A/N: All licensed characters belong to their rightful owners. I own nothing but my brain.
Water. Earth. Fire. Air.
Long ago, the Four Nations lived together in harmony. Then, everything changed when the Fire Nation attacked.
Only the Avatar, master of all four elements, could stop them.
But when the world needed him most, he vanished.
A hundred years passed and my brother and I discovered the new Avatar, an airbender named Aang. And although his airbending skills are great, he has a lot to learn before he's ready to save anyone.
But I believe that Aang can save the world!
The sky-bison slowly descended from the clouds to come to a landing on the beach of a large, tropical island.
Appa let out a satisfied rumble as he finally came to a rest. It had been a hard day for the animal and his riders – after their hasty departure from Kyoshi Island, Aang and his friends had spent much time leading Prince Zuko and his men on a hard chase.
Aang slid out of the bison's saddle, and gave Appa's snout a fond pat.
"You did a good job, Appa. Go ahead and rest now."
The great white beast grunted in response, then settled down for a well-deserved nap.
Katara and Sokka climbed down to the beach with Aang.
"Do you think we lost him?" the Water Tribe girl asked the Avatar, concerned that Zuko might still be on their trail.
"I'm pretty sure," Aang shot a worried look out towards the ocean, as though afraid that a Fire Nation warship would come into view to prove him wrong, "I think that cloud bank managed to cover us long enough to throw Zuko off our trail."
"I hope so…"
These next few words were almost inaudible, and full of sorrow. Aang was still feeling the prickles of guilt about Zuko's attack on Kyoshi Island, feeling that it was his fault – if he hadn't stayed there for as long as he had, then the Fire Prince wouldn't have found out and launched his assault on the village.
"Come on, Aang," Sokka put a reassuring arm around the young airbender's shoulder, "I'm sure that Zuko's WAY behind us now."
"Let's just focus on setting up camp – it's been a long day." The Water-Tribe boy looked over to the thick woods that rimmed the beach, "I'll go get some wood for a fire. Once Appa's rested a bit, we can look for a better place to bunk for the night."
He drew his machete, and began to hack a path through the ferns ringing the beach. As he vanished out of sight, Aang gave one last worried look to the horizon.
"Don't worry, Aang," Katara said, trying to be cheerful, "It's going to be fine." Thinking it'd be good if they found something to do, she suggested, "Let's go check the supply bags, and see what we can come up with for dinner."
"All right," the young Avatar agreed, and they set off to make preparations for supper.
Sokka was just bending over to pick up another stick for his firewood, when he noticed some odd tracks in the mud.
"Huh?" the young warrior blinked in confusion, then knelt to better examine one of the tracks.
It was a large footprint, with three long, clawed toes that had gouged faintly into the dirt as whatever made them had left its mark.
Sokka would have chalked it up to some sort of bird – probably an ostrich-horse from the size – but the placement of the toes was all wrong: from what he remembered of the description, ostrich-horses had two toes in front, and one in back. This print had all three toes in the front, with no rear claws that he could see.
No ostrich-horse could have ever made this mark, Sokka was sure of that.
Therefore, what kind of animal made this footprint?
Having what he liked to call a natural curiosity, Sokka would have been tempted to investigate-
-But as he heard a loud, guttural roar echo through the woods, he decided to save his investigation for another time. Like maybe never.
Frantically grabbing up some other sticks, he beat a path back to the beach and his friends.
Aang and Katara started in alarm as a distant roar sounded in the woods.
"Sokka!" Full of concern for her brother, Katara stood up.
To her relief, she then saw Sokka come rushing out of the woods. He skidded to a halt by their camp, dumped a load of sticks on the ground, and then dropped to his knees, gasping for breath.
"Sokka, are you alright?" Katara asked, looking at her brother to see if he had any sign of injury.
"I'm… fine…" he managed to get out, "I just think… maybe we should find another place to put down for the night."
Katara looked to Aang. "Do you think Appa's rested enough?" she asked.
The sky-bison answered her with an annoyed groan.
"Be nice, Appa," Aang scolded his animal companion, before looking back to them. "Well, maybe we can't go to another island, but I'm sure Appa can carry us to another part of this one. Right, boy?"
Appa rumbled deeply. The massive bison didn't seem thrilled by more flying, but he got up out of his resting position, and let the gang climb back into his saddle.
"Yip-yip!" Aang called as he took the sky-bison's reigns, and Appa duly leapt into the air, soaring slowly above the beach, and then over the forest in search of a new place to camp.
Below them in the jungle, eyes watched the flying behemoth overhead with interest.
Uncle Iroh awoke to the smell of smoke, and the sound of his nephew yelling.
A normal enough occurrence, then.
The elderly Fire Nation noble calmly got up from his bed, and ambled out onto the deck to see what all the fuss was about.
He found Zuko shouting at some of the ship's crewmen, whom he recognized as engineers for their vessel.
"What is going on here?" Iroh smoothly inserted himself into the scene, trying to deflect the prince's attention away from the engineers. "No trouble, I hope, nephew?"
Zuko scowled darkly at the crewmen. One of them ignored him to speak directly to Iroh.
"General Iroh, sir, the engines are in danger of overheating. We need to stop the ship if we want to avoid risking any problems."
Zuko's temper flared up at these words, and he snapped at the engineer. "No! We are not stopping! I won't let the Avatar escape me again!"
Iroh stepped in, putting a hand on his angry nephew's shoulder, "Prince Zuko, you should consider what he is saying. If the engines overheat, they could stop working – or even worse, explode. Then we wouldn't be able to pursue the Avatar at all."
The prince's face creased with a black, furious scowl. He was silent, his body tense and his fists clenched, before he finally spoke again.
"Fine." He hissed in frustration, "Do it."
The order given, the engineers ran to cut power to the engines. The vessel also slowly changed course, moving to stop just off the shore of a large island that the helmsman had spotted, to rest for the night.
As the ship's speed fell, Zuko stared bitterly out into the horizon. He said nothing, stewing in his frustration that he had lost track of his quarry again.
Appa gently crested over a hill, before coming into to land on a clearing. The great white bison groaned as he settled down on the ferns that covered the ground, clearly broadcasting the message that he would not be doing any more flying for the day.
His passengers climbed down from the saddle.
"Okay, buddy, you go ahead and rest," Aang stroked the bison's head, "You've done a great job."
Katara grabbed the firewood that had been gathered, and set about putting together a campfire.
Sokka was frowning as he glanced out at their surroundings. He wished that Appa had managed to touch down somewhere else – he felt too exposed out here; what if the whatever-it-was that made that roar came out here?
His gaze traveled further out into their surroundings –
And his eyes nearly popped out of his head in shock.
"Hey, Sokka, mind giving me a hand with the fire?" Katara asked, trying to strike the flint and light the kindling.
Jaw hanging open, Sokka gaped into the distance and didn't answer.
Katara sighed in annoyance at her brother. "Fine, then," she muttered as she worked to get the fire going, "You're on your own for dinner, then."
"Katara…" Sokka said faintly.
"No, Sokka, I mean it."
Aang looked up, wondering if he'd have to intervene in an argument – and then he saw what had Sokka so shocked.
"Uh, Katara?" he asked. "You might want to look."
"At what?" Katara answered, feeling a prickle of exasperation.
Sokka put a hand on her shoulder, pointing urgently with his other hand. "That," he said.
Katara's eyes widened in amazement as she now saw what had them so stunned:
There, exiting from the line of trees at the forest's edge, was one of the biggest animals that she had ever seen in her life. Easily twice as large as Appa, it strode on four massive, pillar-like legs, and each step could probably shake the earth if you were close enough. Its smooth reptilian hide was a pale shade of brown, with blue-green stripes running down the length of its body.
The strange, giant beast had a long, thick neck with a small, boxy head; this massive neck was balanced out by an equally-long tail that tapered into a whipcrack of a tail, just visible as the creature fully stepped out of the forest and into the open.
All in all, it had to be about eighty feet long from head to tail.
The Brontosaurus lifted its head up high, and let out a deep, bone-rattling call.
It was answered by a second call – and a third –
As more of the giant creatures began to appear, following the first one out of the woods. Soon, a whole herd of them were out and on the plains of the island.
"What kind of island did we land on?" Sokka asked, his voice weak as he stared at the herd of titanic creatures.
A/N: This all started as a silly idea a few years back, before I finally decided to write it down. I love Avatar and I love dinosaurs, so why not do a "lost episode" with the two? XD
I picked Book One for this to take place in because it was in many ways the simplest time of the show, and also the time where I felt I could probably get the most suspense out of any dinosaur action. (Putting Toph in the story would just make it a curb-stomp for the poor dinos, in my opinion.)
The release of Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom a few months ago helped push me to get this story posted on FanFiction.