Love or Power

Chapter 8

"Okay, now that we finally took care of that huge disaster, we are going to go through the jungle, as a group. There will not be any more funny business! We have already wasted too much time and we need to cover a lot of ground before nightfall. Do you understand me?!" Makoto said aggressively, mainly to Alice and Ira. 

Everyone else were somewhat irritated as well. It had taken an hour to calm Alice down and put out the fires she had started. So they were all tired, dirty, and not in the best mood.

"Hey! Why are you yelling at me?! I'm not the one who started setting things on fire !" Ira exclaimed while glaring at Alice.

Alice rolled her eyes. "Because you're a psychotic little son of a bit-"

"OKAY! Let's not start fighting again," Mana said hastily, cutting Alice off. "I'll take the front, Rikka and Aguri keep an eye on Ira behind me, and Makoto try to keep Alice under control from the back. Sound good?"

There were a lot of sighs and grumbling, but they all agreed with Mana's plan. They walked through the jungle in almost complete awkward silence for a while. No one seemed to be in a good mood to talk. Eventually Alice did start talking with Makoto in hushed whispers, but aside from that the only noises that the group made were the occasional squeaks, gasps, or grumbles when they heard sudden noises or something startled them.

Mana was trying her best to lead the way through the unknown territory, but ended up accidentally taking routes that required a lot of effort to get through. The heat and humidity did not help the situation. Aguri and Rikka were just trying their best not to argue with each other. Aguri kept on giving Ira glares of suspicion as she looked around for any other dangers in the area. This made Rikka irrationally angry due to her sleep deprived state, and kept on trying to give Aguri a sign to tell her to cut it out. Surprisingly Alice was not causing too much of a problem, but the embarrassed and flustered look on Makoto's face showed that the things that she was saying were not very appropriate. The only bright side to the situation was that no one had started fighting.

Too bad that the peace could not last.

"I can't take it anymore!" Ira exclaimed, glaring at Aguri. "Could you go five minutes without glaring at me as if I set the world ablaze?! If you have something to say to me then say it to my face!"

"Well excuse me for being suspicious of the boy who has tried to kill us multiple times! You are a member of the selfish trio and a servant of the Selfish King! I wouldn't trust you even if you were the last person on earth!" Aguri yelled.

At this point the group had stopped moving. They were staring at Aguri and Ira argued, unsure of what to do.

"Ha! Finally something we can both agree on! I mean you wanted to kill me when I was injured and had amnesia! At least I attacked you when you could actually fight!"

"Says the psychopath who attacked the innocent civilians in the Trump kingdom! You can pretend to be nice all you want, but we all know that you're evil."

"Oh really! If I'm so evil then why did I give your friend the antidote when she was dying?! And what were you doing at that time? Oh yeah! You were yelling at her for 'slacking off!'"

"Why you little-"

"Guys stop fighting!" Rikka yelled as she put herself in between the two. "Wether you guys like each other or not we need to trust each other!"

Aguri snapped because she was too angry to think clearly. "Says the girl who refused to tell us that she met up with our enemy!"

"Oh for Pete's sake, Aguri, not this again!"