Living Life As A Game: Through And Through 29 Oddly Upse

"Motherfucker! Where are my GOD-damn snacks?" Elizabeth could see as she walked through the entrance, a perfect drop kick land and potentially undo all the hard work she had accomplished in the past couple hours. Jane, still grumpy about the lack of groceries present in the fridge, lashed out at Sun without a hint of mercy.

Naturally though, because there wasn't the intent to truly harm Sun, he was able to take the hit without much problems. If the kick were infused with Martial Qi though, it would be a different story entirely; especially considering Jane's status as an Ice wielding Martial Practitioner.

Sun just let Jane use his side as a foothold and land safely before ignoring her entirely and running out the dojo to clean "his" most precious treasure. As he left through the back door, Jane, and several other dojo residents that knew Sun were stunned by his choice of actions.

Not only was he acting extremely whimsically, the usually serious and focused Sun was nowhere to be seen. They'd all thought that there was some special reason for why he had been missing last night, but here he was running around as if without a care in the world. Some were more concerned than others, and most were particularly interested in his current affairs because there still weren't any groceries stocked away. But all of them knew what kind of man Sun was, and the change from stoic training fanatic to paper boy was too much for them to take in this suddenly.

Elizabeth watched Sun leave with an amused look on her face before she turned to Jane and said "We need to talk…" Sun's antics may be refreshing and bring a humorous atmosphere with every move, but the current predicament she was in left her unable to fully enjoy herself.

"Oh? I suppose you know where that idiot has been?" Jane's eyebrows were raised as Elizabeth asked to talk. Though she hadn't been with her for long, Jane knew more or less how antisocial and misanthropic Elizabeth was from her behavior.

"Yeah, about that… We kind of got attacked last night." If one didn't know any better they wouldn't believe that she had just recently fought with her life on the line, as the uncaring tone of her voice drowned out any semblance of seriousness the circumstances deserved.

"Attacked?!" For a split second, the room felt a bit colder as Jane's Martial Qi flared. She quickly calmed down and withdrew the frigid aura before asking "And who would be so bold?" Various thoughts were floating through Jane's head, but it would be best to keep calm until she better understood the situation.

Elizabeth pulled out her wallet and showed Jane the business card for "Jhan's Gym." That cold breeze that flashed in the room, suddenly returned, only this time, Jane didn't even put any effort into preventing it from escaping. A near-white bluish dot of concentrated Martial Qi began manifesting in Jane's eyes as unspeakable rage blossomed and only with Atid's appearance did the growing freezing gale she was emitting, stop.

"Jane! Calm down! Jesus Christ! Why are you so upset?" Even after Atid showed up and used his own Martial Qi to suppress Jane, a sizable portion of her energy was still whipping about with reckless abandon.

Jane whipped her head at Atid and with unabashed hatred said "Those fucks at Jhan's Shit Gym actually attacked Elizabeth and Sun! I'm telling you, they've been getting increasingly ballsy these past few months and now they've finally crossed my bottom line!"

"Oh?" Atid also became serious as the name of his greatest local adversary "Jhan's Gym" was mentioned. However, unlike Jane who flew into a wild rage so quickly, Atid managed to keep his cool and get more details from Elizabeth and Sun before picking how he'd handle the situation.

He looked at Elizabeth and asked "You guys were attacked? When? And Why?"

"When? Just last night after I left the gym… I was going back home when these four people, three guys and a girl, approached me and wanted me to join their gym. At first I instantly shot them down since I already have you guys and they seemed super shady, but then they pressured me and tried to kidnap me. They managed to knock me out for a while, but before that I saw that Sun came out of nowhere and started fighting for me. When I came back to being conscious I found myself being carried by the lone woman of their group and after trying to fight her for a couple minutes, Sun once again came out of nowhere and beat her for me."

"They wanted you to join their gym and tried to forcefully abduct you when things didn't go as planned?" Atid sunk into his thoughts for a moment as Jane yelled "Kidnap?! Fuck it, let's go down there and get revenge!"

Jane looked at Elizabeth as if to seek her approval, but all she got in the was a doubtful glare, as if Elizabeth was convey the thought "fuck you looking at me for?" with just her body language. She turned to Atid to go an even greater look of doubt from him, when from the back entrance, an oblivious Sun walked in to become her next target.

Jane yelled from across the dojo "Sun! You got mixed up in this situation by preventing those Jhan Gym fucks from kidnapping Elizabeth right? How about you and me go down there and settle the score?"

To Jane's unstable and almost worrisome anger, Sun became as apathetic as Elizabeth as his face showed no emotion. He addressed Jane with the most monotone voice Elizabeth had heard thus far, as he said "Are you insane? I know you hate those guys more than the rest of us, but seriously… What would we even gain from going down to their base? A beating? We might even die, since they probably expect some sort of retaliation after what went down last night."

While Jane felt like she was wronged on all fronts, appearing to be the one taking this incident the most seriously, she was blinded by her rage to the point where it clouded her sensory abilities. Atid, being much more calm and pragmatic than her, noticed almost right away something different about his foster son.

There seemed to be this white fire lit in the center of his navel, and a pitiful amount of Inner Strength stayed stationary right where his Dantian would be located. But… wait a second. Wasn't Sun confirmed to be crippled for life? Initially, Atid attributed the weak Inner Strenght Sun had stored up to be just hallucination. But as Sun moved and the white fire moved along with him, static and consistent for several seconds, the realization of Sun's full restoration became apparent!

"Sun! You! You… Come with me right now!" Atid quickly calmed down from his initial excitement and hurriedly pulled Sun away to test if a miracle had indeed occurred.

As the two men left, or rather, as Sun was dragged away by an overtly enthusiastic Atid, and it was just Elizabeth and Jane left alone for their conversation, the atmosphere became awkward as Elizabeth had already shown herself to not be as die-hard on the matter of getting revenge as Jane; even though she was the would-be victim for the kidnapping.

However, even though the conversation seemed to stagnate for an uncomfortably long period of time, Elizabeth didn't really seem to care, as she spoke up her mind anyways. She was concerned over Jane's anger as it was a bit too extreme to be this wrathful over something she herself wasn't even involved in. So, Elizabeth asked "Say… Why do you hate those guys so much?" All sorts of social conventions and precognitive thoughts a regular person would possess were all but ignored, as Elizabeth asked without consideration for how the question could impact Jane.

"Hmph! All of us here in Atid's dojo hate them, not just me! They're always fighting with us whenever they get the chance. Trying to put us down or make us look bad… I just have a "special" history with them…" Jane's anger dimmed a bit as a slight sad tone tainted her overall angered state.

Even Elizabeth couldn't ignore direct hints like these, so she shut her mouth lest she make Jane distant. Instead, she opted to try out her new Affection functions on someone who wasn't a loyal slav… companion. She willed for Jane's status to appear and became a bit let down.

[Status Updating…

Status

Name: Jane

Level: 15

Rank: Peak Martial Soldier

Affection Rating: Friendly Acquaintance

Description: What more do you expect from having rather "normal" interactions with Jane for the last couple days? You better become more proactive if you wish to improve your relationship...

*New) Current State: Blinded by rage!

Description: Jane is triggered by the thought of her "friendly" acquaintance being harmed and nearly kidnapped by the monsters of her past. She also blames said monsters for making Sun not deliver her snacks on time, further escalating the rage she'd cultivated...]

Elizabeth couldn't make much out from the information the Affection Rating and Current State descriptions gave. She was a bit surprised to see that Jane thought of her as almost a friend even though they had barely interacted. But then again, they had met through fate and had even sparred for a while.

As Elizabeth was thinking of how to proceed with the situation, she felt it would be wrong to just jump into training when she had yet to discuss the details of the assault with Jane and Atid, she heard from one of the private rooms off to where Atid let Sun earlier, an explosion...

Chapter end