Chapter 4 - Investigative Grappling (Patreon)

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Chapter 4 - Investigative Grappling

It was his third time waking up from blackness. This time someone was swaying him tenderly while singing a soft tune in an unknown language. The shock from before slowly vanished with his newest bout of awaken-ness. He felt refreshed, if anything.

Whoever was humming the tune—a lullaby, he assumed—noticed that he was awake. The shadow fell away from his vision, and he saw a young woman smiling lovingly at him. She was whispering something in a strange sing-songy voice. Or was it just the uniqueness of this maiden's language?

The woman had wavy hair the colour of tree barks, a beige-green. Her golden eyes were slit like a reptile's, but he saw no malice there—only devotion. There were several other abnormalities, too, such as her arms feeling strangely rough and grainy against his own skin, but not uncomfortably so. The woman's skin looked virtually the same as an East Asian's from Earth to his human senses.

However, he was sure that whoever or whatever she was, she wasn't a human.

He suddenly remembered the irregularities about his own body, his chubby arms that kept trying to thwack himself… and he was pretty sure that he wasn't a human any longer either.

So then, what was he? What was his relationship with this woman? He noticed he had a similar skin colour to hers. But that wasn't enough information.

The woman had by then carried him back to a crib, presumably the place he had first regained consciousness. She lightly rubbed his cheeks with her fingers and kissed him on the forehead.

'1, 2, 3….6 fingers.'

A few more seconds of unknown muttering later, she was gone.

'Ah…. Is that a common trait of these… beings, or is she possibly my mother or a relative?' He thought back on his deceased parents and found it hard to accept. So he corrected himself, 'The mother of this body then… maybe?'

While he was thinking, a pair of squishy hands started kneading his cheeks out of nowhere. He turned his head sideways to see the white and blue baby from before.

She was lying prone on her belly, facing towards him. Their eyes crossed for a split second, and she stopped kneading.

But then she ignored his questioning gaze and went back to stretching and pinching his facial parts again.

"Stop that!" He growled in Earth Common.

"It tickles! And hurts!

She paid him no heed.

A few more tries later, he tried to slap away the harassing hands with his own short appendages. Yet alas, it seemed he was born physically inferior to the assailant, even as both were babies.

"I said stop!" Again, no results. This time she infuriatingly booped his nose too before sniffing his ears.

"That's it, you asked for it." He mustered up all the strength and knowledge he could in that quick breath of time and counter-attacked.

And by counter-attack, he rolled his body with great effort, on top of the little tattooed scum-bag.

It was finally her turn to feel distressed, as the move was as sudden as it was unexpected. It effectively locked her in position under his back, and she soon started wheezing.

"Take that!" He beamed as he got the desired response out of the harasser. "Teach you to bully me. You think I can't do self-defence? I went to the dojo four times!"

However, before he could feel any happier, he felt the slithering touch of a group of slimy fingers fondling his body.

'Oh no.' He thought, "WAAI-"

Before he could surrender, he broke into maniacal laughter. The laughter then turned into something like a frog croaking, followed by erratic, heaving coughs.

It felt like literal centuries, and before he gave up all control over his body to the demon in a baby's skin, the tickle-torture stopped.

He lay there, breathing heavy and spasming with tiny twitches, wondering why the woman from before hadn't come to save him from an apparent hostile force. Maybe he didn't laugh hard enough. Wait… he was crying at the end, wasn't he?

Before he could get too comfortable lying down, though, the demonic hands returned. But this time, they did nothing so impolite, simply nudging his cheek till he gave up again and looked her way again.

"So…" She spoke at last, "Do you think this is a dream?"

"… you forced me through all that to find out… if we are dreaming?" He asked in disbelief.

The other baby nodded.

"Why didn't you pinch your own cheek?!" He raged.

"… I did before you woke up." She replied a matter-of-factly.

"You!! No, we can't be sure about that. What if whatever's happening is strange enough that it can bypass logical self-ques? Let me do it, so we can be as objective as possible. Now roll over!" He found strength like he never felt before in the few tens of minutes he was awake and made another enraged roll towards her.

"You can try!" She declared in equal parts amusement and challenge.

Yet, the struggle he anticipated didn't come. Even after smooshing her cheeks like she did his and launching his own tickling attack fueled by vengeance, the girl only giggled a little but didn't resist.

Before long, his emotions were vented thoroughly. That, and he found himself dead tired in that one minute of physical violence, and his hands somehow ending up inside the girl's mouth. The baby girl licked his hand taking the chance, and her eyes smiled into crescents.

"… Ey." He sensibly retracted his hands. Now that he was calm, he felt weirdly inappropriate, as if he had committed a sin in the heat of the moment that he should not have.

Back when they were adults, this kind of interaction would result in a confusing relationship going forward. Yet now…

Before he could wallow in any more self-shame though, she affirmed her earlier guess. "Hmm, that definitely didn't wake me up if this were a dream. But I'm not really ticklish. What about you?"

He eyed her carefully for any signs of aversion and found none. The boy fumbled out a reply hiding his face behind his palms, "Ahh… I don't think so. I'm still not awake."

She laughed, "Or we are awake, and this is not a dream, silly!"

"Y-Yeah, that. That's what I wanted to say."

"Are you sure now?"

He blushed anew, as much as a baby could. "Yup! So let's not do any more baby fights, please."

Her childish laugh sounded strongly melodious in his ears.

"Then, Mr Man-of-objective-science, do you think this is a virtual reality cabin of some kind? I heard your friend, Sanada Yukimura, installed a-,"

"Sakada Sugimura. And yes, he did, since a single-core is just about the only thing that can power that beast. I tried it for a test run on Gigantomachy with some of the boys. It certainly was the most advanced VR technology in the collective. But.. It was nowhere near as realistic as all this." He rolled over till he was lying prone and gave the leafy bedding they were lying on a few deep sniffs.

"Mmhm, Smells grassy and citrusy."

He rolled again in the other direction until he could touch the fence of the crib. It felt like wood on the touch of his fingers, but he couldn't be absolutely sure.

He then turned towards the other baby, who was now looking at him with a giggle on her lips. He slowly stuck out his tongue, keeping eye contact with the other party, and… gave the crib a lick.

"Hehe." That got a snicker out of his attentive audience.

The boy conducted a few more investigative manoeuvres. He then announced his expert analysis, "This wood, or the polish on top of it, tastes bitter... and smokey."

He paused for a bit to think back on the memories of the virtual pod on the Gigantomachy, "Yup. I'm sure. There was no sense of smell or taste with this level of intricate details. Even if we ignore sight, hearing, and touch, which can be reproduced easier with the collective's current technology."

The other baby turned serious at that conclusion.

"Unless someone grabbed our disintegrated bodies or cell remnants from deep space after the blast, cloned or healed us, and plugged us into a device far better in level than even the best of the collective's, this all…is real?"

"Or the life before this was the lie, and this has been the reality all along." He replied with a mirthful laugh.

She didn't respond to his lousy attempt at humour. Her expression shadowed over.

"I can't believe it.." She mumbled. "We…"

"Yeah, I know it can be shocking. I am having a hard time accepting it too, leaving behind everything and everyone we ever knew and being stranded in this world without our friends or Miramarja-", He tried his best to comfort the curled up little girl, even though he desperately needed someone to do the same to him too.

Yet a loud cheer interrupted him, "We're aliiiive!"

The hands of assault returned like a storm but without the harassment. Before he knew it, she rolled over and grabbed him tight in a hug—an awkward yet fluffy hug because of the baby's insufficient motor skills, but a warm hug nevertheless, filled with joy and exhilaration.

"We're alive!" She cheered repeatedly. "Your wish came true!"

Her bubbling force nearly overwhelmed him also, his anxiety being thrown out of the window like an old rag he no longer wanted. He asked in the tangle of limbs, "Y-Yeah? What wish?"

The girl stopped. She stared at him for a few seconds from above, then shook her head. "I… don't know? I feel like I forgot something important."

He shrugged, "It happens when you get disintegrated into pure information and energy like that. Not your fault."

The girl beamed, "Nothing ever is, is it?"

Before he could reply, the girl pecked his forehead rolled over from above, crashing onto the bedding beside him, letting go of her worries. "You need to be… more.. ahhhh-hhaaaa~aawn."

"That was an enormous yawn." He smiled, finding her shift in energy levels quite amusing. But the boy then caught himself yawning just as loud.

"Baby brains can't handle so much confused thinking. You overclocked our brains with all your analyses. Ok, stop glaring at me. Babies can't do grappling either. I'm sorry I manhandled you."

He puffed hot air out from his nose and harrumphed in the other direction. But what she said made sense. He felt like he had just finished a hundred kilometres marathon.

"Shame. There's more I want to investigate, but that's enough thinking for now, I guess." He yawned again, then tried to roll over to a more comfortable position on the crib. The fence was pushing against his upper arm, which now felt sore.

When he was back at his original position in the baby bed's dead centre, she also rolled up next to him. One of her hands gently rested on top of his chest, and the other linked with his own. It didn't feel uncomfortable, and he was too tired at this point to even complain.

Soon after that, the light breathing of two otherworldly souls was all that was left in that unknown spacious room.