Goretober Day 25: Branch
Jack is a reasonable teenager.
He plays games but doesn't talk to creeps, he breaks a few rules but doesn't break the law, and he even holds himself accountable when he's caught doing something wrong.
Yet, he's still a teenager, a kid even, so he has the right to complain.
“God, how long have we been here?” He throws his head back and groans loudly, leaning his entire body onto his mentor.
“I told you it was going to take long,” replies his mentor, Unknown, fixing his glasses to look upon the paperwork he held in his hands. “Besides, it's only been an hour, 28 minutes, and 47 seconds. Jack, honestly, you and I have been through worse! Remember the trenches?”
Jack groans again, feeling as if gravity is pushing him down toward the ground, causing his knees to buckle and his frame to lean forward.
“At least I had a place to sit down there, this place doesn't have anything.”
Unknown turns to look down at his student, his skeletal head of an ox sported thin pinpricks of white within his eye sockets. His tall form engulfed Jack like a tower was to a building, and his choice of clothing that being of a dark red suit with black undertones differed from Jack’s black jacket and sweats. No one would speculate the two would bother with each other, especially within this department, but they worked through their differences.
Those differences are being stuck in a line within a DPS (technically DUS as it was for a universal standpoint but it was still a DPS in Jack’s eyes) made specifically for universal transactions.
Now, Jack wouldn't have an issue with this, he's been through places like these before whether it be on his planet, another planet, or even another galaxy. But the issue was that this line was so far and long that he couldn't even see the end of it or even the start. He would look around to see other lines of creatures in the same predicament that he was in.
Various conversations using languages that he either couldn't understand or couldn't displace which was which of those he studied.
Everything was happening all at once and that upset Jack to the point where he couldn't stand still and walked back and forth with what space he had. His phone had died and his only source of sanity, his music playlist was gone so he depended on his mentor to keep himself together. Which, to Unknown’s credit, he did by giving Jack some snacks to calm him down.
It wasn't like Jack would turn down the opportunity to eat some Space Rocks, the Galactic candy popping in his mouth as he ate them.
He liked them, they were good.
“I still can't believe this is the only place you picked for my license. You’d think there’d be other DPS that could take in someone like me, right?”
Unknown shook his head, checking once more if the paperwork were all in order.
“Yes, but the others don't offer services to humans. I've checked, and they’ll practically eat you alive if you ever choose to step into them.”
Jack shivered at the thought, continuing to eat his sparkling candy as he did so to calm his nerves. The creatures ahead of them moved two steps prompting both Jack and Unknown to move two steps. And then they were stuck, once again, in the line, awaiting a chance to get a universal license for a human teenage boy.
Oh, how lucky they were.
Jack sniffed, scratching his cheek as he distracted himself by looking over the creatures that stood all around him. Shockingly, the Hollywood depiction of aliens wasn't exactly true as many of their forms lacked the proper comprehension for Jack to describe. Unknown had said that many alien species looked different in the human eye simply because their minds couldn't understand it.
At one point, the human mind could make up the details itself, but at the other, it could make something entirely different than what the alien truly looked like.
Jack had given up making sense of it but he liked to try to see if he could make out the forms for himself.
He saw a creature with boils all over, pus leaking from the wounds at even the slightest movement. Another creature had various heads twisted like coils, eyes, and mouths moving all around as if they talked to one another. And one more had a body so tall and wide that it nearly took up the entire department.
Jack would laugh but he was being watched, so he kept his thoughts to himself.
However, there was one specific alien that caught Jack’s eye.
It seemed human, at first, its form resembled one. A human man dressed in a trenchcoat and top hat, stumbling as if he was drunk, having a limp as he dragged himself forward. He had ignored the complaints and curses of others who had seen him cut the lines. The security had floated down from the ceiling, like they were leaves to the wind, and tried to calmly assess the situation.
They talked in their native language yet the figure didn't respond, causing the officers to ask various other languages they could think of.
But, once again, the figure had not responded.
The commotion seemingly took the interest of other aliens, their various ‘eyes’ looking over their shoulders to see what was going on. While others ignored it simply because they didn't want to gain a migraine from others' misfortunes. Jack turned over to tell Unknown about the altercation, smiling while at it, until he saw his face.
He was silent.
Usually, it would be difficult to see how Unknown would be reacting to the situation due to the lack of facial structure built into their skull. It would take just the turn of his head to overshadow his eyes to sense something was wrong. And something was wrong, Jack could tell, when the shadows played over Unknown’s eyes and his dark look shook Jack to his core.
“Jack,” he whispered, as he placed a hand on his shoulder and gave a small squeeze, “Jack, stay behind me.”
Immediately, Jack stood behind his mentor, practically using him as a shield as he peeked behind his back to see what was wrong.
By all means, the man had looked completely normal, maybe drunk. He made a move to go forward before he was stopped, the guards having enough of his ‘silent treatment’ figured that he could be thrown out for causing a scene. But the figure started to shiver as if he was cold, suddenly clutching his chest as he started to heave, and his skin (although pale) revealed black veins that grew like the roots of a tree.
Jack recognized the pattern and before he could properly react, the man had burst.
Tree-like limbs ruptured through his chest and struck the guards before him. Branches sprouted out of the pores of the man’s face, piercing those close to the vicinity. Bark split open his back, like armor, stretching the man taller to the point he had hit the ceiling from above. His limbs split themselves apart into various branches, all sticking the creatures below without hesitation, various species screaming out inhuman shrieks as they were struck.
Jack watched helplessly as he was shoved back, the aliens in line struggling to get away from the chaos as they tried to get to safety.
He was nearly trampled before strong arms wrapped around his chest and the air was ducked out of his lungs. Suddenly, he was up in the air, his legs dangling as Unknown jumped from one open space to the next, avoiding the branches and their deadly roots. Once far enough, Unknown put Jack down, focusing his attention on the creature as he made sure that Jack was at a safe distance.
“What is that?!” Jack asked, watching as the guards were being struck and burst open by the various branches.
“Arbor Morbus,” Unknown answered, then focusing his energy to generate as much heat as he could within his gloved hands. “It’s a disease that takes on the aspects of a tree, both internally and externally, it plants itself into the host and grows from within like a parasite.”
He snapped his fingers and fire burst from his hand yet did no damage at all to his clothes or even his onyx skin.
“The only cure is to burn it as soon as possible, surgery only makes the parasite latch on further for survival.”
Jack stepped back as the tree-like creature screeched and twisted itself, growing appendages that grew to latch onto any new life form it drained its essence from. He noticed the man affected by the disease seemed powerless to stop it, his words obscured by the branches that continued to grow from his throat. He was in obvious pain, there was no way he willingly let himself get affected if it caused him that much pain.
Unless he was persuaded to do so…
“Who could have sent him then?!”
Unknown only mentioned one individual as he ran off to fight, hands burning with the embers of Hell itself.
“Defectum.”