Southern Water Tribe, early-fall, 100 AG

It was a busy day in the Southern Water Tribe as it was early fall and there was much harvesting to do before the winter came. There were less people in the village because all men old enough to fight, left to join the Earth Kingdom in the war against the Fire Nation and all the raids left them almost completely devoid of waterbenders. Katara and Sokka, with their friend, Zuko, are out at sea fishing in a small canoe. While Zuko and Sokka prepareNomadpear a fish , Katara attempts and succeeds to catch one by the water around it, lifting the bubble above the canoe.

"Sokka, look!" Katara gleefully exclaimed to her brother. "I caught a fish!

Sokka, oblivious to his sister's success and ignoring her pleas to look at her catch, readies his own spear to strike and accidentally hits the bubble with the back of his weapon, knocking the fish back into the ocean and drenching himself with the water of the now-pierced bubble.

Now drenched in water, Sokka turned around and glared at Katara. "Really, 'Tara?! Every time you start playing with your bending, I'm the one that always gets soaked!"

The submissive retaliated, "Oh, and I suppose that you're any better than I am with waterbending? In case you haven't noticed, genius, both of us are in need of a waterbending master!"

The siblings then start to bicker with Zuko watching in exapseration, placing a gloved fist on his right hip and face-palming himself with the other, though their verbal exchanges are cut short when the sea currents suddenly pick up speed. Sokka tried to steer the canoe to avoid collision with the chunks of floating ice, while Katara frantically shouted, "Go left! Sokka, go left!".

Her shouts fell on deaf ears, however, and the boat ends up being crushed between three ice floes, leaving the trio stranded on the ice in the middle of the sea.

After gathering their bearings, Katara angrily tells her brother, "Now look what you did! This wouldn't have happened if you had gone left like I told you too!".

Just as angry as Katara, Sokka counters by pointing out, "You should have waterbent us to safety if you did not like my steering. leave it to a girl to screw things up."

In annoyance, Zuko hits him on the head with a spear and Katara loses her temper and starts yelling at her brother. "You are the most sexist, immature, and "nut-brained" person I've ever met!" she raged in anger.

While Katara continues to rage about all the things that she does for him as part of her chores, with Zuko staring on at Sokka in thinly veiled amusement and anger since he technically counts as a girl due to being a submissive, she involuntarily waterbends, cracking a large iceberg and eventually causing it to break and plunge into the ocean. As they are pushed back on their ice float, another iceberg, basking in blue light and containing two forms, rises to the surface.

Zuko stared at the site, both gobsmacked at what just happened and in awe of the glowing iceberg. The sound of shouting caught his attention, though, and when he turned around, he saw Sokka and Katara arguing about who was at fault for them crashing, again.

'When will these two idiots shut up so we can find a way to get home? Mommy, Aunt Kya, and Zula will be wondering where we are,' Zuko thought as he folded his arms under his chest.

He growled in frustration and was about to yell at them, before he caught sight of the glowing blue iceberg, not far away from them. Letting his curiosity get the better of him, and feeling drawn to it for some reason, he hopped over the ice floes, the motion snapping Sokka and Katara out of their arguement.

Upon a closer look, he deduces one of the forms to be that of a living human, Zuko falls into a trance-like state and comes into a bending stance while saying something in his native tongue.

"嵐の子、エアベンダー、私はあなたがあなたの運命を果たすためにあなたを解放します。" Zuko chanted while unconsciously falling into a bending stance.

As they arrive at the iceberg, Katara and Sokka catch onto Zuko's plan, although they were confused as to why he was action like this. With one giant column of fire and water, the trio was blown back by a gust of air escaping from the hole they managed to make. The trio watch in astonishment how the ice melts from that point and, in a cloud of steam, when the iceberg cracks in two, a bright column of light shoots high into the sky.

After Katara, Zuko, and Sokka broke through the ice, she finds the person is a young boy with strange arrow-shaped marks on his head and hands. Sokka, jarred by the bizarre events occurring around him, immediately points his spear at the boy, but the boy simply collapses into Zuko's arms. He layed him down gently and tried to help him. Sokka pokes the boy in the head with the blunt side of his spear, still skeptical, but an annoyed Katara and Zuko shoo him away.

The mysterious boy drowsily opens his eyes to see Zuko staring down at him, his own eyes a bright honey gold, glowing slightly in the sunlight. He quickly recovers from his dazed condition, abruptly and snarkily asking the trio, "Where am I? And who are you?"

Turning to the boy, Zuko introduced them. "I'm Zuko, and these are my flying cousins, Sokka and Katara. What's your name?".

Sokka and Katara bristled at the insult, but said nothing in response. However, before he could answer him, he sneezed, launching himself into the air.

Drifting deftly back to the ground, he rubs his nose and tells them with folded arms and suspicion coloring his voice, "Aang is the name and airbending is my game."

Katara, astonished by the distance Aang rose into the air by sneezing, muses, "Then, you must be an airbender! I thought they were all extinct,"

Aang replies with an eye roll, "I literally just said that!"

The boy rises to his feet swiftly, the sudden movement taking a wary Sokka by surprise, prompting him to become defensive with his spear.

When the boy, himself annoyed by Sokka's aggressiveness, inquires, "What the heck are you doing?", Sokka angrily demands, "How did you become trapped in the ice?".

To his disappointment, he only hears the boy say, "How am I supposed to know?!" as he nudges the point of Sokka's spear, now pointed directly at his face at close range, aside casually yet with a bit of aggressiveness.

The boy, looking around at his surroundings, asks, "Do you three live nearby?

This prompts Sokka to snap out, "Don't answer that! He could be a Fire Nation spy!"

Zuko, out of annoyance, asked, "Excuse me, spear boy, do I look like a spy to you? We've known each other for six years, and neither me, my mom, or my little sister have done anything suspicious."

Katara just rolled her eyes at her brother and pretended he didn't say anything.

Hearing a growling noise from within the crater of the hollowed iceberg, the boy climbs back over the rim to find a large, furry, six-legged creature lying motionless within; it takes a moment for him to calmly rouse it.

Sokka asks, "what is that thing?" and the boy replies, "This is Appa, my flying bison "

Sokka expressed disbelief over the purported ability of the large bison to fly; Appa sneezes on Sokka, covering him with bison snot. A thoroughly disgusted Sokka reacts by trying frantically to rub the offending substance off himself onto the snow, while the boy assures him with a slight sarcastic tone, "Don't worry, it washes out."

Zuko just laughs. "I think we're going to get along great, Aang. We can be sarcasm buddies."

Aang just smirked at him, liking the idea of having someone to be sarcastic with.

Sokka, convinced that he is going crazy, decides aloud,"You three can stay here if you want, but I'm going to go home where things actually make sense!".

However, Sokka only takes three steps before realizing, unfortunately, that he is stranded on an iceberg in the middle of the ocean. Aang, seeing the problem, offers, "I can fly you guys back to the Southern Water Tribe, if you want."

Katara happily agrees and Zuko shrugs, knowing that his mom needed an airbending teacher, while Sokka refuses at first, agreeing after a few seconds only when he realizes he has no other choice. The group gets on Appa's saddle, with Sokka still grumpily mumbling, "I still don't believe this big thing can fly."

Aang says, "Yip-yip!", and Appa leaps into the air, though immediately comes crashing back down into the water and starts swimming. Sokka just crows sarcastically, "Oh look at that, it can fly,"

Aang snaps at Sokka. "He can fly! He's just tired from being in the iceberg!"

He turns around and stares at Katara with a small smile on his face, causing her, after a few long, awkward seconds, to ask, "Why are you smiling at me like that?"

He replies, "Oh, I was smiling?"

Sokka lifts his head back, groaning, while Katara, at first smiling at Aang's response, frowns back at Sokka, while Zuko stared in fond amusement. 'This is going to be a long day'...

Back at the South Pole, two of the tribesmen, a man and a girl, no older than 14 years of age, were having an animate conversation while bringing back baskets of herbs and fish to the village. But, instead of the blue eyes of the Water Tribes, they had golden eyes from the Fire Nation.

"Mommy, how much longer until the baby comes?" the girl playfully whined with a laugh, her amber eyes twinkling with curiosity.

The man laughed and rubbed a gloved hand over his stomach, which was showing the faintest signs of a developing baby bump. "In a few more months, Azula. I may be four months pregnant, but I'm not helpless. You, your father, and Zuko know this better than anybody. Besides, you and the rest of the village know how much I hate sitting in one place for too long," he replied and they continued walking.

By the time the duo returned to the village, two of the members were already fussing over the man, asking if he was tired, hungry, or wanted to take a break. It was quite annoying, because the man said, "I'm fine, Kya and Kanna! I'm not dying, I'm just pregnant. It takes a little more energy, though, because my bending is fueling this little one that keeps giving me cramps all the time."

That cause the two women to laugh heartily, before leading him to their tent. "We know, Ozai. We just don't want you to overexert yourself. Bato would have our heads if he found out that you weren't taking care of yourself," Kya teased her friend with a grin, causing Ozai to roll his eyes in fond amusement and exasperation.

 Ever since he found out that he was pregnant, almost all of the female tribe members have been pestering him about his health and inquiring about the baby. Azula, his youngest child, was excited to have someone else to teach like Zuko taught her when they were little.

After some time on the water, a curious Katara asks Aang, "Do you know the fate of the Avatar? Being an airbender, I know that the first Avatar before the genocide was an Air Nomad."

Aang awkwardly states, "I knew the last Air Nomad Avatar, Aisling, but I don't know the current Avatar myself."

He continued to explain that Aisling said he was supposed to teach the current Avatar airbending, but didn't know who it was.

Zuko, Sokka, and Katara shared a mischievous smirk before Zuko told Aang, "We'll explain back at the village,"

Intrigued by the tattoos on Aang's body, she grows more and more curious about him.

Falling asleep on Appa's back, Aang has a dream, in which he recalls his last moments before being encased in the ice. In it, he and Appa fly through a terrible storm east of the South Pole. He remembers the both of them being buffeted by the full fury of the gale, struggling vainly to escape and eventually being forced under the waves. As Aang began to lose consciousness, however, he heard a kind and calm yet familiar voice tell him, "This is not the time period that I want you to be in. I'm going to freeze you and Appa in a block of ice. Neither of you will age, and when you are freed, in 100 years, you are to teach the Avatar airbending. The Avatar during that time period, will be a submissive firebender named Ozai. Rest easy and remember, I may be gone from the physical world, but I will always be with you. I love you, little brother."

As the ice thickened, Aang is abruptly jolted awake by Katara, finding himself in a tent in the Southern Water Tribe.

"Where am I? And where's Zuko?" Aang knew he was in a tent, but when he peered outside the tent flaps, he saw ice and snow shining in the sunlight.

"Zuko went to go get his mother and sister," Katara explained to the shaken airbender. She was eager to introduce him to the rest of the tribe and Aang dressed quickly with Katara watching. She notices with surprise the arrow markings running along his body and gasps. She does not say anything, however, and as soon as Aang was completely dressed, she pulled him along and introduces him to the entire population, which is composed of a small number of women and children. Sokka watches from a short distance away.

"Aang, this is our village. Everyone, this is Aang. He's here to teach the Avatar airbending," Katara explains.

Aang bows to the villagers respectfully, accidentally eliciting a response of fear from them, and they hurriedly take a few steps away from the airbender, to the unhappy surprise of Aang and Katara. Aang asks Katara, in a hushed voice, "Why are they looking at me this way? Did Appa sneeze on me and nobody told me?"

As he checks his clothes for bison snot, an elderly woman steps forward and addresses him, explaining, "Due to the hundred-year absence of airbenders from the world, we believed them to be extinct," The use of this specific word does not escape Aang, who repeats the word, "Extinct?" in disbelief before Katara introduces the woman. "This is my grandmother." She, herself insists, "Call me 'Gran-Gran'."

Abruptly interrupting the conversation, Sokka redoubles his interrogation of Aang, snatching his and examining it closely; viewing it through the lens of war, he assumes it is a weapon and somewhat derisively deems it a failure, having blunt ends which are incapable of stabbing.

Snatching the staff back from Sokka with a quick burst of airbending, Aang snidely tells him, "Its purpose is not for stabbing, it's for airbending." He promptly opens the wings on the staff, causing Sokka, his terror renewed, to reel back from it as a young girl, thrilled, asks Aang, "Repeat the "magic trick"!" Aang gently reminds her that it is airbending, not magic; moving the staff around himself with his arms, he mimics flight as he explains that, by manipulating the currents of air around the glider, he can use it to fly.

Sokka immediately counters with a burst of sarcastic skepticism: "You know, last time I checked, humans can't fly!" Aang, with a sarcastic calm but confident reply of "Check again," proceeds to launch himself into the air, raising a gust of wind that makes the villagers cover their faces, and he begins to fly circles around them. After a few seconds, emboldened by the adulation of the astounded villagers, he attempts to fly with his eyes closed and collides head-on with a watchtower made of snow and ice, causing it to collapse.

As Katara and a few of the children rush to Aang's aid, Sokka rushes to the base of the fallen structure and tries vainly to save it. As a mass of snow buries him, he grumbles aloud, "Aang and Katara are both being time-wasting benders" and storms off. Aang is intrigued to learn that Katara is a waterbender, though Katara is only able to tell him, "I'm only "sort of" a waterbender,". This conversation was unable to be continued because her grandmother called her away, telling Katara she has chores to do.

Out of earshot of Aang, Katara ecstatically tells Gran-Gran,"I believe that Aang can help find a bender who can teach me waterbending!"

Gran-Gran seems skeptical of Aang's ability and warns Katara, "Do not place too much stock in a person you have only just met".

Katara brushes the request aside, replying, as she strikes up a meditative pose, "I believe Aang, while a little jaded around the edges, is "filled with much wisdom"," At that very moment, they happen to glance over at Aang, who is begrudgingly showing the village toddlers, to their deep amusement, his ability to stick his tongue to his staff.

Once Katara and Kanna were gone, Zuko walked up to Aang with Azula and Ozai in tow. "Aang, this is my little sister, Azula, and my mom, Ozai." he introduced, while the airbender returned similar greetings.

"You must be the Avatar," Aang mused, glancing at Ozai, who stared at him with surprise.

He warily looked at Aang. "How do you know that I'm the Avatar?". It was perfectly understandable for him to be suspicious; being pregnant, his instincts were telling him not to tread lightly in case he was a threat.

The dominant looked over at the submissive. "The spirit of my friend, Aisling, told me that you were and I'm supposed to teach you airbending. I understand why you're wary, and I don't blame you. But, I need to teach you airbending according to the cycle. Speaking of Avatars, are you related to any avatars?"

Looking thoughtful, Ozai answered, "My grandfather was Avatar Roku, the Fire Nation Avatar before me, and my great-grandfather was Avatar Kuruk, the Avatar succeeding your friend, Aisling. My grandmother, Melody was born of Water Tribe and Fire Nation."

Aang could only stand there, gobsmacked. This man was the descendant of two Avatars! What?! Bowing, Aang said that it would be an honor to teach him airbending once he was ready.