New Top Gun AU idea because the original is my favorite BUT AUs are funnier for the mental films. So, today we've got an "Avatar: the last airbender" inspired AU (sorry for the long ass post, i just need to write everything down for future needs):
• So, starting as usual with the old Top Gun, we've got Maverick as the last airbender survivor. Everyone else got wiped out by the soldiers of the Fire Nation and so, Maverick is the only one that is now able to teach airbending to the future Avatar.
He meets up with Goose (earthbender) and Carole (non-bender) while he's escaping the firebenders and so they start traveling together with only one objective in mind: keeping Mav out of the Fire Nation's reach to ensure a future for the Avatar lineage.
• During their travels, they end up becoming friends with Iceman, a prince from the Northern Water Tribe and also a very, very good waterbender (he's the one that mastered bloodbending while defending his people). He should stay home to become the next chief of the whole Tribe, but instead he decides to run off with Maverick and the Bradshaws (and with Slider on his heels, obviously).
Their new plan? They're young and high on adrenaline, so their objectives varies from finding the new Avatar and teaching him all the bendings to sneaking into the Fire Nation and wreak havoc in their army to slow down the raids. Nothing goes as planned (you could've guessed that), Goose gets killed to protect Maverick by the Fire Nation and the little team is broken. Everyone gets back to their lives, not having great aspirations anymore, just wanting to keep a low profile.
• Maverick lives on the run until he's old, traveling sometimes to the Northern Water Tribe to meet Iceman, who focused on his duties (bonus points if he's now married to ensure an heir and that hurts Maverick and him both, bonus bonus points if in the end he has to become the Moon Spirit, but in this house we like an happy ending).
• Now, to get into the new Top Gun, we've got Bradley, who's an earthbender like his father and will create metalbending later in life. He grows up with Maverick, gets left behind by him in a raid and feels like he abandoned him too (when in reality Maverick was just trying to keep him safe, since it's him that the Fire Nation wants him, but he did it in the wrong way), so their relationship gets very damaged.
He becomes a nomad and spends his twenties traveling through the cities, learning things and cultures and earning money by doing little reparations or adjusting machines. He meets Phoenix and Bob during one of those trips and they decide to team up over their shared hatred for the firebenders (Bob actually has no opinions on them, he just follows Phoenix after she kicked asses to get him out a bad situation). They realize quickly that the best way to stop the Fire Nation is to find the Avatar, so Rooster reluctantly agrees to find Maverick and get his help in the search.
• Phoenix is the last waterbender from the Southern Water Tribe and she'll learn everything from Iceman.
• Bob, instead, is a non-bender from Ba Sing Se and he likes to invent stuff to get things done even without being able to bend an element. Living in the city, he never really got close to the concept of the war and everything going on, but he learns very quickly and his brains become very useful in the long run.
• Finally, the Avatar. And i know you're going to come at me because i just made my favorite character the Avatar but I SWEAR there is a good story behind (also, i don't give a fuck and i like making my favorite characters the most problematic one, sorry). So, Hangman is the Avatar. But it's a notion useful for later, because we need to take a look at his background first.
He is the only male child of the current Fire Lord and he has been raised since the start to become the next one, learning lightningbending and everything else like daddy's good little soldier. He has a suspicion that he is the Avatar and so do his mother and sisters, but they all collectively decided as a natural reflex to keep it under wraps and pretend that Jake never bended other elements when he was a kid, because his father is already bad as it is and they don't want to make it worse by revealing his son is someone he swore to kill.
When he is sent to find and kill Maverick, Mav clocks him immediately and since Jake HATES his dad with a passion for various reasons it's easy to convince him to defect and travel with them to learn properly how to bend other elements and stop his father. So, he is a firebender, he has Phoenix/Iceman for waterbending and bloodbending, Maverick for the airbending (which is in the end his favorite element, because just like Mav he craves the ability to fly and move with the air and the freedom that comes with it) and a very reluctant, very grumpy Rooster to learn earthbending (they are enemies to lovers coded here too, i'm sorry, so you get bonus points if earthbending is the hardest one to learn for Hangman and they bicker over it constantly until Rooster puts his anger aside and becomes an actually amazing teacher and Hangman mostly stops being a dick to focus on the task).
It would be interesting in a psychological point of view if in the end, when he actually confronts his father, Hangman shows that a child raised in violence and faced with the one that made him like that crashes out, despite being happy and having found a good environment with good people. Maybe in the desperation of the moment, he doesn't have the maturity to show mercy.
• Last but not least, Coyote is also a firebender and he's the only kid dumb (kind) enough to still be Hangman's closest friend even after seeing how his father is. Despite his ability to bend, he takes a genuine interest in Bob's works and he's the first to make Phoenix and Rooster change their opinions on firebenders.
Maybe i will add more to this AU when i get some good ideas for the other Daggers! Please, if you write something on this AU tag me because i need to read it BADLY.
