Kratogenesis

It's No Good (V)

"No mercy for us? Guys, I tried so hard to make this work, but you left me with no choice but to downgrade you all on my loyalty chart!" Leafy scribbled something on a flip chart. "The task was simple, and yet you managed to screw it up! All we had to do was lick the jawbreaker!"

Meanwhile, inside the jawbreaker, Taco was listening to Leafy's ramblings about loyalty. "Ugh, come on, you stupid lemon leaf!" She banged the surface of the jawbreaker a few times, with each bang carrying more force than the one before. "Get to the point already!"

Leafy interrupted her rant to look at the moving jawbreaker. After a while, she went back to her tirade.

Taco groaned. "Why won't that idiot stop whining?!" As soon as she finished the sentence, her arms caught fire. Taco looked at them and screamed in fear. "Oh my stand, I'm on fire!" She flailed her arms around, hoping to extinguish the fire. The fire then died down, but the surface of the jawbreaker took on a brownish color. "Hm. I don't remember it being this brown." She poked the surface: it was soft. "Hang on..."

At that point, no one was listening to Leafy's babble anymore; her teammates were instead looking at the jawbreaker. Suddenly, it was cracked wide open, revealing an exhausted Taco.

Leafy turned around. "Oh hey, Taco! How have you been?"

"I certainly would have been better if you even just pretended to care about me!"

Leafy was confused. "Uh... I'm not sure I'm following you."

"Are you serious?! Instead of wasting your breath with a tirade nobody cared about, you could have freed me! Or at least tried to!"

Leafy realized that she had indeed wasted her precious oxygen. "Ooooh. Sorry, Taco..."

"Yeah, apologies accepted and whatever, but you should really re-evaluate your priorities." Taco walked out of the jawbreaker. "Good day."

Leafy's teammates all gave the team leader the stink eye, except for Rocky, who was just sitting on the grass, smiling.

"Her complaints were all legitimate, Leafy." Nickel shook his head.

"Your poor handling of the challenge made us lose, and your loyalty nonsense only made sure we lost!" Balloony groaned.

"We worget hart do vree Dago, and whad hafe you tone?" Cloudy took on a gray tinge. "You punklet id ub!"

Rocky vomited, not caring about the debate.

"That's right, Rocky! She did nothing!" Balloony was gesticulating.

"That's true. This behavior is unacceptable. We need to take some disciplinary action." David crossed his arms. He then called his teammates to form a tight circle.

"What should we do?" Nickel looked at David. "Should we eject her from the team?"

David thought about it. "Yeah, I'd say that's the most appropriate action."

Woody flailed his arms and emitted some sounds of worry.

"It's okay, Woody. It'll be for our own good." Balloony caressed him.

The group went back to Leafy. "Leafy. We have discussed about the appropriate disciplinary action, and we agreed on the option." Nickel was looking very serious about the idea of kicking her rout.

"Perhaps some time out of this team will be beneficial to you. Therefore, we're going to have to ask you to leave the team." Balloony looked at her. His piercing look felt stern, but also somewhat caring.

"Any lazd wortz?" Cloudy swung in, looking at Leafy.

All eyes were on her now. "If that's how you want it to be, fine! I'll leave. Even if it means forever!"

Nickel chuckled. "Oh, trust me! You're gonna come crawling back to us." He smirked, loudly exhaling in the process.

"Take it away, Roboty!" David left the final announcement for Roboty.

"--. . - / --- ..- -" Roboty looked like a gigantic golem in Leafy's eyes.

Leafy walked away, with no complaints or resistance. "Okay." Once she got far from her now-former teammates, she sat on the ground and smiled. Those weaklings were gonna regret it! She snickered. They had another thing coming!