I don't own Avatar yet. If I did, Crazy Foaming Guy would be the protagonist, traveling the world with the hippies and the Cabbage Man.

Kyoshi in the Spirit World

"I'll leave you to it, then." Yong backed out of the room, clearly sure that Kyoshi wanted peace and quiet when, in actuality, she'd rather have had somebody with her to tell her if she was doing it right. He closed the door behind him.

She stared at the painting. How is this supposed to help? she wondered. What's so spiritual about it? Embarrassed by the whole idea of meditating – before she knew she was the Avatar, she had regarded anything that claimed to be 'spiritual' with a healthy dose of skepticism – Kyoshi put the moment when she would have to try it off for as long as she could. She stood closer to the wall, brushing the painted figures with the tips of her fingers, and sighed. How was she supposed to do this?

"Well, I'd better get on with it," she muttered to herself and, gritting her teeth and abandoning her cynicism – or at least, trying to – she sat down and crossed her legs.

Determinedly, Kyoshi pressed her fists together and stared at the painting before her so hard it made her eyes water. She leaned closer and closer, concentrating so hard she was sure something inside her might explode, but after five minutes of intense focus, still nothing happened.

With an exasperated groan that was almost a yell, Kyoshi got to her feet. "Stupid painting," she muttered. "Why won't it work?"

Yong's words from earlier floated back to her. "Meditation isn't about hard work, Kyoshi, my dear; in fact, it is quite the opposite. You must let your mind relax…"

Well, how was she supposed to do that when she was so on edge? She needed to talk to Avatar Kuruk now, dammit, and a load of spiritual jargon was not going to change that fact.

Maybe if she tried closing her eyes… With a sigh, Kyoshi sat herself back down. She now felt completely stupid – and murderous with it. Stupid painting. Stupid Kuruk. Why can't he make finding him easier?

Screwing her eyes shut as tight as she could, Kyoshi tried to empty her mind of all thought. Maybe this was how meditation worked… but no, didn't meditation mean thinking? She should have a proper instructor to teach her this stuff, she thought; just because she was the Avatar didn't mean she knew how to meditate.

Kyoshi thought as hard as she could about the Spirit World, but it was hard to think of somewhere she had never been, since no images came to her mind apart from the wall before her, and how exactly was thinking about it different from staring at it in real life?

"Relax," she told herself. "Just relax…" It was against her nature, but she let her shoulders slump and her fists slacken and rest in her lap, and hoped that the knowledge of how to enter the Spirit World would simply come to her…

And, slowly but surely, Kyoshi found herself slipping into a state that was almost like sleeping. The painting on the wall before her became blurred… she tried to focus it, but she couldn't, although she could swear that the miniscule figures' eyes had started to glow…

All of a sudden, Avatar Kyoshi found herself in a swamp, up to her knees in boggy water. She wrinkled her nose; the air smelt foul.

Her first thought was, bizarrely, "what a wonderful reception!" Her second was, of course, "I must be in the Spirit World!" And her third was, understandably, "Finally!"

"Hmm," she said to herself, wading through the muddy mire she had found herself in, towards the roots of an ancient tree which stood above the water, "maybe relaxing does have something to it…"

Kyoshi stood on top of a root and took her boots off; weeds, mud and silt poured out. "Brilliant," she muttered, wondering whether her boots would be muddy back in the real world. Presumably, she'd left her corporeal self kneeling in that ridiculous position in front of the stupid painting. With a small noise of annoyance, Kyoshi hoped that nobody – especially not Taj – found her body while she wasn't able to defend herself with reasons for acting so stupidly.

As she was squeezing her feet back into her boots (finding footwear that fitted was a constant problem for Kyoshi) she surveyed her surroundings. Hundreds of trees, just like the one whose roots she was sitting on, were spread out about an unchanging landscape of thick brown water, creating a dense dark-green canopy overhead. Tiny black flies buzzed over the stinking surface of the water, and a lizard scuttled across the root next to the one she was sat on, but apart from that there was no sign of life.

It was a bit of a let-down, to be frank; Kyoshi had never imagined that the Spirit World would look just like any ordinary swamp in the Earth Kingdom.

Well, she wasn't here to admire the scenery anyway, was she? Kyoshi needed to find Avatar Kuruk. How she was supposed to go about that she had no idea, but calling his name seemed to be the best place to start.

"Kuruk?" she called. "Avatar Kuruk?" No answer. What had she been expecting? The man to spring out of the water before her, perhaps? Angrily, Kyoshi stood up. "Avatar Kuruk! It's Kyoshi here to talk to you!" She paused. "Avatar Kyoshi!" she added, so as to leave him in no doubt. When nothing immediately happened, she called, feeling stupid, "Please!"

Kyoshi hadn't expected anything to happen then, either; but to her surprise, a middle-aged man wearing blue fur and an intensely unhappy expression rose up out of the muddy water. The mud didn't seem to stick to his fur or skin at all; however, he still looked distinctly dirty and rumpled.

"What is it? You don't have to shout so loud, you know," he complained. "I've got a headache now." And he earthbended himself a platform of rock from the marsh floor and slumped himself down on it, gazing miserably at his knees as though they somehow displeased him.

"Are you Avatar Kuruk?" Kyoshi narrowed her eyes at him. He didn't really look in the mood to teach anybody anything; in fact, if she hadn't known better, she would have guessed he'd just come back from a funeral.

"I am," he muttered. "And thanks to your yelling, I know who you are. So there's really no need for an introduction." He did not take his eyes off his knees. "What do you want?"

"I need help. I want two things: one, to be able to master the Avatar state, so I can not kill people when I go into it, and two, to defeat General Chin and win my homeland back from him." She paused to see if she'd evoked a reaction from the past Avatar, but Kuruk looked lost in his thoughts. "Hey!" she said, snapping her fingers in front of his face. Reluctantly, he looked up with a melancholy expression on his face. "Are you even listening?"

"Avatar state, General Chin, I know, I know…" Avatar Kuruk shrugged.

"Yes – well – this guy I know, Ling, told me you're the guy to ask for help. So I went to this place, with earth sages and a spiritual painting thingy on a wall…" Kyoshi lamented her complete lack of capability when it came to description, "And I came here. And I was hoping you can help me master the Avatar state."

There was a pause. Kyoshi had expected Kuruk to say something at the end of her short anecdote, but he did nothing but gaze glumly into the middle distance. Annoyed, Kyoshi earthbended his platform higher, so that his face was level with hers as she stood up on the root. "So? Are you going to help me or not?"

"Not," he replied.

"What?"

"I said," Kuruk told her, "Not. As in, I won't help you." He sighed deeply. "Now good day to you." He stepped off his rocky platform, apparently preparing himself to sink back into the mud. "I have things to do."

"Wait!" shouted Kyoshi, and Kuruk looked round reluctantly. "What – what sort of things?" she asked, trying to keep his attention.

"You mean nobody's told you?" Kuruk's tone was a blend of incredulousness and anger.

"Er, no," Kyoshi replied, nonplussed

Kuruk sat back down on his rock platform, sighing once again, even more heavily. "How quickly the dead are forgotten…" He sat in silence for a moment. Kyoshi watched him wallow in his mysteriously-induced misery for a moment, but she had a very low threshold for that kind of thing.

"What haven't I heard of?" she demanded, folding her arms. How could she, in a past life, have been such a self-pitying jerk? "What's so important you won't help me defeat the worst tyrant the Earth Kingdom's ever seen?"

"I am searching," he said slowly, "for my wife."

Kyoshi frowned. "Why would she be down here?"

Kuruk merely shook his head. Sitting herself back down on the root – he didn't look like he was about to attempt to leave her any time soon – Kyoshi succeeded in securing his gaze for the first time, by shuffling so far forward that she nearly fell off her perch. "Tell me," she implored.

"Her name was Ummi," Kuruk blurted out – the mere mention of her name seemed to cause him extreme pain, and Kyoshi felt her heart soften a little. He might be a self-pitying idiot, but it did seem as though he had a reason.

"What happened to her?"

"Her… her face was stolen. By Koh." Seeing Kyoshi's confused expression, Avatar Kuruk sighed again and explained miserably, "he's a face-stealing spirit."

"I got that, thanks," replied Kyoshi, annoyed – then she remembered that she needed Kuruk's help, and immediately softened her tone. "That's awful."

"It is, isn't it?" Kuruk looked, despite himself, a little pleased that she agreed with him. Kyoshi wondered how much company he'd had since he came down to the spirit world. "It was seventeen years ago," he sighed, slipping back into his previous melancholy state. "It was also our wedding day."

"Oh. That's, um – that's terrible." Kyoshi felt particularly uncomfortable; she wasn't quite sure what she was supposed to do, or say. "But, you know, you have to move on. Maybe teaching me could provide a… a distraction?"

She seemed to have said the wrong thing, because when Kuruk spoke again, his voice was notably sharper. "You're not really sorry," he told her. Kyoshi didn't have an answer to that. "I think I'll go now. I have to look for Ummi. One day, I will slay Koh, and bring my wife back!"

With those gallant words, he got up off his rock once more.

"No," said Kyoshi desperately. "You have to help me – otherwise loads more people will be forced to join Chin's army and live under occupation!" She thought of her brother. "The whole of the Earth Kingdom will be changed forever! Everybody will be unhappy – would your Ummi want that? Would she?"

"Well, once I've slain Koh and gotten her back, I'll ask her. Now, if you could just shut up –" But that was too much for Kyoshi.

"Now listen here, you sniveling, self-pitying idiot! I traveled days out of my way so that I could come and talk to you – I am not letting you disappear into this stupid, smelly swamp just because you rate yourself higher than the entire Earth Kingdom!" Kyoshi stood up, her hands clenched into fists. "Your wife might be gone, but that doesn't give you an excuse to let an entire nation get bullied and torn apart by a tyrant – not to mention completely ignore your duties as my own – may the spirits preserve me – past life! You have to help me, or – or – or are you too much of a coward?"

The last comment seemed to have hit a raw nerve. "I am not a coward," Kuruk told her quietly, glaring at her. "In my time, I was the greatest waterbender, airbender, firebender and earthbender alive; and I daresay I still am, considering I've been replaced by a mere child! A girl, for that matter!"

"Oh, you – you –" Kyoshi was lost for words. When she'd entered the Spirit World, she'd been prepared for almost anything; but not this, not her very own past life telling her the exact same thing the boys in her village had told her over and over as she grew up. You can't be a proper earthbender – you're a girl – you aren't strong enough. Her blood boiled at the memory, and at the sight of Kuruk, standing before her, utterly convinced that he was right. "Fine," she said, stamping her foot. "I don't need your help. You go and search for your precious Ummi, and I'll go and master the Avatar state on my own. I bet I could do it. I bet I don't even need your help – even if I am a girl!"

Kuruk laughed coldly. "You wouldn't know where to begin."

"Oh yeah? Well, I can! Off you go – go and find that Koh guy, and maybe one day you'll get your wife back, and when she asks you to tell her about how you helped me, you can try and explain it to her! By yourself!"

Kuruk stopped and stared at Kyoshi, dumbfounded. His mouth was slightly open. Ha! I bet he's never been confronted like that in his life, Kyoshi thought – but then he turned around and, instead of storming off, sat heavily back down on his rock once more.

Something in the slump of his shoulders made her think again about what she'd just said. Had she been too harsh? What had he done to deserve her accusations?

Angry at her own thoughts, Kyoshi shook her head in frustration. He's a sexist jerk – he deserved everything I just told him, and I bet he knows it's the truth! But despite that, Kyoshi felt the need to say something. "Kuruk?"

"What?" he asked, and his voice had changed entirely; it was more like a croak than a human voice.

"Nothing. I think I'll go now," Kyoshi said softly. She knew she'd just overstepped the mark completely; she remembered the time, when she was very small, maybe four, when she had been practicing earthbending and had broken the china moneybox her father had given to her mother. Her mother had remained frostily silent when Kyoshi had apologized – it had taken weeks for the two to be on proper speaking terms again.

"No. No, stay." Kuruk sighed. "I know you're right. Ummi… she was a woman, and an amazing person too." He shifted round on his rock to face Kyoshi. "I'll teach you."

Not quite able to believe what she was hearing, Kyoshi was momentarily stunned into silence. "You – you will?"

Kuruk nodded, but he seemed to be waiting for something. Kyoshi narrowed her eyes.

"I'm not taking back what I said," she told him defensively. "I was just –"

"I know what you were doing," Kuruk said, waving his mitten-clad hand in the air as though to push the problem aside. "I used to be a teenager too, you know, and whenever it was suggested I wasn't powerful I'd either explode or challenge them to a contest. Ummi," he said, "changed that."

"Well, I don't want to be changed, thanks," said Kyoshi sternly. "All I'm saying is, I don't know whether I was wrong about you or not, and I'll save my apology 'til after you've proved me otherwise."

"Fine," said Kuruk shortly.

"Will you teach me now?"

"No."

"What? But you –"

"I said I'd teach you, not that I'd teach you right this instant."

Kyoshi felt annoyance rising once more in her stomach, but decided not to push her luck. "Well, goodbye, then," she said, and Kuruk prepared – once again – to sink back to wherever he had come from, beneath the bog. "Wait!" she called at the last moment.

"Good grief, girl – what now?"

"How do I get back?"

"The same way you got here in the first place," shrugged Kuruk, as though it was simple, and he sank away properly this time. Kyoshi couldn't help thinking he was hurrying more than he needed to, before she could call him back again.

She crossed her legs, balanced precariously on the thick root, and closed her eyes. She let her body relax – not easy, considering the conversation she'd just had. It was difficult, though notably easier than it had been before, but finally she managed to cross between the worlds. It was odd, possessing her body once again; she felt strangely heavy for a moment.

She was sitting in exactly the same position as she'd been in before she crossed over into the Spirit World. Feeling slightly stupid, Kyoshi stood up.

Her clothes and boots were as dry as ever, completely devoid of the Spirit Swamp mud that had soaked into them. Her bones ached a bit; she felt as though she hadn't moved in all the time she was in the Spirit World. And, indeed, she hadn't, though the idea of moving around in her mind while keeping her body completely still was a hard concept to wrap her head around.

Thinking about her conversation with Kuruk, and trying to decide whether it had been worth the effort of getting here or not, Kyoshi strode over to the door and opened it.

Yong was sitting outside it, on a rickety chair, drinking tea; evidently, he'd been waiting all this time to see whether Kyoshi would come out successful.

"Did you make it?" he asked eagerly.

"Yup," replied Kyoshi shortly. Yong kept staring at her, but if he thought she was going to describe anything to him in any sort of detail, he was sorely mistaken.

Heading in the direction of the quarters he'd arranged for her and Taj, Kyoshi stifled a yawn. While she was in the Spirit World, it had grown dark outside, she noticed, although she really didn't think she'd been in the other world for very long.

"I'm going to bed now," she announced to a disappointed Yong, loping her way down the corridor.

A/N: Thanks for coping with the long-ness of this, especially since it's just a oneshot. It was going to be part of a fully fledged story chronicling Kyoshi's fight to defeat Chin the Great and learn the elements, but it was crawling with OCs so it never got written further than the first chapter. But whatever, I'll sharrup.

Kyoshi, though, is pure love. Nothing more, nothing less. She's so cool! For serious.

Anyway… thank you for reading. I'm off to play on the new Nintendo Wii now!! We have named it 'Aang' - lol.

And… I have seen The Awakening, thanks to the wonders of the 'Net, and have one thing to say about it: XD XD XD XD XD XD AVATAR!lol

That's two 'lol's in one review. I may be going insane. Please review constructively, or just review at all, I'm not fussy. TOO fussy.