Fanfic / Absolute Trust

"I need you to absolutely trust me."

Absolute Trust is an Avatar: The Last Airbender Self-Insert fanfiction by Urbanator93.

When his apartment catches fire, a young man named Alec falls into the flames and awakens in the South Pole, where he's found and nursed back to health by Katara, Sokka, and Gran Gran. It soon becomes clear that a spirit has brought him to this world for some purpose, making him physically 15 and a firebender. He may not know what his purpose is yet, but he knows the story by heart, and he plans to use that knowledge well alongside Team Avatar.

It can be found here.

Beware of unmarked spoilers for the source material.

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Tropes contained in "Absolute Trust" include:

• Adaptational Badass: Thanks to Alec's help, the Gaang improves faster than in canon.
  • Katara learns of her healing abilities during the events of "The Waterbending Scroll," seven episodes early.
  • The Gaang arrives at the Northern Water Tribe far ahead of schedule, and with Alec's forewarning, they have several weeks to prepare for the Siege of the North before it actually happens. Sokka takes the lead in strategizing on the front lines, creating a devastating loss ratio of 12:1 in favor of the Water Tribe.
  • With a hint from Alec, Toph learns metalbending the day after they meet her, far earlier than in canon, meaning she's mastered it by the time they leave Ba Sing Se.
  • With Zuko pulling a Heel–Face Turn far sooner than in canon thanks to Alec, he and Aang (and Alec) learn the true meaning of firebending from Ran and Shaw at the time of Ba Sing Se, almost a whole season early.
  • When Aang goes to see Guru Pathik, Alec gives him a piece of advice: "Letting go for now doesn't mean letting go forever." Remembering this allows Aang to master the Avatar State, entering it by releasing his feelings for Katara and exiting it by re-embracing them. During The Day Of Black Sun, Aang uses his control over The Avatar State to commune with Avatars Kyoshi and Szeto, who teach him how to Lavabend.
  • Outside the Gaang, we have Earth King Kuei. Alec exposes Long Feng and gets him arrested without leaving the throne room, and witnessing the horrors that Long Feng committed and hid from him instills a far more take-charge attitude than in canon.
  • There's also The Source, the White Lotus's primary Information Broker and Spymaster. Or as she's better known, Ursa.
  • Following Azula's Heel–Face Turn and officially joining Team Avatar, she is also brought to Ran and Shaw to learn the true meaning of firebending.
  • It turns out that Fat, Piandao's butler, is a master spearman, and he passes his expertise on to Alec while Sokka trains under Piandao.
  • The trope also applies to Sokka's iconic Space Sword. The canon version was made from a meteorite. This version was made from a meteorite and smelted using Dragonfire from two dragons, which produced a steel blade so durable and sharp that Piandao was forced to forego the traditional practice Duel, as every other blade they tried broke upon contact with the Space Sword.
• Adaptational Early Appearance:
  • Alec meets Ty Lee in Chapter 10, during the events of The Blue Spirit, while her circus is passing through the area. She helps him get over his trauma from killing Jet.
  • Zuko meets Druk, his dragon mount from Legend of Korra, as soon as Ran and Shaw judge him worthy. They entrust him with his egg, which immediately hatches, whereas in canon, he met Druk years after the war ended.
• Adaptational Villainy:
  • Jet was shown to be extreme in canon, convinced beyond all reason that firebenders were Always Chaotic Evil. But it never went as far as kidnapping and torturing a firebender in cold blood after the Avatar vouched for him.
  • As if Ozai couldn't become an even bigger monster than he was shown in canon, this story introduces a set of laws that Ozai deliberately violated when he burned Zuko, the penalty for which was forfeiting the title of Fire Lord to Zuko. He also ends up pulling a You Have Failed Me on Azula, arranging her death as a martyr during the takeover of Ba Sing Se. Unsurprisingly, afterward even she wants nothing more to do with her father.
  • Hama, inventor of bloodbending, imprisoned Fire Nation civilians in a cave on the mountainside as Misplaced Retribution for her own imprisonment. That was canon. In this story, she also mummified civilian men, women, and children alive by bending the water out of their bodies, keeping their corpses in a locked room adjacent to the prison.
• Adaptation Relationship Overhaul: Alec's intervention often helps to smooth things over with certain characters.
  • When Alec painfully exposes Jet's fanaticism, the other Freedom Fighters abandon him, a little wiser and a little less hostile towards firebenders. When Smellerbee saw Iroh using Firebending on his tea in Ba Sing Se, she promised to keep his and Zuko's secret.
  • When the Gaang is led to Jeong Jeong's camp, Alec invokes Rule 4, and Aang reluctantly accepts that he's not ready to try firebending yet. But after a test of character, Jeong Jeong does agree to train Alec, whose patience and calm demeanor manage to break through the Deserter's original cynicism.
  • When the Gaang comes to the North Pole, Hahn makes a disgrace of himself to the extent that Chief Arnook calls off his engagement with Yue, whereupon her previous lover, Poduk, almost immediately proposes to her. Hence, Yue never bonds with Sokka.
  • When the Gaang meets General Fong, the guy obsessed with using the Avatar State to end the war, Alec fully explains the Avatar State and Fong's mindset to the Gaang, and they come up with a plan. Katara heals everyone in the base's infirmary and they decline a military escort to Omashu. This, along with the promise that Aang will be ready by the end of the summer, along with Alec providing the Earth Kingdom army with firebending scrolls to use as a means of countering firebending, is enough to pacify Fong, and they part on amicable terms, with Alec stating that there was a plan in the works that needed Fong and the other Generals' backing first.
  • Due to Alec and Ty Lee's mutual attraction, her Ship Tease with Sokka never occurs.
  • When the Gaang meets Toph, Alec smooths things over with her joining the group as much as he can, from first impressions to enticing her to join them to helping her and Katara get along. It helps that Toph is his favorite character.
  • When the Gaang visits Wan Shi Tong's library, Alec is respectful and upfront to the Spirit, bargaining with him instead of lying to him by stating that their goal is to defeat Fire Lord Ozai rather than annihilate the Fire Nation outright; with the proviso that when a new Fire Lord is put on the throne and the war ends, they'll deliver replacement scrolls for everything that Zhao had burned. The Gaang obtains the date of the Day of Black Sun and parts with Wan Shi Tong on neutral terms at worst, while Zei is permitted to stay (to say nothing of Wan Shi Tong's brimming excitement at seeing Toph's metalbending for him to document).
  • General How of the Earth Kingdom's Council of Five manages to bond with fellow Old Soldier Iroh, the two having fought against one another during the Siege of Ba Sing Se.
  • Because of Alec's actions throughout the story, Azula of all people gets a Heel–Face Turn, enabling her to reconcile with her estranged and formerly antagonistic family when they meet again.
• Adaptation Expansion: Many elements from the original story are expanded upon here:
  • Hahn's betrothal to Yue was because of his family's political clout. But then he made the mistake of capturing Alec, whom Southern Water Tribe Chieftain Hakoda had explicitly informed the Northern Chief was a firebender and his adopted son that he considered fully trustworthy. Hahn somehow thought he could get away with it and claim the glory of capturing a firebender by claiming Alec attacked first. As soon as the rest of the Gaang arrives, Alec recruits them to claim that with Hahn being the next in line to be Chief, it could be seen as an act of aggression by the entire Northern Water Tribe against the Southern Tribe as well as the Avatar. In light of this, the Northern Chief immediately revokes Hahn's betrothal to Yue.
  • The history and general rules of Agni Kai are shown to have been written by Avatar Szeto^note The firebender Avatar before Yangchen and Fire Lord Yosor. Under those rules, when Fire Lord Ozai had burned Zuko after he surrendered, not only was Ozai's victory considered forfeit to Zuko, but so were all of Ozais' titles and possessions, including the position of Fire Lord. And it comes to light that Ozai had ensured that no Fire Sages were able to watch the match so he could get away with that.
  • In Chapter 30, Iroh elaborates on his family, of which there was no mention in canon besides Lu Ten. He spent years when he was younger courting his wife, Amaya, before asking her parents' permission to marry her. And he frequently invited over Amaya's mother, Churi, for tea, and her father, Yasam, for Pai Sho, even after she died in childbirth.
  • General How of The Council of Five had participated in the defense of Ba Sing Se against Iroh, meeting him at the negotiation table several times. Due to Alec recruiting Zuko and Iroh to Team Avatar in Ba Sing Se, when they stormed the Earth King's palace, they were able to cause General How to testify of Long Feng's machinations without the Gaang and Earth King even leaving the throne room.
• Adapted Out:
  • While they still happen, the fanfic skips over the events of several episodes, including "Imprisoned," "The Great Divide," and "Zuko Alone."
  • The Search was only half-adopted: everything after Ursa's banishment is completely different, leaving Alec not knowing where to find her at first. Among these changes, Kiyi was never born. Lady Ài attributes it to a ripple in time created by pulling Alec into the world, but the author has his own reasoning:
  Urbanator93: It seemed so strange that a mom who was willing to kill to keep her children safe would willingly forget said children.
  • Due to many changes involving Mai, the entirety of Smoke and Shadow is butterflied out of existence.
  Urbanator93: ...because the Smoke and Shadow comic was one half the stupid Zuko and Mai breakup love triangle, and the other half was every single character being stupid.
• Alcohol-Induced Idiocy: Invoked in Chapter 38 as part of Azula's politics lessons to the Gaang: they all get drunk to find out their limits.
• An Arm and a Leg: To stop Zhao from killing the Moon Spirit, Alec slices off his hand with a fire blade. Because of this, the Fire Nation decided to dub Alec: "Hand Slicer". This is reinforced later on when Alec slices off the hands of Colonel Mongke before tethering him to his Rhino to deliver a message to the Fire Nation.
• Angry, Angry Hippos: In Chapter 16, it's mentioned that Hahn went after an arctic hippo alone to try reclaiming his honor as a mighty warrior. Not only was he killed, they only found half of his corpse.
• A Rare Sentence: From Chapter 36:
  Alec: Thanks, Azula. (Beat) Huh, that's a sentence I never thought I'd say out loud.
  Azula: (smirking) I can imagine.
• Armor-Piercing Question: Alec is fond of these.
  • In Chapter 3, he upends Katara and Sokka's belief that firebending is evil:
    Alec: If someone stabbed you with a knife, would you blame the knife or the person?
  • Chapter 9, to the Freedom Fighters:
    Alec: Jet just ordered you to kill the Avatar. Who do you think has a better chance of beating the Fire Nation? The master of all four elements, or Jet?
• Armor-Piercing Response: Also fond of these.
  • In Chapter 30, when trying to recruit Zuko, it's not Mai's presence that makes the biggest difference:
    Zuko: Why should I come with you?
    Alec: Because I know why your mother disappeared, and I want to help you find her.
• Asshole Victim: Discussed, as Alec mentions in Chapter 27 that there’s a very short list of people he could kill without losing sleep over it. Ozai is at the top of the list, immediately followed by the sandbenders who stole Appa, with Long Feng in third place.
• Atomic F-Bomb: This is Alec's reaction after he realizes that his idea of sending a beaten Fire Nation soldier back with his hands cut off as an example of the consequences of burning down innocent villages means that his Atrocious Alias of "the Hand Slicer" will now never go away.
• A Truce While We Gawk: Zuko's invasion of the South Pole pauses when Alec firebends for the first time. Everyone gapes, including Alec.
• Badass on Paper: People who join the Gaang after a Heel–Face Turn find bewilderment in the Gaang's quirks, usually Sokka's.
  • Shortly after Mai joins the group and sees Sokka trying to come up with a good name for the group:
    Mai: How in the world did Azula have so much trouble catching you?
  • In Chapter 32, when Zuko learns that all the "evasive maneuvers" the Gaang did were just fun side trips:
    Zuko: You know, I'm embarrassed that I didn't catch you all.
  • In Chapter 39, when Sokka is adamant about being quiet in Fire Nation territory because the "enemy birds" could hear them:
    Azula: This is the strategist who inflicted twelve-to-one losses against Zhao's fleet? I'm embarrassed.
• Bargain with Heaven: When the Gaang visits Wan Shi Tong's library, Alec is respectful and upfront with the spirit, who knows his secret. Citing the near-extinction of the Air Nomads and the prospect of the same thing happening to the Earth Kingdom, he convinces the owl to agree to a deal. Alec receives a full catalogue of the works that Zhao destroyed and promises to persuade the new Fire Lord to replace them after the war, and in exchange, Wan Shi Tong permits the Gaang to seek out the knowledge they need to defeat Ozai, with the proviso that Alec never again asks for his help to win a war.
• Betrayal by Inaction: Why does Alec find Hama even more deplorable than in canon? It's what he finds out she didn't do: at the time she escaped from Water's Wail, the Tailor-Made Prison for waterbenders, there were several other waterbender prisoners in there, and in the 30 years of her subsequent serial killing of Fire Nationals, despite the power of her bloodbending, she never made any attempt to break them out. And the Water Tribes consider this crime of Neglect very serious indeed. It turns out Hama's perspective is that if they wanted to escape, she had shown them how, and all they had to do was learn bloodbending themselves.
• Beware the Nice Ones:
  • In Chapter 9, when Katara finds out that Jet kidnapped and tortured Alec, she immediately freezes him to the wall and is ready to put an icicle through his skull before Alec talks her down.
  • In Chapter 23, Katara, usually the one who calls Alec out for his foul mouth, curses without hesitation or apology when she learns that Toph's parents not only never gave her "The Talk," but never planned to, with the intention of excusing her monthly periods as her simply being sick, for the rest of her life. The fact that they're on the run from the Fire Nation is the only thing that keeps her from flying back to Gaoling to do more than just swear at them.
  • In Chapter 28, Azula makes the near-fatal mistake of insulting Kya while not focusing on Katara. Similarly to Chapter 9, Katara knocks Azula out with one brutal tidal wave, and Aang has to hold her back from finishing the job.
• Bilingual Bonus: Lady Ài, the Spirit of Love who brought Alec to the world. Her name means "love" in Chinese and Japanese.
• Black Comedy: After Toph recovers from getting knocked back by Combustion Man blowing up thanks to her blocking his chi flow, she asks where he is. Azula's answer is thus:
  Azula: Oh, he's there... And there... And there...
• Bond Villain Stupidity: With an almost verbatim reference to the trope, when Jet goes after Alec. Tying him up and beating him up after dosing him with a bending-suppressing drug? Fine. But informing him that the drug only lasted a few hours and leaving him alone and unguarded after torturing him? Alec burns through his bonds and easily turns not only the Gaang but the other Freedom Fighters against Jet.
• Break the Haughty: Azula slowly devolves after meeting Alec, whose silver tongue gets under her skin, but the breaking point is Ozai ordering Long Feng to kill her, blame the Avatar for it, and turn her into a martyr. By the time she recovers consciousness after Team Avatar saves her life, she is anguished and begging for someone to kill her. Luckily, she is able to recover with some dragon petting therapy and a reunion with her mother.
• Break Them by Talking: In Chapter 19, Alec takes advantage of the would-be hostage trade to talk evenly with Azula, Mai, and Ty Lee, sowing indelible seeds of doubt with all three of them concerning what they're fighting for. By the end of Chapter 24, Ty Lee and Mai are actively considering defecting and Azula is having hallucinations of Ursa.
• But for Me, It Was Tuesday: In Chapter 32, when Alec says Zuko will have to apologize to Hakoda when they meet:
  Zuko: I've done so many things I'm embarrassed about, you're going to have to be a little more specific.
• Catch and Return: To throw Azula off her game, when she finally uses lightning against Team Avatar, Alec redirects it back, hitting the ground beneath her and blowing her off her feet. When she recovers, she is further infuriated when she sees a message he carved in the dirt: "I missed on purpose."
• Chekhov's Gun:
  • In Chapter 6, Sokka mentions the Mark of the Disgraced, a Water Tribe custom to be used only against someone who has raped, tortured, or murdered a tribe member. A mark is carved into the victim's forehead with a knife, forever branding them as an enemy of the Water Tribe. Three chapters later, Sokka gives the mark to Jet after it comes out that he tortured Alec. Not like it matters much: as soon as they release Jet, he attempts to strangle Alec, and Alec kills him in self-defense.
  • In Chapter 13, alongside the firebending scrolls, Jeong Jeong leaves Alec a Lotus tile that he can use to call in a favor. He uses it in Chapter 35, tasking the Order of the White Lotus to find Ursa. The Source, the White Lotus's main intelligence broker, fulfills the task in the same chapter: the Source is Ursa.
  • In Chapter 17, as in canon, Pakku gives Katara a vial of Spirit Water, and Alec hopes that they'll never have to use it. Unfortunately, they do in Chapter 34 to heal Azula from near-death. But interestingly, they find another Spirit Water spring in Chapter 43, on an island in the Fire Nation halfway between the two poles once considered sacred by the Water Tribes, and Katara refills the vial.
  • In Chapter 28, when they're fighting the drill, Suki reveals that her Kyoshi makeup is waterproof, sweatproof, tearproof, and nonetheless breathable. This comes in handy later when they recruit Zuko, who borrows some to cover his scar after the fall of Ba Sing Se, when the Gaang goes into hiding in the Fire Nation.
  • In Chapter 42, Piandao mentions that during Avatar Roku's lifetime, the Fire Nation had amassed a collection of meteorite metal due to its unbreakability, but someone stole it before the war began.
• Cliffhanger:
  • Chapter 35 ends with the reveal of The Source's true identity, none other than Ursa, and they want to know what happened in Ba Sing Se.
  • Chapter 44 ends with the following Wham Line when they're rescuing the prisoners of Water's Wail:
    "My name is Kya."
• Code Name: The Order of the White Lotus uses code names for themselves and persons of interest:
  • Pakku: Old Fish
  • Azula: Bright Fire
  • Aang: Arrow
  • Katara: South Hope
  • Sokka: Wolf Tail
  • Toph: Tiny
  • Suki: War Paint
  • Mai: Cold Dagger
  • Ty Lee: Warm Smile
  • Zuko: Exile
  • Iroh: Tea Maker
  • Alec: Foul Mouth (to his chagrin)
  • Bumi: Monarch
  • Ozai: Tyrant
• Comically Small Demand: In Chapter 21, when Avatar Kyoshi manifests in Chin Village, Alec requests that she stick around for two favors. First, deal with the Rough Rhinos when they come to attack the city, and second... give him an autograph.
• The Commandments: In the months prior to Aang's awakening, Alec comes up with six rules to govern how he uses his future knowledge, which are listed at the top of every chapter after 3:
  Rule Number One: Alec won't warn the Gaang about things in advance or solve their problems for them, with a few rare exceptions.
  Rule Number Two: Only Alec has the right to tell people his true origins, and he will mostly limit this to group members. He will tell new group members his secret as soon as they join the Gaang.
  Rule Number Three: There are some changes Alec wants to make, and he will use his knowledge of the future to make those changes.
  Rule Number Four: Sometimes, to make a change, Alec will act in a way that doesn't make sense. If that's necessary, he'll tell the Gaang "I need you to absolutely trust me." After he says that, the Gaang has to either do whatever he asks or leave him to do what he needs to do.
  Rule Number Five: After a change happens, Alec will tell the Gaang what happened in the original story, in the interest of transparency.
  Rule Number Six: If a major change happens that Alec doesn't expect, the Gaang will have a meeting ASAP. In this meeting, Alec will break Rule One and tell them all relevant information that will help them figure out how to respond to the change.
• Compensating for Something: When facing Azula at the drill trying to break through Ba Sing Se's walls, Alec taunts Azula by claiming that her father is compensating for something if this giant penetrating drill is his idea of a plan. Given how he mocked her father's penis size in an earlier letter, this gets Azula boiling mad. On The Day of Black Sun, by launching modified flares built by The Mechanist that can last for five hours and can be seen for thousands of miles, Alec spells out: Ozai Sucks Flaccid Cock that is seen from the Fire Nation's capital of Caldera City all the way to Omashu.
• Consummate Liar: Alec guards the secret of his origin carefully, always ensuring he has an explainable excuse for his knowledge. Even when he says too much, he's so good at thinking of excuses that sometimes he doesn't even have to lie.
  • In Chapter 2, he accidentally tells Sokka that he's sure Aang will be leaving the South Pole soon. He covers his tracks by saying he heard Air Nomads are vegetarian, and Sokka is quick to agree that he'd leave as soon as he could, too, if he had to live on nothing but sea prunes.
  • In Chapter 8, when Iroh asks Alec about how he knows so much—this being the chapter after Alec shows his knowledge of how Zuko got his scar and how Zuko defeated Zhao in an Agni Kai—Alec says that it was from eavesdropping in taverns where soldiers on shore leave are gossiping. Iroh seems to buy it, and Zuko definitely does:
    Zuko: (pinching the bridge of his nose) I don't need to deal with drunken sailors running their mouths. I have enough problems already.
  • In Chapter 10, when he gapes at Ty Lee after meeting her far, far sooner than expected, he blurts out that she's beautiful. And... well, that wasn't a lie at all; it was, in fact, the main reason he was gawking for so long. Shortly afterward, he explains away his guess that she's an acrobat by noting how she moved while they ran from the storm, avoiding rocks and trees with exceptional grace.
  • In Chapter 15, Aang, Katara, and Sokka join Alec in making Chief Arnook believe that if Hahn becomes chief after what he did to Alec, the Southern Water Tribe will declare war and the Avatar will take their side. They do this to manipulate Arnook into terminating the arranged marriage between Hahn and Yue, the latter of which is very unwilling and in love with someone who just did Alec a favor.
  • In Chapter 35, when he calls in Jeong Jeong's favor, Pakku asks how he knew he was a member of the Order of the White Lotus, and Alec seamlessly claims he learned it from Iroh.
• Covert Pervert: Mai, as it turns out. When she, Suki, and Ty Lee are told their boyfriends are working at the forge shirtless, both Suki and Ty Lee start shoveling down their food. Mai remains dignified in her eating but Azula notes that she starts eating a little faster. Then when she actually sees Zuko shirtless, Ty Lee notes that Mai's breathing starts getting heavier.
• Crippling Overspecialization: Ozai is covered in muscles beneath his robes, but he only ever learned how to fight using firebending, leaving him completely helpless and vulnerable without it, such as during a solar eclipse. Fridge Brilliance kicks in when you realize this has a basis in canon, since Aang using spiritbending to remove Ozai's firebending resulted in him losing the will to fight, meaning this trope is likely canon. It's particularly egregious when you consider that Zuko and Azula both have alternatives with swords and acrobatics, respectively.
• Cruel Mercy: Alec delivers this unto Colonel Mongke of the Rough Rhinos, after having directly killed Yeh-Lu the day before and having Avatar Kyoshi kill the rest of the Rhinos except for him; Alec then tasks the Colonel to deliver a message to the rest of the Fire Nation about what happens to those who would burn down peaceful Villages. When he initially proves uncooperative, Alec cuts off his hands, leaving Mongke unable to Firebend ever again.
• Curb-Stomp Battle:
  • The fight against June and her Shirshu is over almost before it can begin: when they bust into the abbey, the nuns empty out their perfume stores, Alec sets the perfume on fire, and everyone hits the deck. The Shirshu goes berserk and hits June and Zuko before running off, allowing the Gaang to fly away without a scratch.
  • In Chapter 21, the fight against the Rough Rhinos when they come to Chin Village...well, calling it a fight is too much, considering that Alec convinced Avatar Kyoshi to stick around for a few extra minutes. She knocks out the Rough Rhinos' leader with one fan blast, then buries the others beneath a boulder; it's only four sentences from start to finish.
• Death by Adaptation:
  • The Rough Rhinos mercenary group. In Chapter 21, due in part to anger from Jet torturing him, Alec kills Yan-Hu the Grenadier by using his firebending on his explosives and later gets Avatar Kyoshi to kill three of the others. The only survivor is Colonel Mongke, the leader and the one who killed Jet's parents, whom Alec had spared solely so he could pass a message on to Azula. And when Monkge initially proves uncooperative, Alec cuts off his hands to coerce him, effectively ending his career and The Rough Rhinos.
  • Elua, the royal maid from The Search, died in her sleep of old age four years before the story began. Considering how she betrayed Ursa to Ozai, the reveal that Ursa actually poisoned her to death is hardly surprising.
  • After imprisoning Long Feng doesn't work, Kuei sentences him to death, to be carried out after they retake Ba Sing Se. The only question is whether they'll carry out that sentence before or after Ozai kills him for erroneously claiming that he killed Azula.
  • Hama, the creator of bloodbending. Alec had every intention of ending her life and never allowing the knowledge of the art to become known, and the rest of the Gaang other than the pacifistic Aang supports that decision after finding hundreds of corpses of captured Fire Nation civilians whom Hama had mummified alive by bending their blood out of their bodies; even children. Alec kills her with lightning himself in Chapter 40.
  • Of all characters, Yon Rha's mother is killed, and implied to have been by Yon Rha himself; he disposed of her corpse by dressing it in Kya's clothes and burning it to act as a decoy to any pursuers, while delivering Kya to Water's Wail, alive.
• Death Glare: Many across the story, but perhaps the most notable from Mai in Chapter 30:
  Iroh: "How do you expect to convince my nephew to meet with the Avatar on peaceful terms?"
  Alec: "What do you think Mai's here for?"
  Narration: If looks could kill, [Alec] would've been sharing space in the ground with Lu Ten.
• Dies Differently in Adaptation:
  • In canon Jet died fighting against Long Feng. In this story Jet doesn't even make it to the events of Book Two; his prejudice against Alec leads him to capture and torture him. After Alec is freed and Jet loses all support for what he's doing, Jet attempts to strangle Alec to death, and Alec stabs him in the heart with Smellerbee's knife.
  • Hahn, the pride-filled Northern Water Tribe warrior who was Yue's fiancé. In canon he made an ill-fated attack on Zhao and ultimately plummeted to his death when Zhao dodged his charge. In this story, after Hahn harasses Alec and Alec threatens to press charges against the future chief, the current chief calls off the engagement. Hahn goes hunting after an arctic hippo alone to try to reclaim his honor, and the search party only finds the top half of his corpse.
  • Instead of Combustion Man blowing himself up when Sokka disrupts his chi flow using his boomerang, he blows himself up when Toph outright blocks his sixth chakra using a thick metal headband.
• The Dragons Come Back: After learning from Ran and Shaw the meaning behind true Firebending, Shaw leads Alec and Zuko them into her den and presents them with two of her three eggs that would hatch into their partners. Azula later receives the last egg, and she vows to make it her life's mission to ensure that the dragons do return to the world.
• Drill Sergeant Nasty: Alec. Hinted at in Chapter 14 and put on full display in Chapter 16 to help prepare for the Siege of the North.
• Dude, Not Funny!: Alec chastises Sokka for joking about Zuko's scar, especially when he won't say how he got it. He compares it to someone joking that their mother died by falling into a fireplace.
• Eating the Eye Candy: Mentioned by name in Chapter 32 but shown more frequently: Suki, Mai, and Ty Lee enjoy seeing their boyfriends' shirtless training. Alec invokes this in Chapter 42 by having himself, Sokka and Zuko work in Piandao's forge shirtless, keeping the girls too focused on the eye candy to notice the gifts they are forging for them.
• Embarrassing Nickname:
  • In Chapter 16, Alec cuts off Zhao's hand to free Tui. A traumatized member of Zhao's personal guard escapes the North Pole alive, and when Ozai receives the report, he places a bounty on Alec's head, along with the nickname "Hand Slicer." And any hope of escaping it dies when he does it to Colonel Monkge of the Rough Rhinos in Chapter 21.
  • Alec gets hit with this twice, actually; thanks to Pakku, his Code Name among the Order of the White Lotus is Foul Mouth.
• Everyone Can See It: Aang and Katara, post-Relationship Upgrade, are flabbergasted at how many people already could see the sparks between them or already thought they were dating; that is, literally everyone except Sokka.
• Everybody Cries: Chapter 30, the title of which is "Tears". First, Alec, Ty Lee, Mai, and Toph go after Iroh, only to hang back when it turns out that he's mourning Lu Ten's birthday. After convincing Iroh and Zuko to come with them, Alec tells the story of Ursa, and after that, Iroh tells the full story of how Zuko got his scar. Even Mai and Toph are crying.
• Evil Cannot Comprehend Good: It never occurs to Hama that the other prisoners of Water's Wail might not want to learn such a dangerous and potentially evil bending form as bloodbending. She's convinced that they were too weak-willed to even try.
• "Eureka!" Moment: Sokka sparks two of these for Alec in quick succession in Chapter 21 when Alec is trying to figure out what to do with the knowledge that Ty Lee is his soulmate and they're on opposite sides. Sokka sarcastically suggests that Alec could defect, and that makes him realize he could convince Ty Lee to defect by telling her the truth about the war, rather than the Fire Nation propaganda she grew up with. But that leaves the problem of her still being afraid of Azula, and Sokka, while bemoaning the fact that none of them can match Azula, mentions that she probably knows every firebending technique Alec does. Which makes Alec remember the one technique he knows that she doesn't: redirecting lightning. These two realizations are instrumental in convincing Ty Lee (and Mai) to betray the Fire Nation and join the Gaang.
• Expository Hairstyle Change: After her Heel–Face Turn, Azula lets her hair down and stops wearing makeup (which she used to look older and more intimidating than she really was). Of course, she also lost her hairpin beforehand, which could be seen as symbolic of the death of her old self and used as "proof" by Long Feng that she was dead for real when he reported as such to Ozai.
• Faint in Shock: After Alec shows Zuko the Agni Kai scroll from Wan Shi Tong's library, which says that since Ozai burned a surrendering Zuko, by law, he forfeited all his possessions, titles and honors to Zuko: including the title of Fire Lord, he passes out after his whole world is rocked several times over.
• Fantastic Racism: As a whole, and understandably, people are slow to trust Fire Nationals and firebenders. Most people give Alec a chance even after finding out he's a firebender, by virtue of him traveling with the Avatar. The only one who doesn't is Jet, whose blind hatred costs him his life.
• Fantasy-Forbidding Father: Ozai, no surprise, but it's towards Azula of all people. When she was 6, she daydreamed that one day she'd be able to try and ride on a Dragon of her own, only for Ozai to berate her for pretending and saying she could never do it because Iroh killed the last dragon. This turned Azula more bitter and jaded, especially towards Iroh.
• The Fatalist: The entirety of Makapu Village, who believe so strongly in Aunt Wu's fortunetelling that they're practically unable to think for themselves. Katara correctly guesses that Aunt Wu and the village are the primary reason for Alec's Rule One.
• A Father to His Men: As in canon, the crew of Zuko's ship, the Wani, are loyal to Iroh, and before the Siege of the North, Iroh had them leave the frontlines before the fighting began, only for a passing Fire Nation ship to pick them up and arrest them for desertion. By Chapter 44, they were shown to have been sent to the Navy Yard, one of the Fire Nations' POW Camps and primary ship-building facilities, where Zuko rescues them on The Day of Black Sun.
• Fiery Cover Up: Zhao's burning of the Fire Nation section of Wan Shi Tong's Library takes on a more direct meaning when the Owl Spirit reveals the single scroll in his catalogue that narrowly survived the destruction, one on the rules of Agni Kai that was penned by Avatar Szeto and Fire Lord Yosor half a millennium ago. According to its rules, not only was Ozai's duel against Zuko illegal since the Fire Sages weren't refereeing, but that by burning an already-surrendered Zuko, Ozai forfeited not only the match to Zuko, but all of his titles, possessions, and honors, including the title of Fire Lord.
• First Period Panic: Toph, being 12 years old, has her first period shortly after joining Team Avatar and winds up screaming and panicking until Alec and Katara explain what's really going on.
• Friendly Tickle Torture: In Chapter 42, Alec tickles the soles of Ty Lee’s feet in response to her teasing him with her new swimsuit.
• Fuzz Therapy: It turns out that Azula absolutely loves dragons, to the point where her relationship with Iroh soured after Ozai told her that she could never ride a dragon because Iroh killed the last one. In Chapter 35, when she wakes up after Ozai tried to have her killed, all of her rage and suicidal depression fall silent when she sees Ved and Druk on Zuko and Alec's shoulders, and she immediately turns docile and warm when they let her pet them. When she receives Shaw's last egg, she decides to dedicate the rest of her life to returning dragons to the world.
• The Gadfly: Alec is adamant about keeping Rule 1 most of the time, usually for the stated reason that the Gaang needs to grow and can't if he gives them all the answers. But it's not uncommon for him to withhold knowledge purely so he can see the looks on their faces, either.
• Gilligan Cut:
  • In Chapter 17, when Alec looks at his new wanted poster, Sokka says that none of their friends are going to see the poster and immediately think he's evil. Cut to Ty Lee in the circus finding out and being miserable about it.
  • In Chapter 32, when Alec has trouble falling asleep, as he had gotten used to cuddling Ty Lee at night over the past couple of weeks and he's currently away on a two-week trip, he hopes she's having an easier time than he is. Cut to her having just as much trouble sleeping.
  • In Chapter 33, Alec thinks he's butterflied away the fall of Ba Sing Se, and reflects that things are going their way. Cut to Long Feng in prison where, as in canon, a Dai Li agent assures him that they remain loyal to him... and, as not in canon, Long Feng pens a message to an outside source for help.
• Godzilla Threshold: Rule 6 is this, something only to remember when something has Gone Horribly Wrong. Alec invokes it after the fall of Ba Sing Se.
• Great Escape: With the plans for invading the Fire Nation foiled, Mai presents a different idea for how the Gaang and their allies can exploit the Day of Black Sun: every prison guard at every prison in the Fire Nation is a firebender, meaning that for those eight minutes, the prisons are practically defenseless. So they plan to pull jailbreaks at every single prisoner of war camp that the Fire Nation controls by stealing the information from a communication tower and then coordinating their allies. It succeeds flawlessly; they steal the information with nobody noticing thanks to Toph's metalbending and they successfully liberate the prisoners from every POW camp before destroying them, all the while Ozai is hiding out in his bunker within the Capital expecting an invasion. The fact that two of the major prisons destroyed also served as the Fire Nations' primary weapons factory and their largest naval shipyard is just the icing on the cake.
• Happily Adopted: In Chapter 1, two months after finding him, Katara and Sokka formally adopt Alec as a brother (in part to keep him from dating Katara), and he's happy about it. In Chapter 34, he finally meets Hakoda, who welcomes him easily. In Chapter 45, Kya welcomes him even more easily after he saves her from Water's Wail.
• Hate Sink: Mai's father, Ukano, is a fanatic follower of Ozai as in canon. Here, it's clarified that not only was he the only one responsible for Mai's severely strict upbringing, but he attempted to give her away to Ozai as a bride as punishment for her rebellion. His wife takes Tom-Tom and leaves him the moment that they learn about this.
• Hiroshima as a Unit of Measure: Following the aftermath of Makapu Village, Alec starts using it as a measurement of stupidity the Gaang would be dealing with.
• Hot God: As befits a Spirit of Love, Lady Ài is an absolute bombshell, and her outfit does very little to hide it.
• Hypocritical Humor: Sokka gets easily squeamish at seeing Aang and Katara being romantic, despite his own behavior with Suki.
• I Need a Freaking Drink:
  • Hakoda and Bato have this reaction in Chapter 37 when they realize that among their allies to help bring down Fire Lord Ozai, they now have the rest of Ozai's family.
  • In Chapter 44, Zuko meets his crew again in the midst of the Day of Black Sun mass jailbreak, and at least two of them have this feeling when they learn that not only is Zuko far calmer and nicer, he's also joined the Avatar.
• In Spite of a Nail:
  • During the events of "The Deserter," Alec keeps Aang from blowing his cover on stage. Unfortunately, Chey loudly mentioning that Aang is the Avatar causes Zhao to find them only one day later than in canon.
  • During the events of "Avatar Day", Alec decides that in order for Aang to present his case to the people of Chin that Avatar Kyoshi didn't kill Chin the Great in a clearer manner, he would have Aang memorize the details. However, he still stumbled in the trial because the one that read him the evidence was Katara.
  • Alec defuses all of the conflict between Toph and the Gaang, meaning she never runs away and meets Iroh. Yet when they, Zuko, and Iroh have Azula cornered and she brings up that Alec redirected her lightning, a technique that Iroh himself created, he looks at Alec in askance, giving Azula the opening to attack him.
  • Alec prevents Appa's kidnapping at the hands of the sandbenders. But Alec still leads the Gaang to stop by Full Moon Bay to recruit Suki early, meaning they still meet Than, Ying, and Asha. And when the refugees' belongings are stolen, they quickly go through the options: Talk to the ticket lady? No chance. Use the Beifong clout? No animals allowed; she could bluff about Momo, but not Appa. Fly Appa across? Not safe for a pregnant woman. Float Appa across? Predators in the water. Send Appa across to wait for them? He flew too much yesterday. In the end, there's no choice but to go through the Serpent's Pass.
  • Aang and Zuko's trouble with firebending after the latter joins the Gaang. Alec butterflied away Aang's disastrous first lessons with Jeong Jeong and even broke Rule 5 for the first and only time, knowing Aang would hesitate if he knew he burned Katara. Alec also informed Zuko of everything that Ozai had done to Ursa, Zuko himself, and Azula, figuring that that would give him enough anger to keep fueling his firebending until Ozai's defeat. Despite this, Aang is still scared of firebending due to the lethal ruthlessness Alec used during the Siege of the North, while Zuko's anger at his father is swallowed up in the happiness of being part of the Gaang and dating Mai. Thus, before Aang can begin learning firebending, they still have to travel to the city of the Sun Warriors to learn from Ran and Shaw.
  • Alec prevents almost every bad thing that happened in or around Ba Sing Se, including Appa's kidnapping, Toph's kidnapping, and Azula infiltrating disguised as a Kyoshi Warrior. But the Dai Li remained loyal to Long Feng, and that was the only loose end needed to ensure that the city still fell to the Fire Nation. And similarly, Iroh still stays behind to help the Gaang escape, and Katara is forced to use the restorative Spirit Oasis Waters to save someone from death, only this time it's used on Azula; whom Ozai had commanded Long Feng to kill in order to turn his daughter into a martyr for the Fire Nation.
• Ironic Echo: Played for Laughs in Chapter 35, when Gran Gran has an interesting way of greeting Zuko after his Heel–Face Turn:
  Gran Gran: (grabs Zuko's ear and drags him down) I'm looking for the Prince. He'd be about this age? Avatar Aang's firebending teacher?
  (Aang, Katara, Sokka, and Alec collapse in hysteric laughter)
• Kid from the Future: Alec has a vision of his future son, Roku by name, in the Foggy Swamp. The information Roku shares helps Alec figure out that Ty Lee is his soul mate.
• Leave No Survivors:
  • In Chapter 37, when Hakoda's group and the Gaang hijack a Fire Nation ship, they initially planned to take the crew prisoner. But when they hear them laughing about raping and killing a group of colonials, Hakoda changes the plan.
  • In Chapter 44, when Alec leads a small group to attack Water's Wail, the prison for the Southern Waterbenders, they deliberately kill every guard present for the cruelty they've exercised for so long.
• Living Lie Detector:
  • Toph, as in canon, can read someone's heartbeat to gauge his or her truthfulness. This is a big reason that Alec tells Team Avatar the truth about where he came from: it'd be impossible to not tell her, and implausible to not tell anyone else.
  • Ty Lee, as well, thanks to her ability to see auras: she can read people as easily as books.
• Locked Out of the Loop: Fire Lord Ozai, when it comes to knowing the true capacity and strength that Alec and the rest of the Gaang are capable of. This is because the Intelligence Minister is the head of a spy network spread throughout the Fire Nation Capital in service of the White Lotus.
• Luxury Prison Suite: In Chapter 46, the prison cell where Mai's family was kept after Omashu was re-taken, a pen lit by glowing crystals in candelabras with several large beds.
• Made of Indestructium:
  • Meteor iron is a powerful material to begin with, but when they use dragon fire to forge it, the quality of the metal is without equal. When they meet Piandao, the Gaang gets five weapons out the meteor: Sokka's jian, new daoswords for Zuko, a spear for Alec, a knife for Mai, and a katana for Suki; replacing the damaged blade of her old sword. Piandao and Fat are quick to state that they had already tested several blades against them: all of them instantly shattered against the Dragon-blessed Meteor Iron blades.
  • Only one substance is tougher than the above: a red tree in Piandao's castle that shatters any blade that tries to fell it, grown from the corpse of a dragon who was dishonorably hunted by a group of dozens of firebenders. It swore that the tree that grew from its body would stand as a reminder of their weakened fire, and nothing would fell it except true fire. Which is to say, firebending from a dragon or someone who learned from one. Alec uses a branch from this tree to form the haft of his spear.
• Mama Bear:
  • Ursa won't hesitate to murder someone in the name of keeping her children safe, even the Avatar if it came to it. A shining example of this trope, her name means "bear."
  • Attack Shul in front of Azula at your peril.
• Mathematician's Answer: In Chapter 21, after Avatar Kyoshi buries three of the Rough Rhinos beneath a boulder:
  Sokka: Did she bury them, or mush them into paste?
  Alec: Yes.
• Mission from God: In Chapter 15, Alec meets the spirit responsible for bringing him to the Avatar world and making him a firebender: Lady Ài, the Love Spirit. She sets him four love-related tasks to accomplish:
  One: Save Tui, so that she is not parted from La. Accomplished in Chapter 16.
  Two: Ensure that three couples get together and stay together: Aang and Katara, Sokka and Suki, and Zuko and Mai. Accomplished as of Chapter 31, though he still doesn't tell the Gaang about this task for risk of it unraveling.
  Three: Find Ursa. A more difficult task considering that bringing Alec to the world caused ripples in its events, offsetting the canon events from The Search; everything that happened to Ursa up until her banishment was still correct, but the rest is not. Accomplished in Chapter 35, when he contacts the White Lotus to find Ursa, and it turns out that their chief information broker, The Source, is Ursa herself.
  Four: Find his soul mate. The story summary gives away that it's Ty Lee, which he learns in Chapter 20. Accomplished in Chapter 28: after she defects, both of them already attracted to each other, he tells her everything, and after a successful first date the following night, they become boyfriend and girlfriend. Much later, in Chapter 42, Alec proposes to her, and she gleefully accepts.
• Moral Event Horizon: In Chapter 27, the final straw that makes Ty Lee and Mai decide to defect is when they hear that one of the warships attacked a pregnant woman that was traveling with the Avatar and his companions.
• Murder-Suicide: Aang cites the belief that all life is sacred when Alec asks what happened with Monk Gyatso. As penance for what he was going to do, Gyatso bent the air out of the room, killing himself and everyone in it.
• My Eyes Are Up Here: Said word for word by Lady Ài when she noticed Alec's eyes lingering on her sizeable bust. Though she is understanding considering her turning back his age gave him the mentality of someone just coming out of puberty.
• My God, You Are Serious!:
  • In Chapter 20, Aang, Katara, and Sokka are horrified when Alec says that he hadn't been lying when he said that Ozai wouldn't consider a hostage trade for his own daughter. And shortly thereafter, they're horrified again when Alec says that Ozai banished Zuko for talking out of turn.
  • In Chapter 34, Hakoda quickly goes from laughing to angry when the Gaang says that they recruited General Iroh and Prince Zuko.
• Mythology Gag:
  • In Chapter 18, when Alec dissuades the Gaang from flying to Omashu due to the many, many Fire Nation soldiers nearby, Katara's concession is, while less reluctant, almost verbatim how she responded to Zuko joining the group in The Western Air Temple.
  Katara: I'll go along with what you think is right.
  • In Chapter 30, when Alec convinces Zuko to join him and meet with the Avatar's group, Alec's response carries a similar note to what Zuko said to Katara in The Southern Raiders:
  Zuko: Why should I come with you?
  Alec: Because I know why your mother disappeared, and I want to help you find her.
  • In Chapter 45, when Mai angrily shows the rest of the group the letter her father wrote to Ozai, Toph remarks on it almost exactly the same way she did in "The Runaway":
  Toph: Well, they sound like sheets of paper, but I guess you're referring to what's on the sheets of paper.
  • In Chapter 46, when Mai confronts her father in Omashu's prison, her opening line to him is the same as the one she gives Zuko in The Boiling Rock, Part 2:
  Ukano: I've done nothing wrong!
  Mai: Come on, Father. We both know that's a lie.
• Named by the Adaptation:
  • Zuko's ship that he used throughout Book I to chase after the Avatar is named the Wani.
  • Combustion Man. Zuko informs the group after his failed attempt to assassinate them that his name was Lee. The most common name in the Fire Nation. Something that Alec finds hilarious.
  Alec: That would be like someone in my world going, "Hi there, I'm the Assassin, Bob"!
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero:
  • Two factors lead to the fall of Ba Sing Se still happening, both ultimately being Alec's fault. First, the fact that Alec publicly subverted four Fire Nationals, including the Crown Prince and the Dragon of the West, inspires Long Feng to contact Fire Lord Ozai to regain control of the city. Second, way back at the Northern Air Temple, Alec forgot that the Fire Nation found the wreckage of the Mechanist's prototype war balloon and used it to create airships; Ozai includes a schematic with his response to Long Feng, which causes the latter to abandon his plans of double-crossing the former.
  • Alec calls Ursa out on two mistakes that ended up isolating her from Azula: her claiming Zuko wasn't Ozai's father meant that she had to spend all her time protecting Zuko and neglecting Azula, and her trying to leave without waking her children up and telling them that she loved them.
• Nice Job Fixing It, Villain:
  • Azula attempts to pump Alec for info in Chapter 19, but he has his own agenda for the conversation, and she's oblivious to the fact that her own responses to his questions are sowing seeds of distrust and rebellion in Mai and Ty Lee.
  • With Jet's death, Alec had no cover story he could use to explain away his knowledge of Ba Sing Se's conspiracy...up until Long Feng confronts him for blowing up at Joo Dee, insinuating his mother may have been one, and mentioning that General How of the Council of Five fought in the Siege of Ba Sing Se. As soon as Long Feng leaves and Toph confirms there are no eavesdroppers, Alec laughs his head off since he now has the appropriate in-road to confront Long Feng and his machinations.
  • Ozai's intolerance for failure comes back to bite him in a massive way: when he orders Azula murdered and it apparently succeeds, Azula falls into the hands of Team Avatar. Which is to say, the only people on the planet who have the volition and knowhow to persuade Azula to make a Heel–Face Turn in the face of Ozai's betrayal. And thus, the Fire Lord's most valuable weapon becomes Team Avatar's politics teacher and Co-Firebending mentor.
• The Nicknamer: Toph, as in canon. The ones not from canon:
  • Alec: Hand Slicer, to his chagrin; he retaliates by calling her Shrimp.
  • Iroh: Old Man
  • Azula: Bitch Princess. Changes to "Dragon Girl" after her Heel–Face Turn.
  • Suki: War Fans.
  • Ty Lee: Kitten.
  • Mai: Knives.
• Noble Demon: Pre-Heel–Face Turn Zuko, as in canon, always keeps his word and acts honorably. Examples in this story include allowing Alec to say goodbye to his family when he orders him to surrender alongside Aang in the South Pole and immediately heeding Alec's request not to hurt the koi fish in the North Pole's Spirit Oasis, relocating a safe distance away from the pond before continuing to attack.
• Oblivious to Love: Two of the three couples for Alec's second mission require very little effort on his part, connecting naturally within 24 hours of joining the Gaang. But Aang and Katara (and Sokka) are oblivious to the other's attraction despite it being so obvious that even pre-Heel–Face Turn Zuko—heck, even Gran Gran could see it. Alec actively nudges them at every opportunity after the Siege of the North, and it still takes until Ba Sing Se for Aang to blurt out his feelings and Katara to return them.
• Old Man Marrying a Child: With Zuko's banishment and Azula's apparent death, Mai is offered up through an Arranged Marriage contract by her own father should she be captured, which Ozai accepts the terms of. Naturally, the girl and everyone else who hears of this are sick to their stomachs.
• Once Done, Never Forgotten: Alec hates being referred to as "Hand Slicer" since he only did it twice. He even notes that he's cut off more heads than hands.
• One Degree of Separation: It turns out that Toph's father was the Earth Kingdom nobleman who was planning to buy the waterbending scroll from the pirates.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business: After hearing Zuko and Ursa's Trauma Conga Line and Awful Wedded Life, respectively, Toph and Mai are openly crying.
• Original Character: Aside from Alec himself...
  • Poduk is a warrior in the Northern Water Tribe who had been courting Yue before Hahn forced his way into the picture, using his family's political connections to threaten him into backing off. When Hahn captures Alec, lying about Alec having attacked him for the glory of capturing a firebender, Poduk is the one who guards his cell. Alec quickly learns the situation from Poduk and persuades him to bring him before the Chief to plead his case. With a bit of cunning, they get the chief to revoke Hahn's engagement to Yue, allowing Poduk to propose to her. He becomes a fast friend and ally to the team and, not long after the Siege of the North, the new Chief after Arnook steps down.
  • The Source is an intelligence broker working for the White Lotus. They remain anonymous and unseen, dealing only through an equally anonymous middleman called The Mask. But while these roles are unique to the story, the characters themselves are not: The Source is Ursa and The Mask is Ikem.
  • Intelligence Minister Rezok, a trusted advisor of Ozai, a loyal member of the Order of the White Lotus, and Ikem's brother.
  • Ved and Shul are Ran and Shaw's chicks, siblings to Zuko’s dragon Druk. They're given to and named by Alec and Azula, respectively, after the dragons judge them as worthy to see the true meaning of firebending.
  • Admiral Liang of the Fire Nation, only spoken of secondhand: a shrewd military strategist but a Reasonable Authority Figure who has zero tolerance for harming innocent civilians.
• Out-Gambitted:
  • Alec and the Gaang set a trap in the Spirit Oasis both nights of the Siege of the North. The first night, they subdue and capture Zuko. The second night, Zhao comes with five times the number of soldiers expected... but also Iroh. Alec immediately tells Iroh that they have Zuko hostage and will allow him and Iroh to leave free if Iroh helps them defeat Zhao. Iroh, of course, immediately agrees and holds off three-quarters of Zhao's forces alone.
  • Ozai knows about the invasion plan on the Day of Black Sun. But either he doesn't know that Long Feng told them that he knows or he expected them to try in spite of that. So he's completely blindsided when he retreats into his volcanic bunker, only to find out several hours later that the invasion force had used the eclipse to instead perform jailbreaks at every POW Camp in the Fire Nation before destroying them: two of these happened to be the Fire Nations' largest naval shipyard and primary weapons factory. And did we mention Alec's "little" taunt to Ozai afterward?
• The Paragon Always Rebels: An interesting inversion of this from the Fire Nations' perspective with Mai, Ty Lee, and eventually Azula defecting to fight alongside Team Avatar against Fire Lord Ozai.
• Parental Sexuality Squick:
  • In Chapter 23, after Katara gives Toph "The Talk," the latter notes that she often heard vibrations coming from her parents' bedroom late at night, and now has context for it that she doesn't want to think about.
  • In Chapter 46, when Hakoda and Kya are reunited, it has to be spelled out to Sokka why they'll be busy for an indeterminate amount of time. Less because Sokka doesn't know what sex is (he's already had it with Suki), and more because he doesn't want to think about his parents having it.
• Phony Psychic: Aunt Wu of Makapu village, as Alec privately confirms: she's just good at Cold Reading and telling people what they want to hear. But her motives are surprisingly benevolent: she doesn't make any money from the fortune telling, but the inns and merchants of the town do make money from her customers.
• Placebo Eureka Moment: In Chapter 19, Alec is reflecting on exactly how badly everything is going to play out with the would-be hostage exchange the following day, and angrily asks himself why they're doing it. Then he repeats the question more thoughtfully, realizing that this is an excellent opportunity to change the future.
• Point of Divergence: Alec's presence naturally causes ripples, some intentional and some not.
  • In Chapter 9, Alec doesn't trust the Gaang enough to explicitly warn them about Jet, which ends with a lot of pain for him. In Chapter 12, this is Aang's reasoning for not hiding the message from Hakoda to Bato, allowing him to painlessly learn that Katara and Sokka (and Alec) won't abandon him.
  • In Chapter 10, Ty Lee meets Alec while still at the circus, and a few sparks fly between them. In Chapter 17, she's very confused and hurt when she sees his wanted poster, wondering about how much is true, and it brings her mood down drastically. Thus, in Chapter 19, when Azula shows up to recruit her for help in tracking down a traitor, her worries about Alec come to the surface, and she jumps at Azula's invitation when the latter promises to help track down Alec as well.
  • After the failure to break through Ba Sing Se's walls with the drill, War Minister Qin decides to play up Azula's own failure, emphasized by Mai and Ty Lee's defection and her hallucinations of Ursa. The result of this is that when Long Feng contacts Ozai to surrender Ba Sing Se in exchange for remaining governor, Ozai orders him to kill Azula and blame the Avatar as proof of loyalty.
• Poor Communication Kills: When Alec reveals the truth to the Gaang, they reluctantly accept his reasoning for Rule 1. But after him being too vague with his warnings results in Katara telling Jet that he's a firebender, which leads to Jet torturing Alec and, ultimately, Alec killing Jet in self-defense, Alec plans to trust them with more information going forward.
• The Power of Love: Alec gets Aang to be more assertive in his earthbending training with Toph by fanning his burgeoning crush on Katara.
• Pragmatic Villainy: Discussed. When Alec explains about how Long Feng and the Dai Li have been brainwashing people to ignore the war against the Fire Nation, he notes that their group is probably safe. The process takes a while and can only be done on one person at a time, and if any member of Team Avatar went missing the others would tear the city apart looking for them, so it's likely Long Feng wouldn't risk it. Though Alec plays it safe and lets the group know about Lake Laogai just in case.
• Punctuated! For! Emphasis!: When Momo tries pawing at the Moon and Ocean Spirits in the Spirit Oasis, Alec grabs him by the scruff and orders him clearly, "Don't. Touch. The. Koi. Fish."
• Quit Your Whining: After Azula blasts Iroh in the chest and escapes in Chapter 24, an anguished Zuko tries to ward the Gaang off with fire, but Alec has none of it, shoves Zuko into a nearby wall, and demands that he drop his pride and let them heal his uncle.
• Rape Is a Special Kind of Evil:
  • Implied to be the case between Dai Li and the Joo Dees through the usage of the latter's brainwashing and Laser-Guided Amnesia.
  • In Chapter 37, when the Gaang and Hakoda's group ambush a Fire Navy ship and steal it, they intended it to be bloodless, taking the crew prisoner. When the invasion force overhears that the crew had raped and murdered civilians, Hakoda quickly changes the plan to "Leave No Survivors." Ty Lee's first kill in the story occurs here, and she feels guilty for not feeling guilty.
• Reformed, but Not Tamed: While Azula does have a genuine Heel–Face Turn, they remain cunning and mischievous with a hint of the former sadism just beneath the surface.
• Restored My Faith in Humanity:
  • Jeong Jeong agrees to teach Alec, which brings him the realization that firebending isn't inherently evil and that there could be patient students. Jeong Jeong allows Alec to take his scrolls on firebending to study from. By the time he meets up with Alec again months later and sees that the Dragons weren't all wiped out, he is left in awe.
  • Azula herself undergoes this after going through her Despair Event Horizon when Ozai had ordered for her death, believing that she was completely unloved. It took her seeing that the Dragons were still alive and the return of Ursa to bring her back to normal again, along with learning of her and Zuko's connection to Avatar Roku and receiving the blessing of the Dragons to learn true firebending that she is prepared to take the fight to her so-called father as a part of Team Avatar.
• The Reveal:
  • Alec tells Aang, Katara, and Sokka the truth about his origins in Chapter 3.
  • In Chapter 35, a more expansive version happens after the fall of Ba Sing Se causes Alec to invoke Rule 6.
• Running Gag:
  • For several chapters after he tells the secret, Alec says a piece of knowledge, the Gaang asks something in the vein of "How did you know that?", he gives them a flat look, and they realize the answer.
  • Alec often has to hold himself back from doing something inadvisable, and has a mantra for it that usually goes the same way: "Must not X. Must not X. Must not X." Then a few more paragraphs intensify it, leading to this: "Must not X! Must Not X! MUST NOT X!" Examples:
    • Chapter 11, when Makapu Village is utterly ignoring the erupting volcano: "Must not burn the stupid to death."
    • Chapter 18, when trying to explain to the nomads that they're going to Omashu: "Must not burn the hippies to death."
    • Chapter 32, when Katara and Aang finally get together and use "Sweetie" as their pet names for each other: "Must not laugh."
  • Whenever Alec tells someone he's from another world, the first assumption they make is that he's from the Spirit World. When Toph is about to join them, Sokka is skeptical about someone other than Aang guessing it first, and Alec bets that everyone who joins them going forward will guess that. Current count: six for six.
    • Also happening often: the newly informed person/people remarks that Alec isn't crazy after he shares information that he couldn't know otherwise, and he or one of his siblings says that's debatable.
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here: In Chapter 9, when the Freedom Fighters find out that Jet tortured Alec in cold blood and he orders them to kill Aang and his group for attacking him, every one of them leaves.
  Smellerbee: Sorry, Jet. I can't follow you anymore.
• Secret-Keeper:
  • Not counting spirits, Alec keeps the truth about him and his knowledge strictly restricted to Team Avatar, with only three exceptions. In Chapter 5, Bumi figures out the truth thanks to his...unique way of looking at things. And in Chapter 36, he reveals the truth to The Mask and The Source...or rather, Ikem and Ursa, who know that his usual cover story is a lie thanks to their intelligence network.
    • Among the above, Ursa is the only one who knows the second mission that Lady Ài gave Alec: by which point, he had now actually completed all of his tasks.
  • On that note, only two people know the true identity of The Mask and The Source before that reveal: Bumi, who helped them integrate into the White Lotus, and Intelligence Minister Rezok, the Mask's brother.
  • Alec keeps Aunt Wu's secret that she's a Phony Psychic after learning that her motives are benevolent; she, likewise, tells nobody in the village that he's a firebender.
  • After riding into Ba Sing Se and noticing that Iroh was firebending his tea, Smellerbee cites to Zuko that she and Longshot promise not to tell anyone; having already seen through Alec there can be good and decent Firebenders in the world.
  • Earth King Kuei becomes this in Chapter 33, being the only person in Ba Sing Se that the Gaang tells of Druk and Ved's existence, something he keeps even from his Generals. Though in later chapters, pretty much all of the Gaang's allies learn about them, making it more of an Open Secret for anyone who doesn't serve Ozai.
• Shipper on Deck: Lady Ài, the Spirit of Love, is naturally one. Two of the tasks she assigns Alec are to get the ships of Aang/Katara, Sokka/Suki, and Zuko/Mai going earlier and to find his own soulmate.
• Shown Their Work: The author got the descriptor for the scent of burning blood and flesh that comes up first in Chapter 14 from a firefighter he's friends with.
• Sir Swears-a-Lot:
  • Alec's vocabulary is rather ripe. Usually, someone else (most often Katara) just chides him briefly. When he does it in front of too many people, usually kids, Gran Gran or Katara washes his mouth out with seaweed and tiger seal blubber soap. There's a reason the Order of the White Lotus refers to him as "Foul Mouth".
  • Toph becomes a Lady Swears-a-Lot after Alec bargains with her, teaching her all of the swear words he knows in exchange for her never complaining about bathing with the rest of them.
    Katara: You've created a monster.
• Small Name, Big Ego: Jet, as Alec lampshades. However impressive his resistance may be on the surface, the fact is that his harassment of the Fire Nation soldiers is so minuscule that they could (and did) pass it off as a paperwork error; Alec notes that if the Fire Nation saw the Freedom Fighters as a threat, he'd be dead already. Taken to an extreme when Jet believes that Alec is a Fire Nation assassin and was traveling with the Avatar as a cover to get closer to him. Ironically, when it comes out that Jet tortured him, Alec ends up saving his life at first; it's only when Jet tries to kill him again anyway that Alec kills him in self-defense.
• Spared by the Adaptation:
  • Because Alec saved Tui from Zhao, Yue survives the Siege of the North.
  • Also applies to Aang's original staff, as the difference in events following leaving Ba Sing Se meant Aang never went off on a dangerous mission alone, and hence the device was never damaged beyond repair.
  • Perhaps most notably in Chapter 44: Kya was captured alive and imprisoned in Water's Wail for six years; the charred corpse that was left behind was that of Yon Rha's mother.
• Super-Empowering: Lady Ài gives Alec the power of firebending when he enters the world. We have two explanations for this: in-universe, it's the element that Lady Ài has the strongest affinity with due to its resonance with life, energy, passion, desire, and lust. Out-of-universe, the author says in Chapter 2's notes that he considered all of the other options:
  Urbanator93: I chose to make Alec a firebender to help him keep up with the rest of the Gaang. I can't write a nonbending fighter very well without stealing from Suki, Mai or Ty Lee, and those three are so iconic that I can't do them dirty like that....I didn't do air because that's Aang's thing, and I didn't want to steal Katara's thunder by making Alec a waterbender. I really couldn't do earth, because Toph is my favorite character and I don't want to take anything away from her. That only left one option.
• Sweet Tooth: Alec has this, which becomes a minor plot point during the fist trip to Omashu. He mentions to Bumi that if he gets covered by jennamite (rock candy) like Sokka and Katara during Aang's three tests, there's no way Alec would be able to resist biting down on it, revealing to Aang that there's no real danger. Which would make it impossible to take the tests seriously and possibly fail them. Bumi, who loves jennamite himself, understands Alec's rationale and agrees to leave him out of the "hostage situation".
• Tailor-Made Prison: Aside from locations like Water's Wail, after parting ways with the Gaang in Chapter 25 Zuko asks Iroh about what would happen to the Avatar if he was captured. Hearing about what would happen to Aang is enough that Zuko resolves to stop hunting him:
  Iroh: There were plans drawn up for a prison designed specifically for the Avatar. It was a small cell, not even big enough to stand up or lie down in, and made entirely of metal to prevent earthbending. The Avatar was to have his hands and feet removed so he couldn't bend. Dry, cold air would be pumped in to prevent waterbending or firebending. Food would be dropped in from the roof and the Avatar would have to eat off the floor.
• Take That!: In the canon episode "Sokka's Master," they forge Sokka's sword by casting the molten metal into a sword mold. Here, both Piandao and Fat balk at the suggestion, saying that forging and hammering make better-quality weapons.
• The Talk: In Chapter 23, Toph freaks out when she gets her first period, prompting Alec to have Katara explain what's going on. This prompts Toph to recall a comment one of the servants made, causing her to realize that her parents, blindly overprotective as they were, planned on telling Toph that her periods were just her getting sick and leaving it at that. They never intended to tell her the truth. Katara and Alec are both furious and the former even curses for the only time in the story.
• Team Member in the Adaptation: As Book 2 draws to a close, the Gaang grows far bigger than before.
  • In Chapter 27, Alec persuades Suki to join them at Full Moon Bay.
  • In Chapter 28, Mai and Ty Lee turn against the Fire Nation, convinced that they're on the wrong side and Team Avatar is strong enough to oppose even Azula.
  • In Chapter 30, Alec invites Iroh and Zuko over and tells them his secret. With the knowledge of his mother's love and father's treachery, Zuko's metamorphosis takes less than a day, and he and Iroh join the group readily.
  • In Chapter 36, after Ursa helps Azula realize that she had always loved her and Ozai never had, Azula joins the Gaang to help overthrow Ozai.
• This Is Gonna Suck: Quoted verbatim in Chapter 31 when Toph rats out Alec for sleeping (platonically) with Ty Lee, dreading Mai's anger and everyone else's teasing.
• Time Travel for Fun and Profit: A variation in that Alec hasn't technically time traveled, but since he's living the events of the show from the beginning he realizes he can make a killing placing bets on Earth Rumble VI after seeing a booth that basically acts like a sportsbook. He even remarks to himself that he's about to pull a Biff Tannen.
• Troll: Alec, especially when it comes to insulting Fire Lord Ozai.
• Van Helsing Hate Crimes: Jet when it comes to the Fire Nation and especially firebenders, no matter who they are. Best shown with him planning to drown an entire backwater village with a small group of Fire Nation guards, and when he captures Alec after learning he was a firebender to perform Cold-Blooded Torture.
• War Is Hell: The Siege of the North is not sugarcoated at all. The bodycount is colossal on both sides, and bloodstains are everywhere.
• What You Are in the Dark: Hama could have used her bloodbending to free all the prisoner's of Water's Wail, with no one to stop her. Instead she left the other Water Tribe members to suffer, reasoning that if they really wanted to escape, she had already shown them how.
• You Have Failed Me: Of all people, Ozai betrays and arranges Azula's death after War Minister Qin shifts the blame for the drill's destruction while also bringing up Ty Lee and Mai's defection and Azula hallucinating Ursa. Katara revives her with the Spirit Water, and it doesn't take long for her to join them.
• You Know I'm Black, Right?: Whenever someone comments about all Firebenders being evil, Alec often speaks up pointedly.
• You Need to Get Laid: This was the consensus of all of Zuko's old crew, including Iroh. When they finally meet again, they're relieved to see Mai with him.

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