[Neo Zone] Population: 23 Kids

Ultimate Ninja

Johnny was mentally exhausted. He'd been working all morning in the kitchen and at this point he'd given up years ago that he would ever stop smelling like ground coffee. Nonetheless, he needed a break. And if everyone else could randomly go on breaks, so could he.

"Jungwoo, Jaehyun. Get ready, we're leaving." He called down the basement steps, and as he was turning around he heard Jaehyun yell back at him.

"But Annie!"

"She can live a few hours without you."

"Have you seen the people we live with?"

Johnny sighed, opting to just head downstairs rather than keep shouting when there were customers in the cafe.

"Jisung turned out fine."

"Have you seen Jisung?"

Johnny thought Jisung had turned out fine, but if Jaehyun was going to decide that Annie was his personal charge he knew he wasn't going to do almost anything without her. So Johnny found the next best option sitting in the room looking like he was busy.

"Kun, get ready, we're leaving soon."

Kun immediately slapped down what he was doing and jumped up, startling Bella off the bed. He apologized quickly before turning back to Johnny.

"I really don't want to keep working. Where are we going?"

Johnny smiled, but then frowned when he saw Jungwoo was taking a nap. It explained why he never responded even if it was the middle of the day.

"Nowhere until we get Jungwoo up."

Both Kun and Johnny started waking Jungwoo up as Annie watched them with occasional giggles. Kun was almost pulled onto the bed as a cuddle buddy until Johnny just decided it'd be faster to just pick Jungwoo up and let him wake up on the way there.

"Bye little Annie. Take care of our Jaehyun for us." Johnny added in an imaginary hat tipping, making her burst with little giggles while returning his gesture with a curtsey.

"She's adorable." Kun mumbled fondly as they left the basement, Jungwoo slung over Johnny's shoulder like a sack of potatoes.

They got a few strange looks as they left through the front door of the cafe, but the most loyal of customers had practically watched them grow up and knew that was nothing out of the ordinary. That still didn't stop them from giving their own questioning glances, though.

"So where are we going?" Kun asked as they wove through the people on the street.

"The arcade of course."

Jungwoo picked up his head, now looking fully awake.

"We're going to the arcade?" He then frowned slightly, "Why don't we have more people with us then?"

"Because if I mentioned I was going to the arcade, we would've had to shut down the cafe because everyone would want to come."

Johnny put Jungwoo down without warning, having to turn him around and push him forward so he wouldn't get in the way of anyone walking.

"Hey! Why do I have to walk now?"

Johnny raised an eyebrow, "Because you're twenty-one and you're awake."

Jungwoo immediately closed his eyes and pretended like he had fallen asleep on the spot, hoping that would get him out of walking. Johnny just walked past him as Kun nudged him forward and put an arm around his shoulders.

"You should've just kept your head down."

Jungwoo mumbled some sort of an agreement under his breath as they continued to follow Johnny to the arcade, happy to find it was practically empty since it was during a school day. The only other people that were in there was a couple who were competing at table hockey and the tension between them predicted they were either going to start killing each other over the game or making out.

Johnny spotted what he had come for, though, and headed straight towards the game, leaving Kun to get the tokens while Jungwoo followed Johnny.

He stopped in front of the Fruit Ninja game, staring at the demo recording on the screen with wide eyes. It wasn't until Jungwoo waved his hand in front of his face that he snapped out of it and tried starting the game without tokens.

"Try these."

Kun held out the required amount of tokens, earning himself a grateful smile from Johnny.

"Now what you gotta do to be the fruit ninja is get the combos. It's all about the combos."

"I thought it was about not hitting the bombs and making sure you don't miss any fruit." Jungwoo questioned.

"Not if you put it on zen mode."

"What's that?" Kun asked, stepping aside once Johnny started the game.

"Zen mode is when you just have a timer, fruit, and no bombs." Jungwoo explained once Johnny didn't, all his focus already going into the game.

It took him a few missed combos to get the hang of it again, but once he got going, he really got going. He smirked when he saw his score of almost eight hundred, stepping aside for either Kun or Jungwoo to go ahead.

Jungwoo took up the challenge, but he was way less composed than Johnny was. Rather than staying calm and focused, Jungwoo was all over the place, even using his feet to get some. Yet somehow he almost matched Johnny's score.

Kun, having never played before, was a bit awkward with his virtual fruit slicing, trying to combine Jungwoo's random arm swinging with Johnny's combos. It didn't work out for him too well, but after a few rounds he got it figured out to where he could get eight hundred.

By the time Kun got to Johnny's first score, though, Johnny and Jungwoo were in a heated competition. Both were going all out every time it was their turn, neither of them capable of not panting afterwards.

Johnny did get a score of one thousand one hundred twenty-two and that's when they called it quits, but at that point they had all paid the price in more ways than monetarily. None of them could move their arms the next morning without feeling the pain of becoming a fruit ninja.