Chapter 8: 8 TRUTH

[SKILL SYSTEM— SKILL POINTS— (15)

SKILLS: Thievery (D), Fleetfoot (D), Appraisal (C), Fighting (A), Pianist (F), Memorization (D), Socialization (E)]

Stray passes the night, silently watching over Midtown High’s basketball court. He is very eager on seeing Toussaint now. He very much likely wants answers to whatever conspiracy is brewing behind the scenes.

Going with the flow with the situation he is already in, Stray decides on a path he thinks is most suitable for him… And that is the path of the victim.

And… What could a victim want more than the truth?

Stray doesn’t have any complaints about his current situation. He just doesn’t like it being left in the dark. At least Love has been honest with him. Morgan? There are so many questions that need answering from her too. Depending on the intelligence he’ll get from Toussaint, Stray might find himself in a very unlikely situation of killing Morgan.

Stray doesn’t want that.

There is hidden bloodthirst lurking in Stray’s eyes. If it comes to it, he’ll really kill Morgan, and maybe even Toussaint if the need arises.

“They are so desperate to see their special someone that they will go this far. The mystery is… Why doesn’t Morgan want me involved? And… Why did Toussaint make me involved?”

+Sleepless (F) -1 SP

+Sleepless (C) -3 SP

[Sleepless (A): You have better tolerance to staying awake.]

+Strike (F) -1 SP

+Strike (A) -5 SP

[Striking (A): You are capable of impressive deadly accurate strikes.]

+Fighting -10 SP

[Fighting (S): You have a fearsome fighting sense holistically improving your insight into various styles of combat. You have a 3% chance to learn your foe’s fighting skills.]

[SKILL SYSTEM— SKILL POINTS— (0)

SKILLS: Thievery (D), Fleetfoot (D), Appraisal (C), Sleepless (C), Fighting (S), Strike (A), Pianist (F), Memorization (D), Socialization (E)]

Experimenting with the system, and checking up on every basic skill on the Skill Shop, Stray thinks that there is potential in the combo of Fighting (S) and Strike (A). Though the cost of upgrading the Fighting skill hurts his wallet, Stray thinks that it is a worthy investment.

The 3% chance to learn his enemy’s fighting skills is especially scary.

Stray endures the night with his Sleepless (C) skill. Silently waiting and biding his time, Stray patiently watches over the basketball court.

The time difference between them entering the time machine has caused this wide gap in their time of arrival. Fortunately, it wasn’t too huge of a gap. At exactly 6:00 am of the morning, Toussaint finally arrives in this timeline.

“Hello there, Toussaint, care for a chat?” Stray casually greets the young Wakanda prince.

Still wearing the same Midtown High uniform, Toussaint drops the bag he was carrying. He walks to Stray with languid steps. Stray similarly approaches him.

“Tell me, Toussaint… Why did you have to bring me in this time project? I appreciate the gesture as a fellow member of the Decathlon team, but it really bothers me, you know? Just why?”

“You tell me that.” Toussaint's hostile tone immediately alerts Stray of the danger.

Stray leans backward, almost getting hit squarely in the face by Toussaint. Stray can clearly feel the movement of the air pressing on him as Toussaint’s fists hover above him. This confirms Toussaint’s superhuman strength as the heart-shaped herb provides the young Wakanda prince.

Toussaint didn’t let up as he follows up with a roundhouse kick. It squarely hits Stray in his abdomen.

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Stray can feel his lower abdomen in pain. He is feeling a bit nauseous and has the urge to vomit thanks to that one crispy kick. Stray falls to his knees keeling over the pain.

“Make your confession,” Toussaint demands to Stray, but Stray has no idea what Toussaint is talking about. “Martin Stray Lieber, is that even your real name? If you don’t answer me now, you’ll have it worse… I have never killed a man before, but I swear… I’ll gladly do it if it is someone like you…”

Toussaint’s murderous intent is as clear as day. The anger in his voice is real, and there is not a trace of fakeness in it. Toussaint really wants to kill Stray. “I know they might just be circumstantial evidence, but they are evidence nonetheless. Tell me, did you kill T’challa, son of T’chaka?”

!!!

Stray wants to explain he is not up to date, and that the last MCU movie he saw was Endgame, but how can he tell Toussaint that? Opening his wiki which is only at the 2023 version, Stray makes a quick search for the late King T’challa’s death.

“You stupid wiki… What incurable disease?” Stray mutters in extreme frustration.

Toussaint rears his right foot and makes a deadly kick aiming his ugly shoe at Stray’s head. Stray grits his teeth and swerves left hardly dodging Toussaint’s kick.

Stray makes a left hook, accurately hitting the back of Toussaint’s calf perfectly immobilizing him simultaneously. Stray doesn’t know what is a jujutsu lock is, but he makes up with memory.

Recalling the many action movies in his head, Stray tries to replicate a particular stunt. Taking inspiration from Black Widow, Stray kicks Toussaint’s only standing leg.

Toussaint falls, Stray proceeds… Before even Toussaint was able to react, Stray has already achieved a complete lock, his legs over his waist, and his arms over his neck… It was a perfect demonstration of a chokehold.

But Toussaint being the Black Panther heir himself… doesn’t simply submit to a measly chokehold. With his superhuman strength, he puts force in his fingers to dig deep into Stray’s arms which were choking him.

Stray yelps in pain as he lets go of Toussaint.

Toussaint elbows Stray’s face, but Stray was able to react on time as he pushes himself to the ground causing the two to flip over. Toussaint’s elbow strike misses, but Toussaint is persistent. With the two of them rolling over, Toussaint finds his chance to do the chokehold instead.

Stray gasps for breath helpless against Toussaint’s superior strength. Stray forcefully elbows Toussaint, trying to get a rise on him with even the smallest amount. Stray’s elbow strikes aren’t really hitting exactly where he wants, but Stray’s long life of being an orphan and slum kid isn’t just for show.

Raising his foot, Stray brings down his heel to where he imagines Toussaint’s leg is where. With a clean beautiful strike, Stray makes Toussaint loosen his grip on his chokehold all thanks to the pain.

Stray slithers from Toussaint’s chokehold. He creates distance from the clearly superior fighter. The odds are against him, but Stray has no plans of leaving yet. “I didn’t kill this T’challa guy, can you please explain so that I can understand?”

“Lies,” Toussaint is not listening to Stray at all. “Tell me, where are you from?”

“What do you want me to say, huh? What is your problem? Do you have trust issues? What is it? Tell me!” Stray cannot take it anymore. Toussaint is being too much of a jackass.

Toussaint’s eyes calm down a little, a bit of reason returning to him. “You have a name… And that’s it… I had my people investigate you for a long time. My people literally went all over the world to see if you even exist.”

“Exist? What do you mean? I have a birth certificate, man. You make it sound so complicated. I am here, I exist.” Stray complains to Toussaint that he doesn’t make sense.

“Then tell me, why does your specific DNA, your blood, has no traces of even existing in this world? Or this very planet instead… It was circumstantial, maybe your whole bloodline just happens to die just so much earlier than you… People ending up as the ‘last’ of their bloodline is not really a rare occurrence. You’d be surprised… by how much genealogy keeps on disappearing every year.

“There is nothing strange about you being the last of your bloodline. What is strange though is your grandfather. Now, he is the real ghost. For some time, Wakanda had a cooperative relationship with Kamar-Taj. We developed quite a revolutionary method of detecting outliers.

“We can simply call them aliens, but these outliers are quite different. An alien is something that you’d find outside earth. An outlier however is something you’d find outside this universe. Civilizations that thrive on multiverse technology, you must’ve come from such a place…

“But apparently, our data tells us that you are not. This is where the problem becomes more complicated. Your grandfather was an outlier himself, and we suspect, you must be too…”

So, this is the truth… Stray’s thoughts go haywire as the truth soaks on him slowly.

The truth is so much more than he can handle.

It was depraved insanity!

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