Little Chase twisted his body to the side as two of the others aiming at him pulled their triggers. He dodged both bullets.
Then, he fired a shot of his own, landing straight on a man’s forehead and causing gray and white matter to splatter on the wall behind him.
“Shit!”
Several more bullets began firing towards Little Chase, as the people who took cover joined in, and others crouched down to shoot.
However, he had suddenly become something like the best dancer in the world, twisting from side to side and abruptly dashing in directions one after another.
As for Chase who was spectating all this, he walked right in the middle of the gunfire, with all of the bullets passing straight through him. He then looked directly at the face of his younger self.
Chase suddenly raised an eyebrow.
The gun in his younger self’s hand began changing, shrinking down in size to fit his small hand while his light blue eyes gradually shifted color.
Becoming golden.
This change wasn’t something that he realized at the time.
The others fighting him seemed to notice though.
“What the- his eyes!”
“I couldn’t give a fuck if I wanted to, just shoot the kid!”
Yet, despite having an overwhelming advantage they began falling one by one. As for Little Chase, he was completely unscathed. He shot his gun once every second, and each time he shot a person’s head would blast into blood splattering across the ground behind them.
It did not take long until there was only one person left.
The man in question was taking cover in another room, taking in slow deep breaths. It took him only a second or so to regain his composure and remain completely silent. He was utterly confused on how all five of his teammates died just like that to some kid, but that wasn’t enough to make him give up.
With his line of work, people dying was a common occurrence. One of his companions just casually killed Chase’s sister just now, showing this.
The man pointed his gun towards the entrance, waiting patiently.
Then, a bang rang out.
The man felt dizzy all of a sudden, but didn’t understand why. In his last moments, he put his hand up to the side of his head and felt blood.
Then blacked out.
On the other side of the wall, Little Chase retracted the pistol he had put on the side of the wall. He didn’t even walk over to the other side to check if he truly killed the man. For whatever reason, he was just that confident.
The spectator, Chase himself narrowed his eyes when he saw all of this. He did remember somehow killing all of the people in the house, but never thought about how he did it. It was something he tried his best not to think about.
In fact, he was questioning if the vision he was seeing right now was actually his own memories. If so, it would mean he had some sort of power that he wasn’t aware of.
As weird as it was, it would actually explain how he was able to even survive this encounter in the first place.
He let out a soft sigh and watched his younger self walk over to the first person he shot.
Then push the tip of the gun into the man’s eye socket.
For the first second, there was no response, but then the man couldn’t help but wince in pain.
“Wait, let me go, I don’t even really care about those guys!”
He seemed to want to plead more, but a gunshot cut him off before he could say any more. The blood splashed back onto Little Chase’s face, but his expression did not change. He remained still for a moment, almost like he was fully taking in what he had just done.
Then, Little Chase looked towards the corpse of his sister. He slowly walked over to her side.
The gun in his hand clattered onto the floor.
Then, he dropped down on his knees.
Chase walked over to the couch in the living room and sat on a section that was covered in brain mush. It was quite uncomfortable, unlike an actual couch it felt like he was sitting on stone.
However, he didn’t even notice it, as his attention was all on his younger self.
Little Chase gently picked up his sister and brought her into a soft embrace. The blood spilled onto his clothes, but he couldn’t notice that at this point.
He spoke through trembling lips.
“Sorry, sister.”
Then closed his eyes.
“Your brother did not listen to mother’s advice.”
Chase did not move for a few moments, but eventually, stood up. He knew that this was just a vision of the past, but he still couldn’t help but bring himself to speak up.
“Naive.”
With that, he walked out of the house.
And once he did so, a bright light flashed while his vision suddenly cleared.
“Agh…”
Chase would’ve thought he woke up in a bed if it wasn’t for the fact he was greeted by a violent jostling sensation. His eyes opened, and Tori’s face appeared in front of him.
She smirked, and spoke while panting.
“You finally woke up, huh?”
Chase quickly realized he was being carried by Tori.
He then closed his eyes.
“I’ll go back to sleep.”
The corner of Tori’s lip twitched.
“Wake up, damsel!”
Chase opened his eyes.
“Ok, ok. Just give me a few moments, my body feels weak. What is happening anyway.”
Kairos had a small frown on his face as he carried Sam away.
“We are running from something.”
Chase raised an eyebrow.
“…something?”
Kairos sighed.
“Basically an enemy we can’t afford to offend.”
Chase narrowed his eyes ever so slightly.
“Spooky.”
Kairos took a glance at Sam, wondering if he had woken up yet. He had been making quite violent movements in his sleep, clenching his fists and frowning intensely. However, he was definitely still asleep.
Seeing this, Kairos furrowed his brows, but did not panic.
Since Sam had fallen asleep later than Chase, he figured that it logically made sense that he would wake up later too.
However, he would turn out to be asleep for much longer than imagined.
When Sam was taken over, he too was sent into an endless white expanse.
However, unlike Chase, he recalled what had just happened immediately. He realized that he was in the middle of a fight, but was suddenly thrust into this place.
Sam instinctively reached for his waist, wanting to take one of the sharpened bones he had put there. However, he only ended up grasping air. He realized that he was covered with normal clothes, like he wasn’t actually in an apocalypse right now.
Sam frowned and tried to channel mana into his hand for his blade spell. Unfortunately, it ended up doing nothing. There wasn’t even a tiny bit of mana in his body right now.
He did not give up though.
Sam raised his leg and slammed it down with a grunt. A fairly loud tap echoed within the endless white expanse, while his foot landed down on the rock-solid ground beneath him.
As though this place wanted to further frustrate him, he didn’t get the normal feedback one would from stomping hard onto the ground. While it was hard like rock, it was also soft like cotton.
Sam furrowed his brows from the loud reverberating echoes. He attempted to stomp and even punch the ground, but the only thing that did was to make uncomfortably loud reverberating echoes.
He wasn’t even able to hurt himself, save for his ears.
It was as though he was in a padded cell, where people too insane for their own good are put in.
Sam then tried running, but that ended up accomplishing nothing.
After just a little bit of running, he already got winded, like he was back in his worn-down body that worked a nine-to-five.
Sam hunched over and put his hand on his knees, panting.
That was the moment when the world around him distorted significantly, ripping and tearing. Before he knew it, Sam found himself in a familiar place.
It was a lecture theater, where university classes were held.
There were rows of seats gradually going up, all filled with people. It was as if a really popular movie was showing, but it was actually just a slideshow with a professor monotonously giving his lesson.
Sam blinked a few times, clearly a bit bewildered by the sight in front of him.
After looking around a little, he was able to catch sight of himself. And next to him, was his wife, and best friend at the time.
Sam walked down the steps slowly, and got next to his younger self. He waved his hand.
“Um, hello?”
There was no reaction. This made him realize that in this place, he couldn’t be seen. That he was only an observer.
As Sam spent more time here, the memory gradually became clearer to him. His freshman self leaned over to the side.
“Hey, do you understand a single thing that this guy is saying, Ananta?”
Ananta turned back to look at him with a slightly awkward expression.
“It’s only the second week of lectures, how do you already not understand? It’s just going to get way harder, you know that right? We are just starting university!”
Freshman Sam pressed his lips together.
“Well… I wasn’t paying attention to the first lecture at all. Honestly, I have no idea what the hell this delta epsilon stuff is.”
Ananta let out a soft sigh.
“I’ll teach you later, ok? Just try to understand what you can from this lecture.”
Freshman Sam blinked a few times and recoiled slightly.
“…Wait really?”
Ananta rolled her eyes.
“That was what you were trying to get at, weren’t you? I just said it for you.”
Freshman Sam scratched the side of his head awkwardly.
“Uh… yeah.”
This was a memory that stuck out to Sam in particular, because he was really just complaining for the sake of complaining. Venting his emotions was something he just did casually.
When Ananta proposed to teach him, he was genuinely surprised as he was not expecting that. That thought never actually crossed his mind.
However, he was also the awkward type of person that tended to go along with the flow. He had a natural inclination as to what words and actions wouldn’t piss the other person off.
And in this case, his freshman self had a strange inclination that Ananta would lash out at him if he said anything different.
His thoughts at the time were that Ananta was nicer than he expected and that he might as well go along with it.
Suddenly, a high-pitched shriek reached Sam’s ears, prompting him to grab onto his head with both hands.
The vision around him distorted significantly.
He saw a glimpse of himself along with Ananta, sitting at a table studying several months later.
Freshman Sam was writing down a series of numbers, while Ananta was looking over. After a few moments, she sighed.
“Why are you using permutations here? This is a combinations question, it literally says order does not matter in big bold font. ”
Freshman Sam gasped.
“Ah, crap!”
Ananta sighed, but was still smiling slightly.
“I told you to take this course in highschool.”
Freshman Sam laughed awkwardly.
“I uh, didn’t think it would actually be difficult. I thought probability was easy, with just a couple fractions here and there.”
Ananta laughed.
“You really think they are going to teach you an entire course that just has basic fractions in it?”
Freshman Sam raised his hands in the air.
“I didn’t think it through!”
The vision quickly distorted once more, but it was still this same room. The only differences being the scented candle lit and placed to the side, and the fluffy pillows on the seats.
On one side of the table, was a rather oblivious person. And on the other, was one that was lovestruck.