Hello Everybody! I hope you all like how this story started out. It's kind of a new concept for me, creating a story that solely relies on one-shots to build up the entire story and combine them into one. And for those of you who read my note on the first chapter and got a bit confused at what I meant at this story either being read as one complete story or just separate story, this is what I meant.

As you'll see when you read this, the first part of this story continues from where the first part of the last chapter left off. In essence, you could just read those parts and it'll be just one story. You could also just skip those parts and read the parts that are separated and made into one-shots. Even though you could read them in those two ways, I highly recommend that you read the entire thing from beginning to end. It would cause less confusion, and it would also set the general mood of the entire story.

Anyway, I hope I cleared up some confusion that some of you might have had from the last chapter. I hope that you all enjoyed the first chapter and will enjoy this one just as much or even more. Please don't forget to leave a review after you finished reading.

Also, for those of you who have read my other popular story, "The Altered Journey", I'll update that soon. I've been busy with college and all that, and I've been trying to get the ideas for this story out of my head. Until the next update everybody!

Chapter 2: Different Times, Same Accusatory Bullying

"Alright, I'm back with a couple other guards to pick you up," the voice of the guard that the blue haired teen first heard when he had regained conscious a little over a minute ago said with a small scoff making itself known at the end of his sentence. Were it in different circumstances, it would have made the blue haired teen feel a slight shudder traveling down his spine. "The time to enjoy your last moments of life in private is over. You're lucky that you even had one whole minute to yourself."

In the next second, the sound of keys jingling and being inserted into a lock was heard from behind him where the wall created from bars was. He did not bother to turn around from his position at the window that was also barred up. Instead, he kept his eyes trained on the wonderful green scenery with the orange glow of the sunset in front of him, wanting to remember it clearly while being forced to walk to wherever it was the men were going to take in in just a matter of seconds.

"Come on; we don't have all day to be waiting for you, you nameless brat!" a second person, quite possibly another guard, snarled in a gruff tone as the sound of the door being flung open with great force echoed against the grimy prison walls. "We're currently running on a very tight schedule, and we'd be damned if you plan on staying there and ruining this special occasion for all of us with your ridiculous stubborn behavior."

"...As if I'm even trying to be stubborn at this point," the teen responded weakly yet defiantly while refusing to turn his body around and facing the people by the door. "I just want to make things harder for you so you'd suffer as much as possible without me really laying a finger on you. I didn't think that it'd be this easy to push you guys' buttons around like this," he added with a small hint of amusement in his words.

"What'd you say to us boy?" a third guard, this one sounding younger than the other two, exclaimed as the sounds of rushing footsteps practically vibrated against the floor due in part to the boots which sounded to be made of metal thudding hard against the bricks. The teen then felt a gloved hand roughly grab him by the shoulders and turned him around so quickly that he nearly banged his head against the bars of the window. He was then face to face with a rather young-looking guard with the angriest face he could muster on him. Normally, this would be one of those times where he would be feeling at least a little bit of fear in the pit of his stomach over what might happen, but he felt that now would be a good time to give these guys the hardest times of their life.

"How dare you address us like that!" the guard nearly shouted right in front of his face, a bit of his spit landing against the other's nose and cheeks. "Do you not understand the situation that you're currently in as of now? If it weren't for the mercy of the king allowing you to live as we escort you, you would have found yourself lying on the ground, bleeding your pitiful life away as your tainted red blood flows out of your very veins."

"That's quite a threat you made there," the he simply responded with a somewhat smug smile on his face, a trait he no doubt gained while growing up, as he nonchalantly blew away a few loose strands of hair that fell over his eyes from being so roughly turned around. "I didn't think that you'd be able to come up with that with such a flared temper. And are you the captain of the army or something? Last I checked, those who're not the captain aren't allowed to speak out of line and so freely."

Why you little...!" the guard growled out, raising his free hand up above his head in preparation for a strike against the teen. Before he could even bring it down though, another hand wrapped itself around the wrist of the flaring guard, stopping him just short of smacking the defenseless teen.

"Stop it soldier!" the guard behind him, the same person who the teen saw when he first woke up in here, calmly stated as he held a firm grip on his colleague's wrist, preventing the raised hand from striking its intended target. "We're wasting valuable time over something completely childish. This is exactly what this brat wants us to do. I thought that you had enough composure to refrain from frivolously wasting time."

"Wow, I didn't think that one of you actually had the sense to keep a level head here. It's too bad that you guys can't come up with thoughts on your own. You've all allowed yourself to become mindless puppets to the king, blindly following his orders without once considering for yourself if he's even right in his assumptions."

I don't know if you realize this boy, but the king's word is the king's law, regardless whether or not he is right," the second guard stated smugly as he stood by the door, almost as if he were in preparation for a possible escape attempt that might occur. "We are simply the people he employed to make sure that the people of his kingdom stay true to his orders and wishes. As such, it was his order to have you captured, brought here relatively unharmed, and brought before him to face retribution for all the hardships both you and your ancestors have brought upon us."

"Well, you sure did a pretty good job bringing me here 'unharmed,'" the teen responded with strong sarcasm in his words as he was roughly pushed out of the cell and placed in between the guard outside the cell and the hot-headed one that was about to hit him earlier. "The last time I checked, I only just knew that I was even here because you guys managed to knock me out for god knows how long."

"His Majesty only said relatively, meaning that it was okay for you to come here with a couple of bruises here and there," the first guard stated as he closed the door behind him and took out what looked like to be a gun from a belt holster on his side. "He wouldn't be that merciful as to let you come here without at least a few battle wounds. And as a small bit of advice from me to you, I suggest to you that you don't try running away from us or doing anything as crazy as that? Unlike what you've experienced previously, this gun has been specially modified to recognize your own genetic code and hone in on you wherever you are. Needless to say, a single fire from this contraption will continuously follow you around, mimicking every move and maneuver you make until it hits you and knocks you unconscious. It's amazing what the relics of the techno age gave us, isn't it?"

"Ha, do you really need all this security and fancy machinery just to escort someone as defenseless as me? It seems like the king that you all so respect and trust so fully to a fault is only wasting money and resources."

"If it weren't for the fact that your ancestors were the cause of one of the worst moments in the history of our wondrous planet, then maybe we wouldn't be persecuting you right now and escorting you to your punishment," the third guard stated calmly, eyeing his other colleagues quickly with warning eyes upon sensing their tempers flaring up again, as he led the group from the front and down the dark hallway.

Is that what they all truly believe? the teen thought to himself rather than say out loud, wanting to keep this to himself, as he was forced to follow them. Do they really think that I and my ancestors caused all the problems that they're experiencing right now? Have they ever heard of things just naturally occurring without any cause from anybody or anything? This is exactly how the world is these days; everybody just has to find somebody to blame all the bad things that are going on around here on somebody. And to my great luck, they had to pick me and my ancestors as the unwilling candidates.

With this thought passing though his mind, he suddenly remembered an occasion in his childhood when he was also wrongly persecuted, except that it was on a much lower scale and a lot more trivial than the troubles of the world. He would have rather to be in that situation again rather than this.

-Five-and-a-Half Years Ago...-

"Oh, thank god this stupid famine is finally over!" Teepo groaned out as he stared out of the window of a house that looked to be made completely out of wood and overlooked the forest. "I didn't think that it would ever go away. I'm starting to get tired living off of only small rabbits and birds and bird eggs that we take from bird nests after being nearly pecked to death by them. If they kept it going to another week, I would've broken into the mayor's house and took some food out of his kitchen."

"I didn't think it was that bad Teepo," Ryu, who was sitting on a simple wooden table, placed neatly in the center of the room, responded as he took a red apple from a bowl and bit into it with a noticeably audible crunch. "With Rei being the one cooking all the catches we found, they tasted pretty good to me. I'm sure that I would never be able to make them taste as good as he always makes them out to be."

The house that the boys were in was a place that they and Rei have called home. It was situated on the trunk of a sturdy tree that had all of its branches cut off with little to no leaves growing on any part of it. It was a basic wood structure that provided more than enough protection from the elements despite its rather shabby look from the outside. It was also a two-story tree house, two single rooms on each of the floors with the bottom acting as a combination of kitchen, dining room, and living room, and the top primarily functioning as a bedroom. Because it was what one would consider to be a tree house, it clearly lacked the necessary appliances that a house would normally have in it. It did not pose much of a problem for them since they only lived on what they needed to live on, and Rei was pretty handy with his hands so they had some handmade furniture and beds in the home.

"You know that's not what I was talking about Ryu," the long purple haired boy responded with a roll of his eyes as he turned around to face the other boy. "I meant that I was getting tired of always having to live off of the land just so we can survive. Before we even found you here in Cedar Woods about six months ago, we've been living in a famine for just a little over a month. Before we found you, we were barely even able to survive off of Rei's ears and my speed and skill at catching. With you also having sensitive ears, it upgraded our situation from desperate to barely scraping by."

"Nice to know that I was able to be of some help to you guys right from the get-go," the blue haired boy stated with a small smile as he wiped the corner of his mouth clean of the juice that had started to run down his chin and carefully placing the fruit on the wooden surface of the table. "What I'm happy for about that day was you guys actually finding me and letting me live with you two. I probably would've kept crying my eyes out until it was dark and some monsters decided that I'd make a good meal for it."

"Oh, I'm sure that at least I would've caught the sound of your voice sometime before the so-called monsters even had a chance to roam around at night," the sound of the aforementioned person was heard saying with a hint of pride. "We did find you along the path we always use to come back here, so it'd have been pretty hard for even a deaf guy to have missed you leaning against a tree."

Upon hearing the eldest of the boys' voice answering them, both Ryu and Teepo turned their heads towards the doorway and saw the Woren with a couple bags of what looked to be food in his arms. They then ran right towards him and quickly took one bag each out of his arms. It was only then did they notice a third bag behind held just barely above the ground by his tail, which he brought in front of him once his arms were free.

"Wow, I think I just experienced a seriously downgraded version of a herd of hungry kids taking everything I had on me and raiding them," Rei responded with a small smile and a shake of his head as he saw the two put the bags down on the table and sift through the contents, one more so eagerly than the other. "You guys must have really been looking forward to our first farm-grown meal in months."

"Of course we were," the purple haired boy responded happily as he took out some fresh vegetables and some packaged meats from the bag he took. "It's been so long since we were able to have some food that's been properly farm-raised and all that. I've been looking forward to this since after the first day of hunting."

"I only ran to you because I thought you needed some help with the bags," the blue haired boy responded somewhat meekly when he stopped looking inside the bag as he continued to watch his "brother" dig through both of them. "I wasn't really thinking about having the chance to eat some food grown by farmers. They all basically taste the same to me when they're cooked right."

"Now that sounds like somebody appreciating what it is I do to keep all of us from starving to death," the furry teen stated as he placed his third and final bag on the table, picking up the half eaten apple and handing it to Ryu, knowing full well that he was most likely the only one to eat it since it was one of his favorite foods. "I was beginning to wonder whether anyone here really paid attention to what I do around here."

"Hey, I pay attention to what you do around here," Teepo retorted as he finished looking over the products and looked at his older "brother." "I know that you do all of the cooking around here since neither me nor Ryu can do it. It might make it easier on yourself if you try teaching us how to cook ourselves."

"Uh, do you remember what happened the very first and last time I tried teaching you how to cook a year ago Teepo? You nearly burned down the house when you decided to create a flambé effect with a simple piece of pork. I still don't understand how you managed to reduce the poor meat to a pile of blacken ashes and warp the pan beyond all recognition."

"I already told you; I got annoyed at how slow the thing was cooking so I decided to speed it up by casting some magic on it. It seemed like a good idea at the time to have food ready in a lot less time."

"Oh, if there was one thing that could prove your downfall in anything, it'd have to be your inability for patience. You made me have to fix a part of the wall because it was almost completely burned through to the other side."

"And that's exactly why I consider you to be person who keeps everything running correctly. Only you can do it all without ruining either the dinner or the entire house itself."

"Do you think you can teach me how to cook Rei?" Ryu asked as he took a few more bites out of his apple, intrigued at what his "brothers" were talking about yet wanting to change the subject to something lest they continued on for the rest of what was left of the day. "It might be a good idea for me to learn in case the both of you get sick or something and I'm the only one who can really do anything around here. That and I would really like to know what it is that you put in your cooking to make it really taste good."

"Sounds like somebody here isn't shy about letting you know that they're a fan of your cooking," Teepo responded in a teasing tone as he gave a friendly nudge in the ribs to his older "brother." "I don't think that this is one of those times where you can really refuse him even if you wanted to."

"That's what it's starting to sound like," Rei stated with a wide smile making its way onto his face upon hearing his skills with cooking being praised so highly by his new little "brother." "Well, as long as you promise to be as patient as you can and do not use magic to help with your cooking except to maybe start a small fire, then I guess that I can teach you a thing or two about cooking. The last thing I need with winter just around the corner is to go repairing another blackened wall."

"I think you already taught me how to be patient when you first taught me and Teepo how to go fishing last month," the blue haired boy replied as he sneaked a small teasing smile at the other boy who then scowled at him in return. "All you need to do is just show me the basics of cooking and it'll all turn out great. Besides, beyond the basic healing magic I managed to teach myself with you guys' help, I don't really know how to use fire magic that might cause this place to turn into a barbeque steam room."

"That's definitely one less worry to get rid of from my mind," the Woren responded with a sigh of relief as he walked past his little "brother" and towards the small kitchen area after walking by the table and taking a package of meat off of it. He then added while brandishing the meat over his shoulder, "If you want to learn the ins and outs of cooking Ryu, then the best place to start is with a knife in hand and ready to cut up some ingredients for a simple dish. Once you learn that, you'll be able to make anything that you want to make provided it's within your personal level of skill."

"So you're really going to teach me how to cook?" the boy asked, very happy that he was going to have the opportunity to learn how to do something else either than hunting for food and going fishing.

"I guess it's better you than me in that furry head of his," the long purple haired boy responded rather dismissively with a shrug of his shoulders as he watched both his "brothers" make their way to the kitchen. "That and I guess you do have that kind of patience you show in fishing that you might actually need when cooking. You were the only one having fun even though we didn't end up catching a single fish when we first taught you."

"Wow, are you really admitting that Ryu's actually better than you are at something?" Rei asked, shocked at what his ears picked up and turning around to face his little "brother." "In all my years of knowing you, I never thought that I would be lucky enough to hear you saying that someone is better than you at something. This has to be the most momentous moment of my life here with you finally admitting something."

"Hey, I never said anything like that. I only meant that he might be able to handle the pressure that comes with learning how to cook. I never said that he was going to be better than me right off the bat."

"Well, there's no better time than now for us to figure out if I'm finally better than you at something," Ryu simply stated, shooting a cocky smile at Teepo before moving towards the kitchen with what looked to be a couple of tomatoes in his hands. "At the very least, I'm sure that I won't end up charring up the walls around here."

"Oh, would you just drop it already? I don't need to be constantly reminded about that at every minute now that you know about it. I swear, you're probably going to end up using that to embarrass me at every chance you get, aren't you?"

"How is it that you two almost always manage to make everything we do into a competition?" the oldest asked with a sigh as his tail twitched a bit in irritation. "Personally, I don't think it matters too much on who is good at doing what. All you really get is a sort of ego boost at being better at something than somebody else, but that isn't worth nearly as much as the ability to use those skills for the rest of your life."

"Yes mother, I know that," both of the younger boys responded simultaneously in annoyance. The Woren only gave out another sigh in response to his little "brothers'" very childish behavior before taking position beside Ryu and taking a knife in his hand.

In a little less than an hour later, dinner was all ready and set on the table for all of them to eat. This included a plate of pan-seared beef in a simple tomato and egg sauce, a cooked asparagus and green bean medley dressed with black bean sauce and over white rice, steamed black bass drizzled with oil infused with garlic, and a simple soup made with beef bone and a few vegetables like carrots and potatoes.

"Wow, I've almost forgotten how good all this farm-fresh cooked food smells like!" Teepo said as he stared wide eyed at all of the good food resting in front of him while trying to keep himself from drooling over the sight. "I haven't smelled this kind of food in the longest of times. You're really going to be pulling my leg when you say to me that Ryu actually had some hand at making all of this with you Rei."

"Then you might as well cut it off yourself and save the trouble of trying to pull it," Rei stated with a pleasantly surprised smile on his face as he gave a quick glance at Ryu. "If you really want to know, he was the one who actually thought of the idea to infuse the garlic flavor into the oil by cooking them together and using a bit of the juice from the black bass as a flavorful way to thin up the black bean sauce. Those are simple things that I normally wouldn't have thought of trying out if he weren't here to bring it up. That and his skills with the knife and other things in the kitchen are practically just as good as mines. He only needs to be told once how to do something and he'll be able to do it, provided that it's relatively basic enough for him to remember and do."

"Well, all I did was follow whatever it was you told me to do and say what I thought would be helpful to you," Ryu replied humbly as his cheeks started to gain a slight shade of pink to them. "I didn't really do too much besides the prep."

"Hey, I always say that there're two parts to making a perfect and delicious meal; correctively cooking the food to how it should be and the creation of a tasty sauce that'll nicely compliment it," the Woren stated as the purple haired boy took a seat on one of the wooden chairs by the table and took a fork into his hands, ready to dig into the food himself. "The way you cook the main ingredient may change depending on what you're ultimately planning to make, but they have to follow strict rules lest you end up with tough or inedible food. The sauce, on the other hand, can be changed with anything to make it even tastier, something that you helped make happen just now. If anything, you helped me create half of two dishes that I normally make with your own twists to it."

"Guys, can we stop gloating about how good our little 'brother' is with cooking? I'm starving to death over here, and I'm going to start eating everything on this table without you whether you like it or not."

"Ain't that a good excuse for you to avoid admitting that I finally found something that I'm better at than you," the blue haired boy responded with a roll of his eyes before deciding to join the other at the table. "Then again, I would like to at least sneak in a bite before you end up eating it all."

"Something tells me that I better start eating before you two vacuums clean everything off of the table," Rei said as he took a seat at the last available chair and started to eat with the others.

For the next thirty minutes, the three "brothers" ate the deliciously prepared food in front of them with smiles on their faces. They also made small talk in order to make this relatively quiet time more eventful. They talked about what Rei saw on his visit to the nearby village of McNeil and on the road back home. Unfortunately, both Teepo and Rei were not the most liked in the whole village, and since Ryu started living with them, they started to also act the same way towards him, much to his confusion. Despite that, they did not treat them so differently that they would not serve them should they come down to buy something simple like groceries, albeit they do so rather grudgingly because of one man who seemed to be the only person who genuinely cared about them all. At least that was better than being completely ostracized by the village without knowing why they were doing so.

By the time they were about three-quarters of the way through with their meal, the oldest of the three thought he heard the sound of footsteps pounding away somewhere in the forest. He quickly dismissed it and went back to finishing up his meal. He then stopped again and perked his ears up a bit, this time hearing what he heard a lot more clearly and louder than earlier. Even the two younger boys, who have hearing not as exceptional as Rei's, stopped eating and had confused looks on their faces.

"Are you hearing the same thing I'm hearing Teepo?" Ryu asked, putting down his eating utensils and looking out a nearby window in an attempt to see what was going on outside in the forest.

"If you're talking about the sound that sounds a lot like a big group of people moving around in the forest, then yes," Teepo responded, getting up and looking out of a different window. "Where it's coming from though, I have no idea. Do you know where that sound's coming from Rei?"

"That's what I'm trying to figure out right now," Rei answered as he got up from his seat and walked over to the door, opening it up and bringing his entire self out to the porch to see everywhere around him. Apart from the orange glow of the sunset reaching across the tops of the trees, nothing that seemed to be the cause of the light noise could be seen anywhere nearby. "Whatever is making those footstep noises, it must be somewhere inside the forest because I just can't see anything from where I am."

"Well, I'm not seeing anything on my end either," the purple haired teen responded as he leaned his head further in an attempt to see more. "All I see here are a few birds wanting to migrate to somewhere for the upcoming winter."

"Hey, I see some people moving towards us over here!" the blue haired boy exclaimed as he brought his head back in from the window he was looking out at. "They look like some of the townspeople from McNeil Village. They don't look real happy."

"Oh, don't this just beat all...?" the Woren groaned with an annoyed sigh leaving his lips as he walked further out onto the porch and towards the side where his little "brother" saw the people and saw them for himself. "What do those judgmental people want with us now? I doubt they're here to have a nice celebratory dinner for the end of the famine with us."

"You never know Rei," Ryu responded with an unsure groan leaving his mouth as both he and Teepo followed their older "brother" out of the house. "I've noticed that the people here sometimes do the strangest of things from time to time. I'm sure though that they're here for something else other than celebrating, if the look on their faces isn't any indication of it."

Another second later, the people were close enough to where the three were able to see just how many were in the group coming towards them. They were soon able to count about five altogether, all of them relatively young men who all seemed rather angry over something and making their way over tree roots and stones to get to them.

"We know you're in there Rei!" they suddenly heard one of the men shouting towards them. "You better get your butt down here and look at us eye to eye if you know what's good for you!"

"Are they really resorting to threatening me just to get whatever it is that they want out of me?" Rei asked more to himself than his "brothers" as he gave off an annoyed sigh while shrugging his shoulders. "I thought that they were supposed to be the adults and we're to be children in their eyes. You'd think that they'd be able to settle whatever it is they have against me this time around without any shouting."

"Well, it isn't as though we left them with the greatest impressions of ourselves when we first came to live here," Teepo admitted with a sheepish grin on his face as he continued to stare out at the crowd slowly gaining ground on them. "We did steal things from them at first just so we'd be able to at least get onto our feet."

"You'd think that they'd forgotten about that by now," the Woren replied as he walked back into the house and took his belt with his knives still on them and put them on. "That happened almost two years ago. We've kind of died down from senseless stealing once we managed to build this place and at least manage to find a way to live a decent life without relying solely on stealing."

"Well, you did steal for my sake six months ago when you needed to get some clothes for me to wear," Ryu reminded them as he remembered the stunt his "brothers" tried to pull at the village tailor's shop. "I can see why you did it since none of you guys' clothes really fit me. If anything, I'm sure that's still fresh in their minds."

"Did you hear me, you thieving Woren?" the man exclaimed, this time sounding right underneath them at the base of the tree. "Get your sorry tail down here now before we come up there and drag it out for you. We can easily burn down this worthless shack you call a house with you in it if you don't get out here in the next few seconds."

"Alright, you two stay in here while I go out and see just what it is they're so angry with me about. I doubt it has anything to do with stealing this time around; I only went in there to buy stuff and I paid for all of it."

"Just be careful when you go out there Rei," the blue haired boy warned his older "brother" with a worried look on his face. "We don't know what they have on them, and they might try to get the best of you while you're not paying attention."

"As if any of them have anything on him when it comes to fighting," the long purple haired boy scoffed with a cocky look on his face. "Trust me when I say this; Rei is the best of the best when it comes to fighting. He could easily take care of all of them with one hand tied behind his back if it ever came to that."

"Just please stay up here 'til I get back," the Woren repeated as he walked out onto the balcony and jumped off the side of it. The sounds of the people instantly talking once he did so indicated that he had a pretty safe landing.

"You wanna listen in on what they're talking about Ryu?" Teepo asked not even a second after Rei had jumped off the side railing to meet with the group of five beneath them. "I'm sure you're just as curious as me as to what they're talking about down there. Besides, it sure beats sitting around in here with nothing better to do."

"But didn't Rei tell us to wait for him in here and to not go outside?" Ryu asked with raised eyebrows at his "brother." "I don't think he wants us to see what might be going on with him and the others down there Teepo. Wouldn't it be best if we just waited for him to finish with whatever it is he's doing down there?"

"Oh, quit being such a worrywart," the other stated nonchalantly as he dismissed the concerns with a simple wave of his hand. "He didn't say anything about not watching what was going on from up here, did he? So we might as well take advantage of this and see what's going on down there."

And before the blue haired boy had a chance to say anything else, the other was out of the house and on the balcony in record time. He simply shook his head at his "brother's" need for disobeying their older "brother" before reluctantly deciding to join him in the front row view of what was taking place beneath them.

"You know darn well why we're even here in this forest!" they heard one of the men shouting at Rei with anger that could easily be heard from the other side of Cedar Woods. "There's no other good reason why we'd be in here at this time of day. Don't you dare go about playing dumb with us."

"I honestly have no idea what you're talking about sir," they then heard Rei reply as coolly as he could while having a shouting man right in front of him. "If you would just tell me why you're all here, then I won't have to go around playing dumb with you all."

"You really want to keep playing dumb?" a second person asked, his voice portraying his ever growing annoyance at the situation they were in. "Alright, I'll be more than happy to play along with you. Since you don't know why we're here, we're here because you happen to have something that doesn't belong to you."

"Now I'm really lost as to what you're all talking about," the Woren responded with nothing but clear confusion ringing out in his words. "Just what is it that you're saying I took from one of you guys?"

By this time, both Ryu and Teepo have situated themselves into comfortable positions beneath the balcony railing where they were able to see what was going on beneath them without being caught by anybody. From there, they saw Rei standing at the spot where he most likely first landed while the five men stood just a few feet away from him. Some of them had farming tools in their hands situated in a way that seemed like they were ready to fight if and when the occasion came about. This scene clearly showed that they were serious about whatever it was they came here to talk to him about."

"We're talking about the expensive pearl studded golden butterfly motif hair comb that my wife won in a national cooking contest last year," a third man stated as he stepped up and looked the Woren in the eye with the most defiant glare ever. "It was handed to her by the Queen of Wyndia herself, and she's been crying her eyes out since she lost it not even two hours ago. That's basically around the same time you left out little village with a bag of groceries in your furry arms."

"If all of them were even just groceries to begin with," a fourth person added with a snarl clearly annunciated in his voice. "I'll bet all my crops for this year that there were also some stolen goods mixed in with his bag of goodies."

"...You guys aren't seriously saying that I stole something of great value from right under your noses, are you?" Rei asked with disbelief echoing from his voice. "That's like saying you all found a dragon and decided to keep it in order to help you cultivate the land in a more efficient way. It's just not possible that I stole whatever it was you say I stole."

"As if you would expect us to believe that," the fifth and final person in the group stated with a scoff of his breath. "You and that Teepo fellow have stolen things from us from the moment you both came here asking for a place to stay. Have you ever wondered why it was we never once allowed you both to live in our peaceful village? You should count your lucky stars that we even allow you to walk through our streets from time to time."

"And if that weren't enough, you also managed to recruit another helpless soul into your dark ways of pilfering away the results of hard work from us," the first person added with a hint of sorrow in the back of his voice as he said this. "I truly feel sorry for him ending up with you two. Who knows how warped his mind is now that you've ingrained all those wrong-doing ways into his system."

"I suggest that you keep my two little 'brothers' out of this and just concentrate on the problem you have with me," the Woren warned them with a slight protective growl at the edge of his words. "I really don't think that dragging them into this conversation will help you out with your problem, a problem that, if I may add, has nothing to do with me. If you all haven't noticed, the only things I have ever stolen from any of you were foodstuffs and clothing. And just to keep the record straight, the only time I've ever stolen from you all during the recent famine was when I had to get some new clothes."

"Fine, we'll all give you credit for that," the third person admitted with some reluctance. "That doesn't really put you in the clear for today's incident though. While you may have paid for all the food you bought at the market, which I know to be a fact since I happened to be close by when you bought them, there's nothing stopping us from thinking that you decided to make a little side trip before coming back here. I'm sure that was more than enough time to steal something of great importance from one of us."

"Are you guys seriously going to pin the problem of one of your wives simply misplacing something that she finds to be very important all on me because of that stupid line of reasoning? I doubt that any of you have even thought about taking a careful look at where she might have lost it before you all conveniently decided to put all the blame on me. Have you even considered just devoting one entire night on trying to find it before pinning the blame on somebody?"

"Are you insinuating that my wife was lying to us?" the second man asked with raised eyebrows and a dangerous edge to his voice. "I suggest that you be careful as to who it is you're accusing of lying here."

"Look, all I'm saying here is that you guys probably all went in a panic when she said that she lost it and just automatically thought it was me who stole it since I kind of have a history with all of you. Now I'm not saying that you don't really have a good reason to even not think that it was me who did it. All I'm saying is that you guys should at least try to look for other possibilities before going about and accusing me of something that you don't even know that I did. And just for the record, I didn't steal anything like that when I went to get some things a couple hours ago."

"As if you expect any of us to believe such a transparent lie," the fourth person angrily stated as his impatience was made clear in his tone. "Then how about you answer us this question? If it wasn't you who took the woman's comb, then just exactly who else would have the motive or even the audacity to do something like that?"

"Do you think that I would be standing around here right now wasting my breath with you five if I knew whoever it was that took whatever it is you're all looking for? Trust me, if I knew who it was that took it, and that's considering if it was even taken in the first place, then I would've told you the guy's name by now."

"Not unless you're just trying to cover for them," the fifth person stated quickly, trying to get this tenacious business over with as quickly as possible.

"How can any of you be so certain that it was even Rei who stole the comb to begin with?" a sixth voice, this one sounding deep and was clearly defensive, asked with just as much defiance as the other five were portraying.

As both Ryu and Teepo were quietly watching the entire scene unfold below them from the balcony, they also heard the new voice coming to the aid of their older "brother" who looked like he was taking a real bad beating from these accusers. They, along with everybody else below them, turned their heads towards their left and saw a tall and stocky man approaching. He had bushy brown hair in both beard and moustache form with warm winter-like clothing dressing his body that included a pair of work pants, a thick leather vest over a blue work shirt, and brown boots meant for trekking through the forest.

"Bunyan!" one of the men from the group of five addressed the newcomer with slight surprise. "I thought it was your voice we heard. What are you doing here? Can't you see that we're all busy having a discussion?"

"I just happened to hear all the commotion going on here while I was walking back home and thought that I should check it out," the man simply explained as he moved his head around and quickly assessed the situation. "Judging by the looks of things here, it looks like you're all having an argument of sorts with Rei."

"We're just merely confronting him of a wrong he's committed during his latest visit to the village," the first person stated as he very briefly explained what they all was doing here in the woods. "It's nothing that can be construed as extreme. It's just a simple case of theft that he refuses to admit he's done."

"For the last time, I'm telling you that I didn't take anything from you guys that's not rightfully mines on this particular trip to McNeil Village!" the Woren responded with a very agitated sigh escaping his lips while forming his hands into fists. Even the two boys above them could tell that he was starting to reach his limit with all this nonsense. "You're all just too stubborn to try and look at things from a different perspective. You all just want to hear what it is that you want to hear coming out of my mouth!"

"Alright now, let's all calm down and try to think about this through with a clear head, something that I'm sure none of you have been doing since you all first met here," the stocky man stated calmly as he put himself in between the group and the lone boy in case they decided to close the distance and fight each other. Both sides looked ready to do so at any given moment. "Is this theft you're talking about the same one that everybody's talking about back at the village right now?"

"If you're talking about the loss of my wife's prized hair comb she won some time ago at a contest in Wyndia, then yes," the third man confirmed as he shot a nasty glare at the Woren. "It went missing sometime a couple of hours ago, and he's the only one who entered the village and left during that time. He says he was there to purchase some groceries upon hearing the end of the famine we've all been suffering the past few months. I'm more than certain that he was there to do more than just some innocent shopping."

"And I'm assuming that you all believe him when he said he went to do some honest shopping, right?"

"If we didn't, then we'd be arguing about that instead about a missing possession," the second person stated with a roll of his eyes against the man. "Do you really have to ask us questions with answers that you already know?"

"I thought I told you to keep you attitude in check," Bunyan repeated with a warning glint in his eyes. The other immediately stepped back and kept his mouth closed, although he then resorted to trying to glare daggers into the man. "And have any of you done what Rei had suggested and at least looked all over the village in an attempt to locate the comb before coming here to confront him? And all I want here is an honest answer, not another response that doesn't directly answer this question."

"Well, I can't say that any of us really did look at the places where she might have lost it," the fifth person admitted rather meekly, not at all with the kind of gusto he held against Rei earlier. "But if you think about it, there's only one person out of all of us here who would even at least pick something up and keep it for himself without thinking that it might actually belong to someone else."

"I don't want to hear about that," the bearded man responded before any of the others had a chance to agree with him or add something onto the statement. "What I only wanted to know what whether or not any of you had the sense to at least perform a small search for a couple of hours. It's clear to me now that none of you even allowed that to cross your mind. It's also clear that you seemingly refuse to listen to whatever suggestion that Rei might have had for you just because of his record with all of you."

"But what are the chances of a boy like him telling a truth like that and not trying to pull the wool right over our eyes so he can get away with thievery?" the fourth person questioned, trying to choose his words carefully so as to try and avoid a verbal backlash on his part. "You know how he likes to pull himself out of situations like this by trying to deter our attention away from him. He could be trying to do that to us right now. There's no doubt in my mind that that's what he's trying to do right now."

"You're all way too stubborn for your own good, you know that? You couldn't see the reasonable path in front of you even if there were sunlight shining directly on it. I was truly hoping to save you all the embarrassment and let you figure it out yourselves once you made your sorry behinds back to the village, but I guess I do have to say this. The prized comb that you're looking for has already been found just a little over half an hour ago while you five were walking here. It was found lying in the bushes next to her house where she most likely dropped it after placing it on the railing of her bedroom window."

"They already found it?" the man whose wife owned the lost comb exclaimed with surprise clearly projected in his words. He then quickly turned around and ran back towards the direction of the village without saying anything else while nearly tripping over a tree root in his haste. "You'd better not be pulling my leg here just to get him out of trouble or I'll come and beat you to a pulp Bunyan!"

"Hey, don't go back to the village on your own!" one of the men shouted back in warning as he along with the rest of the group quickly followed the other back to the village. "You could get attacked by the monsters if you go back on your own!"

And just as quickly the group had approached the Woren's humble little tree house, they had disappeared through the dense trees illuminated by the dim light of the sun nearly set over the horizon and back to McNeil Village as if the past few minutes did not happen. The Woren was then left in a somewhat state of shock at how suddenly they had all shifted their attention on something else and acted on it after not even two seconds ago engaging themselves in a very heated argument. The boys could only look at each other with faces of both confusion and something else that could not be directly defined. The only one who did not really seem all that surprised by this act was Bunyan himself.

"Well, don't this just beat all...," Rei stated, his mind now in a somewhat dumbstruck state as he looked at where the men ran off to. "They were just here trying to find ways to bite my head off, and now they're on their way back home as if everything that's just happened never even happened to begin with. Talk about having mood swings."

"And I believe that you have me to thank for that," Bunyan stated as he walked over to the bullied Woren and placed a friendly hand on his shoulder. "If I didn't happen to walk this way when I did, they'd have no doubt tore your head clean off and chased Ryu and Teepo clean out of these woods."

"Better my head than there's if it ever came to that," the Woren responded as he rubbed the back of his neck subconsciously. "They'd no doubt come at me with the entire Wyndian Guards at their tails if I went all out on them. I still can't believe though that those guys were way too stubborn to even hear what I was trying to tell them. They only listened to each other or what you managed to get through to their thick skulls."

"Well, you have yourself to blame for that even happening since you all but stole from practically everybody in the village at least once during the past couple of years you and Teepo lived here," the bearded man stated, although he said it more in an explanatory tone rather than accusing. "And now you have a new addition you need to keep watch over in your little group. I would guess that he's the most reasonable out of all of you being that he hasn't really been pulled into your childish pranks, right?"

"I guess you could say that. Ryu clearly doesn't like it when we go about stealing things from others, that's for sure. When I think about it, he's probably the reason why I've even started stealing from everybody in town a lot less than usual. His influence's probably starting to rub off on me from the past six months we've been together."

"Then maybe you could take his influences to heart and try to clean up the rest of your act. There'll be times when you might find yourself in over your head with people who won't take being robbed so lightly like those here in town. You're just lucky that these people are all but simple farmers and that the mayor is more occupied with his own business to really care what it is you three try to do."

"If you're trying to make me change my mind in learning how to become more mature, then I think that you should try using a different method," Rei responded bluntly as he turned around and began to make his way up the tree again, this time using a set of stairs that started at the base of the tree at the back. "Using scare tactics and all that really isn't going to force me to think otherwise on the subject. Besides, I like acting like a kid, both in actual age and spirit. It really makes me feel like a free Woren with nothing holding me back."

"I'm just giving you a bit of a friendly warning the next time you try to pull a something like that," Bunyan simply stated as he stared at the Woren for a little bit before turning around himself and making his way back to his home. "I won't always be nearby to help you get out of trouble that was never caused by you to begin with. You're going to have to start learning how to get some good standing with everybody else in the village if you ever plan to avoid something like this happening again in the future."

"I'll try to keep that in mind Bunyan," the Woren responded truthfully just before the form of the man that had helped him out of the verbal abuse he was taking disappeared into the trees and back to whatever path he was originally taking before getting himself sidetracked to his position. He then said more to himself as he continued on his way up the tree to his home, "I can't make any promises of getting some good standing with these people though. That's probably a chance that's starting to fly away after this evening's theatrics.

"Speaking of theatrics, I'm guessing that you two had the greatest seats in the entire forest to see the beating I was taking down there," he added as he finally reached the front door and entered it, seeing his two younger "brothers" leaning casually against the railing of the balcony as if they were only getting some fresh air.

"What're you talking about Rei?" Teepo asked, trying to sound innocent about the whole thing and kind of overdoing it in the process. "We didn't see anything of interest outside. We did hear a lot of things going on though."

"Then I'm guessing the sound of your voice asking Ryu if he'd like to see what was going on right after I jumped over the balcony never happened, right? Don't forget that I have hearing good enough to hear what it is you said before all hell broke loose. I was keeping my ears opened in case you two decided to actually come down."

"Well, at least Teepo only suggested that we try and see what was going on from the balcony," Ryu responded with a sheepish smile as he shrugged his shoulders a bit. "If it makes you feel better, he never really said anything about actually going down to get a better look at what was going on."

"Knowing how he usually does things in situations like this, I guess I can say that it does make me feel a little bit better he wasn't planning on playing the small vigilante or anything as crazy as that," the eldest of the three responded with a small sigh as his tail swished side to side a bit. "I was kind of expecting him to come down and give those guys an earful though since that's what he usually likes to do when something like this happens."

"Then I guess this goes to show that I'm not as stupid as you sometimes think I am," the long purple haired boy stated with a teasing tone in his words to show that he was just playing around. The Woren only raised his eyebrows at this statement as he sensed something funny going on. "I don't just go jumping into every kind of trouble I see you getting yourself into just so I can try and help you."

"I thought you said that you didn't want to help Rei because Bunyan decided to come over right when you were about to go down," the blue haired boy responded with confusion written all over his face.

"And I thought I told you to keep your mouth shut about that," the other small boy said with a scowl. "I can't even make myself sound good when I want to with you telling Rei every little thing I say and do."

"I knew I smelled something fishy being cooked up inside that crafty little head of yours. Then again, I guess I should have known better when it comes to you trying to make yourself sound like a better person in a given situation. You always try to make yourself sound better than you really were over half the times we do something crazy after all."

"Alright, that's it. This's the last time I'm going to be made fun of for something that I didn't even do. The only time I'm going to talk from here on out is when you guys ask me something and expect an answer in return. That way, you all won't be able to drive me nuts with things that I might have been able to do if I had only done it."

"Do you really think that you'd be able to not talk without being asked something first?" Rei asked as he tried to keep a smile from forming since he knew that it would only serve to further irritate his little "brother." "You couldn't even manage not free talking for a whole day that last time you tried to do something like that. I'd bet you all the money I have on me that you won't even last one minute."

"Then be prepared to lose all that money. I'm definitely going to commit myself to shut up and stay quiet until one of you guys asks me a question."

"Uh, didn't you already just lose the bet?" Ryu asked as he raised one of his eyebrows a bit. "You just said that you were going to stop talking until you got asked a question. You just responded to something that didn't even sound like a question."

"Well, look who's already lost their bet before they even had a chance to let it get off the ground," the Woren teased with a big smile on his face upon seeing Teepo's screwed up in frustration. "And I was actually right when I said that you weren't even going to last one minute before you failed. It's too bad you didn't bet something for when you lost."

"B-but I...! Oh, I hate you Ryu!" the purple haired boy exclaimed angrily as he stomped out to the balcony and rested his hands on it so he could cool down a bit.

"Yeesh, someone's acting a bit testy tonight. I wonder what's got his hair all tangled up in knots?"

"You don't think we took our teasing a little bit too far, do you?" the blue haired boy asked as he looked at his "brother" moping on the balcony with some concern.

"Nah, he always acts like that whenever he's forced to eat his own words," Rei responded nonchalantly as he turned his attention to the dinner table that had been long since forgotten and started to clean up the dishes that were on it. "He's stubborn when it comes to things like that. Anyway, do you mind helping me clean the table off and wash the dishes? You and I did cook the dinner together, so it's only fair that we both wash the dishes as well."

"Then shouldn't we be getting Teepo in here to help us out?" the youngest asked as he started to help with the cleaning.

"Trust me when I say this Ryu. There's no making him do anything when he's like this. You might as well be asking the meanest monster you can find on this planet and asking it to be your lifelong buddy. That and he broke a couple of dishes before, dishes that we can't really afford to replace or steal at this time," the furry boy added in a lower tone so as to not be heard by the other who was still moping on the balcony.

"Are you sure he's not doing this on purpose? It almost looks like he's trying to get out of doing all the hard and seemingly boring stuff like cooking and washing dishes while doing other stuff like fishing."

"That's exactly the same thing I wonder myself sometimes. Oh well, he's not the type to be going about admitting something like that anytime soon, so nobody except him is going to know the answer to that."

As the two continued talking about their moping "brother" and a few other things that did not concern him, they washed the dishes in a wooden barrel filled with water and using a bar of soap to get them efficiently cleaned. Within a few minutes, they managed to get them all cleaned and carried the barrel out to the balcony so as to dump the now dirty and soapy water to the dirt beneath them. At this time, Teepo had already gone back inside and was now holding onto a fishing rod and messing around with the string.

By the time they finished all of the post dinner rituals, the sun had now completely set over the horizon, covering the entire forest with a black sheet with only the light from the candle that Rei lit inside an oil lamp piercing through it. Each boy then did their own thing for the rest of the night, none of them doing anything of great importance, until it came time for all of them to go up to the second floor and get themselves ready for bed. The early evening today held a lot of excitement for them and they all wanted to rest on it rather than dwell on what had happened or what could have happened. That and they had the entirety of tomorrow to look forward to and make memories that they could create with each other, memories that they would no doubt look back at and smile when they grew older.

Sorry if the title for this chapter sounded kind of bad. With the main story branching off onto one-shots, I was thinking of each thing from the main story triggering some kind of memory as a result. As example, this one was on the bullying Ryu was taking and correlating to the bullying he remembered seeing Rei go through all those years ago. And the last one was him seeing the peaceful scenery outside as if it were signifying his last moments of freedom while also reminding him of when he first met his two "brothers."

I also felt the title was good for this because it kind of related to what I see in real life. Whether it's from when you're in high school with physical scuffles against someone or just online trying to bash someone, bullying is bullying no matter how you look at it or what generation we're in. That's also how I came up with this title. Just figured that you all would like to know that little tidbit.