Tear A Path 267 The Little Things

Fighting is tough sure. Would I like to have a fist inches from my face every time I'm awake? Not if I can help it.

[Get your head out of the gutter kid, or it'll be the fifth time today you get knocked out of the fight. I get that you can't talk I didn't know you also couldn't fight]

Now Apu, he was an ape with some etiquette, one of the few who has the decency to announce his attack with an insult before doing it. It's not the smartest way to fight, but I appreciate his character anyway. Mostly because it gives me enough time to dodge and avoid the pain, but grateful nonetheless.

Side note, stop registering what the monkey says for at least a few hours more, by then if there's some brain damage I should be in a spastic heap on the floor.

On another side note, if I don't crumple in a few hours, should apologize to Apu for being so rude.

It's just that, if it is the crazies affecting my head, I'm pretty sure acknowledging the hallucinations usually just makes it worse. But... he seems to think I'm incapable of speaking for some reason, maybe I can continue not speaking and we can both avoid an awkward conversation... Yeah Apu would probably like that better.

At some point, I find dealing with primates quite repet.i.tive. There might be faster or stronger ones of the same type, but generally they do the same things all the time.

If there's one kind I do loathe , it'd be the monkeys. They weren't that much stronger than me, but still... After having a better physique than me, can't they at least have the decency not to have an extra limb.

And duck! #n orangutans ad their long arms, it's like a kid in a fighting game using a broken character, spamming the same weak-a.s.s attack because it has a father reach.

Though I say this, getting slapped by those stretchy arms hurt like h.e.l.l, and I'd prefer not getting hit by it on any day.

Quite lucky though, as long as Tan's arms are, his strength gets weaker the farther he stretches those things. As long as I dodge it and grab it from the back where his energy isn't concentrated, I can pull him in for a good kick.

But sometimes, the perfect plan and even the most perfect application fails us at the most critical moments. And it's not because of some big flaw, n.o.body ever misses those unless they personally want to. It's the small things like the pebble, or even the slight build up of sweat on Tan's fur that causes the force of my kick to slide off instead of doing him in.

He's hurt, but not more than he is angry, not enough to stop him from using the momentum from my pull to land his full weight into my chest. Well... That's fine, I wasn't planning on using those ribs anyway.

I fly back. Even though there's an understanding that the reason for being in such a position where my feet are not touching the ground is because I got hit heavily, I live in these few seconds of air.

Even if it's small we all have to find something, anything at all to enjoy, because it's the little things that keep us going. Maybe waiting to hit the ground and for your brain to register the mind-numbing pain from having your bones broken is not something one would 'usually' choose to enjoy. But hey some people can enjoy BDSM and others enjoyed watching the K#$das.h.i.+ans, I am not the weird one here.

And of course, the number one rule in life is that life will screw with you, and usually that comes in threes. The first was that kick which used my insides as the equivalent of a children's bouncy castle. And the other two... Were Gor's fists.

From the naming sense so far, you'd a.s.sume that Gor was a gorilla, and usually, you'd be right... The primates had a very limited naming sense, Gor, Tan, Apu, Harambe... but this time those fists belonged to a gibbon.

Anatomically speaking, those arms wouldn't seem to pack a punch, at least, not like the jack hammer sized ones that gorillas owned. But the small hands made it increasingly difficult to block, especially if I'm on the ground. Each strike felt like they tore a hole right through me and out the other side, delivering a literal gut-wrenching pain to my innards.

It was the comparison between a sledgehammer and a hammer and nail. But if I had to pick between the two, I know now that I would pick the sledgehammer. At the very least I'd be out of it and the pain would more or less feel like an overly heavy ma.s.sage, this... this was just torture.

But there's something else, something beyond the pain, like a snow like cold that flooded the places he hit, and a flash of burning heat that met it where it moved. It was the little things I couldn't see or understand, they were changing something in me, growing, pulsing, feeding on the tearing of my flesh and spill of my blood, the breaking of my bones exciting this phenomenon to new heights.

It was breaking me, even more than the infliction of constant battering upon me. With everything it tore apart, it replaced with ones of greater resilience, one that could withstand it's tyrannical demand. By extension, it made me more powerful to limits I did not know and I looked to find, if it did not kill me first before such a time came.

Whatever it was, I dreaded it's existence.

If the little things, just the little things kept changing, just a little bit every day, by what time am I changed?

And if I am changed does the reasons for my living change?

Does the reason I fight change?

Do I change?

If my flesh and blood is no longer what it used to be, then what of my heart and soul.

And by the end of the road, when I find the one I'm looking for, what will she see?

Would I be unrecognizable?

A G.o.d?

A Demon?

Or just a shadow of my former self.

Would she see me as the one who had been lost?

Would I be the one who left?

The one who got away?

If at some point, through this vast new world, I am able to see her and ask all these questions, would it be in the heart of what I'm asking now? Or would it just be some form of curiosity which I need to fulfill?

And a.s.suming I do see her somewhere, do I dare ask?

Am I truly brave enough to find out the answers?

For now, these are hypothetical, only in my head.

The moment she answers or even worse, I find she can no longer answer.

From then on it would be my reality.

Until I truly am able to take that step, maybe it's better I stay a lost wanderer

The little things. These little things.

Little questions that are inconsequential until I actually find an answer.

They gnaw at me, small pieces of my resolve, crumb by crumb of my fire. Not enough to cause me grief, not today, not yet. But one day, maybe someday, they might have already eaten me up before I notice.

But maybe until then I remember the little things. The little pieces of her I have left.

It may not even be a memory of her, not even the sight of her face, the smell of her hair, not the touch of her skin. In my memory she takes but the place of air.

But I remember the way I feel, when I remember the times she should've been there, where she's no longer there.

There were still twinges of the heart I know I felt at those times. The kind nothing else in those memories could give. And I feel the pain of loss even when I reminisce a supposedly empty room.

The little things, these precious little things, have kept me going so far. Have had me refusing to take deaths hand, lest I find myself tired enough to rest in it's embrace.

In front of them, the pain of those blows are little things. The constant destruction inflicted upon my flesh is too little to keep me staying on the ground. So even if my bones and body break, I fight.

Gor's little thing, the s.h.i.+ft of his left shoulder as he throws a punch down, the moss right in front of where his feet stood, and the slight tilt in his head when he throws a particularly packed punch.

It's a little thing, but it's enough to s.h.i.+ft his arm down when he tries to land a blow. His feet s.h.i.+ft to find it's balance, only to lose it even further. Just a tad, but for a moment, a little shock and panic sets in.

In that moment, it'd had two choices. One, It tried to maintain it's position before recovering it's momentum. Or two, try to take me out before I get him. He should've chosen the former.

In a bid to punch me out, Gor's head s.h.i.+fts a little to the right. Not much, but enough to create a blind spot for my right to come in.

In a moment I was under him, and the next I'm swinging him around with his own arm. Taking out the lanky arms of the incoming Tan. A small s.h.i.+ft anywhere, and it wouldn't break the joint, right where he would always keep it.

With their arms miraculous ability to stretch, their joints were almost impossible to find as they could change it's distance back and forth. But even in those changes, they form patterns. A little habit of Tans that I took too many beatings to find how to use.

As for Apu, [Kid you're looking in the wro...hgghk!]. His little thing has always been his need to talk in a fight.

But that blow to his throat didn't stop his incoming kick, one that had been charged with energy. Even if it didn't have it's whole strength after being pulled back by it's owner's throat, the momentum was still enough to split my guts open.

It's the little things, always the little things.