Once Chase fell unconscious, he found himself in what seemed to be an endless white expanse. His first instinct upon reaching here was to take a preliminary look around.
However, there wasn’t much to see. Though one could argue there was actually a lot.
After a few moments, Chase walked a few steps forward. The sound of his footsteps seemed to echo several times over, creating a rather distracting cacophony of sounds. Eventually, he stopped walking, letting the overlapping sounds of footsteps gradually die down.
Chase narrowed his eyes as he continued to look around him.
He felt a little strange, and after a few moments, he realized it was because there was no bow on him. On top of that, his clothes were normal casual ones that were not tattered or bloodied.
Nor was there a faintly bad smell coming from him from a lack of a shower.
His condition made it seem like he was living a normal life, before all of the occurrences of the apocalypse. However, this didn’t make Chase feel any more comfortable. If anything, it did the opposite.
He shut his eyes tightly as he tried to recall what had last happened.
It took a few minutes, but he was just barely able to pick out the fact that they had left the city Tiana had built and headed off to get some more evolution points.
As pieces continued to connect into his mind, he remembered that they were fighting a rather strange opponent, one that could control puppets.
And then…
He couldn’t remember anything else.
Chase held onto the side of his head, trying to push his memories further, but they seem to have been cut off entirely. After a little while longer, he gave up on trying to recall any more.
He was beginning to consider his options, though there weren’t exactly that many in his current situation.
As he was pondering, he suddenly felt the place distort rather violently. Chase himself was unaffected, but distortions appeared on the endless white expanse.
They settled down quickly afterwards, but he was still a little concerned.
Then, a few moments later, the rippling became extremely strong. It was as though he was trapped inside a giant rubber ball, and that rubber was being stretched to its very limits.
And then, it was cut.
Tears formed in the endless white expanse, expanding rapidly. And once it cleared up, it revealed… himself.
His younger self to be exact, out in the park, playing around.
Chase was a bit bewildered, but decided to walk up to his younger self and observe him. It didn’t seem like his presence was noticed. He attempted to reach out and touch his younger self, but his hand phased right through.
At that point, he simply let his arms fall to his sides as he decided to observe.
Chase was playing by himself, and there weren’t many other kids around.
At some point, when he was at the highest point he could reach in the park, he saw some kids younger than him off in the distance.
There was a kid with black hair getting shoved around by two other kids. They seemed quite a bit younger than him. The two kids seemed rather arrogant.
Chase actually remembered this, despite this being many many years ago. He walked over to look at the kid with black hair and noticed something.
Though he was being shoved around, there was a clear look in his blue eyes. From what Chase could tell, that kid wasn’t afraid. Rather, he was clearly intending on doing something. This wasn’t something that he had remembered from before.
However, before that happened, his younger self rushed in, running down a slide and jumping off halfway. Little Chase’s feet slammed into the wood chips, scattering them around in the air.
This attracted the attention of both the kid with black hair and the two other kids.
Little Chase pointed towards them.
“Leave him alone! What did he do to you?”
The two kids frowned exaggeratedly.
“Why do you care?”
“It’s none of your business.”
As for the kid with black hair, he gave a curious look.
“Who are you?”
Little Chase thumped his chest.
“I am a person you can stand behind!”
After saying that, he got in between the kids. Because he was a substantial amount older, he was also quite a bit taller.
The two kids looked displeased.
“Get out of the way!”
“You will regret this!”
Chase couldn’t help but let out a dry chuckle when he looked at his younger self. But then, his smile disappeared.
Little Chase suddenly frowned strangely, looking at the two kids with scary eyes. He gave off a pressure that wouldn’t just come from being taller or older. It was something closer to what one would see from a soldier on the battlefield.
In fact, it would actually be far worse.
Despite taking a spectator role, Chase couldn’t help but feel slightly frightened by his younger self. Right after that fear appeared, he immediately felt strange.
Why in the world was he afraid of himself?
And in a vision no less.
Though, it definitely seemed like he wasn’t the only one that shared this fear.
The two kids were trembling, nearly unable to stand up. In fact, one of them directly wet themselves. After just a few more moments, the two of them ran away crying.
“Waaaaaaah!”
“Mamaaaa!”
After the two kids ran away, Little Chase turned around with a rather proud expression.
“You are saved now!”
The kid with black hair looked up to him enthusiastically, with clear admiration
“Wow! You’re so powerful!”
Little Chase smirked.
“Heh. Naturally.”
The kid raised both hands in the air.
“Can you teach me?”
Little Chase proudly straightened up his back and raised a finger.
“Of course! Make sure that you always fight for someone else!”
The kid seemed rather confused, furrowing his brows and putting a finger on his chin.
“No, I mean teach me how you became so powerful!”
Little Chase giggled.
“That’s exactly what I am teaching you! If you care enough to help someone else, the power comes all on its own.”
The kid’s mouth hung open slightly as he let out a gasp in awe.
“Wow, that’s so cool!”
Little Chase gave him a thumbs up.
“I know!”
Chase let out a soft sigh as he watched all of this. The background became distorted once more. Then, he saw his younger self once more, looking upwards.
Opposite to him was his mother, holding onto the sides of his face with both hands.
“Chase, it’s not too bad because you are a kid now, but you can’t offend some people, alright?”
Little Chase seemed rather upset.
“But they were the ones wrong!”
His mother let out a helpless sigh.
“I know, I know. But it’s not always about who’s right or wrong. It’s about surviving.”
Chase looked rather solemn as he watched this. He recalled that his naive younger self didn’t even slightly believe his mother. In fact, he didn’t even really understand.
Even though Chase was just a kid, he was living in a rather run-down and shady area. As such, there were several times where he witnessed some less than favorable people doing things.
However, Chase knew that he was far weaker, though he based that more on the fact that he was younger at the time. While he did piss some people off, people weren’t able to find out that it was him.
But what he didn’t know was that his parents were also involved in these shady businesses. That was actually the primary reason that they lived here in the first place.
While Chase never directly got caught, he would eventually find out that he ended up leaving clues that led to his place.
That ended up making the people suspect his parents.
And in the end, some people were sent to kidnap one of their children.
At the time, Chase was not in the house. However, his little sister was.
As he was recalling these things, a high-pitched screech filled his ears, giving him quite the headache and prompting him to dig his fingers into his scalp in pain. The space around him distorted to show his younger self at his doorstep. The door was already wide open, and little Chase seemed confused.
In the end, he walked in without caring too much.
However, everything seemed ruined.
When he was younger, he was hardly afraid of anything, and as such charged in. A thick smell of blood filled the air. Along with that, there were several people screaming at each other rather loudly. He followed those voices.
As for Chase, he followed behind with a slow walk, not too anxious to see what happened.
The voices got clearer when he got closer, however.
“Are you retarted? Why did you kill the person we were supposed to take hostage?”
“Fuck, man, she was biting me, alright? I just wanted to put her in her place.”
“With a fucking bullet to her heart? Explain yourself shithead, or we are going to pop a cap in that thick skull. You must be working for the snakes, aren’t you?”
Once Chase reached the living room, he saw his younger self frozen in shock. Six or so burly adults were standing around a tied up dead body. They all had pistols in their hands, and in the middle of them was a little girl. She was bound, but there wasn’t much of a point in restraining her.
The little girl’s eyes were bulging out of their sockets, while a trail of blood leaked from her mouth. Along with that, there was a rather bloody hole in the middle of her chest.
This was Chase’s sister.
Once his younger self showed up, the guy who killed the hostage had his eyes light up.
“Haha, look at all of you overreacting, we have a hostage right here!”
He rushed over and grabbed onto Chase’s wrist with one hand while the other one held onto the gun leisurely. The man turned around with a confident smile, looking at the others.
“See? You all are so uptight and unadaptable like one tiny mistake would cause a collapse of the plan.”
The guy did not notice the strange look Little Chase had right now. It was a rather terrifying one. With a small frown and dead eyes.
While the man was still looking behind himself, Little Chase grabbed onto the man’s hand that was holding onto the gun, pointed at the stomach, then forcefully pushed against the man’s trigger finger. It was all in one swift motion.
A loud blast rang out in the room, and blood splashed out.
The man did not even slightly suspect that a child would fight back, thus dropped his guard completely. In the end, he paid quite the price.
The man groaned in pain and found himself falling to the ground. With both hands, he covered the gunshot wound on his stomach, but the wound from when the bullet exited was far worse.
He was losing blood rather quickly.
As for Chase, he had taken the gun out of the man’s hands and began pointing it at the other five people.
For a split second, the other five were in shock, but they still didn’t seem that concerned. Some people took cover behind a wall, while others pointed their own guns at him.
Before Little Chase even got a chance to fire his second shot, two people had already pulled their triggers while aiming at him.
When Chase saw this scene, he initially felt a bit of melancholy. However, as the situation went on, he gradually felt that his survival didn’t exactly make sense. Sure, he had a gun, but he was facing five other people that not only also had a gun, but had the proper knowledge of how to use one.
Then, he found out his answer.