-Halfway across the world and approximately two months later.-
"Oh, my fuckin lord. Every day. It gets me every time I wake up. Not only am I a dude now, but I also ended up being an idiot all over again," A golden skinned one month-old baby with the stature of a 6-month-old child and the muscle mass/ bone density of a 1-year-old, frowned in a way unbefitting of her age. Well, his age... their age? Her age... But, like, his...?
"Gah. This is so annoying. The whole situation. Am I still me or did my memories just melt into that Idiot Jack's mind. If it's the latter, I don't know which of us is in the lead if that's even a thing... Fuck! It must be the melting bit. Jacq and Jack have no differences in my head, so which am I...", Salimon flipped onto his stomach in frustration and used her arms to prop his head up.
"Honestly. How hard is it to just keep track of the new memories you wake up with? Fuck my life, am I stupid or something? OH my god. Don't tell me I actually caught his stupid," he bashed her head against the feather down pillow underneath in frustration.
"I think I'm Jack? Or am I Jacqueline? Fuck me! Everything feels so wrong. My memories, my body, even this status garbage is wrong. I thought the character's name was Solomon. What the fuck is this unisex like change?"
Salimoon De Monte
Affiliation: Life
Blessings:
-IMMORTALITY lvl.1
*PASSIVE: Healing: (1x [10x]).
*ACTIVE: Healing Amplifier (10x [100x]/1x[10x] Per day).
*RESOURCE: Charge Generator (70x [100x]).
"The only good thing is the blessing still hits hard, or I would have been stuck as a dumb person forever. The only problem I have right now is my body. I can resolve this issue if I go to the
"FUCKING WHAT? Who bought it? How could they have more points than me? Ahh, dammit. I am stuck in this stupid guy's body," Sali lifted her eyes up and stared at the guardsmen by the only entrance and exit to his room.
"What the hell am I saying? It's one of those guys who has it. I can just talk them into helping me out. It's no big deal. I just have to deal with this for now", Sali blew a raspberry and squeezed her pillow since the odd looks the guardsmen gave him felt a bit off.
"Kalil, what do you think the young master is talking about," One of the guards whispered to his brother in arms.
"He may be smart, but he's just a baby. He's not saying anything. Now focus on your great honor. We are tasked with watching the new Messiah," the second guard said.
"I wouldn't be in this situation if I remembered that I was in a damn story. I would've changed the settings of my blessing to avoid my family's stupid blood test," Sali reviewed the original text granted by Big G and grumbled into her pillow even more since talking out loud made her feel awkward whenever someone thought he was trying to talk. In the story, Jack, the original Solomon, activated his blessing through pure instinct. He didn't know what his blessing did or how it worked but, through pure reaction, he used a power that revolved around an unstoppable healing factor that worked on mystical rules rather than biological limitations.
"And what type of family stabs a baby with 20 different needles as soon as they are born? It's absolutely insane," Sali also knew that her background information was similar to Death's champion's in that they both had completely insane religious families and followings. Instead of being born into a death cult, Sali's family proclaimed that they were the direct descendants of a certain religious "messiah". Though its veracity could not be tested, the family did have something that no other people in the world possessed.
"Let's stab this baby and see how fast it heals, oh wait, that's not enough, let's draw some blood and check to see if it's a better ingredient for our weird ass potions. Fucking insane. All of these people are fucking insane. Who thinks like that? Oooh, new baby, let's see if it can provide more medicine for our members and clients? Who sees a baby as a resource, these fucking animals", despite her complaining, it was a fact that each member of his family possessed a body that was insanely useful. Blood, skin, bone, hair, everything about them held some medical or drug-like property that put modern medicine to shame. The point was that Sali would, like Aaradhya, be able to grow to her fullest potential in terms of points and blessing usage if he learned from the family. At the very least, if she allowed himself to be used, her points would surge very nicely. The family, unlike Aaradhya's, only needed a little cut and a stopwatch to determine the worth of anyone in their community.
"A whole month. How do you drain a baby of their blood for an entire month? You fuckers are just lucky I can't move a lot or else I would've killed you all myself," Sali flipped around onto her back and stared at the ceiling with a pout. His family spent her entire first month of life taking whatever bodily fluids they could to test and retest their newest addition since there was almost no downtime in between the child's healing. A cut would instantly close the moment it was made. Thus, every time that they drew blood, it became harder to cut into her skin. It was only after a full month after he had been born that they stopped to let the child's calloused body soften up. It took nothing short of a diamond knife to cut Saal's skin toward the end of his family's experiments.
One researcher for the family determined that Sali had a mutation that made her divine in some way. It was even argued amongst the family that it was possible that the youngest member had a body that was purer than their founder, according to some damaged records. Sali couldn't have been more annoyed when she heard the talks and the plan that the family had made regarding his future. Unlike Jack, the original Solomon character, she did not think that bloodletting was something that she could endure, even if it netted quite the catch of points and achievements for the prime hero of Life. That was even if most of the point gains that were described in the original story, were in the shape of achievements such as:
The third achievement was signed with a cursive, "GoL- God of Life"
A few more came in a little bit longer than a week after his birth but their existence was promptly ignored as an annoying sound by Jack, the original Solomon. The first hero of Life happened to be in control of the body until her memories started to flood back in. He unlocked the
"Disregarding everything else, how does someone see giant golden letters flash in their head and not wonder what they mean or why they are seeing things? I just have to think about it and bam. The whole quest window opens up. And these other fucks! Do they need to take so much blood every time? At least I'm getting a lot of points...", Sali sighed, then nodded in acceptance.
"Bah! What the fuck am I saying? This is how I know I got dumber. Leave it to an idiot stereotype to remain relatively happy in this shitty situation. I'm not accepting it. I'm not," she thought about the life she would have if he did not remember anything about the story or her true personality.
"I shouldn't hate how stupid he was in the story, but I refuse to be a dense super idiot like Jack. I am Jacqueline and unlike that Idiot, I am prepared to escape and live my own life...", Jacq, the new Salimoon didn't argue with the trauma Jack suffered in the story because of his family, she lived it and endured just as he did but it was painful and stupid to continue dealing with. That was the problem with having her mind melded with a character from a story.
The world immediately outside of her family's compound was not exactly in a good place. Well, at least her current location was not a good place for a child to be all alone. It was an active warzone so she has seen and suffered her fair share. To prove a point, It was just then that an ear shattering explosion went off somewhere in the distance, throwing everyone in the family's compound into confusion. Jacq, completely used to running through active minefields or driving out of carpet bombing locations due to her previous occupation as a soldier, was not even a little bit rattled by the sound. Instead, she knew this was coming since it was part of the story as part of the original Solomon's background info.
"Invasion time! I'm ready to go Mr. Ghost man," Sali laughed like a moron as she adjusted her system settings. She clicked a button that said physical settings and adjusted a slider that said general audio settings. If someone else could see her settings, they would notice that nearly everything related to her body was categorized and had a slider next to it. Most were turned down to the lowest possible settings. Around her third bout of laughter, and the fifth round of explosions, Sali calmed down enough to hear two people discuss the safety of their young master, him, and the urgency of the matter. One of the men said he would go out and call over the rest of the guard in the villa, together, they would all forge an escape path.
"Watch out, men. There are ghosts lurking about," Sali sat up with a smile and looked towards the open door. She turned up her hearing slider once more and could make out the beating of hearts of the two guards in the room and just barely make out the droning beat of two other people shuffling about. Off in the distance, an explosion nearly ruptured her eardrums, so she once again lowered the slider. Anyway, like in the story, Sali could hear a sudden scuffle then see a body barrel through the door opening, landing centimeters from her extravagant crib before. The two soldiers that acted as his guard, dropped to the ground, needles poking out of their throats.
"Hey guys. I see you are here to pick me up...", Sali flipped her body over a third time to stand up in the crib and follow the person who dashed in. Her voice came out as a nonsensical babble but she didn't seem to care as excitement rose in her beating little heart. Inside of her room were two men dressed in urban, sand colored, military gear. A large, muscular man placed himself just behind the door, closed it, then pressed a small device against it. The smaller, speed inclined man that she followed, proceeded towards the only floor to ceiling window with a balcony in the room. He set up a quick rope system so the two men could rappel out at any time.
"Where is the extraction team," the smaller man said in English as he crouched at the window. He frowned when he realized something and locked eyes with his ally by the door. The large man frowned and then nodded. Explosions and gunfire blasted off everywhere except for where they were. Both men immediately understood what they had to do, they were now the extraction team, but not in the way they thought or prepared for.
"It was nice knowing you...", the larger man yelled as he threw the doors open and ran towards the noise he heard with wild abandon. He barreled into a stocky but shorter man. The other English-speaking soldier grabbed Sali and ran towards the window with great speed.
The larger soldier briefly overpowered one of Sali's guards and threw him to the ground, giving his brother in arms another few seconds of time to get clear. Sali's guard was much stronger despite having a smaller physique and threw the English-speaking soldier off of himself after a brief struggle. An explosion then engulfed everything behind the speedy man within a fraction of a second as the large English speaking soldier pulled the pin on a grenade he carefully kept in a bullet resistant chest compartment. The flames and shrapnel blasted against the smaller man's back as he rappelled out of the window. Even with his wounds, the man brought Sali to the ground safely. Even though he trembled when his feet touched the ground, he forced himself to skulk into a hidden architectural flaw the team discovered during their preparation phase: A deceptively large clearing sandwiched between two buildings and the compound's outer wall.
"Fuck. FUCK. fuck," the man was about to tear up when he put Salimoon down in a patch of grass. He was afraid he might drop the child in his unstable physical and emotional state. The soldier smacked his face and refocused his blurry eyes on the now rather than what happened. He took his shirt off to assess the damage done to his body. Wood and stone shrapnel peppered his skin, third degree burns ranged the full expanse of his back, and second-degree ones spread across the rest of his body in irregular patches. He looked at Salimoon with a distant spark of hope.
"You wouldn't happen to have some of your family's potion on you...", the man frowned at his own stupid words and then put on a friendly smile. He was talking to the baby, but something about Sali made him truly wonder. He had never seen a baby make the face of an adult like understanding and worry. A moment or two passed by in uncomfortable silence, until the sound of a march echoed throughout the near empty clearing. The soldier put a finger to his lips and then vanished right in front of Salimoon. Sali, almost reactively, put up the slider for hearing.
"Interacting with this guy is so different. To just naturally disappear in plain sight, Ridiculous. No wonder those guys are called ghosts…", it was at this time that Sali stopped ignoring the rhythmic steps of nearby troops. A pair of his family's guards broke off from the rest of the group and headed directly towards her location. They were loud in comparison to the cacophony of bombs and shots in the background, showing how close they were. Constant sensory overload would melt her brain if she wasn't careful, so she put the slider back down once the guards entered the clearing.
"Tch, he should be struggling right now, pushing his body like that. If I let him stay like this then later on during our dashing escape, he will collapse and I will be stuck in the same horrible life as the original me...", Sali sat herself up in the bushes that the man left him in and waited for a pair of footsteps to get closer.
"I wonder if Mr. Ghost knows ESL (English sign language). He should, considering his profession. Oh. Those guys aren't my family's guards. Are they from some other military force that decided to attack? How ballsy," two men rounded the corner in outfits similar to but not entirely like his own family's special forces. There was a slight difference in how they wore their gear which was a dead giveaway that they were not part of the family. They gave a quick scan and were about to leave the area when one of them focused a little bit too hard on a patch of grass in the corner of the dark little area.
"We found him...", The man took out a walkie talkie and adjusted the tuning knob to reach his squad. His ally was even worse as the soldier just walked forward like this whole situation was not odd.
"Idiot. Who the hell trained you two? How can you just enter an area without knowing if it's clear. Rookie mistake...", Sali watched as the English-speaking man silently approached the two enemy commandos from behind.
"Look. The baby is trying to talk. He's actually kind of cute right," the soldier said. He did not get a response because his ally was already dispatched by Mr. Soldier. The English speaking man quickly followed up and got rid of the second commando.
"This will have to do...", The man stripped down, removed the shrapnel that he could reach, gave himself a shot of adrenaline he found on one of the dead footmen, and replaced his clothes with the freshly, only slightly, bloodstained clothing of the footmen. He was about to change into the undamaged gear of the people that he assassinated when he caught sight of Salimoon's little fingers.
"Hey. Do you understand me," Sali acted out her thoughts with her body.
"It was in the reports but this, wow. It said you have impressive intelligence, but I didn't think it was true. No wonder everyone wants you....", The man whispered to himself. Sali rolled her eyes at the comment.
The man then said, "I do. How do you know English, never mind sign language?", incredulously. Such a thing was not in the reports. He just knew that the child was a bit special, even more so than the rest of his family, and possessed intelligence far beyond what a normal baby should have. This level of intellect, however, was frightening to say the least.
"You do not need to know that. Just know, Charlie Briggs, that we are just pawns in some stupid political game...", Sali got right to the main point and said what was directly stated in the info Big G gave her about the original story.
"...", The man waved "continue", as he thought about what the child expressed. He was not only confused, but frightened that the child knew his name. Not even the team that he was a part of knew his real name.
"I can heal you back up to full health with everything I have but I will only do it if you promise to keep me safe," Sali's single tooth shone. Briggs spoke with a frown and eyes that held a glint of fear as he asked, "If I don't accept?"
"You will die, and I will be tortured by whoever wins this little battle, which will be my family. I will then live for as long as I am useful, which will be for the rest of my life. Or until I am big enough to break out on my own, which would be within ten years," Sali showed.
"You have an adult's reasoning skills if you can see what will happen to us. I accept. How will you heal me," Briggs picked Salimoon up and hid in a corner of the little area. He could not find the strength to continue standing and waited for the booster shot to kick in. Not to mention killing and escaping from a small warzone, that was out of his depth with these injuries. To be completely honest, he went along with whatever the target told him entirely due to his delirium: The heat, his wounds and blood loss, physical shock and desperation also accumulated into a slight hysteria that made him feel as though all of this was normal.
Sali laughed inside of her head because of the pacing and result of the original Solomon's interaction with this Ghost Charlie Briggs. Jack, that guy, freaked the fuck out after seeing those two people die in front of him in such a throat slashy way. On the other hand, Sali had seen some of her closest friends get blown up right in front of her, to IED's, so seeing two enemy soldiers not from her family get their throats cut with a piece of particularly sharp shrapnel was nothing. She personally strangled an enemy soldier with a metal coat hanger before so odd killing methods were fine. Sadly, she died soon after that very same day, sooooo…
Forgetting that particularly dumb way to die, she remembered that a passing group of the family's personal soldiers would soon intercept the platoon outside and kill Briggs within a few minutes of this scene. He then spent the remainder of his life being drained of blood, racking up points and skills that he couldn't figure out how to use because he was caged up like an animal. It was only a few years later, just before the first divine field test, that Jack learned how to capitalize on his blessing, the store, and his strength. This time would be different.
"Cut my hand a little bit and then drink as much as you can...", Sali gestured.
"This was hinted at in the reports, but the special effects of your family's medication really do come from the blood of the main members," for some reason, Brigg unhesitatingly followed Sali instructions and felt his back itch beyond belief. Sali herself felt a small amount of pain from the cut as she adjusted the system settings. Sadly, even with everything turned to the lowest settings, her cut healed in seconds. She grumbled and showed Briggs that he had to make the cut bigger, which, for some odd reason, he obeyed.
Seconds, then minutes passed in awkward silence as Briggs reopened the wound and drank once more. To him, Sali blood tasted like strawberries and had an orange tang to it.… Sali, in the meantime, thought about their escape but drew a continuous blank even with a healed-up kidnapper since she had no idea where she actually was other than in her family's hidden base. Her confidence waned as shots and explosions rocked the nearby environment, sand fell from the rooftops as the building cracked.
"We lost visual contact with the Irial and Greysha around here. Do any of you see anything?'
"No. There's nothing over here."
"There's no way they vanished into thin air; They should be around here."
"Guys, I see tracks."
"Those lead to a wall"
"No way, look at this."
"What?"
"It's a crack in the wall but it's hidden by pillars and brush."
"Quiet down. They probably went that way."
"I know, I know, but I walked by here every morning while undercover and I've never seen this."
"I said, quiet. Now, watch each other's backs, we're going in..."
"HEY Rank and number!"
"Fuck. Urie you were supposed to be our lookout. Open fire!" Almost within the same breath, gunfire rang out just outside of the hidden clearing. Just like the story initially said, her family found the roaming commandos and were about to easily dispatch the imposters. As Sali gnashed her gums and singular tooth, an explosion landed square in the area that would have been the entrance. Debris fell, locking the two in and any enemies out.
"Wow. Look at that, If I just stayed quiet, I could have had this glorious moment of respite... I mean, If I stayed quiet, Jack would have had... If Jack stayed quiet, I would have... Fuck. I keep on mixing us up," Sali looked around the clearing and noticed how the debris seemed to completely miss them. In the original story, Jack got rattled by the insane shelling of the area and squirmed out of Briggs hands. To keep the child safe, the already wounded guy used his body to block some falling debris which meant he suffered even more grievous wounds. He couldn't even struggle against the family as they took him out. More importantly, Solomon and Briggs did not see the heavenly opportunity that was blasted open for them.
This time, Sali noticed the collapsed wall that led out to a near endless golden and white sea of rolling sands. Briggs stared at the exit with a dropped jaw and a shivering body. His body boiled with pain and pleasure as the blood that came out of his wounds was dark and clotted. They scabbed over in moments as if he were some ancient beast or monster. The notion that he had lost his humanity did not strike weakly in his mind as his hands trembled with adrenaline and fear and perhaps, magic, as he thought sincerely about it. He had just drunk the blood of a child like some sort of vampire and the more he thought of it, the less he had reservations about doing so. Salimoons's blood tasted like a strawberry punch cocktail with a spritz of lemonade, and an orange tang as an aftertaste. In response to Brigg's despondent stare, Sali smacked his arm. Once she received his attention, she signed, "Run. We have a chance." Her pale complexion returned to a healthy gold in less than a breath.
"Damn. I'm hungry now," Sali's stomach rumbled wildly but Briggs regrouped his dwindling mental faculties and listened. He followed a route that directly led out of the combat zone. Briggs sprinted from the broken wall to buildings that filled the exterior of the property line. Once he left the dense homes of the De Monte family he turned down a wide and empty street and ran even faster than he had ever done in his life. There was only an open road for a few kilometers before a city could be reached . Sali would soon learn that getting recaptured and tortured by his own family would have been a better option to living with a Ghost…