Down the Rabbit Hole

Chapter 5: Killing time in the Borderlands

For such a low-level game, the two of clubs was killing you. The rules were simple and
straight to the point: find the hunter and capture them within the given time frame which you could raise. Several buttons were hidden throughout the maze which would grant your team more time to find the hunter. Aguni had spotted them a while back, but the game failed to mention the fact that your target was armed and ready to fight back.

Hatter suggested that the three of you split up while the rest of the players wandered around the maze. His main goal was to find all the buttons while Aguni focused on keeping track of the hunter's location so that jumping them would be easier. Throwing yourself over yet another wall of the maze, you landed on the other side and grinned at the sight before you.

The very last button to raise the time limit rested on a small table in the very last corner of this section. Pressing this button would be that it was go time for the rest of the players.

"Danma! I found the last button, time to get the hunter," you screamed out into the air so that Aguni and Danma would be able to hear you from a distance. Pressing the button, the lightest ding followed from your phone to let you know of the new time limit, fifteen minutes.

Danma wasted no time in reaching you, jumping over the other wall and throwing your bat towards you. It was a convenient makeshift weapon that saved your skin several times throughout the games. To a certain degree, it was your emotional support bat with how you constantly carried it around to every game you played in.

"Enough moping young one. Aguni is about four rows deeper in the maze, we can get a better look at his location if you stand on the top of the walls. The hunter is most likely a man with the way they are built and are definitely armed," Danma informed you. He grabbed onto your shoulder and knelt down to motion you to use him as a jumping pad. "What? With your height, you need all the help you can get."

Rolling your eyes at his statement, you tied the handle of the bat to your belt with a piece of string dedicated to it. Ignoring his knelt form, you jumped up to get a hold of the top of the wall and raise yourself. Danma softly cursed behind you but followed along and met you at the top of the wall.

"I do it because I care. Imagine if you were to pull another muscle, you would be out of commission for another week or so," he complained from behind you. You led the search for Aguni and the hunter from the top of the walls, balancing your weight over the few amounts of space available. "Not to mention, Aguni would lecture me nonstop about it. Last time it happened, and we were forced to leave you under Niragi's watch, he wouldn't stop scolding me."

"Good. Niragi is a creep, I would have preferred dying in a game that day. Also, why do you insist on watching over my safety as if I were a child? I am twenty-four, not some little kid," you responded. You didn't need to look back at Danma to know that he was faking an appalled reaction to your claim.

This argument, or topic, had been brought up many times, and they always responded with the same thing. They were in their thirties so any twenty-something year old was a kid in their eyes. Their ideology was hypocritical, to say the least since Niragi was around your age as well, and he was never babied. Being babied wasn't even a good way of describing them, it was more of the constant protective stance that parents took with their children. You were happy that they knew when to stop since they never mean to demean you. They were truly only worried about your safety.

The first few days in the Borderlands with just the three of you were difficult to say the least. Nobody wanted to inform their possible enemies of the world around them so context clues were what you relied on to be able to explain the games to them without making it seem like you knew more. During those days when you played the games together, it was pure luck that a hearts game never happened to be what you ended up with. After discovering the brutality of the hearts games, Danma was the one to suggest that the three of you split off into separate games in order to not risk it.