Scrolls told of how the Fire Nation attacked. A havoc descended upon the entire world on the day of the solstice a hundred years priour. Ripping the heavens, causing tears from La and Tui those in balance lost their rhythm as they wept. The ink faded in sections, old, worn, and well used from the many copies made for the people of the nation. In a time when oppression and distrust held them hostage they had melted the shackles and rose anew as a phoenix from the ashes of shame. An army awaited on the borderlands of the Southern Water tribe, an armadia upon the Earth Kingdom, an invasion force with the ability of a legion on the cliff sides of the Air Temples. A victory that elevated the people, each airbender destroyed and the Avatar cycle broken by the death of Ryoku, and the destruction of the Nomads, it was a through belief that none could rise from such a genocide.

Among many, it was a scroll he had read upon first setting foot upon Fire Nation soil. A sorrow that left nothing but a hole encasing his soul plundered through him at the understanding of a world he now belonged in. The truth within the Fire Nation was undeniable, irrefutable, without a complete cycle no Avatar could be reborn, there was no stopping point to the war, no unsung hero to guide the mass protests. As such it was decreed that the war of a hundred years would end under the rule of Fire Lord Madara.

By all accounts the man held little mercy, empathy, blazing high with passion, conviction and ruthless desire. A painstaken stubborn set certainty of victory. Seen widely as the herold from afar, sent by the deities to save a starving nation from the clutches of starvation and economic drought. Before him, his father had begun the campaign under those conditions worsened, the entire Fire Nation having been plagued by unjust taxation, racism and stunted by mockery for the anger in their fists.

None had seen the attack before it had occurred, the monks themselves had remained ignorant of impending extinction. Pacifists of great skill indeed were easily destroyed by those who pertained only anger from prejudice so long held. In time sections of the Earth Kingdom surrendered, jest; of unbroken will being past from soldier to soldier, the Southern water tribe was pillaged of all waterbenders, taken for extermination at various ages for several decades. Their great city fell, and only remained a bone society of elders and children screaming for their parents.

Sixty years- nearing seventy, into the war a young Prince Madara, than Lieutenant was under the command of General, serving to have waterBenders shipped to the jail rigs or passed the judgement of execution. Each to his eye a waterbender appearing as the rest, brown haired with dark toned skin, blue eyes and round faces. All looking upon the iron of the ship at their feet without any keen resolve to survive found. Within the last line he was instructed to pass upon judgement did his eyes meet another's for the first time that day.

The one who's eyes clashed with his own could remember the exact phrasing used to describe the event. 'I have met many waterbenders, you each have the same eye colour, yours are not blue at all.' The fellow crewmen that day had been questioning each other privately once it had been said out loud. For certainly the prince could see for himself that the eyes were indeed blue.

However, the rest of the man was not common among those of the water tribe. Sun-kissed skin, but not darkened in hue, instead honeycomb. With hair of spun exotic gold as the colours cultivated by Fire Nation Royalty. Not a rounded face, but one of a heart equal parts tranquil as it was fearless. While his eyes were blue they possessed three differing shades of the same colour, a blue tinted grey as that in the Earth Kingdom hotsprings, the clear aquamarine of the tropical islands of the Fire Nation, and the deep navy of arctic seas with water bender borders. Bright and so layered.

Many people had asked the crew of the ship that day what had intrigued the prince, yet their answered had never changed. 'For the Prince, in that moment, there was no one more interesting, it was attraction unlike anything understood by common man.'

Merely four years later, and that very same perspective prisoner became the spouse of the Prince, the official heir to the throne, regardless of potential water tribe heritage. A year later, after the death of Fire Lord Tajima, Madara's father, that prisoner became Fire Keeper and the second most powerful person within all of the Fire Nation.

This story is about him.