I think I'm going through some kind of posting withdrawal (I miss having all those alerts in my inbox! Wah!) so I've decided to put this little thing up. I wrote it a few months ago before things got all crazy with NaNoWriMo (which was a blast!). It was inspired by Robby Cook's crossover pictures between various Disney movies and the Avatar the Last Airbender series. And from what I saw of his deviantart page, it looks like he's still making more too. I highly suggest you check them out. His username's racookie3.

His pictures gave me lots of ideas, however with all my other, more established fics, I think this will have to be a side project. There will probably be more segments, however not on any set schedule, and they might be more like drabbles, unless I can figure out how to string them together with a coherent plot line (I'm still working on that).

However despite that I really hope you like my little experiment and please feel free to leave me reviews telling me what you think, whether good, bad, or just plain ol' confused. n_n;

Hope you like it! And Happy New Year! :)

The Lost Avatar

& Other Tales from the Four Nations

-.-

Snow White Beifong

-.-

Snow White Beifong, daughter of the late Grand Secretariat of Ba Sing Se, had always known there were people out there that wanted her dead for circumstances that she had no control over.

She'd just never thought that one of them would be her stepmother.

Bare feet met hard packed earth so hard that she felt the force rocket up through her shins. The air was cold in her chest and she had a stitch in her side, but she couldn't stop. The hour was late, too early even for false dawn to have touched the sky, but Snow knew that that wouldn't stop her stepmother from sending her best agents after her. If it hadn't been for Hunter...well, Snow White shuddered to think of what state she'd be in if her father's retainer hadn't shaken her out of sleep and told her to run when he had.

"I'd be dead by now." Snow White thought as she continued to run through the empty streets of Ba Sing Se. "Or worse! Vanished without a trace and never to be seen again!"

And it was well within her step-mother's power to do just that. After all, the head of the Dai Li's reach was not to be underestimated, especially now that the Earth king and queen were dead and their son was still too young to take the throne.

Snow White was almost to the edge of the city now. The Wall that surrounded Ba Sing Se on all sides loomed over her like a giant, black shadows against the star studded sky. She had always been comforted by the Wall's presence before – the Great Wall most people called it – but this was no day inspection with her father. If she didn't find a way past those unbroken rocks, she was dead.

As she ran the last fifty feet towards the Wall, Snow White dug for her gloves. She may have forgotten her shoes in her haste, but a Ba Sing Se earth bender never forgot her gloves. That was her father's first rule.

She finished pulling on the flexible clay gloves ten feet away from the base of the Inner Wall. At eight she braced herself for the incoming force of impact. And at five, she jumped.

There was the uncomfortable sensation of not being attached to anything as she leapt through the air, arms outstretched above her head to catch the wall as high as she could. For a brief second, the only sound Snow White heard was the internal thud of her heart as her pulse pounded in her ears-

-and then her body rammed into the wall with astounding force. The girl gasped, but didn't cry out. Instead she gripped hard stone with tenacious fingers, digging into the wall like it was wet clay.

Snow White grit her teeth and focused, reaching for that solid core that powered her earthbending. She latched onto it, like a terrier with a rat, and pushed against the stone with her left foot.

It gave way, just enough to give her a toe hold in the flat surface, while above her head, her hands found newly made holds for her to pull herself up with.

With a small grunt, Snow White set to climbing the great wall. Hand over hand, foot over foot, she scaled the barrier that had protected her since childhood from the wild forces of fire that had burned so much of the outside world. Not many people worried about the Fire Nation's continued attack against Ba Sing Se, but Snow White had grown up acutely aware of the war's presence. Her father – the honorable and steadfast Alexander Beifong – had held the position of Grand Secretariat of Ba Sing Se and head of the Dai Li for most of his life. As Secretariat, he had worried about defending the city and the Earth Kingdom at large, and as head of the Dai Li, he had concerned himself with ways to take the fight back to the Fire Nation. And take it back he had, even repelling the strongest firebender to ever live; the great and powerful Merlin.

Snow White had been nothing if not proud of her father.

And he had taught her well too, raising her on his own after her mother had died when she was six. That was eight years ago now and Snow White's skill as a bender had only grown since then. And while she was a gifted earthbender on her own, it was her father's strict training keeping her from falling right off the Wall.

Snow White blinked sweat out of her dark eyes and made herself reach just once more for the next handhold. Perspiration was making her hands slick and her short black hair stick to her face in sticky curls. She was halfway up now and her muscles were burning like nothing she'd ever felt before. Earth was nothing if not hard to move.

The thought made Snow smirk. "Father always said I was the most stubborn element." She thought as she used her right foot to push herself up another few feet.

She reached the top with little strength to spare, hauling herself over the parapet with a groan. She got most of her weight over the balancing point and let gravity take care of the rest. With a tired gasp, she landed on the top of the wall, sprawled out and gasping for air like a novice.

She managed to find enough strength to lift her head and glance around the top of the Inner Wall. As Hunter had promised, it was empty. As she let her head drop back to the solid floor, Snow White supposed that there were others in the Ba Sing Se militia that didn't agree with her father's replacement either.

Eventually her heart stopped ramming itself against the underside of her rib cage and the stitch in her side faded. Exhausted, but knowing there wasn't time to lay around and rest, Snow White hauled herself to her feet, using the parapet to leverage herself upright.

She kept low incase her stepmother already had Dai Li agents looking out for her ebony haired head, but no clay gloves flew out to latch themselves onto her as she crossed the top of the Wall and peered over the other side.

It was a long way down.

Snow White swallowed hard as she pulled her head back from over the edge. "Down is easier than up," she tried to reassure herself. "Down is much easier than up.

"And possibly far more fatal."

She tried to block the mental image that errant thought inspired as she brushed sweaty strands of black hair away from her pale face. She hated feeling sweaty. It made her skin feel like mud, all gross and sticky.

Not quite ready to take that leap of faith down the other side of the Inner Wall just yet, Snow turned and looked back the way she'd come. Behind her stretched the famed city of Ba Sing Se, with its rings of homes and businesses and, at its center, the palace itself. All colored in the traditional hues of green and brown and clay-white. The last safe city. Her city.

"I can't do it," Snow White thought suddenly as the truth finally sunk in, "I can't leave! What about Hunter? What will Lana do to him when she finds out he helped me?" She paused as a different thought struck her. "And what's Mulan going to do to me when she finds out that I left without her?"

That didn't inspire pleasant thoughts. Her bodyguard could be...bull headed even when she was in a good mood. When she found out Snow White had left on her own...

"On my own..." Snow thought in slow horror. "I don't want to be on my own. And what about Ferdy? And Rose and Shang? I can't just leave them like this. They're my friends..."

The faces of her three closest friends shot through her mind. Fiery, impulsive Rose Red with her unusual flaming hair and smiling eyes. The polar opposite of Snow White, in appearance and personality, the girls had been her best friend since they was two. Shang, at four years older than both of them, was quiet and steadfast, one of her father's most loyal agents, now Prince Ferdinand's constant guardian.

And then there was Ferdinand. Sweet, lonely Ferdinand who'd been the most understanding out of all of them after her father had died. It was funny; Snow White could still remember chasing him around the play yard when they were small. The brat had kept pulling her pigtails.

Snow White sniffed hard to keep her nose from running. They'd been her only source of comfort and strength since her father had died six months ago. What was she going to do without them?

And what might her stepmother do to them when she couldn't find her?

Snow White pressed her hand to her mouth and closed her eyes. For a moment, her anger blazed against her stepmother. She hated the woman, fiercely and obstinately. In one night she'd managed to take everything that still mattered to Snow White; her friends and her home. Now she had nothing, all because that woman had hated her since the first moment she'd seen her. Snow White wasn't even sure what she had done to make Lana Feng hate her so much in the first place.

This high up, the wind whipped cold around Snow White's slender body, drying her damp hair and giving her goose bumps. She knew she couldn't stay. She had to leave them. It was the only way she could make them safe. Her stepmother was nothing if not focused; she wouldn't go after her friends because she'd be too busy trying to track down her runaway stepdaughter. Her friends would be safe.

They had to be.

Stubbornly shunting her worry from her mind, Snow White opened her eyes again, setting her face as if she had been carved from stone. She didn't have a plan exactly (she wasn't exactly the planning type) but she didhave family in Gailong. An uncle – her father's younger brother – and his wife. It had been so long since she'd seen them that she couldn't remember what they looked like. Her father had never been close with his brother – something to do with Snow's cousin she thought – and after their falling out ten years ago, they never even spoke. It was the last place Lana would think to look for her.

But first she had to get off this wall.

Snow White breathed deep, drawing in the scent of dust-laden air for courage. It didn't work very well; instead of brave she just felt lightheaded. But lightheaded must have been enough because she turned around, squeezed her eyes shut, and stepped over the edge backwards.

Snow White didn't open her eyes as a feral wind snapped around her, yanking at her clothes and trying to drag her away from the solid presence of the great wall. She didn't let it. Instead, Snow White held out her hands and slammed then into the wall rushing past her at frightening speed.

She couldn't feel the gritty surface through her gloves, but the feel of hard packed dirt breaking way underneath her flying fingers was unmistakable. She clung tight, hoping it would slow her momentum enough that she wouldn't go squash when she finally made it to the ground. She knew it would help if she could dig in with her feet as well, but without shoes the only thing that would happen would be her legs would end at the ankles if she tried it.

She dared to open her eyes when she felt herself start to slow. It was just a tiny amount – a fracture less momentum than before – but when she hit bottom thirty seconds later, it was enough that the impact was only bone wrenching instead of bone shattering.

No amount of knee bending could have kept her on her feet and she landed in a crumpled heap at the base of the Inner Wall.

"I'm alive." Snow White realized after a long moment of wondering how bad it was that she couldn't feel her lower extremities at all. She laughed, the first time in months even if it was slightly hysterical, as she patted herself down with friction warmed gloves. "I'm still alive!"

Even more miraculous, nothing was broken. Her legs sure felt like they'd been broken when the feeling finally came back to them a few seconds later, but a quick test of her limbs showed her bones were still in functioning pieces.

Using the side of the Wall as support, she regained her feet. Snow White took a moment to look back up the Great Wall, knowing it would be the last time she saw it for quite some time. Long gouges, left behind by her hands, stretched high above her head in two, parallel straight lines, marring the otherwise flat surface.

Snow White cringed. "They're going to notice that sooner or later," she mumbled to herself. She didn't like the sound of her voice in the early morning quiet though and quickly fell silent again.

Looking up at the Wall a final time, she patted its side, like one patted a large family dog where it watched the door for strangers.

"Well," she thought as she turned away from the city to face the farm lands that made up the agricultural sector surrounding Ba Sing Se proper, "here I go."

And with that, Snow White began the long walk away from the world's last free city, the only home she'd ever known eventually becoming nothing but a distant smudge behind her.