This is a secondary blog from Waterfire1848! I’ll be talking about dragon Azula and different AUs with both her and the Fire Family😁 Some catzula as well from time to time!
AU - After the war, Zuko hears that Azula knows about the Sun Warrior island. Worried she’s going to cause trouble, Zuko heads there on his own and finds Azula before Ran and Shaw. He doesn’t really know what’s happening but he wants to protect her only for the dragons to knock him back and for Azula to tell him this was her choice as they breath fire on her.
Except that, when the fire clears away, Azula isn’t dead. Instead, there’s a baby dragon in her place. The chief explains Azula’s request for a new life to a very confused Zuko who, even though he is still deeply confused and a bit upset to learn Azula is gone, makes a pledge to return to the island every year to see her.
@waterfire1848 / @dragon-azula I imagine this happens right after Azula disappears into the woods in "The Search" So there's propably a lot of bad blood between the fire siblings. And the memories of how Zuko has treated her during the whole shit show are still very fresh. So much so that she even decided to have her memories erased through the dragon's flames? Maybe?
That’s pretty much what I was thinking. She’s hurting bad and feels like there’s really no one who wants her now. Instead, she feels like her life would be better as a dragon and does some research, discovering the dragon’s flames ability along with the fact that dragons could still exist in one place.
AU - After the war, Zuko hears that Azula knows about the Sun Warrior island. Worried she’s going to cause trouble, Zuko heads there on his own and finds Azula before Ran and Shaw. He doesn’t really know what’s happening but he wants to protect her only for the dragons to knock him back and for Azula to tell him this was her choice as they breath fire on her.
Except that, when the fire clears away, Azula isn’t dead. Instead, there’s a baby dragon in her place. The chief explains Azula’s request for a new life to a very confused Zuko who, even though he is still deeply confused and a bit upset to learn Azula is gone, makes a pledge to return to the island every year to see her.
AU - As it turns out, trying to throw the world into a Fire Nation led authoritarian order angered a lot of spirits. However, a lot of spirits also realize Azula is trying to change and was young when those events occurred. The spirits end up cursing Azula but with a weredragon curse, leaving her herself most of the time and becoming a wild dragon for only one night a month (their way of showing mercy). Months later, Sokka and Azula start dating and the weredragon curse is never an issue because they simply spend the night apart from each other. It becomes a problem though when Sokka has to explain to their daughter why she can never see her mom during full moons
Breaking into the Firelord’s palace was already a pretty difficult affair. The fact that none of them could find the Ozai didn’t make things any easier. By some luck of the spirits, they managed to get into the palace while the darkness from the solar eclipsed bathed the city. When they got inside though, they were quickly spotted by guards and separated.
Katara had managed to find a hidden staircase and ran down it. She was all the way at the bottom before realizing no one was following her. From what she could gather about where she’d ended up, she was in a dungeon. There was a large hallway in front of her—lit with torches—with a similar looking staircase at the end and multiple doors, each one closed tight, that lined the hallway.
It didn’t look like there were any guards present at the moment. Katara assumed that they must have heard about either the invasion or the Avatar and his friends getting into the palace and went to go help. Either way, she wasn’t about to miss this chance to get out and find her friends. Both doors would probably work to getting her back to the upper level but there seemed to be less of a risk of using the other door—the guards could figure out where she disappeared to and be waiting for her.
Katara was halfway down the brightly lit hallway when she heard the chains move. These didn’t sound like regular chains on someone’s wrists, these sounded like they were chains strong enough to move a building. Curiosity taking over her, Katara moved towards the cell that was making the noise and looked inside. The cell door has a small window at the top of it allowing Katara to make out who was being kept prisoner inside.
That’s how she saw a dragon staring up at her with golden eyes. The dragon had chains around her paws, muzzle and a final large one around her wings. Katara’s heart instantly twisted at the sight. She might not have been an expert on Fire Nation culture but she knew what they’d done to the dragons and what dragons, supposedly, meant to them. There was no way she was going to leave a real dragon, maybe the last dragon in existence, to rot in a cell.
“Hang on. I’m coming to get you.” She froze the handle of the cell before kicking it and messing with the now easier to break open door. The door began to creek open, “Hey.”
The dragon curled up tightly.
“It’s okay. It’s okay. I just want to get those chains off of you. They probably hurt, huh?” Slowly, Katara knelt down in front of the chains over the dragon’s wings, “You have gorgeous scales, did you know that? The light blue is beautiful and, of course, blue’s my favorite color.” She showed off her outfit as if to prove her point.
Her talking serves its purpose because the dragon had unfolded itself and was listening to Katara rather than moving while she got one of the chains off. Once the chain was off her wings, the dragon raised them and beat them down once.
“I assume that feels much better. Let me get these two chains off you and you will be a free dragon. You know we have a sky bison outside. I’m sure he’d love to fly with you.” The chains on her paws hit the floor, “And don’t even get me started on Aang. He’s going to lose his mind when he sees a dragon.” The chain around her muzzle fell to the ground with a clinking noise.
The dragon shook itself off and flexed her wings once more like it was trying to confirm if she was, in fact, free from the chains. Realizing she was, she instantly nuzzled Katara, thanking her for the rescue.
“You’re welcome. Let’s get you out of here.”
Escaping with a dragon from an underground dungeon wasn’t as easy as Katara expected. For one, the dragon had a lot of trouble fitting through things. When she couldn’t fit through a door, her solution was to breathe blue fire on it until everything melted around it. Not the worst solution but one that got them noticed by guards very quickly.
“She’s got the dragon! Stop her now!” The dragon grabbed Katara’s neck and flung her onto her back, “Stop the waterbender!”
“Okay. What are you doing!?”
The dragon roared at the incoming guards with a ferocity Katara had never seen from any creature and, once again, unleashed a wave of blue flames onto them. Only when she was certain that the guards weren’t following them, to busy dealing with her fire, the dragon burst through one of the windows.
“Woah! Ah!” Katara clung to the dragon’s horns with a grip so tight that she wasn’t sure if she was hurting the dragon or not. If the dragon did care about what was happening, she didn’t show it. She only climbed higher into the clouds.
“Katara! Katara!”
Aang.
“Aang!” Katara screamed. The dragon began to growl again, warming up fire in her throat, “No. No. It’s okay. Aang’s a friend. He wants to help you.” The fire vanished.
“Where did you find a dragon?”
“Ozai was keeping her in a cell. I’m sorry I left you guys. I couldn’t leave her to rot—“
“No! It’s great that you did this! The rest of the invasion is down below. They all made it to the capital.” Katara felt her heart lighten, “But I couldn’t find Ozai in time.”
“It’s okay. We’ll handle him another day. Right now, we need to make sure our people get out of here before Ozai has the chance to send his forces after us.” Aang nodded, pushing Appa to return to the ground. The dragon must have decided to copy him before she flew down right after him, landing on a rooftop and growling at the humans who were staring at her in awe, “It’s okay. You’re safe. No one here is going to hurt you. I promise.” Katara whispered.
The dragon released a small but unsure noise and climbed down to the ground.
“How did you…?”
“It’s a long story.” Katara told Sokka as she climbed off the dragon’s back, “The important thing is is that this dragon is away from Ozai and we have to keep it that way.”
“The invasion force is heading back to the beach to escape before Ozai can mount an attack. It seems like we did catch him off guard because he has no attack plan ready.” Sokka told her. True to his word, most of the Earth Kingdom fighters and Water Tribe warriors were fleeing down the mountain already, “Can the dragon follow us?”
“Yes.” Katara nodded, a hand resting on her mane, “She can.”
“And what about the metal cuffs?” Toph asked.
“The what?”
Sure enough, Toph was right. There were two small metal cuffs that were clearly too small for the dragon, if the almost broken scales around them was anything to go by, right above her paws. Katara wanted to hit herself. How had she missed those? They must have been hidden under her chains.
“Can you get them off?”
“Yeah.” Toph fell into a metal bending pose and expanded the metal cuffs until they were torn enough that she could remove them without issue. Katara was right behind her, pulling out water to place on the dragon’s injured legs, “She seems to be doing better without those.”
“I can imagine.” Katara grumbled, “Her poor legs are going to be red for a while but they should clear up.” Especially with healing.
“Uhh Katara, we have to go now. You can heal the dragon later.”
“I know. I know. I’m—“ A glow took over the dragon before Katara could finish her words. It looked almost spiritual in nature like it was from some kind of light not found in the human world. When it appeared, it covered the dragon’s entire shape. After a moment or two, it began to shrink down and, Katara realized, so did the dragon until there was only a human girl, around her age, laying on the ground in rags.
“What? I…I’m human again? What’s going on?” Her eyes were the same golden color the dragon had and her hair was long, falling down past her hips.
“Did we all just see that dragon turn into a girl?” Sokka asked, “I want to make sure I didn’t get hit on the head too many times.”
“You probably did,” Toph said, “but that’s definitely not a dragon anymore.”
The sound of distant shouting and rumbling snapped the group back to their senses. Katara wrapped her arms around the girl to get her on her feet even if she was badly shaking and only able to take a few steps forward before collapsing.
“What is going on?” She asked again.
“I’ll explain everything later.” Katara promised, “Right now. We have to run. I’ll help you onto Appa so that you don’t have to walk as much.”
“Appa? What’s an Appa?” Katara didn’t answer her and instead moved her towards the sky bison. She was easily able to get into the saddle thanks to Appa’s tail and grabbed hold on the saddle, “What is this thing?!”
“His name is Appa. He’s a sky bison and he’s here to help just like all of us are.” Katara grabbed the girl’s shoulders so that she’d look at her, “I imagine you have a lot of questions and we have a lot of questions for you, but, right now, you need to trust us and trust that we’re here to help. Please trust me.”
The girl looked down at her arms where her skin was still a little red from the cuffs and chains and back up at Katara. Her previous look of confusion and a bit of terror faded away from she stared at the waterbender.
AU - Azula changes sides in season two and agrees to help Aang and his team. During Ba Sing Se though, Azula is captured while helping Aang escape and taken back to the palace. The Gaang agree that they won’t leave the palace without Azula when they invade on the Day of Black Sun, leaving Sokka to search the palace for Azula. He doesn’t find her but does find a chained up blue dragon with Azula’s exact eyes.
AU - Shortly after the death of his wife, Hakoda starts leaving the village for long periods of times on ‘fishing expeditions’ and coming back days later. After one of these events, he returns to the village, and Katara and Sokka, with one red and one blue dragon egg in his arms saying they were given to him by a woman who washed up on shore. She said her name was Ursa.
It’s not dragon!Azula but I response to the live action announcement and learning that we gotta wait until June I think people need some turtleducks in their lives.
