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Kyoshi’s lungs were burning, a singeing, aching kind of burn deep in her chest. The world was on fire around her, thick black smoke covering the sun, casting deep shadows onto everything in sight. The air was choking and thick with soot, her skin burning from the ash and flames alike. Her head was spinning, blood tricking down into her eyes, sweat sticking to her skin. Everything ached a fierce kind of pain, and for the briefest of moments, she could barely remember where she was.
Sound suddenly returned to her, the screaming noise of fighting clamoring for her attention all around her. Her vision, still blurry from whatever had hit her, struggled to make out figures in the dancing flames. The unmuted world was causing her headache to grow tenfold within seconds, a pressing pain behind her eyes, and as she stood on unsteady legs, she nearly whited out from the pain.
“GET AWAY FROM HER!” a voice boomed through the battlefield, causing Kyoshi’s head to whip towards the sound. Everything blurred and tilted dangerously, and Kyoshi felt herself stumbling as she latched onto that voice.
Like a phoenix rising from the ashes, Rangi burst through the flames, golden fire seemingly responding to her very presence. She leaped into the air, flames bursting from her feet as she stepped over the fighting, more ethereal than Kyoshi had ever seen her. She was confidence and fury wrapped into one, burning as bright as the sun itself, illuminated by golden flames. Even the smoke seemed to sense her power, parting around her like she controlled the winds. If someone told Kyoshi that Rangi was a god, she’d believe them without question, the raw power she exuded greater than any spirit.
As she landed meer steps in front of Kyoshi, the flames around her responded, curling upwards and outwards like angry talons, white flames of passion and ferocity causing those around them to scramble backward, shouting in fear. Kyoshi found herself rooted in place, eyes never leaving Rangi’s form. Rangi rushed towards her, grabbing her hand and pulling her close, dark bronze eyes glimmering from the flames.
“You’re bleeding,” she said sternly, and Kyoshi could only nod, wincing as she did so. Rangi’s eyes widened at the movement, and she was pulling Kyoshi toward the edge of the battlefield, sending short blasts toward their attackers. Were they raiders? Pirates? Kyoshi’s head throbbed, she couldn’t remember. Everything was chaos, yet Rangi was like a healing balm.
“Come, the Fire Nation army can handle this, you sent them running for the most part,” Rangi said, glancing every couple of seconds toward Kyoshi. Every minute made Kyoshi’s headache worse, and she couldn’t remember. Why couldn’t she remember? She clutched to Rangi, her single constant, knowing without a shadow of a doubt Rangi was safe, she was home, even when everything else blurred at the edges.
A coughing fit nearly sent her tumbling down, held up only by Rangi’s strength and touch alone.
“Rangi?” she wheezed, hunched over her aching body. Her lungs burned something fierce, and black spots danced in her vision.
“Kyoshi come on,” Rangi said, and distantly Kyoshi registered the encroaching panic in her voice. Was she making Rangi panic? She didn’t want that, she tried to cover her next cough, letting out a harsh wheeze instead that only made Rangi’s grip on her tighten.
“We need to get out of here, the fire is too strong.” A cough garbled whatever she was going to say next, and Kyoshi felt her own panic start to take over. Dying she could live with, but Rangi? Rangi was everything.
Kyoshi’s head whipped around frantically and she realized that there wasn’t anyone else here, not that she could see far through the thickening black smoke. The sound of the flames had grown louder and louder, the ringing in her ears clanging like useless bells. It was a maelstrom, angry flames taunting them, no enemies or friends in sight.
If only she could remember . Rangi was still pulling her, but she was coughing more and more. Something bright was flickering at the edge of Kyoshi’s mind, a power wrapped in fear and anger, not for herself but for Rangi.
“Avatar Kyoshi! Lieutenant Rangi!” a voice called, carrying over the flames. It was tauntingly familiar, but it yielded no recognition. The only thing she was sure of was Rangi, and she trusted her with her life.
But…Avatar Kyoshi? The title was familiar, pulsing with that light flicking in her mind. The wind around them whipped up in seeming indignation, and Rangi let out a cry as the flames burst higher around them, licking at her skin. Her cry bellowed into Kyoshi’s ears, and for a split second, the world righted itself.
She was the Avatar. She was limitless, the very balance of the world, and she would not submit to these pathetic golden flames. She tugged at the light, searching for her very soul. She knew she was there, her and the spirit combined as one. The thread was taught, and as Rangi yelped at another flame coming too close, the cord snapped and everything whited out.
She knew only herself and Rangi in the moment, the outside world drowning out, a thousand lives slamming into her at once, the full force of her and the world merging as one. Kyoshi thrust out her hands, a spiral of air at her command, and everything was right, this was who she was at her very core. The smoke around them billowed away, Rangi as her epicenter, her tether. Kyoshi pulled at the angry flames, they were rebellious and childish in nature, fighting against her control, but she pulled, twisting them into submission. She could see their foes now, eyes wide, dressed in black.
“Enslavers,” a voice hissed in her mind, one of countless lives before her. “They shall not live.”
The squall around her increased in ferocity, the environment pulsing at her very hands. She could feel the flames in her fingertips, drawn up from deep in her core. The air sang around her, begging for control. The earth called to her, craving notice, filled with life. Even the water nearly parched from the air by the once unruly flames became bright to her, a reminder of its existence, of change.
She was one with the world, a grasp of humanity between the elements and spirits themselves, a connection bridged for thousands of years. She was everything and nothing, the very glue that connected the cycles together. All things knew her, the peacebringer in chaos.
“You have upset the balance of this world,” a thousand voices said through her. “You will pay.”
The world responded to her, every hum and vibration rising through her as she commanded the elements at her will and demanded their respect. She twisted, sending shards of earth toward two attackers before swirling and hitting another with a torrent of air. She knew every move, every skill, from every life before her, and she pulled them at her usage now, to end this quickly.
There, at the corner of Kyoshi’s vision, a slaver moved quickly towards her, but their attack was not aimed at her, but rather at Rangi at her feet, who was still surrounded by her swirls of air to stave off the dissipating smoke. Rangi was struggling to her feet, never one to be kept down for long, but Kyoshi was faster.
All her lives narrowed down into one moment, compacting under pressure until she was Kyoshi herself, one with the Avatar State alone, metamorphized into something, someone new. It’s like everything snapped into place inside her, no longer reaching out from her like tendrils of light but rather humming through her. She had total control.
“Touch her,” Kyoshi boomed out, “and I will kill you.”
The fighting around them screeched to a halt. Kyoshi was aware of Rangi gaping up at her in awe, the white light of the avatar state still glimmering around her. This was total control, and everyone knew it.
She thrust her hand forward, a tendril of ice forming from the water in the air and wrapping around the attacker's neck.
“You will leave now, freeing those you have with you,” Kyoshi commanded, “or I will wipe you from the face of the earth, so much so that not even your bones will find peace.”
The man spluttered red-faced, gasping as she dropped him. He would serve her purpose. He ran, tripping over his feet as he did so towards their ships near the shore. The Fire Nation army would follow them back towards their base and attack them there, Kyoshi knew.
Finally, she let go of the thread she’d been hanging onto tightly, letting the power of the Avatar slip back into her mind, closer than ever before, feet back on solid earth. She felt whole, Kyoshi realized, like she finally had unlocked the very deepest parts of herself in a way that she’d never realized was missing.
“Kyoshi,” Rangi breathed, hands coming up to touch her face reverently, “you controlled the Avatar State.”
Kyoshi nodded, commanding the water around her to her hands to start working on the burns on Rangi’s arms.
“How?” Rangi asked softly, ignoring the calls of their friends and family in the distance.
Kyoshi glanced at her face, momentarily distracted from her healing as she took in Rangi’s soot-streaked appearance, more exquisite in her natural element than anything Kyoshi had ever seen.
“Because of you Rangi,” she said softly, adjusting the water on Rangi’s upper arm, “you make all things possible.”
Rangi let out a breathless laugh before surging up and meeting her lips, causing the water to splash uselessly on the bare earth. Kyoshi responded in tune, pulling her close to her body. If the Avatar State was limitless, Rangi was her guiding point, her tether to the universe that Kyoshi revolved around. She was everything because of Rangi, her sun, and just as she felt the elements pulsing under her skin, she felt Rangi throughout all of her. It was not fury nor fear that controlled the power she wielded Kyoshi realized, but love, a fierce kind of love that was worth fighting the world for.