Arthur woke up to a headache the next day.
Groaning his way through wash-up, he sat at the breakfast table and nodded his greeting at Alice. The latter set a cup of morning tea before him, and wait till he emptied half the cup before asking. "Tough night?"
Arthur nodded, still in a daze as he took another sip of tea. "Felt like I just witnessed Cold War 2."
"Um hmm, horrible player dynamics?" Pushing a plate of toast to Arthur, Alice asked as she dug into her breakfast.
"Horrible is an understatement." Arthur scoffed, and was about to bite into his toast when he changed his mind. Putting the bread down, he continued with furrowed brows. "No. Actually, if it's just that problem, I can live with one eye closed. I met Francis."
"Pfft-" Alice almost chocked on her breakfast at the sudden reveal. "Francis?! As in, Francis-Francis? Frog Francis?"
"None other." Arthur nodded with a sigh. "Wonder if the developers chose country representatives by blind lucky draw. Hundreds and thousands of French and he just had to be chosen."
"I don't know; he represents the generic image of a Frenchman very well." Alice joked. "That aside, isn't it a little childish of you to bear a grudge this long? He was your classmate for one year—"
"And that year felt like a century." Arthur grumbled with a mouthful of toast
"—that was more than a decade ago, dear brother."
"It would take a lifetime to fade anyone's disdain for him." Arthur rolled his eyes, feeling annoyed just at the thought of bearded man. God he would pay to set that man's hair on fire.
Watching him, Alice decided to change the topic before he could start rambling. "So, apart from Frog Francis, did anything else interesting happen?"
"You mean apart from exploding a grenade in the subway?" Arthur raised a brow.
"I'm all ears." The younger sister leaned forward in her seat, and propped her head up with both hands as she waited for the storytelling to start.
Arthur did not rush, and took a slow sip of tea as he thought back on the events yesterday. A brief moment of silence later, he finally started. "After our close encounter with death, we went further down the tunnel and witnessed the other team slay the boss. Turned out, the leader of that team was…"
Neither Alfred nor Ivan moved ever since Ivan spoke, and the two just stood there glaring at each other like it was some form of competition. Arthur watched with his breath held, fearing the outcome of this encounter. If players were ranked purely by the amount of damage they could incur, then these two would be the superpower among the players present, and history had warned enough about the danger of superpower rivalry.
Apparently, the amount of tension from this face-off was not enough to faze Francis. Ignorant to the tense atmosphere, he went ahead and waved wildly at Arthur. "Oh! If it isn't Arthur! That's you right? Big brother can't be wrong! Those eyebrows are too telling!"
Arthur pretended not to notice. Maybe if he ignored it long enough, the nuisance will go away.
"Arthur! Hey! It's me Francis!"
Just focus on the glaring contest, just focus on the two giants over there.
"Golden caterpilla- "
"Quit yapping you beardy bastard!" Finally losing his cool, Arthur retorted angrily. The latter was not much offended and felt mostly proud that he was right.
"Oui, you have to be the Arthur I know." The delighted Frenchman nodded to himself. He then evaluated Arthur from top to toe before adding: "The bad sense of fashion matches too."
Arthur growled. "Care to take some fashion tips out of your head and fill in some common sense instead? We almost died because of you."
Francis leaned back at Arthur's accusation, pressing a hand to his chest in utter disbelief. "Died? Mon dieu! I saved you!"
"You gave Matthew a grenade! In a bloody tunnel! Does that not ring any form of alarm in your wine-filled head?"
"Oui~ so the sweet child is called Matthew. Very nice boy he is—let him join our team for now on. I'm sure we will be a better influe-"
"Don't just decide on things on your own! And hands off Matthew he doesn't need to be in the same team as someone who blatantly disregarded basic safety precautions."
"Arthur, Arthur. Are you still alive?" Francis sought to clarify.
"No thanks to you I am." The Brit scoffed
"Then I see nothing wrong with my plan."
"God the idiots multiplied." Groaning painfully at the pointless argument, Arthur wiped his face with his hand and decided to just let things go. That's right, he was a better man than this; he was a gentleman who knew not to argue with this…this hazard of a player. And of course, there was no need to be this mad either, how dangerous Francis was would be a problem for his team. All Arthur really had to worry about for his own team would be Alfred.
And frankly, after meeting Francis, Arthur found Alfred immediately more pleasant to work with.
Arthur took a deep breath and regained composure at that thought. That was right, this encounter here, however unlucky, was not going to last. Any time now Alfred would announce his next plan, and the three of them— god help him Arthur was not going to let Francis anywhere near Matthew— will be on their way. Any time now—
"Oh, the two of you are friends already! That's great. We will be working with this team for a while." Alfred announced out of the blue, and Arthur could not be more devastated with this sudden arrangement.
"What?!What about the cold war- I mean, I thought you and Ivan don't get along." Arthur stated, paused, and hastily added. "That wanker and I are not friends."
Must be complicated then, Alfred though. But he quickly dismissed that minor discourse and started explaining the sudden plan. "Ivan there said he was nearly killed by an NPC and wants me to improve the game's AI mechanics."
"That's it?" Arthur raised a brow; from the intensity of their glare just now, he figured Ivan would have more complaints about this game.
"Oh that's the most important one. Others are just nit-picking. Stuff like "your game's introduction is too long, tutorial is a drag, weapon choice too complex… all that." Alfred listed off, tilting his head left and right as he went on. "He also said that the dreamer is a little too heavy but that's not really what I'm in charge of."
"It is a little heavy." Arthur mused in a soft whisper. "But what does that have to do with us working together? Is it absolutely necessary?"
"Yes." Alfred answered gravely, sounding so serious about the matter that Arthur was stunned for once. But Arthur quickly found reasons to convince himself that it was necessary: that NPC might be a bug that only Ivan had spotted and survived.
"I need to prove to him that I'm clearly the better player here. No, more than that, I'm obviously the best player in this game." Ignorant to Arthur's reasoning, Alfred stated with the same amount of seriousness.
Arthur was close to flipping at him. "That's your reason?! What about the NPC?! At least spare some attention for that!"
"Oh, no need to worry about that. Ivan got rid of it."
"What-"
"It's a bug for sure; I didn't include any murderous NPC in this game." Alfred replied in a whisper. "But Ivan said he killed it, and get this, when the NPC respawned, it started acting normal again. You know what that means?"
Arthur shook his head.
"That means the bug isn't as troublesome as we think. Whatever effects it has on this world is only temporary, as long as the data resets, the bug will be removed."
"What, now you want us to go out there and start killing every NPC and bosses that got affected by the bug?" Arthur raised a brow.
"You want to do that?" It was Alfred's turn to be surprised.
"No!" Get a clue dammit!
"Phew." Obviously not aware of the sarcasm involved, Alfred showed clear sigh of relief at Arthur's answer. "We just have to win. As long as one player finds the cure, end-game objective will be met, and the game will reset. That will remove the bug completely."
That sounded like a solid plan at first glance, but the more Arthur thought about it, the more flawed it was. First of all, beating this game was difficult as it was. Now with the bug messing with the bosses and NPCs, it was going to be twice as difficult to even get to the cure. Sure they now know that the bug was temporary and can be removed after a reset. But that also meant they were literally at the disposal of the bug for the entire duration of this round. And heck, this whole game was for the sake of testing the dreamer. Who the heck was going to play it after this round? No one!
So this plan of Alfred's… it was as good as having no plan.
Breaking the news as gently as possible to Alfred, Arthur expected at least the littlest bit of disappointment. But Alfred, being Alfred, simply laughed it off. Then to Arthur's utter horror, the American went ahead and told Ivan everything.
The Russian man kept his calm throughout the explanation, but his smile became visibly darker by the end of the explanation. All others except Alfred took a step away from the giant of a player.
"So in short, the game's in extreme survival mode right now. Let's work together and find the cure as soon as we can! Of course I'm sure I'll beat you to it." Alfred finished his offer with his signature smile and offered to shake his hand.
Ivan accepted it with a bright smile of his own. "Da, I cannot wait to see your disappointment when I shatter your pride and prove you wrong."
"Ahahaha, aren't you funny?" Alfred replied.
Watching from a distance, the remaining four members wondered about those two. They might be smiling at each other, but from the looks of things, the staring contest earlier simply manifested into handshaking contest. Neither side was willing to let go first, while their grip of each other's hand only got tighter with each passing moment.
"Aiya… are they friends or enemies now?" Wang Yao, the player from China asked, furrowing his brows at this childish sight.
"Frenemies… maybe." Francis mused, then suddenly looked at Matthew with a glint in his eyes. "Ohh! That means we will be in the same team now!"
"Only temporarily." Arthur scoffed, cutting in to stand between Matthew and Francis. The soft Canadian player did not mind as much, and simply smiled helplessly at the situation.
"Ahh, forget about them aru, let's discuss what to do with the key the boss dropped." Turning his back at Alfred ant Ivan, Yao pulled out a labelled key and showed it to the three.
As it turned out, the boss dropped a key to a storage room back at the hospital basement. Since the boss encounter was originally meant to happen back at the hospital building, this arrangement made perfect sense. But now? Now the group was a good distance down the tunnel, and their way back to the hospital was littered with zombie corpse. Arthur was concerned about the after-effect of that Screamer too; there might still be zombies loitering in the hospital building.
If they disregard this key however, their next move would definitely be walking to the next station in order to exit the subway. But the previous battle drained a lot of resources, and frankly, even if that storage house was stored with just food, Arthur would be contented. He never noticed it just now with all that tension and adrenaline rush, but man was he hungry.
Torn between the decisions, the four decided to list down the pros and cons of their choices while they waited for Alfred and Ivan to end their hand-crushing competition. Fortunately, it did not take long before they joined the discussion.
"We could use it." Alfred said affirmatively. "Resources aside, that's a safe-house. We can rest there for a while."
"A safe-house sounds good, but big brother's not sure we can make it there safely." Francis voiced, now more bothered by the concept of dying after knowing about the bug.
"I believe we have a scout with us now, do we not?" Ivan suggested, and everyone turned to look at Matthew, some with hopes in their eyes, others with concerns.
Matthew averted his eyes; uncomfortable with this sudden spotlight. Yet he nodded, willingly accepting the task offered. "I-I could check the path first if you want."
Arthur was personally against idea; he had already given Matthew enough trouble to handle. He was all ready to defend for Matthew when the latter took up the task, and ended up staring at Matthew in shock instead.
"It might be dangerous." Alfred shared Arthur's concern. "Matt, your stealth stats might have been pulled down by us too."
"It should still be fine. I think…" Matthew smiled sheepishly, but Arthur only felt more worried.
Then, before Arthur knew it, he volunteered. "Let me go with him then, it should be safer that way if he runs into any zombies-"
"On the contrary, comrade." Ivan interrupted, icy calm voice immediately silencing Arthur. "You will just stand in the way and attract zombies to him."
"Hey that isn't-" Alfred huffed, jumping to defend for Arthur, but Ivan simply continued.
"Relax, American. We are a team now, I care for everybody." He smiled warmly, yet sent a chilling sensation down Alfred's spine. "Let Francis go with him."
Francis' eyes widened at the mention of his name. Pointing at himself in disbelief, he repeated. "Moi?"
"Francis is our escape artist." Ivan nodded, beaming with pride for a moment. "If surrounded by a mob of zombies, he is the second among us to have the highest chance to escape safely, da?"
"W-well, when you put it that way, I have to go." Flustered by the sudden flattery, Francis sold himself out. Arthur's worry for Matthew just doubled.
"Very well, any objections?" The Russian man asked.
No one else spoke up.
"Splendid." Iva smiled, concluding the discussion.
"Then what happened?" Alice asked, so immersed in the recount that she forgot about her breakfast.
"Then I had work so I logged out." Arthur simply sipped at his tea.
"You're kidding me."
"Don't have the time." Giving a glance at his watch, Arthur muttered as he hastily got out of seat. "Neither do you. Hurry or we will both be late for work."
"But what about Matt! What about Frog Francis! That Ivan sounded horrible but he made so much sense… Hey wait! I need to know!" Promptly setting the dishes in the sink, Alice chased after her brother.
And for both of them, another busy day of teaching began.
A/N: It's been so long... Does anyone still read this?