Being A Brat
Smultronstället
A few (hard) battles and several mind-boggling puzzles later, they'd finally made it to the final room - which was blocked, by yet another puzzle. Toto groaned in frustration, ready to sling his gauntlets off in anger. This was getting boring for him - he hated puzzles, as did Shishi, if the grunt of annoyance every time they came to the next puzzle was any hint.
"This one requires several steps..." Jiji hummed softly, tapping her chin. "And it's going to require us all to take part. This was obviously not meant to be a solo mission." She nodded, turning to the other two, who just looked at her unamused.
"It also wasn't meant to be a mission for those who despise puzzles." Shishi deadpanned, his enthusiasm for the dungeon had waned with each puzzle they'd been presented with. He'd never been one to question whether a mission or exploring a field/dungeon was worth it - to him they always were - but this one dungeon was beginning to change his opinion.
'When we get through this, I'm going to post up a warning on the forums about this...' Shishi grumbled inwardly, turning to Jiji then. "Lead the way. You've got more of an idea of what we're supposed to be doing than either of us."
Jiji rolled her eyes at her disgruntled friend but said nothing to him. Instead, she made her way over to the pedestal off to the side. It was made of stone similar to that of the walls surrounding them and in the center of the top was a brightly burning flame. She studied it carefully for a few moments before realizing the core of the flame was that of a sphere. Taking a guess she reached out and grabbed the sphere, the action immediately causing the fire to disperse.
"Okay... now what?" Toto questioned boredly, hoping Jiji didn't expect great praise for obtaining a sphere. Honestly, what would it do?
"Um..." Jiji mumbled, eyebrows furrowing as she glanced around the room. She smiled when she noticed the small spherical shaped hole right next to the space where the door was and wasted no time inserting the object in said hole, standing back when a sort of fuse was lit. The three could only watch in surprise as the door was quickly incinerated, leaving only the skeleton of it remaining immersed in flames. On another guess, she removed the sphere and once that was done the flames dispersed, leaving no trace of there ever having been anything there to begin with.
"Well then... good job." Shishi muttered, more than a little impressed by the special effects but thoughts of this being only the first obstacle in the puzzle quickly kept him from feeling any further awe. "Let's continue, you two." He walked forward without another word, just barely squishing the urge to throttle Toto when he heard his sarcastic 'good job, Jiji'.
Once past the door and across the small bridge, Jiji took the lead again and let her instincts take over as she slipped the sphere into the recess on the north wall. A glyph etched itself into the wall almost immediately after and, following her previous method, she removed the sphere from the insert and turned to the next one in the right wall. The sphere once again ignited with flame though this time, instead of removing it, she instructed Toto to touch the glyph on the north wall that had been created moments before. Not a second later, the door rose up, allowing them entry into the next room.
"See guys? This really isn't that hard after all..." Jiji's voice trailed off when they arrived in the next room. In front of them were large flames reaching from one side of the room to the other, clearing blocking their path to the other side.
Toto turned to her then, eyes narrowed almost accusingly as if blaming Jiji for the fire being there. "You were saying?" He snarked.
"Toto, be quiet." Shishi hissed sharply, glaring at the blue haired avatar for being so rude to the girl. It wasn't Jiji's fault. "What do we do now, Ji?" He asked, eyes switching from here to Toto who, fortunately, was too busy pouting now to say anything at the moment.
"Give me a second." Jiji murmured to her friend, walking forward and looking over the room carefully, studying everything from the sphere located in the wall on their right to the bit of floor not to far from it with a glowing located in the middle to the flames still raging. "Hmm... okay. I think I know what to do." She finally announced after a couple of minutes.
"Shishi, go and stand on that glowing spot on the floor - I believe it's a switch of some sort." Jiji instructed and Shishi did as he was told, walking over to the switch and standing on it. The second his weight shifted onto the switch, a blinding white light enveloped the room though, thankfully, it left as quickly as it had come. It didn't escape their attention that the pedestal from the previous had moved into this one but they said nothing and continued with Jiji instructing them on what to do.
Despite the obvious tension between Toto and Shishi over the former's obvious hostility toward Jiji, the three made a decent team working the puzzle and sooner than they would have thought, they had reached the final part. Jiji allowed Toto to use the sphere to open the final door, the loud grinding of stone on stone reaching their ears as the door slowly rose.
"Finally." Shishi sighed in relief, wasting no more of their time as he lead them over to the treasure chest sitting oh so prettily on the single pedestal in the middle of the room. He opened it without another thought and promptly frowned upon seeing nothing but a weapon sitting in the bottom. A whip to be exact.
"That's it?" Toto hissed irritatedly. They'd come all this way, gone through all of those mind-boggling puzzles, for a ty whip?
"I suppose so..." Shishi hummed, wholeheartedly agreeing with his younger companion's irritation this time; it was rather disappointing. He looked over at Jiji, who didn't seem the least bothered by their dud of a treasure, and back to the whip, realizing it was a level higher than weapon she was currently using. Without a second thought, he tossed the item to her. "Here - you take it. We can't use it and you did most of the work today anyway." He gave her a small smile as he said this.
Toto watched the exchange, inwardly fuming at Shishi. He snapped his head to the side and huffed loudly, knowing he'd drawn attention to himself when Shishi stretched and looked his way. He didn't care though, he wanted Shishi to say something to him; he wanted to unload all the annoyance and jealousy he'd felt for the past few hours. He didn't like that this Jiji seemed so close to Shishi - he didn't care how long they'd known one another, he hated being introduced to others as 'a member of Shishi's guild'. After all the time they'd spent together, he would figure Shishi would at least introduce them as friends - but now, Jiji got that status.
And she'd also gotten the mission item! Toto was furious over that too. Sure she did a lot of work and she could use the weapon, unlike any of their guild members, but they could've also sold it to replace items used during missions too.
Instead of continuing to mope about it right there, he walked a bit backwards, heading back towards the entrance of the dungeon. He just wanted to get away from them, period.
Shishi watched with narrowed eyes as Toto left the room, his irritation with the other and his attitude for the last little while now reaching its boiling point. If it wasn't one thing, it was another and all of it seemed to trace back to Jiji's presence with them on the mission today. He would've been able to understand any discomfort Toto might have felt from her being there, but the other boy wasn't feeling that at all - he was just being a downright brat. It was beginning to piss him off.
"Shishi? We should get going now..." Jiji murmured, snapping the red-headed warrior out of his thoughts.
"Hm? Oh... yeah. Let's go..." Shishi replied, guiding them back through the hallways that would lead them back to the beginning of the dungeon.
Once there, Shishi walked over to Toto and grabbed his arm, dragging him off to the side to talk to him, keeping out of earshot of Jiji. "What the hell is your problem today?" He hissed.
Toto yanked his arm out of Shishi's grab, his eyes narrowed unhappily. "Don't you mean 'what the hell is your problem'?" He whispered sharply, his eyes darting over to where she stood, confused at the whole situation.
Shishi followed Toto's gaze as it landed on Jiji, still confused as ever about what the other had against Jiji and why it was him that had the problem all of a sudden. "Care to enlighten me a little or do you want to continue to act like a spoiled brat who didn't get the toy he wanted?" He questioned, voice sharp as he looked at the other boy again.
The robotic avatar's gaze snapped back to him, his gaze hardening if at all possible. "A... spoiled brat, huh?" He hissed, "Why is it she had to join us? What's so special about her? How do you even know her?"
"She has a name if you hadn't figured it out already!" Shishi roared, fists clenched at his sides to keep from throttling the other boy at hearing how he was talking about Jiji. "And its none of your damn business how I know her or anything else - she's a friend of mine and that's all you need to know!"
Toto took a step back from the anger he could hear in Shishi's voice, but he wasn't backing down - not in the least. "I don't give a about her name!" He yelled back, shoving Shishi away from him. " this," He spat out, stomping away. He dropped the connection they shared and warped out of the dungeon, seething visibly.
Shishi sat up from his place sprawled out on the ground from not anticipating the shove, eyes rolling upwards at Toto's actions. He really was like a child who hadn't gotten his way. He blinked when a hand made its way into his line of vision, eyes trailing up the arm to see a frowning Jiji.
"What?" He grunted simply, taking the offered hand and helping himself back up into a standing position.
Jiji crossed her arms, her fingers tapping on her skin gently, awaiting an answer from the other. When it wasn't offered, she sighed heavily. "What was that all about?" She frowned, glancing back to where Toto last was, "Yongguk-ah, you were too hard on him..."
Shishi winced ever so slightly at the use of his real name but ignored it and shook his head at the light scolding. "I don't think I was - I think I was too light on him." He replied, crossing his arms. Silence fell over them for a few moments as they tried to stare one another down, neither wanting to back down from their opinions on the fight.
Shishi lost. Miserably.
"Aish..." Shish groaned softly, rubbing his temples in mild irritation. "He was being a brat, Jieun-ah. Not just that even, his attitude towards you has been downright unfriendly and he acted like saying your name gave him a bad taste in his mouth. It pissed me off."
Jiji shook her head, adjusting her whip on her belt before gently hugging her longtime friend. "Ah, I'm a big girl, don't fight with your other friends because of me. Besides... do you not understand why he was so hostile towards me the whole time? Or did that completely slip your battle-crazed mind?" She joked, poking the swordsman's forehead.
Shishi frowned and batted her hand away, the slight teasing from his friend helping to calm him somewhat. "I am not battle-crazed." He replied, returning the gesture and poking Jiji's forehead. "And yeah, I think I do know why Toto was like that - it's because he didn't have all of the attention like he usually does. He's become spoilt - that's that. It's all of the others' faults, especially Joko and Tats." He grumbled, crossing his arms once more.
Jiji gave her friend a blank look before rolling her eyes upwards, shaking her head. Even if she told him why, he still wouldn't get it, so she dropped it. "If that's what you think, Shishimato," She hummed lightly, an eyebrow rising in amusement. "It's time for me to go, maybe next time we can do this with all of your guild members, I'd love to meet the rest of them." She smiled sweetly before warping out of the dungeon, giving a final wave before disappearing completely.
Shishi shook his head at his friend, knowing very well that she'd meant something else by her question but it didn't really matter anyway. He wasn't going to let Toto get away with being so disrespectful towards his long-time friend. "Stop thinking about it, Shishi - you're only going to get pissed off again..." He scolded himself, forcing his thoughts to drift somewhere else.
"It is about time to introduce the others to Jiji though... I think they'll be a little more grown-up about it..." He thought aloud as he looked around one more time at the dungeon, eyebrows furrowing when upon noticing something really off.
Just a few yards away from where he was standing was a hallway that led to a treasure chest they'd journeyed down earlier, but unlike before it now looked as if something acidic had been splashed on the walls and had eaten its way through. The patches were completely random, one here and another there, but through the patches he could see what looked to be numbers and letters.
"Strange..." Shishi murmured, more than a little perturbed by the sight. However, being that Matoki was an online MMORPG, it was bound to have more than its fair share of glitches.
Shrugging it off, he warped out of the dungeon.
—
At the guild room, Toto sat on one of their couches, still seething and cursing under his breath. "Stupid Shishi, idiot red-headed swordsman..." He grumbled, kicking at Keke's empty and mostly unused satchel. "Why did I ever even see you as a stupid idol..." He crossed his arms and leaned back on the couch, his glaring eyes directed at the floor. He didn't even move when he heard someone enter the guild.
"Oh Tats, shut up! It's not the first time you've gotten slimed and it won't be the last." Joko scolded the fencer, who had not stopped complaining about being an apparent "slime magnet" since they'd warped out of the field.
"We should do more missions like that. It was funny watching Tats running everywhere trying to get away from the slimes and Joko following behind him to heal him." Dada snickered softly. "Wasn't it funny Keke?" He questioned the silent ninja, knowing he wasn't mistaken when he saw the slight eye smile the other had had.
Though silent for the most part of the whole mission, Keke let out a snicker at Tats' expense before answering Dada, "Yeah - especially when he squealed when he ran right into one."
Tats sputtered at his teammates, about to throttle them when he noticed Toto. He frowned and tilted his head in concern, "Toto...? Are you okay?"
No response.
Joko frowned at the normally talkative avatar's lack of response, opening his mouth to say something only to stop when the guild's doors opened and Shishi walked in.
Scratch that. Not walk, but stomp in.
The four guild members watched as Shishi journeyed over to the guild's vault, walking right past Toto, and began storing some supplies he'd apparently bought, surprise etching onto their faces when neither Toto nor Shishi acknowledged one another's presence. In fact, they noticed Toto had made an effort to turn his head in a direction he couldn't see the other.
Interesting indeed.
"Ummm.." Dada mumbled awkwardly as a tense atmosphere began to settle around them.
Joko, ever the one to get to the bottom of something, stepped forward, "Alright - what's going on you two?"
"Ask him." Shishi replied simply, jabbing a thumb in Toto's direction.
Toto whirled around instantly, huffing at Shishi's words. "What do you mean, 'ask me'? You're the one who started it when you invited her to join us!" He half shouted, jumping onto the back of the sofa in an attack position.
The rest of the teammates were all shocked to see the two at odds, especially with such hostility.
Shishi's eyes seemed to flash an even brighter red than usual, all previous thoughts of giving Toto the benefit of the doubt about earlier now evaporated. "'She' has a ing name!" He shouted, swiftly running over to the blue haired avatar, one on his sword's hilt.
The other four were quick to act before Shishi and Toto had a chance to come to blows, Joko and Tats body-slamming Shishi while Keke and Dada grabbed a hold of Toto and pinned him to the nearest wall. The two struggled furiously with them, but their grips remained steadfast, all four of the confused guild members determined to keep their friends from PKing one another.
"Stop both of you or I swear I'm going to put a curse on you!" Joko screeched out over the angry grunts and snarls from the two. He and Keke could hold their own as far the two went but neither Tats nor Dada stood a chance against an enraged Shishi and Toto - the latter of whom had a beserk mode that could put them on their asses in mere seconds.
Toto grunted heavily and he shouted, "Let me go - I'll just leave. I don't feel like being on anymore anyways. No sense being here since I'm not important."
Upon hearing his words, Keke and Dada released him. True to his word and stomped to the door and sighed heavily. "I won't be on for a few days..." He murmured, logging out immediately. Keke's sharp gaze went to Shishi as Tats and Joko released their hold on the angered swordsman.
"Just what the was that?" Keke asked. All eyes went to Shishi, each questioning him. Who was this 'she' they kept referring to? What happened to make them so angry? It just wasn't like Toto to suddenly turn on Shishi like that.
"He's just being an idiot." Shishi huffed in response, obviously not wanting to go over this again.
Dada chewed his lips, "But... Toto isn't the type to attack anyone especially you, Shishi..." He mumbled softly.
Shishi rolled his eyes, "He certainly is when he doesn't get all of the attention like he's used to." He logged out without another word to any of them.
Tats stared hard at where Shishi once was before turning to look at the others. "Well... when did they start PMSing?"
Keke gave Tats a blank stare before grabbing up a random object and tossing it at him, taking out a few health points. Tats half-squawked at him, trying to reach out and strangle him. Joko stopped him and shook his head.
"Having two arguing is enough..." Joko hummed, his mind occupied.
"What's going on with those two?" Dada questioned, looking around at his three friends in hopes they had answers.
Joko sighed heavily and shook his head, "I don't know honestly. I mean... this is different from the spats me and Tats get into - they're furious with one another." He sighed heavily, rubbing his temples in frustration.
"Well... what do we know?" Keke asked the room at large.
"Other than they're both imbeciles? Nothing." Joko replied dryly, sighing once more.
Tats shook his head, leaning against the couch, crossing his arms and shrugging. "It's late... I should get some rest, but let's meet up tomorrow and figure out a way to help those two. It's... abnormal to see the two of them at each others' throats."
Keke hummed thoughtfully, nodding his head some at Tats just before the fencer logged out. He turned to Dada and Joko. "I agree with Tats. It's weird to see them fighting. We should meet tomorrow and brainstorm about it."
"Yeah... I've got some things I need to do anyway. It'll perhaps help me clear my mind of this mess for a little so I can focus better." Joko nodded, bidding goodbye to the other two and logging out as well.
Dada gave Keke a weak smile, "I don't like seeing them fighting - it's scary." He admitted to the ninja, knowing the other wouldn't tell anyone. "I'm going to go now, today's been tiring. See you later, Keke." He waved to him and then logged as well.
Keke checked his inventory and began planning for one more mission before he logged out. Going on missions helped him think after all - perhaps he'd come up with a solution during a battle or while receiving well earned rewards.
——————————
Normally I would wait until next week
but I really wanted to update today
(aka, I'm awful with cliffhangers),
so here's the continuation of
the previous chapter!
<3
Psst... don't pay any attention to her.
This chapter and the last one were orignally supposed to be one,
but it was so long we split it and she didn't wanna wait until next Saturday to post up the rest keke
It has nothing to do with cliffhangers, I tell you, nothing!
(^ - ^)
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