Kuruk's team

:This article is about For Kuruk's team. For the Team Avatar in Avatar: The Last Airbender, see Team Avatar. For the Team Avatar in The Legend of Korra, see Team Avatar (Korra). For Kyoshi's team, see Flying Opera Company.
After Kuruk was identified as the Avatar, he formed a team with a group of benders, undertaking a journey to master the four elements. It was originally composed of Kuruk, Jianzhu, Kelsang, Hei-Ran, and Nyahitha. Together, they accompanied and supported the Avatar through his training and duties as such.
== History ==
=== Formation ===
After Kuruk was identified as the Avatar and began his earthbending training, his master told him that his form was improper, too loose, and wiggly, and that he had not adopted the attitude of an earthbender as his style was influenced by his waterbending. Kuruk did not understand why this was a problem as he considered that all the elements were connected and that the strength of the Avatar was to be of one mindset instead of four. Jianzhu, a younger member of the Earth Kingdom delegation sent to the Northern Water Tribe, was the only one who agreed with him. Although their personalities were different, they began to hang out often. After a long time, they played a Pai Sho game together and bonded completely.
Jianzhu accompanied Kuruk during his firebending and earthbending training, where he complied with his teachers' wishes instead of arguing, and pretended to be a model student as he wanted the reward he would get after mastering all four elements: a flying bison. At some point, the two of them sneaked into the bison pen at the Southern Air Temple, attempting to steal one of them to experience a ride. A junior monk, Kelsang, caught them and pinned them to the wall with a blast of air that rippled their cheeks for minutes. They knelt before the abbot of the temple and Kuruk's elders as they were rebuked for their actions and told that every Avatar had the opportunity to travel independently and that they would have simply needed to wait. Kelsang, in spite of his wishes, had been assigned as a companion of the Avatar to supervise him during his journeys. Kuruk and Jianzhu had been surprised to learn that the monk of hulking size who had a beard was the same age as them.
Afterward, it had been arranged that the last member of their group would be an adult, a member of the Sei'naka clan in the Fire Nation, and one of the harshest and strictest senior teachers at the Royal Academy. However, the man got sick before he could join them and sent a younger relative, Hei-Ran, in his place. Kuruk fell in love with her as soon as he saw how beautiful she was and tried to be charming, asking about her feelings for him. It took her less than a minute to say that she was not interested in a relationship with the Avatar, but Jianzhu and Kelsang bonded for the first time over their friend's misery, laughing at how quickly he had been dismissed. As Hei-Ran witnessed this, she gave Kuruk a blink and a smirk, and said that "romance was forbidden ... while on duty."
=== Traveling and training together ===
As they were traveling the world, Kuruk asked his companions for more bending training. They were surprised as they were not the established experts of their elements and Kuruk was a very powerful and skilled Avatar. He explained that the difference between the Pai Sho grandmasters and the more mediocre players was the experience gained from playing many games and that the best never stopped playing. Kuruk told them that they could make him and each other better and so they practiced during the stops of their journeys. They identified, corrected, and eliminated each other's habits until their bond and mutual understanding became so strong that they could easily read each other's thoughts and communicate silently. Kuruk considered that his friends had the potential for greatness and unorthodoxy far beyond their elders' expectations and wishes.
=== Drifting apart ===
One night, Kelsang told the monks that he visited the Spirit World unintentionally, describing colorful, translucent creatures, talking plants, and shifting landscapes. The elders were upset, considering the Spirit World an austere place of blankness reflective of the visitor's detachment.
Kuruk told Kelsang that when facts disagreed with people's preconceived notions, people lost their minds and asked him to guide him to the Spirit World. They meditated in a meadow located in the Earth Kingdom near Yaoping, where Yangchen practiced the use of the Avatar State to power her airbending. Kuruk waited before he began meditating to take in Kelsang's breathing, Hei-Ran and Jianzhu's warm gazes on his back, as he thought how much he loved his friends and how good life was.
Upon entering the Spirit World, Kuruk came across a malevolent spirit trying to pass into the physical realm through a rift created by Father Glowworm. He realized that the spirit wanted to attack Yaoping Town and, after being knocked out by it and waking up in the human world, he stole Kelsang's airbender staff as Hei-Ran and Jianzhu looked at him with surprise. He rushed to the settlement and, using all four elements, he defeated and destroyed the spirit.
The battle with it, however, took a toll on him, weakening his body and spirit. His friends found him the next morning in Yaoping, very sick. The Avatar was unable to speak for days but eventually managed to talk to the others, telling them that a mischievous spirit had tricked him into losing his faculties for a moment. In an attempt to dull the untreatable pain he was feeling, Kuruk slept with a maid after getting drunk. When they found him, Kelsang did not judge him, and Jianzhu considered that, as the Avatar, he should do as he pleases, while Hei-Ran lost a lot of respect for him.
The four of them continued their adventures, but a second spirit attack soon followed during a visit to the Fire Nation. Kuruk decided to face the threat alone, knowing that his friends would insist on helping him and he would never make them experience the overwhelming pain he had. The Avatar ran in the middle of the night to a cenote supplying sacred water to a corner of Ma'inka Island and killed another foe from the Spirit World. He dragged himself over the lip of the cenote, feeling the cold emptiness that came after a skirmish with spirits again, and reached Nyahitha, a man from the Bhanti tribe who had been sent there to aid the Avatar.
Nyahitha took Kuruk to a campsite, using firebending to guide the heat along his energy pathways in order to diagnose the spiritual damage done to his body. The Fire Sage told him that the fights with the dark creatures had damaged his soul, and he did what he could to repair it. Nyahitha admitted, however, that these skirmishes took a permanent toll on Kuruk's body, saying that he "was going to be out of the running for 'Longest Era' in the Avatar history books". The Avatar joked that the sage had terrible bedside manners for a doctor, but, knowing that battling spirits cost him years of his life, he became even more determined not to tell his companions about them.
Kuruk began taking breaks from the missions with his team and started doing research on the spirits with Nyahitha, deducing they came through newly created rifts in the boundaries between the two worlds and unsuccessfully searching for new ways to subdue them. Each encounter wounded his soul more and more, and he became too tired to participate in meetings during which Jianzhu had to solve matters with the politicians while the Avatar slept through them, exhausted by his pain and the alcohol he drank to dull it.
The Avatar began pursuing a hedonistic lifestyle at night after the duels with spirits, drinking, and going to parties and bending contests while his team thought they were accomplishing nothing of worth in his company. He also missed Hei-Ran's wedding and was sent a letter of admonishment from Jianzhu afterward. Kuruk eventually encountered and fought Father Glowworm in a colossal battle which resulted in the spirit being weakened for a generation or two, and Kuruk being doomed to suffer for the remainder of his life.
Around 316 BG, Kuruk's companions, without any real challenges to face, began to drift apart, toward their separate lives. Jianzhu started working on his family's holdings, Hei-Ran started teaching at the Royal Fire Academy for Girls and married Junsik, Kelsang was being groomed to take over the Southern Air Temple by Abbot Dorje, and Kuruk traveled the world, "breaking hearts and taking names" in between his missions.
One day, two months before Hei-Ran's wedding, the Avatar nervously showed up on the airbender's doorstep without notice, asking him to read over a declaration of love he had composed in the form a poem for the headmistress. Kelsang berated Kuruk for his selfishness and destroyed the confession, which left the monk wondering for years if he had done the right thing.
== Legacy ==
Though Kuruk felt that he was protecting his friends by not telling them about his condition, his untimely death would have a severe impact on Jianzhu, Kelsang, and Hei-Ran, and their attempts to keep the world in balance. Not aware of the true nature of what Kuruk was doing, Jianzhu and Kelsang blamed themselves for not correcting what seemed like their friend's personal failings. Hei-Ran, meanwhile, reasoned that, as youths, she and her friends were not responsible for raising Kuruk, apportioning the blame for the Avatar's adult excesses to himself and Nyahitha.
Before his death, Kuruk had asked Hei-Ran, Kelsang, and Jianzhu to search for and train the next Avatar. After many years of fruitless efforts, Kelsang and Jianzhu found Yun in Makapu Village, who was playing Pai Sho with tourists for money. Jianzhu misidentified the boy as the Avatar since he randomly drew tiles and executed a precise line of play used by Kuruk and was also a gifted earthbender. The sage became the boy's guardian and earthbending teacher, while Hei-Ran and Kelsang became his firebending and airbending masters, respectively.
The true Avatar was Kyoshi who had been working at the Avatar mansion while Yun was thought to be Kuruk's successor. Father Glowworm told Jianzhu that Yun had been misidentified since it could sense the Avatar's spirit after the confrontation with Kuruk. After revealing Kyoshi as the true Avatar, the sage gave up Yun to the malevolent spirit; however, Kelsang opposed to Jianzhu's methods, resulting in the earthbender killing him. Kyoshi escaped and the sage began hunting her down throughout the Earth Kingdom.
Jianzhu did not tell Hei-Ran the entire truth about the subsequent events, but she became reluctant to support him in his search. Later on, she was poisoned by him, albeit unwillingly, when he killed several Earth Sages that had come to his house in order to depose him of his status of sage and guardian of the Avatar.
Hei-Ran survived due to her extremely powerful inner fire and the treatment from Atuat, but Jianzhu was eventually killed by Yun, who wanted to take vengeance upon everyone who told him he was the Avatar.
== Members ==
* Kuruk
* Jianzhu
* Hei-Ran
* Kelsang
* Nyahitha
== Allies ==
* Avatar Yangchen
* Pengpeng
== Enemies ==
* Father Glowworm
* Several dark spirits
** Heartwalker of Yaoping Mountain
** Phoenix-eel spirits
== Trivia ==
* Kuruk used to travel extensively with his friends without the supervision of elders as it was tradition for the Avatar to do.
* Kelsang believed that Hei-Ran, Jianzhu, and himself were not a positive influence on Kuruk. The Earth Sage also viewed that period as a great personal failing of his.
* By 295 BG, Hei-Ran and Nyahitha were the only members of the team who were still alive.
== References ==
Category:A to Z
Category:Groups
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Category:Kyoshi novels
Category:Minor groups