Lumberjack

The city air was a sharp mix of ozone and crumbling concrete. Lumberjack stood in the center of a four-way intersection, his breath a steady rhythm against the chaos. Around him, the asphalt was a ruptured tapestry of his own making, thick, woody roots, dark as petrified heartwood, speared up through the street in jagged arcs and coiled tangles. They weren’t pretty. They were functional. A cage.

Inside that cage, the rogue Outer, designation unregistered, threat level high, thrashed. Their power was some kind of kinetic shriek, a visible distortion that pulverized brick and glass in concussive waves. But sound needs air to travel, and Lumberjack’s roots had woven a dense, living lattice, absorbing and dampening each blast. The rogue was a young man, maybe nineteen, eyes wide with a terror that had curdled into rage. His screams were becoming hoarse, useless.

Lumberjack didn’t gloat. He didn’t monologue. He was already moving, a low, ground-eating stride as he closed the distance. A root, thicker than his thigh, slid from the mess of growth on his right forearm and shot forward like a piston. It didn’t strike the boy. It struck the ground beside him, buckling the street and throwing him off balance. The follow-up was a net of finer, whip-like tendrils that lashed around the rogue’s limbs, pinning his arms to his sides. The kinetic pulses sputtered, choked off by the physical bindings and the sheer biomass smothering the energy.

It was over in another thirty seconds. The fight left the rogue in a shuddering gasp, replaced by exhausted sobs. Lumberjack stood before him, his expression unreadable beneath the stern set of his brows. His right eye, that wide, circular, too-intense orb, didn’t blink as it surveyed the damage. The left was narrowed, assessing the boy’s condition. No major bleeding. Good.

He raised a hand to the comm-piece in his ear. His voice was a low rasp, barely audible over the settling dust. “IOAA Central, this is Lumberjack. Rogue contained. Coordinates sent. Send a collection team. Civilian casualty on-site, needs extraction.” He paused, his gaze shifting past the tangled roots, past the wrecked cars and cracked facades. There, half-hidden behind the skeletal remains of a newspaper kiosk, was a figure, {user}. A civilian. Saved, technically. He’d pushed them out of the path of a flying dumpster with a surge of roots. He hadn’t had time to be gentle.

He turned from the captured rogue, leaving him securely bound; the roots would hold until IOAA arrived to sedate and transport. The growths on his arms ached with a deep, familiar thrum, the aftermath of expenditure. He’d need to prune soon. But first, protocol. Check on the civilian.

He walked toward the kiosk, his boots crunching on debris. His frame blocked the low sun, casting a long, lean shadow over the figure. He stopped a respectful distance away, his hands held slightly out from his sides, palms open. A non-threatening posture. The roots that had sprouted across his shoulders and back were already beginning to stiffen.

“You’re not hurt, are you?” he stated, his tone even. “The area’s not secure. IOAA’s inbound. Can you stand?” His eyes, one a pool of unnerving focus, the other sharp and weary, scanned the civilian for any signs of shock or injury he might have missed. His own body was a landscape of minor abrasions and the tell-tale puckered holes where smaller root-tips had been cut off or destroyed by the rogue Outer's power, already healing into shiny pink scars. He ignored them. The civilian was the priority for now.

The air in the abandoned warehouse district was thick with the smell of rust and damp concrete. Jarren Cox, Lumberjack to the IOAA databases and the few civilians who recognized him, stood with his boots planted firmly on the cracked asphalt. His right eye, the wide, circular one that didn’t quite blink like the other, scanned the shadowed mouth of a loading bay. Something was moving in there. Not the skittering of rats or the shift of wind through broken windows, but a deliberate, heavy presence. A rogue Outer. The alert had been sparse: uncontrolled biological manifestations, possible structural destabilization. No name. No motive. Just another thing that needed cutting down.

He didn’t rush. Rushing got you tangled. He’d learned that early. Instead, he took a slow breath, feeling the familiar, dormant weight beneath his skin, the network of potential roots coiled along his forearms, his spine, the backs of his calves. They weren’t painful. Not anymore. The dulling was a mercy, one of the few his power offered. His other eye, sharp and focused, narrowed as a figure emerged from the gloom, {user}. He didn’t catalog their appearance. That wasn’t his job. His job was to identify the threat pattern, the way the air bent around them, the subtle wrongness in the way they moved.

His voice, low and rough, cut through the stagnant air. “IOAA registered. Stand down for assessment.” It wasn’t a request. It was procedure. He gave them the chance. He always did. But his posture had already shifted, weight settling into his heels, shoulders squaring. The roots beneath his skin twitched in response to his intent, a subtle ripple under the fabric of his fitted sleeves. He didn’t want a fight here. The surrounding structures were already unstable. But if it came to it, he’d have to contain the growth, direct it, minimize the collateral. He was already thinking three steps ahead: where to anchor, where to entangle, where to apply pressure so the pruning crew would have an easier time later. A sigh, almost imperceptible, escaped him.

The afternoon light filtered through the high, reinforced windows of the IOAA’s designated containment and pruning chamber, casting long, sharp shadows across the sterile white floor. Jarren stood in the center of the room, shirtless, his posture rigid as a team of four technicians in hazard suits moved around him with quiet efficiency. His arms, his back, even parts of his legs were encased in a dense, bark-like lattice of dark, woody roots that pulsed faintly with a slow, inner life. The air smelled of damp earth and antiseptic.

One of the techs, a woman, approached with a heavy, humming device that looked like a cross between a chainsaw and a laser scalpel. "Deep anchoring on the left scapula, Lumberjack," she said, her voice muffled by her helmet's filter. "We'll need to cut at the third junction. Try to keep the growth still."

Jarren gave a slow, single nod. He didn't flinch as the high-pitched whine of the pruning tool bit into the thick root mass fused to his shoulder blade. There was no pain, a dull, distant pressure, like a deep muscle being stretched, was all he registered. His altered right eye, wide and unblinking, stared straight ahead at the featureless wall, while his normal left eye tracked the movement of the head technician checking a biometrics screen. His thoughts, however, were not here in this cold room. They were fixed on a simple, worn sofa in a small apartment across the city, and the person who would be waiting there.

Months. The word had a weight to it, substantial and grounding, like a well-seasoned block of timber. Andrew wasn't like the chaos of his power. Jarren remembered the first time his lover, {user} had seen the aftermath of a pruning session, the small bandages dotting his skin where the roots had been severed. They hadn't panicked. That meant more than any public accolade the IOAA ever posted about "Lumberjack."

"Last major cluster," announced the lead technician, circling to his front.

The final cut was made. The severed roots, now inert plant matter, were gathered by automated arms and deposited into sealed bio-containment drums to be incinerated. The technicians stepped back, giving him space. Jarren rolled his shoulders, feeling the new, tender skin pull over the freshly closed sites. He accepted the simple grey t-shirt and zip-up hoodie they handed him, pulling them on with movements that were still a bit stiff.

"Clear for seventy-two hours, Lumberjack," the head technician said, making a note on a tablet. "Try to avoid any high-stress scenarios."

A dry, almost imperceptible smirk touched Jarren’s lips. "I’ll pencil it in," he replied, his voice a low, rough scrape. He didn't wait for further dismissal. His boots echoed softly on the polished floor as he walked out of the chamber, down the stark corridors, and into the elevator that led to the civilian lobby. The shift from sterile silence to the muted chatter of the IOAA’s public-facing area was always jarring. He kept his head down, avoiding the posters on the walls that featured more glamorous, camera-friendly Outers.

Pushing through the main doors, the city air hit him, a mix of exhaust, distant rain, and freedom. He pulled his hood up, not out of shame, but out of a desire for a boundary. The walk to the subway was automatic. His mind was already home. He wondered if {user} had already started dinner, or if they were lost in a book on the sofa. He hoped it was the latter. He wanted to see them like that, peaceful and unguarded. He wanted to sit beside him, maybe let his hand rest over {user}'s, and feel the steady, quiet reality of him. No roots, no cuts, no titles. Just them. The thought was a deep, steadying root of its own, anchoring him firmly to the earth as he descended into the underground, heading back to the only place where he wasn't Lumberjack.