Flip the Coin [BL]-Chapter 386. Offspring(s)

I see myself getting caught, I see myself getting caged, I see somebody attempt to train me, and I feel myself dying.

I breathed out again and let the arrow gun in my hand disappear to press my palms against my eyes.

"It’s alright, Kenny, it’s alright." Henry used an ultra-soothing tone while kissing my hair and stroking my chest.

"I don’t want to kill any more innocent beings." I choked up and heard the crystals in my mind crunch, as if they were weighted down.

"You don’t have to. Let me do it, or we won’t do it at all. I don’t mind rats running around; we can stay in the house and build a sturdier fence around it. If something slips through, I’ll take care of it, or I’ll catch it and let it go." More little pecks rained on top of my head.

"You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do." More enticing words that soothed me into calmness.

It is laughable that I say stuff like this, having just killed a human being. However, this ’human’ hadn’t been innocent.

The Deer Monsters, the Shadows, the Bone Monster, even the Room Monster, together with the rats—they all were innocent, as they killed to eat or to protect themselves.

Meanwhile, I feel much closer to these monsters than to other humans—given the powers residing inside my body, I really was closer to them, as each speck of power was obtained through the death of counterparts—mostly killed monsters.

Now, looking at the corpse of the rat, I could somehow understand the staff sergeant’s strange reverence for them. I didn’t want to kill them either.

But just as I am not a vegetarian and eat meat—which I don’t even personally hunt—it would be strange for me to drown myself in pity and mercy for monsters that are much more dangerous than a cow or a pig.

Just like I didn’t belong to the mother of Kenny 2, these beings don’t belong here, so there was no need to hesitate.

Attack when being attacked.

Kill what has to be killed.

Pony and his gang had to be killed, and these rats have to die as well.

I have to get my own fucking principles in order to get around in the future, and that not as a damn doormat but as someone mentally strong and at least a bit capable.

"Come here, let’s change positions."

Just as I had pep-talked myself again and took a look at the perfectly fine table in my mind, Henry let go of me and really exchanged our positions.

When he stood in front of me, he turned back and steered them around his waist.

"See? Give me the arrow gun; you’ll take a break."

I chuckled and leaned my face sideways against his strong back while conjuring up the arrow gun.

Henry took it out of my hand and dissolved the cage of my counterpart, including the dead rat inside. Yeah, I wouldn’t want to touch my own dead counterpart to conjure it up again later anyway.

Henry hummed a little tune while resting one of his hands on mine, and with his other hand, he speedily killed the angry rats.

When he had killed them, he would lead one of my hands forward to let me touch it while I could just bury my head in his back.

A few arrows later, I would conjure up another gun.

He really is the absolute best little puppy one could wish for. Each and every time I feel like my world is crashing down, he is there, and with a few sentences, everything doesn’t seem so dire anymore.

One of my best decisions really had been to take his word back then, when I was lying on the floor of my small apartment while bleeding and being angry.

And while no normal person would agree to that, or even crazier, go through with it—he did, he had, and he is doing it right now.

"Good boy," I praised while breathing in his ravishingly good scent.

He laughed happily.

"Are you praising me?"

"Yes, you deserve it. Good boy. Thank you." 𝒻𝑟ℯℯ𝑤𝑒𝑏𝑛𝘰𝓋𝑒𝓁.𝒸𝑜𝘮

"Hehe~ I love it when you praise me."

"I know. It’s so nice to lean on you." The last part I hadn’t intended to speak out loud, but I just blurted it out while the screams of the rats slowly but surely lessened as their number decreased.

"I like when you lean on me as well; that’s what I am here for: balance~"

"Mhm, I got it. Now stop the balance shit."

I didn’t feel even the slightest bit stronger after killing my rat counterpart, probably because the amount of earned power was too small to notice. This makes the huge difference my crystalline counterpart had made for me really interesting.

Hmm...in my dreams and also after meeting the crystalline figures, all they ever did was mirror us, so did it also mirror our power?

If average Joe killed, or better, merged with his crystalline counterpart, maybe he would feel sturdier; with Henry, who was fairly strong, he could now yield crystals to his bidding, and my crystalline counterpart had become strong enough to shield me from the giant.

Like this, it would make sense.

"Hear that?" Henry asked me, and while I still hugged him with closed eyes, I could indeed hear it.

"Silence." No more fucking screaming rats, finally.

"Yes." He was in a good mood, and I was too, even if he led my hand to touch another black chicken.

"Ah. There were no pink rats inside my counterpart’s memories." I finally remembered what I wanted to tell him.

The rats’ memories had not been as glazed over as the giant’s, so I had a better grasp on them.

"They mutated only after arriving?" Henry turned his head back while dissolving the cage, including the last rat for today.

"I think so. And the pink ones are the ones with rabies."

"Hmm, they mutate as they reproduce."

"Yeah, something like a black mother rat eats humans and births pink rats, or something." I nodded against his back before finally letting go of him and pulling out my phone.

"The pictures of black and pink rats on that government website don’t match the rats we encountered; maybe it’s for this reason as well," Henry added.

"Yeah, they change with each generation—that is bad news for us." It would be best to get rid of every single rat in an instant.

I texted Ethan that we would need another few hours and would come back in the evening.

"Let’s go and take a look at where the coin will lead us; I bet it’s somewhere underground." I looked at Henry, who had turned around and was busy fiddling with my hair.

"Yeah, let’s go." He put his arm around my neck and steered me to the stairs.

When we arrived at the door, I opened it for Henry to pass first while he chuckled happily.

"What?"

"Nothing." He pulled me to himself, and when I was forced to let go of the door, it fell loudly shut.

"Can we finally get rid of the masks?"

Although I was now immune to the scary clown face, I didn’t want someone to see two scary clowns walk out of the gate, so I agreed.

"Yeah." I put the masks back in the past before I gave Henry his normal black mask and sunglasses.

He sighed with annoyance but obediently put them on, and I did the same when we stepped back out onto the street.

There was still nobody in sight, and it was creepily silent while the sun shone down brilliantly—which made the setting of empty streets and buildings not any better, but creepier.

I think not even the upside-down South District had seemed so creepy.

"It’s like we’re inside a movie."

"Yes, everything seems unreal." Although Henry said it, the way he languidly hung on me, clearly in a good mood while he fumbled with something in his pants pocket, didn’t seem like he had problems with accepting this setting at all.

"Mhm." There was a slight elevation in the middle of the street, and I steered to that spot, unsure what it was.

And he continued to fumble in his pocket.

"Are you jerking yourself off right now?" I asked him as we stood just steps away from the concrete elevation.

"AHAHAHAA! No!" Henry broke into laughter, and I raised my hand.

"Paw," I commanded, only for Henry to place the hand from the arm he had around my neck into my palm.

"Other paw," I demanded impatiently.

Henry chuckled and let go of whatever was in his pocket to place his other hand on mine as well.

I flung his paws away and reached into his pocket before he could fight me off.

The next moment, I had a crumpled tissue in my hand.

"You creepy dog, is that what I think it is?" I asked while Henry raised his arms as if he was admitting defeat.

"Just a tissue; as you know, I cry a lot."

"Mhm, sure. So I can’t let it disappear, can I, you damn pervert?" I asked while raising the crumbled tissue in the air for him to take one last look.

Henry lunged at me, but I simultaneously returned the tissue back into the past, resulting in him hugging me tightly to prevent both of us from falling on the asphalt.

"HA! I KNEW IT! You are the creepiest here!" Not the street, the sun, or the setting—it was him!

Who the fuck even keeps a tissue full of cum?

"Hey! It’s part of me and part of you; how could I throw it away?" His deep voice tickled my ear.

And why the fuck did this sound as if this crumbled tissue was our damn offspring?

Can’t take that guy on missions anymore; he is too restless.

"Shut it before I vomit all over you."

"That would also be a part of you~"

I punched him in the stomach again and went to the concrete elevation by myself while Henry whined a few steps away.

Hmm, a strange block of concrete, only a few centimeters high. Not something that would really stop cars or serve as a roadblock.

Isn’t this the perfect spot for one of these sewer covers to be?

"They forcibly shut the sewers?" Henry came to my side and actually contributed something to the conversation, albeit holding his stomach with even more drama than before, and he even limped for whatever reason—what the hell?!

I ignored him and his antics.

"Rats go into sewers; it makes sense. So they tried to shut the sewer so that they don’t come out, or to lead them to one specific place where they can eliminate them?" It’s only possible for them to barrage the sewer covers and not the whole sewer, and if it rained heavily or something, then who cares? Water would just flood the streets.

However, it is impossible for them to fill up everything underground, as we still need a functional sewage system.

So if they had missed a spot where rats still come out, this whole operation would have been for naught, and evidently, it was because rats still ran around.

Not on this street, though; we haven’t encountered feral ones until now.

Maybe they prefer to come out at night?

I don’t know much about them, and everything we surely know about the rats could already be old news if they tend to mutate at the speed they reproduce.

"I remember digging through the earth, arriving in a tunnel, and ’my feet’ touching concrete for the first time. I bet a bunch of them are down there. And I hope the portal they came from has closed itself already."