The Masks You Wear
By
DragonLady of Avalon

Amanarath Re slowly let his eyes flutter shut, dozing in the back of the truck that he and his two traveling companions had hitched a ride on. It had been two weeks since they left Avalon for home, but every time they found a wormhole, something went wrong on the trip, sending them farther away from their world rather than closer.

It was Wren's fault. Tall, thin Wren, their world's first Deathraptor and the biological son of the man who ruined it, transforming most of the populace into monstrosities to use in his armies and personal guard until the great Anton Gibbons had the world in the palm of his hand.

Am chuckled to himself. Those must have been good times, some eight years prior. Amanarath was a third generation GenoSoldier, a direct project of Gibbons'. His great-grandparents had been white Bengals and snow tigers, animals that made officers and generals in Gibbons' private army, a fact that Am remained proud of, even when Gibbons' successor raised him, along with his traveling companions, Eden and Wren, from the time they were six years old.

Of course, Wren was fifty years older than Am, and Eden six years older than Wren.

The joys of cryogenics.

Amanarath was almost asleep when he felt someone poke his muscular arm. The snow tiger snorted, growled, and then opened his eyes to a world of purple. He growled again.

It was Wren, his purple-furred face and giant bright blue eyes thrust into Am's field of vision, apparently trying to wake him up.

"We're about to miss our stop!" Wren warned through teeth that looked like they came out of a shark and a tongue that was exactly like a snake's. Though Wren's voice was natural, the sounds and syllables were formed from a battery-operated translator he wore around his neck on a chain.

Am grunted and backhanded Wren "gently". Wren dodged half the blow, and besides which, Deathraptors don't feel pain, not that Am, at six hundred pounds and six and a half feet, cared much about watching his own strength, particularly at his long-time rival.

The snow tiger then stretched and stood, shaking his head and tossing his mane dramatically.

"We near where Sorsha said to look for the portal?" he asked.

"So Tyger says," Eden, the only female Ultima Dragon they had ever encountered, lounging in the opposite corner.

The trio stood up and faced the metal door, awaiting Am to open it, which he did, anchoring his claws underneath it and sliding it open. The ground rumbled underneath the truck at sixty miles an hour, coated in sand and pebbles and not paved.

"We just jump? While it's moving?" Am asked.

Wren snorted, "Why does that scare you?"

Am snarled back.

"I see it!" Eden XIV cried out, pointing to where a spot in the air started to shimmer silver, a spot which seemed to be following the trio.

The three counted until the silver became a full-fledged hole in space, hanging in midair yet following the trick, sucking in small bits and pieces of dirt and debris that flew up into the unmistakable breeze that came with the wormhole.

Wren was the first to take the running leap of faith, vanishing before he hit the ground. Eden took a breath and followed closely behind, leaving Am to follow last.

Six hundred pounds of male Bengal snow tiger went flying into the air, headed toward the wormhole. On instinct, Am blinked his ice blue eyes and for a second thought the portal had closed.

For an instant, his heart leapt into his throat at the thought of being left behind on a foreign world, without Eden, his link to Avalon and therefore his only method for tracking the wormholes.

But when he opened his eyes, the portal was there, and he flew through it, just like the other two.

Am found himself sprawled in the middle of an alley at night. He was disorientated at the sudden time change and growling darkly at the thought of the jetlag he was going to have for the next few weeks.

Her purred to himself and stood up, sniffing the air to see if it smelled like home.

Nope, the air was too clean and there didn't seem to be any other GenoSoldiers or Deathraptors nearby. The creatures that did inhabit these areas were definitely not human, elven, or draconic.

Am snarled again and stood up, hissing loudly, "Looks like you did again, Wr-!"

Ever seen a dog circle its bed before going to sleep? Imagine a six- and-a-half-foot-tall anthropomorphic snow tiger doing the same thing.

Am cussed. He was stranded. Somehow that stupid Deathraptor managed to screw up the wormhole again, dumping him out in the middle of nowhere without either Wren or Eden.

Everything that Deathraptor did caused the GenoSoldier trouble. It was Wren who had the eye of feline Eden, Wren who led their motorcycle pack back home, even though Am was easily the strongest of the two. It was Wren who kept getting them lost in the wormholes.

Wren.

Wren.

Wren.

How the heck such a screw-up managed to be so popular with the queens and so admired by the toms was beyond Am. It wasn't as if Wren ever did anything truly great. His claim to fame was that he was the first Deathraptor made by being stung by another Deathraptor, having been sired by Selena Algameth, one of Gibbons' old test subjects from fifty years ago.

Amanarath shut his eyes and decided to let his natural instincts take over, since he lacked in any other direction.

Food.

Water.

Shelter.

The three ingredients for successful habitation. These are what Am needed to find and as soon as possible. Am didn't necessarily have to eat every day, but since he didn't know when his next meal would be, making sure food was actually available would be a nice idea.

Am lifted his pink nose to the air and sniffed. He wasn't quite sure what for, since he had no idea what flora or fauna existed on this world, but it was better than nothing.

He looked for comforting, food smells. Lazy scents, like when cows are milling bout in the sunshine during spring, chewing contentedly on grass.

Am licked his lips. Put a pretty queen in that pasture, perhaps even Eden, and his day was made in the shade.

Am found only the scents of flowers, all around. The entire city smelled like one big garden. In fact, when Am looked up, he saw huge trees the likes of which he had never seen. The buildings, outlined against the night sky, seemed to be tall cylinders with disks built on top, linked by bridges and walkways.

The color and texture, that Am couldn't tell at night, but he could see well enough the depth and height.

He sighed, cussed again, and decided that he just had to get out of the alley, covered in garbage cans, even if the trash was picked up a lot better than back home.

He pulled his leather jacket closer too him and stepped forward, walking silently, brushing a few strands of snow-white hair out of his eyes.

Am was deep in thought, about how to get back home or back to Avalon, about how long he could stay here if there wasn't any meat to sate his carnivorous needs, and whether or not Eden missed him and if she was making sure Wren felt guilty for screwing the wormhole up again.

Yeah, that sounded like Eden.

"YOU IMBECILE! WHY CAN'T WE EVER MAKE IT THROUGH ONE WORMHOLE WITH YOU??"

Amanarath laughed at the image. Eden is the voice of reason in their little group, Am and Wren always doing some stupid stunt or another to see who was alpha.

If Am had been paying attention, he might have felt the air suddenly warm up, the sure sign of approaching bodies. He might have heard the thudding footsteps, beating wings, and angry voices.

But he wasn't, so he didn't.

Am crashed right into the stick-like figure that happened to be running by at the time, sending the person to the floor with a loud grunt.

Six hundred pounds of Bengal snow tiger will do that to you.

Am himself hit the floor, too surprised to catch his balance.

You would think that someone who had been born on a world where 65% of the population were descended from genetic experiments and being a third generation experiment himself, he wouldn't have been surprised or stunned by what he saw.

But there's a reason that Wren calls him a six hundred pound jackass.

The figure that Am had knocked down was built like Wren, tall, lean, and wiry. It wore a tight-fitting, long-sleeved red cloak that covered most of his body, flaring open at the waist to show bright red long pants and red leather boots, which matched gloves on the creature's skeletal hands. It also wore a steeple hat, similar to what one might find in a Halloween store or on a scarecrow.

And that was what Am instantly named the creature: Scarecrow.

He had seen them a lot, in the outskirts of town where food was grown. Not often did they look like Elves, and they certainly never looked like GenoSoldiers.

But they were exactly what this creature looked like, tall, thin, with bits of straw hanging out of its gloves and boots. Its mane (or hair, as an Elf, human, or Dragon would call it) was the color of straw, but soft and silky underneath what looked like years of dirt and grime.

And it was face down at Am's pawpads, unconscious or stunned.

Am stared at it, sniffing it slightly at a wary distance.

The creature moved, then pushed its upper body upward, groaning and rubbing its head. Am hissed, drawing its attention to him. The creature respond with first a look of fright, then aggression.

Am couldn't quite see its expression, though. He couldn't even tell if it was tom or queen. It wore a light red scarf that had to be twice the thing's height, wrapped around the lower part of its face from about the nose down, with either end falling down beside the thingy's arms.

It hissed right back at Amanarath, then jumped to its feet, crouching low in a feral position.

With a whoosh, two red and liquid-gold feathered wings appeared from the scarecrow's back.

Where the heck did those come from? Am briefly wondered.

The creature flapped its wings once, twice, and then vanished to the roof of a building, pausing to turn and stare at Am with piercing green eyes that looked oddly familiar, yet Am was sure he had never seen.

Scarecrow and tiger kept their eyes on each other, both apparently trying to stare the other down. Am never heard the footsteps behind him. He never heard the arm that through the projectile or smelled the body that it belonged to.

All he knew was one minute he was staring at a living scarecrow, then he was flat on his back, staring at a girl.

She had the most remarkable blue eyes. At a distance, they might have looked like compound eyes, the ball and iris being deep, bright blue and the pupil being slitted and the color of robin's eggs. Her skin was gray and in the moonlight, seemed to have a metallic shine to it. Two long antennae, the left one shorter, slightly thicker, and bent as if it had once been broken, dripped down the sides of her face, fuzzy and making the air around them go out of focus in an impossible manner. Beyond them were two long, pointed ears, extending far away from the head like a Deathraptor's, but metallic gray instead of jewel purple.

The girl wore a facial veil that covered the same part of the face that the scarecrow's scarf hid, from about the nose down. She reached a delicate, slender hand to it and began to pull the cloth away.

Then---

A/N: Amanarath Re is a very, very old OC. He's the oldest fully-formed OC that I can still give a name to, being the leading male from one of my very first plotbunnies. Unfortunately, I abandoned that story in favor of Tiger, but last week or so, maybe before, I decided to give Am a new home, since other parts of his story made it into the written world (namely, the Moonchildren, who were first identified in Am's story).

It's kinda funny, though. My leading ladies get personalities like vipers and its attractive on them (until I run it into the ground). But I give that same sort of personality to Am and he becomes a jackass. Go figure.

I hope you guys like him, he's a pretty cool character from how I've planned him out.

This story takes place after one of Scorpion's sequels, but I think it stands well enough on its own since Am's the lead male, not Wren.

Three guesses who (or what) the thing Am bumped into was. The first two don't count.