Chapter 111: Finding my family II

I hold my mom until she is ready to let go, soon she pulls away and smiles. "I was so scared when you were taken before us, I thought I would never be able to talk to you or hold you again!" You can count on moms to be the ones to treat you this way no matter how old you are. I look at the rest of my family and the anger is boiling back, but I put a lid on it. I don't know why my emotions made the area shake, but if that's possible I need to watch out. I walk over to my bandaged dad and just smile. He smiles back and I can guess from his condition that he fought very hard. I'm a little surprised that Hailey was even allowed to fight, dad would never let her do something like this. I walk over to my sister this time and I sit on her make shift bed.

She looks at me with sadness and shame, she was one that didn't like people seeing her weak. "No need to have such a look big sis, I'm sure that you did just fine fighting alongside everyone else. So how about you turn that frown upside down." She looks at me with teary eyes, must have been painful fighting for your life for the first time. While we can be killed we cant die, she must have fought hard to avoid being killed. I put my hand on the top of her head and smile down at her. "You did good sis, while other fell you stayed up and fought till you couldn't anymore. I'm proud to have you as my sibling, and I know that when your done healing you'll be ready to get back out there and get stronger." She has always been a good person with a clean heart, and the best of her is when she defies the odds. 

I stand up and take a seat on an old looking office chair next to dad. I want to talk to him about what happened here. "So how was the fight here? I had a long and hard fought battle myself, and if mine was tough I can see yours being just as hard." He looks up at the ceiling, he must still be thinking about the fighting. It isn't something I like to think about after the fact, you end up punishing yourself for mistakes that weren't in your control. "Don't think so hard about it, I know you and you're criticizing yourself for what you think you did wrong. If you get stuck in your head like that its going to take a long time to get out." He looks back at me with regret on his face. He turns his gaze to Hailey and gives an expression like his insides are churning. He wouldn't want his little girl getting hurt, but there are some things you cant avoid. 

He looks back at me with a more normal expression. "I should have protected them better. I'm the father of this family, its my job to handle any threats to our lives. The fight was going fine at first, but after a couple hours the monsters never stopped coming. After awhile the weaker players had to take over for the strong, and that's when I joined the fight. In the end weaker players starting dying in the dozens, and that's when Hailey was forced to join. If the hidden boss monster wasn't killed when it was both Hailey and I would've been force to go through the resurrection process. I've heard horrible things about it." I can understand his mindset right now, and while I understand it I cant change it. I think just letting him work though it on his own is a good idea.

I look at my parents harder then before and I can say for sure they have both gotten much younger looking. They are close to the way they looked before they had me, while this is both cool and worrying it makes me wonder why its happening. Is everyone over a certain age getting younger, these are question I might get answers for. "Do you guys know why your getting younger? When I look at you 2. You look the same as you did in the pictures before you had us. I've noticed most players have all started to look younger, I've never seen or heard anything like it." My mom looks at dad and they just shake their heads no. So whatever is happening to the players is not known yet, I'm sure many older single females are enjoying it. 

This could prove to be more of a problem then a benefit though. The ramifications of such a process isn't know, both qualitative and quantitative, the long term is unknown right now. It scares me that I don't know what's going on to my parents, even with future knowledge I only know so much. So anything regarding this new continent is something I have to figure out on my own. "Don't be so worried sweetie, just sit here and relax with us. I want to know what you've been up to as well, like how you found us to begin with." Mom isn't being subtle with how much she doesn't want me to go right now. I don't want to lie to them about how I got here, but they aren't strong enough to protect my secret yet. I'll give them half truths.

My mother is waiting for an explanation, and while she looks sweet I can see she is ready to rip into me if I did anything reckless. So I'm going to leave out the details of my battle, she will go nuclear if she found out. "I did pretty good with individual kills, and for a reward I was told where you guys were. Once I found out I headed straight here, I wasn't that far away surprisingly." In truth I was very far way. They don't need to know that, and I hope that satisfies my moms curiosity. When I look at her however, she is very suspicious of my answer. She leaves it alone though, instead of standing she goes and sits on dads bed. She must have been taking care of them all by herself, and since Marcus is so young he wouldn't be able to do much. "Where is Marcus anyways. I haven't seen him since I got here." Mom gives a slightly worried look, but dad just rubs her back.

I'm about to ask what's happened, but mom beats my speed. "He is playing with some friends he made outside, he is supposed to be back soon. I'm going to go look for him, mind coming with me Cera." I see no reason to not join her, I stand up from the chair and stretch out my body. I'm still shirtless right now, but nothing is around that can hurt me. "Honey, we'll be back as soon as we find Marcus. Don't go anywhere alright." Mom says teasingly. She actual makes a decent joke, I laugh a good amount. Dad looks at us as we leave, we are walking down the hall to long staircase. Mom starts to talk to me, and she scares me a little. "So what did you really do to get here, you shouldn't have lied to mommy Cera. I know that only the top 10 can get custom rewards." Damn it, she is way smarter than I gave her credit for.

I'm extremely hesitant to answer her, and since I don't want her knowing the truth I only have one option left. I have to just outright refuse to tell her what she wants to know. I hate the idea of shutter her down like this, but its the only thing comfortable for me. "I'm sorry mom, but I'm not telling you. You will just have to accept the fact that I'm here and safe, I hope you don't hold it against me. You aren't ready to hear how I got here." There is silence next to me, and I'm slightly worried that she is loading more ammo. "Please, just don't ask anything about it. I wont give you an answer. You should be okay with accepting the fact that I cant tell you." I throw on some more just to make sure that she understands.

As we are walking down the stairs I can feel a chill running up and down my spine. She doesn't like that I've done this, but she'll have to get over it. "Fine sweetie. If you don't want to tell me I wont force you, just know that you can trust me and your dad with anything. It hurts that you don't think we can help you, but you are a man. I have to respect your decisions, not matter how much I hate them." I breathe a sigh of relief, and the feeling mom is giving off soon goes away. We make our way down the stairwell in silence. It takes a lot of time to reach the bottom, but we do. We walk through the packed lobby, and make it to the street. "Marcus plays at the park a couple blocks away, so lets go." Mom tells me where were going, must be the park mom and dad used to take us to on the weekends when I was young. Hailey and I stopped going regularly. Marcus is still young enough to like going.