The Castle Family

The moment Jay left the cave, he immediately saw Rodrick and the others gathered around a bonfire, just a couple of steps near him. He also saw a couple of wolves in the open area doing stuff like running, sparring, mating, etc.

Jay approached Rodrick and the rest. The moment he did so, Rodrick was shocked when he saw Jay's terrible condition.

"Jay! What happened to you?!!"

"Nothing much." Jay said as he sat down beside Jin and Cidney.

"So, did anything happen to you guys when I wasn't around?" Jay asked.

"After those wolves brought us here, I thought we were goners. But contrary to what I thought, the wolves never tried to hurt us or anything." Rodrick said and grabbed some sticks beside him and threw it on the bonfire.

"So any thoughts on what we should do now? We're stuck in the middle of nowhere with wolves around us and we do not know a way to go back to Earth." Rodrick said as he gritted his teeth and gently punched the ground with his chubby fist.

"I don't know about you guys, but I am heading back to the place where I killed myself. And besides, I think Fenrir will probably send you guys back to the Fatelord Plane if I ask him to. Cidney knows most of the places there and you guys can settle down somewhere while this dimensional crap goes on." Jay said and wondered if everyone he knew will still recognize him since he's in his original body.

The one everyone knew as Jay back then was a 14 or 15 year old boy, and now, he was a 30 year old guy with long black hair and a stuffy beard. He even had a well toned body right now.

Cidney was about to say something, but Rodrick suddenly grabbed Jay by his shoulder and looked him in the eye.

"We're going with you. Screw that shit about settling down!" Rodrick said and there was even some kind of desperate look in his eyes for some reason.

"Are you sure? You aren't indebted to me in any way. To be honest, it is me who has a debt to pay since you guys treated me generously back on Earth. So why?" Jay said and wondered what was going on in Rodrick's head.

"Cidney, Jin, would you guys leave the two of us for now? I need to speak to Jay privately." Rodrick said as he let go of Jay's shoulder. Since things have come to this, he might just as well tell Jay the truth about himself and the Castle family.

"Dad..." Before Cidney could even ask, Jin gestured her to just do what Rodrick told them and led her somewhere else.

...

"So, what do you need to tell me in private?" Jay asked Rodrick and wondered what this was all about.

"I'm your older brother." Rodrick said as he looked Jay in the eyes and hoped Jay would not suddenly punch him in the face. He knew that there was probably some kind of grudge deep within Jay since he knew that Jay thought that the Castle family abandoned him and everything.

"Bullshit. Throughout the 30 years of my life, I have always been alone. I had to depend on myself to survive. And now, you're telling me that I have an older brother?" Jay said calmly and did not even took Rodrick seriously.

"I know it's hard to accept-" Before Rodrick could even continue speaking, Jay interfered and spoke up.

"Of course it is hard to accept for fuck sakes! I don't know who my parents are and I know they abandoned me in a daycare center. I don't know how many brothers or sisters I have or if I even have a family to go back to. And out of the blue, you will just say that you are my older brother? Stop messing with me."

"We did not abandon you! Do you even-" Rodrick was starting to get angry but before he could even finish speaking, Jay interrupted him again.

"Oh really? Then where were you guys during the past 29 years of my life-" Before Jay could continue, Rodrick suddenly punched him in the face.

"Just shut up and listen to me! Everyone in the family is dead besides you and me, so shut the fuck up and listen!" Rodrick said angrily and his eyes were starting to get a bit teary.

"Fine. Tell me all about it then." Jay said as Rodrick moved away from him and tossed a few more sticks into the bonfire.

"Our father, John Castle, once owned a large plot of land on the countryside. Through his efforts, he turned the land he owned into a farming community and after a few years, it turned into a small town. He managed to do all of that in just twenty years. It was also in this community he built up where our family started.

Getting bored of just governing over farmers and workers, our father wanted to start his own family. He had some kind of disease which made it impossible for him to make babies, so he adopted three orphans from a daycare center. I was one of these adopted orphans.

After 2 years, our father met Roxanne, our mother, during some kind of party. After another year, the two of them got married. Together with our mother, she brought her three younger siblings into our family.

As a family with eight people, you could say that we had a lot of fun times together. And for some reason, during the next year, mother gave birth to twins. A boy and a girl.

But as I told you already, father was incapable of making babies, so the event where our mother managed to give birth to twins caused a huge fight in our family.

Father believed that mother cheated on him obviously. Besides him, our eldest brother and two sisters also believed in what father believed in and started to despise mother and even started calling her names.

As for me, Maria, and Jack, the three of us sided with mother because we knew a horrible truth. In truth is, even mother did not know that we knew of this truth." Tears started to flow out of Rodrick's eyes as he gritted his teeth.

"Our mother was raped by our uncle, Ben Castle. This happened during uncle's business trip in the Castle's farming town. While father and everyone else was out besides mother and the three of us, uncle visited our house. I even remembered him talking to someone on his phone saying that 'sooner or later, this land will belong to us.'

Our uncle pretended to be a nice guy and gave me some cash, telling me to get Jack and Maria. He told us to go out of the house and have fun. Of course, we were still kids back then and we did not know something strange was happening.

While we were out buying some food and even boasting to the kids in the farming town, we thought it would be nice if we could buy some delicious food for mother. So with a lot of junk food and cola on our hands, the three of us hurried back to our house.

But the moment we went in, we heard mother screaming from the bedroom. We heard her shouting 'Stop!', 'Please, don't...'

While I grabbed a knife from the kitchen, Jack and Maria suddenly ran towards the bedroom and saw our uncle lying on top of our mother. In a pained voice, mother tried to tell them to run away, but our uncle suddenly stood up and started beating the shit out of them. The moment I arrived at the scene, our uncle was back at it again with our mother and I saw Jack and Maria lying down on the corner of the room, with their blood splattered around.

I was so furious back then and almost lost my mind. Our uncle did not even notice me back then as I crept closer to him and stabbed him in the neck. I killed him and thought it would fix everything, but I was wrong.

Who knew that the fucking asshole just climaxed during then, impregnating our mother. If only I acted quick enough, our family wouldn't have been destroyed by our fucking uncle.

That day, I became some kind of doctor, therapist, psychologist, and whatever as I tried my best to treat Jack and Maria's wounds, talk to mother about stuff, and even dump our uncle's body on a random farmer's house in order to protect mother and our family name. It was as if I wasn't a kid anymore during that day."

Jay saw that Rodrick was having a hard time telling him all of this so he told him not to force himself and just tell him the details.

"No. I have to tell you everything, so just shut up and listen." Rodrick wiped his tears and rubbed his eyes before continuing.

"Back to the part when the twins were born, when the fighting started in our family. Together with me, Jack and Maria defended our mother since we knew of the truth.

But no one believed in us. Even when our mother told everyone the truth, our father did not believe her words. I even remember his words clearly when he said 'How dare you speak of my dead brother like that! Do you have no shame woman?'

Out of anger, I punched our father in the face and shouted at him, telling him that uncle was the one at fault and not our mother. I even told him I killed our uncle and threw his lifeless corpse on a poor farmer's house.

The next thing that happened was our eldest brother, Benji, started to beat the shit out of me. Our mother begged him to stop.

For some reason, father did not make mother and the three of us leave the house and still allowed us to stay. The next three years after that, our family was a mess where no one wants to talk to another. We all minded our own business and it was as if everyone turned into strangers.

Our father always went on business trips in order to improve the farming town. Our siblings who sided with father went to the cities and lived their separate lives there. Jack and Maria went to a military school. As for me, I was always in the house, accompanying mother.

The next year after that, I noticed that mother was pregnant again. When I asked her whose baby is it and even threatened to kill the bastard who impregnated her since I knew father was incapable of doing so, she just smiled at me and hugged me before telling me something. 'Rodrick. Thank you for being a good son to me. I hope you can watch over Jay when he gets born into this world. I hope you can forgive me for everything.'

After saying that, she gave me this..."

Rodrick stopped speaking and he snapped his fingers, causing a rusty key to appear in his hands.

"I was confused why she started to speak like that. It was as if she was bidding farewell. And I was right. During one night, she started packing up her things and kept it a secret from everyone. Only I knew of it since I secretly kept watch over ever since she gave me the rusty key.

Out of persistence and constant worrying, I asked mother if I can come with her, but for some reason, she suddenly smiled at me in a very strange way. It wasn't a happy smile or anything, it was an evil smile.

I was so scared back then to be honest. It was as if the person smiling at me wasn't my mother anymore and was a completely different person.

She then approached me and whispered into my ear, 'My son, my beautiful son. Take care of yourself and Jay, the child in my womb.'

After that, she grabbed her stuff and left. I was losing my mind back then. How the hell was I supposed to take care of a child in her womb if she disappears? What the fuck was going on?

Then, after our mother's disappearance, no one besides me, Jack, and Maria gave a shit. It was as if father and the rest of our siblings did not know of her.

After another year, during a family trip, when father decided to have a family picture, another creepy and mysterious thing happened. But this creepy thing was only known by me and no one else.

When the family picture was taken, we all had a copy for ourselves since father wanted us to remember this special day. But when I received my own copy of the family picture, I was shocked when I saw mother standing next beside me in the picture. She was still pregnant with you in the picture.

When I checked everyone else's copy, mother wasn't there. It was only on the copy I had where mother appeared."

Jay did not know how he should feel about all of this but he guessed that it was because of 'his' mother's words that Rodrick decided to stick with him this time around.

"I don't know how you ended up in a daycare or what those people who took care of you told you. But this is the truth behind our family. After everything I've told you, we all went our separate paths.

I also made a promise to Jack and Maria that no matter what happens, I will find mother and ask her the truth about you and why she left us. But alas, in all my years of searching, the only one I found was you, an addicted virtual reality gamer who ended up getting caught in the DATOF incident and whatever dimensional clusterfuck you ended up in."

"It seems like I am just another accident along the way then." Jay said to himself and wondered if some kind of god was to blame for his twisted fate in life.

"So what's with the power ranger suit? And by the way, what kind of spatial inventory do you have that requires you to snap your fingers every time you take an item out?" Jay asked and set everything about the family matters aside.

"Wait, you're not mad at me?" Rodrick asked with a surprised look on his face.

"Why should I be? Based on the touching story you just told me, the one I have to be concerned about is my mother and not you, brother."

When Rodrick heard Jay calling him brother, he felt so happy and suddenly hugged Jay.

"Hey! Answer my question first and stop hugging me." Jay said as he sighed deep within himself. While Rodrick was hugging him, he also had a thought on his mind.

"The Castle family... am I even actually part of it? Since John Castle isn't my father, then who is it?"