Chapter 23
Blair
One thing about me, I would never turn my nose up at a strategic retreat.
Giant Krampus showed up and started rampaging through town?
I was gone. Gone like the wind. Or to be more specific, I ran around like a chicken with my head cut off until I found a brick house strong enough to withstand the icicle assault.
To the simulation’s credit, it was an adorable little cottage, complete with a stone fireplace and cozy woodwork throughout.
It would be much cozier without the destructive kaiju raining hell outside, but beggars couldn’t be choosers.
Right when I managed to get a decent fire going in the hearth, the front door slammed open. I turned to find Osid looming in the doorway. A mask of anger clouded his strong features. His hooves clacked on the wood floor as he stepped inside and slammed the door shut behind him. “You left me.”
I pulled out a chair from the kitchen table and slumped in it, body already tired from hauling ass to get away. “Did you miss the giant monster that popped up out of the river? I wasn’t exactly gonna stick around for that.”
He stormed over and slammed his hands on the table. “Of course I didn’t miss the giant monster, but when I turned around to find you, you vanished!”
I shrugged. “I see danger, I run. That’s the normal response, Osid.”
“The normal response should not be to leave your comrades to die.”
I crossed my arms over my chest. “Are you actually getting mad at me for this?”
He mirrored my posture and shot back, “I’m not getting mad, I am mad. You just ran off—”
“Yes!” I shouted. “Yes, I ran off, there’s a goddamn kaiju!” A roar outside punctuated my point.
Osid raised a brow. “And what if he caught you?”
“Who’s catching me, hoe? I’m a runner, I’m a track star. This is all your fault!”
“My fault?!”
“Yes! This is your fault for thinking I’d be slow enough to get captured. In the future, when we see a monster, we run, okay?”
“In the future, I expect you to run to me!”
I stared at him in disbelief, then down at myself, then around me.
“What are you looking for?” he snapped.
“The army or Gundam or other such deus ex machina that you assume I’d be able to pull out of my ass that would’ve helped you.
What exactly did you expect me to do other than run?
The question is, why did you take so long to get here?
Look, I don’t know how it works on your home planet, but when you see a Black person run on my planet, you run.
That’s usually a pretty solid indicator that you don’t want to be around whatever’s going down.
You don’t ask no questions, you don’t ask for directions, you run! ”
“What is a Gundam?”
I rolled my eyes. “It’s not important. But look, you’re here now, you made it. Good for you.”
“I wasn’t expecting you to help me,” he growled. “I thought you’d gotten snatched up and tucked into that red sack when I wasn’t looking. Do you have any idea what I went through trying to rescue you?”
I paused and took in his disheveled appearance.
His cloak had a litany of new tears. Soot was marred across half his face while bits of shredded wire clung to the spikes of his horns.
I rose from my chair and plucked a flickering red Christmas light from his hair and tossed it into the trash bin beside the counter.
“Did you actually climb into that monster’s sack? ”
“Yes,” he all but snarled back at me.
My head tilted. “Now why the hell would you go and do a stupid thing like that?”
Osid’s eyes grew to the size of dinner plates. He whirled around and muttered something under his breath, then turned back to me, closed the distance between us, grabbed me by the shoulders, and shook once. “I thought you were captured.”
“And you risked yourself for that?”
“Yes,” he said, eyes wild. “Why do I need to explain this to you? You’re my queen, of course I wasn’t going to flee while you were in the belly of a beast. You can’t just disappear like that.”
Hand on one hip, I raised a finger and counted off.
“One, still haven’t agreed to be your queen, two, I don’t know what would possess you to think I was gonna run my escape plan by you in the middle of being chased by a monster, but you are gonna have to lower your expectations of me by quite a bit—”
“Understatement,” he cut in.
“Shut up. Three, you made it, so it’s fine.”
Osid took a slow, measured breath. He blinked once, twice, very slowly, as if needing to reset his vision. “Wicked Thing, I’m curious. Why do you act like that?”
I stared, nonplussed.
“Why?” he asked again, more stress in his voice now. “Wh-what are you trying to accomplish? What are you getting out of this obstinate nonsense?”
My mouth fell open. “I’m obstinate?”
He recoiled back as if from a physical shock. “How is that even a question? Yes!”
“Osid, you chased me all over the damn forest just because I gave you some head.”
“That’s not the…” He paused. “The whole reason, and you know it. But you don’t ever take a second to try and understand anyone else’s perspective. It’s just petty selfishness, over and over.”
A startled laugh escaped me, more out of reflex than humor. “Those are some rich accusations coming from you. Mr. You’re My Wife Whether You Like It or Not. Mr. Chase Your Ass Through Hell and High Water—”
“You would have been blown up by those bomber birds if I hadn’t chased after you!”
“Who were they actually after, Osid?” I looked around us. “Is it me, the stranger no one’s seen before, or you, the king whose own damn advisor is trying to kill him?”
Scalding heat rushed off him in waves. “Jivorn has no way of getting bloated buttons that far south. Whatever you saw in that smoke couldn’t have been him.”
“AHHHRG!” I grabbed fistfuls of my ’fro and turned away from him. “Oh, I can’t stand your stubborn ass.”
“I could say the same to you,” he shot back.
I whirled back around to face him, poked him in the chest and said, “Well, go ahead and say it, then, cause I’ma tell you right now, you ain’t seen petty yet. I’ve been content to root for your downfall, but now I’m about to be an active participant.”
He cocked his head to the side. “Now? Just now you’re going to try and sabotage me? Was getting us trapped in here just your people’s weird idea of flirting? Every time I’ve tried to talk with you or have any kind of back-and-forth, you shut me down.”
I felt pressure building behind my eyes and in my chest; the unavoidable migraine caused by his audacity was going to be one for the ages, I could feel it.
“You haven’t gone back and forth about shit!
It’s been your way or the highway this whole damn time.
You don’t get to talk down to me like I’m the only unreasonable party here when you barely listen to a word I’ve said.
But I’m warning you, you wanna keep going low, I’m on the floor! ”
He rolled his eyes. “Yeah, yeah, I’ve heard it all before. You want a war of attrition? I’ll salt the fields. That’s all you know how to do, huh? Just a salty wretch. That’s the only response you have.”
I stuck a hand on my hip. “Of course this is not the only response I have. I also know how to run when a damn—”
He grabbed me by the front of my shirt, pulled me to him, and growled. “Finish that sentence.”
I looked deep into those rage-filled teal eyes and smiled. “Hey Osid.”
“Keep running your mouth.”
The snicker I choked back sounded like a cross between a snort and a hamster’s squeal. “Hey—”
His grip on the front of my shirt tightened. “Say another word and I’ll—I’ll throw you in the snow.”
“Hehehe, hey Osid.”
“I—ooo—by all the gods, I—” A harsh, exasperated puff of air escaped his lips. Heat smothered the room until sweat beaded on my forehead. The charcoal gray of his skin flushed an emerald hue that had no business looking as pretty as it did.
“I will launch you—oohh—”
His lack of ability to even form a proper sentence made me laugh. Which of course only pissed him off more. “Hey Os—”
He sucked in a breath, then let it out in a low, seething hiss. “I’ll bury you so deep in the cold.”
I laughed so hard tears pricked my eyes. “Hey Osid.”
He didn’t even need both hands to snatch me up off the ground. Just hoisted me up and swung open the door. Giggling, I grabbed onto his face and said, “Hey Osid, when you see a monster, don’t climb into its sack, you overzealous, baitable idiot.”
Osid launched me through the air. I landed with a magnificent whumpf that robbed the air from my lungs and sent a plume of powdery snow sparkling into the simulated sunlight.
The shock of the cold hit me like a brick, and for a moment I just lay there laughing so hard I was half worried I was gonna pee.
A single, perfect snowflake landed on my nose, only to be knocked off when the ground shook.
In the distance, I could hear Kaiju Krampus stomping toward us.
The last remaining functional part of my brain knew I should get up and run back inside.
Instead, I crossed my legs and just wheeze-laughed so hard my sides hurt.
I tilted my head to see that man still seething in the doorway.
“Running an empire is less stressful than dealing with you!”
I chucked a snowball at him, hitting the alien square in the chest. The reaction was like watching a rubber band snap. Osid leapt on top of me and shoveled snow down my shirt.
Shrieking, I swatted at his chest and tried kicking away. “Stop it! Don’t you hear the damn kaiju coming?”
His only response was to pin my hands above my head and stuff a snowball against my neck. I shirked away from it and slipped my wrists free, only to be pinned by his tail as he tore at the laces of my boots.
“You bastard!” I screamed, trying to roll over and claw my way to freedom. “Not the feet!”
“You brought this on yourself.” The evil alien slipped my boot off and tossed it to the side. Then cast a sinister glance back at me as he scooped up a handful of snow.