Rong An is a tree, a strangler fig that once crawled through the shadows of a well where the hanged dead lurked in the old world.
Tiny flowers, tiny leaves, and enormous, vigorous roots and strangling tendrils. He comes with his own rainforest purification system and an insane ability to regenerate that makes him impossible to kill. All the Old Ones put together can't beat him!
But Rong An has one fatal weakness. Sure, he has plenty of roots, but he has no eyes or ears. He can only sense the world through the planet's magnetic field and nearby water sources.
Luckily, he has a good friend in the old world: a mute cat-bird with wings! The cat-bird is injured, missing a leg, and can't fly very far. It often dozes on his shoulder. It's Rong An's eyes: its night vision and hearing are top-notch, and it flies without making a sound. Its fluffy head can even turn 270 degrees. In the lightless old world, it can spy on everything!
After becoming symbiotic with the cat-bird, Rong An can finally see the world!
The cat-bird perches quietly on his shoulder. The cat-bird opens its big eyes. The cat-bird preens. The wind ruffles the cat-bird's fluffy pants...
The cat-bird's ear tufts stand up!
Oh! Rong An gets pecked. He angrily shakes his leaves, and the cat-bird flies away.
Then a hole suddenly opens up in the old world. The curious banyan tree crawls inside, and keeps crawling until he reaches the post-apocalyptic wasteland. He can never go back!
Oh no! He left his cat-bird behind! Without the cat-bird, he can't see a thing. He's no longer the Big Boss who struck fear into the hearts of the Old Ones!
Jiang Shan has spent forty years holding his ground in the Arctic. Since the age of thirteen, he has lived in this old, run-down astronomical observatory.
A faint kerosene lamp illuminates this last unspoiled refuge, abandoned by humanity. Beyond the permafrost lie unseen nuclear waste and heavy-metal garbage, sealing Blue Star beneath layer after layer. The planet has long since stopped breathing.
At the final moment of his fight against the genetically mutated monsters, the old man finally fell. He thought that, like Blue Star, his life would quietly disappear into the ashes. But then he had a dream.
He saw rainforests and broad, rushing rivers, things he had only ever seen in books and on computers.
It was a strange dream, like a delusion brought on by obsession.
The old man opened his eyes and struggled to look at his arm, wounded down to the bone.
A leaf fell. He hadn't seen anything green in a very long time.
Then he froze in shock.
Inside the tiny observatory, snow blanketed the world outside the window. A small, warm flame struggled to burn in the fireplace.
A child with deathly pale skin sat there, eyes unfocused, repeatedly pushing his fingers into the fire.
The instant those soft, pale fingers touched the flames, they turned into branches. They crackled as they burned in the minus-seventy-degree night, but the child seemed not to feel pain and kept burning for a long time.
"Hello, human. I'm a tree."
"Have you seen my cat? It's a bird that looks like a cat, with big eyes and a head that keeps turning this way and that. It can't talk."
"It has a broken leg. Poor thing. I just lost it."
The CP is a little tree and a little bird. Both are disabled in their own way, and both are strong. Apart, they're a powerhouse; together, they're brainless and clueless, a no-brains-and-no-smiles duo.
The story is from the top's perspective. The top is a shameless Old One, with survival as his only passive skill. He has no divine powers, no supernatural mutations, and can't fight. All he can do is guzzle water, stand still in comfort, grow roots and branches like crazy to take up space, and make strange sounds as he pumps out oxygen. His self-healing is absurdly powerful. He has a terrible memory, likes making things up, and has no human sense of good and evil. His personality is as tangled and obstinate as his roots. He can eat any kind of wastewater, purify any kind of soil, and likes scattering seeds everywhere to reproduce without limit. He may have wreaked havoc in the old world, but in the apocalypse, he's a blessing to the world. In theory, he's invincible in Earth Online, but he's scared of his dad and his wife.
The bottom is a Siberian eagle-owl, a cool, battle-scarred little bird. It isn't mute; it just thinks the top is too noisy to bother talking to. It travels from the apocalypse to the old world to restore the rainforest and drags the top along with it, never expecting to wind up with a plant-type beagle.
The relationship between the top and Jiang Shan is father and son. No bullying old men or children.
A small heads-up that isn't really a warning: the blurb was written by the banyan tree, so it makes him look a little better than he is. The actual story takes precedence. (He's a lot worse than the blurb makes him sound.)
Theme: For the world!
For civilization!
