But Everything Changed When the Fire Nation Attacked

***Warning: slight avatar the last airbender spoilers ahead***

"Aang, the name of the boy destined to save the world. The child whose entire life was written out for him before he could walk. The avatar: one burdened by expectations of greatness." 

A young man clad in a black toga sat to recite this laid-back speech. A blackened arrow tattooed down the centre of his hairless head, and a bladed staff leaned within reach against the throne he sat on. He reached for it.  

"A child's hand cannot carry the extent of the world's problems. I wish you could have seen that too, Katara. Or maybe you did..."

Before Aang's feet on a cloud covered carpet, bowed the head of a young and beautiful water bender. She sat strained against her knees, her wrists were bound in cuffs and tugged back by two metal benders at her sides. As an extra precaution, an old and shrivelled blood bender stood behind her with a red lotus pin holding together her cloak.

Aang stood and forced Katara's chin up, without touching her, with a graceful lift of his hand - this was airbending; the last of its kind. Katara's face was bruised and scarred, streaked with the sweat-wet waves of her own silky hair. 

"I thought you were dead." she cried.

"That's what you wanted, wasn't it? 

"How could I have wanted that!?"

"No? When you fed me with lies of fulfilling my destiny, showered my mind with your false-confidence in me? You didn't want me dead?! and yet you watched me die, and completed my destiny with the team I thought was mine. How did it feel, I wonder, when you saw me fail my mission, when you saw your wishes come true."

"HOW CAN YOU SAY THIS?!" She stretched forward against her restraints to scream out her pain. "What happened to you? Aang..."

"I tasted a bit of the real world. Thats all." Aang slammed a bare foot against the hard earthen pavement. Down from a newly formed ledge along the back of a pillar, fell a hard-headed blind girl with a loud and tough "Oof!"

"Toph, its great to see you again." She made a heavy kick-up back to her feet and jabbed a violent finger towards Aang, without making eye contact, like she used to always do.

"That's Master Toph to you, Twinkle-Toes! Have you completely lost your mind, treating Katara this way. Has losing the fight against the fire lord knocked you bonkers?!"

Aang smirked. Then rapidly, he stomped and made a swift punch to the ground. Toph immediately sunk deep into the surface, but knowing she could easily free herself, Aang made one small utterance to keep her in place: "Appa." 

A massive flying bison swooped in and landed over the ground she submerged into. Her angered calls could still be heard under Appa's mighty fluff. 

"Now for..." Aang scanned his throne room for the last of the gang, "Sokka!" Upon sensing his presense behind another pillar, Aang made a string of water, from the sweat and tears Katara had been harvesting, and whipped it towards Sokka's hidden figure. He used the water whip to rip the katana from his grasp. The hooded blood bender continued this assault and dragged the warrior out of hiding. Next, she pinned him next to his sister, ignoring his many yells of pain.

"I really did miss you guys... even if you didn't miss me..." Aang pressed his bladed staff against the carpet and sharpened bat wings popped out, he spun the flying contraption as if it were a scythe. "...I don't know if I'll miss you this time around." He then tightened his grip around his weapon and marked the spot at Katara's neck he would slice.

A blazing yell blasted its way through the tall throne room doors. The source of the ruckus zoomed through the air with a whirling display of flames to propel the body forward. A heated vertical spin kick smashed so powerfully on the spot Aang was standing that he had to use both air and earth bending to prevent the debris from crashing into him. Fury itself stood up tall in the persona of a person.

Aang wasn't afraid to directly confront the angry man."Zuko. I'll admit I forgot about you, didn't think you cared enough about this group to interfere."

Zuko's eyes were closed, one forever so due to the burn mark of a bloody pink scar. His lengthened black hair fell in a low ponytail. His working eye opened to speak out his compressed rage: "Aang... Stop this foolishness and release them. Trust me, when I say, the path you walk on, is one you will come to regret. It bears a far heavier burden then that of destiny. You don't want this life." 

"That's the problem Zuko, I wouldn't know which life I would or wouldn't have wanted. I never had a choice in the matter."

~~~

Background info on the original character: Aang is a really hilarious, happy-go-lucky kid who has to become the saviour of an unbalanced, elementally astounding world of fun.