Returning Readers, Please Read:

A.N.

Sorry! I fell off the wagon with writing this! I'm sorry! I've got too many ideas up in my head. Plus, I've been busy with my junior and senior year of high school(AP classes, getting a job, picking a college)! Yeah, I'm that young! XD And now I'm older and going to college! DX I don't know what to do! Sorry! I want to update for you guys as much as I can! I really do!

Also, I'm sorry to say this guys, but I had a moment of crisis. I almost gave you guys up. I almost quit the story because I stressed out and got intimidated by Moonfire who has started her own version of the story. After a talk with both her and the original author, well... I've decided I need to start deviating from the script. It's hurting me creative juices and it's hurting your ability to get through reading my story because I can't update fast enough as a result. So, yeah. As the 13/12 year old who started this story, I'm now 17, almost 18, and I need to get MY story heard, rather than only Caeria's story. From here you can read Moonfire's story without getting spoilers for either of our stories, or, at least, most of them.

So, I'm gonna run with a story idea I had from a dream which I thought I had to make a new story for. But, guess what?! XD I realize now that I can easily fit it in. I just have to work around some plot-holes. So prepare for an uphevel of what you know and love about this story because I am taking full control! And things are about to get a little messy! Muahahaha!

-Thank you all Guest Reviewers and the realization that is Moonfire and Cearia in all their support. You all receive hugs and cookies from me. -And lets throw in all reviewers and readers into the mix, you guys can have some too! XD

Chapter 10: Cycles End

"Fuck!" Where the hell were they?! He was pacing back and forth in his tent, back from their scouting with nothing to show for it. He had another team continue onward, but there was hardly a chance of them coming up with anything. "Fucking Agni!" It was all their fault! He was biting his nails down to the numbs.

He paused a moment to look at them. Red like the blood he could have spilt from that Fire Brat! He clenched in his hand into a fist. There should have been more by his hands. Not this. Not nothing. "Dammit!" he growled.

"Sir-"

"What!?" Arun turned on his second in command. "What could it possibly be?!" The fire crackled behind him. "Did we lose another while we were away?!" It felt warm against his back. "Because that'd be just pumpkin-peachy!" The fire went out.

The commander looked over his shoulder at the dying embers, the smoke rising from its pit, scrutinizing it.

Nazir cleared his throat, wringing his hands nervously. "Umm... No, Sir. Unfortunately, that is not the case..."

Arun could feel his forehead scrunching up in confusion. He wanted to yell, but he felt himself spent. "What is it, then?" he asked gruffly, turning back to the embers, poking at the coal with a stick, only succeeding in moving the still simmering matter around.

"Red Mask is back."

He closed his eyes. "Oh, shit..." He wiped a hand down the front of his face, as if it will wipe all traces of what has taken place in the last few weeks, which had turned into a month or more...

He distantly heard Nazir leave.

"Shit," he said again.

" 'Shit' is right, my dear commander," said that cold voice that still sends shivers down his spine, even in his sleep. How he wished he could forget it.

His feet turned to face her of their own accord and he followed their lead, using the stick he was holding like some self-important cane of a rich man, which he is, thanks to people like her.

How he'd like to make her scream. But that wouldn't be a very useful business strategy, now would it?

"Ah, Red Mask. What a pleasant surprise-"

"Oh, spare me your pleasantries." He noticed more read in her attire under that dark cloak, and her hood was down, revealing a rounder, more youthful face, and dark brown hair pulled up into a tight bun. "Let's get down to business." She circled closer, coming to stand behind one of his nice chairs in front of his desk, real silk cushions of cushiony-green with the pattern of vines on them, which he won in a round of poker. "I hear you've misplaced something of mine," her silky voice went on, tracing the patterns on the fabric with her sharp talons, "but I know that can't be right since I gave explicit instructions not to misplace them." Her face was smiling with that mask. Her smile was anything but gentle.

He felt like a Canary-shark had just trapped its prey, but he didn't let his outward appearance show it. Why give the bitch the credit, the accomplishment of seeing him sweat under her gaze? Arun was anything but weak.

"Ah, yes," he smirked, like he had all the cards. "You heard about that, did you?" He inspected the poker in his hands, his well crafted stick he'd carved himself. "But, I'm afraid you heard it the wrong way."

"Oh?" Her smile tightened. "Do tell." Her grip tightens on the fabric.

"Those brats didn't get away, Ms. Red Mask." He paused for dramatic affect because he's an ass like that, smirking victoriously. "I killed them."

There was no gasp of surprise at his statement. The room was eerily quiet as he watched her from the corner of his eye, doing his best to remain unaffected by her unwavering stare behind that mask.

"Interesting," she finally said, smirking a genuine smirk that beat his own by a mile.

She released her grip on the chair to stand before him.

The chair had crescent shaped tears in the thread.

"Interesting you chose to say that." She reaches out to ghost her talons over his face, his check bone, which reflexively twitches. "Too bad nothing you would have said would have helped save you anyways. In the end," she dug her talons into his chin, making him clench his teeth and try not to strangle the little wench, "you all fall."

His eyes widened upon noticing his mistake.

Her hand ignited.

He felt the ache in his bones, the weariness of what had come of his weary existence that had amounted to nothing... All the memories, good and bad, floating around in his mind like bubbles on the surface of water, popping once only taking a glance - but one can remember that pop so well. The death of a bubble. The death of hope those memories bring - all meaningless.

He felt a stirring in the back of his consciousness, something, perhaps, pertaining to the avatar state and his past personas. They felt what's coming, he's sure. They'd always been present.

Katara

He wished he could see her again. He knew she was not dead, and neither was Sokka. His best friends. They were taken away from him, but they were still alive.

He could't do anything for them here, to make it stay that way, to keep them alive. He couln't stop the evil he was born to thwart. He couldn't do anything he was supposed to

...like marry Katara.

So, he goes.

He gave into the ache in his bones, the weariness of what had come of his weary existence that had amounted to nothing... and sleeps...

"What do you mean the Avatar is dead?!" Zhao roars.

It's beyond belief. Just standing here, thinking about it; standing there staring at it, staring at the evidence, the corpse. How could one all powerful being just die? They weren't treating him overly harsh. All he did was just hang there. And he was dead. And it was your fault. But it's NOT, he refutes. How was he supposed to know the Avatar would get so depressed that he'd consider suicide, consider just letting himself go when the world needed him most? How was he, all powerful, but ultimately mortal, Zhao, supposed to understand the workings of a million year-old soul stuck in a twelve year-old's body? How in the name of Angi was this fair? After everything he worked for! After all the trouble it took to get him here! How could the kid just die?!

He was fuming in the hallway outside of the cell, fists burning in indignation.

He hadn't even begun to think about what the Fire Lord would say to this. He was given the Avatar and the young Water Tribe boy he was with; they were his charges. He supposed to keep them just barely alive, a difficult balancing act to begin with. With the Avatar dead, though, any promotion he may have been inline for receiving were shot. The fact that the Water Tribe boy was alive was not enough to make up for the fact that he let the Avatar die.

What was Zhao supposed to do?

He figured he'd just lie and blame it on someone else, one of his subordinates.

He looked down the hall, spotting his subordinate Guo, his second in command, whom he had learned to trust. He was flanked by two imperial guards, which caused Zhao's hackles to be raised and his eyes to narrow.

He should have known never to trust. He should have know loyalties were fickle to one's own agenda. He should have seen this coming... even as he was shoved into a wall and shackled, pulled along to his death sentence. He should have seen this coming.

The death of Admiral Zhao was swift and under-publicized. It wouldn't do for the public to know, just yet, that the Avatar had been reborn, not that it'd truly stop anything.

Fire Lord Ozai smirked.

Zhao's death was no real consultation, neither, in the grand scheme of things, was the Avatars.

"My Lord," Guo said from his right. The beheading of the Admiral was done in the courtyard below. From the balcony of his throne room, they'd watched. "You seem unaffected by today's events."

"I could say the same for you," he replied pleasantly, turning to walk back inside.

Yes, Guo, a simple soldier with a boring title under Zhao, had turned against his Admiral and had now become an Admiral himself, all in the span of a day or two. What an interesting development. What an interestingly loyal man to his cause. The smart young man had even managed to get Zhao to reveal his future plans of the North to him.

In a matter of a few weeks, they'd have their men heading over there to the North Pole with Guo at the helm.

Everything was falling into place.

The young man, only in his late twenties, felt the need to keep questioning him. "But, Fire Lord Ozai, the Avatar was not killed in the Avatar State, the Avatar will still be reborn. Our search will just start over again, right?"

Ozai just nods at the poor fool, but he supposed he couldn't really blame him. It wasn't like the man had all the cards, all the tiles in this game. He was new to it, so he supposed he had to give the man a bit of slack. "Yes, though your raid of the North Pole should rectify that, wouldn't you think?" He could see the wheels turning in the young man's head as he put the pieces together. "And, if it should fail, all we need to wait for is the coming of the comet in the summer. At that point, the game is won and the world," opens his arms wide in a grand sweeping gesture, "is ours. Even if there is an Avatar born that successfully manages to stay alive," which he highly doubts as his men will be sure to be thorough, "there will be no time to train a new avatar." At this point, Guo is nodding and smiling along with his talk, so easily swayed. "The babe will be out of teachers, out of time, nothing but a babe, and it will be consumed by fire."

"-There isn't time to wait for a new child to be trained!" Roku argued.

A few of the newest past lives stood arguing as the ones most prominent in the future of the Avatar. Aang's soul lay in the balance in those precious few moments before they were all reborn again in their pressing cycle. The Spirit World was good for slowing down those moments.

"You can't! We'll be messing up the cycle," Kuruk, the last Water Tribe born Avatar, warned.

Kyoshi, the last Earth Kingdom Avatar, was just as displeased by this plan. "We may never get a new avatar again."

"If we don't, the Avatar cycle will cease to exist anyways with no Earth or Water Tribes left to be reborn into," Roku pointed out, irritated that the other lives could not seem to grasp the importance of this kind of plan.

"But," Yangohen, one of the more arguably peaceful Avatar's due to her airbender heritage, asked, "Are you sure that he's the correct choice for a new one?"

"That's right," Kyoshi agreed, " he is Fire Nation. Are you sure he will not decide with his nation?"

Roku glared at them. "Are you sure the Fire Nation will have an easy time killing one of their own? That this will not only completely throw them off, but ensure safety?"

"Yes," Kuruk entered back into the conversation, "I admit. That is a fair point, but he is already born, already alive. How in Spirits name do you assume that we can combine our soul with his and not completely destroy his own in the process?"

"It's an impossible a task," Yangohen agreed.

The dragon tamer growled like a true dragon. "Have you forgotten?! He is of my blood?!"

"He is also of Azulon's," Kyoshi coolly remarked.

Roku gave her a determined look. "My side will prevail. He is his mother's child just as his sister is her fathers. They both belong only to one parent in the end. Their natures are opposites."

"Still, there is no guarantee," she returns.

"And, yet, there is no success with the old. At least my grandson has a chance!" He edges towards the ball of chi, ready to be sent out to the next Avatar.

A hand appeared on his shoulder, a firm grip preventing him from going any further. "Please," Kuruk tied to reason. "Think about-"

"Think!?" Roku spits in outrage. "We don't have time. Either rebirth an avatar, the age of a babe to go fight and die against the Fire Lord, or salvage our last hope." He was out of Kuruk's grip, out of all their reach.

"Roku-!" They shouted at him.

There time was up as a blinding whiteness enveloped them and they were reborn.

A.N.

Muhahahah! I come back to this fic corrupted! How do you like me now!? I just killed off the main character in this universe! XD I turned the story on its head!

I feel liberated! I think I just broke some sort of rule!

I also killed our main antagonist(s?), with Arun and Zhoa being gone, and created new ones to focus on to go with it! XD How do you like me now universe!? I killed three, maybe really only two...?, main players in one chapter! XD

By the way:

The name "Guo" means Fortification.

And an unanswered question I pose to myself... Where's Iroh?