The Fire Nation had attacked.

Long ago, the four nations (water, fire, earth, and wind) had lived together in harmony up until this attack.

Only the Avatar, the master of all four elements (and not the Avatars of Wuweizi who could use Soul Crystals to enhance their own power) could stop the Fire Nation. But when the world needed him most, he vanished.

A hundred years passed and two teenage siblings discovered the new Avatar, an airbender named Aang, and although his airbending skills were great, he still had a lot to learn before he was ready to save anyone.

But Katara believed that Aang could save the world.

That’s what the TV show intro said, at least.

Xi Guo Lao kind of liked this show; it was one of the newest shows on Nickelodeon in the year 2005 (the year that this novel takes place) and it was very different than most concurrent Nick shows that he enjoyed such as Chalk Zone, My Life as a Teenage Robot, The X’s, and his personal favorite, As Told By Ginger. but it was also pretty exciting! He liked it quite a bit, even if it wasn’t necessarily going to be the best show he’d ever experienced (that honor would surely, permanently, be given to Megas XLR, which aired only on Cartoon Network).

But the show, which was on the TV right now blaring up really loud because his father annoyingly always turned the volume much higher than it ever had any right to be, also reminded Xi Guo Lao of the fact that he was failing very much to become the cultivator he dreamed of.

Maybe HE could have been the Avatar, the master of, uh, the Soul elements (there was only one type of Soul matter in Wuweizi so it wasn’t a good comparison), and he could be the one to vanish when needed most.

But instead, he was just a farmer living a simple life in a simple place.

Even though Avatar was playing loudly on the TV, so loudly that Xi Guo Lao could hardly hear anything but Sigourney Weaver’s exposition to Jake Sully about how the avatar process works, his father was certainly NOT actually watching it; instead, he had his air pods in his ears and was listening, also rather loudly, to vaporwave music—in this case, the Tetris CD-I soundtrack by Jim Andron. This annoyed him enough that he just had to leave the house.

“Aren’t you going to help make dinner?” asked Xi Gu Lao’s mother asked. “Hei Mei is helping, you know! And unlike you she is the heir to the Xi family estate, so she has an actual stake in improving her cultivation!”

Yes, it was in fact a part of Wuweizi culture that when family members passed away, they would also pass along their Soul Crystals to designated descendants. No humans were allowed to take the Soul Crystals, or the Soul Quests, of those they were not legally designated to take, and proof of such actions was punishable by death (except in love & war where all was fair).

Hei Mei, of course, was the eldest-born female and thus the only one eligible to inherit under Ghebville family customs. Xi Guo Lao very much hated this rule, but he knew he didn’t need any handicaps to get stronger. He was way too cool and charismatic for that. His personality was just so much more vibrant than her sister.

Her sister did another pose where she bent her knees together and winked at the camera while holding a soup ladle.

“I’m going out,” Xi Guo Lao said. “I need to meet up with my friends for the big carp hunting event.”

“Oh, don’t you get started with that!” his mother shouted. “You are not an arrogant young master, and I’m not going to hear from you when the arrogant young masters beat you up for trying to muscle in on their territory!”

Xi Guo Lao sighed. No use arguing with his mother. Instead, he would just ignore her.

He left his treehouse and jumped across a few trees (this village was very unfriendly in an accessibility standpoint to handicapped people), and eventually swung across a vine rope to the downtown area.

This was, like an Ewok village, a sort of connection of eight or nine treehouses linked by staircases, bridges, and a central plaza of flat wood planks that stretched down at the bottom of the area, about six stories above ground level. It was the place where festivals, concerts, town hall meetings, and other events were normally held, and whenever Giantesses invaded the jungle, it was the place for defense, since it was the lowest point in the central region from which they could fire bows and arrows down at their enemies. However, Giantess attacks were rare these days, and it was even rarer to see a Giantess more than three stories tall anymore (more likely it would have had to be that one of them was standing on the shoulders of one or two others, Lost Vikings style).

All the teenyboppers hung out here since this was where all the shops were, including the food court and roller coaster—basically the central downtown of Ghebville was the jungle version of Mallrats—but it was also the perfect place for people to congregate first when they needed to meet up before going somewhere else, since it was right in the center of the village. Navigating the jumbled expanse of trees and treehouses without going through the downtown area was nigh impossible for how convoluted and sprawling it was (the treehouse suburbs were always filled with traffic jams this time of day, as well), but almost all branches of the town were directly linked to the downtown area, so it was pretty easy to access.

Today, Xi Guo Lao would be going for that latter purpose, because he had somewhere to go after he met his friends. Meeting friends is, of course, the perfect way to get a fantasy story going, because friends often help introduce exposition and ground the protagonist AKA audience surrogate in the new reality before the inevitable action scene occurs. Xi Guo Lao knew none of that, though, because he was a fictional character and thus had no actual knowledge to begin with.

“That’s really rude,” said Xi Guo Lao. But we ignored him because who cares, really?

“Just ridiculously rude.”

Xi Guo Lao descended some stairs and came upon the grand plaza, where two arrogant young masters were dueling over honor. One of them had set it upon themself to train for several years to get revenge for being humiliated and initiate a face-slapping, while the other much more handsome, much more intelligent person was trying to make sure that they had no shame to come to them. Obviously, the latter person would win because it was still too early in the story for a real face-slapping moment to occur.

He watched the duel for a few minutes but it was a bit boring with all the jumping and kicking and no real damage being done to either of them, so he moved on.

Then he came to a small marketplace stall where a young boy was selling honeydews... and his dear friend Budou, the blue-haired, glasses-wearing genius, was haggling over the price.

“Honeydews cannot be worth more than three dollars a piece. And yet you’re selling for six dollars? It’s ridiculous,” said Budou. “I just can’t buy something like that.”

“Then don’t buy them,” the kid said plainly. “Honeydews are much more expensive to grow than you think. I’d be taking a huge loss on them at three dollars.”

“What? Preposterous!” Budou adjusted his glasses in the anime way that created a glare to show off his skilled intelligence. “It takes like, three weeks to grow a honeydew. You don’t even have to water them.”

“You’re completely wrong about everything you just said,” the boy replied. “Have a nice day. Or not. I really hope not.”

As Budou huffed away, he spotted Xi Guo Lao and his face brightened (and so did the glare on his glasses. “If it isn’t my medium IQ friend,” he said. “What brings you to the marketplace?”

“Uh, I was meeting you here, like you just texted me about?”

“What? Phones don’t exist in this world.”

“Oh yeah, I forgot.”

“I’ll bet you did.” Budou lit up a cigarette and blew it in Xi Guo Lao’s face, cementing the awfulness of the whole experience. They were good friends though, don’t worry.

“Well anyway, aren’t we gathered for the carp thing?”

“Uh, yeah, I guess. Once a year, and all.”

“I’m pretty excited about it,” Xi Guo Lao.

Then, suddenly, an unknown voice:

“I’LL BET YOU ARE, YOU CRETIN!!!!!!! XD”

A red blur zoomed into the scene and smashed right between Budou and Xi Guo Lao.