My Idea Box

FANFICTION IDEA: Last Day on Kyoshi

Disclaimer: Avatar: The Last Airbender and Avatar: The Legend of Korra belong to Nickelodeon, Michael DeMartino, and Bryan Konietzko.

The mid-morning sun fell on Kyoshi Island and the statue of its namesake as it had for centuries. The natives didn't notice the sun or the statue they passed by, their focus on the time on their pocket or wrist watches. The young man by the statue's base, on the other hand, hadn't paid attention to how much time had passed. He didn't really pay attention to anything.

He sat on the grass, hands resting in his lap. He pushed aside the itchy feeling on his legs, along with the buzz of a Satomobile engine and the soft wind breezing by. He focused on his breathing, on his state of mind, and on his inner self. As he was taught, he kept his aim on being calm like water.

Sadly, he was anything but calm. There was the slight irritation, the tiniest irksome that stopped him from reaching his goal. And that irksome thing was only he could see:

She stood in the empty ocean, her dark hair blowing in the wind...

He squeezed his eyes shut, as if trying to block out the image like his teacher had taught him. He tried to focus on something, anything to keep the woman away. His efforts were rewarded with something else:

... her Water Tribe outfit, once newly made, was torn in several places...

A frown cracked his calm façade. He was not supposed to be seeing that. Not again. "Come on..." he whispered, hoping to be free of the image. His hopes were rewarded with the opposite:

... and though her back faced him, she slowly turned with that expressionless face and those dead eyes...

At last, he opened his eyes and slumped his shoulders in defeat. "Ugh, not again," he murmured to himself. After running a hand through his dark short hair, his gray gaze slanted up at the statue of Avatar Kyoshi. "There has be to another way to doing this."

The statue didn't answer him, but someone else did. "Meditating again, Mushi?" said the man whose brown head of hair suddenly loomed over.

A startled Mushi jumped, placed a hand on his thumping chest, and whirled to the stranger. "Sifu Niko, don't do that!" he exclaimed.

Keeping his back in a hunched position, Niko shook his head and laughed. "I don't think I had any other choice. You were doing it again..." he told his old student. "... I swear, you are too tense sometimes."

"I'm not tense!" Mushi snapped up.

Holding his hands behind his back, Niko frowned down. "Don't start with me, Mushi," he said. "You've been at this statue all morning. I don't know what has gotten through your head but stressing over it will do you no good. You need to relax."

"I told you, I'm not-"

Mushi's stopped as something jabbed at the back of his neck. The joints in went crick-crack, and the shoulders spasmed from the built-up tension now trailing down Mushi's spine. All of it happened so sudden that he never noticed his own lanky body shaking like a leaf on in the middle of autumn.

Once the feeling faded, a far more relaxed Mushi turned to a smirking Niko. "Well?" the older man asked as his hand returned to behind his back.

Mushi sighed and uncrossed his legs. "Okay, you win," he grumbled and grabbed his coat lying beside him.

The younger man didn't complain as Niko led him away from the statue and into the paved street. As annoying as the older man could be, Mushi found Niko to be endearing. Niko had taken personal interests in all his guests. It wasn't hard, seeing how Kyoshi Island kept a population less than two thousand. When he arrived a few months ago, the atmosphere took Mushi by surprise with the fewer Satomobile, one or two telephone lines, and the additional rows of modern buildings to the centuries-old wooden houses.