards ran outside, Sokka and Katara looked at each other in confusion. Toph laughed and jumped to her feet. She cracked her knuckles and began walking outside without waiting for her companions.
"I guess we should at least go see," Katara said as she rose to her feet. Sokka hopped up and they walked out together.
Zuko waited patiently. He was supposed to be at the Jasmine Dragon by now, but the mate of his pet dragon had just laid her eggs and he wanted to make sure she was okay before he left.
When she fell asleep with her body circled around the eggs to keep them warm, he knew it would be okay. He whistled for Ryuu, the first of his pet dragons and the only one he trusted enough to fly with.
The silver dragon arrived almost instantly and swirled and the Firelord in excitement. Zuko climbed onto the top of the dragon's neck where it was the safest to fly.
"You ready boy?" Zuko asked. The dragon roared in delight as it released a jet of flames into the air before slapping its tail against the ground and leaping into the sky. They flew quickly and within an hour he could see the outline of Ba Sing Se in the distance. He also noticed a strange bolt of lightning that seemed to move steadily closer to the city. His heart thumped wildly for a second as he remembered back to when Azula had hit him with lightning. Without Katara there to heal him he probably would have died.
Without Katara there, Azula would have shot at you and you would have simply redirected it.
Zuko hated arguing with himself because even in his own mind he always seemed to be wrong about something.
"Speed up Ryuu," Zuko called. "I want to reach Ba Sing Se before that lightning does."
The reason Zuko had come to trust and love Ryuu was how well the dragon listened. Almost instantly Zuko felt the chance of speed and they were rocketing toward Ba Sing Se so fast the sound of rushing wind was hurting his ears.
He soon realized that even at full speed, Ryuu was not fast enough to outrun lightning. The strange thing was that when the lightning crashed down against the wall of Ba Sing Se, Zuko could see a person standing right where it had struck.
"Oh no," Zuko whispered, amazed that there was lightning on such a clear day and even more amazed that it had managed to hit someone. He finally reached the wall just in time to realize that the person seemed fine. He had a thin plume of steam rising from his skin, but other than that there was nothing unordinary.
Zuko had Ryuu land just in case the man needed help before realizing who he had been looking at the whole time. Before Ryuu had even touched down, Zuko had leapt off his back and ran to Aang. The Avatar turned around and grinned ear to ear.
They hugged but seemed to not know what to say to each other for a moment. Aang's eyes fell on Ryuu just as Zuko put all the pieces together.
"You have a dragon?"
"You can turn into lightning?" They said in unison.