#zhao the moonslayer

[attackfish]

To be perfectly honest, Ozai/Zhao isn't a crack ship, and in fact given Zhao's track record, it's one of the more plausible explanations for his career trajectory.

[atla-polls]

Best Zhao ship?

Thank you for submitting your question, i look forward to seeing the results!

[fanofmyth]

The Hunter’s Fury: an Avatar the Last Airbender story

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This is the first story I’ve posted here, so please be nice.

This occurs just after the siege of the North in season one's final as a post-credit scene. This is not canon, but something I thought of after listening to the Kyoshi stories. It is part of a headcanon I have, considering how the Avatar state works. That is, the last four Avatars have the greatest chance of being called on by the current one in times of distress and who was the one Aang called on before he and La merge.

Avatar the Last Airbender and other works are not mine and never will be. There are some spoilers if one hasn’t read, listened to, or known about what happens in the Shadow of Kyoshi novel or have watch the Legend of Kora episode: Darkness Falls.

The story is under the cut.

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Summary: Killing spirits never ends well. Zhao finds out the hard way, but before he ends up in the Fog of Lost Souls, someone wants to speak with the so-called 'Moonslayer.'

Cold and dark were all Zhao could feel after the glowing hand grabbed him just after his near defeat by the banished prince, and the moon somehow came back into existence, and then light and warmth filled his system.

The area where he found himself was outside a mangrove forest. Although it was preferable to the tundra of the Northern Water Tribe's capital, he still longed for the temperate heat of the Fire Islands.

"Is this the Earth Kingdom?" Zhao asked no one. "What was that thing, anyway? No matter, it will pay once I return to the Northern Water Tribe." As a member of the Fire Nation, Zhao held honor in high regard, even if he had very little of it.

"This is the spirit world, and you're not leaving; La will ensure that." A Male's voice answered. "but first, you will be dealing with me."

The former Admiral yelled while spinning around, letting loose a wave of fire, trying to burn whoever spoke only to have his foot caught on the side of a water tribe weapon made of bone.

The owner of the bone weapon appeared to be around Zhao's age, maybe in his early thirties. He was a Water Tribesman with tanned skin and what seemed to be black or brown hair and a bread, although it was difficult to tell as he had a beast pelt draped over his head. His eyes were a striking shade of blue, colder than any pole. He was dressed in typical Water Tribe attire but with a more ancient style than Zhao had seen during the siege. He wore a dark blue and white outer parka with tassels, blue pants with white fur over brown boots, and various bone jewelry.

"Who are you?" Zhao demanded, trying to move the weapon by fire bending with his foot.

"Who I am is not important, boy," the water man said, keeping his weapon steady and then using it to knock the Fire Nation man off balance. "Only someone furious at what you nearly did to the world."

"You Water RAT, I was fulfilling my destiny as the Conqueror of the Moon." Zhao snarled, getting up while launching fire at the man, not knowing or caring if his opponent was a water bender. Not that stopped his opponent from making Zhao eat dirt five times in a row using only his weapon.

"You're wasting your fire, Brat. I am not sure how you kept your bending when you were dragged here." The water tribesman yelled, "Once I'm done, you won't bend fire again." He slammed his fists into parts of Zhao's body, causing him to fall to the ground and the fire to stop.

"You're a Chi-blocker?" Zhao said as he tried to move.

"Hopefully, this place heals like it did when Kyoshi's boy was killed," the man muttered, ignoring Zhao as he gazed at the scorched earth. "Not that I have an attachment to this part of the spirit world since the world-borer disappeared."

"You're not making sense," Zhao yelled as he moved a bit at a time.

"You angered a very ancient spirit and will now suffer the consequences," the man yelled. Then, he slammed his spear into the ground in anger. "Someone like you doesn't understand."

"Like you can do anything to me." Zhao snarled, "Spirits have no place in the world." he had made it to his knees.

"You have done something I would never dare do. One doesn't kill spirits and get away unharmed," the water tribesman snarled, sounding more like the beast whose pelt he wore. "You will never leave this world; your destiny is finished." The snarl was frightening, but what was more alarming were the glowing eyes the man now possessed.

"You're an." Zhao started to say, realizing who the man was, only to get grabbed by the throat.

"I'll repeat it: who I was is of no concern," the former Avatar said. "Only where you will be staying." Then, the area started to shift, and the light and sound blurred together. The two humans were the only solid things Zhao could comprehend. Before long, the world righted itself, and Zhao found himself hanging over a ridge with dense fog below.

"What is that? "Zhao croaked out.

"The Fog of Lost Souls," came the answer, while the voice that spoke sounded like multiple people talking simultaneously, both Male and Female. "It's a fog that one doesn't get lost in but one that keeps people lost in their own minds."

"I'm Zhao, the moon slayer; a simple fog won't keep me contained. I'll walk out." Zhao arrogantly said as he tried to kick the man holding him, but couldn't reach being held at arm length. "I will get out and capture your current life."

"I'm not repeating myself, " the Water Avatar said, the echo effect leaving his voice. "Now La's punishment will fulfilled." He let go of Zhao's neck, dropping the Admiral into the fog.

"No," Zhao cried as he disappeared.

"Destroying dark spirits out of necessity because you don't have any other way to placate them is one thing," Kuruk said solemnly, moving from the edge to his spear. "Killing a pure light spirit, however, to win a war out of misguided destiny is the height of arrogance." Squaring his shoulders and picking up his spear, the great hunter ran to find Koh the Face Stealer.

Kuruk temporarily stopped pursuing the spirit because Aang, the current Avatar, was overwhelmed with grief at not being able to stop Zhao from killing Tui, the moon spirit. As the most recent Avatar with the most knowledge of spirit matters, he took charge, acting as a buffer and conductor for La.

Before dragging the Admiral to the spirit world, they had a conversation: Kuruk's actions wouldn't absolve him of his past killing of spirits, but helping La did redeem him to some extent in the eyes of the Ocean Spirit.

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[sweaters-and-vertigo]

zhao, holding some powerless fish in a bag: i am the moonslayer!!!!!!!!!!! i am zhao the conqueror!!!!!!!!!!!!

momo, first in line to kick his ass: you can conquer these hands !! 🤠👊🏼

[juniperhillpatient]

okay so I’m not overly mad about this more just… confused & amused? but why is jee randomly such a purposefully hateable character & enemy to zuko while zhao - the fucking wannabe MOONSLAYER crazy bitch zhao - is now just… the most forgettable side character of all time ever? like whatever. I like zhao as a villain but also this adaptation is just for fun. it’s not like I no longer have og zhao. so I don’t really CARE… it just seems like such a random & bizarre change that I can’t really understand the purpose of?

zuko already has a canon annoyance always undermining & insulting him & in the context of the competition to capture the avatar it makes sense.

jee’s random persistent disrespect of his prince even during a war meeting while turning zhao into Just Some Guy just seems like a bizarre change that I don’t really get lol

[supreme-leader-stoat]

I'm assuming that Kya was a casualty of an attempt on Hakoda's life by Fire Nation assassins in an attempt to decapitate the Southern Water Tribe's military command and turn the tide (har har) of the war.

Iroh... I can see Iroh's arc going one of two ways in this. Either he's hailed as a war hero in the Earth Kingdom for helping to break the six hundred day siege of Ba Sing Sei, or he wages a six hundred day siege against the north pole that ultimately fails but still stands as the most successful offensive that has been made against the North to date. Either way, Lu Ten still dies.

They try to hide Katara's status as a water bender (no duh) whiel traveling through the Earth Kingdom. Bumi sees through it no problem.

Zhao's arc remains largely unchanged, with only the perspective and justification shifting. He's a zealot. His side of the war is on the back foot, and they need something drastic to give them an advantage, no matter the cost. And so he still winds up hatching a variant of his Moonslayer plot from canon.

Alternatively, Zhao winds up as something akin to that Earth Kingdom guy... ah, General Fong, trying to use force to bring out the avatar state. His canon arc then gets merged with Hama's; a waterbender soldier who got captured and held as a POW by the Fire Nation before eventually escaping, and the experience turned her into a fanatic. I can't really see her killing the sun, but I can see her trying to track down and kill the two last surviving dragons.

Is Zuko still hunting Aang here, do you think? Do Fire Nation spies see the avatar traveling with the daughter of the Southern Chieftain and make the wrong assumption that he's gone over to the enemy side? Do they think that he's been taken captive and Zuko goes/gets sent on a suicide rescue mission? Is his actual target the Water Tribe siblings, and he's as gobsmacked as everyone else when the weird bald kid tagging along with Katara starts airbending?

ok yes it’s fun to think about atla roleswap AUs where the fire nation is good and the water tribes are bad, but ultimately they wouldn’t really work because if sokka had been on the bad side then the bad guys would have won full stop

[thescarlettempress]

Avatar’s biggest crime was not having Zhao and Azula interact. She would have put him in his place ten times over and it would have been glorious.

[canyourscienceexplainthis]

It’s honestly so satisfying that Zhao was such an incompetent donkey that he wasn’t even included in the ember island players. Like they might have heard stories about him but even playwrites of that absolutely abysmal caliber went “lol what a loser forget this guy.” That, to me, is justice.

[attackfish]

5hc for an Ocean Spirit Katara AU? (Like in the same sense that yue was blessed by the moon spirit?) I can’t remember if you have one for that or not, but it’s a favorite premise of mine

I don't. The closest I have is a Katara-Yue role swap, where Katara becomea the moon. So you get a whole new AU.

1. Katara is born silent, eyes closed, not crying. Her chest barely rises and falls. This happens. Some babes are born only to die. There is nothing to be done. It has happened as long as children have been born. Nothing to be done? hisses Kanna as her son and his wife weep, caught between the exhaustion of birth, and the grief of losing a child they will never get to know? Nothing to be done? She takes the baby from her son's wife and carries her to the frigid ocean. She dips her in the water and begs. There is no oasis here, no koi, but surely the Ocean Spirit is in the ocean. Ocean, give her granddaughter the strength to live.

2. Katara's eyes open, and her mouth opens to wail. Her dark brown hair turns a bright watery blue. Kanna wraps her granddaughter up tight, and holds ber close to keep her warm, and carries her back to her parents.

3. Little Katara grows up, bright, strong, and a waterbender, the only waterbender at the south pole. She is in all ways a normal little girl, and a loving sister and daughter, but to the people of her village, she is a miracle child, saved by the spirits themselves, and marked by them too. Sokka, in the face of this, struggles fo be seen, to be noticed, not by his parents, but by everyone else. It galls, to be known as Katara's brother, when Katara is just his annoying little sister with weird water powers and weird blue hair. Sorry Sokka, your sister is an anime protagonist, and you got to learn to live with it.

4. Then their mother dies, ans their father leaves and they find the Avatar, and leave on adventure, and it's all big and new, and Katara has to cover her hair to keep it from being noticed, and they're chased by Zhao and Zuko, and they make all the way north, and Katara has to fight to learn waterbending, but finally, finally they make it, and she gets to learn.

5. And then Zhao attacks the Northern Water Tribe fortress, and marches to the Spirit Oasis to kill the moon, and he... kills the wrong fish. The ocean draws back as if there is about to be a tsunami, but the water just keeps drawing back, exposing the deep dark parts of the sea that have never seen the sun, and Katara, blessed by the ocean itself, knows what she has to do.

[madam-melon-meow]

Op tagging this post like they’re trying to win some algorithm game.

Aang x Katara, atla fanart, 70s horror, zuko x katara, and sokka are all tags that do not describe the post.

If they wanted to get more visibility, they could tag this post the dragon of the west, general iroh, prince iroh…. commander Zhao, admiral zhao, zhao the moonslayer, zhao the invincible. You get the idea.

I’m not sure who told them that the best tagging practice was to tag random genres or ships, but it will not endear them in the eyes of tumblr.

The Fire Nation in Netflix's AvatarTheLastAirbender

Daniel Dae Kim — Fire Lord Ozai

Paul Sun-Hyung Lee — Uncle Iroh

Elizabeth Yu — Princess Azula

Dallas Liu — Prince Zuko

[lightdancer1]

Though ironically in retrospect it's the fifth AU I get to and the first where Zuko actually acts like his season 1 self

Zuko starts out as one of the villains hunting the Avatar, under the direct orders of both his parents and in a rivalry with Captain and then Admiral Zhao. He acts like his canon self down to introducing himself trying to sink Katara and Sokka's village, burning Suki's village to the ground in a fit of rage....and then he finds a one-eyed Firebender in green fighting with the Avatar and company on Crescent Island.

And every bit of cognitive dissonance he has about his supposedly dead sister who's alive, well, and kicking ass and having altogether too good a time doing it roars into being with a vengeance. For Zuko, hunting the Avatar is business, hunting his traitor sister who 'went native' is PERSONAL. She more than Aang becomes the Moby Dick to his Captain Ahab.

Ironically this Zuko is still a better person than his Season 1 self or his canonical self overall. His action are motivated by cognitive dissonance souring and turning into RAGE in Angron fashion and having the power to actually set things on fire fueled by RAGE.

[juniperhillpatient]

“They’ll call me Zhao the Moonslayer” bitch they will be calling you “Zhao the insane dumbass who tried to kill the moon” I will never be over how crazy this man really is

[balsa-margarita]

An interesting snippet from the upcoming chapter of Death-Fires Danced

So far, Admiral Zhao had been having the best day of his life.

Admiral…

He had received the promotion earlier in the afternoon - a letter from Fire Lord Ozai himself - and had immediately taken advantage of it. Whatever Colonel Shinu’s objection to sending his Yuyan Archers after the Avatar might have been, it could not override a direct order from a naval admiral. Especially not one who possessed the favor of the Fire Lord.

And now, after an almost laughable amount of effort, he had the Avatar in chains. For a supposedly terrifying spirit-human hybrid, the boy had been extremely unimpressive.

All the wind in the world won’t get him out of those manacles… especially once we leave him there for a day or two.

After that…

By that time, though, he would be long gone. His promotion to the rank of admiral had come with a mission - to command a siege of the Northern Water Tribe, using any and all resources at his disposal to lay it low. 

It was time.

“Zhao the Conqueror,” he said, testing the sound of the title. “Zhao the Moonslayer.”

Excellent.

Fate itself had led him to the knowledge that would allow him to destroy waterbending and the Water Tribes forever, and he would use it. For that, his name would go down in history.

Something to add to my victory speech-

A knock on the door snapped him out of his thoughts, and he turned, opening it to see a young Yuyan cadet looking at him nervously. “Sir - Admiral? This letter just arrived for you.” Bowing hurriedly, the boy handed him a light scroll. “I know the title is-”

“Leave me.”

Something about the letter stood out immediately - the seal was a coiled dragon, applied in a level of detail that suggested a Fire Nation noble house, but Zhao had taken pains to memorize the insignia of every important family. This was not one of them.

Maybe it was a trick of the candlelight, but there seemed to be a faint glow trapped within the orange ink. 

What is this?

Unfurling the scroll, Zhao glanced at the carefully written characters. To Commander Zhao…

Fellow bearer of fire.

Perhaps fate had seen fit to bless him once again.

[orangepanic]

October 2: Sun and Moon & Trust Issues (Zhao and Yue)

Zhao knew who he was. He knew where he was, too. He was… was… 

“I am Zhao the moonslayer," he muttered. That had meant something, once, in another time and place. Not here. Mist danced around him the push and pull of shadows and flame.

"Zhao the conqueror!" He wasn't sure why he'd shouted or what the words were. There was nobody here, wherever this was. Was there? At times the space felt crowded, but when Zhao looked around there was only fog.

"Are you sorry yet?" One of the shadows had become brighter than the rest, in fact not a shadow at all but the opposite of that, a bright silvery white light. A girl. A light. Both? Neither? Did he know her?

"Moonslayer!" he spat, though he didn't know what that was.

The light-girl glared at him. "I don't know why I come here. Even if you had the mind to be sorry, I could never trust you."

"You come because you must," said Zhao. "You must help me. I am Zhao the conqueror! I must... I have a mission..." He trailed off, unsure how to continue. He hadn't the faintest idea what his mission was.

"You gave everything for your mission," said the light-girl, "as did I. And we will reap the consequences."

31 Days of Whumptloktober

What is Whumptloktober, you ask? Well, nothing, because I made it up through the art of shameless theft. There's a TLOKtober event on twitter/x/elon musk's wanksite that has rules I can't follow, and there's an interesting set of Whumptober prompts this year, so I decided to do my own mashup and create 31 days of absolute nonsense short fics for tumblr. No rules besides having to address both prompts and involving Legend of Korra. Crack encouraged.

To give credit where it's due, the original prompt lists/event pages are here and here.

[burglar-bird]

Been reading Rapunzel ATLA AUs and just realized there's the perfect opportunity to make the tower Zuko (of course Zuko's the princess in this!) is trapped in Wang Shi Tong's library.

Crazy spirit owl obsessed with hoarding things? What's rarer than a smol fire prince blessed by Agni? He's the crown jewel of Wang's collection and basically nobody* knows the kid is there. So. That's ten thousand and one things this spirit bird knows, suckers.

*Admiral Zhao, soon-to-be-moonslayer and conqueror of the northern water tribe has no idea where the beloved lost Prince Zuko is. If he had thought to look for clues of the boy's whereabouts in the spirit library perhaps he could have eased the hearts of the royal family, but alas he did not think there would be preserved records of political intrigue on hand... such a shame, truly.

[atla-sinful-shit]

Role Reversal

Another drabble, this time most definitely on the angst side, for day 5! It's still the 29th here, so technically I'm not late XD

He had been the guardian of the Spirit Oasis his entire life. Now, a girl threatened it, her hands held up in a clear threat.

“I will be Yue the conqueror, Yue, the Moonslayer.” Her eyes blazed, and Zhao just offered her a smile.

“You’ll have to go through me first.”

It was not a fight that lasted long. She was a fighter, he was a healer. A burning hand was pressed to his throat.

“Any last words?”

Zhao just remembered the koi, swimming their endless circle.

“Your nation will suffer too.”

Her rage was the last thing he saw.