59

Challenged

Sweat drenched his grimy body, the foul liquid that oozed down Oga's neck from the precious cargo he carried on his back forced the brunet stop to gag. "...kill me...please…" The bundle on his back continued to wheeze this phrase over and over on the trip back to their original hideout. Oga stopped trying to argue. The brunet didn't even know what made him scrape Furuichi off the pillar and take him home in the first place.

The closer to home, the more doubts Oga had, what was he doing? How could he help this morphed creature if it was to survive the rest of the trip? Oga heard a gross wet cough directly behind his ear and then something slimy drip beneath his collar. Oga's stomach convulsed and the acid burned up and out of his throat. Recovering, Oga wiped the back of his mouth with a cleaner part of his arm. Looking up to gauge the horizon, if he made it past the rocks before the sun dipped below the mountains, they'd make it home before too long into nightfall. Even if I'm bringing him to be properly buried, it's better than leaving him there. Oga shouldered his pack higher and trudged on.

Neither man nor corrupted image could foresee Furuichi's survival. Mother's fusion took two more weeks to complete, and when Furuichi could finally move without pain, he was hungry. Voracious. Mad. Oga threw a couple of cans at the silvernette's head before the creature had enough sense to eat from them instead of Oga's leg. The Furuichi side of the creature's brain, Oga liked to call it, rathered food from the can. Mother's side of the brain, well, Oga could only reason that She had a zombie appetite. When Furuichi's side of the shared brain realized that their body was trying to commit the sin of eating another human, Furuichi sat in the corner, sobbing, pleading with Oga to "just get on with it and kill me already!"

Still, Oga could not.

It went on like that for a few more weeks.

"What are you waiting for? Can't you see I'm literally a threat to society?"

"Well," Oga began as he settled beside the hybrid, "I'm still trying to wrap my head around the fact that you can talk."

Furuichi flinched when Oga brushed against his sensitive sides. "Are you an absolute moron? I know you can't actually be that stupid. You're saying that on purpose!"

"You're right. What I can't figure out is the trigger to your Mr. Hyde mode."

Furuichi deeply loathed Oga referencing the morph to the literary example, but what Furuichi loathed about it was how accurate of an explanation it was. Dr. Jekyll was supposed to be Furuichi's half of the body, when Mr. Hyde was Mother's. Furuichi managed to stay in control of their shared body 65% of the time, but there were some instances, like being super hungry or even the sun shining a certain way, that caused Mother to take over. Oga slept with his gun and made sure to be at least a sizable distance within the den to have fair warning when the switch occurs.

"You're impossible. Fine. If you're too chicken to do it, then give me the gun and I'll do it myself."

Oga thought about it many times. To give Furuichi what he wanted, but Oga couldn't see the justice in it. Whether Furuichi did the deed or if Oga did, it didn't matter, it felt so defeatist to go down, what Oga considered at least, the easy route.

"And if you kill yourself, doesn't that mean that Mother will try to find a new host? So, what position does that put me in?"

Furuichi's eyebrow jumped. "Now why didn't you say all of the smart things before when I was human? It would've made you a hell of a lot more attractive back then!"

Furuichi pouted. "It's not fair to be turned on when I'm this...this hideous freak!"

Oga really looked at Furuichi then. As Furuichi healed, the dripping foul ooze disappeared. Furuichi's once pure silver head of hair sprouted baby green leaves that seemed to grow the same length as his hair. Furuichi's skinned glowed with green and blue at concentrated spots, like his elbows. The doe brown eyes remained the same, though Furuichi claimed to see much better in the dark. Oga figured this to be true since Furuichi was able to spot a deer 100 meters away from them on a night without a moon. Oga hadn't seen underneath Furuichi's clothes since the healing began, but now he was becoming mighty curious.

"You don't look that ugly to me."

"That's not funny, jackass."

"Look," Oga turned to face the silvernette, dark eyes glowing with mischief, "all I'm saying is that maybe you should learn how to get along with Hyde since you're sharing the same body. Maybe Mother can see the better side of humans through your eyes."

Furuichi stared into Oga's eyes. Then the silvernette stood up with a huff, kicking rocks all the way inside his part of the den, grumbling about how stupid humans were, especially the handsome one with a scar down his face with an annoying name that started with the letter "O".