Hey Yo! I'm NerdRyuu and this is chapter 23

Last chapter, Lincoln took leadership from Lori and decided to leave, while in the future arcthe trio got to see the Dam HQ

Let's go to the question I received this week!

Dimitri Gomez: Is the farm compact in size or is it relatively spacious?

Yes, it is a quite large farm, the reasons will be clear by the end of the story.

For a year and a half, Linkie made us travel around in this endless desert. He became so distant, barely talked to us aside from giving orders. He also started taking some white pills. Lola asked what those were, all he said it was that they're to make him feel better, that Lisa made for him. As time passed, he started to take more and more, now he gulps like four or five at once. At least We had that jeep, so the travel wouldn't be more tedious.

We didn't staid in a single place for more than a night, we scavenged what we could to survive, with five siblings to eat, we often felt hunger as we didn't got any food that day.

Although Lori's pleads, Lincoln didn't budge on the idea of returning to the bunker. I think, like, he is traumatized from that place.

And there was some times we needed to defend ourselves, often was from gross animals, like a weird monkey with two heads, two tails and three arms.

That one in specific was a weird situation, we found that thing when we decided to camp on a abandoned power plant

Other scary time was when we entered a old shopping in search for resources, and a horde of giant cockroaches attacked us. It was so gross! I panicked when I saw those things, and Lincoln had to lead us to the exit while Lori shot the roaches.

And since that day I had in my mind a, like, sad thought. I… am kinda useless. The twins started to learn to shoot with Lori's aid, Lori drives, Luna is a great scout, but me? I'm just a paper weight. I'm too clumsy to even be handed a real gun! All they allow me to use is a flare gun that I never had to use, my skills with tailoring are useless now that Linkie demand us to use this ugly police padded armor we retrieved from a police department we raided, just Lincoln and Luna wear the armors Lisa made, as we have just two of them, Linkie decided to give the other to Luna. They don't allow me to drive, to handle our food or resources, nothing!

Do they think I'm stupid to the point that they don't trust me to even function as a part of this team?

Well, it's what it feels.

All I want now is a way to prove to them that I'm not useless. I just need a opportunity, just one.

"It's getting dark." Lori spoke as she drove off by the endless wasteland. "Link, should we stop for the night?" She asked Linkie, who was sitting in the passenger seat.

"It's dangerous to stop here in the open. We should look for a place to hide for the night." He stated with his now usual serious tone.

"Hey, I see a cave!" Lola spoke, getting her arm out the window and pointing to a rock formation on our right, she was right, it had a small opening in the middle of it.

"Let's set for the night there." Linkie spoke, Lori changed course and drove up to the cave and stopped near the entrance.

We got out the jeep and the twins went to the trunk. I looked to Linkie and he was gulping his pills once again.

"Let's set the fire pit." Lana spoke. The twins did so and we set for the night.

It was in the middle off the night when I heard something, and it woke me. I sat up in my sleeping bag, and looked at the darkness of the innards of the cave.

I don't know what I had in mind, but I got up and walked deeper into the cave, getting .ore and more far from the camping. I didn't went unarmed mind you, I had a flashlight and my flare gun with me.

The flashlight illuminated the otherwise darkness of where, like, didn't got light ever. I got confused, the only thing I could hear was my own footsteps and a dripping sound. Creepy was an understatement.

After what I guess it was a mile deeper into the cave, I started to hear something. It was a crawling sound. Something crawling through the rocks of the cave.

I heart sank as I recognized that sound.

As I stood by the nest of hundreds if not thousands of giant, harry, ugly, eight legged spiders! They looked at me and for a split second I looked back.

That's when I ran screaming. The rage full crawling sounds alerted me that they were after me. I ran as fast as I can, taking care in not tripping, as the rocky ground could make me fall easily.

The night light started to reappear as I got closer to the entrance of the cave, where the camp was. My screams woke them and they had got the not and had started quickly picking our things and exit the cave.

That's when I tripped. With my speed, I rolled forward for quite far before stopping. I got cuts, bruises and gashes in all my body, and when I tried to re-stand myself, I felt believable pain, as my left leg didn't responded. I looked at it and it was bent in the wrong way.

I'm not a doctor, but I think that this is bad.

I looked down to the darkness of the cave and heard the crawling getting louder. I tried to crawl away, but I was too hurt to do it.

That's when Lori appeared and helped me get up.

"Let's go Leni." She spoke with a serious, yet sincere and caring tone. I just nodded and placed my arm around her neck and use her as a crutch to get out the cave.

Then a giant spider jumped on us from behind, making me fall and launching Lori forward. I looked up and saw the spider stab her leg with her horrendous jaws. She roared in pain, grabbed a knife she had in her pocket and stabbed the side of the spider head repeatedly.

The giant spider fell on top of Lori. The Twins, Luna and Linkie had got out the jeep to help us.

They used their combined strength to push the spider from Lori and the Twins grabbed her.

"Go start the jeep." Linkie ordered to Luna. She nodded and run in the entrance direction.

I looked back. Hundreds of spiders were approaching fast. I looked to Linkie, he was about 29 feet from me. He had no chance to grab me and take me out the cave before the spiders got to us.

A font movement of my leg made me remember from my flare gun in my pocket.

I grabbed it, and, like in slow motion, I looked up to the ceiling of the cave, noticing the brittle rocks that held themselves with just their own strength. It had a small crack between three rocks.

It was the weak spot of the ceiling. I looked at Linkie. He was still very far from me, but started running in my direction.

I may not be very intelligent. I may be very clumsy, ditzy, airheaded, but I had, in that moment, I knew exactly what was happening and what I had to do.

Trying to fire at the spider wouldn't do much, I had just one shot with the flare gun, so I had to make it count. Lori and Twins had already arrived at the jeep, and Linkie was still very near the entrance in comparison to me.

I closed my eyes, swallowed and looked at Lincoln.

" Live." I spoke to Linkie who shouted back. " For us."

"No!"

I aimed the flare gun to the crack and pushed the trigger.

The red flare shot up and exploded right when it collided with the crack.

I closed my eyes as the rocks begun to fall. The last thing I thought, it was my family.

And specially, Linkie.

N/A: And here we say goodbye to Leni, one of my favorite characters of the cartoon. although I really don't like to write her beacuse of her quirk of being ditzy, I'm too afraid of making her too dumb to actually function as a human or to make she out of the character by being too smart, its a goldilocks situation, ya know?

I had her death being the result of her phobia of spiders since pretty much the beginning, and I really liked the result of this chapter.

For who don't accompany my Twitter, I'm finishing to wrote the fic, and I actually already finished writing the Past Arc, and like, by the 28th chapter the Past Arc will end and all the backstory will be clear for you.

Now for to usual blabber, Favorite and follow if you liked, comment if you want, ask anything that I'll try to respond everything next chapter, follow me on Twitter @ryuu_baku for updates, well, I think this is all, unitl next week!

Bye.