[Sabre's POV]

"Sabre."

I slowly open my eyes to see Orange standing next to my bed, holding Gerald. He looks excited about something.

"Oh hey, Orange. What's up?" I say, sitting upright.

"There's bunnies outside." Orange says, smiling.

I quickly jump off the bed and run over to the balcony, although being quiet. Orange follows behind me. I see three bunnies next to the gazebo, one normal one and two tiny ones. They're so cute!

"Woah..." I whisper.

"Heheh, they're small like you." Orange giggles.

I ignore that for now, and watch as the little group of bunnies hop through the Hub. It looks like the big one is trying to lead them somewhere, while the tiny ones keep playing together and getting off-track.

"I've never seen actual bunnies before... just pictures of them." I say.

"I've never seen biological ones before, heh." Orange says. "They usually run away before I can get a good look at them."

"How'd they even get in here?" I ask.

"I dunno, but I'm not complaining." Orange says. "They're adorable."

"Heheh, yeah." I say.

We watch the bunnies for a little while. Eventually, they run off into the forest in the Hub.

"Aw... they left so soon..." I say, wishing I could've seen them a little longer.

"They probably have a burrow to go back to, we might see them again." Orange says.

"Okay..." I say, stepping down from the fencing of the balcony.

Gerald jumps out of Orange's arms and heads inside, and I notice that Orange has been far from the edge of the balcony this whole time.

"Oh come on, Orange. It's not that high." I say.

"Hey- shush." Orange says.

We both laugh, but are cut off by a growl noise.

"Aaand of course, you want food." Orange sighs, but still smiles.

"Hey, not my fault that's how I work." I say, giggling.

Orange picks me up and takes me inside.

"Come on, let's get you something." He laughs. "I have a new thing that I made from the harvest from the garden I'm pretty sure you'd like."

Orange takes me downstairs, and sets me down once we get to the living room. I run over to the couch like usual, and this time Gerald is sitting in Orange's spot. Orange heads into the storage room, and I hear a chest open.

"Huh, that's weird..." Orange says. "I was sure I made more than this..."

I freeze in place. Can he tell I was in there last night? Probably not, because he hasn't asked me about it, but still... did I leave something out of place? I look over at Gerald, and he's staring at me.

"Don't." I mouth, careful not to make a sound. He said he wouldn't be a snitch, he better keep that or I swear...

Gerald looks away, and I relax. He's not gonna tell, good. I then hear Orange walk out of the storage room.

"Maybe I just miscalculated..." He mumbles.

Orange then walks over to the couch and stops, looking at Gerald.

"Move please, buddy." Orange says.

Gerald gets up and hops off the couch, then lays down in his usual spot. Orange sits in his spot on the couch and hands a few loaves of bread to me. I happily take them and start eating the first one.

"Hey, I knew you'd like it." Orange says, smiling.

Suddenly, we hear lightning outside.

"Again?" I mumble, trying to finish the bread I have as I talk.

"Hm... Let's check it out." Orange says, picking me up off the couch.

"Wh- hey! My food!" I say, trying to reach for the other bread loaves as we go.

"Worry about it later, buddy." Orange says. "Heck, I could even just get you more. Right now we need to see what's happening."

When we get outside, we see that the lightning is surprisingly coming from the yellow portal.

"Yellow...?" Orange mumbles, and I look up at him. "But the Yellow Steves haven't been contacting anyone of other colors since the..." I don't hear the last part.

"Maybe it's the Yellow Steve from yesterday!" I say.

"Maybe..." Orange says, getting a bit of a tighter grip on me as he walks towards the now-activated portal. "It would make sense, because of the recent happenings with their power struggles... the kingdom wouldn't really be needing help right now anyway, as far as anyone can tell."

"What happened?" I ask. "What about power struggles?"

"I'll tell you later." Orange says, getting ready to run in. "Right now, we're going to help out our friend. Brace yourself!"

I prepare for the disorienting trip through the portal as Orange dashes into the multicolored wall of swirls, and I again feel like we're floating as I shut my eyes from the bright light.

—————————————————————————————————————

As soon as I feel us hit the ground, I open my eyes to see we're in a forest, standing in a cleared path between the trees. Orange looks confused for a moment, but then we hear somebody yelling.

"NO! GET BACK! HELP, SOMEONE, PLEASE!"

"That's Yellow Steve!" I say, and Orange bolts to where the sound came from.

We reach a spot in the clearing that's more open, and see that Yellow Steve is surrounded by Darkness. They're slowly inching closer to him, claws out and ready to strike. Yellow keeps looking for a way to run out, but the Darkness has closed off any gaps between them.

I don't even think when I hop out of Orange's grip and run towards the circling Darkness, preparing something I learned back in my world.

"Wait, Sabre!" Orange calls out after me, but I don't listen.

"Get away from him!" I scream, and the Darkness and Yellow look at me.

I aim for one of the Darkness that has its back to me, and swiftly kick the back of its knees. The thing quickly falls like a brick, halfway sprawled on the grassy floor. The other Darkness start to chase after me, but I run away and weave through the trees, the creatures following me.

I see Orange helping Yellow up when I look back. Good, they can get to safety while I lead these idiots away. Speaking of, the Darkness turns out to be outrageously stupid; They haven't learned a thing from what happened in the Orange Village! As I dodge branches and zoom around tree trunks, the skeletal robots crash into the foliage and get their claws stuck in the metallic wood. This is actually-

Ow! What was that?!

I look to where the sting on my arm is, and I see a small cut. Where'd I get that? The Darkness isn't that close to me because they keep stumbling in the forest, and this looks more like a paper cut or something.

I quickly get my answer when I have to run through a grassier part of the forest.

Since the longer grass is made of metal, it's cutting me like tiny swords! I feel my jeans get ripped up a little more as the blades slice through the fabric, reaching my skin and making small trickles of blood run down into my shoes. The same happens with my hands, as I feel the crimson liquid run through my fingers and drip from them, leaving a trail behind me as I run. A few really long blades of grass even cut my arms, torso, and shoulders, luckily never reaching my head. This stings worse than when I accidentally angered a bee nest back in my world...

Suddenly, I see a dark, metal hand shoot out from behind a bunch of shrubbery, and I have no time to stop. I feel myself get hit in the stomach, hard, before I quickly shut my eyes.

The next thing I know, I'm lying on my back on the cold, metal ground. Opening my eyes, I see a Darkness creature frantically trying to get something off itself. Oh wait, heh... I know what that is... shouldn't have aimed for my stomach, dummy.

Ow... this hurts. I ignore my screaming fear and curl into a ball, trying to ease the pain from my sudden run-in. I feel my blood smear over me, as I wrap my arms around myself. That's gonna suck to clean out of a white hoodie, later...

I gasp as I feel a big, clawed hand grab me, and lift me up off the ground. I'm soon staring into the face of another Darkness, dangling high from the forest floor, as it lifts me over its head to get a better look at me. Why is it doing that...? If the Darkness just kills people, why isn't it killing me? Wouldn't it be super easy for it to do that, since I'm not a robot?

Out of nowhere, I hear Orange Steve scream out at the creatures, coming from my right.

"HEY, UGLY!" Orange says. "OVER HERE!"

The Darkness turns to look at where the voice came from, and promptly gets hit in the face with... a log?! How did he throw that?!

The Darkness drops me as the other Darkness next to it also gets flattened by another log, and Yellow Steve dashes out of nowhere and catches me before I hit the ground. Before I know it, Yellow is running next to Orange, and hands me off to him. I'm still curled up, trying to recover from the Darkness hitting me.

"What happened to him?!" Orange asks Yellow, panicked.

"He got punched by one of the Darkness. I dunno how bad it hurt him." Yellow replies. "And I think he got the cuts from the grass. I don't really know, I'm just guessing on that one because that's what happens to biological animals when they run in there."

"Shoot, the Darkness is chasing after us!" Orange says, switching his hold on me into one hand and picking up another log we go past with his free hand.

Orange throws the metallic tree trunk right at the group of Darkness following us. I don't know how many it hit, but judging by the crushing sound, it at least got a few. There's still some chasing us, though.

"I have a bunker around here, it should be safe." Yellow says. "Come with me."

Orange follows Yellow, and eventually we get to a hill. At first, it looks like nothing's there, but then Yellow reveals a hidden switch and flips it. A part of the hill opens up, and we're quickly rushed inside and Yellow shuts the door behind us.

"Come on, the safe room is farther down." Yellow says, walking into a hallway.

Orange follows him, occasionally glancing at me with a worried look. Yellow leads us to a room with some furniture in it, looking kind of like a house.

"So, this is uh... where I've been hiding out." Yellow says. "I've been here while I was sent on a scouting mission."

"Oh, is that why you're all the way out here?" Orange says.

"Yep." Yellow replies.

Orange then looks at me, and holds up my arm as he checks on all the cuts I got from the sharp metal grass. He notices that I'm still wrapping my other arm across my midsection, and looks even more worried as he sees the cuts there too.

"Is he doing alright?" Yellow asks.

"I don't know..." Orange mumbles, then he looks me in the eyes. "Sabre, are you doing okay?"

"The Darkness is a fricken cheap shot..." I groan, trying to ignore the stinging I feel around my limbs. The soreness form the punch is just now starting to fade, but very slowly. "I'm pretty sure it just looks bad..."

"...I need to get him back home soon, so I can treat this." Orange says. "It might only look bad, but you never know what could happen."

"Well, we're gonna have to wait out the Darkness then." Yellow sighs. "They've never waited long before, so-"

Yellow is cut off by a 'bang' sound, coming from the entrance of the bunker. He looks worried as he runs over to check.

"They're trying to break in." Yellow says. "We're cornered."

"What?!" Orange says, quickly getting up.

"They've never done this before, I don't know what's happening!" Yellow says.

We hear the door starting to break more. I then have an idea, remembering a similar situation I've been in.

"Maybe we could trap them somewhere...?" I manage to say.

Orange and Yellow look at me.

"What?" Orange says.

"Trap them somewhere, once they get in..." I say. "Like, lock them in a room or make a wall collapse... so we can escape..."

"...We could... We could actually do that!" Yellow says.

Yellow leads us down a hall and points to a vault-like door.

"In there is a generator." Yellow begins. "The lever to turn it on and off is past this wall, put there for safety purposes. We could hide behind the wall and leave the generator room door open, making the Darkness think we hid in there. Then, we can turn off the generator, which will make the door close since it's kept open by the generator's power."

"It's our only shot..." Orange says.

"Thanks, Sabre." Yellow says, as we group together into the room with the lever.

"No problem." I smile.

We hear a dull crash echo throughout the bunker, letting us know that the door gave out. Then, we hear loud, clanking footsteps coming towards us. We soon see a group of Darkness rush past, going into the generator room just as planned.

"Now! Now!" Orange says, and Yellow flips the lever.

The hide door suddenly closes, and we hear angered scratching against the thick steel of the door. The three of us quickly rush out of the bunker, and keep running once we get out. Orange make sure to keep me from getting too close to the metal foliage as he runs, not wanting me to get any more cut up. We eventually reach a spot in a forest clearing where we can't hear the Darkness anymore.

"Okay, I think we're good now." Yellow says.

"That was close..." Orange says.

"Maybe I should head back to the Kingdom... it seems the Darkness has gotten more extreme." Yellow says, looking in a direction.

"That's probably a safe bet, Yellow." Orange says. "We're going to head back home so I can get Sabre patched up."

"Alright." Be safe you two..." Yellow says. "And hey, now we're even."

"Seeya, buddy." I say.

"Bye, Yellow Steve." Orange says.

Then, Yellow rushes off into the forest. Orange looks at me as his hand starts to glow again.

"Hopefully that punch didn't do too much damage..." He says.

"I'll be fine, I'll go back to running circles around those punks soon enough." I say, giggling.

Orange smiles, and a bright light follows the sound of lightning as we teleport.

—————————————————————————————————————

"Ow." I hiss, the cool water splashing on my latticed skin.

"Sorry, but I gotta make sure these cuts are clean before I wrap them." Orange says, moving a cloth over my bloodied arm.

Orange got some clean water and is bandaging up my injuries after washing them, so they don't get infected or anything. He's working on my right arm, the last thing that needs to be bandaged. My hoodie is on the couch next to me, blood staining the white fluffy material and the sleeves sliced to ribbons. Orange has a bucket next to him, which is holding the water he got from one of the rivers outside, the cloth now hanging on its edge. 

I just keep staring down at a spot on the table, not wanting to see how bad the cuts are. I've brought my knees up to my face so I can lean on them as Orange fixes up my injuries... although my still extremely sore stomach is making it uncomfortable to do so.

"Seriously, Sabre... what on earth were you thinking, running off like that?" Orange says, taking out the bandages. "They got really close to getting you that time."

"I dunno, I just panicked and did it..." I say.

We stay silent for a minute. I stop using my knees to support myself and swing my legs over the cushions, them now dangling from the huge couch. Orange sighs as he finishes wrapping up my arm, puts down the roll of bandages, and gently hugs me.

"I just got so scared when I saw that thing holding you up... you looked dead from where I was." Orange says. "Promise you won't do something like that again, okay?"

I return the hug using my left arm, which hurts less, and lean on Orange.

"Okay..." I answer.

We stay like that for a bit. Then, Orange lets go and gets up, and gives me a warm smile.

"Hey, do you want some food?" Orange asks. "That always seem to make you cheer up."

"Normally, I'd say yes, but..." I say. "That punch hurt pretty bad. I'm still really sore from it... I dunno if I can eat right now."

Orange seems to look a little more worried... which is understandable, refusing food is seriously out-of-the-ordinary for me. He then picks up my blanket from the side of the couch and wraps me in it.

"Well... just let me know if you change your mind, okay?" Orange says. "I'll be right here if you need me."

Orange walks off, and I let myself lay down on the couch. I suddenly realize that I feel exhausted from that chase from the Darkness... I don't usually tire out this fast. Oh well...

I let myself drift off, and before I know it I'm asleep right there on the couch.