Rough morning. Not much inspiration and a short chapter. Enjoy regardless.
-Raoul
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The team continued onward, following after Ren, who had taken point. The team noticed he seemed to know where he was going, so they silently followed behind.
Well, mostly silent.
Ryuji was grumbling about being bullied until the group offered to buy him a bowl of ramen each, which earned them a blinding smile from Ryuji.
"Leave it to him to be bribed by food," Morgana teased.
"Hey Mona, I'll get you some fatty tuna if you give me an idea on how to move on from here," Ren joked as he peeked into the next room.
"Tuna? High grade?!"
'He caved immediately!' the team thought.
"Yeah, take a look," Ren said as he fully opened the door.
The room was a spire with a spiral staircase headed upwards to the next floors. However, a massive chunk of said staircase had collapsed, leaving a huge gap the team couldn't jump across.
"If we believe we can, we can?" Ryuji got out weakly.
"I don't know if we can trick ourselves into believing we can jump a 20-foot gap," Ann said. "And you're already getting three bowls of ramen with any toppings you want, don't be greedy."
"Hehehe. NYAHAHAHA." Morgana let out an excited laugh. "Prepare to buy me good tuna because I have an idea!"
The team tilted their heads.
"Joker! Remember? After I taught you how to make some supplies, I left for a while?" Morgana explained excitedly. "It was for this!"
He proudly raised some sort of wrist-mounted contraption into the air.
"Test it out!"
"Mona, is this a grappling hook?" Ren asked in shock.
Ryuji had been silent.
"Did you steal a grappling hook from Untouchable?"
"No!" Morgana bristled. "I built it myself!"
"Iwai is too scary still anyways," he continued in a whisper.
Meanwhile, Ren had finished equipping the grappling hook. He was inspecting it when it merged into his Metaverse clothing with a flash of blue fire and remerged as a shiny, professionally made one.
"Wow, cool," Shiho said as Ann began to poke it, avoiding the release mechanism.
"I guess we're just going to ignore how the cat somehow made a grappling hook," Ryuji mumbled.
Ren took aim and fired the grappling hook towards a gargoyle mounted on the side of the staircase where it was unbroken.
And completely missed.
....
"I meant to do that," Ren said with a cough.
"Uh huh..." the team replied sarcastically.
"Come on, Joker..." Ren whispered, taking aim once more.
He fired the grappling hook once more and it smoothly wrapped around the target and secured itself. Ren jumped into the air and allowed it to pull him upward. He noticed he was going a bit too fast, choosing to flip himself through the air with a swing, and he gracefully landed on the staircase.
Morgana nodded in pride, seeing his work in action. He handed a near-exact copy of Ren's to each of the team and fired his own, catching up with Ren and waiting for the others.
"See? It works perfect!" the not-cat called down in pride.
Ann was nervous.
"Heights are scary," she mumbled. "Get with the program, Panther!"
"I'm not scar— AHHHHHH"
Shiho followed closely behind and caught Ann before she crashed, falling to the ground.
"Whew, what a rush!" Shiho exclaimed.
"If that's what you call it," Ann mumbled.
BANG
Ryuji had slammed into the wall and was now sliding down it. When he landed, he was silent in mortification for a moment before asking Ren,
"Joker, how did you do that flip and still land normally?"
"I don't know."
The team continued onward briefly.
'Trickster, take a left here,' Incubus suddenly instructed.
He took a look to the left and noticed two balconies across from each other.
'Use your fancy grappling hook to swing over there,' Incubus continued. 'There is a room there that's covered in vines. Cut 'em down and go in.'
'What will I find?' Ren asked inwardly as he waved the team forward and then swung across the gap with the team following him.
'Something good,' Incubus said. 'Well not really, but it will be useful at least.'
Ren sighed as he drew his knife and cut down the vines wrapping the door.
"Joker, what's in here?" Ryuji asked. "Seems like a secret room."
"I don't know, Incubus told me something useful is here," Ren said quietly as he opened the door.