Puck's Tale

Later in the pantope campaign, Tom was feeling rootless and lonely, and so was moved to create Puck the monkey. He wrought rather better than he knew. He wanted Puck to understand him, so he copied over his own understanding of Earthron. He thought it would be both amusing and useful if Puck could act as an assistant mechanic, so he copied over a lot of his own technical knowledge. These things pull lots of context with them, so the result was a monkey that was at least semi-sapient, a neo-monkey. Meaning to produce a pet and (unconsciously) a repository or working out of his "monkeyness," Tom produced a sidekick ... or a child.

When Tom started out on his solo adventures, he left Puck with his parents, back on the Jack. Puck settled in nicely, but began to chafe under the limitations of being little and stupid and speechless and the only one of his kind. He came to wish he were a neo-gorilla, who are sort of monkeys, but big and strong and able to talk. He might have wished to be human, but unconsciously wanted to fulfill his function of being the monkey for Tom.

During a telepathic contact on a visit home, Tom became aware of Puck's existential problems and longings. He then contacted the Captain and asked for the use of the pantope autodoc, to regenerate Puck as a neo-gorilla.

Arrangements were made, Tom's family briefed, a pantope door opened in the Jack one day, and the deed was done. However, the changes to gene-code were minimal. Puck resembled Tom as closely as a neo-gorilla can resemble a human. Eye-color and hair-color, for instance, were identical (except that Puck's back has gone silver, since he became fully adult). There was a haunting similarity of voice, and even about the face and hands and feet. People who are told Puck's origins had no trouble believing them.

Officially, on the Jack, Puck is the adopted son of Tom's parents, so officially, Tom and Puck are foster-brothers. Both, however, realized that the relationship between them was essentially parent and child, just by very unorthodox methods. Both of them felt it would be a little grotesque to claim to be father and son -- and least on the Jack. It might be different in a less mundane setting. Tom, who collects guilt easily, felt guilty over creating this situation inadvertently, and, if he WAS a father, being an arguably negligent one.

Not that the situation was all that bad. Puck went to secondary school and college on the Jack, turning out to be a very bright neo-gorilla (brighter than the average human), and took up the traditional career for a Jack neo-gorilla, forest ranger, with duties covering all the wild areas of the Jack.

But...

Some things bothered him. Tom's folks remained friendly and all that, but he'd rather grown away from them. Neo-gorillas got more respect than other semi-folk, for obvious reasons, but they were still condescended to. And he didn't fit in with the other neo-gorillas, because of his origin. For that matter, it felt a little odd to be in such an ordinary line of work (if being a neo-gorilla forest ranger on a space station is ordinary) when you had such an exotic background. And he inherited Tom's itchy feet, even if they had thumbs on them.

So, after a few years, Puck took ship to Hellene, went to the ranch, and through the mirror to Vinyagaerond. He already knew some telepathy, from Tom, and turned out to have a Knack of Lifesense. Combined with the foraging and tracking skills he's learned as a Jack ranger, and the natural talents of a neo-gorilla, he was well-equipped to be a ranger in Faerie, and he did this from time to time, mostly for Daewen or in service to allied elven lords. For the first time in his life, he had the interesting experience of being regarded as nothing out of the way. The rest of his time, he worked as vet -- a very acceptable profession in Faerie forests.

Also, with a variety of teachers, he began to learn. He acquired Hysterical Strength and Endurance. He picked up a lot of Psychosomatics. He learned Levitation and Patterning. Most important, he learned Lifekey.

Then, one day, on the way back from a visit to the Dreamtime, he got lost on the Chaos Roads and found himself in a very odd place. He figures it was "near" the Toon universe, or maybe part of it. But it wasn't talking animals; it was superheroes. In a world where everyone is either a mundane or a super, there is no question where a magic-working talking gorilla fits in.

They called him the "Evolution Master." He used his Fleshkey skill to turn himself into a very large man -- a fullback or Acro version of Tom. It went much faster than it would at home, taking only a week. And it got faster and faster as he went back and forth. He made up more shapes. He also used his Levitation to fly, and learned to combine his TK with his Hysterical Strength, for a classic superhero effect.

He adventured solo, in jungle settings, somewhat a la Tarzan and the Phantom, for a year or so, then teamed up with a group. He took a "secret identity" as Robin Thompson, zoo vet. (The origin of the last name is obvious; the first is from Robin Goodfellow, the other name of Shakespeare's Puck.) Life was an endless round of angst and battling supervillains. It got tiring.

Maybe that's why, in one epic battle, Puck got severely thrown away by an interdimensional invader. (There were a lot of interdimensional invaders that summer.) He was falling into chaos while in a battered, semi-conscious daze. In fact, he was falling into Chaos' Rim, or a state like it. He was wishing intensely that Tom were there, knew vaguely that Tom wasn't, and recalls thinking, as if it were some sort of key, "Thomas means Twin."

And suddenly Tom was there. Or a Tom. This person supplied the first aid and the lucidity that Puck couldn't give himself, and a few hours later they were both on the Chaos Roads, deep in discussion of what the heck had happened. By the time they reached the Dreamtime, the new Tom had taken the name Jacob Thomas Noon, later shortened to "JT." See "JT's Tale."

Puck left JT in the Dreamtime and finally completed his trip back to Vinyagaerond,where he found that, in Faerie, his superpower translated as a certain amount of Shapeshift. Puck is now a New Blood shapeshifter, his repetoire incuding a squirrel monkey, an australopithecus, a chimp. a gorilla, a yeti, a Neanderthal, and modern human. They all have blue eyes and blond hair, and a haunting familiarity persists from face to face.

Puck has gone back to being a ranger and vet for the New Blood. He has no particular desire to return to Superhero Toon (or wherever it was), but would not be very surprised if someone from there sought him out some day. Puck, by the way, has not touched bases directly with Tom since JT's creation. He suspects Tom has no notion of his time as a superhero or of the existence of his "grandson."