This is The Beginning

Danny slowly drifted into consciousness. He clutched his head. Everything felt sore. He tried to remember the night before, but was feeling a little fuzzy. He remembered being exhausted but unable to sleep, going out to clear his head, flying a little, going to the sanctuary—

Danny shot up into a sitting position. He tried to look around at his surroundings, but they were shrouded in darkness. He charged his hand up with ectoplasm, and lifted his glowing arm up.

He was still in the sanctuary. Did he fall asleep here?

Then everything came back to him, the eyes glowing, speaking with Roku, and then the light.

Danny stood up and looked around. He walked up to Roku's statue.

Was it all just a dream? He prayed that it was just a dream.

Everything looked the same, and if Clockwork wanted him to bring him to the next Avatar, wouldn't he have actually moved him to the next Avatar? He had to have been dreaming—

Danny jumped and snapped his head towards the door as some sort of horn sounded, and there was a click. Another horn went off, and another. The door slowly began to creep open.

'Shit!' It was probably one of the Council of Elders! If he was caught in here, he would be in major trouble. Without thinking, Danny ran behind one of the statues in the far corner of the room.

"Hello?" A child's voice rang through the room. "Is anyone home?"

'A kid?' Danny thought. 'How'd he get in here?'

Danny peaked out from behind the statue, and could see only the outlines of three figures. They began to advance.

"Statues?" A boy said, who sounded older than the first, but still young. "That's it? Where's the meat?" This boy was obviously not an air nomad. What was he doing here?

"Who are all these people?" The third figure, a girl, asked.

As they spoke, Danny tried to think about a way out. He could try and sneak past them, but then—

Oh, wait. He has ghost powers.

Danny smiled as he realized he could just become invisible and walk right past them. Almost two years and he was still forgetting he could use his powers to get out of these simple situations.

Danny became invisible, still in human form since going ghost made a very small noise, and ran around the sides of the room and out the door.

"Look! That one's an airbender!" One of them shouted in excitement as Danny left the room.

Once out of the sanctuary, Danny became visible again and began to run to the courtyard. He would fly, but it was already day, and he had no idea how early or late it was. Anyone could be watching.

'That was close.' Danny thought as he slowed to walk when he began to approach the courtyard. Although, now that he thought of it, he wasn't sure why he was afraid to be caught by those kids. He was sure they wouldn't have ratted him out to the Elders, since they would have been in just as much trouble.

As he walked, he noticed something strange: the courtyard was empty. As were the airball courts, and no one was gliding around the temple, not one sky bison!

"Hello?" Danny yelled, looking around. Everything looked different.

Older.

"Oh no…" Danny said, looking at ruins that yesterday were in pristine, well kept condition. He felt week in his knees.

Danny went ghost and took off, looking for any hint of anybody. He flew around the mountain, starting at the top of the temple, and moving down.

This was freaky.

The temple seemed completely deserted!

He didn't care at this point if some flying monk caught him in his ghost form; he just wanted to find a flying monk.

"Ahhhha-ha!" Danny heard someone yell in joy, presumably the child he saw in the sanctuary earlier.

He turned around to look for the boy, and saw a young airbender jumping down the mountainside.

"Hey, wait!" Danny yelled, but the airbender didn't seem to hear him. Danny flew down to pursue the boy, who just went into a building with a cloth roof. He landed in front of the entrance, became human, and started shifting through the cloth hanging from the ceiling.

"Hey, kid!" Danny yelled again, and stopped when he saw the boy kneeling on the floor. "Hey, what happened here? The temple looks…" Danny looked up at the rest of the room. There was red armor and bones scattered throughout.

"…deserted."

At the center of this horrible scene, in a pile of snow, was a corpse in Air Nomad garb. Around his neck was a familiar wooden necklace, with three spirals carved into the main pendant.

"Gyatso…" Danny muttered as he stepped backwards in shock.

"Hey Aang," The other boy entered the tent entered. "Find my dinner yet?" He did a double take when he saw Danny.

"Hey, who are you?" He asked in a raised voice laced with paranoia, but Danny didn't notice him. The boy looked down at Aang, who was crying into his hands.

"What did you —" He began an accusation, but was stopped short when he noticed the atrocity around him, and Gyatso's corpse in the center of it all. "Oh, man..." He went up to the crying Aang while Danny continued to back up. He meant to back out of the building, but he hit a corner instead. Danny turned around to the corner and vomited.

"Come on, Aang, everything will be alright." The teen, who Danny could assume was Water Tribe because of his blue furs, put his hand on the crying boy's shoulder. "Let's get out of here."

Aang's arrows and eyes began to glow the same incandescent blue that Danny had seen in sanctuary when Roku spoke to him.

Danny gasped as he watched the child rise, fist balled in fury. Wind started swirling around him. Though from where Danny was standing it was just a breeze, he could tell from the teen's motions and clothes that the current was stronger where the airbender was. You could physically see the airflow form a sphere around the distressed child.

"Aang, come on!" The other boy said, trying unsuccessfully to calm him down. "Snap out of it!"

The sphere rapidly expanded, destroying the surrounding building and sent the two teens flying.

While the Water Tribe guy was stopped by one of the still-standing walls, and got a grip on a rock to prevent being blown away.

Danny was not so lucky. He was flung through a gap where the entrance once was, and sent flying through the air. Danny had little time to react as his body rapidly approached the mountainside leading up to the sanctuary.

The last thing he saw was the white ring started to form around his waist before he felt a sharp pain in his head, and then darkness.

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"Hioijlllnnluu?" Danny heard a muffled female voice echo gibberish throughout his head. He squinted his eyes open, and saw an incredibly bright light.

"Hiayllo?" Her speech slowly began to change from gibberish to words.

"Ugh…" Danny groaned as he rubbed his head and slowly propped himself up on his elbow.

God, did he have a headache. And his ears were ringing from… he actually couldn't remember what happened before he was knocked out. The ringing began to go away, and he was able to hear everything well once more.

A little too well, in fact.

He looked towards the source of the voice, and saw three blurs rushing towards him.

"Hey, are you alright?" The girl yelled. Danny dropped back down and put his hands over his ears. Over the years, he had learned to control his enhanced senses, and got used to things like his over-powered hearing; but she still sounded abnormally loud! Like she was speaking into a megaphone.

"That's the guy that was with Aang before his Avatar-spirity-stuff happened." The Water Tribe boy said, though to Danny it felt like he was screaming. As they got closer, it got worse.

"I am so sorry!" Aang said, seemingly yelled into Danny's ear, at least from his perspective. Danny winced and got up again.

"It's fine. I'm fine." Danny said as he started getting to his feet, clutching his head. "I'm not sure why you're apologizing though…"

"You don't look fine." The girl said. Danny stumbled and she caught him before he fell back to his knees.

"Thanks." He looked up at her, and she gasped.

"What?" Danny looked at the other two, who had the familiar face of pity and horror that other people would give him when Dash beat him up. "What?" He asked them. Aang pointed to the right side of his forehead, and Danny took the hint and reached for his head.

He felt something warm and sticky on his forehead. Danny brought his hand in front of his face and saw blood on his fingers.

"Oh."

"You definitely aren't okay." She said.

"How bad is it?" He asked, and she gave her best fake smile.

"Uh… it's not that bad—"

"No, it's pretty bad." The boy said.

"Sokka!" She yelled. Danny winced.

"What?" Sokka asked, shrugging. "It's true. That's a really bad gash."

"So I should probably sit down?"

"Yeah, you probably should." She told him as she helped him ease into a resting position against a rock. "Aang, can you go get a cloth from Appa?"

The airbender nodded, and was about take off when Danny held up his hand to stop him.

"Wait, I got this!" He untied his orange belt and asked the girl for help tying it around his wound.

"Thanks." Danny said, and he put out his hand. "I'm Danny, by the way."

The girl grabbed his forearm, and did the same strange handshake Roku did when they first met.

"You're welcome, I'm Katara." Katara said. She motioned to Sokka. "That's my brother, Sokka," He raised his hand to acknowledge this. "and that's Aang." She pointed to the airbender.

"Nice to meet you all." Danny said, wiping blood off his brow. "Can you guys tell me what—"

"Are you an airbender?" Aang asked eagerly.

"What?" Danny asked, cocking his head to the side curiously.

"Your clothes? Are you an airbender?" He asked again.

"Oh…" Danny looked down at his orange and yellow clothes. "No, I'm not. I'm a… I'm just a traveler." He lied, "And the Air Nomads are fairly hospitable. They let me stay here and gave me some clothes to wear—"

"The air nomads were here?" Aang asked excitedly, running closer to Danny. "When? Where did they go?"

Danny looked up at Aang in confusion.

"Yeah they were here. This is the Southern Air Temple. Where would they be…" Danny stopped as everything began to come back to him. Roku and Clockwork speaking with him, the bright light, waking up in the sanctuary. "Hang on– when I woke up this morning, the Temple looked deserted." Following Aang into the tented building. "I saw you, and I was going to ask you about them. And…

"Wait–" Danny remembered seeing Aang's arrows and eyes light up in the same way Roku's statue did. "You're the Avatar, aren't you?"

Aang nodded. Then Danny remembered the corpses.

"Oh, man…" Danny put his hands on his head. "Gyatso."

Aang's eyes widened.

"You know who Gyatso is?" Aang yelled, surprised. Danny scrunched his face in pain from the noise.

"Ouch, not so loud!" Danny said.

"Sorry…"

"And yes, I know who Gyatso is. I knew Gyatso."

"What?!" Aang yelled.

"How is that possible?" Sokka asked. Danny put his hands on his head.

"Argh! What do you mean? And what happened here?" He asked.

Aang looked down in dismay.

"Monk Gyatso lived one hundred years ago." Sokka told him. "How could you have possibly known him?"

"One hundred years?" Danny yelled, standing up too quickly. "How is that…" He swayed as stars began to form in his eyesight. "Whoa…" He put his hand on his head as the world began to spin. "One hundred… that can't…"

"Uh-oh," Katara said as she and Sokka began walking towards him. They both reached out to grab him. "I think he's going to fain—"

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Danny opened his eyes, and rolled his head to the side.

"Ouch…" He said aloud. His head was still pounding.

He was lying on leather, head propped up with some rolled up cloth. There was a rim surrounding where he was lying. Danny sat up and looked around.

Surrounding what turned out to be a saddle was white fur, and in the front horns.

He was on a sky bison.

Danny looked behind him to see he was still at the Southern Air Temple. Sokka and Katara were about thirty yards away from the bison. It looked like they were fighting.

Aang was chasing a lemur around the two as they fought.

He remembered what Sokka had said about Gyatso; one hundred years!

The Avatar looked only twelve! None of this made any sense.

But right now, that didn't matter to Danny. He just wanted to get back to the other time. Danny slowly stood up, climbed out of the saddle and slid off the bison's tail.

The sky bison gave out a groan from Danny's sliding as Danny landed on his tailbone, alerting the three. Katara ran over to Danny, and Sokka crossed his arms and walked over while Aang just stayed behind, rubbing his shoulder nervously as the winged lemur landed on it.

"What are you doing? You need to be resting!" Katara shouted

"No, I'm fine." Danny lied. "I was just going back to the room I was staying in." He said, continuing to lie; he was actually going to head back to the sanctuary, and see if he could somehow get into contact with Roku or Clockwork again and convince them to let him go back.

"See, Katara?" Sokka said, motioning his hand in Danny's direction. "He'll be fine."

Katara wasn't convinced.

"Is anybody here with you?" She asked. Danny looked down at his feet.

"No… Just me."

"I'm sorry, but you shouldn't be alone right now." Katara said. "You have a major head injury, and you should come with us. At least until you're better."

Danny sighed. Of course he could insist on staying, lie and tell her that he had someone not far behind him that will be here soon, or make up some other sort of excuse; but Clockwork wanted him to help the new Avatar, and the more Danny thought of it, the more he realized there was little to no chance he could convince Clockwork to let him go back. He wasn't even sure he could get into contact again with the ghost of time in the sanctuary.

No, Danny's best bet was finishing what Clockwork wanted to do here, and then asking him to let him go back to before all this. To let him go back to Ming.

"Alright, I'll go with you." Danny said.

Katara gave a triumphant smile while Sokka grumbled.

"Good." She said smugly.

"Just let me go get my things from the room I was staying in."

"Alright." She looked over at Aang. "At least let Aang show you back to the room. Just in case you pass out again."

"Yeah, sure." Danny said. The siblings watched Danny walk over to Aang, and point to the building he was staying in.

"You know Danny's answers to Aang's questions are just going to disappoint him, right?" Sokka asked her.

"I know." Katara said, looking down. "But he needs to hear it."

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Aang and Danny entered the tattered remains of the entrance to the building. They began walking up the stairs, up to Danny's room.

"So," Aang said, "You said you knew Gyatso? Personally?" He was cautious in his question; Katara explained that Danny might just be confused after hitting his head. Aang didn't want to get his hopes up.

"Uh..." Danny rubbed the back of his neck. "Did I say that? Wow I, uh, must have really hit my head hard, huh?" He laughed nervously while knocking on his head.

"Ow." He rubbed his head. "Yeah, what I meant was— uh… I mean, I knew of him; from my dad– " One hundred years ago. His father would not have been alive. "– Who heard it from his dad." Danny corrected himself. "My grandfather knew him, personally."

Aang perked up.

"Oh, was he an air nomad?"

"Oh, uh, no." Danny said. "Well, he was a nomad, like a traveler, but not an air nomad."

"Oh." Aang said, shoulders slumping.

"Sorry."

"It's okay."

"And you said the Air Nomads were hospitable—"

"Yeah, sorry. Again, I hit my head pretty hard, and I was really confused at the time. I just knew this temple was inhabited by the Air Nomads."

They moved on to the next set of stairs.

"So, you're the Avatar, right?" Danny said. It was his turn to ask questions.

"Yep. That's me."

"Mind if I ask you a question?"

"Yeah, sure."

"How are you so young?" He said, looking at the child before him, who had to be younger than him. "You guys said Gyatso–" Hold it, Fenton. Touchy subject. "–lived one hundred years ago. The Avatar before you died when Gyatso was alive, so you must have lived the same time as Gyatso. How are you not, like, a hundred years old?"

Aang traced the cracks on the wall as they walked.

"I– I was in a storm. And I lost control." Aang said glumly. "I was plunged into the ocean, and I guess with the help of my Avatar spirit I froze myself and Appa. Katara and Sokka found us frozen in an iceberg, and Katara waterbent me out."

"Wow."

"Yeah."

"I also wondering–" Danny was going to ask if he could tell him what happened to the Airbenders, but Aang already looked depressed from talking about Gyatso, and what happened to him. "–how old are you?"

"Twelve. Well, one hundred and twelve, but–"

"Only twelve?" Danny interrupted, smiling while he pointed at Aang's tattoos. "You mastered airbending at twelve? That has to be a record, or something."

Aang's spirit seemed to be instantly lifted, and his face beamed as he gave out a small laugh.

"Yeah, I'm the youngest airbending master in our history."

"Wow." Danny said, as he tripped on a broken step. He caught his balance before he fell. "Ah! I always forget about that step! The next floor is mine."

"Hey!" Aang said, smiling. "The next room was mine!"

"No way!" Danny said, smiling back, but slightly concerned. If Aang lived in his room, would his bag still be there? Especially after one hundred years?

"Race you there!" Aang said, sprinting up the stairs, going at a super-speed with the help of his airbending.

"Hey! No fair!" Danny said, running after him, and stopping on this floor, but Aang kept going to the next one.

"Hey, Aang!" He shouted up the next flight. "You passed… it"

Danny stopped, and stared. Where the door to his room used to be, there was a smooth wall.

"What are you talking about?" Aang said as he descended the stairs.

"My room was right here!" Danny said. He went up to the wall, and pressed his hands against it.

"Wow, you must have hit your head really hard." Aang said. "There has never been a door on this floor. At least, not when I was here."

Danny continued to stare at the wall. This didn't make any sense. If they reconstructed this area, and tore down his room, they would have at least fixed that step. He stepped back and looked at the entire wall, and noticed that there was still a brown fruit stain in the bottom right corner.

It was the same wall!

Was the door just covered?

"Oh, yeah." Danny laughed. "I just remembered… that I was in the room on the floor below. Oops.

"How about you go up to your old room, and check it out? I need some privacy to change clothes anyways."

Aang nodded, and ran up to the next level. When Danny was sure Aang was in the next room, he became intangible and walked through the wall. Sure enough, on the other side of that wall, was his room. And it looked like nothing changed.

Literally nothing had changed! The half finished fruit pie he left next to his bed still looked like it was in its prime! And the several flies buzzing above it were… frozen. Their wings weren't moving, yet they stayed in the air, in the same spot.

This was weird.

The medallion on his chest began to tingle, and the CW began to glow. The flies began buzzing around the fruit pie once again.

Not knowing how long it would be until Aang would check on him in the other room, Danny rapidly took the pictures off the stone shelf next to his bed, and shoved them into his backpack. He pulled out the red clothes he trained in, and was about to change into them when he realized that might not be the best idea, considering Clockwork told him before all this that the war would be against the Fire Nation.

He laid the clothes onto his bed, and pulled out one of the two white t-shirts with a red oval in the center that he had packed. It's been awhile since he'd worn his classic white shirt and jeans combo.

He slipped on his shirt, pulled on the jeans, and flung his backpack onto his shoulders. He became intangible and ran towards the door, but stopped when he noticed a note nailed to the wall. Danny became tangible and tore the note off the wall.

Danny,

The spirit Clockwork came to me in a dream, and told me that

you have moved on to help the next Avatar. Though I am saddened and confused about why you won't be completing your airbending training,

but if the spirits believe you are ready, I believe you are ready.

He told me that your room would be sealed in time until you

arrived again, and that I should close the room off to the rest of the world.

I do not know how you'll get through this wall, but Clockwork assured me

it will be possible.

Perhaps we shall meet again once the new Avatar comes of age.

I wish you the best of luck,

Monk Gyatso

Danny read the note over again.

'Perhaps we shall meet again.'

That was the bit that stuck with Danny. They did meet again of course, but not in the way either of them had planned or hoped.

Danny sighed.

Another friend gone.

He folded the note up. He began putting it in his pocket, but realized he couldn't be caught with this on him. Danny let the paper fall to the floor. He became invisible, then intangible, and walked through the wall, looking around to see if Aang was in the area. Which he was.

Aang was walking down the stairs to the room Danny said he was staying in.

'Shit!'

Danny ran, invisible, down the stairs and strait into the door-less room. He became visible and began walking out just as Aang reached the door.

"Ready?" Aang asked.

"Yeah." Danny said, painting from sprinting down the stairs.

"Why are you so tired?" Aang asked.

"Um… I just…" Danny tried to think of an excuse, but couldn't. "Uh… Race you back to your bison!" He yelled, and began sprinting down the stairs. Behind him, he heard Aang laugh as he jetted past him on an air-scooter.

"That's cheating!" Danny yelled and slowed down, knowing that he would lose if he ran or not.

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Katara saw Aang approach on a ball of air, with Danny doing a light jog far behind him.

"What are you two doing?" Katara asked Aang as he landed in front of her.

"Racing!" Aang said. "Danny's a lot of fun."

"He shouldn't be running!" Katara said, as Danny arrived next to them. "You shouldn't be running! You probably have a concussion, and need to be resting."

"Look, I'm fine, okay?" Danny said, putting his arms up. He began to sway a little as his wound throbbed on his head, and he became dizzy. Danny put his arms down in defeat.

"Okay, yeah I need to rest."

Katara smiled in a know-it-all kind of fashion, and she helped Danny onto the bison, who they introduced as Appa, and they were off.

Danny leaned back on the saddle, and took one last, long look at the Southern Air Temple as it began to shrink in the horizon.

A/N: And we're off! Honestly, the last six chapters have really been one big introduction, and I'm happy to get here.

I made some slight changes (mainly grammatical) to some previous chapters, and added the description of Gyatso's necklace to when Danny first meets Roku and Gyatso. I also changed some things, wording and structure, in the first part of the first chapter, since I wrote that YEARS ago and my style has changed since (but I'm too stubborn/lazy to completely re-write it)

Some people have been asking about what will happen with Ming and Danny, and I'll just let you all know that her relative will be introduced in Book 2. That gives me time to change my mind, If I want to.

Try and guess who it is!

And tell me what you think of this chapter, and the story as a whole!

Criticism is welcome, as always.