Revive: An Avatar: The Last Airbender Fanfiction

Chapter One

The most infuriating part is that it all began with a sneeze.

It was a Monday. I know it's cliché, but Mondays are truly the worst days of the week. I'm nowhere near a morning person, so my alarm on a Monday after sleeping in all weekend is like the devil personally giving me a wake up call. This Monday was no different from the rest except for the fact that it was even worse than usual. After a weekend of trying to get over a persistent runny nose and sore throat, I had hoped that the beginnings of what I knew was going to be a kick-your-butt kind of cold would just disappear. You see, when I get colds, I don't just get them. I really get them. It seems as if my coughs and sneezes are some of the worst ever. I've been bedridden for days with only a simple cold to answer to. I was hoping that this cold, which I had seen coming over the course of the weekend, would simply slip away since I hadn't had the first sneeze yet. You know that a cold's there to stay once you start sneezing, but if you haven't began yet, there's still hope for your poor nearly forsaken soul.

At this point, however, I wasn't so lucky. I rubbed my nose once again with a Kleenex, trying to keep-for lack of a better word- snot from running out of my nose and making me look worse than I was sure that I already did. I hadn't gotten much sleep last night, and my eyes were red and irritated, my nose constantly running, my hair thrown up into a messy ponytail (and not the apparently fashionable kind), and I was wearing my comfiest pair of sweats and a old t-shirt from middle school. I usually tried to keep myself somewhat presentable, but today I arrived at school looking harried and unkempt. I really didn't care due to my current condition, however, so it wasn't that big of a deal. Looking back though, I guess I kind of wish that on one of the biggest days of my life, I would've been dressed in something, I don't know… well, something a little bit more important or presentable, something like as suit, or maybe a fancy dress (not that I even own either of those). I really had no idea about what was going to happen, but I feel like it wasn't really fitting to be wearing old sweats and a t-shirt while it did.

I pulled out my math book and put it into my arms, awkwardly shifting my box of ultra-soft Kleenex that I had brought from home. The school tissues were cheap and rough, and none of the teachers actually really had any in their classrooms anyways. It always felt like they were perpetually out of them, not that anyone really wanted to use them in the first place. In any case, I never settled for less than my Kleenex from home. They were strong as well, and could withstand my sneezes of momentous proportions. The school tissues broke apart at the smallest ah-choo. There was no way that I would sink to that level. Yeah, I know I sound really stuck up at this point, but it's about Kleenex, for god's sake. Does it really matter?

…Okay, yes it does. But I digress.

I was on my way to lunch anyway, so I didn't really need to be anywhere at anytime until my 6th hour class started. I decided to head into the bathroom and clean up, and see if I could, I don't know, splash some water in my face or something to try to get rid of the about-to-sneeze feeling that I had been getting for the past twenty minutes. Groggily, I set bundle of stuff on the shelf below the mirror and threw my backpack down on the ground. Everyone was at lunch, and the cafeteria was at the other end of the school, so no one was going to be down in this bathroom anyways. I didn't really care where my stuff went. Not knowing exactly what I was going to do, I pulled out my ponytail and redid it, combing several loose strands of hair out of my face in the process. I moved over to the sink and splashed a little water in my face. Much to my surprise, it made my face wet.

Well, what did you expect?

Oh yeah, I forgot you can't really read sarcasm. Well, go re-read that sentence sarcastically.

After biting my lip and wondering why I really came here in the first place, I felt it again. I squeezed my eyes shut as hard as I could, and took in deep breaths to try and satisfy the urge. I had found that taking deep breaths when you feel like you're about to sneeze sometimes helps to prevent it, and I certainly wasn't going to let my body give in and admit that I had caught a cold. It wasn't official until the first sneeze, so if I didn't sneeze it would go away. That was my reasoning, at least. I held my breath (metaphorically of course; I was still taking the deep breaths), and for a moment, I felt it go away. I sighed and relaxed my face, thinking that I had dodged the proverbial bullet. Instead, the moment after I let my guard down, the feeling returned with a vengeance, and I knew there was no way that I could avoid it, so I simply braced myself.

And then I sneezed and flew into the back wall.

What the hell?

I slid down to the ground rubbing my head from where it had impacted the hard tile. I felt like I had just hit a brick wall (It was tile, so truthfully it wasn't very far off), and was left dazed and confused. What had just happened? I mean, yeah, I knew the sneeze was going to be powerful, but not THAT powerful… No one sneezes and gets shot up through the air. I must've tripped or something. That had to be it. One does not simply get airborne by a sneeze.

I shook my head, still slightly disoriented. Even though it must've been a fluke, I still… felt something. Power. Beneath the surface, and subdued, but power nonetheless. Almost as if I could feel something stirring within in me, something dying to break free… I shook my head, trying to clear the thoughts out. This was all a fluke. A coincidence, and these things that I was feeling was a cold induced hallucination, or something of the sort.

I tried to push the thoughts out of my head, picking up my backpack and leaving the deserted bathroom. I had other things to worry about, namely how I was going to get rid of this cold before the cross-country meet coming up. I had been training all summer for this upcoming season, and I didn't want to blow the first meet of the season. That'd put me way down on the pecking order for future meets, and I didn't want to be any farther down than I was already as a first year varsity member. I bit my lip, my mind having already moved on from my explosive sneeze to other things.

Little did I know that sooner than I expected, I was going to have much bigger fish to fry.

That night, I dreamed.

It's not like I've never dreamed before, but I haven't really ever dreamed like this. My dreams before were usually pointless, and without any true meaning that I could ever discern, much less remember after the first ten minutes post waking up. However, every second of this dream was etched into my memory from the moment it begun. I couldn't have forgotten it if I tried.

It began with hundreds of statues, all regal looking with glowing eyes that lit up the dark tones of the dream. Something with these statues resonated within me, pulling me closer and closer, forcing my feet forward until I was toe to toe with the last one in the infinite row. It was a girl, muscular and tough, with twin ponytails on the sides of her faces and one large ponytail in the pack. She looked vaguely familiar, as if I should know her, but before I could place the face, my dream changed.

I was flying through the air through a blood red sky, surrounded by a sphere of what felt to me as pure energy, but appeared as a sphere of air, and streams of earth water, and fire circling around me with fervor. There was a feeling of togetherness, and a deep, underlying river of power that I had full access too. I felt like a god.

The dream shifted.

I was kneeling on the ground, unable to move my body because it wasn't responding to me. The room was dark and foreboding, and was such a change from the energy that I felt just moments before. A finger was placed on my forehead, and fear and dread ran through my body, but I didn't know what I feared. It was just there. Suddenly, the fear was ripped away by a heavy feeling of loss and defeat, an empty space in my mind if you will. I fell to the ground, unable to move with shock. Suddenly everything felt hopeless and bleak. I had lost everything.

Then came the final shift in my dream sequence. I was standing in my own bedroom, and I felt the soft carpet beneath my feet. The mirror stood in front of me, and I looked up inadvertently as a reflex, expecting to see my reflection just as before. However, I saw a face that was mine, but also not mine in a way, with glowing eyes and a face devoid of every emotion besides determination. Wind swirled around me, lifting the papers off of my desk and set the curtains into a frenzy, turning my entire bedroom into a maelstrom. Once again, and for the last time that night, I felt that sense of power; underlying, but deep and unending.

I woke up.

Immediately, I sat up and turned on my light, expecting to see my room in a state of total dysfunction. Instead it was just as I left it when I was going to bed, with all of my school papers still on my desk and the curtains just barely flapping as the night breeze blew through them via the open window. I took a deep breath, and laid back down, running a hand through my hair as I did. That was definitely, bar none, the weirdest dream I had ever had. The worst part? I felt as if it actually meant something, rather than just your average dream. Those kinds of dreams, you could go through a guide book or whatever and see what the fact that you accidentally left your boots at home when going snowboarding meant and try to squeeze a meaning out of them, but this one… this one felt so clear cut, so simple, and that I was an idiot for not realizing what my subconscious was trying to tell me.

The feelings left by the dream were still there as well. I shivered under my blankets as I remembered the loss and empty hole that was left after the third part of my dream. It was as if half of me was just… gone. Pushing the clearer than it should be memory out of my head, I realized that I still felt that power, albeit not so vividly as I had in my dream, but still there running beneath the surface.

With a shock, I remembered the same feeling when I sneezed. Still though, no one feels power when they sneeze. It pretty much would've been the stupidest thing to ever happen to me. Still though, it did. I bit my lip, probing it with my mind. I felt, it but I couldn't draw it out as freely as it had been flowing in my dream. What could I do to trigger it?

Sneeze, the little voice in the back of my head whispered. I frowned. There was no way I was going to call on some phenomenal cosmic power (that probably didn't exist in the first place) by sneezing. However, it was really the only way I could think of… It just didn't feel dignified. Maybe if I simulated something like sneezing, it would have the same effect.

I made contact with the power once again, then took a deep breath. I closed my eyes, and then exhaled as hard as I could. I heard a large amount of fluttering and shuffling and opened my eyes to see the large stack of papers that had previously been on my desk falling to the ground. My eyes widened. There was no way… but it had just happened, and part of me was starting believe that I had made it happen. I sat up in bed and leaned against the wall. This was the kind of stuff that happened in movies or TV shows, minus the experiment gone wrong or the radioactive spider bite.

I groaned and slammed back onto my bed, taking time to actually look at the clock for the first time since I had woken up. The display was winking 3:12. I sighed. I was not going to deal with this right now, and if I was lucky I'd wake up in the morning and it all would've been a dream. I snuggled into my pillow and closed my eyes, hoping that I'd fall asleep quickly and just forget about all of it, as cool as it was. I didn't want to have any responsibility that came with weird powers or anything. I already had enough on my plate.

I fell asleep quickly, and when I woke up I felt normal and like myself again. I ate a bowl of Lucky Charms and went to school and had a perfectly normal day. Then I grew up, went to college, met a guy, got married, and had fourteen kids. I forgot all about that weird dream and the events that followed that night. Life moved on.

Not really. I went to school that day, and for several days after that, but the new power I had discovered didn't go away. In fact, things started happening without me consciously trying to make them happen. And then, everything went haywire and my life got flipped upside down.

However, we'll get to that later.

A/N: This chapter was difficult to write. For some reason, I just felt like I couldn't get it right. However, this is probably the best that it's going to get, so I'm going to leave it here and just post it. I hope you all enjoy it, and please remember that reviews and criticism are always appreciated, but they're not necessary. It's cool enough that you even read my story. However, I do like knowing what everyone thinks so I can try to do better in the future. I hope you're all having a good summer!