Darius: Hunter Is Stuck In The Human Realm! What If Something Happens To Him?

I don’t think anyone has fully considered the potential of a feral zuko au.

Like, Ozai tries to kill him when he’s 10, but zuko escapes with a scar, Ozai claims he was killed by an assassin and Azula gets a redemption arc early.

Meanwhile zuko is off completely changing the corse of history by, in no particular order:

-Making Hama realize that not all fire benders are bad cause the child she just told about how she was in prison immediately his to instigate a jail break

-is emotionally adopted by hakoda along with most of the crew

-finds wan shi tong’s library

-befriends/is adopted by June the bounty hunter

-discovers a herd of flying bison

-joins a traveling acting troupe for a while cause he’s a theater nerd

-visits omashu and is forcibly befriended by bumi, who decides that zuko is now his grandson and no one can stop him

-discovers the white lotus, decides that they don’t do shit, and starts a hobby of breaking into their safe houses and wrecking them until they get off their asses and help with the war

-meets toph when some fire nation soldiers chase him to gaoling and she stops them, and her parents see her, but zuko does this little speech about how proud they must be of their daughter and how much they must trust and respect her since she’s such a powerful earth bender, and basically guilt trips them into letting toph continue to fight and practice bending

-gets a dragon tattoo 

-wanders into the swamp at some point

-drinks a bit more than he probably should, but he can hold it shockingly well

-figures out lightning bending in the middle of a thunderstorm 

-goes to ba sing se, gets arrested by the Dai li, breaks out, and starts a one man war with them, which basically is just zuko par core-ing around the city till he finds some Dai li, then rather beats the shit out of them, or just kill them. 

-He does it all with out fire bending though, just his swords. 

-After like a week the Dai li are basically gone, and the earth king finds out about the war, and makes zuko a part of the army, some fancy title and a medal or something, zuko is officially recognized as the dragon of the east, and proceeds to duck off to the North Pole to try and convince them to help in the war

-they don’t want to, but he befriends yue and they talk about politics and zuko helps her get out of the arranged marriage 

-zuko called Paku a sexist bitch and is surprised yet delighted to inform him that blood bending was invented by a woman

-invents lightning redirection

-the north joins the war thanks to yue 

-zuko meets the mechanist at the northern air temple at some point

-meets and joins the freedom fighters, makes out with jet, uses fire bending to save jets like, then jet tries to kill him

-the other kids understand that zuko is still good even though he’s a fire bender, but zuko leaves, even though every single kid adopted zuko as their older brother

-becomes known as the greatest swords man to ever live

-it’s actually true, and when piandao, who has Ali adopted zuko, hears that he is very proud and brags about it to everyone he meets

-basically zuko gets adopted by almost every adult he meets

-gets really good at cooking, hunting, reading maps, finding water, pick pocketing, stowing away on beats, sewing, and pretty much every other skill you would need to live on your own. 

-hears that Zhao has captured the avatar and casually breaks Aang out of prison

-refuses to be his firebending teacher and leaves

-stops at a village to tell them that the volcano next to them is about to explode, and he knows this cause he grew up in the fire nation which has a lot of volcanos

-they don’t believe him cause the fortune teller never said anything about it, zuko gets pissed and starts yelling at them

-this is the exact moment Aang Katara and sokka show up

-zuko thinks Aang is following him and tries to leave, but sokka recognizes him as the dragon of the east from a wanted poster

-they basically follow zuko around trying to convince him to help them, and he is this close to just beating them up when Katara mentions they are going to the northern water tribe to learn bending

-zuko agrees to go with them just so he can see Katara kick paku’s ass 

-obviously zuko and sokka get together at some point

-when the gaang finds joung joung zuko makes fun of him cause zuko was there when he broke up with piandao cause he was afraid of being found out (cause being gay was illegal) and piandao kicked his ass even though he’s a non bender

Meanwhile Azula thinks she could have prevented zukos death somehow, maybe helped him with his fire bending or hadn’t bullied him so much or something. 

Ozai kind of focused on her more and started to look down on her a lot more cause he couldn’t compare her to zuko. He put a lot more pressure on her and it drove her away from him, she started seeking his approval less and less, instead growing closer to her mom and uncle. Her mom was constantly worried she would screw up and Azula would die too, but she was Ali scared of making her think she was trying to replace zuko. But by being rather open with Azula about that it never really became an issue. 

Azula took up sword fighting and trained with piandao and she got a lot of character growth from that, cause she wasn’t naturally good at it and really had to work hard. Piandao was not someone she could bully or manipulate, so she had to struggle with earning someone’s approval. 

Piandao told her at some point that sword fighting was not something that came naturally to anyone, and you had to work hard your whole life to be really good. He also said zuko was the fastest learner and best student he had ever taught. Piandao believed that zuko could have easily surpassed piandao himself within a few years.

Azula gets to go to the war meeting that zuko got banished at in the show, she also says the plan is wrong, but in a much more eloquent way that doesn’t dishonor the fire lord but does dishonor the general. She fights an Agni Kai against the general and wins.

The plan is done anyway, (zuko finds that message and is able to warn both the earth kingdom troops and the squad of fire nation soldiers that where going to die, it starts the rumor that the dragon of the east is actually prince zuko and it spreads, some solders start to rebel against their commanders in the name of the prince) Azula finds out about it much later and raises all kinds of hell over it, calling Ozai an “honorless coward who betrays his people, unworthy of the throne” to his face in front of a bunch of people.

Azula gets banished for it, Iroh comes with her and she’s now basically zuko from the show, but tasked with finding and capturing the dragon of the east to prove her loyalty instead of the avatar. At this point she does not know that it’s zuko.

She finds zuko didn’t recognize him and fights him, but he’s better than her, and then she sees the knife that Iroh have zuko just before he “died” and puts two and two together and comes up with seven. She thinks the dragon of the east is the assassin that killed her brother.  It kind of makes sense, if the assassination was his first act of rebellion, cause a string of jail breaks followed. 

I’m not really sure where the story could go after that but there’s a lot of potential for an invasion, since zuko knows so many people. Imagine them all showing up to help and they’re all like “oh hey zuko” and the gaang turns to zuko and ask how he knows them and he’s just like “that’s my mom/dad” and it just makes them more confused.

i had the most MESSED UP idea last night where joel gets bit, but instead of attacking ellie he just gets like, ferally protective of her. (More than usual, i mean)

(Maybe this is because of her weird fungal variant, maybe because their love is ONE IN A MILLION or maybe some combination of the two idk)

Like ellie SOMEHOW got all his weapons from him before he could off himself, because she just couldnt watch him do that. Cordyceps!joel coming towards her, and she’s holding her knife up between them, sobbing because SHE CANT DO IT she cant hurt him, but he just pushes the knife aside and grabs her arm, inspecting her bite marks, sniffing her all the way up her arm to her neck to her head, then gathers her up in his arms under his chin. She can feel his lips on her hair, can hear him grunting in a strange rhythmic way, almost like he’s trying to hum. Eventually she feels something other than his lips on her head, realizes it’s the fungal tendrils coming from his mouth.

cordyceps!joel brings her dead deer and rabbits, destroys any infected who threaten her, cradles her like a baby when he can tell that she’s upset. When they come near humans, he heeds her when she makes him hide and not attack. (Except when the humans are raiders, she lets joel eat those.)

on the nights it’s so cold she needs a fire, cordyceps!joel sits 20 feet behind her, grumbling, until ellie yells at him to be quiet. (he is NOT a fan of the fire)

Joel eventually becoming a clicker. She leads him by the hand through the wilderness, learns to communicate with him by clicking just as much as talking. She finds herself in front of a mirror one day in an old cabin looking for supplies, and doesnt recognize herself. If anyone saw her they’d assume she was infected without a second thought.

Oh god HOW DOES IT END does he finally get taken down by a bullet, ellie holding him as he chokes on his own blood, soothing him with her voice because he doesnt even understand what’s happening??? Does she finally put him down, knowing joel is long gone and he wouldnt want to live like this?? do they continue on like that forever, until ellie’s forgotten how to speak? OH ITS TERRIBLE someone take it away from me

zuko and azula wearing matching outfits >>>>>>

Fic Snippet!

“Are you out of your mind?” Zuko rushed across the courtyard and bore down on Aang with an intense, almost palpable fury. “Do you know how badly you could’ve hurt her?”

“I was just…I didn’t mean to-“ Aang stammered.

“Fire is not a toy!” Zuko bellowed at him. He turned to Katara, examining her for injuries. “Are you okay?”

“I’m alright,” she assured him, her voice shaking. “I’m fine.” She was trembling visibly, and there were singe marks on her clothes, but she otherwise seemed unharmed. Zuko turned back to Aang, how was looking down at his feet in shame.

“What were you thinking?” Zuko demanded.

“I don’t know,” Aang mumbled, kicking at the ground. “I was…mad.”

“About what?” Zuko was absolutely bewildered. “What could Katara possibly have done that you thought it was a good idea to do that?”

“Nothing,” Aang admitted sullenly. He didn’t say anything after that. Zuko glowered at him, took a few deep breaths to quell his own anger.

“You’re going to clean this mess up,” he said gesturing to the torn up stones, dirt and cooling lava. “Then you’re going to do 100 fire squats. Then you’re going to work on your forms for an hour. And I don’t want to see so much as a curl of smoke out of you. You’re not responsible enough for fire. Understood?” 

“What? That’s not-“ Aang’s protests died on his lips when he saw Zuko’s expression.  He huffed, kicked at stone, and finally nodded.

“Get started,” Zuko ordered through clenched teeth. He turned back to Katara, who was watching the exchange. She was still shaking a bit. Zuko draped his arm protectively around her back and guided her away. He glanced back once more at Aang, and almost rolled his eyes when he saw the younger boy still moping at the ground. It was hard sometimes to reconcile the awesome might and eminence of the Avatar with the reality of Aang, the child.

“I’ll be back,” he warned Aang. “Have this mess cleaned up. And don’t even think about asking Toph to help.” 

I know canonically, the Lava Fissure Incident takes place while Zuko and Sokka are rescuing Hakoda, but I wanted to have Zuko see and react to it. Personally, I think it was another accidentally accurate depiction of how unready Aang is to be the Avatar. And it is also another incident that the narrative decides not to call Aang out for, so the chances of him growing from it are...well, we all know how things turned out in LoK.

All 12. I just need time to do the actual calendar bit but it’s almost done and will be up on my ko-fi shop as soon as I’m done.

If you're still taking TOH requests, would you draw Darius, maybe bonding with either Hunter or Eber? He's one of my absolute favorite characters too!

*cries on the floor and never recovers*

I NEED MORE DARIUS!!!! I get the feeling we might've gotten more of his backstory had we not been robbed of season 3.... Like, why he and Amity's dad fell out of friendship, his relationship with the old golden guard. There's so much mystery left to explore!!!!! TAT!!

And with those kind of themes being played out on the kid main characters too, I could totally see an episode meant to happen where the show deals with an adult having to come to terms with old burned bridges.

Like how Willow and Amity became friends again. But imagine it between adults, y'know? That has held these feelings for so much longer. The drama. It is so... juicy!!!!

AND HIS "I TOTALLY DONT CARE" ATTITUDE BUT HE TOTALLY SO DOES CARE!!!

Adult characters that is like "lmao I hate everyone and these children annoy me" and then wind up being their designated best parent is... ... one of my fave tropes...

I am.. weak... for this character type.

I love him. TTATT!!! Dariiuusss!!!!

WARNING very graphic visual of Lu-Tens last moments. the footage shows, how prince Lu-Ten son of Iroh second in line. has to fight off on his own, two small hatchlings, both enraged by their pray being stolen. and you can clearly see, how his father, the general, dragon of the west crown prince Iroh, JUST SITS ON THE SIDELINES SIPPING HIS TEA AND LAUGHING HIS BELLY OF!

Pirate Zuko

Alright so Zuko doesn’t go running from his ship once he wakes up, but he also doesn’t buy anything he’s being told anymore. So he turns to his crew, explains what’s going on and essentially goes, “So I’m gonna be a pirate now. I’ll fill out all the paperwork for you to be dismissed from the navy and get you guys as close to home as I can.”

Iroh’s shocked, but doesn’t say anything about it and that night the rest of the crew have a big discussion. They all come to the same conclusion and wait for the opportune time.

By the time Zuko’s filled out and sent off the proper paperwork relieving them of duty he’s also cut his hair short. So then he’s about to take the ship as close to the nearest colony as he can to let them go home they all just go… no.

Zuko: What do you mean no?!

Jee: We mean no, you can’t get rid of us.

Zuko: I’m your prince, go!

Jee: Technically you just went and threw your title away after discharging us. We’re civilians of the Fire Nation and you’ve got no title. You can’t make us leave.

Zuko, fuming and nearing screaming: What do you want?!

Jee: Oh, we’re staying. You want to be a pirate? You need a crew. You’re not a prince now, you’re the captain.

Imagine a thirteen year old in charge of a ship full of ex-navy officers turned pirates. Except he’s dangerous as well and no one knows how to deal with him.

And when Aang wakes up? Ooooh boy.

Ty Lee keeps a drawing that Zuko made of them playing with turtleducks together. Zuko keeps a sparkly bead bracelet with a little golden flower charm Ty Lee made for him when he mentioned it was his favorite color. They gave these things to each other when they were little, and they mean the world to them - even acting as comfort items despite their initial friendship having faded away and not having seen each other in years.

cant stop thinking about this