Beast Soul

"Oh, I'm feeling dizzy.." Gerald could feel that he was slowly feeling the urge to throw up. He attributed it partly due to motion sickness and partly due to the fact that he was tied upside down, but he resisted the feeling. Right now, there were bigger things at stake here. He had no time for throwing up. At least, not right now.

"Just a bit more…" Gerald said to himself as he began slowly stretching out his hand forward. He just needed one more swing! 

He went back for another swing, but his eyes were stuck on the rock. 

'Now!'

Gerald stretched out his hands as soon as he went for another swing and right when he shortened the distance between his hands and the rock, he used the rope to hook his hands onto the rock!

Whack!

Gerald's hands grabbed onto the rock, and the rope hooked onto it!

"Yes!" Gerald screamed with joy as he stared at his hands, which were now hanging on either sides of the protruding rock, and he then began wiggling them, trying to break the rope and to free his hands.

"Come on, come on…" Gerald mumbled under his breath, gritting his teeth as he desperately tried to rip the rope that tied his hands together. The rope rubbed against the sharp ends of the rock, and Gerald saw that his technique really was working, albeit the process seemingly taking a bit more time than what he had expected.

"It's not like I can go anywhere else if I can't get this off my hands…" Gerald tried to make half-hearted jokes in an attempt to keep thinking positively, put this whole process really was extremely strenuous, and he definitely was beginning to feel the exhaustion.

Slip!

Right then, the exhaustion made him lose his focus and his hands slipped, causing Gerald to lose his grip and caused the rope to slide over the rock.

"Sh*t! Sh*t! Sh*t!" He screamed loudly as he stretched out his hand in a desperate attempt to grab onto the rock, as his body was pulled backwards, swinging back to its original position of hanging upside down. 

Gerald wanted to grab onto the rock, but his body was quicker than his reflexes, and simply stretching his hands and reaching out to grab the rock wouldn't work as he would definitely be out of reach by then. The best chance he would have to reach the rocks once again would be to xo the whole process once again, from the start.

Gerald already knew all that. But nevertheless, he still felt the need to stretch out his hand for one last try! Perhaps it might've been due to denial, but Gerald didn't care for his reasons. In that moment, his hands moved without him even thinking, as though they had minds of their own.

WHAM!

Gerald's eyes widened with surprise. He thought that his hands would fail to grab the rock, and he would revert back to the position of upside down. After all, that's how it should've happened, no matter how you look at it...

"Then, how…" Gerald's gaze was fixated on his hands, which were gripping the rock tightly, and after a split second of confusion, he immediately let out a groan and pulled his body upwards, covering the rock using the rope around his hands. 

"What the hell happened just now…?" Gerald raised his eyebrows as he stared back and forth at his hands and the rock, confused as to how his reflexes became so quick that it was somehow able to beat gravity. It didn't make any sense.

'Unless it had something to do with me awakening my superpower…' Gerald's eyes sparkled for a second. Perhaps he had attained the power of superspeed, and was incredibly quick. Or maybe he had the ability to slow down time. 

"Wait a f*cking minute.." All of a sudden, Gerald realized something, and his gaze once again shifted to his wrists, after which he scanned his entire arm. 

"Ah.. So that's what happened.." Gerald mumbled under his breath as he let out a slightly disappointed sigh. Of course, it wasn't too noticeable at first, but Gerald's arms were about an inch longer than it was before. Maybe even more. That was the reason why Gerald felt that something was slightly off. He couldn't figure it out immediately, as it wasn't that big of a chance. It wasn't as though his hands had become five inches longer.

"Hah… why couldn't it have been super speed…" Gerald cursed at his bad luck. He had received the ability to expand his body parts, which most people wouldn't consider to be a 'cool' superpower.

"Forget it.. I have to focus on getting out of this wretched place right now." Gerald said to himself as he stopped whining and regained his focus on the problem at hand. He then continued rubbing the rope on the sharp ends of the rock, and the rope slowly began to be cut open.

TAK!

After a few more seconds of rubbing against the rock, the rope split into two, and Gerald screamed loudly with a joyous voice. "F*ck yes!" 

He swung back as he let go of the rock, and his gaze then shifted to the top, where his legs were tied up and hung onto the roof of the cave, and he gritted his teeth.

Gerald wasn't too good with exercises, and so he wasn't confident about raising his upper body up to grab onto his legs and untie the rope. This meant that he had to look for other options to help him free his legs. 

"I guess I can now rely on my superpowers…" He turned his attention to his hands before stretching them upwards. 

"Urgh…" But to his surprise, Gerald found that it wasn't so easy to actually utilize his abilities. Although he was groaning and grunting a lot, his hands weren't expanding even a tiny bit, which made him annoyed.

"What the f*ck? Why the hell is it not working anymore? Is it like a one time use kind of ability?" Gerald was angry at the fact that he wasn't able to use his superpowers. This was perhaps the easiest and simplest method that he could use to free himself. But if it doesn't work, then that means that he had to search for alternative ways to escape, which would require time to think and implement.

"Come on! It worked the first time, it can work again!" Gerald said loudly as he pointed both his hands at his legs. It sounded like he was saying those words to reassure himself, but whatever the reason was, it seemed to have worked as Gerald could feel a ticklish sensation in his body and he turned his gaze towards his hands, which he felt were slowly increasing in length and a smile appeared on his face.

"Yes! Just like that!" Gerald yelled out with a cheerful expression as he watched both his arms becoming longer and longer, but as time went on, he began to get more and more exhausted, which made the progress of his abilities slow down a bit. 

"No, no, no… not now! Don't give up!" Gerald said as he tried his best to grab onto his legs, but it was still too far away. 

"Gerald!" Right then, a familiar voice entered his ears, and the startled Gerald tilted his head towards the direction from where the voice had come.

"Harold?" Gerald said in a confused tone, puzzled as to why Harold was here. But of course, he was not alone. Right behind Harold, following him closely, were Alphonso and Max, who both looked at Gerald curiously as soon as they spotted him.

"What the hell? What's wrong with your hands, Gerald?" Alphonso said loudly as soon as his gaze landed on Gerald's suspiciously elongated arms, and his eyebrows rose up in response. 

"Is that your superpower, Gerald?" Max asked with intrigue in his eyes. He seemed like he was genuinely interested in learning about his abilities. "To grow out your limbs?" 

"I don't know if my abilities just extend to my limbs, but for now, yes." Gerald nodded his head after letting out a long and heavy sigh, and as soon as he finished speaking, he loosened his hands, and his arms began to shrink, turning back into their original sizes within seconds. "This is my superpower, apparently."

"Woah…" Harold watched with a shocked expression on his face as the arms returned to their normal sizes, and he walked up to Gerald, inspecting his arms carefully, as though he was examining a rare specimen. 

"Elongating your limbs, huh...That's... kind of lame... No offense." Alphonso said softly as he touched his chin, and Harold snorted in response. "For all we know, you could get one that's actually even worse."

"I was just stating the facts, alright?" Alphonso shrugged his shoulders and spoke with an annoyed tone. "You don't have to be snarky."

"Just help me get down from here, guys.." Gerald decided to interject into the conversation, and the others walked towards him. 

"Let's make this quick!" Harold said as he pointed at the direction they came from.. "We have to help Noah. I think he might have a tough time with this monster!"