PREDATORS: THE AVATAR THE LAST AIRBENDER VERSION!

Part 1

Aang gave a conscious moan as he slowly broke away from his deep sleep. His natural body senses, alerted by odd gusts of wind flittering across his face and an uncommon weightless feeling to his body, had awakened the young airbender from his earlier slumber. Responsively, Aang gradually opened his heavy eyelids in order to gain a visual sense of the strange phenomenon occurring across his body. What he observed, though, shocked him to the core and effectively removed all residual traces of sleep from his widening eyes: he was alone, the topography of the earth was thousands of feet below him and he was freefalling at an incredibly rapid pace through the troposphere of the sky.

"AHHH! APPA, YIP YIP!" Aang screamed, at the top of his lungs, as the strong gales of wind, caused by the turbulence of his plummet, tossed and turned his body, haplessly, in the troposphere. Much to Aang's confusion and fear, however, his beloved bison never came. He decided to give it a second shot, "APPAAA! YIP YIP!" He cried out, even stronger, while turning his head frantically in all directions of the sky to try and gain a sight of the flying bison. Appa was still nowhere to be found. Astounded, scared and drawing nearer to the surface of the earth, Aang decided to make a rash attempt to airbend in order to slow down his momentum. The attempt failed, unfortunately, as the turbulence proved too strong for Aang to effectively manipulate his maiden element.

"KATARA! SOKKA! TOPH!" Aang exclaimed in an irrational desperation for any kind of help he could receive, despite the clear absence of his friends and his understanding that they would be of little use without Appa anyway. In the middle of his panic, however, Aang managed to realize that he still had one last resort: his trusty staff-glider. Turning his attention to his body, in order to recruit the last ditch trump card from within his garment, Aang noticed something new on his person. Wrapped around his chest area was some sort of black, bulky, vest-like apparatus that held a blinking beacon of red light in the middle of its front surface. Although curious as to how it got on his body, anxiety quickly dispelled the former emotion by making Aang recognize that the apparatus stood in the way of him reaching his glider. Frantically clawing and pulling at the tough material of the mysterious apparatus in order to somehow remove it from his body, Aang found his efforts to be unsuccessful. In a final burst of fear, frustration and confusion over his impending doom, Aang let out a loud cry, "NOOO!"

It was at that moment that something unexpected happened. In what sounded like a muffled mass of thunder to the startled airbender, a giant, bag-like, white fabric suddenly emerged from the apparatus on Aang's body and opened up, like a roof, high above his head. The various chords, anchoring the bag to the now deflated apparatus on the Avatar's body, caused him to grunt from the resulting jerk that came as the bag filled with the rushing air and suddenly rose upwards, carrying Aang with it. The rise was brief, however, as the bag expanded into a dome-like canopy and quickly became buoyant in the atmosphere, ceasing Aang's fierce plummet and transforming it into a peaceful, steady descent. The Avatar looked up, in amazement, at the strange yet simple device that had unexpectedly saved his life, remarking on the design that was so ingenious of Fire Nation technology yet minimalist of Air Nomad blueprinting.

But before the Avatar could get too comfortable, his thoughts were quickly interrupted by the twigs and branches of treetops, which, swiftly managed to greet and guide their new guest through their canopies with a bumpy and painful welcome down their narrow slopes. Before Aang knew it, his tumultuous journey to hell and back and then to hell again was ended with a graceless thud on dirt and grass that left him debilitated and sprawled out, face-first, on the verdant floor. Aang moaned from his pitiful position as the torn remnants of the bag and its chords, which had saved his life, finally caught up with his body; emerging from the merciless, broken treetops in various sequences and landing gently on or around Aang, himself. Emotionally exhausted, a still conscious Aang took time to remain on the grassy floor momentarily in order to gain some rest and recover over his sudden experiences.

What had started as an otherwise normal day in Ba Sing Se for Aang and his friends had quickly turned into one of the more traumatic experiences of the young Avatar's 112-year-old life. He last remembered that he was leisurely cleaning off the fur of his pet bison, Appa—who had been newly reclaimed after a mysterious kidnapping in the desert—outside the lodge where he, Katara, Sokka and Toph were temporarily staying, when a strange, blinding light came upon him. Oddly enough, the next thing he knew was waking up in a freefall thousands of feet above the earth.

Up to this point, Aang's eyelids had been closed as he laid down on the grassy earth. Now however, he reopened them to focus on his current predicament, "Is this...some sort of a dream?" Aang asked himself, considering the notion that his bizarre circumstances could be the result of some sort of cruel, out-of-body experience. Being the Avatar, he was well acquainted with visions and metaphysical ventures into the spirit world, but usually it began with a strict meditation and never ended with a deadly plummet through the sky.

Moving the hand on his outstretched left arm towards his face, Aang pinched himself softly on the cheek, "Hmm…no, still feels too real." He replied in response to his earlier question, confirming his inner skepticism over his body being an astral projection. Then, taking a deep yet gentle breath, Aang slowly picked himself up to stand on his own two, slightly feeble legs. Peering around curiously at his surroundings, Aang found himself in the middle of a wild, organic utopia somehow similar yet greatly different from the calm forests or murky swamps of the Earth Kingdom, which, he had experienced before. The environment was humid, somewhat moist and lush with thick, dense flora that ranged from bushy shrubs and various shades and shapes of flowers to lengthy ferns and an endless array of tall, moss-covered trees.

"Where am I?" Aang, in a soft voice, raised another question to himself while scanning the foreign, green-hued setting before him. Just as he made the statement, another sound of snapping treetop branches and twigs permeated the air around Aang and a mysterious figure suddenly emerged from the treetops and landed roughly just a few yards away from Aang. Somewhat defensive due to his unfamiliar surroundings, Aang's attention turned to retrieving the only weapon he ever used or needed: his staff-glider. With the bulk of the apparatus on his chest freed away by the release of the large bag, the scrappier remnant was easier for Aang to remove from his upper body in a simple series of pulls and tugs. With his normal garment now fully exposed, Aang reached into its depths and pulled out his trademark staff-glider, twirling it quickly before using it to position himself in a defensive stance.

In watching the vague figure as it slowly moved around and recovered from its landing, Aang also saw a similarly ragged and shapeless bag, like the one that had saved his life, descend from the branches above the figure and land softly on its body, engulfing it completely. An inquisitive Aang then dared to carefully venture towards the hidden figure that now fought to free itself of the bag's voluminous, saggy remains. At less than a few inches away, Aang slowly extended the tip of staff-glider to gently prod the covered figure.

"Hey, who's poking me!" A familiar male voice emerged from inside the bag.

"G-General Iroh?" Aang awkwardly inquired in surprise as he retracted his staff.

The covered figure successfully managed to rid itself of the bag's remains to reveal none other than the renowned former Fire Nation general, himself; although he was dressed in Earth Kingdom attire. The general, as astonished as Aang, incredulously blinked at the Avatar, who was the last person he'd expect to encounter, "The Avatar? What are you doing here? W-Where am I? What's going on?" Iroh asked while eyeballing his surroundings disconcertedly, as baffled over his circumstances as Aang, himself.

"I-I don't know…" Aang replied, his face slightly downcast due to confusion, "…everything happened so fast. I was in Ba Sing Se, a-and the next thing I knew-"

Before Aang could finish, he noticed a huge boulder, in the periphery of his vision, flying in his and Iroh's direction over the back of the general's shoulder. "Look out!" Aang cried as he shoved Iroh out the way and swung his staff at the oncoming boulder. A huge gust of air emanated from the thrust of Aang's staff and struck the boulder dead on, sending it away in an opposite direction. But just as quickly as Aang began and ended his counterattack, another flying boulder appeared from an indiscriminate location and headed straight for the unsuspecting Avatar.

Iroh, however, returned Aang's earlier favor by intercepting the boulder in its flight with a quick yet powerful burst of fire from his clenched fist; stopping the boulder's momentum, in its warpath and dropping it to the earth, as a result. But again, the quick defensive act was responded to by an even quicker offensive outburst, this time consisting of various sizes and shapes of rocks thrown from a now central location, barely a few yards away from Aang and Iroh, by an assailant hidden in the thick brush of the surrounding plant life.

Aang spun his staff like a propeller to create a fanning force of air to repel the oncoming mass of deadly rocks and boulders. Iroh responded similarly by firing short bursts of forceful flames that stopped the rocks in their direction.

"Looks like we got an earthbender!" Aang cried out.

"A not too friendly one at that, either!" Iroh responded, between huffs and puffs, "I've got an idea to flush him or her out though. But I need you to keep this individual busy!" He yelled to Aang.

Aang nodded, "Right!" He then began to twirl his staff even faster to create a stronger fan of air in order to compensate for Iroh's ceasing output. As Aang did this, the general stepped slightly back, took a deep breath of air and then expired a vicious, flowing mass of fire from his mouth into the massive air fan created by Aang's staff. As a result, a huge smoke screen flew forth from the air fan into the jungle facing both Aang and Iroh, enveloping the hidden location of the unknown earthbender. As the mass of rocks and boulders finally ceased coming, Iroh and Aang ended their assault, as well. Still in defensive stance, the two watched the smoke ridden jungle that faced them in hostility. Soon, the sounds of a gagging cough began to echo from within the smoke screen and a Dai Li agent staggered out from the depths of the grayed jungle.

Aang was stunned to see the presence of a Dai Li agent outside the gates of Ba Sing Se where they were specifically tasked to serve as both Long Feng's bodyguards and secret police force. Nevertheless, he still had a mind to tell off his former attacker, "Hey! What's the deal with attacking us!" He cried angrily.

The still hacking Dai Li agent weakly held up one of his hands to gesture an apologetic surrender , "I-I'm sorry…it's just that-I have no idea where I am, how I ended in this place or who even put me here to begin with. I figured maybe I'd been captured somehow by the Fire Nation and you two were some sort of enemy patrol in disguise. My training has taught me to be hostile in foreign environments and to strike the enemy first whenever I'm in one."

"There lies your problem my good man. Being too brash is always the precursor to a short life-span." Iroh responded, sauntering closer to the Dai Li agent, "But you look fairly young and still well capable of learning from this mistake." The general spoke with an amiable smile.

The Dai Li agent nodded graciously, "Thank you for your understanding sir. Please, allow me to introduce myself. My name is Dongshan Lin Wei-Yu, but my friends just call me Phil."

Iroh raised an eyebrow, "Phil?"

"Phil?" Aang also echoed, wrinkling his nose in reaction to his inquisitiveness.

"Yeah... Phil. I know it's a weird name, but it sounds different from all the other names you hear flying around the Earth Kingdom and I've come to take a liking to it." Phil replied.

Aang scratched his bald head before giving off a satisfied shrug, "Eh, works for me." He spoke before walking up to both Iroh and Phil, "Glad to meet you Phil, my name is Aang." The young airbender said while holding out his hand. Phil received the gesture gladly, "Hey, you're the Avatar that Long Feng talked to us about! By the way, those are some killer tattoos you have there. Wish I could've gotten something like that when I was your age."

Aang chuckled, "Thanks."

"I'm Iroh…" The former general spoke up, "…and while I have no tattoos, I am a deep connoisseur of tea and a master of Pai Sho. I can also breathe out fire whenever I wish, as I just displayed."

Phil nodded, "And who's that?" He pointed off into the distance behind Aang and Iroh. At his question, the two turned around, with intrigue, to face the direction from which Phil pointed. What they saw, however, caused Aang to gasp and Iroh's face to considerably droop. "The name's Azula. Actually…Princess Azula of the Fire Nation." The pretentious Fire Nation princess spoke up for herself while standing at a small distance away from her uncle, the Avatar and Phil. She was clad in her usual Fire Nation attire.

"Oh no…Azula is here!" Aang cried, raising his staff-glider defensively.

Iroh sighed bemoaningly and lifted his right hand to bury his face in it, "Oh no…Azula is here?" He groaned.

"Hey, wait a minute, you guys know each other?" Phil asked.

Azula grinned, "Why yes, we do. The fat geezer to your right is my beloved uncle and the bald kid to your left is my object of future glory."

Unsure of how to correctly respond to the brusque statement, Phil awkwardly replied back, "Oh, uh…okay. Well, my name is Ph-"

"I don't need to know you, but you need to know me!" Azula interrupted harshly, "Now, I'm going to take time to suspend my impulse to electrocute the Avatar into a near brain-dead submission—and possibly my uncle too, while I'm at it—in order to demand some quick answers from you three losers: Where am I? Who brought me here? And where can I find this individual or individuals? So I can shoot a lightning bolt in their face for daring to capture a Fire Nation princess and drop her like some condemned peasant from the sky!"

Azula's similar confusion gave Aang a small, uncanny sense of comfort that allowed him to relax his defense slightly, "We're all asking the same questions. None of us know how exactly we got here or where exactly this place even is."

"It's definitely not Earth Kingdom." Phil spoke up, "I've been around to most of the countryside and even some of the swamps in my lifetime. This place is nothing like anything I've ever seen."

"Of course not, Captain Obvious. This environment is way too tropical for even the most extreme of Earth Kingdom terrain." Azula responded.

"Perhaps we can find some connection in our presence here to our earlier experiences?" Iroh spoke while looking down at the ragged, black apparatus that was still strapped to his chest, "I'm sure that we all found ourselves waking up in the middle of a freefall, high in the sky, am I right?" He asked, removing the apparatus as he did so.

Aang and Phil both nodded while Azula raised a scorning eyebrow, "That observation still tells nothing of why we're all here."

"Well, what about what we were doing before we woke up in a freefall? I was just brushing Appa's fur outside before I saw a strange, bright light." Aang spoke.

"Same thing here!" Phil exclaimed, "Well…I wasn't cleaning fur, but it was just another normal day at work for me, you know? Spying on people, hunting down, imprisoning or executing suspected political dissidents, brainwashing refugees; just regular Dai Li stuff. So, this afternoon, I was chasing down this one, elementary school-aged, refugee kid that Long Feng had suspected of finger painting about the war outside the city. Just as I was about to nab the little bugger though, I saw the same bright light that you just talked about."

Azula narrowed her eyes, "Interesting. I had just finished defeating a Kyoshi Warrior not too long before I experienced that light as well."

The statement managed to displace Aang's interest temporarily, "Whoa, what we're you doing fighting a Kyoshi Warrior in the first place?" He asked with a raised eyebrow.

The sadistic princess sported a sly grin, "Oh, let's just say…I'm planning a costume party." She replied vaguely.

"Okay…?" Aang retorted, uncomfortably, before returning back to the subject at hand, "...What about you Iroh?"

Iroh rubbed his chin, "Well, I was enjoying a cup of tea-"

"Typical." Azula interrupted with a roll of her eyes.

Iroh properly ignored his niece before clearing his throat to resume his statement, "As I was saying, I was enjoying a cup of tea outside my teashop, during my lunch break, when I was caught by this mysterious light as well."

Azula sighed, "So right now, all we have to work with is some 'mystified luminosity' to explain how we got here. Way to brainstorm people. Maybe we just might be able to find it walking around if we go look for it." She scoffed.

"You're not helping." Aang spoke with a frown.

"I know." Azula retorted charmingly.

Phil cleared his throat, "Well, I know this might sound crazy, but...what if we're all dead and this is some kind of afterlife? It kind of makes sense, you know? The white light and the falling?"

"Okay…that, literally, has to be the most absurd thing that I ever heard uttered from another person's mouth." Azula commented.

"I'm serious, though! I mean, how else can you explain what happened to us?" Phil asked.

Azula sighed with a growing impatience, "You know what? Fine. Let's play the hypothetical game and say that we did bite the big one. Tell us then, is this heaven or hell?"

At her question, Phil lowered his gaze while penitently rubbing the back of his neck, "I-I don't know, but to be honest…I do know that I've done a lot of pretty rough things with the Dai Li. Things that I don't think will exactly reserve a spot for a guy like me in heaven. This place does have some serious heat though and who's to say that maybe some parts of hell don't have jungles?"

Phil's words managed to strike Iroh's heart, "I too have performed questionable acts in my past which could've hindered my salvation also. As a general for the Fire Nation, I've seen and done my own share of destruction to countless civilizations and people; much to my own shame." He solemnly spoke.

Azula rolled her eyes, "Way to pride our nation's victories uncle!" She sarcastically exclaimed, "Anyway, I just can't believe my words were actually taken seriously; but then again, I guess that comes with being a good liar. Alright, so maybe this place could be hell? I say, so what? Personally, I have no qualms about my damnation; it's not like I never thought that I wouldn't end up here eventually anyway. I buried my morals with my conscience a long time ago and have learned to be a successful, Class-A sociopath without them. I have no regrets for my life."

Aang sighed, "Okay, that's enough with the death-talk guys. This is not hell and we're not dead, okay? We're just lost in the middle of nowhere and it so happens to be really hot. Besides, I'm the Avatar, remember? The person who brings harmony and balance to the Four Nations? It's practically impossible for someone like that to end up in a place like hell after death. Also, if I was dead with you guys, then we'd be joined by all the spirits of my past lives as well."

"Says the Avatar who abandoned his home and the world for a hundred years…" Azula sneered, "…for all its worth, you probably deserve to be in hell more than any of us do. That explains why your other Avatar friends aren't with you."

Azula's brutal statement reopened a deep wound in Aang's heart that had only recently begun to heal.

"Azula, that's enough! Your disrespectful talk is unbefitting of a princess and I will not stand for it!" Iroh angrily yelled.

Azula slowly drew her gaze on her uncle through the corners of her eyes, "Excuse me uncle, but considering that you've been designated an outlaw and traitor to the Fire Nation, you're in no position to give me any kind of order."

Before Iroh could respond back, Aang's voice came first, "Iroh…it's okay." He spoke gently. Gripping firmly the body of the staff-glider that he still carried, the young airbender attempted to mask his inner anguish with an outward, stoic resolve, "Look, we need to try and find a way to get off this place. I say that we get to higher ground in order to better understand our environment. For all we know, there might even be more of us around."

Phil nodded, "You know what? Now that I think about it, I did manage to see some other floating bags in the sky when I was landing."

Aang nodded back, "Then it's settled, we make our way to higher ground and try to contact with others, if we find them, along the way."

Azula crossed her arms, "And who exactly made you the brave leader?"

Aang gave the princess a firm gaze, "I'm the Avatar and regardless of circumstances, I still need to find a way to guide the people that I'm with. If you don't wish to respect that, then you or anybody else are free to go their own separate way."

The princess returned Aang's stare with poise, "You're right, I don't respect that. But there is strength in numbers so I'll play along...for however long it suits me."

"That's good enough." Aang responded, before turning his attention to the rest of the group, "Let's go." He spoke.

Meanwhile, unbeknownst to Aang and the company around him, a mysterious set of eyes was observing the group through a pair of infrared lenses, from high in the treetops, as they collectively began to move from their location. Phil, stopping in his tracks, felt this strange gaze upon his back and turned around to look upwards to the treetops where he sensed it. Iroh, trailing the leading Aang and preceding the reticent Azula, managed to notice the Dai Li agent standing aloof, in the back of their small, advancing file, while staring into the heavens.

"Phil! Is there something wrong?" Iroh asked with a yell as he stopped, causing Aang and Azula to also.

Phil was slow to respond back, his interest preoccupied with the treetops. As he focused deeply upon them, Phil swore that he could make out the faint image of, what seemed to be, a translucent silhouette perched atop the branches.

"Phil!" Iroh yelled, once more.

This time it proved to be effective as Phil, abruptly, snapped out of his trance, "O-Oh, It's nothing…!" He shouted back, turning his neck slightly to show his facial profile even though his eyes were still placed on the branches, "…nothing at all." He repeated softly while slowly backpedaling, his stare still fixed on the treetops. Little did Phil know, his gaze was being exchanged the whole time with another set of transfixed eyes watching the frame of his body, in the hues of thermal imaging, and quietly mimicking the sounds of his voice in a low, garbled, tone, "…nothing at all."

Finally, Phil turned his body around and jogged up to his newfound allies who resumed their advance immediately after he rejoined.

"What kind of a ridiculous Earth Kingdom name is Phil?" Azula condescendingly asked upon the Dai Li agent's return.

...TO BE CONTINUED...