Chapter 2 - Childhood

When Tai Lung first regained consciousness and realized what exactly was happening, all he could say was one thing—being a baby was perplexing.

To begin with, babies are functionally blind.

Their brains are still figuring out which nerves govern which movements—their muscles are so feeble that they can only turn their heads—it had taken Tai Lung days, no—perhaps even weeks for his to realize exactly what was happening.

And it had taken even more weeks to have any sort of controlled motion or see more than blotches of colours, months to build the muscles necessary to crawl and move.

The first thing he could clearly see were the servants, dressed in immaculate crimson robes made only from the finest silk, he'd never seen anything like that. The walls of his room screamed royalty—they were a dark red with intricate details pained with an even darker shade of red—and the handles of the doors seemed to be made out of solid gold.

Even his crib—which was the size of a normal twin-sized bed—was beautifully hand craved from the finest redwood with a dragon soaring through the sky and shooting flames right out of its mouth, painted on the side of the crib. The blankets were so smooth, they seemed to run through his puggy fingers like water—he never touched anything so soft—it almost frightened him.

The first sound he heard was his name—at least what he determined to be his name, "Prince Tai Lung." Which validated his initial assumption that he was born into Royalty.

Tai Lung, as his new name suggested, meant "Great Dragon," so he naturally assumed to have been reborn in an ancient Chinese Dinasty or something in the likes.

'In the likes' was one way of saying "reborn in the Royal Family of the Fire Nation," as Tai lung later found out. And not just as any member of the Royal Family but as the second son of Iroh, the Crown Prince. Yes, the Royal Family in Avatar the Last Airbender.

His first endeavour in this new life was to learn the language—not that it was necessary. Since surprisingly, everyone here spoke English—at least everything he heard and understood was in English, though the letters and written aspect of the language was different. Maybe whatever sent him here gave him the ability to comprehend the spoken language.

His second endeavor in this world was focusing on his mind. A developing brain is a very bizarre and interesting subject. Depending on how you focus your time and effort, combined with natural inclination, neuroplasticity leads to the formation of specialized thought capacity.

Having young children do calculations for example, will make them more likely to be good at it later on in life. So, Tai Lung did what anybody should do in his shoes or in this case—diaper, and worked on what little he remembered from his previous education.

He still retained the memories of his previous life but he felt strangely disconnected from them, as if it was a vivid dream or almost as if he was watching a play of his own life, even in the Final Act- his death, he felt no pain or sadness. The faces and names of family and friends were gone, all that was left was an emotionless puppet show.

His new life as Tai Lung though, was extremely pleasant to say the least, the maids took great care of him.

One day, as Tai Lung laid in his crib, he reached out to that familiar yet foreign energy coursing through his body—Chi as they called it here if he wasn't mistaken. He'd heard of the Phyician saying something about him having a surreal amount of it. This energy, to him, felt like a steady river flowing through passageways in his body and its source seemed to reside in his stomach—but there were passageways in his tiny body that still felt inaccessible.

He heard to sound of heavy footsteps approaching him from the outside of his room. He identified the sound of the door opening and from the corner of his eyes, he spied the silhouette of a man approaching while two others bowed—probably guards or servants. When the figure came close to Tai lung, he was finally able to identify him.

Iroh, Crown Prince of the Fire Nation and his father. He didn't look anything like in the TV show, no, here he was slimer and more muscular he had short dark brown hair and a small beard that complimented his sideburns. He still was the Dragon of the West. Though, he had bags under his eyes and seemed to have suffered a lack of sleep, again.

It wasn't surprising, Tai Lung through snippets of conversation of the gossiping maids and servants, managed to identify why. His wife died at childbirth, at Tai Lung's birth. A bang of guilt hit Tai Lung, of course, Iroh didn't blame his own son as the reason of the death of his wife, he just didn't know what to do without her.

Tai Lung's tiny hands subconsciously moved towards him, almost as if he wanted to comfort the most favored character of the show. A smiled blossomed on his father's face as he picked Tai Lung up.

"Hello, little one." He whispered gently. "Let's go and see what's your older brother up to."

As Iroh picked him up, Tai Lung giggled while clenching Iroh's little finger that was three times the size of his.

Damn this baby body.

---

A year later, another Royal was born, Prince Zuko, firstborn son of Prince Ozai and Lady Ursa.

Lady Ursa and Lady Illah had grown very close to each other when they first arrived at the Royal Palace and had planned to have Tai Lung grow up alongside Zuko.

Unfortunately, Lady Illah passed to soon to see it happen.

With permission from the Royal Family, Ursa took responsibility of raising Tai Lung as she thought she at least owed it to Illah who would have undoubtedly done the same if she was in her place.

Iroh was an important Military General in the war against the Earth Kingdom and was often needed away from the Capital with little time for family—and the young Prince Lu Ten was attending the Royal Academy and only came back to the Palace during the Solstice breaks—so other than the caretakers, no one was there to spend time with Tai Lung.

Tai lung quickly took a liking to Ursa and had no problem seeing her as a mother figure—Zuko, on the other hand, was more difficult to live with, mainly because he was a baby.

And as Tai Lung grew up, he kept on surprising everyone around him.

From an early age Tai Lung showed to be far more intelligent than any other child his age, talking and walking earlier than most.

He learnt to read and write much, much earlier than most and when he was not learning from Ursa or the tutors his father had hired, he could often be found in one of two places. Either at the library pouring over books that would have even some of the highest noblemen stumped or in the training yard observing master firebenders practicing their katas.

It was on his fourth birthday that he was able to feel every node and pathway of Chi connect—it felt like it just snapped into place and with a simple push, the energy flowed through his body and he forced that energy out of a single point of focus at the end of his palm, painting a bright arc of amber flames.

To say that Tai Lung was ecstatic was an understatement. Every day since then he spent countless hours practicing, meditating everything related to firebending—he did it.

It was one of the first time in Fire Nation history that someone had been able to firebend at such a young age, and if he wasn't a Prince, most would believe it to be lies.

His father was most especially proud, he gloated over his son's talent to anyone who'd listen over a nice cup of jasmine tea. His older brother Lu Ten who was thirteen at the time surprisingly didn't seem to mind the attention, normally, most kids his age would have been jealous over the attention Tai Lung got, but not him, well he did end up first of his year at the Royal Academy—every year actually but still. He was supportive even, helping him with training whenever his father couldn't teach him.

Up until his tenth birthday, Tai Lung spent his days learning and playing around—already he had a habit of going out for walks without supervision and would feed the turtle-ducks at the Palace's Pond in the Royal Gardens.

After his tenth birthday, Tai lung was enrolled at the Royal Academy for boys.