The Avatar's Will of Fire

Arrival

"All around her was chaos. She had been in her share of fights before, but she had never seen anything like this. Nothing she had experienced could ever equal the sheer scale and brutality of the carnage taking place before her eyes.

She was standing (floating?) over a broad, rocky plain, under a sky filled with stars and a full moon in the distance. On this plain were two great forces, both of which were trying their hardest to kill each other. Through all the chaos happening around her, she was still able to at least clearly identify two different groups among the horde. One group was wearing what appeared to be some sort of uniform, consisting of red clouds against a black background. However, there were many different styles to this uniform; some wore the clouds on their jackets, others on some sort of cloaks, a few even wearing black robes that covered their entire bodies. The other group didn't seem to have any of the conformity of the first one. They had no obvious uniform, each of them wearing what seemed to be their own personal preferences, although some groups wore an odd-looking jacket over their chosen wears. However, she could identify some similar symbols that she couldn't recognize on many of their headbands.

They clearly had some kind of ability to manipulate the elements like she did, but the techniques they used were like nothing she had ever seen before. She certainly wouldn't call them 'bending.' For one, it seemed as if every time one of their abilities was used, the person using them had to create a series of odd formations with their hands. Second, after each hand formation was completed, the user always shouted out what she guessed was the name of the technique they were using. It seemed somewhat slow to her, but the effectiveness of whatever they were doing was soon made plain to see.

The first technique she saw stunned her; one of the fighters actually blew fire out his mouth! To her chagrin, her first thought after witnessing this was "I have got to learn how to do that!" However, her previous amazement soon turned to horror as she understood the intent of the attack as it incinerated its target.

Looking over the plain, she saw countless other techniques, some used for defense, others for offense, but all possessing the same ultimately deadly consequences. She saw a man slam his fist into the earth, forming massive spikes around him that pulverized any poor soul that was unfortunate enough to get in their way. There was another a woman who surrounded her entire fist with lighting in the split-second before her punch contacted with her opponent's chest and another man hurling some kind of knife she had never seen before with a piece of paper attached to it before the knife seemed to explode in the center of a large group of cloud-robed men and yet another man who seemed to created an giant ball of water in the air before releasing it and snap-freezing the falling water droplets into countless thousands of needles made of ice where they slashed their targets to ribbons and everyone else was using a knife or a sword or some kind of blade or even their bare fist to utterly destroy their enemies but the red-clouded horde just kept on coming...

Suddenly, she was focused on something else, a small six-member squad of men and women standing on a ledge that overlooked the fighting. They were all dressed in dark clothes and wearing masks that clearly represented some type of animal, but like no animals that she had ever seen. In the lead and obviously in charge was a man dressed in black, wearing a mask that reminded her of a Polar Bear-Dog, and at his side was a woman dressed in dark purple wearing a mask that was completely faceless, no mouth, no nose, no edges, not even any eyes. She appeared to be scanning for something.

While this group was at a relatively safe distance from the worst of the fighting, they were in no way safe from it, but every single member of this group stood with an air of absolute confidence, as if they simply didn't notice or didn't care about the carnage happening around them.

"Well," dryly stated the man in charge, "I think we can safely say we have their attention."

One of the men in the back heaved an over-dramatic sigh and said, "It's going to one of those nights, isn't it?" The leader's response was a simple, "Imagine so."