HALF: Dead nor Alive

Ruby and the others were shaken by the parasites that came out from the forest and jumped down the cliff. They saw so many Ex-Axis Humans like what Archie warned them, they were hiding behind the trees and hope those parasites didn’t notice their presence. The hordes that they dealt with back then couldn’t be compared to all these parasites.

“What should we do? Should we help Archie down there?” Vincent asked Ruby who had been staring at The Mother.

“Help him? It’s better if we run away but it seems that the parasites are focused on Archie as if they’re being ordered to fight Archie,” Ruby answered.

“That’s right, The Mother controlled them all and she wants them to kill Archie,” The black-haired witch said as she leaned on the tree. “You’re all safe here, so don’t worry about the parasites will hunt you down because you guys aren’t her priority. So, enjoy the show while it lasts,” she continued with a smile on her face. With that being said, Ruby and the others walked back to the edge of the cliff and watched Archie fight against hundreds of parasites.

They were looking at Archie that was slowly being surrounded by the parasites, they were worried that Archie wouldn’t be able to fight them all until the parasites that were walking toward him stopped moving. The black-haired witch smirked and giggled mischievously which made Ruby and the others felt uncomfortable.

“Wait, don’t you guys think it’s weird?” Prince asked as he squinted his eyes and looked at the parasites around Archie. “They’re not attacking Archie and they’re slowly changing their direction and walking toward The Mother,” he continued.

“He’s controlling them,” The black-haired witch said as she sat down next to Ruby.

Ruby looked at her and raised her eyebrows. “You mean it’s the same power that the guy that Archie fought had?”

“It is the guy’s power, Archie took it from him since he consumed the guy’s flesh, heart, and brain,” The black-haired witch answered. “That’s what makes Archie and us Ex-Humans different because he can get the ability that the other Ex-Human has,” she explained.

They were listening to the witch’s explanation while they were watching Archie walk toward The Mother with the parasites fighting each other. The Mother seemed to be furious that the parasites disobeyed her orders and killed some of the parasites with her tails.

Archie watched the parasites around him were getting flattened by The Mother’s tails, he didn’t care about the parasites since they were just a decoy so he could get closer to her. The Mother was screeching and looked at Archie who was only a few meters away from each other. She showed her tails and immediately whipped them at Archie, but Archie sliced them like butter. The blood was spurting on Archie’s body, he looked at the tails that were still twitching and suddenly they exploded like a ticking bomb.

All the parasites’ bodies melted because of the acid from the blood of The Mother. Archie looked around and he saw guts floating on the water, he looked down at his body and his body was still intact because the tissue under his skin prevented the acid from melting his body. He decided to transform his whole body and wrapped it with tissues while he was still holding his swords. Ruby and Vincent were shocked when they saw Archie’s transformation for the first time, they couldn’t believe what they saw because he became and looked exactly like the guy he fought back then but a lot bigger.

Archie looked at his hands and the swords looked like toothpicks, they looked so small compared to his hands. He then noticed that his gloves were torn apart and the swords were touching his palm, the gooey liquid slowly covered the handle and crawled up to the blade of the swords. He looked at the pattern of the swords being filled with liquid and covered the whole blade. He watched the liquid shape itself into a sword and made a giant version of the swords in his hands.

The Mother felt threatened by Archie’s ability and her whole body was wobbling and a gigantic arm came out from her body. An arm with barely any flesh around it and the bone could be seen clearly started to swing around. Archie ran toward her and swung his swords at her but she blocked them with her arm, it shocked Archie that her arm was so sturdy that his swords couldn’t cut it but it must be because of the sword-shaped liquid around his swords’ sharpness couldn’t be compared to the real thing.

Archie kept swinging his swords relentlessly at her arm because it was the only thing that prevented him from killing her. He kept attacking but nothing really happened because of how sturdy her arm was until the crystallized liquid around his swords shattered into pieces. He was shocked and immediately felt all the muscles in his arms were being torn apart and his head was ringing which made him dizzy and almost lost consciousness. He didn’t know that it would take a huge toll on his body when it breaks and it was painful, a pain that he hadn’t felt in a very long time.

Before Archie could recover from the pain, The Mother grabbed him on the neck and tried to crush him. Archie couldn’t breathe as he tried to free himself from her grip. He tried to break her bone with his swords, but even though it was effective, he couldn’t keep doing that since his head felt like it was about to explode. He decided to throw the swords away and used both of his hands to grab her fingers and loosen them, but his strength couldn’t outmatch her at all.

While he was struggling, he noticed the liquid in his hands came out and wrapped around her fingers. He immediately had an idea and decided to endure it a little bit longer while he let the liquid wrap around his fingers up to her hand. The grip was slowly weakened and he could free himself up, The Mother couldn’t control her fingers and hand anymore because they were stiffened by the liquid around them.

The Mother wiggled her arm and tried to throw Archie away but he was stuck like glue and she couldn’t do anything about it. The liquid crawled toward her forearm and up to her elbow, she couldn’t bend her elbow anymore and all she could do was wiggle it as hard as she could. Archie took over her whole arm and he could feel every part of her arm like it was his arm, and he could feel the joint of her arm and decided to cover the whole thing with the liquid.

Archie used all his strength and pulled the arm, he chopped off her arm like it was nothing. The Mother was screeching and growling in pain while the blood spurted out from her body. Archie removed his hands from her arm and dove down the lake to grab his swords. As he dove down into the lake he noticed that The Mother wasn’t actually living inside the lake, he saw a giant hole underneath her massive blob of a body.

Archie went to the surface and saw The Mother was still screeching in pain and ignored everything around her. He looked around and the parasites she controlled stopped attacking the parasites that Archie controlled. He used the opportunity to take control of all of the parasites and ordered them to attack her. Even though some of them couldn’t get past the water covered with her blood, some of them survived and started to attack her.

Archie climbed up The Mother’s body from behind and he saw the faces and the body parts of parasites on her body. It looked like a living nightmare as he kept climbing up to the top of her body. He covered his swords one more time and then stabbed her head and injected the liquid into her body slowly and painfully.

Archie could feel every part of her mother from the head down to her neck, and it expanded all the way to her body. He could feel the body parts that she swallowed and stayed inside her body like an accessory. It was so uncomfortable to feel a body that didn’t belong to him, and once all the liquid covered her whole body, he pulled his swords as hard as he could and The Mother’s whole body exploded as he pulled out the crystallized liquid inside her body.

Her body sank into the water and Archie slowly walked away from her and stood on the small island in the middle of the lake. He watched her body sink and followed by a huge whirlpool that sucked all the parasites down to the giant hole underneath. Ruby and the others were shocked when the whole lake was drained and saw the giant hole on the ground.

They decided to climb down the cliff while the black-haired witch stared at nothing. “Goodbye, Mother,” she said and then left.

Ruby and the others ran toward Archie, but as soon as he turned back to normal, he collapsed and fell unconscious. “Archie!” Ruby screamed.