Summary: READ THE STORY!!!! BLEH!!
Chapter 1- Changes
Pained yelps and howls rang out through the Fire Nation's testing facility as scientists prodded a large tiger-wolf with prongs and poles. They injected him with several shots that were slowly changing his attributes and DNA. He had been in this living hell for three months, and every day the scientists took him into a dimly lit, small room and injected him with both fluids and solids. He could feel his bones stretching and changing, and his vocal chords were changing as well, allowing him to utter throaty curses between yelps and howls.
His light brown fur, with a white chest and belly, black stripes on his back, and a helmet style patch over his eyes, muzzle, and forehead, was bristling with fear and rage as the scientists stabbed him with a needle again. He swore they were enjoying tormenting him.
Once or twice he had sensed other animals in the facility, but their presence was weak, and he could tell they were dying. Determined not to meet the same fate, the tiger-wolf fought against the sleepy feeling that was trying to over come him and tried in vain to fire bend again. But he was too weak, and the scientists had his arms and legs chained to a wall, so he couldn't fight back. And they never seemed to get close enough for him to bite them, though he didn't know exactly where they were because his fire bending was too weak to even send out the small, undetectable heat waves that he used to be able to 'see' the world around him.
With one last stab with another needle, the scientists stopped their testing and unchained his arms and legs, making him slump to the ground. The tiger-wolf could feel that his front paws were different, the toes had elongated, and that he had grown another one on the inner part of his paw. They were trying to make him more human, giving him opposable thumbs was nothing compared to what they could do.
A low, weak growl escaped his throat as he glared at where he thought the scientists would be and he heard them chuckle darkly at him.
"Well, now that you have the ability to speak, why don't you tell us your name?" one of them sneered. The tiger-wolf snarled and tried to stand so he could attack them, but his legs felt like jelly, so he huffed and slumped back down, his lips pulled back in a defiant snarl. One of the men kicked him in the ribs, making him cough as air was forced from his lungs. "Name." he demanded.
"... Ren..." he growled in a low, extremely throaty voice. Even he could barely understand it.
"Hmm... seems like your vocal chords need some more testing to make you coherent, but you should be ready for the Fire Lord within a week." another one said. Ren could tell that he was one of the ones that didn't much care for the testing that all the animals in the facility were going through, but that didn't change the amount of malice that he harbored for Fire Nation residents, innocent or not.
"The Fire Lord... can kiss my furry behind..." he snarled, a bit louder this time. The scientist that kicked him before kicked him again, but harder. Ren toppled over onto his side, but struggled to sit back up almost immediately. They dragged him roughly out of the room and back to the cell that had become his 'home' in the past months and flung him harshly inside.
"Maybe no food for two days will teach you to respect our nation's leader." Ren just growled in response, his blind eyes narrowed in hate as they walked away, leaving him to fall slowly into a state of unconsciousness.
-Two Years Later-
"Come on you no good wolf! Let's go!" yelled a young man. He was dressed in Fire Nation armor, his long dark brown; near black; hair pulled back in a high pony tail, and a hideous burn over his left eye.
"Keep your panties on princy boy, I'm coming." snarled Ren as he plodded up the ramp leading onto the other's ship. "Just cause you have a twist in your toga from being banished; even after three years; doesn't mean you have to take it out on me." The wolf smirked as he got the image of smoke coming out of Zuko's ears in his mind at his taunts.
"Why you dirty-"
"Prince Zuko. Do not take out your anger on this poor tiger-wolf. Save it for more efficient things, such as training." Iroh, Zuko's kind uncle, whom had come with him when he had been banished, cut in. "Now come and have a cup of tea. It is delicious, and it is also the perfect time of day for it."
"Thanks for the support Iroh. And for the tea." Ren said, grinning in his general direction. Iroh chuckled good naturedly and offered a cup to the tiger-wolf, who took it gingerly with one paw. Sometimes, he was glad he had been a guinea pig in the testing facility two years ago, but he still had nightmares of the great pain he had been in to this day.
"I don't want tea. I want to capture the Avatar." Zuko growled, swatting the tea that had been offered to him away.
"Avatar, Avatar, Avatar." Ren muttered to himself, sitting down. "That's all you ever talk about. Don't you ever have anything else on your mind?"
"No! Why would I?"
"Oh I dunno, maybe cause you're a boring stick in the mud with anger issues?" the tiger-wolf said, waving his now empty cup dismissively. Zuko growled at him and Ren could feel the heat waves radiating off him, giving him a high definition image of the prince wallowing in his anger. And self-pity. He thought with an inward snort. Turning to Iroh, he blinked and said; "How long did you say it would take to get to the North Pole?"
"Two weeks my furry friend. Two long weeks." replied the fat man.
"Lovely." he growled in response. The idea of being adrift at sea with an obsessive-compulsive; in his mind that is; prince for any amount of time didn't bode well with him, even though he had been with the motley crew for six months now.
"Well, look at the bright side-"
"What bright side?" Ren cut in abruptly, glaring at Zuko with his blind eyes as the prince continued to melt a hole in the ship's deck.
Iroh cleared his throat and continued. "There's plenty of time to drink tea and tell embarrassing stories about my nephew over there." Ren couldn't help but grin at that, for he had been told stories about Zuko's childhood before, and found them quite amusing.
"Hey princy boy, the ship is gonna give out from under ya if you don't cool it." he said with a smirk, his eyes closed as he held another cup of tea. Taking a sip, he put the cup down on the table that had the pot on it and stared at him, the image of him glaring darkly at him implanted in his mind as the heat waves he sent out to be able to determined his surrounding picked up the prince's expression.
Zuko stomped away muttering curses under his breath, most of which were directed at Ren, and going up into his room to vent in private. The two left on the deck waited until they heard the door slam from the inner most reaches of the ship before they burst out laughing, Iroh slapping his knee and Ren rolling on his back clutching his sides.
-Two Weeks Later-
"Finally! Its about time we got to this giant ice box." Ren yowled in exasperation. He could feel that the temperature had changed drastically since he went to sleep the previous night. Iroh yawned beside him, rubbing the sleep out of his eyes while Zuko paced impatiently at the very front of the ship's deck. The tiger-wolf's ears pricked in surprise as he heard something. "Flare at 3 o'clock, 300 feet up." he said calmly to the prince.
Zuko looked up and his eyes narrowed in pleasure. "Well well, seems as though the Avatar is alive after all." he muttered with a smirk. He yelled something to the man who was steering the ship to head for the flare and grinned evilly as he watched the flare slowly slink downwards.
Sighing, Ren sat by the rail and stared down at the water sightlessly, hoping for the sake of humanity that the flare was just a flare, and not the Avatar. He may hate the Fire Nation as a whole, but, in the past two years, he had come to realize that the individuals didn't deserve to be hated, they were just following their leader like any loyal citizen would. But he also knew that the Fire Nation as a whole was not to be trusted, and had learned that himself.
He had made the mistake of trusting a Fire Nation solider and following it into a camp before his intelligence had been boosted and he had become part human. That had lead to him being taken to the testing facility and changed forever. Never again. He snarled inwardly. He had learned not to trust the Fire Nation very quickly, even though he was technically Fire Nation himself, for he had been born, had grown up in, and had a family in the Fire Nation. And he was a fire bender as well.
After about an hour, they pulled up to a Water Tribe Village and went ashore, destroying one of the walls in the process. Ren stood beside Zuko and tried to get a feed on the power levels of those in the village. None of them seemed to bee all that powerful, but one of them seemed to have the ability to bend. He could also sense a powerful force behind them, and hid a smirk as he figured that it was in fact the Avatar.
Zuko meanwhile glance around them and scowled. "Well? Where is he?" when he received no reply, he grabbed an old lady and yanked her harshly from the crowd. "Tell me where he is and I won't kill the old woman." Ren growled as he felt fear radiate from every person before him and jumped backwards just as a blast of air knocked Zuko off his feet and onto his neck, his helmet landing on his butt. Snickering and turning his attention to the boy whom had landed gracefully in front of them all he was surprised to sense that his child had the power that he had sensed before.
"Looking for me?" the boy demanded.
"Aang!" gasped a young girl from the crowd. Zuko growled and stood up, brushing snow off of him, and glaring at the boy.
"You're the Avatar? You're just a kid!" he snapped. Aang didn't reply, and Zuko's scowl deepened. His amber gaze snapped to Ren, who was standing to the side. "Ren, capture him." he ordered.
"Who me?" Ren said surprised. "Naw, I could never hurt a kid. You're on your own princy boy." several villagers gasped at him and the tiger-wolf smirked, sitting himself down in the snow. Zuko glared at him and and attacked the Avatar. While he was preoccupied, Ren started to herd the villagers back, out of range of any stray fire blasts. A couple of them refused to be pushed back, but quickly changed their mind when some stray embers burned their flesh.
Behind him, Aang stopped fighting abruptly and put his hands up in surrender, saying something that Ren couldn't make out over the protests from the same young girl from before. He sensed that the Avatar was being taken to the ship and went to follow them, but a blast of fire stopped him. He glared at Zuko, who glared right back.
"Oh no you don't you traitor. You get to stay here." he said sourly. Ren was about to protest, but thought differently and sat down with a huff.
"Hey, I never wanted to be saddled with you in the first place, so you're doing me a favor." Ren snarled back, embers being spat from his mouth as his temper rose. Zuko walked away, back onto the ship, ordering the helmsmen to pull out. Sighing, Ren turned his sightless gaze to the villagers. He could sense that they were traumatized, and stared sightlessly at the snow by his paws.
A chunk of snow smacked him in the side of the head and his head snapped to a young boy who was armed with a boomerang to throw next. "Get lost you mutt." the boy snapped. "You're not welcome here."
"Ah, but I know where princy is gonna take your precious Avatar." Ren replied, shaking the snow from his head. "Besides, I'm not your enemy. I want to help you. If I didn't I would have followed Zuko's orders and attacked the boy." he shrugged and stood up. "But, if you don't want my help, if you want the Avatar to become a stuffed head on the Fire Lord's mantle, hey, who am I to tell you otherwise." as he started to walk away, he stopped and turned around partly. "Oh, and if you want to catch up to them, I suggest you get something faster than a row boat." he stared pointedly at the boy and the young girl who had called the Avatar 'Aang' before turning back around and padding away slowly, jumping gracefully over the wreckage that was the walls of the village and disappearing from sight.
Okie dokie! There's chapter 1! I hope you like it. And if you want to see exactly what Ren looks like, go to my deviantart page, .com, and check out my gallery. Review!!