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By manzai See other fanon and fan fiction works from manzai.


Bolin realizes
Juji's fine. He comes back to life in the end when the doomsday device shifts the polarity of the Earth. Oops. Spoiler. Sorry.
Warning! This page contains spoilers for Enemies and Traitors.
"I'm sorry. I know what it's like when you think you know someone and they turn out to be...something else.""
— Kuzon


Kuzon was the second son of Fire Lord Izuma and Jiroh and the younger brother of Fire Lord Sozin. In his youth, he was also a good friend of Avatar Aang. Although he was appointed Commander of the first Fire Nation Armored Division by Sozin at age 18, and commanded these tanks during Sozin's assault on the Southern Air Temple, Kuzon could not tolerate his brother's plan to completely destroy the Air Nomad race. When he discovered what Sozin planned to do, Kuzon freed several Air Nomads from their cells in the camp. He was promptly discovered by Sozin, and barely escaped the battle with his life. Branded a traitor by his home country, Kuzon had nowhere to go but the community of refugee airbenders. He joined a group of airbenders who chose to covertly fight the Fire Nation and assist the Earth Kingdom and Water Tribe forces. Though he was once captured and brought back to the Fire Nation to face execution, he escaped with the help of his airbender compatriots Taro and Kunchen, and spent the rest of his life helping to stem the tide of Fire Nation onslaught.

Biography[]

Childhood[]

While Kuzon was still unborn, his mother Izuma brought him to Avatar Roku to have Kuzon's chi read and have the Avatar bless him. Roku told Izuma that Kuzon had a lack of yang energy to his chi, while Sozin had a lack of yin. Roku gave Izuma the dao sword that Kuzon would use for over half his life on this visit. Kuzon's father Jiroh died within a year of his birth, and Kuzon barely knew him.

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Kuzon, about age 8

Since Kuzon would never have the responsibilities Sozin would have as Fire Lord, Izuma did not subject him to the same pressures Sozin faced. Though Kuzon, as a prince, was nominally expected to study the same academic subjects, arts, and combat tactics Sozin was, realistically Izuma was much more lenient with him. Kuzon had much more time for friends and leisure, and was consequently much more outgoing. However, some sources indicate Izuma intended or groomed Kuzon to be more friendly and outgoing in order to make him some sort of diplomat when he grew up. Kuzon was famously a good friend of Avatar Aang as a child, but it is less well known that it was Izuma who introduced them, knowing Aang was the Avatar.

Kuzon was reckless as a child, thrill-seeking and fun-loving. He occasionally got into trouble or damaged property wth his antics, such as when he and Aang rode a gilder through someone's apartment and destroyed the owner's paper room partitions. Kuzon often avoided consequences of such behavior due to his royal status. Although he was mostly the same as a teenager, the death of his mother humbled Kuzon somewhat. When Izuma died Kuzon was fourteen. Kuzon mostly dealt with it well, after an initial period of mourning, as opposed to Sozin's handling of the death.

Kuzon initially objected to Sozin's use of Scholar Shunkai in his war effort, either due to loyalty to his family or because he believed it was wrong for the Fire Nation. Sozin, however, persuaded Kuzon to withdraw his objection.

Fire Nation Nobleman and Military Officer[]

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A portrait of Kuzon commissioned shortly before he assumed command of the Armored Division. It invokes the spirit of the mythical tiger creature

When Kuzon turned seventeen he left the capital to oversee his own estate on another part of the main island. Kuzon lived there for only a little more than a year. He visited Sozin at the palace a few times, and during one of these visits Sozin appointed him as commander of the new Armored Division. It was traditional that members of the royal family undertake high-ranking positions in the Fire Nation military. Kuzon had misgivings about Sozin's plan even at this early stage, though his love for his nation at first superseded his concerns. Kuzon was also present at the palace when Sozin ambushed the Air Nomad diplomats and coerced Afiko into betraying them, and briefly fought Afiko himself in the scuffle. Kuzon sailed on Sozin's flagship to the assault on the Southern Air Temple, and fought on Sozin's side during the initial battle.

Betrayal at the Southern Air Temple[]

For the whole time leading up to Sozin's assault, he had told Kuzon that he planned to minimize airbender casualties because Sozin wanted to capture him alive (to prevent him from being reborn into the next nation) and did not know his identity. However, after the Fire Nation defeated and imprisoned the airbenders after the battle, Sozin announced that he now planned to kill the Avatar, and that he would have every airbender executed until he knew he had killed the Avatar by process of elimination. Kuzon protested, but Sozin shouted him down. Presumably out of loyalty to Aang, Kuzon could not allow Sozin to carry out his plan and so left his bunk that night and covertly freed what airbenders he could. Though he had no love for the airbenders, having been told they were selfish and willfully withholding food from the Fire Nation for years, Kuzon still felt compelled to free them, even though he questioned the act even as he did it.

In the chaos of the airbenders attempting to escape, another battle began, in which Kuzon was discovered by Sozin. They fought, and Sozin forced Kuzon to the edge of a precipice. During the fight, Sozin grazed Kuzon's face with his sword, givin him a scar down the side of his face. Though Sozin promised not to kill Kuzon if he surrendered, Kuzon felt he had already lost everything he had once known and threw himself from the ledge. Fortunately, Taro caught Kuzon's falling body on his bison, thinking he was an airbender. Taro initially wanted to kill Kuzon, even after discovering he was the firebender who had freed his friends, but was dissuaded by Kunchen and his own wariness of fighting after two great battles.

When the airbenders arrived at the Southern Water Tribe for healing, Kuzon merely had his facial wound dressed and wandered into the city. His internal conflict over what he had done caused him to contract an unnatural fever, after which he collapsed and was carried by Taro to the healers. When he woke up, he agreed to help Taro and the others rescue airbenders from the other Air Temples.

Guerilla Resistance Fighter[]

Kuzon assisted Taro and some of the other airbenders in defending the other temples, but they only arrived within one or two hours of the arrival of Sozin's fleets, meaning they were only able to save some of the airbenders at each temple. In all, less than one hundred airbenders were left alive after Sozin's initial assault was done. Kuzon was still not comfortable around the airbenders, but culd not return to the Fire Nation, and so he became a hermit, living in the mountains sear Ba Sing Se. After a few months, Kuzon wandered into the cave where Taro kept his bison, Pema. Taro allowed Kuzon to live with her in the cave in exchange for helping take care of her.

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Kuzon as a guerilla fighter, about age 40

Kuzon bonded with the bison, and after a while with Taro himself. Taro introduced Kuzon to the militant airbender community, and over the years Kuzon became a well-respected member of their community. Kuzon would help them fight against the Fire Nation for the rest of his life. The traitorous prince Kuzon was as much a fugitive from the Fire Nation as the airbenders were, and so he helped them develop their clandestine combat procedures and abided by them. Along with the militant airbenders, Kuzon secretly broke into Fire Nation bases and ships, freeing prisoners or pilfering intelligence.

However, Kuzon still occasionally experienced feelings of regret about betraying his brother, especially when he got to be about forty years old. He even began experiencing hallucinations and nightmares. On one mission, Kuzon attributed the death of his friend Khalama to hesitation on his part caused by a hallucination.

Return to the Fire Nation[]

In 23 AG, at age 41, Kuzon was captured by his nephew Azulon and Azulon's companions Lo and Li while Azulon was on a quest to find the Avatar. Reasoning that his infamous uncle was just about as good, Azulon brought Kuzon back to the Fire Nation. Kuzon was thrown into the Hall of Justice to await execution, during which ime he was visited by Sozin. Fortunately, Taro and Kunchen broke him out. They attempted to escape through a series of escape tunnels built under the palace for the royal family. On the way, Kuzon felt compelled to see his brother one more time. Kuzon petitioned him to end the war, but Sozin would hear none of it. Sozin attempted to carry out his duty as Fire Lord and kill the traitor, but Kuzon was able to defend himself and escape through the tunnels with his friends as he originally intended. After a visit to Taro's former mentor Afiko, Kuzon returned to the Earth Kingdom with his friends.

Later Life and Death[]

Kuzon spent the rest of his life fighting Fire Nation forces with the airbenders, in much the same way as he had the last twenty years. He retired from fighting eventually and died of natural causes as an old man. Any progeny he may have had is unknown.

Personality[]

Kuzon's outgoing nature made him fun-loving and friendly. He held his friends in high regard as a boy in the Fire Nation or as an adult with the Air Nomads. He could be something of a brat in his youth, being royalty. He retained a certain sense of entitlement and privilege for his whole life, even while living as an exile, splurging on food or clothes when he could. Kuzon was also more defiant towards his elders than his brother was.

Kuzon had a wider range of experiences than Sozin, which was possibly why he was more emotionally and mentally stable. Kuzon was fairly open with his emotions, although that may only be because he mainly associated with the stoic Sozin and monastic airbenders. He certainly was not afraid to say or do what he thought was right.

Despite being best kown as a traitor to his people, Kuzon was very loyal, be it towards his friends or his nation. Kuzon initially attacked the airbenders with Sozin's army because he believed it would end the starvation in the Fire Nation, and when he later freed the airbenders he told Sozin that the war was killing the people of the Fire Nation and tainting its honor. He also returned to his brother at great personal risk, in order to offer him a last chance to redeem himself. For months after the battle at the Southern Air Temple, Kuzon felt mixed feeling of regret, and was unsure whether what he had done was right.

Kuzon was often happy-go-lucky, and so he fit in well with the airbenders and had good group cohesion with them on their missions. By then he had mostly recovered from his guilt, but the feeling was persistent and after some time Kuzon began to feel guilty not only about helping his brother begin the war, but also about feeling that he "defied his destiny" at the Southern Air Temple. After Taro resued him from the Fire Nation, Kuzon overcame these feelings.

Abilities[]

Kuzon was a fairly skilled firebender. He received a good deal of training as a youth, though with his reputation for skipping lessons it is unknown how much of the training actually sunk in. In terms of pure firebending, he was certainly not as skilled as his brother Sozin, espescially because of his time in exile from the Fire Nation. All the firebending Kuzon knew he leared before he was exiled at age 18, and he undertook responsibility for maintaining his trining while in the Earth Kingdom. Kuzon did display the ability to make fire daggers and breath of fire, although he is never shown using lightning and could probably not generate it, at least not well.

However, Kuzon made up for this deficiency with his ability with his dao. He was able to hold his own against Sozin in a swordfight, probably because he would have had an easier time practicing with a sword than with fire. He was also able to employ a more unorthodox style of firebending that incorporated evasion techniques that his airbending compatriots taught him, much in the same way his relative Iroh would invent lightning redirection by studying the waterbenders. This gave him an edge in many fights, although it mostly amounted to dodges incorporated into firebending, rather than actual firebending techniques using different motions.

Appearance[]

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Kuzon, about age 18

Kuzon had little concern for his appearance as child, in contrast to Sozin, who meticulously groomed himself as an attempt to please his mother, in somewhat the same way his descendant Azula did. Kuzon did not often comb his hair or like wearing elegant robes as a boy, at least until he became a teenager and began to notice girls.

When he grew up he retained some concern for his appearance, even though he was forced to live as an outlaw and refugee. He would still occasionally splurge what little money he had on a new cape or nicer boots. Taro believed it was Kuzon's noble upbringing that caused him to retain his concern for such things even as a fugitive.

Kuzon had black hair and gold-colored eyes, like his bother's descendants.

Differences with Canonical Kuzon[]

The Kuzon of Enemies and Traitors has very few explicit, defined differences with the canonical Kuzon, though this is primarily due to so little being known about the canonical Kuzon. The only explicitly non-canonical part of Kuzon's biography is his saving of and association with the airbenders, since it has been confirmed that no airbenders survived Sozin's genocide. It is also extremely unlikely that the canonical Kuzon could be Sozin's brother without some mention of this in the series. Aang also seems to indicate in "The Headband" that he used to visit Kuzon in the town shown in that episode, rather than the capital city. Kuzon's age, based on the AG/BG dating convention, would also probably be different from that of the canonical Kuzon, due to Sozin's Comet arriving four years after Aang froze himself in the Enemies and Traitors continuity.

Behind the Scenes[]

Kuzon's name may be transliterated as "kù jùn." The first character means "to toil," and the second character means "enlightened" or "profound."

Some readers have commented that the Kuzon of Enemies and Traitors reminds them of the biblical figure of Moses, particularly as portrayed in films like The Ten Commandments and Prince of Egypt, (as opposed to the original portrayal of the character in Exodus), where the relationship between Moses and Pharaoh is emphasized. The author has stated that this resemblance was not intentional.

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For the collective works of the author, go here.

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