#dysfunctional teamwork

Ao3: Posted

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I woke up with a pain in my back, as a lump of a rock was jabbing into my back and pressing against my spine. confusion setting in immediately as I came to my senses. The warmth and sweet smell of the botanical gardens was nowhere to be found. instead replaced with the cold and crisp scent of pine and oak wood. For some reason beyond my current comprehension: I found myself in a forest, which wasn't recognizable by any means available. 

Where was I?

How did I get here?

Which were the first questions that first came swarming to my mind, soon followed by; where even is here?

 After standing up, a few things became more apparent; I had no wallet, I was wearing strange clothes, and the only other thing in my possession was a whip. The whip itself didn't look all that special at first; odd in the fact that it was a pure white in colour. I had never seen a whip made that way before. 

Patting around my pockets I didn’t have my magic pen either; which proved to be all that more concerning. Who would go out of their way to do something like this? What kind of cruel joke was this? If whoever did this had more sinister intentions why not lock me up? Why not hold a prince for ransom at least? Why leave me stranded with anything at all?

However, I didn’t have much time to ponder this issue, because my thoughts were cut short. By something akin to listening to an elk's dying scream. On most occasions, this probably wouldn’t have raised much alarm. But considering that the scream went from blood curdling to sobbing, it seems like there is more to this than expected. So, as much as I want to ignore it… I suppose it’s my only chance for an answer.

Now it was no challenge to follow the sound of the scream and sobs. You can imagine my amusement when it was just Azul, who was simply stuck in a tree. He practically acted like he was about to die. I almost pitied him, watching him scream his several hearts out. His eyes were practically glued shut. It was rather embarrassing for him I imagine since I think he had more composure in Broom Flying 101 then he did on this low hanging branch. 

“Quit you wailing already Ashengrotto, you’re not going to die.” I finally broke my silence after several moments of watching Azul. getting bored of watching, and waiting to see if he’d notice me on his own.

“That’s easy for you to say!” Azul blurted out without even opening his eyes for a moment. But guessing by his tone, it was clear he knew who he was talking to already.

“Yeah, because even if you fell, you’d probably be fine. Maybe a little bruised, but you wouldn’t break anything. Unless you were woefully stupid.” Was my simplistic counter to Azul. I can not express just how close to the ground Azul was. He could probably unwrap himself from the branch and lower himself till his feet were flat on the ground… 

“If you are just going to stand there mocking me, you can shut the hell up!” yelped out practically shaking like the leaves on the tree. 

“Mmmm, We both know that’s not going to happen.” I mused flatly to Azul. “Moving on, do you know where the hell we are, or even why we are here?” I would interrogate him without much of a second thought. Taking a moment to take in how Azul was also in some fanciful outfit of his own. What the ever loving fuck was going on? Didn’t realise that I signed up to go to the ren fair. 

“For fuck sake Kingscholar, get me down from this tree and THEN, I’ll answer you questions” Azul practically whined out. Seeming to have had enough of his time in the tree already. 

“Do you even have the answers, Ashengrotto?” I will admit I did sound rather condescending saying that. But, Azul wasn’t a damsel in distress, and I wasn’t a knight in shining fucking armour. 

“Yes-!” Azul may as well have been one of the leaves on the tree with how much he was shaking like one. Uncrossing my arms so that I can walk out under the branch azul is on. 

“Lower your legs first so if you fall you’ll land on your feet.” Directing him wasn’t all that hard. Because unlike some people Azul had at least three brain cells and could use at least two of them to form a coherent thought and not make the situation worse for himself. “ stop hugging the branch for dear life and slowly lower yourself, then let go.” 

“Oh Thank, Neptune.” Azul lands on his feet but since he was basically jello from the anxiety so, he crumples to his knees in a matter of seconds. He seems rather too happy to be on solid ground. Maybe just a tad dramatic.

“So, get to explaining-” Not even a moment later would I be interrupted as a scream echoed close by. A text box popped up in my vision about someone being in danger nearby, something about how I should help them. I promptly ignored it. “Anyway- “ That said, nothing could ever go my way once today, as no other than Riddle Rosehearts came running into our clearing.

“YOU- “ Riddle points his finger at Azul, causing the other to raise his hands in defense. “DEAL WITH YOUR EEL.” Riddle would finish before promptly putting Azul between himself and, presumably Floyd. 

“What do you expect me to be able to do about him!” Azul would argue with him, practically scrambling back to his own feet. For a Leader Azul sure doesn’t seem to have any idea how to get his main subordinates to behave themselves.

So in a clearing, we have Azul dressed as some wizard. Riddle dressed like, I don’t know, a bard maybe? Thus, Floyd marching into the clearing dressed as a knight really didn’t come to any surprise at this point. Floyd looked a little bit surprised to see others but that didn’t really bother him obviously, he was going to do what he wanted regardless.

“Oi, that is enough, the lot of ya’. Azul get to explaining what is going on.” Simply ignoring the addition of the others I skipped to the part of getting Ashengrotto to explain. Because I would have remembered agreeing to something this ridiculous. The statement alone seemed to pique Rosehearts interest, clearly he was just as clueless as I was. Now, Azul had the two of us staring him down.

“Yeah, go on Azul, Tell them what is exactly going on here!” If I thought I had condescending earlier, Floyd simply out did it. Despite his wide grin he seemed to be… unimpressed with being roped into this mess even if he had just been having the time of his life chasing Rosehearts through the forest.

“Well… you see, to put it simply, we are in a game.” Azul explains while having taken his glasses off to clean them. Uncertain if it was a nervous fidget or because he had cried so much from being in a tree that he needed to clean them. 

“Care to elaborate on the how’s and why’s?” Rosehearts spoke up after had dusted himself off. “Because I certainly would like to know why the rest of us are here. I have things I need to get done, you know.” He was far from impressed as he had his hands on his hips.

“I can only assume - something went wrong. Because you weren’t supposed to be here.” He would elaborate, but Ashengrotto certainly would have to do better than ‘oopies’ to make up for this blunder. “So Idia must have been interrupted when casting the spell, or something went haywire with the technology.” Regardless of which it was, I could only feel the burning anger I felt at the situation at hand. “Thus sucking in more than the intended players, or something Akin to that” he would assume.

“That’s it? What exactly were you trying to accomplish? You better have a fail safe in place” Honestly, I didn’t particularly care about what they were trying to accomplish, but knowing might make the difference in survival at this moment. Needless to say I wasn’t happy about learning that a guy with blue fire hair, who couldn’t even come to Dorm leader Meetings in person, was responsible for all this. Honestly I was impressed the only thing I had done was clench my fists in anger, because I so badly wanted to lash out. 

“We’d have to ask Idia-” Azul didn’t get to finish his sentence before I interrupted him myself.

“And Just where is he? Do you even know where we are in the game Azul? We are probably lucky enough to have found each other as it is.” Azul admittedly did look- well concerned, and well maybe a tinge fearful. I may have raised my voice when raising my concerns. 

The others did their own glances around the forest. It was generic, it looked like it could be any other forest that ever was. No it was more than Generic, it was artificial. It was too clean, and unassuming. It was like we were standing in a picture, we basically were. So, none of them had a much better idea of where we are or which direction we should go. Azul looked uneasy with this new evaluation of the situation. Riddle, despite everything, looked like he was trying to come up with a plan. So I assume.

“Are you all done yapping yet? Standing around isn’t going to do us any good” Floyd couldn’t seem more bored out of his mind at this moment. How he can be so uncaring in this moment is both agitating and beyond me. 

“I hate to admit it, but he’s right. Arguing isn’t going to get us anywhere.” Riddle agreed, the hesitant to agree with Floyd was no surprise considering everything. He glanced between myself and Azul for a moment. “You have a decent understanding of the game, I hope?” He spoke with his hands while looking at Ashengrotto. I too turned my attention to him while crossing my arms.

“It was an older game Idia wanted to show off, so I know, enough things, but I wouldn’t say I’m an expert by any means” Azul would say simply- that was when the second text box appeared. Seems the others might have seen something similar based on their facial expression.

 ‘Quest Complete! Damsel saved! Party members Added: AmbitiousTycoon, RoseKnight, and ViciousMockery. 100 exp Gained!’ What quest? What Damsel? Why the hell did I have to be teamed up with them? I didn’t accept anything!

“You got to be kidding me.”

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