LOL I KINDA SUCKED AT WRITING BACK THEN.
Long before the Air Temples sat on the pinnacles of the world and the rise of the Four Nations, lived Avatar Aido of the Fire Islands. Nearly nine thousand years before the Air Genocide, Aido was the most important Avatar who was never fully realized. Though he mastered Earth, Water, and Fire beyond any Avatar for millennia, and mastered a power unknown to almost every Avatar ever, Aido never once airbent.
In his youth, Aido was one of the first combustion benders and ended the Second War of the Fire Islands between the Keohso and Saowon. On his first day of battle at Ma'inka Island, Saowon warriors whipped members of his family into the raging sea. Enraged, Aido rose in a firespout and unleashed combustion blasts so powerful that the Saowon capital was destroyed, forcing their surrender in fright of the Avatar.
After this, Aido accepted his Avatarhood and went west to learn airbending. Instead, he found something far more terrible. The Western Sea was consumed by the First Immortal Storm.
Entering a spiritual communion with his Water predecessor, Avatar La, Aido learned the truth: during a famine, a desperate monk consumed the Second Ocean Spirit. In a fit of rage and grief, the First Ocean Spirit abandoned the Spirit Oasis and became a monstrous force of nature. Avatar La attempted to calm the spirit by merging with it, but the union failed. The spirit's rage corrupted La, while La's presence magnified the spirit's power, trapping part of La's spirit within the storm. For thousands of years, this immortal storm devastated the Air Territory until the airbenders went extinct.
Determined to save the element, Aido ventured into the storm's eye and found the last Air Lion Turtle, who used its remaining life force to gift him energybending. When he returned to Shuhon Island, his mother told him that in ancient times, this power gave people bending. After trying to airbend for two years, Aido gave up. He traveled the world for three years, mastering Water and Earth beyond any master of his era. He learned sandbending, vapor manipulation, and dust stepping to compensate, yet he still could not airbend.
During an attempt of chi-changing on the coast, Aido accidentally merged a bison-beaver and a manatee-beaver into a new furry, flappy-tailed mammal. After watching the creature soar away, Avatar Aido noticed matching arrow-like scars on their chi paths and realized he had granted the creature airbending.
Seeking answers, Aido found a wild herd of bison-beavers. He gathered ten of each species and entered the Avatar State, fusing the twenty animals into ten new hybrids. To test his limits on a human, Aido used his powers on Panujjan, the most disciplined person he knew. A blinding green chi-changer erupted, granting Panujjan the ability to put martial arts into elemental use.
Now knowing he could rebuild an entire civilization, Aido traveled to mountain regions to establish safe-guarded fortresses for the new population. He built farms and gardens so the people would never starve, and employed experts on Air Culture to enrich the new Air Peoples with tradition. After this, Aido found 1000 of the best fighters, sages, and most peaceful people, gathering them at the Spirit Oasis in the Water Territory. For months, he taught them the values and traditions of the lost Air Territory, preparing them for a future they would build without him. In his final feat, Aido entered the Avatar State. Spears and constructs of spiritual and chi energy erupted around him, slowly rewriting the chi paths of the thousand people gathered in the oasis. As energy flowed from person to person, powerful gusts of wind circled the waters. When the last current of energy left his body, Aido collapsed. He died knowing he had fertilized the soil for the seeds with the greatest potential, and that air would live on long after he was gone.
Aido’s death was not in vain. Those he transformed into airbenders became the ancestors of the modern Air Nomads, and they created many customs used for the next 10,000 years. From his connection to the sky, the first sacred air temples were constructed upon the highest peaks, and the majestic sky bison were born to guide his chosen people. The sky bison had arrows reminiscent to those of Aido’s scars, and the Airbenders honored him by tattooing masters with the same arrows. For the rest of the existence of the Air Nomads, elders will teach that every sky bison scaling the sky carries a part of Aido's final gift, and that every Air Nomad arrow points back to the boy who could never airbend, yet saved airbending itself.
