Aang's long lost "Team Avatar"

Re-watching Avatar The Last Airbender on Netflix gave me a wonderful idea. There have been plenty of "what-if's" about Aang not running away. My title is a little click bait because I don't want to talk about Aang not running away. But I do want a story line to during the Hundred year war; of the water, earth, and fire benders holding out hope for Aang's return. As I mentioned in the title above these three benders are who should've been Aang's team Avatar. Don't get me wrong; I absolutely love Katara, Zuko, and Toph. But I think this is a very interesting group of people. In no way would this alter the general plot of the original series, in fact I'd love to not have Aang find out about this troupe until he's an adult.

General plot

So this plot takes place roughly 10 years after. This gives the world enough time to realize that Avatar is missing and most likely dead. Also this allows most of the air benders to have already been eradicated or deep in hiding for their lives. By a twist of fate we have our three benders unite under one common goal; find the avatar, take down Sozin and the Fire nation before it's too late, and bring balance back to the world. Sadly they do not succeed at this mission, however that doesn't mean they were a failure. With 100 years of Aang's disappearance that's a lot of time to cause the fire nation problems.

The Benders themselves

Before I forget, I'm sorry none of these characters will have names. Sorry, I'm not that creative. Let's start with Fire; the fire bender I want would be a female healer. She would actually have a dragon of her own. Disgusted by the corruption of fire bending and threats against her dragon, she defected from the fire nation and hid high in the mountains where the fire nation would never find her. And even if they did, she'd use the extreme elevation to her advantage. With the fire benders forgetting the importance breathing as uncle Iroh had once taught Prince Zuko, the rest of the firebenders would struggle to firebend that high up as they become winded too quickly.

Next is our water bender. Well, swamp bender to be exact. This character is shares a lot of similarities with DC's "Poison Ivy". This water bender, or more fittingly a swamp bender was found deep within the swamps. She's an incredibly gifted healer both with her advanced waterbending but also her knowledge of the various herbs that grow in her swamp. She's also astute at camouflage; a little rough around the edges at first but also one to throw herself in front of harms way to protect those she cares about most.

Last but not least is the Earth bender, an incredible tactician extremely well versed in guerilla warfare. Equality a brilliant swords man on top of being a a prodigy bender. His technique to defeat the firebenders who tried to apprehend him was to divide and conquer. Raising rock walls around his enemies, going under ground, and resurfacing in the makeshift "box" he'd trapped the soldiers in picking them off one by one.

How Aang finds them

As I mentioned in the opening paragraph sadly this group would have no influence on the original series. My plan however is once Aang is an adult, working on rebuilding the nomad culture. He finds this time capsule filled with air nation relics, clothing, and even a glider buried deep within the mountains of the western air temple. And although they weren't able to take down the fire nation they still did plenty of good and never lost hope that Aang would eventually return. In the group's final days they left an incredibly detailed journal of their adventures along side this capsule. The final page stating "Dear Aang, we never lost hope of your return. Where ever you are, whenever you read this. Please note this was not your fault. The remaining monks told us you were but a child when you found out you were the avatar. Don't ever stop trying to rebuild your nation and restore the people of the air nation". Or roughly something along those lines. This brings Aang to his knees, crying through his smile clutching ancient relics of his past. Aang is eternally grateful but also heartbroken over this team he'll never meet. Enter a pregnant Katara, seeing Aang crying clutching relics he though long lost. She puts her hand on Aang's shoulder and just smiles. Not saying a word, but also tearing up as she sees Aang reacquire these relics from his past.

I would absolutely be over the moon if we got to see something like this in the future no matter the medium. Comics or TV show, count me in to see this team.

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