Warning its pretty mature!

Growing up in the forest in Alaska isn’t as tough as one might think. My grandfather has raised me since I can remember and he used to do most of the hard work until I was 5 years old. At 5 I was chopping wood, and hunting for our next meal.

This might sound ridiculous to normal people, however I am not normal. It took me many years to accept Gramps orders to never leave the forest and enter towns. At first I thought he was crazy. He always schooled me and put me to work so I never got the chance to enter a town anyways. For some reason he said our life will end if I go meet anyone else other than him.

Back to what I was saying about not being normal. I have a photographic memory which helps me in all subjects of school and learning language too. I know Spanish, Russian, Japanese, French, Italian, and others, even Latin for who knows what reason. This is where it gets really creepy though: I know a language called Draastifarian. Sounds like major bullshit right?

That’s not the only thing weird either. Gramps made me learn the economics, hierarchy, history, races, etc. of this fantasy place.

Many times I wanted to just get a chair and knock him unconscious so I could go out hunting. But that would probably kill him which would be a no-no. With my photographic memory as a 19 year old I am learning subjects that someone with a PhD. would get so confused and pissed off then start using the textbook for a doormat.

Where the hell do I get all of this material? Well it’s my loony paranoid grandfather’s stash. By stash I mean cellar that has so many textbooks it would make an Ivy League school raze cities for!

Anyways now for the ridiculous section again. I am 6’ 4” and have hair with two shades. The roots of my hair is red, midway through a strand it changes to black. Also my eyes are red. Though this red is not the bright kind you would find in a normal redhead person. It’s crimson like blood, which makes me look intimidating.

Not only those features but also the final ‘fuck this bullshit’ feature of mine is my ability to morph my appendages. Yeah, who needs an axe to chop firewood? I haven’t touched that axe in years, hell I don’t even know where it is. My hand can turn into an axe head. Now it’s not like it turns into metal, no, my skin stretches and hardens better than the actual axe could ever hope for. One swift motion and I could fell even an oak tree if I stretched my skin enough.

Who knows if this is even skin in the first place? It could be synthetic material that can conform to my wishes.

It does have a limit though. My appendages can only stretch from one hand length away from the tip of my fingers. Meaning I can only stretch my arm about 8 inches farther than normal. And this goes for any direction. I can spread my skin on my arms and make a shield. Or I can make a short sword.

My appendages, also my head (both heads) can be altered too. And I can morph it to a certain extent. I can’t morph into a bird head or anything but I can change certain parts without shifting the bones too much. This is the simple way to put it, there’s more anatomy and physiology to it, but this is easy to understand.

Unfortunately for some damn reason I can’t change my hair color or eye color. Well I guess it looks cool so no harm done. My hair is long and I have it put in a small ponytail but not in a girly way. I made sure of that.

I need to mention something else about my skin. It’s pretty much normal Caucasian except for the black and red veins that start from the end of my fingers, up my arms, to my chest, then neck and stopping behind my ears.

Both colored veins twirl around each other in each strand from the fingers making it look like I have 5 red/black DNA strands on each side of me going up to my head. Personally I think it looks badass but in the books I’ve read there is no one else that has this. It’s one of the reasons Gramps says I can’t go to civilization.

During my life I have also been given basic martial arts training. Very basic because I can’t get far since one of the major factors of training is sparring. Gramps has been training me to try and use ki for meditation and fighting but he said I won’t need to use it until later and to not use it until then. Whenever that is?

Oh well. My body is harder than steel and I also have superhuman strength. Yeah superhuman strength is another perk of being a freak. So when it comes to sparring I can’t do it without squishing Gramps on the first hit. However most of my day is spent reading, learning, hunting, and training. I am never bored or without something to do.

-----The Day Where Shit Hit the Fan----

After lifting weights in the morning I walk to the living room. The cabin is as big as a normal sized house from the suburbs (at least the books tell me so) instead of being a cold damp wood place. We don’t have electricity, cable, internet and such so it’s pretty quiet most of the time.

Gramps is nowhere to be seen though. Usually he would be somewhere in the house grumbling about the cold weather right about now.

*creeeeeakk*

The front door opens slowly and gramps enters with a pale face and hunched over like he’s about to vomit. Except his clothes are soaked.

Not soaked with water. With blood. Startled, I run to him before he falls face first into the floor.

“Gramps! W-what the hell is happening?! Who did this?!” Anger blinds my fear until he speaks.

“Jared, *Huk* don’t worry about it, *Kuk* just go into my room and grab the crystal on my nightstand and break it!”

What? He’s talking about crystals at a time like this?! He must be on crystal meth if this is the shit he’s spouting with a hole in his side.

“NO! we need to help you get to saf-“

Before I finish my words a small rock gets thrown at us and rolls to his legs.

Wait? A rock? No I’ve seen this in some of my recent history books on wars in the late 1900’s.

Yeah it was on page 76 with a picture and text under it that said ‘M67 Grenade is a fragmentation grenade used in the Vietnam War by the United States. Known for its area damage, it can be fatal to anyone in a 5 meter radius.’

“HOLY SHIT!” I yell while trying to use my skin on my arms and legs to make a shield over Gramps. However I spent too long lost in thought and only managed to cover half of Gramps.

The explosion went off. There was a ringing in my ears unlike anything I’ve heard before.

Disoriented I make sit back and look down at Gramps. What’s left of him.

Sorrow and guilt. That’s what dominates my mind. The old man who raised me with an iron fist, but cared about me the most. The only other person I know. The last thing that tied me to this world.

Caught up in despair and weeping pitifully I hardly notice the men in black jumpsuits holding guns rapidly approaching. One of them empties their magazine on their MP5 right at my body.

The bullets barely puncture my skin, rolling off my arm.

I’m done with this shit. Are all people like this? Wrecking people’s lives? Killing their loved ones? To hell with that. Standing up and forcing myself to look away from the stumps that used to be my grandfathers legs I stare straight into the gunman.

And I snapped. That’s the gist of it. It was ugly but felt right. Vengeance. If they want to fuck with me when I didn’t do anything then they were going to be 6 feet under.

Turning my right hand into a hybrid of a lions paw and human hand while my left arm changes into a serrated sword, I burst towards them with inhuman speed. It was sloppy but I didn’t care, I was enraged.

I appeared in front of the attacker and without hesitation brought my hybrid paw down on his skull through his helmet, crushing it into pulp along with its eyeballs. I never looked away from his eyes. The terror he showed was delightful and if I wasn’t high on adrenaline and pumped for vengeance, then I would have vomited.

His buddies don’t want to give me a chance at killing them so they also unload their weapons into me. At least they tried to. I sprinted too fast for them to follow and arrived at the next guy to slice him. I say slice but it was more gruesome than that. Using my serrated edge on my sword it brings more pain and gore than expected.

I bring it down on top of his head with the strength of many bears, watching as he gets cut in half. His organs and brain matter go everywhere making the other guys tremble in fear but me in anticipation.

The other 3 got close to the same treatment. The first lost his legs then his head, the second had his a paw swiped though his chest all the way through his ribcage and to his heart, where I then skewered it like a shish ka bab. Looking around for the final gunman I see he is holding another grenade far out of the blast radius. He chucks it at me with a smile on his face.

So I catch it with a smile on my face.

Making use of my superhuman speed I dash towards him punch him in the gut, then drop the grenade down his pants and haul ass out of there. He went out with a ‘bang’.

----1 day later-----

After burying Gramps I realize again that now there is nothing holding me here. Remembering his last words about the strange crystal I walk into his room to grab it. Whatever it is he wanted me to crush it so I did.

That day I figured out what Draastifar is.