Reborn In Water || ATLA

Machines

"Where will you run there's no place left for you to hide? When you're faced with the flood, will you stand for the future and swallow your pride?" - Crown The Empire

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Ninety-Six Years Ago

Fire was an element that either commanded respect or consumed fear.

With a cliff to his back and a wall of fire to his front, Shukaku was terrified of it. He could hardly stand anymore, he'd been fighting off Fire Nation troops since they arrived at his door the day before. Twenty-four hours of terror and bloodshed had pushed him to his limits. He was only eighteen and not even close to having fully realized his powers' potential yet here he stood before Fire Lord Sozin himself, and the man was out for his head.

"My Lord," Shukaku pleaded through heavy breathing. "I belong to your nation, I am nothing but your humble servant. But here you bring an army to my home, you attack my wife and you condemn us both to die. What is the meaning of this?"

Sozin stepped forward over the bodies of the dead, past his small arsenal of some of the best firebenders in all of his nation. They were the lucky ones. Shukaku was strong, especially when those traitorous eyes of his were glowing.

"Because my boy, even though you're of this nation you're more loyal to your dead Avatar than you are to me. A pitiful waste of the true power of the Akira." Sozin said while motioning to a soldier on the ground. "Chasing a ghost and trying to please the rest of the world. I asked you to take out the Northern Water Tribe, but you asked to remain neutral. You may bend water as you bend fire, but it seems you've forgotten where you were born. In war, there's no such thing as neutral. You've left me no choice."

Shukaku felt his heart sink when his young wife was brought shackled before him. 

No. 

He thought he had gotten her past the barricade. She was supposed to run. They had only been married a few months. A rarity for the times, it hadn't been arranged. He loved her and she loved him. She never even had the chance to tell her husband she suspected she was with child.

"Sozin, please! You said it yourself, the Avatar is dead, you wiped out all of the Air Nomads! I serve no one, I just wish to raise a family!" The Akira cried, not above begging for her life. The shadow spirit inside of him long ago whispered that the Avatar, whoever they had been, was gone. Their partner had vanished four years ago now, not long before their spirits were set to collide in this physical world they resided in. But the embodiment of light, the pillar of this world was not dead. No, if the Avatar was dead Gaara would've known. Shukaku had thought he could keep his head down low until the yin to his yang returned but it was clear now that Sozin wouldn't be giving him that choice.

"The Avatar may be gone, dead with their people," Sozin stated simply as if the genocide was child's play. "But if the Akira lives and won't fight for the Fire Nation, then they must be destroyed as well. " Sozin circled the boys' crying wife, holding a dagger of blazing fire he willed from his palm to her throat. It was almost a shame to kill a woman so young, but nothing was off-limits in the game of war. "This is your last chance to join me, Akira Shukaku."

Shukaku looked at the woman he'd move mountains for with a broken gaze. She had known this day may come but he had promised to protect her with everything he had. Shukaku failed her. It was clear that she was just as broken as him but still, there was the fire he had fallen in love with behind her golden eyes. They spoke to him in a way that words had never needed to.

Do not yield, not for her. Do not falter, do not bend, do not break. She wasn't afraid to die for this or for him.

"Never." Shukaku choked through the tears he didn't realize he was crying.

"So be it. "

The Akira watched in horror as the woman he promised to love and cherish fell dead before him. The despair surged deep inside him and once more his eyes began to glow a haunting shade of blue. With a heartbreaking cry, fire poured from his mouth like that of a dragon. The waves from the ocean below thrashed into the cliff so hard and so high that even Sozin was afraid he might be swept away.

"Shukaku." A woman's voice called faintly from the distance. Just past the soldiers, in airy light, she stood dressed in Earth Kingdom robes. She wasn't there. Not in a physical sense at least. She was a spirit, his own past life. He knew already what she was there to remind him; it was something she had told him on one of their first encounters. "If they kill you while you're like this, the cycle will be broken."

With the Avatar long gone and no return in sight, the cycle of the Akira very well may be the last hope this dammed world had for peace.

With nothing left tying his body to this world, Shukaku made a decision.

"It's time for you to go now, just for a little while." The bender told the spirit inside of him. "Find a new host, and wait. Live, please."

A disembodied voice hummed a reply somewhere deep inside him. Calm, but sad nonetheless. "Raava does not yield, and neither do we. Our time will come. Rest my boy, and be free."

A surge of fire was sent the Akira's way from one brave soldier but it was easily deflected. A flick of Shukaku's wrist pulled water from the ocean that whipped the soldiers and the Fire Lord surrounding him, sending them tumbling back and giving him the time and space he needed. This ended here, at least for now. As strong as he was he couldn't end the war on his own, not without the Avatar.

"Fire Lord Sozin." The voice that came from Shukaku's mouth was not his own. It was eerie, downright terrifying to those who listened, and it sounded as if a thousand other voices spoke at the same time as the young man who hosted them. "You may have won the battle, but you have yet to win the war. This isn't over yet."

Sozin watched as Shukaku took a step back and plummeted over the edge of the rocky cliff. His eyes only stopped glowing seconds before his body hit the water.