Destiny of A Few

Chapter 8: Undetectable Circumstances

Harmon enjoyed mornings where he woke up to the sight of the bright sun and the sound of birds chirping. He looked forward to mornings like these. However, unfortunately for Harmon, today was the first day on the team with him.

"Aprikose!" a rather enraged Ruben yelled. The leader of team RADR struggled as he tried to free himself from the web of strings that entangled him.

In the corner of the room, Malko watched the rest of his team squirm underneath the strings he had woven around their beds before they had woken up.

"Don't... don't struggle...!" Malko tried his best to talk in between snickers, only for him to break out in laughter. "It only gets worse!"

"Argghh!" Avery tried to reach for her flame pellets atop the desk that was beside her bed with her free arm, but to no avail. After a third attempt, she conceded with a tired huff.

Harmon just silently hung upside down from the ceiling, completely expecting this sort of situation. He had already experienced Malko's sadistic form of humor before in the Emerald Forest, but he wondered if his new teammates could handle the puppeteer and his antics.

"As your leader, I command you to release us from our bindings!" Ruben ordered.

"Did you just make the sentence 'Let us go.' more complicated?" Malko answered back.

"Please," Avery pleaded.

"Mr. Aprikose, I believe we've all had our fair share of fun," Harmon spoke up. "Would you kindly release us? Otherwise we would be late for class. And Ms. Goodwitch wouldn't like that, would she?"

Malko wiped a tear as his laughter died down. "Alright, alright. I was just messing around. And for the record, I'm not afraid of Ms. Goodbitch."

With a smile, he motioned his hands backwards, and Charlotte's Web started to retract. Halfway through, the puppeteer felt an unnatural click within his weapons.

"Uh oh," he gulped. "Looks like it's jammed." Malko only chuckled nervously.

"Oh for the love of-!" At this point, Ruben was visibly fuming.

"Geez, relax! Don't get your underwear in a twist. Oh wait."

Malko gave the strings several light pulls in hopes of it slowly retracting. He tried again several more times, but still nothing happened. The puppeteer gradually grew impatient at the lack of results. With one last tug, he fixed the jammed mechanism.

However, the strings suddenly reeled back and retracted with tremendous force. The furniture, along with the rest of team RADR, flew across the room and landed with a loud and painful thud.

"Ouch..."

Harmon wiped the sweat from his forehead and examined the room. It was tidy enough, almost as if their predicament never even happened.

"That took a while," Malko said. "But I'm glad we-"

The puppeteer was cut off as Ruben grabbed him by the shirt and pinned him against the wall. "You're lucky you didn't break anything! If you ever do something like this ever again, I'll make sure you can't walk."

"Hey, hey. What's with the hostility, supreme commander?" Malko only laughed as he grabbed his leader's arms. "Now let me go and say you're sorry."

There was a short pause before Ruben gently released Malko from his grip. "I'm... sorry..."

"Now punch yourself in the face and-"

"Hey!" Harmon grabbed the puppeteer's shoulder and pulled him away from their leader. "That's enough!"