Mystic Roots
By: CrystallicSky
Disclaimer: I don't own Xiaolin Showdown or any of its characters, nor do I make any profit or attempt to with the writing of this or any of my other pieces.
Warnings: Language, homosexuality, some violence/gore later on, etc.
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Jack was both dizzy and a little winded from the speed at which he'd been flying for the past twenty minutes.
When he had woken up this morning and gone down to his lab for a leisurely day of inventing, the last thing he had expected (and wanted) was to be greeted with the unwelcome reminder of having muted his Wu-Alarm for whatever reason the day previous. With the poor genius's terrible luck, it was little surprise that the damn thing had been going off for an hour already over something only a few continents over.
And, so had come about Jack's current circumstances, in which he was flying as hard and as fast as he possibly could down to New Zealand in search of the location he had pinpointed for the mystical object.
An old hand at flying by now, the goth felt no fear as he glanced at the ground far below him. It was only when he was on land; firmly grounded that he feared heights. Here in the air, completely free of his usual brand of clumsiness and instead imbued with all the natural aerial grace of a bird, he was practically a god.
A sharp beep startled the 'god' out of his reverie and he offered a quick glance to his Wu-Alarm: he was very close, within several miles of the object. Jack allowed himself to drop in altitude a bit, bringing him closer to the ground and making it easier for him to see any potential signs of Wu-related activity as he meticulously traced the thing's signal.
It was particularly hard to miss a giant-formed Dojo taking a nap outside of a thickly forested mountain area, Jack mused. Where there was Dojo, there were undeniably going to be monks so he was on the right track, at least.
The genius couldn't help but wonder how much trouble the Xiaolin were having in obtaining the Wu if Dojo had not only opted to wait outside, but had fallen asleep doing so.
Jack deftly put it out of his mind and continued to track the Wu's signal over the dense forest, only pausing as he spotted a relatively small break in tree cover. From the looks of it, it was a primitive settlement, complete with huts and tribal garb and tattoos; the works.
The goth could say honestly he didn't give much of a fuck what kind of people currently had the Shen Gong Wu, only that it would soon be his.
Psyching himself up for a battle, he landed in the center of the village and allowed the blades of his helipack to retreat into the contraption itself. A few nearby people glanced over and stared oddly at him, but he paid them no mind: he had received similar looks all over the world, as people tend to give you odd looks when you come flying in out of seemingly nowhere.
Jack instead glanced hurriedly around for anything out of the ordinary and soon spotted the monks mere feet away, arguing with what looked to be a chieftain unsuccessfully over what looked a little like an erhu. He breathed a sigh of relief as he realized that he was literally just in time.
"Hey, Xiaolin losers," he barked, standing straight and refusing to let his voice betray whatever nervousness he felt, "don't even think about it! That Wu is mine!"
The goth couldn't help but feel a tiny bit self-conscious when every head turned and locked onto him. Of course, he'd wanted to be paid attention, but…
Well, he was kinda figuring only the people close to him would look over, not the whole damn village.
The monks scowled at him, clearly irritated with his presence and attempted claim upon the Shen Gong Wu. Omi's mouth opened, obviously intent on spewing forth some idiom horridly mangled beyond recognition.
He did not get a chance to speak it.
Quite suddenly, Jack was surrounded; not by monks, as he'd expected, but by the New Zealand natives. The lot of them rushed over in droves and formed a tight circle around the youth, peering almost frighteningly closely at him.
It was a very, very, very unmanly thing to do, but Jack couldn't much help it: he squeaked.
The goth was not at all used to people being so close to him, much less so interested, but interested these ones were without doubt. Their dark-skinned faces were easily read and bore not only curiosity, but wonder and confusion as they stared and muttered quietly in a foreign tongue amongst themselves. Jack vaguely heard the monks mumbling snide and somewhat bewildered comments from where they were, but he had bigger issues to deal with at the moment, namely the fact that he was surrounded by a bunch of primitive people gawking like fish at him and now beginning to gesture with obvious puzzlement at his face.
Jack swallowed hard, taking an instinctive step back. He might as well not have moved at all, as the step brought him no closer or further away from the natives who simply moved their circle with him. "Ummm…" he began quietly, "th…this is kind of an invasion of my personal space…"
It didn't even occur to the genius, as unnerved as he was, that these people likely spoke no Chinese and hadn't the slightest idea what he was saying. All he knew was that this was creepy.
The people reacted to the fact that he'd spoken, at the least, and attempted speaking to him. While Jack did not know the language they spoke, he knew it to be Maori, the shared name of the people and tongue of New Zealand natives. Unfortunately, this was one language that he had never put on his list of, 'To Learn' and so he was just as lost as they probably were listening to him.
The Maori chieftain, the one with whom the Xiaolin monks had been speaking, pushed his way through the crowd abruptly and stared hard at the pale youth before saying something, as well.
Jack blinked at the strange words and frowned, slowly shaking his head to indicate that he didn't understand.
The chief conceded to repeat the sequence of sounds and syllables, this time using hand gestures to aid the point he was trying to convey. The man's hands made motions to his face, where ink was carved into his flesh in thick, banded patterns that curved over his eyebrows and beneath his eyes as well as on his nose and around his mouth.
Jack looked around as he realized that the chief was not the only one with such markings. Indeed, most of the men bore similar tattoos upon their faces as well as their stomachs, bare thighs, and calves; of course, not all of them at once, and some men only had facial tattoos or only thigh tattoos, but it was clear that it was something common amongst the peoples. Even the women were marked with ink, but amongst the females, the tattoos appeared to be restricted to the lips and chin.
The goth was slow to realize the gist of the chieftain's words. The most he could figure was that the man was inquiring about those markings; perhaps why he didn't have them…?
Jack wasn't quite sure how to respond, but any response he could've given would've been cut off as the dark-skinned man reached out and touched his left cheek. The genius squeaked again and backed up, staring with wide eyes at the chieftain. Said man was gawking at his fingers in surprise, now smeared with black.
Oh, Jack realized, his eyeliner…he'd forgotten he was even wearing it! That was probably what they were confused about.
He was not at all prepared for what came with the revelation that it was mere makeup he was wearing and not tattoos like the Maori had.
The people crowding around him, particularly the women, gave an ear-piercing noise of glee and pounced on him, squealing the unfamiliar word, "Patupairehe!"
Jack yelped as he was tackled to the ground and groped at by a plethora of hands. He struggled to free himself from the knot of people, but thoroughly failed and ended up in the embrace of at least twenty women that touched him all over. Hands skimmed through his red hair followed by coos of interest, his chin was caught and pulled this way and that so as to allow the natives to peer at his equally red eyes, and the goth couldn't help but sputter wordlessly as they figured out the latch of his helipack and the zipper of his trench coat and peeled both off of him.
Jack feared for a moment that these women had very unwelcome sexual intentions for him, but those fears were (slightly) eased when they did not next go for his pants or try to remove any other clothing. Instead, they ran their hands over his bare, white arms, marveling at the contrast between their own dusky skin and his pallid complexion.
Jack shivered hard and reinitiated his struggles, this time managing to break away just a bit; enough to stand.
"Okay," he spoke shakily, "I dunno what the hell is going on here, but…no, okay? Just…no!"
The women stood as well and trotted back over to him, all oblivious smiles and bedroom eyes. The Maori men watched with interest, some obviously upset by the behavior of their spouses or daughters or whatever the relation happened to be, but they pointedly did not interfere. Out of the corner of his eye, Jack saw the monks watching and giggling to themselves at his plight instead of, oh, say, helping like good guys were supposed to do.
Jack scowled, abruptly annoyed and angry with the whole situation. He scanned the area briefly, taking mental data of the layout of the village and the positioning of the people. The chief stood to his left, yet holding the Shen Gong Wu in the form of an erhu in his hand, and the females that'd become enamored of him were directly before him. The monks were off to his right, far enough away for this to work…
In a daring and risky move, the goth darted over to the chief, plucking his helipack from the ground on the way there and taking advantage of the fact that the man had not been expecting it to snatch the Wu right out of his hands. The women moved to follow him, as did the monks who had suddenly lost all sense of humor they'd had regarding the situation.
They would be too late.
Jack hastily put on and activated his helipack, quickly gaining enough altitude that Raimundo's blast of wind, meant to knock him off balance and send him crashing back to the ground, missed altogether.
"Who's got the Shen Gong Wu now?" he crowed victoriously, trying to sound every bit as confident as he didn't feel. "See ya', losers!"
With that, Jack turned and sped off into the sky for home, ignoring the angry cries of the monks and Maori men and the lamenting, pleading cries of the Maori women.
He shivered weakly, and not from the air's cold without his jacket to protect him. "Weird…" he muttered to himself.
By the time Jack got home and made it through his front door, he had worked himself up into a marvelous freak-out.
He was within his rights, of course: he had just been forced to get to second base with a bunch of strange women before he'd even had the mental preparation of first, and all this with little to no prior experience with members of the opposite sex (or the same sex, for that matter). The goth had basically gone from the absolute minimum of social touching it was physically possible to have to the rock star treatment of being mobbed by females and Christ, was it weird!
"JB-1640," he called to the nearest bot, not mustering the energy to care that his voice cracked on the last number, "get a hot shower running for me and set out some fresh clothes. I want a glass of chocolate milk and two- no, three pudding cups on my desk by the time I finish. Oh, and put in an order for a few more custom trench coats while you're at it; the way they get lost or ruined these days, I'll be totally out in a week."
Instead of instantly rushing off to obey its master, however, the robot inquired, "Are you feeling alright, master?"
"What…?" Jack mumbled. "I'm fine, why the hell are you asking?"
"Your physical status reads otherwise, sir," JB-1640 informed. "You heart rate's elevated, you appear to be suffering physiological tremors, and your facial expression is indicative of fear. Have you suffered any significant trauma recently, master?"
The genius immediately cursed his own decision to program his creations with a human-machine interaction function that allowed them to interpret little clues such as the ones JB-1640 had described in terms of emotion. "Fuck you," he growled unnecessarily at the robot. "How 'bout you quit bothering me do what I told you?"
In perfect, unquestioning obedience, the Jackbot dipped in a bow, intoning, "Of course, master," and zooming off to complete the tasks assigned it.
The goth mechanically stormed up the stairs to his room, running a frustrated hand through his hair and catching hold of his goggles as the motion dislodged them. He then carelessly tossed the protective eyewear onto his black silken bedspread. Most teenagers his age would literally kill for a large lavish suite of a bedroom such as the one Jack had, but he hadn't the presence of mind to appreciate its loveliness at the moment.
Instead, he gave a brief glance to his windows, making sure the curtains were drawn before stripping off his sleeveless Frankenstein t-shirt and tossing it to the floor, kicking off his boots and unbuttoning his jeans as he made his way over to the adjoined bathroom where he could already hear the water running.
By the time Jack made it through the door, he was down to his underwear and, perhaps out of some lingering sense of paranoia, he shut and locked the door before peeling those off, as well.
The water of the shower was blissfully hot as he stepped in, practically scalding his snow-white flesh a bright coral color the moment it touched him. The goth reveled in the pleasant burn for a few moments before finding the shampoo and scrubbing it into his hair thoroughly.
If there was one thing Jack hated, it was dirty hair and what with the dusty and unsanitized hands of Maori natives that'd been in it fairly recently, the youth couldn't help but feel it warranted a good cleaning today.
With a quick rinse to remove the bubbly suds left behind by the hair care product, Jack simply stood under the hot stream of water for several long, long minutes, imagining on some deep, subconscious level that it was washing away the freakiness of the event that had happened mere hours ago.
It wasn't really working, but he enjoyed trying it, anyway.
When Jack finally emerged from the bathroom, steam following behind his freshly toweled body, all the items he had asked for were waiting for him. He took the clothing that'd been laid out on his bed and dressed himself before meandering over to his desk.
Jack plopped down unenthusiastically into his chair and grabbed his chocolate milk in one hand and the remote to his giant plasma screen television in the other. His mind was racing as he turned on what appeared to be a soap opera and took a swig of his beverage, trying desperately to make sense of what'd gone on in New Zealand.
It just…it didn't make sense! He was ignored by others all of his life regardless of what country he was in, and then all of a sudden, a bunch of nutty Maori women just…just mob him like that? It was weird! Why were they so interested in him? Why were they all crazy-excited over him? What the hell kind of appeal did he have to those people?
It was only when the theme for the next daytime television show began playing that Jack realized he had lost himself in thought for about an hour and finished off all three pudding cups in the same amount of time.
He shook his head and stood from his chair just to get up. This couldn't keep going on, he knew. If it did, he'd probably never get anything done again.
But what the fuck was he supposed to do?
He began thinking of the word they had called him, over and over. Patupairehe. What did it mean?
Quick! To the Googlemobile!
Jack strode over to his desk. Dropping into the chair, he quickly accessed Google and, from there, went to Wikipedia – otherwise known as "Info God."
He read the three sentences Wikipedia had on the subject and sighed roughly even as he ran his hands through his hair, tangling the vibrant red-orange strands.
"Fairies? Really? Y'know, Wiki, I thought you were up on the times," he groused. "We prefer to be called 'gay' these days."
Pouting, Jack got up and paced; no wiser than he was before. He threw a glare over his shoulder at his innocent computer. "I'm not even from New Zealand!"
Abruptly, he went stone still. No, he wasn't from New Zealand.
But his Grandpa Spicer had been.
He didn't have many memories of the old man. He only knew that Heketoro Spicer had been colored the same as he was; the only difference between them had been their eyes. His were crimson while his grandfather's had been dark blue.
Heketoro had been the love of Jack's grandmother's life. The vicious old woman only ever seemed to soften around him, but Heketoro had always seemed to vanish when Jack had gone to visit his grandparents.
Memory filled Jack's mind - so strong that it was as if he were re-living the moment over again. He'd been five and it had been the last day he'd ever seen his grandfather. He'd gone looking for the old man while his grandmother was preoccupied; involved in a shouting match with some old frienemy over the telephone. He'd found Heketoro in a private den in the attic, writing in a thick book... a journal. Heketoro had noticed him, of course. He'd locked away the journal and Jack remembered making note of that because he'd planned to come back later and pick the lock to see what his grandpa had been writing. At that moment, however, he'd allowed Heketoro to pick him up and carry him away to play some sort of silly nonsense game.
Jack had been worn out from playing all day and had been put down for a nap. When he'd woken up again, his grandfather had vanished and the family had been in chaos.
He'd never gone back for that book.
Jack blinked as awareness of the here-and-now returned. He shook his head. He hadn't gone back for that book, no, but his grandmother had to have known about its existence. If that was the case....
He roared for a Jackbot, and JB-1640 quickly zoomed up to him.
"What do you require, Master?" it asked of him.
"When Grandma died, her things came here, right?" Jack asked quickly.
"Yes, Master."
"Is all of her stuff still here?"
"Yes, Master."
"Where is it?"
"In the attic, Master. I wouldn't recommend going in there, though. There's some awfully big spiders up there."
Jack cringed. Dust and cobwebs and a mouse or two he could deal with. Spiders? 'Awfully big' spiders? Fuck, no.
He described the book he needed and sent JB-1640 away to do the searching while he paced again, jittery with nerves.
A couple of hours later, JB-1640 returned and was promptly yelled at by Jack.
"What the fuck took you so long?!" he bellowed, and threw a wrench at the robot's head.
JB-1640 bobbed out of the way. Its brass casing was covered in dust and cobwebs and, as Jack watched, a really big spider rappelled down from the ornamental edge of one shoulder. The robot noticed its master's terrified squeak, glanced down, and then hovered over the arachnid. A quick blast of propulsion and the eight-legged creature was a soot mark on the floor.
Jack grimaced. "Great. Now every spider in the house is going to come eat me in revenge."
"I will intercept them, Master. Here is the book you requested. It was in the seventeenth trunk."
"There's still that much stuff left up there? Huh. I'm surprised it wasn't sold off to fund some soiree or another," Jack muttered, and accepted the book.
Some strange symbol that Jack didn't recognize decorated the leather cover of the journal. Its pages were soft rag-pulp paper that tickled the skin of his fingertips as he stroked the book for a moment.
"Do you require anything else Master?"
"Nah. Get out and lemme read."
JB-1640 zoomed away, leaving Jack to his reading as ordered.
Jack flipped open the journal and winced at the protesting creak from the old leather spine. Carefully, he placed the journal on his desk, pushing his laptop out of the way first. Sitting down, he focused on the tiny, crabbed writing his grandfather had used. It was block print, like the way a child would write when first learning how.
English is a difficult language. I would write in my language except that my language is made up of flute sound. Paper is not a good... it won't hold the music. I tried. No spell helped. Besides if anything happens to me then this book - Phyllis called it a diary - this book can be used as a source of knowledge for our son. I don't think Martin will have much to worry about though. He came out colored like his mother. The only thing we seem to share in common are the eyes. Even after he grew out of infancy, his eyes remained dark blue. Phyllis said human baby eyes change from birth blue to something else when they get older.
Goose-chills rippled over Jack's skin even as his eyes widened. Spell? Human baby?
Bracing himself, Jack continued reading. He delved into the thoughts of Heketoro Spicer; a native of New Zealand, to be sure, but not a human native. He read about Heketoro falling in lust, then in love, with Phyllis Wang; a half-American, half-Chinese woman who'd gone to New Zealand on vacation.
She'd come back with Heketoro in tow and already three months pregnant with their son.
Heketoro had left behind his tribe, but not willingly. They'd exiled him for mixing his blood with that of a human. It wasn't that Heketoro had taken a human lover; part of the patupairehe social structure meant regularly taking human lovers. It was that he'd made an infant with her and had refused to give her a drink that would make her void the baby. Patupairehe and human blood should not mix, but Heketoro found himself hard-pressed to win victories against Phyllis Wang. The woman could be sweet and loving, but she was capable of cruelty and evil if she felt crossed. Heketoro was in no mood to cross her about this.
The two of them had gone to China, where he'd learned to assimilate to a busy human industrial society. He'd tried to learn Chinese and simply could not. English was easier to speak; a bitch to write. He could function, though, and so he helped Phyllis take over her parents' spice company and they became the Spicers.
Their son had been born. Heketoro liked the boy well enough, but the two of them just couldn't seem to connect. That was fine; the less familial interaction they had, the less likely Martin's paternal inheritance would arise. Martin grew up, to all appearances a normal human being, and took a wife and got her pregnant.
Then, Jack arrived, white-skinned and red-haired and red-eyed, and Heketoro knew that trouble was coming. He knew, too, that his days of living in the human world were coming to a close. He couldn't stay, or else Jack would-
Jack blinked. He flipped the page, but it was blank. So were the others after that. He stared at the line where his grandfather had stopped writing; the point where his five-year-old grandson had interrupted him long ago.
"'Jack would' what?! the albino genius yelled at the journal. "Damn it, old man! What would I do?"
Angry, frustrated, frightened and confused, Jack picked up the journal and lunged out of his seat. With all of his strength, he hurled the journal at the nearest wall – which, unfortunately, was actually a window.
The glass balcony door shattered as the old, leather-bound book went through it. The journal hit the marble railing outside and burst apart. The wind and rain of the storm going on outside caught the rag-pulp paper and scattered the pages far and wide.
Jack stared at the mess he'd created, feeling the blood drain out of his face and nausea form a tight, huddling knot in his belly. A moment later, he screamed for his Jackbots and sent the small army of them that appeared out into the storm to gather up the remains of the journal.
He watched them work for a while, but knew it was pointless. Any information his grandfather had left in that journal, he hadn't found. Whatever it was, was too blithely mentioned for him to catch hold of and understand.
Sighing, he turned away and paced for a little bit, mulling over the information he did have until one piece of it stunned him as the truth of it crystallized in his mind.
Wow.
The goth flopped onto his bed, staring sightlessly at the dark canopy above it as an ocean of thoughts swam around in his head.
So…he was a fairy. A…patupairehe, apparently, and he just as apparently looked like one. And yet, here he was, nineteen years into his life and only just finding all this out through a bad experience and his grandpa's diary as opposed to some paranormal happening that came with the awakening of his long-dormant magical powers.
He was a fairy without magic, a human that didn't look it by any means whatsoever: the worst of both worlds and what appeared to be a very obvious reason why he'd never seemed to fit in amongst the mortal crowd or the magical crowd.
The youth thought about that for a moment, digesting it fully.
"Yeah," Jack grumbled to himself, throwing an arm over his eyes, "that sounds like my luck…"
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A/N: To those who read my journals on deviantART, you saw this coming. XD
For those who don't, there's a creature in Maori mythology called the "patupairehe," which describe Jack by about 90%. Of course, I just had to write a fic about it!
It ended up being long enough to split into chapters for posting, and so that's what I'm doing.
As a side-note, the odds of such a primitive Maori settlement still existing in New Zealand is EXTREMELY unlikely, but hey: artistic license. XD
Anyways, thanks for reading, and I hope you guys like it! :D
P.S.- Thanks for your help with Chase and in writing that scene, Silv!