--CHAPTER ONE: TAKE-OFF --
The plane shuddered slightly as it reached cruising altitude and leveled out. It was a small one, a lush private plane which carried only three passengers at the moment. They were all teenagers, and though very different from each other, were all very unusual.
Steve Wellington, as far as the rest were concerned, was the most unusual of the three. Unlike his companions though, he had only just learnt of this. Steve had been born in the Ohio countryside but had been taken to New York when he was three. There, he’d spent the next 13 years of his life with his mother, Laurel – Just another unremarkable kid in the big city. He had never known his father or anything of him.
All these changed when, just 16 hours ago, Chris McGregor showed up at his door and informed him he was the Incarnate – a being who was reborn every generation with access to all the knowledge and experiences of his past lives. The holder of wisdom from ages past. After that, things had progressed very rapidly. Steve had been taken to meet the leaders of the Bending Alliance, an organization founded by his own father Thaddeus Wellington, made up of persons capable of physically manipulating the four elements –an art called bending. They told him of a threat and the need to secure a mystic totem from his childhood home at Ohio, sending him off with Chris and a girl called Jean. They had succeeded, but only after an intense and unexpected battle with The Solution, a rival organization to the Alliance. Now, they had the totem.
However, they were not heading back to New York as originally planned. In fact, they weren’t heading anywhere within the United States. They were heading to China.
Chris unbuckled his seatbelt and stood up. “I’m going to check on the pilot,” he told the other two, smirking confidently as usual. “Back in a minute.”
He flipped his long, dark hair and disappeared through a door.
Steve watched him go. Christopher McGregor was a firebender, which meant he had limited pyrokinetic abilities. He could create fire and energy blasts, including electricity—lightning. This last skill, as well as his ability to redirect lightning blasts shot at him could only be done by a select few firebenders. In the world of bending ability and skill, Chris stood out. But he also stood out in a different way. Chris’ father was Sir Robert L. McGregor, founder and C.E.O of McGregor Tech, one of the world’s largest tech companies, and a distant cousin to the English royal family, which meant he was extremely rich. The plane they were flying in was his. Sir Robert, Steve had learnt, was also one of the Alliance’s two leaders.
Steve unbuckled his seatbelt and stretched, looking over at his second companion, Jean. Unlike him and Chris, she hadn’t made any move to free herself, but sat stoically in her slightly tattered, dark ninja-like clothing, facing straight forward.
Jean Gagné was the most mysterious of the trio. Steve knew next to nothing about her, except that, for some reason, she absolutely disliked him. He’d pieced together from her name and slight accent that she was a French-Canadian, but any question about her had resulted in a fiery diatribe. Attempts at conversation hadn’t gone well either. Yet, just like Chris, the blonde girl had shown an utmost dedication to protecting Steve. She was an extremely smart, extremely skilled waterbender. She was also very fierce. Steve had seen her without a scowl only about twice.
He had only known them for a few hours, but Steve already trusted them both completely. This was his team, though Jean would never let him call them that. The first time he’d mentioned it, she had all but ripped his head off. She definitely wasn’t into the whole team thing.
Still, Steve knew that if he was to truly be the Incarnate and succeed at the mission, he needed his team.
The Incarnate and the ability to control the elements were very similar to the Avatar mythos from a fictional animated series aired on the teen channel Nickelodeon a few years back. Steve had seen every single episode of every show connected to it, read every comic book published as part of the same universe, and followed fan-pages dedicated to it. So far, there had only been a few differences between what was really going on and the cartoon. In the Nickelodeon Avatar universe, there was no Incarnate. Instead there was the Avatar, who was also a reincarnated being very similar to the Incarnate except for one thing—the Avatar possessed the additional ability to control all four elements, whereas Steve could control none. The Alliance had made it clear the two weren’t the same, which was quite disappointing and made him very dependent on his team. Not that he was after powers or anything. It would have just been easier if he could assist whenever they were attacked, instead of cowering behind Chris and Jean and the rest of the Alliance.
He even had trouble thinking of himself as the Incarnate. Avatar came much easier, probably because of the series. It was the same with the younger members of the Alliance, including Chris and Jean, though Steve could not really picture the scowling girl watching the Last Airbender or any of the other Avatar cartoons. He’d supposed she must have picked it up from the other kids. Incarnatus, the term the elders used to refer to him just didn’t sound as cool.
But then, when they had gone to Ohio, they had met his Grandma Lily. Gran knew everything. And Gran had also called him Avatar.
He hadn’t been able to ask her about it then because of the Solution’s attack on them and their consequent flight from the village. She had fled with them—the Alliance’s initial assumption that the Solution wouldn’t harm an old lady had proven false. They had decided the best place for her would be with the Alliance colony in New York and sent her off on another plane. Just before she boarded the flight though, he’d gotten his chance. Her reply had startled him.
“Why,” she’d said. “That was the title your father used, the title we’ve always used right from the beginning. There were other different titles especially in other languages, but Avatar stuck.”
The Alliance’s explanations had left him with the impression that Incarnate was the original term and Avatar just something the cartoon writers thought up. But if his father, the very founder of the Alliance had used the term Avatar, where then had ‘Incarnate’ come from?
The truth was he had no idea what being the Incarnate meant. He had no idea how to be the Incarnate or what kind of abilities he should have. From what he understood, no living person knew either, which meant there was no one who could teach him. How was he supposed to guard the totem? How was he supposed to do anything?
Suddenly, the door at the other end of the cabin opened and a pretty stewardess rushed past to the door Chris had gone through. A few seconds later, she reappeared with Chris by her side. Steve raised an eyebrow in question. Jean looked around too, her face impassive, but her eyes sharp.
“It’s nothing,” Chris told them, though he seemed slightly unsettled. His usual smirk had a nervous quality to it. “There’s a video conference room on the plane... My old man and Director Strongman just want to facetime, that’s all.”
“Do we come along?” Steve asked.
“No, I think they just want me. I’ll come for you if they ask. Just wait here—I shouldn’t be long.” He went to the door, but before he went through, he turned again. “We’re currently on our way to Beijing at 500 miles per hour,” he said, “which means we have 14 hours of flight time ahead of us. When I return, I believe we’ve got some work to do.”
And with that, he was gone.
“What was that about?” Steve muttered. Jean, of course, merely sent him a baleful look and didn’t reply.
Steve sighed. Chris tried to act cool about having a world famous dad, but that was all it was: an act. Anytime he talked about him, Steve could clearly see his pride at being a McGregor (they were English royalty, no matter how many cousins he claimed separated them from the throne), mixed with slight intimidation by his father’s personal success, the feeling that he had to live up to it, the resentment that feeling brew, and many other emotions he couldn’t identify. Little wonder he would be nervous when the man summoned him so urgently. But he was right. They did have work to do. And that was putting it quite mildly.
The truth was, though they were already on their way to China, they had no idea where exactly they were going. They had to figure it out before they arrived or there would be absolutely no point to their travels—just an immense waste of jet fuel. Steve knew this was the reason Jean was even surlier with him than usual. He had been the one who insisted they begin the trip at once, based on a vision he’d had just before the Solution’s attack. But what was he supposed to have done? Allow the only chance he might get to connect fully with the previous Incarnates slip past? Unfortunately, the vision had only shown him a temple somewhere near the Great Wall of China. Since the Great Wall stretched for miles, that didn’t exactly narrow it down. Worse still, the temple’s inner sanctuary, the room he actually needed, only opened to the Incarnate on the Summer Solstice, which would end in 20 hours. After landing in Beijing, they would have barely 6 hours to get to the temple.
Still, they had to try. The temple might be the only place that held answers for him, and finding it might even be the key to figuring out how to use the mystic totem around his neck to avert the threat the Alliance had told him about. And the thought of that threat truly scared him. If he failed, there was no telling what would happen.
Ten long minutes later, Chris returned. And this time, he wasn’t smirking.
Steve’s heart skipped a beat. “Chris? What’s it? What’s happened?”
Chris’ eyes darted between Steve and Jean. His words came slowly. “We’ve got a bit of a situation.”
Jean’s eyes narrowed but she remained quiet.
“What?” Steve asked, alarmed. He realized he was on his feet though he hadn’t made any conscious decision to get up. “Is t the colony? Is Grandma Lily okay? Is my mom?”
Chris sighed heavily. “No, it’s not the colony,” he replied. “It’s us.”
Watch Here for Chapter 2: Troubles
The Lost Legend series is fan fiction based off Nickelodeon's Avatar franchise.
Find more of my original works as Peter M. Ogwara on Amazon!
