Secretly Pooka
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Disclaimer: I do not own Rise of the Guardians.
Author's note: I actually thought Gallifrey was the name of the Pookan home planet, it sounded familiar enough. It sounded like one of the names of the countries in Prince's Bride. But then with Painapple's review, I double checked that. :) It seems fitting enough since the Pookas could have been time lords.
Also this planet has pretty long 'days' and 'years' in comparison to Earth's. I think that real galaxies would take quite a bit little longer to blow up, but I'm not sure. However, I'm taking a bit of literary freedom here.
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Chapter two: The Unnamed Planet
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Jack ducked as a vine lashed at his head, swinging his sword and cutting off the aggressive plant limb. He journeyed deeper into the gigantic forest. Even the grass was taller than Jack was and was known as 'Bladed' grass for a reason. The edges of the greenery were sharper than the cactus' spines on Gallifrey! Prior to this adventure, Jack had never been so grateful for gloves and storage capsules. Storage capsules could hold plenty of items in a small container until the items were needed again. The idea had originally come from an Pookan inventor who was tired of carrying heavy fruits in several dangerous trips home. On Jack's back, Aloe giggled as Jack picked up speed and jumped over an abyss. Jack grunted as he felt his energy lagging and sped up faster anyway. There!
Jack leaped and twisted in the air, landing on all four paws, having skipped over prowling leaves. Jack poked the giant berry with an metal rod and sighed in satisfaction as it was deemed non-poisonous by the simple machine. Jack put the machine away, pulling out a storage capsule and beaming the into the container with a flash of white light. He had left the one berry that he had poked with the scanner outside of the storage container (the berry was smaller than the others, but still half Jack's size). Jack pulled out a small kitchen knife and cut a section off, juice squirting over the two young Pookas. Keeping an eye on his surroundings as best he could, Jack twisted the baby harness so he could see Aloe. It was extremely fortunate that Aloe was at the age where he could be weaned off his mother's milk, because there was no more of mother's milk (including milk substitutes). It was a messy process, but Jack was able to get Aloe to eat the berry piece. Gently Jack imitated a memory of his mother by putting Aloe on his shoulder and patting the baby kit's back. After a few moments, wondering why his mother would do so, Jack heard Aloe burp. Not even a second later, Jack's face was filled with revulsion at the feeling of the throw-up on his blue-brown fur. Satisfied, Aloe laughed and settled in the harness, yawning and falling asleep, still under some influence from the cryogenic chambers.
"Eww!" Jack shuddered, trying to wipe the liquid off with a leaf instead of his hand. The plants might have somehow smelled or otherwise detected the berry juice on Jack and left him alone instead of trying to throttle them. Grimacing after he had scrubbed as much of the liquid off of his fur as he could, Jack turned his attention back the berry and ate it one handedly without the help of his kitchen knife to size it down. (He had used the other hand to try and clean himself off).
The growing shadows spooked Jack, bringing his attention to the late hour. Jack glanced up. Sure enough, the sun was setting. He probably wouldn't make it back to the ship until a little after dark even going as fast as Jack could. It made Jack's stomach clench in uneasiness, but Jack was determined to get to the ship before the last rays of light left the sky and made the flora potentially more dangerous. After Jack double checked that he had all of his equipment, Jack tightened the straps that held Aloe to his back and zoomed off.
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Just as the sky was abruptly darkened, Jack tumbled inside the spaceship, hitting the button that would close the doors. Automatically dim lights highlighted the hallways. Making his way back to Aloe's 'room', Jack collapsed into exhaustion as the internal door closed.
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Jack groaned as he felt someone nudge him insistently awake. Blinking his blue eyes open, Jack realized Aloe was bumping him in a gesture of, 'Good morning, now wake UP!'
"Guess you are hungry then, huh?" Jack mumbled before yawning, "Alright, alright. I'm awake."
Aloe waited impatiently for Jack to move before nudging Jack again.
"I got it. Here." Jack huffed in amusement as the fruit piece was gone in short order. Aloe sneezed and burped at the same time shortly after, shaking his tiny head. At least nothing came up this time... thought too soon. Jack mourned the state of his fur. He could already foretell that this would be a common event for a while.
Aloe tried to climb out out Jack's arms. "Oh no you don't. Not until most of this dust is cleaned up." Jack settled the squirming youngster back into the harness, going to find a dust vacuum. Having slept and moved around in the dust, both of the Pooka kits were fairly dirty. After Jack was satisfied with a cleaner floor, he prevented Aloe from running around again until Jack had first cleaned Aloe off. Finishing the grooming with the babe's delicate ears, Jack moved on to trying to lick the dirt and grossness out of his fur. At least he was more bendable than an adult would be. Otherwise his back would have never been clean again. There were parts that Jack couldn't do and uncomfortably tried to put it out of his mind for the moment.
Before he could return to the computer, Aloe pulled Jack into a small game of tag until the baby yawned. Chuckling and grateful that Aloe was so easy to please (remembering taking care of other kits), Jack cradled the infant and chinned his baby brother. When Aloe fell asleep, Jack remembered that he was still hungry too. Pulling out the storage container, Jack selected a new piece of fruit he hadn't tried yet. It was... sour, but tasty.
Jack turned his attention back to the computer finally and looked up the galaxies-wide search. "There must be something-!" Jack's breath hitched in panic and repeats the search. Numb, Jack stared where the blank spots where galaxies had vanished in. Maybe the stars had moved while he was sleeping... But no, the spaceship would have kept track of any changes periodically. Furiously typing away, Jack's dread and horror grew as he realized he no longer had a home planet. Gallifrey was gone!
The fruit seemingly curdled in Jack's stomach and Rhododendron struggled to keep the nutrients down, swallowing fresh water from the planet.
Jack stood up, pacing, mindful of the napping tike. It would be a while before the search returned results so Jack kicked up his weapons into his hands, gathering storage containers and went hunting plants again.
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Panting, Jack slid down against the closing doors. He really needed to keep better track of the time. At least he had managed to distract himself from the blank spots on the map of Space. Jack couldn't afford distractions out in the wild, especially with the guardianship of Aloe.
When he had caught his breath and his heart calmed, Jack stood up and walked among the dusty corridors. Aloe seemed to be adapting well to the new foods. His fecal matter was a little runny at first, but Aloe wasn't having any stomach aches.
Jack tiredly cleaned Aloe off once more, who yawned and fell asleep half-way through. And then groomed his own fur before returning to the computer screen. Rhododendron stared blankly at the repeated information. The universe had forever changed while he had been in suspended animation. It would have changed anyway, but... galaxies were gone and destroyed by an unnatural force.
Jack idly wondered if the fearlings were as dead as his kin now. Obviously plenty of the universe was still intact, which meant either someone won the war or the fearlings were biding their time for a new assault. When the two young Pooka left this planet, Jack noted that they would need to take the clan's weapons and artifacts (broken or not) along with their other supplies.
It hit Jack then that the escape-ship would need a location to go to. Which meant... it couldn't go to Gallifrey. Jack bolted upright, scrambling to type another galaxies-wide search. Come on, come on... oh... Jack deflated. That large of a search would take at minimum a few hours. Filled with nervous energy, Jack couldn't bring himself to rest. Instead Jack started searching out every nook and cranny he could find and cleaned the areas as he collected odds and ends that could be useful for Jack and Aloe's escape from the on-verge-of-exploding sun.
Eventually, Jack fell asleep, exhausted near the computer.
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Again Aloe was the reason Jack woke up some time later. As Rhododendron stretched, he mused that it seemed like it was going to be a routine wake-up call until Aloe could get his own food. While Aloe happily munched away on soft vegetables, Jack did a double take at the computer's search.
"No." Jack breathed in horror. They couldn't be the last, they couldn't! Jack and Aloe were only kids!
As Jack began to hyperventilate, Aloe reacted to Jack's panic and began to wail. Rhododendron Thistle forced himself to calm down, rocking Aloe a bit tighter than necessary with his eyes closed. It took some time, but the brothers' relaxed eventually. No longer as agitated, although his paws shook as Jack sent the search for other Pooka again.
As the days and then weeks passed, Jack grew increasing despondent and depressed as the search returned the same results day after day. There were no other Pooka detected. Each day Aloe, Jack's reason to keep moving and living, would wake Jack up. Then Aloe would be fed and then they went harvesting/ hunting. Jack went without food quite often because it just didn't seem appealing anymore. Rather it seemed like he could barely stomach looking at it most days. The routine day continued, Jack arriving back at the spaceship just before dark. Aloe would be fed the last of four or five small meals, play with Jack or be groomed by Jack before falling asleep in his older brother's arms. On restless nights, Jack cleaned the spaceship up more or prepped the escape-ship.
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About a month or two after they first woke up, the spaceship's computer alerted Jack that they didn't have ten years left on the planet. They had three. Max. Three years before the sun would explode. Already the sun had devoured the first planet in the solar system. Climbing slowly out of his depression as panic ripped apart Jack's apathy, Jack began cataloging how much they had. Fortunately, several items had been already packed away in the hand-held devices before the Frostfall clan had fallen. Libraries in a blue lidded storage capsule, plant life (seeds, dirt, growth potions) were in green lidded ones, weapons in red lidded containers, artifacts in the purple colored machines, food ready to eat in the yellow lidded storage containers and so on. Based on the number of food capsules, the computer calculated that Jack would be set for at least four years. However, Aloe could not digest harder foods yet. And while they had enough soft food for only a year, who knows how long it would take to get to another life-bearing planet. Now that Aloe was no longer drinking formula, he had a couple of years before he was ready to eat 'just anything' as their uncle had once described the food rations. And that wasn't including the 'picky' years mothers sometimes complained about.
Jack was once again typing at the computer, this time looking for a suitable planet. An adult Pooka, armed with a powerful source of 'light' could use any planet to make it into a life-bearing one, but Jack didn't know how the adults did it. Jack and Aloe had one shot to make it to a planet of their choice that already had life growing on it with the proper conditions.
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Jack was almost ready to pull his fur out in frustration by the time (a few months later) that Jack finally found the perfect planet. He entered the coordinates into the escape-ship's computer and wrote them on an extra map, just in case.
It took about a week to pack all the 'hundreds' of containers into the mini-storage area built into the escape-ship. Most ended up outside the storage area in the egg-shaped cockpit. The last things gathered were a copied disk of the spaceship's computer info and the larger spaceship's remaining stardust fuel in a specialized container. Jack had yet to bring himself to watch his family's massacure. He didn't want to, but it was part of his and Aloe's history.
Jack's eyes widened in disbelief as the computer had new results for one last search for other Pookas. There was a blip of a signal of a single Pooka on the planet Jack had already decided on. At first Jack thought he had stumbled in shock, but then the entire ship rattled, alarms coming to life. The sun had devoured the second planet in the solar system!
Pookan instruments were very accurate and the scanners were reading that those previously estimated three years had dropped down to one. This planet was the fifth and last in the solar system, but it was being dragged closer by the sun's increasingly stronger gravitational pull.
Counting his blessings, Jack buckled Aloe into the passenger seat. He didn't want to be anywhere close by when the sun either blew up or collapsed, condensed, and became a black hole. The spaceship shuddered again as Jack extended the launch pad, closing the hatches tightly.
"Ready Aloe?" the infant giggled as Jack continued, paw twitching on the thrust lever, "In three... two... one... Launch! Outer Space here we come." The escape-ship shivered as its disused, but recently cleaned engines roared to life.