Chapter 1.1- And so the Dragons Danced (ATLA Firebender OCSI)

“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.

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.