Seeing those eyes, I knew something terrible was about to happen.

“What the F---, Am I about to get stabbed?” I’m thinking to myself.

Suddenly, I see Brandon flinching; the next thing I know, he is jerking his arms forward. I can see the shine from the metallic luster the style's pen is giving, and it's fast approaching my chest.

I’m thinking, “This is going to hurt so bad.”

I close my eyes and concentrate on the pain that is about to come. I know there will be a lot of pain, but it will depend on where and how deep the stylus goes, which will determine how bad it will be.

I cannot help but think about the skill Enhanced Skin that Roy tried to give me. If I had that skill right now, I could save myself.

“If I had learned the DNA sequence, could I have used it?”

“No, I don’t think so.”

“I’ve never heard of any 12-and-a-half-year-old kid using any skills. Even if I had the DNA sequence, I couldn’t use the skill.”

“Hmm, I even remember the sequence, GGA CTG GAG TGT…” I start going through the whole sequence.

While having all these thoughts, just a few milliseconds have passed in real-time.

The momentum of Brandon's swinging arms brings me back; I am expecting acute pain any second now when suddenly I feel a flash of heat from my chest and arms.

“What the hell,” I tell myself, “Did he strike a nerve?”

I open my eyes and expect to see the stylus pen plunged into my chest and blood gushing everywhere, but what I find is a shocked Brandon looking at me in utter disbelief. I look at my chest and see the stylus pen in Brandon’s hand bent in almost an L shape.

Was the pen made of plastic or something? I look at this pen, and it's bent almost in the middle.

“What’s happening here?” I say, not believing what I'm seeing.

I look at Brandon, and he seems more confused than I do. His eyes start getting redder and redder by the second. He gets this awful crazy smile and mumbles incoherently, “Why is it him? Did he steal it? No, I’m the only one allowed to get skills first….”

The next thing I knew, he shifted his gaze back at me and had this unnerving look in his eyes. His mouth is in this half frown, and his teeth grind louder than ever. His veins pop in and out from his forehead and neck.

“You are not allowed to be better than me,” he says in this cold, chilling voice.

He spins the stylus 180* so that the other side of the pen is now facing down. He grabs it with both hands and lifts it over his head again. Although the back part is not as sharp as the front, it will still cause damage if stabbed.

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As he does this, I think, “There is no way I will get lucky like the first time.”

I didn’t even pay attention to what he was mumbling or saying. All I wanted was to free myself.

Something in me told me to throw a punch. I don't know if it was survival instinct or something else, but I'm not wasting time trying to find out. I moved my right arm away from my face, lunged forward, and threw a short upper punch straight to Brandon's head.

Brandon’s face is uncovered and unprotected as he is holding the stylus pen over his head with both hands.

Seeing this, I went straight for the face. In a split second, he left himself unprotected, and I landed a solid punch underneath his chin.

I didn’t think I could muster much force behind the punch, so I let it rip, hoping for the best. As soon as I landed the punch, I heard teeth clash with teeth, and Brandon lifted about four feet in the air from where he was sitting as the force of the punch threw him back.

Surprised by the outcome, I got up in a hurry as I was expecting Brandon to spring back up and try to kill me even more now.

But he didn’t!

I was a little skeptical and kept some distance at first. But after a few seconds of not seeing Brandon get up, I went in for a closer look.

Sure enough, he was out cold. Even more surprising was the giant welt on his chin from the punch; even two teeth had been knocked out.

“What is going on?” Must have been my catchphrase for the day, as that is the only thing that kept repeating in my head through all this.

I was in total disbelief at what I had just done. I had never punched anyone before, and if you told me I would punch like this, man, I would have said you were crazy.

“What's going on with my hands?” I mumbled softly to myself as I felt a little bit of heat coming out from them. I picked them up, and as soon as I looked at them, my mouth dropped from shock.

“It can't be?” I kept thinking, “Can it?”

These were the two things that kept running through my mind right now.

Staring at two familiar yet not-familiar hands in front of me. I asked myself, " Are these mine?"

Yes was the answer but doubts still lingered in my head, "were they really mine?"

I asked myself this as both hands; although they looked like regular human hands, they were not. They were covered in what looked like perfectly overlapping diamond-shaped scales. They ran from my fingers to my upper biceps.

“These look like scales.”

But after a closer look, I knew they weren't. I can't lift or rotate the scale. It's more like a diamond-shaped etching than an actual scale. Either way, this is incredible.

“They run to my biceps,” I said, thinking, “Hmmm..I wonder how much of my body is covered in this?”

The first place I looked was my chest, which also radiated some heat, like my arms. I took off my shirt, and my guess was correct. My chest also showed the same diamond scale etching as my arms.

“Could this have stopped the stylus pen from stabbing me?” I was wondering when I heard a noise coming from the main house.

“Baby, where are you at? Mommy just got you some new toys, and we brought back some food.”

The Madam was calling out for her baby boy.

Had she known that I had just knocked her baby boy into next week, she probably would have thrown me out and then had me killed.

Her baby boy was everything to her. So, I had to think fast.

“Damm Khyrum what do we do?” I asked myself as I felt a sense of urgency about the situation.

“I know,” I mumbled to myself.

I placed Brandon face down on the pavement and had him lie like he had just tripped and landed face-first into the ground. I put a big rock next to him and the bend stylus pen. This would provide an excuse for the bump on his forehead, the welt on his chin, and the two knocked-out teeth.

With the evidence, it seems like he was playing with the pen, did not see the rock, and tripped over it, landing flat on his face.

I did this in record time and ran back into the guest house, closed the door, locked it, and turned off the lights.

I ran back into the bedroom and jumped in the bed. As I lay there, I knew the show would start soon. I was waiting for the screams to begin at any moment.

As I waited, I told myself, “K, we must go hunting tonight. I said I would not do it for a while, but this idiot spent our money. We need to make it up quickly.” Just then, I heard it.

“BRANDON BABY!!!!!!!!”