As soon as their second in command left to execute for his self-assigned mission, the stared into the table for a moment, hoping to find some sort of relief staring into the blank reflection-less, white, wooden round table. Nova, who was standing closest to where Antauri was previously sitting, turned around to her teammates with an expression and voice of pure turmoil "So, what'll we do now?" she asked her fellow teammates.
The raven haired leader quickly spoke up and calmly announced "First things first, I'm going to get changed. I'll make Otto some tea on my way back." he said pointing upstairs with his thumb.
"Very well, Chiro. I see no harm in that. We'll be here with Otto in the mean time." the blue scientist replied while Sparx was standing next to him with his arms crossed
"Yeah, take your time, Kid. We'll be fine for a few minutes." the red pilot waved one hand encouraging the boy to get dressed. With that go-ahead, Chiro walked into his tube and shot himself upstairs to properly dress himself.
Suddenly, everyone was startled by the sound of Otto coughing in pain so loudly that he almost left an echo throughout the robot. The others shot their eyes open as they turned to the med bay and stampeded to the ill monkey's aid. When they enter, Otto's body was on the verge of convulsing, but he fought through all of his weakened muscled in order not to. However, because of all his struggling and wheezing, nobody could tell the difference. He's fighting these spasms so much that he dropped the ice packed for his feverish forehead and the melted ice was all over the floor.
The pink eyed female covered her mouth with quivering hands an began to hyperventilate "W-(gasp) what'll we do?!" she exclaimed in fear as they all rushed to Otto's side. Sparx and Nova quickly grabbed arms in an attempt to lightly restrain him. All the while, the poor ill simian was coughing up a hurricane, trying to breathe, but it hurt too
Meanwhile, the blue primate rushed to his desk and dug through his desk looking for an unknown object. "One of you get him another ice pack, and someone else give him breathing exercises, HURRY!" he shouted as he rapidly digging through his medicinal supplies.
"I'll get the ice!" said the yellow primate as she released the thrashing mechanic, quickly picked up the soggy purple ice pack, and rushed out the door
"You sure, Nova?!" asked the red simian over Otto's cough "You'd be better at the breathing thing than I would!" he grunted from Otto accidentally elbowed him in the chin.
Nova stopped and turned around to her comrade with nearly dampened eyes, "I'm sure... I can't watch this." she croaked as she ran into the kitchen. Back in the med-bay, Sparx was struggling to hold his ill friend onto the table without causing him more pain, as well as ignoring the pain from where the green simian slapped him. Meanwhile, Gibson had found the needle he was looking for, when he acknowledged that the green primate was still having a coughing fit.
"Sparx, what are you doing?!" Gibson shouted as he turned to face his red teammate.
"I don't wanna hurt him!" he shuttered in anxiety "How am I supposed to help him breathe?!"
"Just direct him to take deep slow breaths. Help him relax. You can do it, and hurry." the blue monkey said more calmly in order to help Sparx concentrate on the task at hand.
With those words of encouragement, the red smart aleck slapped himself in the face to shake off the panic. With a more determined express, he stood over the ill simian and ignoring the fact that Otto was almost coughing all over him. "Otto? Otto, Can you hear me?" he uttered softly. Just then, the green simian stopped coughing and began to wheeze with painful pants as he nodded in response
"Alright, I want you to take slow, deep breaths with me. Come on buddy, nice and slow." he directed as Sparx, himself tok, slow, soothing inhales and exhales. However, his breathing exercises didn't appear to be working.
The youngest of the monkey was still gasping and struggling to breathe, then he grabbed the closest arm to him and panted weakly "I (gasp) I can't.." he inhaled and sobbed "M-make it stop-p-p." he cried pulling his quaking body into Sparx's chest.
Just like Nova, the fist rocket pilot couldn't stand watching this anymore, but lucky enough to have to the liberty to leave the room. He started panting to himself as he shouted at the top of his lungs "GIBSON, WHAT THE MONKEY DOODLE ARE YOU DOING!?"
"I'VE GOT IT! HOLD HIS ARM OUT!" the team's genius leaped over the table to the red simian's side as the latter monkey softly pulled Otto's arm out with one hand and held the ill simian's shoulder. With a grunt of adrenaline, Gibson stuck the needle into his friend's shaking arm. The sick green mechanic flinched at the minor sting in his arm. Within a few moments, Otto finally stopped kicking and coughing as his entire body relaxed as the sick little primate passed out where he laid. The red simian stared at Otto's weak body with pure grief in utter disbelief. He couldn't understand why on Shuggazoom this was happening to anyone he cared about.
In an attempt to receive answers, he turned to his fellow fist rocket pilot and questioned in concern, "What'd you do to him?"
Gibson sighed. While he held one hand to his sweating forehead and using the other to put the syringe down on the desk, he replied in sorrow "What I had to. Because of all the pain and stress on his body, I gave him some tranquilizing medicine." he explained as the yellow primate entered the room overhearing with her blue teammate did.
The warrior appeared to be quite shaken up as she placed the ice over the sleeping primate's forehead like a crown. "He's still gonna wake up, right?" she asked nervously
"Why of course he will." the blue pilot was honestly surprised at such a question, "He just won't be able to wake up for a little while. Hopefully, he'll sleep until Antauri returns with those beacons." he replied. The three simians stood over his Otto's resting body as he curled up into a ball.
"Poor Otto." Nova whispered stroking his flush, shimmering cheeks "What could've caused all this?"
The intelligent simian placed a hand on his chin and theorized aloud "Well, malnutrition tends to be the result of an imbalanced diet or simply not giving your body the proper nutritions to support it. I'm still wondering where this sudden irresponsibility came from."
"Something must be upsetting him, Gibson. You can't possibly be blaming him for this." Sparx spoke with a defensive tone
The blue primate was taking back by the red pilot's tone with him "Well, we're warriors. A condition like this can only come from a lack of eating."
"Yeah, but you can't blame him for being sick." Nova exclaimed in frustration
Gibson scoffed "Antauri was right, you are putting words in our mouths." he said getting close to Nova's face, only to have his sarcastic brother pull his shoulder to make them meet eye to eye
"That's not the point, Brainstrain!" he shouted. Then the fighting resumed from before. The red, gold and blue monkeys were just yelling angry, meaningless nonsense at each other as their words clashed together like sharp ice against the ground. In the background, the green patient's slumber clearly wasn't so peaceful anymore. His hands were tensing up as he rolled over on his back mumbling whispers of apparent discomfort.
While the arguing continued with no sign of it ending, the shouting match was suddenly silence by the sound of lightning that crashed down so hard, that the floor almost vibrated. Wait, how could this be? There wasn't a cloud in the sky outside, let alone rain. They all quickly turned their heads to the med-bay's entrance, and their startled expressions soon deteriorated into fear when they saw that it was a lightning kick courtesy of Chiro that caught their attention. The thing that sent tingling shivers down their furry, metal spines was Chiro's body tone. He stood still in the doorway, back straight, with his mouth closed and a rage induced fire piercing through anyone locked in its glare, and the only sense of movement he displayed was the angry breathing of a bull that he was concealing. To the teammate, the raven haired teenager looked like he was ready to exploded, and then, without warning, he did.
"THIS IS WHY HE'S SICK!" he howled in a pitched he'd never reached before, causing the team to flinch in their tracks. "I'M JUST AS SICK OF ALL THIS FIGHTING AS HE IS! Except Otto let it get to a point where it's LITERAL!" the infuriated boy pointed to his friend's quivering body on the med bay table. "Look at him!" the three simian jut stared silently at their feet. Chiro took this as a sign of disobedience and rose his voice again "NO, ALL OF YOU, RIGHT NOW!" he commanded as they all shamefully and slowly turned to face their green comrade. "All of this damn arguing is what made him sick and now you're just making him feel worse!" he scolded his team. He didn't care how harsh he was being to his friends. As of now, he was fed up with those friends and had to be a leader to them, whether they liked it or not.
Gibson finally developed the spine to speak up for the first time since his leader entered the room. "Chiro, I gave him medicine to keep asleep until Antauri returns. Odds are he can't hear a word we're saying." he defended himself
"That's not the point, Gibson! What is going on that I can't even make tea without you guys having a shouting match?!" the three primates just stood there in awkward silence with Chiro towering over them. Nova stared at her feet with her arms crossed and her tail wrapped around her wrist, Gibson hid his face in his metal hand, and Sparx bit his lip and rubbed one hand on the back of his head.
The young leader just grunted and walked over to the sleeping mechanic "I've had enough" he snapped
Nova stepped aside and let Chiro pass but asked quickly, "What are you doing?"
He picked the slumbering monkey and held him in his arms bridal style "I'm taking Otto to his room so he can sleep. Unless it's an emergency, I don't want to see any of you come near him until Antauri gets back. That's an order!"
The others gasped and thought the orange leader was being too hasty. Thus, they tried to stop him "No, Chiro, I need to watch over him in here." said Gibson anxiously
"I can handle it." he said sternly as he didn't seem at to care about what any of them had to say. However, with their behavior over the past week, he didn't feel that they deserved the attention "Like you said, he should out for a while." he slipped past them with little emotion. Just before he stepped out of the lab, the three guilty monkeys rushed in front of him as Nova exclaimed
"No, Chiro! Please. We'll stop fighting, we promise." she pleaded
The young warrior glared down at his teammate,looked down at Otto, and set them straight "Can you promise me, that after an entire week of fighting over every little thing, you three can stand in a room without giving each other so much as a stink eye? For three hours?! After you couldn't control yourselves for five minutes?!"
After that remark, nobody could their enraged leader in eye. Nova stared at the floor while Sparx and Gibson stared off into random directions with guilt painted on their faces like a Renaissance's canvas. With an expression of disgust, Chiro silently walked past them in shame as he stepped into the green tube. He left his fellow Hyperforce member with a stinging pain from their leader's silence of disgrace.
(OTTO'S BEDROOM)
With the sickly simian still asleep in his arms, the blue eyed teen opened the door and let himself into Otto's room. When he entered it, he had to do a double take with the condition it was in, yet only being semi-surprised by the mess considering whose room was in question. All across the floor was junk that to the innocent little cyborg was treasure fitting a pirate; there were nuts, bolts, scrap metal, blueprints, and a plush doll or two scattered across the light blue floor of his bedroom. Odds are it was like this because the silly primate had a habit of staying up late to finish his strange inventions. The raven haired boy couldn't help but chuckle a little bit as he did his best to step over all the small objects so wouldn't trip and/or break anything of his friend's. Lord knows that poor Otto has been through enough stress as it was.
"Jeez" he snickered as he arrived at Otto's bed "You really let your room go, didn't you, Buddy?" he grinned as laid the resting robot on his bed and gave him the ice pack. In silence, Chiro pulled the blanket over the green monkey's shaking body as he laid on soft warm bed. At least he seemed more relaxed than he was in the lab, even if he was still showing signs of discomfort.
"Oh boy." the teenage warrior sighed sitting on the wooden chair next to the bed post. In his despair, he pulled his knees up to his chest and placed his chin over his knees "What's going on, Otto?" he asked rhetorically, knowing that nobody was going to give him an immediate response. "Why are the others so upset lately?" he cocked his head in the slumbering monkey's direction "Is it something with me? Is that why no one's telling me anything? I just want to help you guys, whatever's going on, maybe I can help fix it." after remorsefully pouring out his soul to the sleeping primate, he pulled his knees even closer to himself, nearly up to his damp blue eye on the verge of tears "I just need some answers."
Without warning, Otto's breathing became heavier. He began mumbling to himself and tossing and turning in his sleep. Clearly, he was becoming more and more upset with every passing moment. The orange leader gasped as the word popped into his head, 'Nightmare'. He grabbed Otto's shoulders, attempting to wake him up.
"Shoot!" he muttered. Just now, Chiro remembered the due to Gibson's medicine, the green mechanic couldn't wake up, so he was essentially trapped in his nightmare. The blue eyed boy paced the floor in panic "What am I gonna do?" he exclaimed "He can't take much more stress on his body. How can I stop his...night...mare?" he paused as he looked down into his hand and looked at the green simian. Chiro took a deep breath and thought to himself, "Dream control? Without Antauri?" he debated to himself. However, with everything going on, he couldn't bear to see his friend in anymore pain, so he knew what he had to do. He sat back down in the chair, placed his hands over the ill primate's sweaty temples and whispered "Hold on, buddy, I'm coming." he closed his eyes and entered his friend's nightmare
(TO BE CONTINUED)