AN: The season 3 sneak peek kicked me. Seriously. In a way I haven't been kicked since the end of the last season. Doubt I'll ever really be able to jump all the way back into the fandom, what with FFVII, Transformers, Black Cat, and my own original ideas. But, hey, it's a hobby, not a lifestyle. And my other hobby is dove breeding. So meh, enjoy this little drabble while I get cracking on my other fics that need so desperately to be finished, if anyone's still interested in season 1 and early season 2 AUs.

T E O . . . I N . . . A . . . T A N K

It'd touched something within him. Meeting the Avatar, that is. Along with all the subsequent events following the arrival of the airbender and his motley collection of friends.

"Even though Teo's not an airbender, he really does have the spirit of one."

...spirit of an airbender.

That's what he'd said. That Teo, a cripple with a glider, had the spirit of a member of an extinct civilization that had once ruled the skies. It had been a revelation of sorts for Teo. The Avatar viewed him (useless, ruined) as he would a member of his own nation. Teo hadn't known what to say, so he'd pretended he hadn't heard.

He'd felt a deep shame — Father, how could you? — when the Avatar, who had finally given Teo the honor of having his trust, had opened the supposedly sealed chamber only to reveal that his father — the man Teo respected above all others, even the Avatar — had committed treason of the highest sort.

Teo thought it was over then, but the Avatar had been merciful to him and his wayward father. He'd helped them undo his father's mistake. And then he confronted the end of his own people together with them as he helped them defend the very temple that had failed to shield his brethren from their end a century ago.

That battle, too, had been an eye opener. The final epiphany for Teo. One that would change his life forever. When news of the fall of Ba Sing Se reached them in their little isolated only-on-the-surface-utopia, Teo and his father had known their time had come. The Avatar needed them now if he was to stand against the Fire Nation and the formidable technology that they themselves had created. So together, they and their fellow temple dwellers, they constructed the self-same tanks that the Fire Nation had gotten from them (with a few modifications).

When the time came to deliver the tanks to the rallying point for the Avatar's forces Teo had gone with them. He was the only thing his father had refused the Fire Nation but would surrender to the Avatar. Teo wondered if his epiphany would cost him his life as he glared out through the small window in the tank's exterior at the approaching mass of the Fire Nation's army.

AN: So last night, my little sis was like "Do like Avatar anymore?" and I was like "God, I miss that fandom."