Kratogenesis

Sorry Seems To Be The Hardest Word (XXII)

Hours and hours after Nickel was scolded by Leafy, he could not close his eyes to sleep, as her words were still echoing in his mind. He got up and went to the living room, where everyone else was chatting. He looked at the bunch. "Guys, there's one thing I have to ask you."

Balloony was sitting on the couch. "Go on, Nickel."

"Am I toxic to you?" Leafy's insults were still invading Nickel's mind.

"No, you're not." Balloony looked like he was answering an obvious question. "Why should you be toxic to us?"

"Well, Leafy said so..." Nickel looked away.

"Dude, Leafy is a thing of the past now." David was unenthusiastic now that he had to think about her again.

"I know, but she's been harsh to me today." Nickel sighed, as he did not want to think about it anymore.

".... --- .--" Roboty slipped away as he emitted the beeps.

"Yeah, Roboty's right." Balloony looked at Nickel. "How harsh was she?"

"Enough to call me a failure." Nickel groaned in displeasure.

"Whoa! That's not good." Balloony was determined to fix the situation; he grabbed a monkey wrench from a toolbox. "We need to teach her a lesson!"

David looked in shock at the monkey wrench. "No, Balloony. Things would get even worse." He put the palm of his hand on his face and sighed. "I think what she's trying to tell us is that we wronged her."

"Wronket her?" Cloudy couldn't make sense of David's conjecture.

"We need to look at the bigger picture." David looked at his teammates, hoping to grab their attention. "She may have been harsh to us, but we've fixed nothing by kicking her out."

"Wait, are you suggesting we should bring her back?" Nickel sat down on the ground.

David shrugged. "Uh, no–"

"But then she'd harass me to no end!" Nickel started rocking himself.

"We'll make her not do that, Nickel." Balloony adjusted the monkey wrench to fix the situation.

"...Balloony, you need to chill." David was fed up of Balloony's eagerness to patch things up through unorthodox means.

"I was just suggesting!" Balloony didn't understand why David was so hostile to him.

After a moment of silence, David stood up from his armchair and got ready to deal with Leafy. "Come on, boys. It's time to patch things up."

"Wait, are you sure?" Nickel was terrified.

"Man up, Nickel. She can't be too dangerous now." David and his teammates got out.

Once Beep reached Leafy's team house, David knocked on the door. "Leafy!"

Leafy opened the door. Upon noticing it was David, she sighed. "Oh. It's you." She was unimpressed.

"Leafy, there's one thing we have to tell you." David stared into Leafy's shiny emerald green eyes.

"Well, make it snappy." Leafy stared back. "Little Grassy can't hold on to his midnight hunger for much longer."

After mustering up his courage, David sighed. "We're sorry, Leafy."

Leafy's mild annoyance gave way to shock. "Oh?"

"We're sorry for expelling you. We thought you were toxic, but in reality, you were just attempting to assert your leadership." David looked the part, shaking his head.

Leafy took notice of Beep's apologies, and her eyes started to water.

"We thought kicking you out would fix things," David thought about his involvement in making Leafy look like the scapegoat a few days back, and shuddered. "But we were wrong. We only lost our goal as a team."

By this point, Leafy was struggling to hold back her tears. "I've been thinking about this, and yeah, I may have been harsh back then." She opened her arms and hugged David, letting her tears flow.

David was stunned at first, but then got his composure back. "There, there." He patted Leafy's back. His teammates couldn't believe it.

Balloony watched the scene in awe, dropping his monkey wrench from his hand.

Cloudy heard the metallic noise and looked at the tool. "Where tid you ked dhad vrom, anyway?"

"Uh..." Balloony didn't expect this question to appear. "My dad's toolbox...?" He blushed, rubbing his head.

"We're ready to let you back in, Leafy!" David smiled, trying not to lose his composure.

Leafy pondered over David's proposal and sighed. "Thanks, but I'm not sure I can leave my teammates just yet." She walked inside for a moment, and came back with a familiar face. "As a peace offering, you can have Rocky, though!"She let him fall to the ground.

Balloony heard the thumping noise from the fall and looked at whatever it was that fell, gasping in joy. "Rocky!" He grabbed him and hugged him. "I missed you!"

At first, Cloudy didn't understand what Balloony was talking about, but then he noticed that Rocky was back in the team. "Dhis is koing pedder dhan I dhoughd!" He nuzzled his cloud body against Leafy's cheeks. "Dhangs, Leavy!"

"Oh, stop it, Cloudy! It tickles!" Leafy attempted to cover the flush on her face with her hands.