After knocking around one Lion Turtle for a while, Wan moved on to another, where he first encountered airbenders and then a horde of hostile spirits led by Vaatu, who had come to reclaim the lands humans had seized from them.
That was when the "heroic liberator" was finally shown his place. The spirits nearly devoured him alive and beat him half to death, but Raava, who had come chasing after her antagonist, drove the hostile spirits away… and then very kindly informed the airbenders exactly whom they should thank for almost getting them all eaten.
The "grateful" locals very nearly killed the idiot on the spot, but once again he somehow managed to talk his way out of it. More than that, the thief even managed to talk Raava into giving him control over air.
Basically: I need to help you defeat Vaatu, but I'm too weak, so hurry up and level me up already.
I have no idea what short-circuited inside the spirit's head. Spirits really were bizarre creatures. But she gave him air. Later came water and earth as well.
And naturally, the spirit personally taught him how to use them.
Having become tougher than a boiled egg, Wan returned to his homeland, presumably intending to settle scores with the island's rulers. Except by the time he came home, everything had changed.
His former accomplices now ran their own village built atop land carved out of the Spirit Wilds, and they weren't exactly thrilled to see their long-lost leader return. To make matters worse, furious spirits deprived of their old homes showed up looking for a nice meal of human flesh.
Avatar Wan threw himself into the conflict yet again, trying to make sure both "the sheep stayed safe and the wolves stayed fed," but he lacked the strength to pull it off. So he proposed that Raava act as a living battery by merging with him.
The Spirit of Peace, Order, and Stability agreed and powered the Avatar up, granting him a bankai… or something close enough.
The former thief rushed off to inflict goodness and deliver justice, beating the hell out of both sides alike. But he vastly overestimated himself. The Great Spirit possessed far too much power, while the thief's body had nowhere near the capacity to handle it.
As a result, the bender began to burn out from the overload, and Raava, saving her partner's life, separated from him and carried him far away.
The spirits, meanwhile, recovered from their "preventive beating" first.
And then they proceeded to enjoy their meal of human flesh.
What followed was a long mad dash toward the South Pole by an increasingly weakened spirit (because honestly, maybe don't go merging with suspicious individuals in the first place. Meanwhile, the newly freed Vaatu spent his time stirring up wars, revolutions, and conflicts everywhere he could. Not that humans needed much encouragement, honestly. All of it weakened the Spirit of Harmony even further) and an increasingly exhausted human (bankai takes a toll on the body too — just ask Ichigo).
Eventually the two of them confronted Vaatu once more and, through the power of sheer heroic bullshit, finally overcame him. Afterwards, they sealed him inside some incredibly mystical hollow within an incredibly mystical tree (what kind of tree it actually was, I never figured out, but whatever), where Vaatu remained trapped there to this day.
During the battle, under a set of unique spiritual conditions, Wan and Raava fused into a single being — and that was where the world's real problems began.
The spirit obsessed with "peace and harmony" acquired an active human mind and worldview, while an ambitious, arrogant, and — let's be honest — not especially bright young man inherited the full power of a Great Spirit along with an overwhelming fixation on harmony and balance.
Harmony and balance as he understood them, of course.
The first thing this genius did was throw every spirit he could get his hands on back into the Spirit World, severing their connection to the material plane. Just outright banished beings who had lived in forests and rivers, mountains and fields into an entirely different world most of them knew absolutely nothing about. And to make things even worse, he scattered them all over the place in the process.
The only thing that saved the spiritual population from wholesale slaughter were the Greater Spirits, among whom counted my feathered acquaintance.
But Wan didn't stop there.
Declaring himself the "bridge between the human and spirit worlds," he also appointed himself "keeper of balance" and "peacemaker," after which he began wandering the world "bringing peace" between nations. Which, in practice, meant showing up on battlefields and beating the hell out of both armies alike.
That continued right up until one fine day when the already aged, decrepit, and increasingly senile "peacemaker" finally got turned into a pincushion by a volley of arrows.
Well, in a sense, he accomplished his goal. The warring armies of the Fire and Earth actually united for the sole purpose of killing him. There was just one tiny problem, though. Humans are mortal. Well, their bodies are, anyway.
After death, the Avatar passed into spiritual form and, driven by his obsessive fixation, reincarnated into a new mortal vessel. Thankfully, death and rebirth apparently did wonders for clearing the mind. The new body also wasn't fused with the Great Spirit nearly as completely, so the next master of the four elements became noticeably more reasonable… and noticeably weaker.
Still, the Avatar remained powerful enough to keep the world "in harmony."
Or more accurately, under the absolute dominance of the Spirit of Order.
In stagnation.
And this nonsense had continued for ten thousand years.
(End of Chapter)
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