PHM x ATLA
Like 1000 years after Korra when the world looks a lot like ours, it would be pretty hard to keep track of the Avatar and where they'll be born with how much the nations and peoples have intermixed. Sooo they may have.. sort of... lost? the new avatar? This is a really unfortunate time to not know who the Avatar is when the sun is dying because not even the priests of Agni are having much more luck than the average scientist at figuring out what's going on. Irina Petrova publishes her findings as normal and the world elects a rather unspiritual Airbender to lead the Petrova Project: Eva Stratt. While she is a democratically elected dictator she has one rule: She is not allowed to influence the Avatar should they pop up. She is subject to their judgement as much as anyone else. Things progress as normal, she picks up a mediocre water bender with a PHD in microbiology that is surprisingly against life possessing his own element but she needed free thinkers. One day a terrorist organization with a grenade invades the Vatt and manages to get down to the secure room the most important people are in like the astronauts and lead researchers. They are blocked by a piece of metal from the floor of the ship being bent up and blocking the grenade. When it explodes, the shrapnel is rapidly cooled and thrown back at the attacker, killing them pretty instantly. This wouldn't be of special note except that it wasn't trained military man and earth bender Yao who did it, but the now unconscious Dr. Grace who had clearly panicked and tried to waterbend and well... he certainly bent something. Stratt swears everyone in the room to silence. It becomes clear that Grace has little recollection of the event and after confirming he too believes Yao did it, Stratt adds supervising bending practice of the astronauts to Grace's schedule. After all, we can always learn from other elements. She finds a list of the best teachers the world could offer in any primary or secondary bending skill an Avatar could possibly want to learn Things get tricky when the science officers die because clearly triggering Grace's fight or flight is going to go supremely poorly so if he does decide that he's not getting on the ship willingly they can't just jump him. Historically jumping the Avatar almost always goes incredibly wrong and involves a lot of property damage. So instead of a syringe, within the vent system some narcotic gas is being held just outside Stratt's office with her own bending. When he starts to panic after she pushes, she releases her hold on it and invites him to sit down and walk her through another plan. To his credit, it's a good plan. He'd clearly thought about this too. But it wasn't the best plan and Eva Stratt, holding the core Tennant of her cultural bending history closer to her heart than perhaps any airbender before her that "All life is sacred", cannot settle for simply good. She--the world-- needs the best for this. She believes Dr. Grace can save the world.
4 relative years later Grace wakes up with a perfect memory and a note in his bag "You're the Avatar. Do NOT fire bend in the Hail Mary. Earth and Airbending are also inadvisable before you are absolutely confident in what you're doing. There are plenty of tutorials online. We believe in you." - Eva Stratt (and Carl) The don't go crazy room also incudes little spiritual relics now and a small spirit garden beneath the catwalk.
Grace is convinced that either he and everyone else was crazy for believing he's the Avatar or that he does in fact have amnesia because he thinks he would certainly remember being the Avatar. Also somehow his pet cat-fox is here but a little more... iridescent than they were before. Was Charcoal always that big? Eventually he meets an alien! They can bend too! Initially he thinks it's Earthbending but it is in fact Heavy Metal Bending. No earth bender can bend something like Xenonite Grace is 100% sure. Rocky can even bend pure iron. Apparently it's the only element Eridians have to bend, if they're a bender. Grace has just discovered a 5th element and Rocky has just discovered there's more than one that a person can bend, let alone all the secondary applications. They are both flabbergasted. Charcoal and Rocky beef hardcore. During the Adrian trial Grace goes into the avatar state and its the second most beautiful thing Rocky has ever heard right after Adrian his beloved mate. The nearly dying did admittedly nock it down a few points. Charcoal and Rocky are no longer at odds. So in the end Grace becomes the greatest Avatar of all time, saving not only the world but the known galaxy and creating the geographically biggest era of peace amongst different species ever recorded. The power of friendship should really be counted as another element. Then he one ups even his own self when he gets to Erid and is greeted by THEIR Great Spirit who bestows Heavy Metal bending to him and Raava, thus officially adding it to the Avatar cycle. Which could mean nothing... He solves spiritual problems on Erid, usually at least slightly on accident through the power of cultural sensitivity. The Eridians suddenly understand why it would nice to have one of those all the time.
Also Rocky is the best-- the universe's specialest little guy said it himself. No Rocky will NOT be taking any criticism thank you. After Grace dies about 50 years later an orphaned pebble who recently may or may not have accidentally brought down an abandoned building made of dirt trying to hide from bullies, is with it's classmates taking a tour of the biodome when they hear more footsteps in the sand and a friendly voice that they feel more than they hear that offers to show them their favorite place in the dome. The pebble is intrigued and follows the kind voice and set of two footsteps off the path where they find an outcropping overlooking the ocean underneath a tree with an older Eridian sitting beneath it. The impression of a freezing 5 fingered hand gives them a nudge forward. "Tell Rocky I say hi would ya? I think he needs a hug."
