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“Kyoshi,” Rangi coughed. “Do you remember what I tried to teach you so many times since Governor Te’s? And you could never do it? I think you have to do it now.”
“I can do it. But not for long.”
Yun allowed them to stagger back to their feet, presumably so he could knock them down once more. Kyoshi and Rangi looked at each other, the white powder caked on their features, the mention of the Flying Opera Company’s moonlight raid hanging in the air. And in an instant, they were possessed by the exact same idea.
Of course they’d been losing. They hadn’t put on their faces.
Rangi pressed her palm to her bleeding lips and swiped a crimson bar down her chin. It was the most distinctive mark of a benevolent river spirit worshipped in Jang Hui, the same design Rangi had chosen the first and only time she’d ever worn the Flying Opera Company’s colors.
Kyoshi gathered the blood streaming from her nose with her fingers. She closed her eyes and dragged crude red streaks across them, tapering back over her ears. It was a far cry from her normal makeup, the fine oil-based stuff from Ba Sing Se, but it would do.
Together, the two of them wore white and red again. Like daofei.
“I remember Qinchao,” Yun said. “You showed a face like that to Jianzhu, once.”
“And now I’m showing it to you,” Kyoshi said. Before he could reply, she ignited the air under her feet.
Flame shot out from her soles, lifting her off the treacherous ground, propelling her body forward. She thrust her hands behind her for extra speed, bending concentrated fire from them, torching her own skirt. She was jet-stepping, using the form of elevation that the one Fire Nation member of the Flying Opera Company had innovated.
In his surprise Yun tried to send out another pulsing earthquake to knock her off-balance, but jet-stepping didn’t involve touching the earth at all. He couldn’t take the ground from under her feet anymore.
Kyoshi rammed him hard in the stomach with her shoulder. He went rolling over the courtyard, shifting the ground underneath him to halt his skid. As he came to a stop, he pulled up another wall of earth to protect him from the blasts of flame Rangi rained down from above as she hovered high in the air, standing on nothing but the counterforce of her own bending.
This was their one shot, and they both knew it wouldn’t last long. Jet-stepping without pause was impossible even for a Firebender as gifted as Rangi. Kyoshi put her hands together and shot a massive yellow fireball at Yun, hoping its size and overwhelming power would count for something.
She still missed. Yun smirked as he dodged out of the way of the rolling sphere. But Rangi acted faster and better than them both. From her higher vantage point she spun her arms in a circle, mimicking a Waterbender, redirecting the flame Kyoshi had put out into the world. Kyoshi saw her fireball change course behind Yun like the orbit of a comet and come around for a second pass.
Caught off-guard again, the barrier Yun raised at the last second wasn’t as thick as he needed it to be. It exploded under the weight of the flame. There was a burst of blinding light. Smoke and dust flew everywhere.
The raw power of the Avatar’s fire, guided by the refined skill of the Avatar’s firebending sifu. In tandem, maybe they’d done it.
But when the column of smoke cleared, Yun wasn’t there. There was nothing where he stood except for a patch of loose, crumbly earth. “Kyoshi!” Rangi shouted from above. “He can tunnel—”
Yun rose up behind her, carried by a rising mound of soil like a waterspout, and drove his hand into the small of Rangi’s back.
Rangi’s lips parted. Her flames sputtered out. Yun let the girl who once defended him with body and mind, spirit and honor, fall to the ground.
Kyoshi managed to reach her in time before she dashed against the earth. She caught Rangi in her arms. Her back was wet with blood. Yun had stabbed her with a spike of earth like the one he’d used on her mother, angling the puncture wound underneath her armor.
Kyoshi shut her eyes. She knew if she opened them, light would shine forth, the elements would flow through her, and her bending would rage, unstoppably, until she was left victorious, the last person standing. A thousand voices told her so. It had been decided long before she was born that power was adequate compensation for losing what she most held dear.
But what was the point anymore? What did the generations have to offer her but sorrow and pain? All she knew as she rocked back and forth, cradling the girl she loved in a lullaby of grief, was that if Rangi was taken from her, she would no longer be Kyoshi. She would no longer be human. She would be forever on the other side of the rift, among the swirling colors of the void she’d glimpsed in the Spirit World, watching humans from afar, a terrible and alien presence.
“Kyoshi.”
Rangi’s voice was the only sound that could make her see right now. Her Firebender reached for her face.
“Stay here with me,” Rangi whispered, a faint smile on her lips. She shuddered, and her hand fell before she could touch the Avatar one last time.
Kyoshi looked up at Yun. The bloody earthen dagger in his hand crumbled to dust. “It shouldn’t have been this way,” he said. “But this is how it will be, over and over again, if you keep trying to stop me.”
She’d wondered why Kuruk had nearly let her destroy her surroundings in the Spirit World, and why he’d taken her to the site of the damage Yun had caused. Yun had failed his portion of the test. He would rather break the world than his own self-regard.
Kyoshi knew what he wanted to hear, despite what he’d said before about her being innocent. There was only one thing that would placate him. “I’m sorry,” Kyoshi whispered softly under her breath. “I’m sorry I stole your Avatarhood.”
“Hmm?” Yun came nearer. “You’ll have to speak up.”
“It was yours, and I took it from you.” She didn’t raise her voice, kept it so he could barely hear her. “I’m sorry I robbed you of everything, Yun. I’m sorry I stole your future.”
