Kaizhen Taiyo

Kaizhen Taiyo, also known as Kai, is a thirteen year old firebender. Though he is passionate about the Fire Nation, he is also fiercely noble and refuses to fight an unfair battle. Though originally part of the Fire Nation soldiers, he abandons them to join Ezona and company.

Appearance
Kai is small and skinny for his age, with thick dark hair. Though traditionally garbed in Fire Nation colors, his clothes are not particularly great, perhaps due to his poor upbringing. His skin is relatively fair and he is known for bringing a wooden staff around with him.

Personality
"Get me a good meal later and I'll call it even."

— Kai, after saving Vali

Perhaps due to the fact that his element is fire, Kai can be very hotheaded, passionate, and rather stubborn. He posseses great wisdom due to his poor life on the road with his grandfather Haozen, whom he affectionately refers to as "Gampy". Despite his intellect, he is sometimes known for acting recklessly and boldly. In spite of these weaknesses, his heart is more often than not in the right place. Kai is very passionate about the Fire Nation and firebending, but this doesn't stop him from retaining his noble ways, refusing to fight an unfair battle unless he absolutely feels the need to.

Kaizhen is very big on sparring and firebending, but has one truer love...good food. While living his economically disadvantaged and simple life with his uncle, they had little else to eat but rice gruel and meat from whatever animal they could catch and prepare. Perhaps due to this, Kai has a realized love of food and good meals, having never gotten the chance to appreciate many of these flavors on a daily basis. As such, he strongly loves food, especially favoring noodles, seafood, custard tarts, and the ever-popular sizzle-crisps. In spite of his love of food however, he finds lychee nuts disgusting, which is ironic when considering that lychee nuts are a large part of the traditional Fire Nation diet. He also dislikes cabbages.

He can also tend to act somewhat lawless in nature and/or not know of social conventions and graces. This is partly due to being orphaned up until Haozen found him and began raising him. Despite this, Haozen never taught Kai these things because they rarely had a house to stay in and were often by themselves. As such, he has developed a few less-than-polite habits, such as his messy eating and his tendency to talk with his mouth full.

It is also implied that this impoverished lifestyle also led to Kaizhen becoming rather resourceful, as he and his grandfather managed to make ends meet just enough to keep themselves alive without keeping a job. Both did a variety of odd jobs or occasionally hunted their own food and both also provided themselves with shelter when they were unable to stay anywhere. Kai had helped his grandfather occasionally build a lean-to, among other things during their impoverished days.

Background
Kai was orphaned at a young age and was "well on his way to becoming a feral child" purportedly, when Haozen found him. Since then, the grandfather-grandson duo has looked after each other. Though economically struggling, the two managed to make ends meet just enough to keep themselves fed.