Chapter 10: Pull and Switch
Written by Etnalla
Edited by Goald3n
Lucky's hand was tightly gripped by Judges as his bro pulled him along. Together they went into one of the side tunnels in the mine. From the sound of it the wendigos were everywhere and whether or not they ran into one would depend on their luck—his and his bro's. In which case Lucky hoped his bro had much better luck than him. Despite his name, the events of his life were often as unlucky as could be....what he could remember of them anyway.
As they flew through the tunnels Lucky took the time to observe the paintings on the walls as they passed. At the speed they were running the images just blurred together in an incoherent mess. Still, aside from running Lucky had nothing else to do, and sorting out the images was pretty easy.
After the events outside the cave he'd tried to control how slow he saw the world. He was able to make it move a bit faster with some cool concentration, which, in all honesty, was a relief. Seeing the world in slow motion would get boring after awhile, and after long time it would get madness inducing, especially if only your mind was moving faster but your body was as slow as ever. All Lucky had to do was let his concentration slip a bit and the blur of images began to sort themselves out.
Since Judge had chosen to avoid the paintings, Lucky was also unable to really take a good look at them. He wasn't really that interested in them, just curious, and as a curious person he couldn't help but wonder what they meant. Almost all the images depicted tribal-looking people fighting with the wendigos.
The tribal-looking people were covered in a tapestry of intersecting tattoos and seemed to fight the wendigos with equal ferocity. They didn't use any weapons, and met the wendigos' claws and teeth with their own bodies.
While the images weren't very detailed and quite crude in design, they instilled in Lucky an odd sense of fear. It felt primal in nature. A fear that wasn't born from reason or ignorance but the fear that all creatures felt when facing their death. The longer he looked the more the sense of death began to fill his mind.
His vision swam and began to blur as his mind began to buckle against the fear assailing him. Fortunately for him the genetic constraint was still active and worked to heal the damage as it occurred.
All of a sudden his field of vision turned black and he couldn't see anything. The loss of his sight caused him to stumble, throwing him off balance.
"What are you doing!? Move!" He heard Judge shout.
Lucky felt himself be lifted into the air as his bro carried him on his back. He marveled at his bro's reaction, taking less than a second to pick him up and resume running. Despite the fact that he couldn't see anything, his other senses were still active and all performing at levels that exceeded normal humans.
He could feel the moments in the air as they ran, hear Judge's tired breaths and the wendigos' enraged screeches, smell and taste the fear and adrenaline that both parties, them and the wendigos, were unconsciously letting out. More than that though, he could feel something else within Judge. A faint formless something that writhed about inside him.
Despite the fact that he had no idea what it was he could feel that his bro was fighting some sort of battle against it, so, regardless of his knowledge on the matter, he decided to do something about it—if his bro was fighting against it, then it was obviously bad.
Not knowing exactly what to do Lucky let his instincts take over. While he couldn't do anything to the something that his bro was fighting, he could help his bro by taking care of some of the fatigue he was feeling. It had been some time since the last time he'd done this but years of being forced to do it made it easy for him to fall back into the motions.
With a little concentration Lucky focused on the sensations currently plaguing Judge's body. He quickly identified three as being the most detrimental to his bro: exhaustion, stress, pain. Oddly enough Lucky didn't feel much fear from Judge, that was another point towards his bro's greatness. After identifying what plagued Judge the most Lucky prepared himself for what would come next—he had done this a lot of times but each experience was always different from the last. Lucky pulled.
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He pulled on those sensations and began to draw them into himself. His entire body shuddered violently at the flood of exhaustion, stress, and pain that flowed into his body—completely shocking him with its volume and concentration. Normally only a little bit would flow in the beginning, taking quite some time for it increase to noticeable levels. Now, instead of a trickle, the sensations he pulled came at him in a violent surge, completely against his expectations.
The waves of fatigue, stress, and pain that he pulled out of Judge assailed him without stopping. Every moment that passed he felt his breath became more labored, his chest become tighter, and his heart beat faster. Worst of all was the pain. It came at him far more violently than the others as if looking to drown him in its depths. Maybe, he could have dealt with the pain if it came at him slower, he was quite used to pain after all, but facing the sudden assault his resistance crumbled almost as quickly as it had formed.
Move.
Seeing Lucky trying, and failing, to fight against the sensations Luke immediately took charge and put their childish side to sleep. Taking control of the body Luke fought back against the waves the best way possible, he ignored them. Luke felt it was really annoying to have to always fight with Jack and Michael whenever one of them needed to come out and take charge of the body—he was the smartest of them and the only one of them that was unable to feel pain, you would think that would make him the go to guy for most problems.
Still, each time he would try to assume control, Jack, Michael, or the both of them, would always try to keep him from doing so. Jack would always insist that he was the better choice, regardless of the fact that his brand of mindless action was needed by Lucky, while Michael would only allow minimal interference from them—lightly influencing Lucky but never taking full control.
Luke would have questioned why exactly did Lucky so easily trust a random stranger, but among all of them Lucky was the best judge of character. The childish one never failed in finding the right person they needed to survive, whether that was a conscious action or subconscious one was unimportant; the childish one's skill had saved them more times than they could count.
Continuing Lucky's actions, Luke kept pulling on Judge's fatigue, stress, and pain. He easily blocked out the pain but the fatigue and stress were a bit harder to deal with. Still, he kept on pulling, relieving Judge's burden as much as he could, it didn't take much to know that if Judge went down he would to—both of them torn apart by the pursuing wendigos.
This continued for some time until the unexpected happened. Judge stopped. Luke didn't even have time react, blind as he was, before a loud boom and a rush of hot air came from behind them. Another rumbling sound like the one before came again and suddenly Luke felt like he was falling.
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Author’s note
Well here is chap 10! Hope you guys enjoyed it! The shorter chapters make it much easier to crank out new ones. The only problem is when I get a new idea and have to start the whole thing over again! So yeah, it's gonna be shorter chaps now cause I think that some of the older chaps went on for way too long or were more independent chapters put together rather than one cohesive chapter. Like always, see you in the next chapter and please enjoy the story. The poll for a game or a manga for the next arc is 50/50 at the time I am writing this so I am wondering whether telling you guys which world would be for each would help in the decision making. Although I kinda wanna keep it a surprise. Next few chapters I'll be revealing Judge's ability and if any of you can guess it before the reveal they will get an.....INTERNET COOKIE!! Also I know that isn't how multiple personalities work in real life, I'm not an idiot, but hey, it's not like hundreds of anime and games haven't represented it the same way?
Editor’s note
Finally the true reveal of his multiple personality disorder, guess this explains who michael is (first chapter). Author san has a… complicated and creative mind. What do you guys think happened at the end? State any of your opinions and don’t forget to rate!