Waking up, I found myself on the floor again of a dimly lit space.
This time though, we were clearly in a room and I could see all four sides of it from where I was laying.
Groggily sitting up, I soon realized that the room was a lot smaller than it had seemed a moment ago, and that curiously, the dim light source in the room seemed to come from nowhere and everywhere at the same time.
Glancing at my side, I found that Missus Oh Great Princess of Zahard was still sleeping.
Herein, I couldn't really move around. The room was barely big enough to fit both of our masses inside of it after all.
Seeing that nothing was happening even though I had already woken up, I decided to shake Maschenny awake...
...yet I immediately jerked my hand away from her.
'Touching a psychopathic princess of Zahard? Probably not a good idea.'
In the end, all I could do was use my voice, and so I did.
"Wake up..."
No response.
"Wake up... Princess..."
Still no response.
"Kekeke... you're in a simulation..."
Fuck Shiyoon. Did I really just make that joke?
"WAKE UP!"
Deciding that the soft way wasn't gonna cut it, I immediately decided to just rip the bandaid off.
And sure enough, she woke up, although surprisingly, not in a startled state.
She woke up exactly the same I had woken up, all groggy.
'Were we drugged?'
I couldn't help but ask that question. Yet, knowing how the world worked, it was probably some technique that I wasn't aware of yet.
'Huh, she actually seems pretty defenseless like that. Should I just kill this crazy bitch now?'
I mean, some would say that I was being heavily prejudiced against her right now. After all, wasn't this past self of hers different from her self in canon?
And to that, I would respond with a "Fuck you."
She was psychopathic then, meaning she either had the seed of a psycho in her now or she already was a psycho.
There wasn't any other possibility here.
At this point though, she had already regained most of her bearings, and so my decision was made for me.
"Don't look at me like that... you're violating me." I said, whilst hugging my own body like I was trying my best to protect it.
Holy fuck.
Fuck this shit, I'm out.
(~~~)
Just kidding, but still.
Shiyoon, you might've just gone too far.
I mean, the words that had just come out of my mouth were about the worst thing I could've possibly said to a fucking PRINCESS OF ZAHARD.
Thankfully though, she didn't respond at all to "Shiyoon's" provocation and instead, her cold stare only got colder.
And somehow, that was even scarier.
I mean, I could probably definitely defeat her in a fight with Shiyoon's body, but I was a normal fucking dude before all of this for god's sake.
Well, maybe not the most normal, but I was still living in a civilized society!
Anyways, in the end, all the tension between us was cut as the walls around us started falling down.
And immediately after confirming our surroundings, her and I both practically teleported away from each other.
'Yup, being in close proximity to a psychopath will do that to ya.'
Above all this though, we were still a team.
"Do you have any idea what the objective of this test is?"
Surprisingly enough, she was the first one to speak up.
And I couldn't blame her for it, because I was still thinking about what our setting told us about our future.
I had been studying the new room we had found ourselves in since the previous walls had dropped, and had come to a few certain conclusions.
"Seeing as to how we haven't heard anything, we're probably being tested on our ability to figure out a plan of action in an uncertain situation. Furthermore, our surroundings look a lot like a..."
"Get to the point."
Thankfully, she didn't threaten me or anything, probably because of the prowess I had showed earlier in front of the tester, and so she just resolved herself to always be looking at me coldly.
And I was almost certain that she had frost coming out of her mouth whenever she talked to me.
"Nope!"
As my body smiled a little wider and turned away from Maschenny, I couldn't help but mentally shudder.
'You're gonna get me killed!'
The strike I feared never came though, and we were just left in an EXTREMELY uncomfortable silence.
So, to get out of it, I completed the puzzle that I had just solved inside my head.
'If the first test Bam faced was also testing that, then...'
We were currently situated in what seemed almost nostalgic of a winter cabin the the woods.
The walls looked like they were made of wood, there was a cozy looking couch that overlooked a fireplace that was taller than myself, and a bookshelf lined a wall whilst the other had a clock and painting on it.
And, of course, it wasn't no normal clock. Looking closely, one would notice that it was a stopwatch, one that was slowly counting down the time we supposedly had left before presumably being dropped to our deaths if Bam's version of this test was anything to go by.
There were also no windows and doors leading anywhere. Although, for some reason, I could still hear the sound of a blizzard raging outside this supposed room.
'Ah, yes, that must be it.'
Walking towards the raging fireplace, I took a deep breath before walking through the fireplace and disappearing from view.
~~~
Watching him confidently walk through those flames, I clenched my hands tightly.
At this point, I already knew that he was probably stronger than me, but he was also smarter than me?
Well, this was with the assumption that he had solved the puzzle to this room.
For all I knew, he could've been burned to a crisp inside those flames as he had walked in without even bothering to coat his body with a layer of shinsu.
After seeing his "solution" though, I suddenly felt that if I used shinsu during this test, something bad would happen.
And so I dropped all my defenses and followed in after him.
---
A/N: I'm sorry about the quality of Maschenny's character that is told through her thought process (I'm just not satisfied with it at all). I honestly don't currently know how to write her POV's better and more according to her character, so I just hope that y'all will bear with me as I get better at expressing characters' feelings though not just their thoughts and words, but through their thought processes and actions.
Also, I'll have to write the next chapter in a few hours because I got another class to go to. I'll cy'all then!