Avatar:Duel in the Avatar mansion
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Template:Battle infoboxThe duel in the Avatar mansion saw Kyoshi return to her childhood home in 295 BG, where she was forced to face both her past and Yun, the boy who once was her closest friend and falsely believed to be the Avatar. Seeking retribution for the life stolen from him, Yun had become a ruthless murderer, and his reckoning with Kyoshi culminated in an intense battle within the dilapidated Avatar mansion. Once Kyoshi became trapped by Yun in the courtyard, her allies of the Flying Opera Company intervened. Despite their coordinated efforts, Yun overwhelmed Kyoshi and her allies, grievously wounding each opponent in turn save for Kyoshi herself. His rampage ultimately ended when Kyoshi used deception to lure him into a trap where she delivered the killing blow.[1]
Background
Prelude
Kyoshi, Yun, and Rangi were initially good friends, living together at a mansion on Yokoya peninsula. Yun was believed to be the Avatar, and he occasionally trained with Rangi and at least once with Kyoshi, though his martial skills were largely superior to theirs.[2] Everything changed when Kyoshi was revealed to be the true Avatar in 296 BG, while Yun was carried away into the Spirit World by the murderous spirit Father Glowworm.[3] While Kyoshi survived many tribulations and gathered a loyal team in form of the Flying Opera Company daofei gang,[4] Yun was left to fight Father Glowworm alone in a duel before emerging victorious yet deeply damaged by his experiences.[5][6]
After devouring Father Glowworm and returning to the mortal realm, Yun reemerged as a manifestation of vengeance, murdering innocents just for their rudeness as the first act of his long and bloody rampage.[6] Kyoshi first reunited with him in Qinchao Village during her battle with Jianzhu, where Yun executed his defenseless former mentor without a word or hesitation. He pierced Jianzhu's chest with a pebble before vanishing from Kyoshi's life again.[7] Disquieted by Yun's actions, Kyoshi spent months searching for him in vain.[8] A year later, he resurfaced in the Fire Nation Royal Palace, disrupting the Festival of Szeto and holding the noble guests hostage by trapping them in the floor with earthbending. When confronted by Kyoshi and Rangi, he mocked them, evading their attacks and demanding justice from those who had deceived him into believing he was the Avatar. Tunneling his way through the palace, he murdered Lu Beifong before turning his deadly skill against Fire Nation guards, turning the earthen pigment from the Royal Gallery portraits into lethal projectiles that left many wounded or dead, before disappearing once more.[9]
After the attack on the palace, Yun's former firebending teacher, Hei-Ran, concocted a plan to use herself as bait in an attempt to lure Yun out of hiding. This plan partially succeeded: In North Chung-Ling, Yun orchestrated a diversion to pit the Saowon and Keohso clans against each other, while he confronted his old teacher in an inn. Catching them mid-conversation, Kyoshi found Yun poised over a Pai Sho board, reforming the tiles into a deadly spike aimed at Hei-Ran's throat. Despite Kyoshi's desperate earthbending resistance, he drove the blade into Hei-Ran's neck. Defiant despite her injury, Hei-Ran retaliated with a surging fireball, searing Yun before he wrenched the dagger free and shoved her aside. As he escaped through the window, Kyoshi was left with the critical choice to pursue Yun or save Hei-Ran. She chose to heal the firebending master, letting Yun slip away once again, his vendetta still unfinished.[10]
Afterward, Kyoshi was put under even greater pressure to confront Yun, as Fire Lord Zoryu used a double of Yun to orchestrate an end to a potential civil war in the Fire Nation. Zoryu told Kyoshi that his actions merely bought her some time to find the real Yun. If she failed, the Fire Nation's clans could once again erupt into conflict as the double's ruse would be exposed.[11] Seeking to learn whether Yun was acting out of free will or had been corrupted by Father Glowworm, Kyoshi communed with Kuruk. To her horror, Kyoshi learned from Kuruk that Father Glowworm was not responsible for Yun's actions.[12]
Preparation for battle
While Yun recovered from the injury which he had received from Hei-Ran and plotted more assassinations, Kyoshi spent a month making preparations for their final battle. She underwent healing training under Sifu Atuat's tutelage along with jet-stepping practice with Rangi. She also sent her Air Nomad secretary Jinpa on a quest to enlist the aid of the other Flying Opera Company members, offering them a sizeable sum of money for their service.[1]
Her search for Yun eventually led her back to Yokoya, now even grimmer in its decline after Jianzhu's death. His estate had deteriorated into ruin, a stark reflection of Kyoshi's neglected ties to her origins. Upon her arrival, she discovered a cryptic message written in pebbles, leading her to Yun. Seated at the dining table in the Avatar mansion, Yun played the part of a long-lost son returning home, indulging in Auntie Mui's cooking while she wept with joy at the sight of him and Kyoshi together again. Desperate to remove Mui from danger, Kyoshi sent the old woman on a fool's errand under the guise of preparing a welcome-home meal. With the house now empty, Yun revealed his plan to eliminate every single person who ever wronged him. Kyoshi realized how his thirst for vengeance has consumed him, his cruelty no longer tethered by reason or regret. She resolved to put him away no matter the cost, granting him no choice in the matter. Yun begrudgingly agreed to her desire to fight, and the duel began.[1]
Battle
Yun made the first move, raising a stone column between himself and Kyoshi with an elbow flick, not an attack, but making ammunition available to both of them. Both began punching fist-sized bullets from the column at each other, aiming blind and hitting the walls. Kyoshi ducked and circled, while Yun dodged them with airbending-like footwork, keeping himself opposite of her position. Kyoshi ended the stalemate by hurling the entire column at him, ripping open the mansion, exposing the field and sky. She cleared the dust with airbending, but Yun was nowhere in sight.[1]
Kyoshi pursued him through a more central corridor, and Yun ambushed her by erupting a spike through a painting. She ground it to dust with her fans, earning a mocking compliment from Yun. She followed his voice, making her way through the kitchen, before arriving on the path to Yun's room, which he blocked with a brick wall. Approaching from behind, he commented how he never liked her going into his room. She replied she never did, even after he left, and kicked an airbending blast behind her, scrubbing the hall floor to ceiling, Yun still unseen by the end of it. She moved toward the training grounds at the back of the house, in an exposed position, and told Yun he had to let go of what happened to him. Enraged, Yun emerged from an alcove, highlighting her hypocrisy in achieving her revenge by helping him kill Jianzhu. Kyoshi countered that it did not bring her peace, and that with Jianzhu gone, whatever pain and anger Yun had left, he had to live with it instead of putting them on others. Yun told her she got it wrong, and hurled a wave of liquid earth at her from behind, trapping her in a shell. She mistook it for waterbending for a moment. Yun approached her avoiding the centerline of her mouth in anticipation of any fire-breathing. He removed her fans, claiming her to be the only other innocent party in the situation, and expressed his belief that her Avatar duties have turned her against him. Yun shared Jianzhu's low opinion of how the Four Nations were unruly students, and grew to hold them in even lower regard, as children in need of slapping until they learn to be quiet. He disapproved of her daofei outfit and the "walking terror" Kyoshi had become. Kyoshi on the other hand felt pride on what she had become, and raising her voice, declared she chose her clothes, and denied his claim of being her truest friend, boasting truer ones.[1]
Answering the cue, Kirima lashed a water whip from the ceiling, creating distancing between Yun and Kyoshi, and signaled Wong to action. He dust-stepped his way to Kyoshi, and weakened the shell around her enough for Kyoshi to free herself. Yun skated away on earth, avoiding her attempt to grapple him, and used the shield he raised to block Kirima's next attack as an attack of his own at her, forcing her to dodge. He acknowledged their skill with dust- and mist-stepping to avoid his seismic sense, and asked if Rangi was also present. He rolled out of her attack before it hit him, leaving a smoking whole where he had been standing. Above them, Jinpa circled on his Yingyong, who had served as the group's transport to the battlefield. Kyoshi lamented Lao Ge's absence, but still felt relived at fighting alongside her allies.[1]
Yun mocked her companions as daofei scum, Kirima complaining they did not socialize often enough to count, Wong sending Kyoshi a hurt look. Kirima sent a fresh torrent at Yun, managing to knock him off his feet as Wong caromed off the Yun raised in protection. Kyoshi tried trapping his feet, like Yun had in the Fire Nation, but he broke free effortlessly. He boasted that earth was his element, merely letting others borrow it. Wong dropped a towering tile stack from behind on him, but Yun merely flicked his shoulders, causing them to fall neatly around himself, like flower petals. He belittled the attempt. Taking it as an invitation, Rangi breathed in out out very deeply, leaving herself exposed while building up her power. She lunged at him, releasing fire so hot it almost burned white. Yun slid away on a mound of earth, Rangi burning everything in between them as she tracked him until the flames flickered out. Everyone but Rangi was surprised at the attack's ferocity.[1]
Deciding to match Rangi's seriousness, Yun sank deep and low, into a fundamental stance for beginner earthbenders, which scared Kyoshi. The earth began to shake back and forth, the mansion's foundations liquefied by Yun's warped adaptation of Jianzhu's style, the walls around collapsing. The shifting ground robbed Kirima and Wong of their balance, sending them crashing down, their stepping techniques requiring a solid foundation to work. Jinpa attempted a rescue, but Yun raised a hedge of earth spears. Jinpa had Yingyong turn, his saddle offering some protection, but left himself as the rider exposed, one of the spears pinning his shoulder to the saddle horn. Yingyong fled the battle with the injured Jinpa.[1]
Shooting to be heard over the mansion's collapse, Yun told Kyoshi her allies were a liability. Kirima and Wong had gotten used to the timing of the earth's spasms, and attempted an ambush on his blind side, but with a quick motion, Yun opened pitfalls under them, sinking them up to their knees, their own momentum breaking their legs. He pushed them aside, and focused the tremors on Kyoshi and Rangi, forcing them to stay on all fours for balance. As he did, he also struck them with the earthen training disks, focused on bruising them in punishment instead of knocking them out. Rangi stressed out the necessity of Kyoshi succeeding in something she had tried to teach her since Governor's Te. Kyoshi admitted she could not maintain it for long. Using the disks' white dust and their own blood as makeup, they painted their daofei faces, reinvigorated.[1]
Yun recognized the face Kyoshi showed Jianzhu back in Qinchao, and she jet-stepped toward him before he could react, firebending from her hands as well for extra propulsion and stability. He tried shaking the ground to unbalance her, but unlike its other variants, jet-stepping did not require solid ground to work. Kyoshi slammed him to the ground, forcing him to earthbend to halt his skidding, and to block Rangi's fire blasts from above, where she was jet-stepping herself. Kyoshi hurled a massive fireball at Yun, which he dodged, but Rangi took control of it with a waterbending-like motion, sending it his way again. Yun's last-second earth shield was not as thick as it needed to be and exploded on impact. When the smoke cleared, there was only a loose, crumbly patch of earth on the ground. As Rangi attempted to warn of Yun's tunneling, he rose behind him in a mound, stabbing her in the back with a stone dagger like he did Hei-Ran.[1]
Rangi's flames gave out, and Kyoshi caught her before she crashed down, feeling the wet blood on her black. Kyoshi fought the bubbling rage of the Avatar State, and focused on Rangi, who tried to reach for Kyoshi's face before losing consciousness. Feigning remorse and speaking softly, Kyoshi offered whispered apologies for stealing his Avatarhood and future, drawing Yun closer to her until he knelt next to her. When he asked for an apology for telling him to forget what happened, she placed her hand on his chest in fake comfort, and sent a burst of cold through his body, freezing his heart and lungs with a deadly version of Atuat's healing technique. Yun toppled aside dead.[1]
Aftermath
With Yun dead, Kyoshi turned her focus to healing her allies. Using the Avatar State, the ground cracked as she drew forth water from the well that supplied the mansion, using the same hand she used to kill Yun to heal Rangi. She continued to work on her, treating her injury until she awoke in the ruined infirmary. Exhausted but relieved, Kyoshi explained how she saved her while Wong and Kirima complained about their own untreated injuries and unmedicated pain. Kyoshi told them off, saying Jinpa needed medicine more. Drugged into a daze, Jinpa began to sing tavern songs while the rest of them bickered. When Rangi asked what became of Yun, the room fell silent. Kyoshi confirmed it was over. As she and Rangi held each other, they cried grieved for the friend they could not save.[1]
After Atuat arrived to better tend the wounded, Kyoshi laid Yun to rest on a scenic hill outside Yokoya, marking his gravestone herself. Beneath a quiet sky, she and Rangi held a small funeral. Kyoshi wondered if she was right to kill Yun, and how she would be viewed for failing to save him. Rangi dismissed Kyoshi's fears, instead promising to always stand beside her.[13]