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Once Again into the Fray
Harry gasped, checking his side for the lightsaber mark he knew wouldn't be there.
He sighed as he sat up and looked around. The great white expanse stretched before him, filled with arches depicting all his past lives.
Dragons filled the skies of one archway. His defeat on the Tower of Edoc'sil at Galbatorix's hands still stung, all these lifetimes later. But hopefully their plan with the Vault of Souls would bear fruit in the age to come. Old Brom was still around in that world.
Another arch showed Konoha thriving under his best friend's rule. The Ōtsutsuki had been taken care of before they could ever become a problem.
Hundreds of worlds where he had intervened—either directly as the Chosen One or as the old master who guided those touched by Fate.
Albus sat on his usual bench, waiting. He watched as the scene of Old Ben Kenobi being struck down by Darth Vader on the Death Star painted itself across the archway Harry had just exited.
"Strike me down and I will become more powerful than you could possibly imagine." Albus spoke the words with an amused grin.
"Well? Am I wrong?" Harry asked.
"Anakin would never guess his old master was a cosmic cleaner," Harry said with a shrug. "Do you always have to wear that face? You know how I feel about him."
The old man shrugged. As the robes fell away, a black cloak replaced them, and a skull-like face took the place of the congenial grandfatherly look. Two blue flames burned where eye sockets should have been. "Would you rather I look like this?" The voice came deeper now, gravelly.
"Better than the old codger. So what's next?" Harry took a seat, watching as the next arch began to build itself.
"A special request, actually." Death waved his hand, and the history of the next world began to play out in the archway.
"Oh, you're taking commissions now?" Harry said, sarcastic.
"Don't get snippy. It doesn't suit you."
"You're the one pimping me out," Harry muttered.
"True. But you are free to refuse."
"When have I ever refused helping people? What's the job?"
He watched the scenes play out. "This world looks pretty war-torn, with a spiritual realm interconnected with the physical. So am I to be born as one of these Avatars, or one of their mentors?"
A glowing white being appeared in their realm. Her voice was light but distressed. "My last life, Aang, just passed. He did his best to rebuild after a century of war, but many of the world's spiritual realities have been neglected. Cracks are beginning to form, and I can feel my opposite, Vaatu, pushing at the edges. The Harmonic Convergence is coming within the lifetime of the next Avatar, and I would like to ensure peace continues."
Harry nodded. "So you want to stack the deck and bring in a specialist?"
If such beings could blush, Harry was sure this Spirit would be. "In a manner of speaking."
Harry sat and thought for a moment before nodding. "Alright. Sounds like fun."
The kite-like spirit tilted her head. "Just like that?"
"Trust me—if you knew me, you'd know this world looks like it'll be a vacation compared to some of the crises I've had to deal with." Harry flashed a cheeky grin.
"Alright. For this to work, I'm actually going to have to take most of your memories and… dull them for this world." Death spoke in a thoughtful tone.
Harry's head snapped toward his old companion. "What?"
"The Avatar cycle is a special dispensation, similar to the Master of Death. And I am… uncertain how your spirit will integrate with all the memorial spirits of the former Avatars."
"Seriously? Will I still be Master of Death after this life?"
"Oh, yes—that's intrinsic to your soul now. No, that won't change. But your spirit will need to leave an imprint within Raava after you die, too. So there may be some strange interactions, especially considering the spiritual convergence that's going to happen in this realm during your lifetime there."
"Joy," Harry grumbled. "Well, I already said yes. So let's get to it, eh?"
Death reached out, and with a single skeletal finger, plucked a strand of silver light from Harry's chest—the sum of his memories, dulled and distilled.
The colors in the archways muted to gray.
"I'll keep these safe for you, shall I?" Death asked.
"See you in a century or so, old friend."
Harry fell back into the arch. Raava flowed after him, her light wrapping around his soul as it contracted, folding inward, shrinking to the size of a child's. Their spirits merged—distinct threads braided into something new. His eyes flared white, then settled into the pale blue they would wear in the world to come. The shape of the boy he would become took form, and the white expanse faded into darkness.
o.0.o
Four years later
Southern Water Tribe
Tonraq opened the door to his igloo and bowed to the three figures in white robes waiting outside. "The White Lotus honors us. Thank you for coming."
He stepped aside, revealing a traditional living space lined with whale-tooth scrimshaw, water tribe scrolls, and the mounted head of a polar leopard. Senna looked up from her sweeping and smiled. "Please, be welcome in our home."
The three White Lotus members filed in from the cold, edging toward the central flame with visible relief.
"I won't sugarcoat it, Chief Tonraq." The leader was a squat man with a close-cropped gray beard. "We've investigated claims across both tribes and the Foggy Swamp. All false."
"Then your search ends here." Senna set aside her broom.
The man raised a skeptical eyebrow. "What makes you so certain?"
"Hakoda, come here, please!" Senna called toward the back room. "The White Lotus is here to see what you can do."
A crash. Scrambling footsteps. Then a four-year-old boy burst through the doorway, clutching a scroll, his parka half-zipped. "What? Already? But I wanted to practice more—I'm not ready!"
"See? Just another—" the old man began.
Green eyes locked onto him.
"Were you about to call my mother a liar?"
Hakoda snapped his hand out. A clay tile ripped from the floor and whipped past the man's head, shearing off a lock of gray hair. Before anyone could react, flame erupted from the boy's foot, setting the man's beard ablaze. A spinning kick followed—a ribbon of water from the melting pot snuffed the fire and soaked the old man from head to toe.
The boy landed, arms crossed.
"I am the Avatar." His tone was calm, precise, and far too adult for his small frame. "Deal with it. And do not insult the honor of my parents again in their own home."
"Hakoda!" Tonraq snapped.
The boy shrank in on himself. "What? The old goat was insulting Mom!"
Tonraq pinched the bridge of his nose. "Son."
The White Lotus member laughed aloud. "Well, I dare say you showed me, kid. Forgive me, Senna—I did not mean to imply anything untoward. Your son is highly articulate for a four-year-old."
Senna blushed. "That he is. Once we discovered he could bend more than one element after his first lesson with mistress Honam, we just assumed his strong vocabulary was a side effect from the accumulated past lives."
The White Lotus member turned to Hakoda and bowed. "Are you already connected to your past selves, Avatar Hakoda?"
The boy shrugged. "Maybe. But I've never met any of them, if that's what you're asking." He waved the scroll. "I'm reading Lady Katara's journals right now, and it all feels like déjà vu, but also like the first time I'm hearing it. If that makes any sense."
The tall White Lotus member in the back stared blankly for a moment, trying to parse the statement, then shook his head.
Hakoda just shrugged. "Anyway, Mom, what's this word?"
Senna leaned down and scanned the scroll. "The combustionbender, also known as…" She paused. "Did they really call him 'Sparky Sparky Boom Man'?" She looked to the White Lotus members, skeptical.
The old man chuckled. "Sokka was many things. Eloquent was not one of them."
o.0.o
Twelve years later
Water Tribe Training Fields
Hakoda stood tall, just shy of six feet, with broad shoulders and a determined set to his jaw. He wore the traditional lamellar armor of a Southern Water Tribe warrior—blue-gray whalebone plates laced with sealskin, cut to allow full rotation of the hips for bending. Integrated into the ensemble, a heavy green and black shoulder pauldron from his earthbending master. A crimson silk sash from his firebending master was wrapped around his waist. His hair was pulled back into a wolf-tail mohawk, and in his off-hand, he held a whalebone naginata—its curved blade carved from the jawbone of a leopard whale, the shaft wrapped in shark leather for grip.
Across the frozen training ground, three fire benders from the White Lotus shifted into position. Hakoda took a deep breath in and out, connecting with his Breath of the Dragon before the spar began. The final breath and a golden flame, the lowest heat he could produce, blew out as he exhaled, forming a ring at his feet. The young Avatar moved into the first form of the Dance of the Dragon, his naginata resting loosely in the crook of his arm, ready for battle.
"Begin," called Katara from the observation platform, her voice carrying crisp across the ice.
Hakoda held his hands loose at his sides, eyes tracking the stances of his three opponents. The firebender on the left—Jian—shifted his weight onto his back foot, settling into a defensive root stance. Hakoda saw the punch coming before the flame left Jian's fist. He exhaled, let his energy flow through his center, and wrenched control of the flame mid-air. The fire twisted like a ribbon caught in a gale, arcing across the training ground to slap against the defender on the right.
The center bender—Mei—drove forward with a blazing kick, flame sheathing her shin. Hakoda swept his naginata low, the whalebone shaft catching her ankle and breaking her footing. As she stumbled, he pivoted on his back foot and struck out with a controlled gout of flame toward Jian, forcing him to dodge into the path of his own redirected fire.
Sho—the eldest of the three and the only one wearing the traditional red and yellow—saw the opening. He launched himself in a flying leap, body horizontal, and kicked the naginata from Hakoda's grip. The weapon spun across the ice. Sho landed inside Hakoda's guard and drove a flaming palm strike square into his chest plate.
Hakoda stumbled back three paces, breath knocked loose. He briefly touched the hot spot on his chest plate, wiping away the soot from his warrior mark. Then he looked up and smiled—wild, feral, the expression of a warrior who enjoyed the fight as much as the art of bending.
"So you want to play it that way, Sho?" He rolled his shoulders, feeling the adrenaline spike hot in his veins. "Let's dance, then."
Hakoda bent his knees and launched himself high, a burst of flame from his heels rocketing him upward. At the apex he twisted, sending twin fireballs punching down toward Jian and Mei. They scattered, shields of flame barely deflecting the blows. Hakoda descended in a controlled spiral, landing in a crouch beside his naginata.
Sho was already backing toward the arena's edge, realizing his error.
Too late.
Hakoda snatched up his weapon and began spinning it in a tight figure-eight pattern, wrists loose and shoulders driving the motion. He channeled his chi through the whalebone—porous, once living, and unusually responsive to flame—and the naginata blurred into a wheel of fire.
Ribbons of red and gold, edged faintly in blue, wrapped around the spinning weapon and formed the outline of a coiling dragon. It was the culmination of six months spent practicing alone on the glacier, far from the White Lotus sentries and their disapproving eyes.
The dragon took shape between the blade and shaft. Hakoda’s precise weaving of the naginata gave the construct the illusion of independent motion. With each rotation, the dragon seemed to twist, flex, and breathe as he poured more chi into the form.
“I’ve been working on this for a while,” Hakoda said, catching Sho’s eye with a wink. “Thanks for letting me show it off.”
Sho did not respond. His eyes remained fixed on the flaming construct, seemingly hypnotized by its movements.
Hakoda struck.
He inhaled deeply from the diaphragm, just as his Fire Nation master had taught him, then exhaled a concentrated stream of flame directly into the dragon.
The fire-beast roared and leaped from the naginata, carried forward upon the stream of Hakoda’s breath. It grew as it moved, jaws yawning wide and scales trailing sparks.
Sho came back to himself and threw up a desperate wall of flame. The dragon shattered through it without slowing.
Hakoda felt how much chi he had poured into the technique.
Too much.
He drew back his stance and sharply cut off the flow, pulling his chi inward. The dragon unraveled an instant before striking Sho, but the released force continued forward. The shockwave caught the firebender squarely in the chest, lifted him from his feet, and deposited him on his backside three feet beyond the fighting boundary.
Sho sat in the snow, his hair smoking as he stared up at the dragon’s fading afterimage.
“Impossible,” Master Yim breathed, staring at the remnants of the flaming construct.
Katara chuckled, her voice roughened by age. “Obviously not. I seem to remember a circus performer doing something similar when I was traveling with Aang.”
“But such chi control…” Yim murmured.
Then pride softened his expression as he looked down at his student.
“Enough!” the firebending master barked, raising one hand. “Point and match. Avatar Hakoda has demonstrated mastery of the Dancing Dragon forms, advanced flame shaping, and precise breath control. The examination is concluded.”
Hakoda let the naginata come to rest against his shoulder, breathing hard but controlled. He extended a hand to Sho, still grinning. "You nearly had me with that palm strike. Two inches higher and you'd have cracked my sternum."
Sho took the hand, letting himself be pulled up. "Two inches higher and I'd be explaining to the White Lotus why I killed the Avatar."
"Nah," Hakoda said, clapping the older man on the shoulder. "I'm harder to kill than that."
Hakoda straightened, bringing the naginata to vertical rest at his side, blade pointed skyward. He bowed first to his opponents, then to the observation platform—the formal bow of a Southern warrior to his elders.
The White Lotus members exchanged glances. One made a notation on his scroll.
"Your forms are unorthodox," the lead examiner said, his tone carrying a note of disapproval. "The naginata is not traditional Avatar training."
"No," Hakoda agreed, his voice carrying the measured cadence of someone forcing himself to remain calm. "But I am not just the Avatar. I am a son of the Southern Water Tribe. I have completed my Iceflow trials and earned the Mark of the Wise." He tapped the symbol on his chest as he stared down the squat, bearded White Lotus master. "I have joined the hunting parties of my people, taking on leopard seals and arctic lion bears. The Avatar must master the elements. But a warrior must master himself. These forms teach me both."
"Against the advice of the White Lotus, endangering yourself in dangerous iceflows, and against wild beasts is entirely irresponsible!" the man said firmly.
Hakoda stiffened, looking to Katara for support. The man had just insulted their entire culture so flippantly. The old Water bender’s eyes hardened as she nodded to him to continue.
Hakoda took that as encouragement. He planted the staff end of his naginata in the snow and stepped up to the man. He pulled himself up to his full six feet as he stared down the much shorter man. "Respectfully, Master Ozu, by the rites of my tribe I am an adult. More than that, I am the Avatar. I should be traveling the world learning the elements as history dictates. But for whatever reason, when I was five, something happend that scared everyone. You have kept me here in the South Pole for my training, bringing masters to me rather than allowing me to go to them. You have your reasons, and from what I can deduce, they have been to protect me. It has protected me, I will not dispute that."
The man went to speak, but Hakoda pressed on before he could get a word out.
"But I draw the line at dictating who I am and how I conduct myself, especially from someone who would so casually insult the culture of my birth. If I am to be a fully realized Avatar, then I will need, not want, to travel the world and learn more than just my own culture. How can I keep the balance between peoples I know nothing of, or who know nothing of me?"
"Avatar Aang charged us with protecting his successor, Avatar Hakoda!" Master Ozu protested. “The peace Aang fought for has lasted years but there are still dangerous elements out there that you are unaware of.”
"And you think an Air Nomad, who traveled the world at twelve, fighting a war, mediating disputes and taming spirits, would have interpreted protection as keeping me sheltered and isolated from the world?" Hakoda countered.
Katara gave the old Lotus master a satisfied smile, "He has a point, Ozu. I told you I'd support your plan as long as Hakoda didn't voice an objection. It seems that time has come."
Hakoda smiled at his waterbending master. "Besides. The last Avatar was a monk. Someone should represent the martial traditions." He finished with a wink toward Lady Katara.
The elderly waterbender chuckled. "You know, sometimes I think you are an entirely different soul from Aang—and then I see a little of him wink back at me from the afterlife." She descended the stairs, her weathered hand reaching up to cup his face.
Hakoda couldn't help but smile. "You honor me, Master Katara," he said, clasping her hand in return.
The old woman snorted. "Don't go flirting with me now, boy. Your scores are set, and there's no changing them." She turned on her heel to walk away. "I suppose I will need to call Tenzin and let him know you are ready to begin your airbending training." She finished with a smirk.
Ozu stared at Hakoda. "Don't think this is over. You are still inexperienced, and Tenzin will agree with me." He stomped off, nursing his wounded pride.
Master Yim shook his head as Ozu left. "Don't mind him, Hakoda. You are more than ready. Your restraint and prowess today have shown me that. The rest of the council will agree. You aren't some impulsive teen entering your rebellious phase. You are a young man coming into your own."
Hakoda bowed, palm to fist, in the traditional firebender's bow. "Thank you, Master. Though to be fair, I am entering my rebellious phase," he said with a cheeky grin.
Yim rumbled, "Oh? And what makes you say that?"
"This." Hakoda swept his hands in the motion of the tides and launched himself forward on a wave of snow, drenching Master Yim, Ozu, and Dolan as he swept toward Nala's pen near the front gate of the Lotus compound.
Hakoda's laughter echoed across the training grounds as Ozu shouted obscenities after him. Master Yim simply smiled, warming himself with a measured Breath of Fire.
Ozu watched the boy disappear toward the animal pens.
"The Equalists are gaining support in Republic City," he said quietly. "He'll be walking into a powder keg. He may be a good bender, a warrior, but he is untested as a diplomat."
"How do you expect him to grow into one without giving him the opportunity, Ozu?" Katara replied.
"He's sixteen."
Katara smiled faintly. "And Aang was twelve. He learned by wandering the world. Hakoda learns by devouring every scroll he can find. Have you seen his room? He's had to expand it twice with earthbending just to fit all the books and scrolls he’s collected.”
Ozu fidgeted uncomfortably under the woman's stern gaze before finally nodding, “Call Tenzin. He can spend some time here assessing Hakoda, and if he thinks the lad is ready, I won't protest.”
Yim’s amused smile broadened into a full grin. “If Tenzin can relax long enough actually to assess the boy, I’ll eat my boots. No offense, Lady Katara, but for an airbender that man is pretty inflexible.”
Katara just raised her hands, declining to comment on her son’s shortcomings.
o.0.o
Hakoda smiled, pride swelling in his chest. Finally.
The White Lotus had kept him here in the Southern Water Tribe his entire life.
An Avatar was meant to travel the world, to know the nations—but something early in his childhood had spooked his minders, and he had never learned what. Whatever it was had kept him trapped at the South Pole for sixteen years.
But they couldn't hold him here anymore. Only one man could teach his final element: Avatar Aang's youngest son, Tenzin. The airbending master served on the United Republic Council and couldn't leave the city for long. If Hakoda wanted to master airbending, he would have to join Tenzin and his family at Air Temple Island.
Hakoda smiled as he entered his room. Nala immediately moved to her large fluffy bed between two shelving units. Scrolls and Water Tribe warrior paraphernalia lined the walls—maps of the Spirit Wilds, treatises on lightning redirection, a mounted polar leopard skull his father had given him when he'd completed his first ice-dodging trial. He had become known as something of a collector over the years.
He couldn't help it. The magical knowledge and history of this world was so rich, so layered, that resisting the urge to dig felt like fighting gravity. Old habits, perhaps. He'd been a scholar in a dozen lifetimes, a librarian in another, a wizard with a bottomless bag of books in one particularly memorable existence. The Hermione Granger Special, he called it privately—that desperate hunger to understand that had driven him through library after library across countless worlds. Perhaps it was to make up for his lack of enthusiasm for knowledge in his first life as Harry Potter. Either way most lives ended up with him archiving knowledge in some fashion or another.
Katara had called him her little Wan Shi Tong for the longest time. At least until he'd surpassed her in height and she couldn't quite call him little anymore.
And hadn't that story sent him down a rabbit hole.
He'd spent three weeks cross-referencing every mention of the Knowledge Spirit, cross-checking Avatar chronicles with oral histories from the Si Wong tribes. The owl's threat to sink his library into the Spirit World rather than let humans abuse its knowledge—it resonated with him in a way he couldn't fully articulate. Something about guardianship. Something about the burden of knowing too much.
He definitely wanted to head out into the desert at some point. See if the old owl had held true to his threat.
"So, Nala," Hakoda asked, scratching behind the ears of his polar bear dog, who lifted her head from where she'd been dozing in the corner. "What do we pack for Republic City, and what do we leave behind?
Nala huffed, unimpressed by the magnitude of the question.
Hakoda chuckled quietly. "Of course you don't care, ya big lug. But this will be our first time out of the South Pole. Don't get me wrong—I'm a proud Southern tribesman, but a life of endless tundra is not one I'm looking forward to."
He looked over his scrolls, and his hand rested on the water-whip scroll Katara had given him at their first lesson together. His eyes flashed white briefly as a memory surfaced—he was shorter, and Katara was a teenager, but he knew it was her by the hair loops and her smile as they ran from a group of river pirates.
"Guess it means a lot to both of us, eh, Aang?" he whispered. The Lotus was unaware of how easily he could communicate with his past lives. He knew that would disturb them more than anything. So he kept it quiet. He was amazed at the width and breadth of knowledge the Avatar Spirit held, but years of traveling the multi-verse had told him such knowledge was dangerous, even in a world so centered on that one mechanism.