Tomobi sat uncomfortably in the living room with Kiorif facing him, whilst the Spoon and Sprout mobbed behind him. Rookie was tough to talk to, Sprout was embarrassing to talk to, but Kiorif, Kiorif was going to be terrifying to talk to.
“So you broke the only rule that I told you that was important, used it, encountered the problem at this place, failed to tell us, and then tell me that I should bend my own rule,”
Tomobi could only look at the floor as he felt his body burn slightly.
“Well I-'' he couldn’t piece a sentence together as he looked up, Kiorif’s eyes were void of emotion. Tomobi fell into silence once again.
“I thought so. Which means that until you can say something that could actually help us you are going to stay here to not cause any more problems. So how about you do something you are good at and go make us something to eat,”
Kiorif left the weight of those words for everyone else in the room, they wanted to say something but could not find the right words either. That is except Rookie who went after Kiorif.
“What the hell was that?” Rookie stormed over him, though his focus was only on his damaged gun.
“You can’t say that to a ki-”
“Rookie enough,” Kiorif stood over Rookie.
“I don’t care if he is a kid, or if things have changed, or any other excuse you can pull. The mission is more important than the feelings of one individual,” his unwavering voice could be heard inside as well, with the remaining two looking over to see what could happen.
“So if that individual puts us in a compromise for the mission then it becomes our problem. And in case you haven’t seen, we have little money because he couldn’t help you, we are right now working for some farmers. And the final nail in the coffin is that we now might not be able to continue because my gun got broken by the same thing he didn’t tell us about,” Rookie remained unfazed from this.
“We can figure something out,”
“No we can’t, it's not like earth. There is no backup or no repairs, no calling out. We are on our own until we finish this mission. Now let me try to fix this,” Kiorif sat back down to tinker with his gun, though Rookie still stayed beside him.
“Are you talking about the gun or your plan?” Kiorif paid no more attention to her.
Spoon and Sprout both ran towards the couch to hide their knowledge of the argument. Once inside Rookie looked over to Spoon and sighed, joining them on the couch.
“Man we’ve only been here for a couple of weeks and we are already dying,”
“Oh come on, it isn’t that bad,” Spoon’s words had no impact as Rookie looked at him with doubt.
“We need to get rid of that creature,”
“Easier said than done. We’ve been trying to do that before you guys reached here, what makes you think it will be done?”
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“Wow Spoon, for somebody who tried to just cheer me up, you sure didn’t know when to,”
As they continued to debate, Tomobi paid little attention to it. Kiorif’s words broke down all the progress he had for the past couple of days. With Kiorif, with Sprout, with Rookie, with even the creature.
“Well, we don’t have any bait to lure it out, besides it’s seen Kiorif so maybe it’ll leave?”
“Yeah but you two aren’t going to stay here forever, sooner or later it might come back or worse, bring more,”
“We can try to figure something out,” Spoon Sprout and Rookie leave to prepare a strategy, leaving Tomobi on the couch in the empty room. And whilst his body stayed motionless, his mind ran a mile.
‘This stupid loop,’ his thoughts clawing inside him.
‘Why do I always move back when I try something different,’ he didn’t know what to do, he wanted to yell, fight or at least do something to calm the fight inside of him.
The phone glowed with temptation once more. This time, no one would interfere.
‘I’ve caused enough trouble, I should just leave before I cause more,’ But another thought slashed at him.
‘Am I just going to leave them though?’ he pulled himself away from the thought of home and looked beyond the window. Outside Rookie was chatting with Sprout and Spoon openly and free, and he wanted that. His eyes even turned over towards Kiorif sitting afar, still toying with his broken gun. A childish thought came to mind.
‘I might as well try to help them,’ Now abandoning the phone he went outside to join the conversation.
“Sprout, do you have anything that could help?” Sprout had a moment for thoughts.
“I actually do have my own that you could use. Just wait a moment,” Sprout left while Tomobi joined.
“Great, how about you Spoon?”
“I think we do have some old guns in the barn, see if we still have any slugs,”
“Perfect try to find them too,” Spoon also began his own scavenger hunt.
“Tomobi do you have any weapons-sorry-I-got-caught-in-the-moment. Let me restart, what do you need, Tomobi?”
“What can I help with,” Tomobi kept a calm composure whilst Rookie had a sense of confusion.
“You don’t have to do anything,”
“No really I want to, I have to make up for what happened,” a sense of surprise sparked in Rookie.
“Really? You really want to make up for what you did?” a small, sly, smile grew across her face.
“Cause it’s gonna have to be a lot,”
“If it means I can help fix this then-”
“No time for self-growth, go and apologise to everyone,”
“Wait what?”
“You heard me,” Rookie raised her voice.
“I let the gift thing slide, but you messed up by not telling us about the creature. Now go tell everybody in the farm you are sorry about it, NOW SOLDIER,” Rookie’s bark had Tomobi running about to follow her order. Pausing the time of each person to apologise for his actions. Rookie had a small laugh as she looked over to Kiorif, noticing how he heard her yell.
“How is fixing things?” Rookie cooled the fire she had with Tomobi. Kiorif focused on fixing the gun, before finally grunting a response.
“Not good, turns out the gun hasn’t just cracked but now it has been crushed. Has a bent that makes it harder for bullets to fly,”
“So more likely to get jammed?” Rookie sat down next to Kiorif.
“And less likely to shoot,” now Kiorif relaxed his body.
“Things are becoming a mess,”
“Don’t worry about it, you've just had to carry a lot. Now we Sprout and Spoon are gonna help us with that,”
“What about Tomobi?” Both looked over as he talked to one of the VitaNav workers and were surprised to see him get chased off.
“I’m making say sorry,”
“You are punishing him?” Kiorif now had that sense of surprise.
“You were sorta right, just a smidge bit. I couldn’t let him get away with everything. He did say that he was open to whatever we told him?” to add to the change of emotion Kiorif did give a faint smile.
“I suppose I can see what you are trying to do,”
“That would be nice, can I try to see what’s wrong with the gun,” Kiorif passed the gun to her as he finally took in a deep breath.