What Gold Couldn't Buy: The Guild of Scraps Finds Its Place

After that great chase Sora had to endure, he decided to return to where Airi was, but he noticed she was nowhere to be found not in the restrooms, not at the beverage stand, nothing.

"I guess... when she didn't find me nearby, she decided to leave... No way, I can already hear the scolding she'll give me at school," Sora thought to himself while imagining a scenario where Airi punished him in a dark, twisted classroom.

With nothing else to do, Sora decided to return to where he had left the girls. He had been away from them for too long, and they could be in danger.

However, in the distance, in a completely different place from where he had escaped from Mochi and Shiori, he ended up finding a surprise.

"Is that... Airi?" Sora asked, squinting his eyes.

In a corner where there was a claw machine with plush prizes, he found not one, not two of the girls, but all four of them gathered in the same place.

Upon seeing the four girls united, Sora froze completely. He wasn't sure what could happen if those four girls were in the same place.

At the center of that scene, the machine was war loot.

"Your behavior is completely unacceptable for an employee!" Airi exclaimed with her arms crossed and a look that made delinquents tremble. She was standing in front of the cow mascot, who seemed to be vibrating with rage. "These two students have spent an irrational amount of resources on this rigged machine, and you, instead of assisting them, are mocking their bad luck!"

"Moooo! It's not my fault that those two idiots don't have the skills to get a simple plushie!" the cow responded with a voice distorted by the inside of the plush head, which perfectly hid Mika's identity but maintained her aggressiveness. "It's a game of chance! Go read a coexistence manual somewhere else and stop interrupting me!"

Airi turned red with anger. She didn't know who was inside that suit, but her aura of authority wasn't having any effect on her.

Meanwhile, a couple of meters to the left, the real world seemed not to exist for the other two girls.

"Shiori... The claw released the package again..." Mochi murmured with eyes boiling with rage and her hair disheveled. "My cleric prayers aren't breaking this glass's defense. We need more gold!"

"Negative, Cleric. This machine has a protection mechanism against high-level users," Shiori responded, adjusting her red glasses that now gleamed with dangerous intensity. "I've analyzed the swing pattern. If we combine both forces, we might be able to beat it."

"Are you suggesting we hit the machine?!" Airi intervened, turning toward them without stopping watching the cow. "That's school vandalism! You'll embarrass the institute! Yamamoto, if you're seeing this, come out from wherever you are and bring order to your guild!"

Sora sighed upon hearing those words. It was time to be the guild leader and restore order.

"Yes, Airi, I heard you..." Sora said as he approached with his hands up.

As soon as Sora finished pronouncing those words, Mochi and Shiori's proximity radar activated instantly. Both stopped fighting with the machine's glass and turned with a speed that defied animation frames.

"TAAAAANK!" Shiori shouted, completely forgetting her mission with the machine.

"HONEY!" Mochi exclaimed, with tears of frustration in her eyes.

Before Sora could say another word, both girls lunged at him with force. The impact was so strong it sent Sora straight to the ground, with Mochi clinging to his neck and Shiori hugging his legs as if she were an anchor.

"You disappeared for so long!" Mochi protested, throwing a tantrum as she buried her face in Sora's shoulder. "We wanted to win this stupid slime plushie to give you as a reward, and the system humiliated us!"

"Mochi is right..." Shiori murmured from the ground without letting go of Sora. "My precision stats dropped to zero because you weren't there to give us support... You're an irresponsible leader!"

Sora, still on the ground, just looked at the sky begging for mercy. "Forgive me, girls. I had an unexpected special event I had to resolve before returning," Sora tried to explain, while Airi approached with rage.

"Yamamoto! Get up and restore order!" Airi exclaimed, though inside she felt a sense of relief seeing him safe after disappearing minutes earlier. She crouched down and, with authority, began peeling the girls off. "Let go of this idiot! You're in a public place; you're going to get us all kicked out of the park!"

While Airi helped Sora stand up and dust himself off, the cow mascot stayed observing the scene. Mika, from inside the suit, watched how Airi scolded Sora while fixing his clothes, and how Shiori and Mochi kept pouting around him.

She no longer saw those girls as before. She saw a team that, despite being broken, functioned.

"Moooo..." the cow let out a sound that this time wasn't of rage, but a sound that seemed almost amused. "I guess after all... they don't seem like such bad people..."

Airi turned instantly, surprised by the change in tone.
"Did you say something, Miss Cow?" Airi asked, squinting her eyes.

"I said get lost already! The park is closing soon, and I don't want to see your faces for one more minute!" Mika shouted, recovering her tone as she walked away toward the employee area while making a quick gesture with her hand that only Sora understood as a farewell.

And so, the sun began to set, reflecting an orange sky that could remind one of the sunsets in Frontier Online.

"Well... I think it's time to head back," Sora said, looking at his watch. He only had a few coins left in his pocket, but his happiness and the girls'was at maximum.

"But... the prize!" Mochi shouted while looking sadly at the machine that had easily defeated the mage and the cleric.

"That's the least important thing, Mochi." Sora placed a hand on her head and then on Shiori's, giving them a gentle caress. "What matters is that we survived the raid and had fun like never before. Tomorrow is school, and we need to prepare for what's coming."

Both girls couldn't help but blush at Sora's touch.

Airi walked a bit ahead, leading the exit as always, but every now and then she looked back to make sure the trio was following her.

However, she couldn't hide a happy face because of the events they both had shared.

The walk to the bus was peaceful; Shiori fell asleep on Sora's shoulder almost as soon as the return trip began, and Mochi followed halfway through while humming a song.

However, Airi had to get off the bus before reaching the trio's destination. But not before saying goodbye to Sora, this time with a smile he had never seen before.

The day at Dream World had ended. The Daruma was broken, the savings were gone, but Sora knew that this moment of his real life had been the best of all.

Perhaps... having company like theirs wasn't so bad after all.