Rebellion

(started 8/6/07 – finished 9/18/07) 

Summary: During “Balto II: Wolf Quest”, Jenna was told not to go find Aleu by both Balto and his guardian, Boris, but what if the young mother felt that she had a strong enough reason to disobey her mate’s orders . . . something that dates all the way back into her own past? This is the story that answers the most-asked question that fans have complained about since the beginning! (One-Shot Fic)

Rating: G for General Audiences. There’s nothing bad here. 

Disclaimer:Balto, Balto II: Wolf Quest, and all other characters and events that took place within the Balto films are the property of Universal Studios Inc. and Universal Cartoon Studios. The lines of dialogue in the beginning of the story are directly from the “Wolf Quest” script; the thoughts and the basic idea of this fic are completely fictional and is the work of Juuchan17.

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Author’s Note (before):

Good lordy, I am sick and tired of people wishing that Jenna played a larger role in “Wolf Quest”! (I know that there are others out there that will agree with me, right?) 

Anyway, in complete sanity, I thought up the idea to write this quick, little one-shot fic, which gives a different answer to this question: What if Jenna secretly followed Balto into the wilderness when he went to find Aleu?

[RANT] God, I seriously wish people would stop asking that question. Please. It’s really, very annoying. You gotta think about it for a second: Jenna’s character is pretty minor altogether if you think about it. In the first film, she was mainly cast as the “hero’s love interest”, the female that still had hope for a happy ending; of course, Rosy, her owner, got better, and she . . . well, she got hooked up with the half-breed hero. The sequel should have given our favorite purebred husky some more action and adventure, but instead, she just became another devoted mother . . . not allowed to join her lover on the search for their upset daughter (Hmm, the movie is called “Wolf Quest” for a reason . . .). Many fans have flooded WQ topics, saying that if they could remake or change the film they would have Jenna remain as that adventurous spirit that risked her life to save Balto’s in the first film (or at least have her be in the film more than just as a new mother, a worried lover, and a minor player with only hope in her heart that her mate and daughter would come home safely). 

As many different opinions that we may have for Jenna’s role in the first Balto sequel, there really is nothing that we can do about it. Besides, it’s kind of impossible to actually change the film anyway – it’s been made over five years ago. It’s too late to change it, so you gotta deal with it.

IT IS OVER. [end-RANT] 

Okay, now that my rant is over, you can get to the story. Let me remind you that this is only a “what if” story . . . it is not true and don’t get pissed if you don’t like how I did it. You can write your own version of it; it is called a fan-fiction for a reason, duh. It was just a random thought to try and spice up the idea, that’s all.

I apologize for my somewhat annoyed tone, but that’s how I feel with the premise of this fic: VERY annoyed. ^__^ 

But don’t worry: I’ll have a post-story explanation for why I wrote the story this way, just so no one is confused in the end, okay? Enjoy!

- Juuchan17 

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She awoke with a light moan inside her mistress’s house to the sound of her hybrid mate’s voice calling her concernedly. 

“Jenna . . .”

Her burgundy and ivory head quickly turned towards the window where a grizzly-looking male dog stood by the wooden windowpane, gazing worriedly from the outside. It was a few moments after the start of the morning sunrise and the young husky could easily sense that something wasn’t right, so the female approached the window carefully speaking with a normal tone. 

“Balto, what are you doing here so early?” Jenna yawned slightly. She gazed at her mate’s face, noticing a defeated look in his eyes. Her next words were spoken in a worried mother’s tone. “Is Aleu all right?”

The wolf-dog closed his eyes, shaking his head slowly. “I don’t know. I was hoping she was with you.” Balto was smart: he knew that if his yearling daughter wasn’t with him, she always went straight to her mother’s house to spend some time with her. “She’s . . .” His gray-brown head turned to the side in shame. “She’s kind of mad at me.” 

Feeling the seriousness of her mate’s concern, the she-husky knew they had to talk in a more comfortable location for him. “Stay there,” Jenna told him, quickly fleeing the safety of her owner’s room and through the back door of the house. Once her dainty paws met with the snowy dirt ground, she turned her head up to Balto, who still stood on the roof. “Now, tell me what happened.”

Carefully and surely, the nimble wolf-dog made his way down to the ground, using some nearby wooden storage boxes to descend back onto the earth. Once he finally looked his mate eye-to-eye, he took a deep breath before announcing the news, knowing very well that he had to brace himself for his mate’s sudden reaction. “A hunter took aim at her.” Jenna only gasped, much to the surprise of the patriarch. Quickly, he reassured her with his words. “No, don’t worry; we got away . . .,” Balto’s ears began to droop as his tone turned to regret as he stammered slightly. “but I-I finally had to tell her how humans see her.” 

The burgundy husky gasped again under her breath. “You mean, you told her about being part –”

“Yes,” Balto stopped her immediately; he didn’t want her to remind him of what he knew very well: the fact that their eldest daughter, Aleu, had wolf inside her blood and that, unlike her five other brothers and sisters, she looked more like her father’s wild ancestors than her mother’s tame relatives. “We should have done it sooner. I know that now.” The father blamed himself regretfully. His head was low as he continued to speak. “She’s so angry with me . . .” He sighed again, realizing that if Aleu hadn’t returned to his grounded boat of a home and that she wasn’t at her mother’s – “she must have run away.”

In shock, Jenna took a step back, repeating her mate’s final two words. “Run away?” Never had she had to hear such frightening words! She had only become a mother over a year ago, but she was surprised that one of her own would actually run away from home . . . well, Aleu actually never received a home; because no human had chosen her as a pup, she lived at both her mother’s and her father’s homes, switching from between them every so often. 

Balto approached his mate, placing his head over hers and gently stroking her with his nose in comfort. Aleu’s running away was equally as difficult for him to deal with, so he tried his hardest to console both of them. “I’m sorry, Jenna. I never thought it would turn out this way.” He closed his eyes in sorrow. “I thought I could keep her safe.”

At the sound of those words, Jenna jerked her head away from him in an angry mother’s outrage. “But she’s not safe now – she’s running wild!” Letting out a huff, she moved past him. “We’ve find to find her.” 

Quickly reacting, the hybrid halted her with his harsh yet careful words. “No, not you, Jenna.” Again lowering his head, he realized what he had to do to make things right within his world once more. “This is my fault, and it’s something Aleu and I have to work out together.” Jenna, defeated by the truth, lowered her head with a bothered look in her amber-hazel eyes. Balto reassured her with a gentle touch of his nose against her cheek and his words of a promise. “Don’t worry; I’ll find her.”

The hybrid had been gone for many hours once the purebred was visited by her mate’s guardian. He was a snow goose named Boris, one that had flown off-course from his relatives and migration formation a couple of years ago, landing in Nome; however, destiny began to guide him to the gray-brown hybrid pup, allowing him to take a personal oath to remain by his side until his honking days were over. Now, Boris was at the doorway of the side-house that was connected to Rosy’s house, awaiting a reaction from Jenna after telling him what had happened only some time ago. 

While the goose, accompanied by a set of polar bear brothers named Muk and Luk, wandered through the nearby woods trying their best to help Balto reunite with his daughter, they surprisingly discovered the blurry form of Balto lying against the edge of the nearby Nome River. As soon as the three friends leaped into the water to approach and greet their half-breed companion, a thick fog swirled around them, almost as if to prevent them from advancing any closer. Within a matter of seconds and after calling out Balto’s name, he answered back to them; by the time the fog had lifted, Balto had vanished deeper into the forest, and Boris realized that Balto had to make this one journey without them by their side.

“What do you mean he just ran off?” Jenna shouted enraged by the tale that the gander had told her. 

“I mean he’s got Aleu’s scent,” Boris explained to her the simplest way he could. “Told me to tell you not to worry, and away he went. He’s a wolf on a mission.” He closed his eyes and gave a little nod of approval.

Jenna, however, was not convinced by his confidence. “I’m going to help him look.” She began to march past the gander with hope in her heart; the husky had a feeling that if Boris and the bears couldn’t travel with him, at least his most-trusted friend – Balto’s one and only love – should be able to. 

With a gasp, her dream was shattered into tiny pieces.

“No, Jenna!” Boris blocked her from the doorway, forbidding her to move any