ABOUT

HISTORY

ABILITIES

INVENTORY

CODE BY

A diamond in the rough. The very rough. The rough and gruff. The rough and gruff and awkward. Zuko's spent a significant portion of his life mostly alone, for only being sixteen years old, and has had limited exposure to anything resembling a normal, peaceful life — and so likewise, little contact with anyone who's lived such a comparatively charmed lifestyle... But, perhaps counterintuitively, Zuko is an endless well of empathy. His mother tells a story of a time when Zuko was a toddler on the beach, and saved a crab from being eaten by a hawk; but as he stood there with the rescued crab in his hands and looked into the eyes of the hungry hawk, he became conflicted about stealing the bird's lunch — which one does he help? At his core, he grapples with a deep duality over what kind of person he aspires to be and where to place his stakes.

He's a reflective, intelligent, profound young man, who's been given far too much cause to ponder the big questions in his short life so far. Turning the microscope inwards has been as much to his advantage as it has been to his detriment. He's wont to analyze the hard stuff: defining honor, contemplating his destiny, reevaluating bonds, relearning how to love, pondering his place in the universe (now quite literally)... He's fun at parties. He has a pure heart, naturally leaning toward compassion against all odds, with an innate idealism that drives him toward great things, whatever direction he chooses to go in with it. He struggles to follow his own moral compass, but he's hard at work within himself trying to map out his way to a kinder worldview. He's easily influenced by others around him, and responds well to guidance from those he perceives as wiser and more composed than himself. However, it's not always easy for him to identify people's true intentions, and an ill-intentioned person's lies can influence him to do things he may later be ashamed of. The pendulum of his still malleable convictions swings far, but for someone who's still figuring out his own philosophies, he's surprisingly outspoken about his opinions — which has gotten him into some serious trouble.

For as intelligent as he is, Zuko is none too calculated — he's extremely impulsive and headstrong, and deliberately puts himself into dangerous positions with ill-conceived plans at best, no plans at worst. Once he's made up his mind, he's stubborn until he comes around by himself to a better clarity. He's hotheaded and explosive, despite his recent extra efforts in his anger management skills. He tends to be on the less talkative side, but once he's opened up with people more, in fact he's quite reactive and emotive — for better or worse. He's not fully literate in reading body language, and many seemingly obvious social cues fly right over his head. He doesn't have fun the way "normal" people do — he's perpetually dour and uneasy, even when he's trying to get on well. He just hasn't had enough practice having fun. But he's learning quickly, after being recently adopted by his first real friend group as the newest member of "Team Avatar" at home, and he'll learn even quicker now with his new life at ease in Prismatica.

With his recent decision to become "good," comes learning how to let loose and joke around and make good friends. He's built so much of his identity on resilience, and lies to himself about being emotionally self-sufficient, but as he's maturing, he's realizing there's no shame in accepting help from others — in fact, it's crucial and necessary. Everyone needs friends to rely on; it can only happen if you let it happen. In Prismatica, Zuko has the chance to put his new, positive worldview to the test. Essentially, he's here to learn how to live, laugh, love.

Zuko is the crown prince of the Fire Nation, a historically violent and tyrannical kingdom that has been enacting worldwide invasions, sieges and raids for the past hundred years. Zuko’s great-grandfather, Fire Lord Sozin, was the one to start off this domino effect, as he sought to “share the greatness” of the Fire Nation with the other parts of the world. Over time, it became clear the Fire Nation was not “sharing” its wealth with the rest of the world, but increasing it at their expense, as their violent sovereigns continued to overreach and establish Fire Nation colonies in the Earth Kingdom, and regular attacks befell the polar Water Tribes. Sozin essentially murdered his childhood best friend Roku, who’d grown up to become the Avatar (a unique master of all four elements, who alone holds immense power to protect the balance and peace of the planet), so that he could move forward with this vision of expanding the Fire Nation’s sovereignty, knowing the Avatar would oppose his plans as a threat to world peace. Fire Lord Sozin is Zuko’s paternal great-grandfather — but by some twist of destiny, Avatar Roku is Zuko’s maternal great-grandfather; their century-old battle between good and evil exists within his very nature.

Fire Lord Sozin knew the Avatar would be reborn as an Air Nomad in the next life, and so after murdering Roku, he commanded the genocide of the Air Nomads as a means to defeat the Avatar preemptively. However, the next incarnation of the Avatar, a twelve-year-old monk named Aang, had gone into deep hiding in the South Pole before Fire Lord Sozin began to enact his genocide — so unbeknownst to anyone for a full century, the Avatar was the last airbender to survive. Seemingly, the Avatar had disappeared, and hadn’t been seen for over one hundred years; and in that time the Fire Nation grew stronger, and the world’s hope grew dimmer that peace may ever return — let alone the Avatar…

Cue Zuko. Banished 13-year-old Fire Nation prince embarking on a three-year-long wild goose chase around the globe on sheer principle. Zuko’s great-grandfather was not the only complicated, vicious fire lord; his son, Fire Lord Azulon, continued his legacy, and signed away a young Zuko’s life on a poetic whim. Fire Lord Azulon had two sons, Iroh, Zuko’s uncle, and Ozai, Zuko’s father. Iroh was a decorated military general in the Fire Nation armies, but while they were both away at war, his young son, Zuko’s older cousin Lu-Ten, was killed in battle. Iroh, far more empathetic and sentimental than the rest of his family, could not keep his composure after the loss of his son, and resigned from his military position in the middle of a major siege he’d been leading. Meantime, upon hearing of this terrible news, his cutthroat brother Ozai began scheming. Ozai proposed to their father Azulon that in Iroh’s stead, since he had shown weakness in battle and now had no bloodline with the death of his son, Azulon should appoint him, Ozai, as crown prince instead, as his children were living, and he was “just as loyal” to the Fire Nation as Iroh was. Azulon was affronted by the coldhearted suggestion, and as punishment for conceiving of something so vicious, he told Ozai he would have to pay the same price Iroh paid: the death of his firstborn son. Ozai agreed. However, Zuko’s kindhearted mother, Ursa — the child’s sole comfort, confidant and protector then — found out about the plan, and begged Ozai not to kill their son. Instead, an arrangement was made with Ursa where Zuko’s life would be spared, but Ozai would become Fire Lord, and Ursa would be mysteriously banished. So in the dead of night, Ursa came to kiss a young Zuko goodbye for the last time, and vanished without explanation. Zuko lived on as crown prince without her by his side — but not for long.

Ozai found another way to remove him. As a 13-year-old, Zuko felt disregarded and wanted to be involved politically to prepare for his future as fire lord. He begged to be allowed to sit in on a war council meeting, and with his kindly uncle at his side, they snuck him in — on the one condition Zuko would not speak. However, when the general in the war chamber began to elaborate on a plan to use a troop of inexperienced Fire Nation soldiers as bait in an Earth Kingdom invasion, Zuko’s empathy got the better of him, and he spoke out of turn to defend the soldiers that were to be sacrificed. His father was insulted by his son’s impudence, and so was the general whom he’d spoken out against. When asked if Zuko would defend his words with an Agni Kai, a ritual firebending battle, he interpreted this challenge as being a fight against the general he’d contradicted… However, the young boy was surprised to see it was in fact his own father whom he’d just challenged to a duel. He was told he had spoken out in his father’s war chamber, and the shame in Zuko’s behavior reflected only onto the Fire Lord himself. But the child refused to fight his father, laying himself out at the fire lord’s feet in tears, pleading. He maintained he meant no disrespect — that he was Ozai’s loyal son, and only had what he thought were his best considerations for the Fire Nation at heart. But Ozai found his refusal to fight even more shameful, and accosted the child for being weak and a coward. He told the thirteen-year-old boy: “You will learn respect, and suffering will be your teacher.” Zuko’s father then punished him for something so innocent by permanently disfiguring him with a blast of flame that seared half his face. This was not enough punishment, however, and he further banished the prince from the Fire Nation, sending him in exile to scour the world in search of the Avatar, whom hadn’t been seen for a full century.

But that didn’t deter Zuko from his search. For three years, he traveled the globe with his kindly Uncle, also disgraced and unwelcome at home now, but not banished. Iroh was merely there to support and look after Zuko, like a father should a son. The prince became fixated on the idea that if he could find and capture the Avatar to bring home to his father, then his father would welcome him back home, and in doing so, Zuko’s honor would be restored at last. It took Zuko three seasons worth of making mistakes and regretting them, until he learned for himself that only you can take away your own honor, and only you can restore it. No one else can touch your honor — even your family. But he only came to that realization the hard way, and only by the miracle that after a full century, the Avatar returned, and Zuko found him.

While searching the South Pole, Zuko just happened to be in the right place at the right time on his global goose hunt. The Avatar had been frozen in an iceberg for the past hundred years, and two Water Tribe teenagers accidentally released him — Zuko noticed the shock and light that this produced, and followed his gut straight to them. He spent every last ounce of effort and energy from then on following the Avatar and his new friends around the world, chasing the young boy down, determined to capture him at last. The only thing that had given him hope in three years was finally coming to a culmination. But after repeatedly trying and failing to locate him, trying and failing to defeat him, trying and failing to capture him, did he realize this was not his destiny.

For a short time, Zuko took off on his own, feeling he no longer had anything to gain from traveling with his humble uncle, as he honed his skills as a stealthy thief — maybe with a little too much practice. In his time touring the Earth Kingdom by himself, riding an ostrich-horse under the blazing sun for days on end, with no money or food, he began trying to reform his character on his own, realizing people are kinder than he thought, and that he’d rather not screw them over. He also began to realize the abject devastation his country wrought on the entire world for years and years, shattering the propaganda he’d been fed as the truth his entire life. After some time, he spontaneously defended the Avatar and his friends, reuniting with his uncle, and this led to a warrant for both their arrests. After this, the two men assumed false identities and went undercover as Fire Nation fugitives, living peacefully as refugees in the Earth Kingdom in disguise. They worked in a tea shop together, which did marvels for humbling Zuko, giving him the slightest chance for the first time in his life to be a normal teenage boy who goes on dates and hangs out with other teenagers — which his uncle eagerly supported, even against Zuko’s own will. This time soon became tumultuous once Zuko discovered the Avatar had arrived to their same city.

Without a plan, Zuko set off in disguise to steal the Avatar’s sky bison, their team’s main transportation. Once he found the bison in secret, however, Iroh found him. He urged Zuko to reconsider the kind of man he wants to become — to redefine his own destiny for himself, rather than continuing to be senselessly bent on a destiny his father’d forced on him. If Zuko seized his own destiny, he held the reins on his life independently. Realizing this drastic change in morality, Zuko surprised himself by freeing the Avatar’s bison, instead of stealing it. This was a crucial turning point in Zuko’s psychology — so much that it launched him into days and days of sickness and fever, physical symptoms brought on by massive mental anguish, shock and anxiety from his decision to break his destiny after three years of dogged pursuit. When push came to shove, he was presented the opportunity to either join the Avatar and his uncle and fight against his vicious sister, or join her in her attempts to murder both, and welcome Zuko back home to the Fire Nation. In an equally crucial lapse of judgment, Zuko took his sister Azula’s side.

Upon returning home, the prince was unhappier than ever before, and didn’t understand why. His lifestyle was charmed and relaxed again, he had a girlfriend whom he loved and who loved him — or at least they didn’t hate each other the way they both hated everyone else, which was profound and the closest thing to love Zuko could recognize then. His father wanted him around again, even believing him to be a hero. Azula, ever the cruel and manipulative sister Zuko never deserved, had lied to their father by telling him Zuko had been the one to defeat the Avatar, giving him all the glory — but in fact, she had been secretly giving him all the shame and fresh dishonor, because she knew that he knew that somehow the Avatar had survived, and set him up for disgrace. And they were correct: the Avatar was alive, and still determined to defeat Fire Lord Ozai and dismantle the Fire Nation’s government. And after deep, difficult, damning consideration, Zuko decided he shared this goal. He wrote a vague breakup letter to his girlfriend, prayed to his mother’s shrine, confronted his father to speak his truths, and abandoned his princely life, bolting in the night, determined to join and help the Avatar, against all odds — but not against his better judgment. For once, he felt sound in that he was making the right decision. It was difficult to convince the Avatar and his friends that Zuko had good intentions toward them now and had changed inside, but after showing he understood fire can unintentionally hurt others if you don’t control your emotions, the Avatar understood Zuko was sincere, and agreed to allow Zuko to teach him firebending and join their mission.

In the time spent traveling with the Avatar and his other good-natured friends, Zuko became a different person — or rather, he became his true self. He’d not spent much time in his life hanging out with kids his own age, and certainly had no friends his own age apart from leeching off his sister’s friends — one of whom having been his ex-girlfriend Mai. He’d never made his own friend even once in his life until he joined the Avatar’s group. It was a continual effort in how to connect with others and build trust together. But with every attempt, Zuko proved the strength of his character and the purity of his heart to everyone around him quite naturally, while also showing immense bravery — and often immense awkwardness, too. After gaining his new friend group’s respect and affection, Zuko became a crucial member of Team Avatar in their ambitions to defeat his father, no longer afraid to confront him or to confront himself.

His destiny had seemed to go wildly off-course, before he realized it had in fact gotten back on track, and he was the only one holding the reins. His kindly uncle and gentle mother had always recognized Zuko’s natural inclination to protect the weak from the strong, and they both knew his innate empathy would inevitably guide his destiny — they saw who he truly was. But Zuko’d had to lose himself in order to find himself again, and he did that by himself — but not alone. After a short lifetime in various shades of solitude, trauma, and rejection, it was a profound lesson to learn to accept kindness as much as it was to dole it out. No one can be emotionally self-sufficient, and independence can’t exist in isolation, which was the hardest lesson for Zuko to accept. Everyone needs others to survive their own inner lives, and the value of teamwork is an incomparable force to be reckoned with, when fighting for the right side. It was a hard path he is still traveling, and his dual nature will forever prompt his self-reflection — but no longer tempt him away from the truth.

FIREBENDING

Zuko comes from a country and culture built around the power of fire — it’s very important, so I’ll keep it brief. Essentially, bending is all at once genetic, personal and spiritual, and some combination of these dictates the nature and strength of your elemental bending. Zuko comes from a long line of naturally talented royal firebending prodigies — but he is not one of them. Zuko struggled with the basics for years, exhibiting poor motor skills, poor memory recall, poor emotional control, poor focus… When bending fire, emotional control and focus are key to controlling the flames, or else you may hurt others — intentionally or unintentionally. With that, firebending must come with a certain meditative quality attached. Firebending begins with the breath, which is turned into energy within the body, which then extends all throughout and then past the limbs, manifesting at last into actual, weaponized flames. Zuko is extremely well practiced, having had to study and train intently due to his lack of natural inclination. He’s now a competent and powerful fighter, but still not at the level of any of his family members. What fuels flames best, though, is his will.

When he switched sides and joined the Avatar, he lost his will, because his purpose had changed so drastically, and so temporarily lost his firebending. Thankfully, in series, they were able to go find some ancient secret dragons who gave them a quick Firebending 101 tutoring session on the fly, and Zuko got his fire back within a couple days, more determined than ever to help the Avatar fight his father. Bam. However, being trapped in Prismatica now, after being removed from right before the culmination of the war, Zuko’s will and purpose will have now shifted again in reaction to his current predicament. Only temporarily, as he figures himself out here (and perhaps meets a good sensei or two, hopefully), I’m taking away Zuko’s firebending in-game, simply because his soul feels lost for now. And he’s gotta do the mental hard work himself here. Cuz this time there ain’t no dragons just like coolin at the convenience store who gonna wanna help him out real quick nbd… Figure it out, kid.

TWIN DAO SWORDS

Zuko is very adept with swords, but has a special interest in dual broadswords. He uses two antique dao blades, and it’s his main battle skill outside of firebending. It’s good for close combat only, and he uses it mostly defensively. He does not think of them as two separate weapons, but treats the swords as if they are two halves of the same whole, moving them as if they’re one, slicing in tandem in each hand. This requires precise agility and presence of mind in battle.

STEALTH

He’s a sneaky lil thief when he’s desperate and/or hungry, and he’s pretty naturally good at it. He’s broken into (not out of, into) high-security prisons, infiltrated strong military fortresses at home and abroad, rescued the Avatar and the Avatar’s sky bison nearly undiscovered (eh, more or less) on multiple occasions, collected a fair bit of stolen luxury for himself and his uncle while on the road, and so on and so forth… He’s just generally good at sneaking around.

GENERAL ABILITY / STRENGTH / MARTIAL ARTS

This bitch singlehandedly infiltrated a palace in the North Pole by swimming nearly vertically through a tunnel in an iceberg against the current of an arctic geyser, and then popped out still ready to fight, like. I don’t know what to tell you. He’s dumb and wants to fuck shit up, but he’s at least good at fucking up while he’s fucking shit up without getting too fucked up. That’s my final answer.

TWIN DAO SWORDS

Two large blades, dual broadswords that Zuko wields together at once; antique Fire Nation Royal Family artifacts, most likely.

FIRE PRINCE CROWN

Zuko’s hairpiece as crown prince. Another momento to keep on the shelf. His hair may grow long enough to wear it again while in Prismatica, but even if he has occasion to dress up — he may still not be so keen to wear his crown again. Perhaps best kept on the shelf as a quiet reminder for his eyes only. To anyone else it'd merely appear to be a simple, golden trinket. And for now, that's what he'd like to pretend it is, too.

Update: Given to Gokudera Hayato (bakudan_bambino) in October 2020 in Prismatica, in the spirit of friendship and some poetic serendipity, believing Gokudera to be some sort of Avatar in his own world, meaning to emulate his great-grandfathers, Sozin and Roku, the Fire Prince and the Avatar, when Sozin gave his crown to Roku as a parting gift to symbolize their deep friendship. Zuko gifted Gokudera with his crown when playfully trying on each other's clothes, going over Zuko's collection of pictures, and comparing their different cultures. In Zuko's eyes, it was a meaningful, heavily symbolic gift to honor the mafioso as his best friend. Destiny returned the crown to him in Avalon; but he plans to give it to Gokudera all over again anyway. Aang has no hair. An alien Avatar will have to do.

SCROLL OF VARIOUS PARCHMENTS

• A portrait of his mother Ursa
• A portrait of his uncle Iroh
• A portrait of him and his ex-girlfriend Mai
• A portrait of the Royal Family when he was a child
• The wanted poster for himself and Uncle Iroh
• The wanted poster for Appa
• Painting of palace gardens
• Acquired in Prismatica. A printed modern photo: a selfie of Zuko and Gokudera together, Zuko dressed in Gokudera's punk jewelry and T-shirt, Gokudera in Zuko's Fire Nation clothes wearing his Fire Prince crown, both boys smiling at the camera

MAGIC TEABAGS

Acquired in Prismatica. In September 2020, Noiz (zunge) propositioned Zuko for a detailed description of the pain he felt when his father burned his face, trading this strange information for enchanted tea leaves that allow the drinker to change their appearance at will. Effects of each bag typically lasts for about an hour; Zuko was gifted three teabags. He's saving it for a special occasion.

MINIATURE MODEL WARSHIP

Acquired in Prismatica. Zuko picked up the hobby of model making while idling his time. He was sent to Avalon with his favorite model. He struggled to find a simple, antique-looking warship amongst all the modern alien battleships, but managed to find a small cruiser that very vaguely resembled his own back home, and painted it to look metal and as if it were a ship from the Fire Navy. He plans to customize it further, following Gokudera's clever idea to modify the bow into a spiked, movable bridge, just like Zuko's real ship. He may or may not be waiting to do it with Gokudera, still sad over their lost memories together in Prismatica. Regardless, the little ship reminds him of home, and he's become quite fond of this hobby, finding it relaxing and oddly meditative. His mind needs focus, his hands need to work, or else he'll go mad thinking. Making models is stimulating and mindless at once. Uncle Iroh encouraged the hobby, proud that his nephew has found something creative he enjoys, or just... something he enjoys at all.