554A/N; I am entirely reader-supported. Here are my special thanks to those of you who enjoy my writing enough to support me with your hard earned money on my pa-atreon page. Not just them though, special thanks to everyone who even just reads this story, reviews it, favourites or follows it. You're the reason I keep going. Thank you. Welcome to this new story, feel free to check out my other work if this is your first.
"Un, deux, trois…" I whispered to myself to keep calm, as my dance teachers had taught me. I balanced on the beam as carefully as I could, and then began to run, maintaining a steady face and flipping at the last minute to grab hold of the pole. One, two, three, four. I counted the swings in my mind before finding my angle, letting go, and beginning to corkscrew.
I had done it a thousand times before. Now, I just had to do it for the gold medal. Of course, that's when things went wrong. I missed my landing, and everything went blank from that point.
I had no idea how I had messed up the move. Even now, two years after starting my new life, I still couldn't understand what had happened on that day. I turned my mind away from that and focused on balancing on my toes and doing a vertical split. Two years in this body, and it still shocked me. When I first began this new life, I thought it was a dream. A day later, I realized it was anything but, but I still failed to recognize the situation I was in.
It took the man I would come to know as my grandfather showing me a few tricks to stop my crying, for me to realize what was going on. When he tossed a fireball from hand to hand, he must have thought himself some sort of baby whisperer because all my wailing ceased, and I was struck with sudden understanding.
All the words I had heard spoken suddenly began to make sense. Talk of the Fire Nation, Azulon, and Ba Sing Se suddenly gained context. Fuck. I'm in Avatar. And I'm from the Fire Nation. Fuck. I had lost consciousness soon after, and since that day, I had resolved to... Well, I still don't know yet. I just practiced the gymnastics exercises I knew children were made to do to train their flexibility. I had no idea what I wanted from this brand new lease on life, but I'd be damned if I gave up one of the few things I had ever actually enjoyed.
And that's when things suddenly got interesting. I got up from my split and, focusing on my balance, landed a technically perfect cartwheel. Not the most impressive thing anyone would ever see, but still technically perfect. When I heard clapping from a corner of the room that I was sure was empty, I actually jumped out of my skin. Punching at the imagined threat, flames flowed from my fist. Both my grandfather and I watched the fire in shock before the old man's shock morphed into something much more recognizable. He laughed. He laughed and ran to me before placing me on his shoulders and spinning around the room with me. I laughed along with him, doing my best to pretend to be a child while my mind was racing. A firebender. That made living much easier, but it also dashed whatever plans I had of just disappearing into hiding.
Of course, after that, my grandfather seldom let me have a moment to myself. When he wasn't showing me off to visitors, he was making me listen to him as he told story after story of our ancestors and the "treasured bloodline" I was bound to inherit. Apparently, our family went back almost a thousand years and had served in the Fire Nation military for as long as it had existed. For ten generations straight, not one of my ancestors had failed to reach the rank of General. It screamed nepotism to me, but who was I to say? I just found it highly unlikely that so many people from the same family managed to reach the rank that, at most, only a couple of dozen people in the entire military ever achieved.
Either way, for generations now, we had led the war effort of the Fire Nation from the front lines. My great-grandfather personally orchestrated and completed the Air Nation genocide. That fact made me want to vomit and cry at the same time. And then things hadn't stopped there. My grandfather took pleasure in recounting his own exploits. By his own admission, he led the efforts in the South and was responsible for the "Shattering of the South Pole," a genocide nearly as total as what was completed in the Air temples. The Southern Water Tribe had been turned from a sprawling metropolis to a collection of villages. He told the stories with pride, and the more he spoke, the more my heart sank. Whatever plans I had for life after the war began to dry up. My family. My family was arguably more responsible for the war's atrocities than the Royal Family itself. Fuck. There was no way I was ever going to get the same good deal Zuko did. No, if the Avatar won, I would find myself strung up and shuffled into a similar cell as Ozai. And if not me, then definitely my grandfather and father. I didn't care much for the latter, but I loved the former. So much so that I saw my future plans being made practically on their own accord. The Fire Nation needed to win.
When I turned three, my lessons officially began. And let me just say, being a noble sucked balls. Serious balls. When Grandfather took me under his wing, I still managed to get a few hours every day to play as I wished under his supervision. All of that disappeared once he deemed me ready for my lessons. Speaking was easy. For some reason, my brain seemed to automatically understand the language they spoke and could reproduce it on its own. Reading and writing, however? That was a whole different can of worms. It was like learning a new language, and I thanked all the gods, Agni included, for the mental elasticity children were blessed with. It was the only reason I could begin reading scrolls and tomes without any assistance in only a few months of training.
Once I learned to read, my inner bookworm awakened with vigor. My family, in our large mansion, had a library of epic proportions. One would assume that a family of warmongers like mine would have little appreciation for the written word, but from what I could tell, every generation of the family had a bookworm or two who contributed to the library. And across almost a thousand years of a traceable bloodline, we had gathered quite a lot of scrolls on a variety of topics. A shocking amount of them related to tea preparation techniques, and an even more shocking amount were erotica.
That was how I spent much of my early life, switching between reading everything I could find, moving from lesson to lesson, and firebending training, which seemed to consist of meditating with my grandfather while we both held flames aloft in our palms. The goal was to teach me endurance and control. I had to do my best to prevent my flames from flickering or going out and hold them for as long as I could. The training was tougher than it looked but also rewarding. It got visibly easier with each session.
Of course, my idyllic lifestyle had to come to an end.
It happened in 85 AG, just a bit after my fifth birthday. Grandfather had returned from a trip to the palace looking elated beyond all reason. That night, when we met to meditate, he spent the time before our lessons pounding one piece of information into my head. "Ursa has given birth to a girl. Princess Azula. The Royal Family has a princess, and you are to be her husband." I nearly choked at the news before I realized that it wasn't news. At least, not the last bit.
He wanted me to marry the princess because our family had not seen a royal match since his aunt had married Sozin and birthed Azulon, the present Fire Lord. Of course, that made me and Azula cousins (distant, but still cousins). That was something he didn't care about. From that day, my lessons took a turn. He confided in me that he knew little about training young firebenders and told me he had secured the services of the best firebending instructor in the entire Fire Nation. Master Kuonyo would be arriving in a month, and I was instructed to prepare for my lessons and adjust my schedule. Ozai would only marry his daughter to a powerful bender, my grandfather had said with a look in his eyes that told me he expected me to become that bender if it was the last thing I did.
XXXX 85 AG (After Genocide)
I stood in the training outfit that grandfather had given me, doing my best not to fidget as Master Kuonyo examined me.
"And you can already bend?" He asked.
"Yes, Master."
"Show me," he demanded. I gathered my inner flame and created a fireball that floated above my palm. It was virtually instant, I thought to myself with pride. Even the Master was impressed, judging by how silent he became.
"Good. We will now work on your kata," he said after a minute or so.
"There are two major bending styles practiced in the Fire Nation. There is the Sozin style favored by the royal family and other nobility, and the military style favored by the military, as the name suggests," he said while making me move through step after step of the kata he had just demonstrated.
"I will be teaching you both. In the time we spend together, I will turn you into a master of both styles and a fearsome firebender in your own right," he said.
"Yes, Master."
"Good, now continue," he said.
Punch after punch flowed into a kick, which flowed into a block. I used the word "flow," but in truth, there was very little flowing involved. The Sozin style favored a strong base and powerful strikes. It was all about the powerful flames and movements that would tire anyone out in a real battlefield. That's why it had more use in Agni Kais among nobles. I wasn't calling up any fire with my moves, so I did look a little ridiculous, but my grandfather's encouraging smile was all I needed to convince myself to keep going.
"Stop there. Your hands are too wide. Watch your legs. Footwork is everything. Without a strong base, you will be knocked on your bottom in seconds," he said, moving to me and correcting some movements I had gotten wrong. It was the third time he was doing this in this lesson alone, but the corrections got fewer each time, so that was good. I was actually lucky that I had spent so much time training my balance and flexibility in preparation for gymnastics. That same balance, flexibility, and body control were paying dividends right now.
"Now, begin to call upon fire in your movements," he said.
"Yes, Master." I started focusing on my inner flame and began. However, I was very disappointed when my first punch created a disappointing sputter of flame. Neither of the men stopped me, so I just decided to continue. It was actually sad. In the end, my movements were barely even producing embers. I guess those evenings of practice were wasted. When I looked up at the Master, it was to find him studying me with a hand on his chin.
"What do you think of when you call upon your flames?" He asked, and I racked my head for an answer. What did I think when I used my flames? Nothing. I just searched for my inner fire and brought it out. I told him that, and he nodded and hummed as if he had discovered the secret to the universe.
"There's the answer to your predicament. Fire is the element of passion. Unlike the other elements, your power comes from within. The water and earthbenders control what is around them, already existing. Even the air nomads had done much of the same. Unlike them, we create our flames. Every fire needs fuel, and you are that fuel. You must feed your flames with powerful emotions. Rage and hatred work best, in my experience," he said, waiting for me to grasp his words.
I looked to my grandfather to see if he was in support of this message, only to see him nodding along. Hatred and anger? I settled my mind and tried to focus on the emotions. I didn't have much anger to speak of, but hatred? That I had in spades. I hated my old life. I hated myself for dying on the cusp of achieving my dream of becoming a gold medalist. I hated my old parents for never being supportive enough. They were the reason I wasn't a gold medalist at 19 like every other fucking prodigy. I had hatred to spare, and when I held the face of my ex-girlfriend in mind and punched the air, it looked like I had a flamethrower in my fists.
Fuck. I lost concentration, and the flames died out, but I stared at my hand in amazement. "Good, young Lord," Master Kuonyo said to me. "Now, keep going," he said, with a look in his eyes that I'm sure matched mine. It was insanity. All firebenders were insane. I had to admit that.
XXXXXX - Winter, 85 AG
It took me six months of practice for Master Kuonyo to determine that I was good enough at the Sozin style to move on to the military style. I still remembered his words: "Your form is as perfect as it will ever be. I cannot train you in actual combat for now, until your body is a bit stronger and better suited. Instead, we will move on to the military style, and if you prove as much a prodigy with that as you are with this one, we will learn more and more of the older firebending forms," he said, before giving me a bow that I reciprocated.
I could see what he wasn't saying, the suspicions he must have held. No one just technically mastered an entire martial art in six months. I'd have tried holding back, but the look of pride on my grandfather's face whenever I mastered a complicated manoeuvre or form was something I enjoyed too much for me to even seriously consider the idea of holding back and risking disappointing him. As a result, I copied Master Kuonyo's movements perfectly as he showed me the opening forms of the military style. Mixing the hand-eye coordination and body intelligence of a master gymnast with the mental elasticity of a child meant there were very few body movements I couldn't copy on the first try. In fact, it was getting to the point that even I was becoming a bit suspicious.
The military style shared a lot with the Sozin style, but it focused less on sweeping powerful attacks that were beyond most firebenders and instead on swift jabs and movements. It also had way more blocks and defensive formations than the Sozin style, which was all offense and unrelenting attack, with each attack setting up the next in a continuous expression of circular motion. I moved with him, in and out, as we went through the moves.
"Come with me, my son," my grandfather said to me as I finally got the opportunity to rest after Kuonyo's seventh lesson on the military forms. I hurried to follow him as he marched straight to the library. I wondered what he was going to show me until he moved one of the shelves. I didn't know what was more shocking, the hidden passage or the aged man who just lifted a whole ass shelf like it was nothing. I walked in with him as we entered a dark cavern. He made a fireball float in his hands to give us some light, and I followed his lead.
We had appeared in some sort of hidden study. I spotted the torch holders at the corners and set them on fire to improve the lighting. It was exhilarating, moving my small body around and sending fireballs around the room. At least, my aim was good enough that nothing caught on fire.
"Well done, Natsu," he said, using the name I low-key hated being referred to as. I remembered the Natsu from fairy tail, and the less affiliation I had with that idiot, the better. "Thank you, Grandfather. Where is this place?" "I'm sure in your explorations of the library, you noticed that there was a lack of firebending material. That was no accident. My own grandfather, fearing our enemies stealing our knowledge and using it against us, built this private area for our firebending knowledge to be kept safe. The secrets are traditionally passed from father to son, but while your father brings honor to our family on the front lines, I will take his place here," he said, and I nodded as he waved me forward and began to show me the scrolls.
"You see, our family has collected and gathered knowledge on diverse and divergent fighting styles for centuries now, and all that knowledge is yours to use. The Sozin and military styles can be good bases to learn even more advanced styles and forms," he said, drawing my attention away from the scroll that contained the forms for a style I could actually recognize. "Ah yes. The Dragon style," he said when he noticed the scroll in my hands. "Obtained from the Sun warriors themselves by my grandfather's grandfather. They preach a more deviant firebending philosophy but still one worthy of being learned."
I barely heard him, focused as I was on another scroll. The secrets of Combustion, it was titled. "I will leave you now. Note that you may not remove any of the scrolls from this room, but you may copy any ones that catch your interest. There is a lever to automatically close and open the entrance on the shelf itself. I'll leave you the task of discovering it," he said, leaving me to my own devices in heaven. This was a treasure trove that had been right underneath my nose. I looked through it, searching for scroll after scroll. Pretty much all the information I would ever be interested in was here for my perusal. Even lightning. The secrets to generating lightning were here right before my eyes. The cold fire was mine to control.
XXXXX 86AG
Master Kuonyo swept a blast of fire at me, which I cut in half with my own comparatively smaller blast, allowing the two halves to pass by me as I jumped into the air and sent multiple fireballs at him. He blocked them with his own controlled fire blasts as I landed on the floor and swept my feet across the ground, creating an arc of fire to trip him up. A stomp of his feet extinguished my flames as they reached him, but I was already moving, doing my best to utilize the distraction to the fullest. I sent two fire blasts at him in quick succession. When he was forced to raise his hands to his head to block, I struck.
I cartwheeled towards him, moving out of his line of sight, preparing to smash into him with a flying kick, only to have the air knocked out of me as he folded me in half around his fist. I fell to the ground in a slump from that miss. "I have told you times without number. Your acrobatics have no place in combat. Maybe if you had been born an air nomad, I could have said differently," Kuonyo commented uncharitably as I struggled to return to my feet.
"Don't bother. Today's lesson will end there. You did well. You just need to get better at chaining your attacks. There is no shame in losing to me. You are only six years old, after all," he said, and I nodded, still clutching my midsection on the floor.
He nodded and swept from the manor. When I finally regained my feet, it was to the library I went. Kuonyo had ended his lesson about an hour early, so I had time to study for a bit before dancing lessons would begin. Etiquette training still remained my least favorite part of being a Fire Nation noble. Well, apart from the Fire Nation part. It was still something else to accept that I would be the bad guy my favorite characters growing up would be forced to fight against.
XXXXX 87 AG
"This will be our last lesson, young Master Natsu," he said, and I watched the firebending master in shock. "Let's not deceive ourselves. You've outgrown whatever I had to teach you. The only reason I still retain the upper hand in our spars is because of experience and power. Two things I'm sure you will acquire on your own. Besides, I have been contacted by the palace. I have been placed on the short list for being considered to take charge of Prince Zuko's firebending education," he said, and I finally understood the rationale.
I doubted Kuonyo gave much of a fuck about me learning anything or not. I'd seen the account statements. Grandfather was paying him a veritable fortune to teach me. No one was going to leave that kind of cash on the table unless they were getting a better deal. I nodded to his words. "One final session, then. For old times' sake?" I asked the man, and he nodded.
I took my stance right in front of him, and he sent the signal for us to begin. A flash of my fists, and I sent a fireball screaming for his head. He leaned backward in a dodge, and I zoomed across the field, using fire blasts from my feet to move faster. He tried jumping backward to retreat, but there was no point. I kicked at his head with flames gathered on my feet. He blocked that attack with a confident raised hand and, gathering flames in an open palm, tried to blast me while I was mid-air. I stretched my hands and tore the flames from his control, forcing them to flow past me.
I twirled in the air as I moved, sending two more arcs of fire at him before I landed in the traditional Sozin stance. Feet wide spread, and hands clenched into fists by my side. Punch after punch sent a blast after blast screaming at him. He dodged and weaved past them, blocking every second hit before another firebolt was sent to my head. A classic matrix dodge led into a handstand that I used as a platform to blast him with my feet.
I could already feel myself getting tired, so I tried to wrap things up as quickly as I could. I used the explosive nature of fire to blow myself into the air and twisted as I jumped right at him, aiming to use the element of surprise to my advantage. Of course, things didn't go according to plan as he sped up and caught my kick in mid-air with a kick of his own. I was sent flying back from the collision, and I landed on my arse. Taking that as an end to the battle, Master Kuonyo bowed, and I hastened to return his bow.
Applause from the balcony had me turning back to the manor. There my grandfather stood with a white-haired man that any fan of the series would recognize in an instant.
A/N; And that's the very first chapter of this story. What do you guys think?
A/N; Yup. Got struck by the bug and wrote out the first part of the first chapter of that Avatar SI I spoke about. What do you think about it? Really let me know how it feels to you, please. In my imagination, the Sozin style is the style Iroh uses- All strong base and powerful blasts. We've got the next five chapters of this story, along with the next five chapters of another fic that I uploaded at the exact same time as this one (an insert is into a version of Kal El, who gets tossed into the MCU) all available on pa-atreon, and you can read all of that right now just by heading to the link on my profile or searching for my username up there. Feel free to have a look.