Hello, folks, and thank you for joining on my new ATLA/LOK story thread, ATLA Ponderings. This thread will mainly be stories based on Avatar: the Last Airbender with a few Legend of Korra thrown in, and sometimes… a mix of the two, like this one. We'll see what happens.

Avatar: the Last Airbender and The Legend of Korra, of course, are the property of Mike DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko, and also by extension Nickelodeon, Viacom, Paramount, CBS, or whatever corporation owns them at the moment, and my deep thanks to Messrs. DiMartino and Konietzko for creating them. And with that, on with the show.

And I think you'll figure out which one(s). :D

Avatar Tunes

Korra woke up in a desert—which was strange because she was sure she was on Air Temple Island. She did remember Avatar Aang had been in a desert before, so maybe… this was a vision from his life? Hard to say.

She stood and looked around. The desert was strikingly beautiful. Deep canyons threw up towers of rock, and the colors were so vivid—the orange and tan of rock and sand, splashes of yellow where the sun shone on the desert floor, reds and purples where the canyon deepened into shadow, and the sky was an incredibly clear bright blue. It was a nice place. Very dry, but nice.

Movement caught Korra's eye. A figure cloaked in dust zipped along a road at the base of the canyon. Korra found that the road curved away from the rocks and toward her—no, she was actually standing in the middle of that road. If that figure followed the road, it would be on her in an instant.

Which it did. And it was.

Roaring out of the canyon, the figure barreled down on her at incredible speed. Eventually she reacted, realizing the need to Earthbend, Firebend, Airbend, get out of the way, something—

Then the figure shuddered to a stop, barely two paces away from her.

Since whatever it was hadn't done anything else to her or at her, she waited and allowed the dust cloud to dissipate. When it did, it revealed a bald-headed boy in an orange cape-like tunic and yellow-tan pants—with a very prominent sky-blue forward-pointing arrow on his forehead.

Korra's jaw dropped. "Avatar Aang? How—what are you—?"

The boy grinned, stuck out his tongue several times, and jumped up. "Meep meep!" Then zing! off he zipped down the road in a flash.

Korra stood there slack-jawed for a moment. Then she saw that something else was coming out of the canyon, but at a much slower speed. This figure, when it came into view, was clad in black and red armor. He too was bald except for a warrior's ponytail on the back of his head. He ran up toward Korra, then slowed, obviously tiring. He came to a stop within speaking distance of Korra, hunched over and exhausted.

It took Korra a while to figure out who this was, and that too was a shock. "Prince Zuko?" she said as he stood there panting. "How—what are you doing here?"

That earned her a glare. He straightened and held up a sign.

What does it look like I'm doing? the sign read. He turned the sign around. I'm trying to capture the Avatar!

Korra tried to square that with the fact that she was the Avatar—notwithstanding the fact that Aang had just run by. "Well, I, uh—"

Then Zuko's eyes bugged out as an anvil dropped on him and squished him into a hole in the desert floor. Alarmed, Korra looked up. Nope. No anvils.

"Okay," said another voice. Korra's attention was drawn to her left, where there stood a teenage Sokka. He rubbed his hands together. "Let's get down to business."

Korra was about to answer that when a group of Kyoshi Warriors popped out from behind Sokka and chorused, "To defeat—the Huns!" They disappeared again behind Sokka, who stood there looking around and confused.

All of a sudden Korra was looking at a woodland scene with green trees, and Aang, bound chin to toe in rope, was standing before a triumphant Zuko. "Okay, you got me, Zuko," said Aang. "Would you like to flame me now, or wait til you get home?"

"Flame him now! Flame him now!" said freedom fighter Jet.

Korra frowned. Where did he come from?

Aang turned to Jet. "You keep out of this! He doesn't have to flame you now!"

"Well, I say he does have to flame me now!" He turned to Zuko, jumping up and down. "So flame me now!"

Zuko stood there confused—then shrugged and shot a huge torrent of fire at Jet, leaving him blackened and bug-eyed.

Now Korra was looking at the inside of a dark cave with some statuary on the right. Two lithe red-clad women leaped into the cave, one clad in black and red armor, the other in a bare-midriffed pink and red gymnast's costume.

The armor-clad woman struck a pose and pointed. "Pull the lever, Ty Lee."

The gymnast pulled down one of the projections on the statuary—and a trap door opened under the armored woman, who dropped out of sight. "WRONG LEVERRRRRRRRRRR!"

Korra heard a distant splash.

A moment later, the armored woman, dripping wet, appeared through a large stone mouth-like door on the left with an alligator firmly clamped onto her ankle. She shot a burst of blue fire at the alligator, who whimpered and scurried away. "Why do we even have that lever?" The gymnast smiled and shrugged.

Back in the forest, Jet tapped Aang on the chest. "Let's go through that again."

Aang shrugged, ropes and all. "Okay."

He turned to Zuko. "Okay, you got me, Zuko. Would you like to flame me now, or wait til you get home?"

"Flame him now, flame him now," Jet said in a sing-song voice.

"You keep out of this, he doesn't have to flame you now," Aang said in kind.

Jet pointed. "AHA!"

He turned to Zuko. "Pronoun trouble."

He came back to Aang, shaking his head. "It isn't, 'He doesn't have to flame you now.' It's 'He doesn't have to flame me now.' "

Jet got furious again. "Well, I say he does have to flame me now!"

He turned to Zuko. "So flame me now!"

Zuko, still bewildered, shrugged again and hit Jet with another gout of flame, leaving Jet bug-eyed and even more charred.

"Good…" Korra's attention was now drawn to a dark flame-lit private room, where Fire Lord Ozai was reading some papers. Ozai was smiling. "Good… this fits in well with our current plans. By tomorrow night, everything will be in place."

"Why, Ozai?" Fire Lady Ursa tilted her head. "What are you doing now? What are you doing tomorrow night?"

"The same thing we do every night, Ursa." Ozai smiled cruelly, and raised and shook a clenched fist. "Try to take over the world!"

Ursa made a face, stood there a moment longer, then turned. "I'm leaving."

Ozai was crestfallen. "What? Ursa!"

Somehow back in the forest, Korra looked on the whole thing, bewildered. "I don't understand all this."

"It'll be all right, Korra." She turned, and there stood the tall, broad-shouldered white-haired Earthbender Tyro, Haru's father. (Why Korra knew all this, she didn't know.) "All of this is part and parcel of being the Avatar. I am certain you will find an answer to your questions in time."

"Are you sure?" Korra said dubiously. "All this seems so weird."

"Completely." Tyro smiled. "Some of this is merely your mind working through what you have seen. The rest…" He waved his arm open-handed to the side. "Merely imagination. Over time, you'll learn what to hold on to and what to let go."

All of a sudden, there was Meng, cone-like ponytails all white and clad in white and ice blue. "Did someone say 'Let It Go'?"

All of another sudden, Aang, Zuko, Jet, Azula, and Ty Lee swooped up in chorus. "NO."

"Awww…." Meng exited stage-right, trailing snowflakes.

"ENOUGH."

The sky darkened. Tyro, Zuko, Jet, Aang, Azula, and Ty Lee all twitched and shook, their faces contorting as they tried to break free of whatever held them. Another figure rose from a hole in the desert floor, wearing a brown jumpsuit and a white mask with a large red circle in the center of its forehead.

Korra knew all too well who this was. She shook a little herself. "Amon!" she whispered.

"It is clear, even in this distorted reality, what the evil of bending is capable of. This madness is an obvious by-product of it. It will be removed." Amon raised his hand. "You will all be cleansed."

Then Amon went bug-eyed as an anvil squished him into a hole in the desert floor.

Korra and the others looked up—to see Sokka on a conveniently placed rock overhang. He grinned. "Gee. Ain't I a stinker?"

o o o

Korra woke up late that morning with the sun on her face and an Earthbender pounding away on her head with rocks—no, that's just what it felt like. It was a monster headache that she woke up with.

Pema peeked in through the crack in the door, then seeing Korra was awake, poked her head in. "Good morning, Korra!" She came into the room. "I was beginning to wonder about you. Did you sleep well?"

"No," Korra groaned. She held her stomach, which also wasn't feeling too well. "Pema—I think you ought to buy another brand of noodles or something."

"Really? Why? Do you have a stomachache?" Pema tilted her head. "Did you have a bad dream?"

Korra looked at her, still bleary. She shook her head. "You don't wanna know."

o o o

Several multicolored concentric rings on a black background dropped down from above. Meng poked her head through the middle, her hair back to its normal dark brown, and waved. "That's all, folks!"