Setting: Avatar Min comes from an era that is an unspecified amount of time before Aang is born. At this time, the Water Tribe hasn't split yet. Tensions are rising between factions within the Water Tribe, setting the stage for their split. Min is nearing the end of her Avatar Training at age seventeen. On Earth-16, it is six months after Vandal Savage took control of the Justice League. Basically, nothing has changed. The same eight members of the Team, as of Auld Acquaintances, are still the only members of the Team. No one has left yet.

Waking up was difficult. I felt peaceful and relaxed; I couldn't remember why it was so important to get up, but I guess something deep in my subconscious realized that this sleep was not natural.

And so I fought.

It was like pushing up through molasses. My eyes fluttered, but refused to open. I couldn't move my fingers beyond a few twitches. My mind, however, was recovering more quickly. Soon, I was sure that something was terribly wrong. I began to panic, to thrash against the mental bars that held my limbs. It didn't help.

The thrashing was completely metaphorical and my hands and feet still refused to move. My panic at my helplessness turned to anger, and with the familiar heat of rage came the also familiar warmth of my body temperature rising rapidly.

My Firebending Master called it, and I quote, "an unusual phenomenon." My unconscious ability to raise my internal temperature beyond natural levels when stressed or angry was something she had never seen before, that no one had ever seen before. Now, it turned out to be a blessing.

As my temperature rose, I could feel control of my body return to me. Twitches turned into jerks and flutters into blinks. Ever so slowly, my vision returned. Blinking, I peered blurrily at my surroundings. At first, it was all a smear of browns and greys, but soon I could make out earthen walls and a few metallic constructs. Some minutes later, I could turn my head, but the surveillance yielded no new clues as to my whereabouts.

All the while that my bodily functions returned to me, my heart and my mind raced. Obviously, I had been drugged and kidnapped. But by who? And where was I being kept? The only group who were dissatisfied enough to take such a drastic measure as kidnapping the Avatar were the rebels in the Water Tribe, but my prison was of Earth. None of this made any sense.

There was nothing to do, then, but to continue to fight the effects of the drugs in my system. It seemed that by raising my body temperature, I was burning through the toxins quicker than my captors expected. Thus, all I had to do was maintain my anger and my heart rate, an easy enough task considering the circumstances.

Who were my captors? Who did they think they were?

I flexed my hand.

What did they hope to accomplish with this?

My tongue wet my lips.

Did they think they could get away with this?

I bent my knee, raising my foot. If only I could…

My foot stopped, was stopped. With a still considerable effort, I moved my head and looked down at my ankles, and then back up to my wrists. It was only then that I realized that I was upright, and bound by metal shackles at my wrists and ankles.

Silently I cursed myself. Of course I would be bound. There was probably a guard, too. I would have to free myself, and then fight my way out, all while still battling the drugs in my veins. In short, I had to accelerate the process, before my captors sent someone to check on me.

While I was studying with the Air Nomads and mastering Airbending, I took a special interest in their meditative practices. The Air Nomads used meditation as a way to bring peace to themselves, to control their emotions and their heart rate and to let their minds and spirits be free. I saw another use for it. I wanted to be in control of my heart rate so as to as to be able to slow it down or speed it up. Little did the Air Nomads know that the day I mastered Airbending, I mastered this technique.

As I meditated, I reflected once more on my predicament. Before in my anger I had looked for someone to blame for my imprisonment, and had found only the Water Tribe rebels, but now even more than then I saw that that just was not feasible. The rebels had no reason to kidnap me and good reason not to; my Waterbending Master was none other than their leader, and to them it seemed likely I was a sympathizer. No one I knew of had any reason to want the Avatar taken out of the global picture. The only logical conclusion, then, was that I was dealing with someone I didn't know. This person or group of people could be anyone, could have any affiliation. They could be radicals, desperate, even mentally unbalanced.

In other words, I was dealing with a wild card.

I gritted my teeth. I hated unforeseen factors and I especially hated not being able to compensate for them. This entire debacle could prove to be disastrous. Perhaps it already had.

By this time, I was very nearly in full control of my body. My head felt like it was stuffed with cotton and my mouth had an acrid taste in it, but I could move my limbs enough to manage a clumsy sort of Bending. The metal shackles would not be too difficult to break with a bit of Earth.

I looked again at my cell, which wasn't really a cell, or even a room. It was a cave. From the slope of the ceiling, I was probably right in the side of a mountain. So, probably not the Water Tribe, then. What was curious, though, was that where the cave seemed to narrow into a passage, there was a large slab of metal acting as a barrier. Most of the barrier was taken up by a large ring of indented metal, lined with an array of flashing lights. The closest thing I had to compare them with were the glowing lanterns at the Winter Festival in the Water Tribe, but these weren't lanterns. They were just… lights, with no distinguishable source. Just in front of me was a podium of sorts, but metal like the barrier and with the same blinking lights.

And then I realized that I wasn't just chained to the wall, or strapped to a table. I was looking through glass. I turned my head as far as I could to look to my right and my left, and in both directions half of my view was blocked by a metal wall less than a span from my head. I was encased in metal and glass, a closed structure that wrapped completely around me, with the glass on my front side and the metal to my back. I was in… a pod.

This insult was the last straw. My temper flared, and my hands stretched and then clenched. Several chunks of Earth separated themselves from the far wall and flew towards me. I closed my eyes tightly and lowered my chin so as to protect my neck, preparing for the possibly lethal shattering of glass, but when then the crash came, the bits of debris I was showered with were not small and jagged, but large and blunt. I opened my eyes, and gazed in consternation at the incredibly unlikely arrangement of broken glass before me. Shaking my head, I focused again on the rocks hovering before me. Carefully, I directed the rocks to my wrist restraints, a usually simple task made laborious be fingers that seemed to be stuck with a thousand tiny pins and needles. Finally, the rocks were in place on the metal bands and with a flick of my wrists my arms were free. A few moments later, my legs were free as well.

Still groggy and with the world lurching around me, I staggered over the remains of my prison and fell to my hands and knees upon cold, rough stone. Getting up took several tries, but within minutes I found myself wobbling over to the podium and leaning on it heavily. Minutes, precious minutes spent escaping a small pod when I still didn't even know where I was or who I was up against. I had to move faster, always faster. Taking a shaky Earthbending stance, I made a pathetic attempt to bash down the metal construct in my way. A bit of Earth jumped towards the door, but fell after traveling a few spans. Growling to myself, I tried again, with only marginally better results. I was beginning to get my dexterity back, but moving anything beyond a few pebbles was beyond me.

Giving up was out of the question, though, and so I kept at it. The chunks of Earth piling at the base of the door slowly grew bigger and indeed closer to it, but I was no further along in my goal. The first time I actually hit the door- to absolutely no effect- I growled and took a step back, stumbling and catching myself on the podium. Glaring at the door I vented my frustration with quick Breath of Fire on the small stand. It seemed to help somewhat, at least the ground stopped tilting so much, and I tried it again and then again. I was still doing basic Firebending exercises when the shouting and banging started.

Starting up, and nearly falling, I turned towards the door, taking up a defensive Firebending stance, since it seemed that it was my best, and only, weapon at the moment. The shouting grew louder, though still indistinct, until it was directly outside the door. Tensing, I prepared for a fight I couldn't possibly win. The door opened, though as a sliding door, not on a hinge as I was expecting, and a number of strangely dressed youths leaped through it.

"Robin!" One of them yelled, a tall, muscular young man with darker skin than any Water Tribe native that I had ever seen. "Lock the door!"

"Already on it," replied a small, dark haired boy in a red and black jump suit. He had a cape.

"Damnit! This is so Cadmus all over again!" Yelled a skinny boy also in a jump suit, this one yellow and red. "Next thing you know, we're going to find another god damn clone!"

"Hey! I resent that!" Another one yelled, just as the little dark haired boy announced, "there, the door's locked."

Not one of them had noticed me all the time they were shouting at each other. I loosened my stance slightly, but didn't give it up. It seemed likely that these youths, though most were no younger than me, were not my captors but instead trespassers. It also seemed that they either expected me to still be drugged and contained in my pod or else they didn't expect to see me at all. Either way, there was still no way to tell how they would react to my presence when they finally turned around. I stiffened my stance.

Wild cards, indeed.

I didn't have long to wait. The first to notice me was a girl as dark skinned as the other, the one who seemed to be the leader, and who was surrounded by a dark pink aura and flying. I had no time to reconcile this fact, or the strange garb of all the youths before me, before she spoke.

"Aqualad?" Her voice was strangely accented, but wariness was evident in it nonetheless. All the youths turned, but it was the dark skinned boy who seemed to be responding to the call of his name. For a moment there was silence as I faced unenviable odds. Then Aqualad, strange name to match strange appearance, stepped forward and spoke in soothing tones.

"There is no need to be alarmed." He said, "We are not here to hurt you. We are here to help. What is your name?"

When I didn't respond, the kid in yellow asked in an impatient and rather loud whisper, "do you think she is another clone?"

"Where am I?" I demanded. "Who are you?"

A girl in green with a bow and arrow cuffed the kid in yellow, to which he responded with an affectionate scowl, as Aqualad, who indeed seemed to be the leader, spoke again.

"I am Aqualad"- no duh- "and this is my team." Also no duh. "We are with the Justice League."

There was a pause, as if the youths expected a certain reaction from that remark. "Is that supposed to mean something to me?" I asked.

Another pause.

"KF's right, she's gotta be a clone," said the small, dark haired boy, presumably Robin.

From outside the door there was a loud crash. "The Shadows are coming," warned the girl with the bow.

"Yes, there is not much time," Aqualad said, turning to me. "Quickly, how much do you remember of your life? Do you know your name?"

I just stared at them. "What kind of question is that? Of course I know my name. I'm Min. I'm the Avatar."