mmmmm I’m suddenly plagued with thoughts of an Assassin!Zuko/Banished!Azula AU where Ursa takes him with her after she kills Ozai and then proceeds to have him trained to be the ultimate assassin of Fire Lords.
Poisons, weapons, stealth, lock picking, anything and everything she can think of Zuko is trained in. Ursa justifies it as preparing and keeping him safe, but unintentionally kinda fucks him up even more than having Ozai as a father/Azulon as a grandfather/being a prince in the Fire Nation already did.
He and Ursa get seperated at some point and he starts hunting for Aang because people keep talking about how the Avatar is going to stop the Fire Lord and he wants in. Everyone is a little concerned about the intimidating, Blue Spirit mask wearing (does he ever take that thing off?), stab first ask questions never dude that has suddenly signed himself up on their quest. But hey, Aang needs a fire bending teacher anyway, and this guy’s actually pretty good at keeping them all alive so far...sure his first answer to any question is “inventive and horrible forms of violence” but hey they can usually talk him down into something less murdery that still involves his frankly batshit insane arsenal of skills.
Now if they could just get figure out why an old man obsessed with tea and his shouty niece with a burn scar suddenly started chasing them around all of a sudden that’d be great.
I just read your fic where Zuko was trained as an assassin and it’s great! I was wondering: who in the royal family knows Zuko exists? Do Azula and Lu Ten know? Did Iroh know?
Iroh and Lu Ten know about him, but Zuko is so far removed from their lives that they only remember he exists occasionally. All they know is that Azulon is training him to be a vassel/bodyguard for the next Fire Lord, and they don't investigate further. When Iroh dies at Ba Sing Se, Lu Ten becomes next in line to inherit. He has a lot more pressing things to worry about than a cousin he's never met.
As for Azula, she sees some of the status updates about Zuko on Azulon's desk at some point, and that's how she learns she has an older brother. She'd say she was surprised her family kept this life changing secret from her... except that's a total lie.
can anyone recommend any good canon divergent zuko centric atla fics where zuko was banished but never chased the avatar? whether hes a pirate, an assassin, working in a tea shop, with the avatar, against the avatar. literally anything. i love that shit.
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the
Organization for Transformative Works
Bookmark Series 1-8
A series of one-shots exploring small moment within the Avatar series that may or may not have happened, focusing on the detail that Zuko may once have been trained to be an assassin.
What are your thoughts on Assassin!Zuko AUs? Lately I’ve been OBSESSED with it, I can’t get it out of my head. It just fits too well with his skillset! Which btw includes, but is not limited to:
Infiltration/breaking&entering (canonically including at least 2 prisons, 2 military strongholds, 4 Air Temples supposedly unreachable by normal means, one water tribe fortress under siege, and one secret underground brainwashing facility)
Stealth
Information gathering
Tracking
Flawless parkour, acrobatics and balancing
Scaling vertical or near vertical surfaces
Very Long jump (see: The Boiling Rock pt 2)
Swordsmanship mastery
Pinpoint accuracy, both with knife-throwing and firebending
Skilled in dagger usage
Extremely proficient unarmed combat
Incredible physical strength (snapped steel chains and a thick wooden table with only a kick goddamn)
Good at improvisation while under pressure, and working with a partner/team at the drop of a hat
Also, if the comics are to be believed, his mother was unbelievably skilled at poisons and after book 3 he has good enough tea-brewing skills to use them with
It just makes too much sense. He’s like a goddamn ninja. If Ozai had stopped being a dumbass about his “lack” of firebending skill (even though he was still like the 5th best firebender in the world, since the only people we ever see with superior skills in the show are the Royal Family and Jeong Jeong) and started cultivating this talents, he’d have had a nearly unstoppable, devastatingly loyal assassin on his side (it took the poor kid having half his face burned off + 3 years of banishment + months of travel through the most affected regions of the Earth Kingdom + learning that Ozai was literally planning to burn down the works in order to finally let go of that loyalty. Imagine if Ozai had pretended to love him or sth)
I need more Assassin Zuko fics, there are only 19 on AO3 and that’s just tragic 😭 Now that I think about it, Bounty hunter!Zuko would work just as well, they have basically the same skillset requirements and Zuko meets all of them
i love them! there is so much potential there. i haven't read any of the fics with assassin zuko yet, but they've been in my to read list for a while.
and if you think there's not enough assassin zuko fics out there, then write one! be the change you want to see! if you want more than there's definitely others out there who would read it too :)
Alright, time to go on a whole ass thing about why Zuko being trained to be an assassin makes sense. Will be under a cut because I can tend to get very wordy when I get into something.
Zuko was shown from very early on in the show to have a certain set of skills. Very obvious skills that apparently a lot of the Fire Nation - no matter how high ranked - didn’t know about and weren’t privy to.
The thing people knew about Zuko was that he was a ‘mediocre’ firebender. Which was a thing that the royal family would have been ashamed of and would have show off his better skills, but they didn’t.
The skills that they didn’t show off were that he was a master of dual broadswords. At such a young age this would have been impressive no matter what it was thought of for a bender to use weapons. When Zhao sees them in his cabin though he literally tells Zuko that he didn’t know he was skilled with broadswords.
Even if he’s an asshole, Zhao was trusted and told a lot of things by Ozai because he knew he was loyal. Yet Ozai never mentions that Zuko is talented with swords and trained under Piandao, a master. Zuko is also horrified when Zhao says this, obviously for potentially being found out, but perhaps also because no one was supposed to know.
There was also no speculation that Zuko could be the Blue Spirit. Like no one knew that he could do anything even close to that acrobatic. No one seems to know that he has the mask. No one comes close until Zhao sees the swords and makes his own conclusions, like he hadn’t even considered that it could be Zuko under the mask.
Zuko also is kind of stupidly strong. Like, people in the show (Ozai and Azula mainly) call him weak, but... he’s far from weak. The first time we see just how strong Zuko is is when he saves Iroh from earthbenders.
He also kicked away a full on rock that was being tossed at Iroh’s hands. Not to mention, the chain doesn’t break, it shatters under the force Zuko gives. There is no sign of injury after this (and ATLA isn’t exactly afraid to show injury, it showed Sokka with a broken leg, I doubt it would have shied from Zuko having consequences for actions that his body couldn’t handle.) (Also, note Iroh’s little ‘oh, he’s here in time’ face)
More times we see that he’s almost unnaturally strong is breaking a table at Ember Island (that looks considerably sturdy and well made) with a single kick. There was also when rescuing the helmsman of his ship he catches him one handed as he’s falling. His grip on the ladder isn’t exactly sturdy either, which means that with a normal grip on a ladder Zuko (who isn’t exactly tall or particularly built) can bear the weight of a full grown man falling.
Then there’s back to the Blue Spirit shit. Who taught this boy how to fucking flip around like that and just... disappear for now good reason? Like, Zuko what did you do with that before you were actually out in the world? He literally moves around so silently that he isn’t seen or heard until he’s ready to be. He is practically a ninja and just... like three people on screen know it?
Then there’s the amount of control he has over his strength. That same kick that shattered a chain carefully kicked Sokka so that he wasn’t injured. The amount of control over his strength is terrifying.
He can also mix his bending with his sword fighting, which is dangerous and a completely unnecessary skill that looks far too polished to be done on the spot. So he obviously learned how to do this, but why?
You think I’m done? No.
Zuko slips around seamlessly when he’s not in Fire Nation clothes. People don’t easily suspect him of being the Fire Nation’s own prince 9/10 times unless they happen to see his poster right before/after seeing him. They just go “Oh, look at this teenage boy who looks exactly like the crown prince of the Fire Nation... he’s obviously from the Earth Kingdom.” He fucking walked into Ba Sing Se with Iroh - who laid siege to this city for 600 days - without being thought strangely of. Even Jet - who’s seen a lot of Fire Nation soldiers and therefore should recognize obvious traits of the Fire Nation, like Zuko and Iroh have - didn’t even blink upon seeing him.
Now who would need to be strong, capable of controlling their strength to a fault, sneaky, acrobatic, good with weapons, and able to blend in quickly? An assassin.
Also, from what I know of the comics Ursa was good with poisons and Zuko probably is too and that would still fit with the assassin thing!
From a young age zuko was smart and calculated like azula and ozai but took after ursas kindness and compassion. Unbeknownst to everyone ursa was a assassin and secretly trained zuko who kept it hidden playing the weak child role so no one noticed even pretending to be a weak firebender.
When azulon ordered zukos death he went o his mother for help who promised to help him, the next morning azulon was dead and ursa was gone. With that zuko began to educate himself by sneaking into the catacombs learning everything he can learn even the forbidden knowledge granting him black flames.
Zuko was loyal to ozai until the agni kai and his banishment with that he began the long game.
He would train in secret and pretend to be the weak boy they know (hiding his black flames with regular flames) and even fooled iroh. In the agni kai with Zhao zuko still won but did burn Zhao badly and very convincingly playing it off as he didnt mean to which fooled everyone again.
While healing from his burns zuko snuck aboard his ship telling zhao that for losing he had to surrender all his control to zuko once he did zuko burned him to death. Zhao crew was informed and told if they swore alliance to him they would be greatly rewarded and that no one can know zhao was dead and play it off as healing severe wounds and keeping in correspondence with him secretly while he 'hunted' the avatar on his ship.
Zuko worked to turn the nation to him getting the yuyan archers, rough rhinos, and various troops and ships then siege of the north happened.
Instead of capturing aang or killing the moon spirit zuko manipulated things so the ship still got blown up, iroh boarded zhaos ship to help him and zuko,iroh into believing they were going with zhao moon spirit plan while not finding out zhao was dead.
zuko instead snuck into the city killed the council and arnook and captured yue instead making their way back to the firenation.
Zuko convinces yue to join him saying now she can become the chief and make things right for both tribes ending their sexist ways and bringing peace to the tribes and stop the attacks and all she has to do is marry him in a political marriage. He promises his men he has occupying the north wont hurt her people as long as they dont hurt his people which wont happen as he keeping her hostage.
She is hesitant cause she likes sokka but agree when zuko said as long as they have one child together she can be free to be with sokka. With that they headed for the firenation. Iroh was convinced the plan failed and they stole the princess as a backup plan and was on another ship and zuko told him he'd meet up in a resort in 3 weeks time.
Zuko cant enter the firenation due to his banishment and sends a ship to inform his father and ask for temporary entrance to the firenation. Zuko is allowed and explains he did everything to prove himself and is playing a long game to defeat the avatar and the next part of his plan is to take the earth kingdom and he need only azula for that.
