Everything felt weird to Benjamin.
It wasn't cold or hot, but there was a muted pain somewhere in his body that he couldn't feel quite as well as he would like. But he didn't mind it. The loss of feeling, that is. There were still some other sensations as well as the pain, like an odd weight in his chest, an unusual nothingness in his lower body. But overall he welcomed it, no sadness and no happiness. Sure, he would miss his Grandpa, but he would meet his Mom and Dad! He will meet them, and his Grandma! And if he was a good boy, he might even meet the Hero himself!
He was finally free to leave this world and its pains behind. He would smile if he could, but he didn't have the energy to do it. Benjamin stopped thinking, and started drifting away into whatever awaited him.
But that pain was still there. Lingering, pulsing. Moving up his body and through it. It felt almost unnatural with its dedicated rhythm. And the weight in his lungs, he could feel more clearly, was getting too much. He tried to breathe again, but doing so just made that weight heavier. Benjamin's mind started working again and panic started creeping in. The pain flared and he opened his eyes.
He was underwater, the usual blueish lake water had an almost red tint to it. Like diluted blood.
The memories of what happened that week hit him hard. His parent's unexplained death, his grandpa trying to help him cope with the sudden loss, and finally the fishing trip. Something in the water blew up just as they were going to leave. And thinking about that reminded him of something that brought even more panic with it.
Where was his grandpa! Benjamin struggled through the water, trying to find where he was. But he couldn't move through the water as well as he would like. Trying to move, his lungs screaming for air, he attempts to at least move upwards. But in doing so, he gets to have a somewhat clouded look of his arm, and bringing his panic into a peak. It looked like it had been torn off in the explosion and if one limb had been destroyed, then it's safe to assume another had been lost as well.
It was all starting to become too much for poor Benjamin. He would have entered shock, he should have, but it suddenly went away. Sure, it was there together with the memories. But his body told him otherwise, if anything he was completely fine. The weight in his lungs was still there, but he didn't feel the need to breathe. His limbs were numb, sure, but he could feel them again. He could actually see them now.
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He looked around the water for his Grandpa, but all he saw was dirty water and damaged surroundings. Worried, he swam up to see if his Grandpa was somewhere above the water. As he breached the water's surface, there were only pieces of the old boat and some scraps of cloth soaking up the water. He rubbed the lake water out of his eyes and turned around to see if there was anything there, but it was all the same.
Benjamin didn't know what to do, but was sure that getting to shore was something he had to do. After that, he would have to find someone to help him find his Grandpa. Turning around and around, trying to find a shore, he decides on a direction and starts swimming. But as a 10-year-old who has barely been around any kind of large body of water, swimming was something he didn't quite know how to do. Yet as a numbing sensation spread throughout his body, probably from the cold water, he managed to cross the distance in a much shorter time than expected.
And finally reaching the shore, he flopped over onto his back and staring at the sky. The sunlight chasing away the stars, like a large kraken against fish. Benjamin wanted to cry, having lost so much in such a short time, but the tears didn't flow as much as they would. Only a single, lone, tear that joined the lake water already on his face. He thought he wanted to scream, he wanted to do so many things, but he felt it in his body. It wouldn't make any sense to cry over what has happened. Where this line of thought even came from didn't make sense to him, he was only ten years old!
But Vita knew where that line of thinking came from, for it was Vita that planted the thoughts there. Vita doesn't have the greatest control over others minds, since that seems to be in a similar category as someone's Soul. But the brain was something Vita could affect, and that would affect the mind in turn. Perfect to make sure a child doesn't think about seeking help.
Which sounds wrong, for sure. Evil even, but when did Vita care about being good? Benjamin was nothing more than a walking experiment waiting to make a reaction for Vita to document. And there had been a reaction. The reverse-fins from the pommer, which wouldn't work for Vita, worked as intended when they grew out of Benjamin's body. Of course, his body had to be numbed and the reverse-fins had to be recycled to keep them hidden. But this had proven something rather dangerous.
It proved that Benjamin had a soul that could fuel the magical organs Vita might stumble upon. And would you know it, there was a magical organ smaller than a cell but strong as dynamite. And before this poor boy potentially explodes into a fine, red mist, it was time to introduce him to his new roommate.
…
Benjamin had by now placed his hands over his face to simply stop existing at the moment and simply breathe. Like how his mom and dad told him to do if he got angry. It was meant to help him calm down, but it wasn't working. Probably since he wasn't furious. He was having emotions, that he knew, but they were dulled by something inside him that he didn't understand. It was frustrating.
“Ay lil'man, you mind me sharing your body with myself and I?” Benjamin froze, propped himself up using an arm, and looked around for who it was that spoke.