Demonic Po*nstar System

Chapter 835: Resolute Girl

Aria had never treated her like a servant, not once, but she hadn’t gone out of her way to bridge the gap either.

She was a quiet, friendly presence in the hallways, sometimes jealous when Alexandra got too close to Kaiden, sometimes very yandere about the whole situation, yes, but never outright hostile. Never cruel. Just... Aria, being Aria.

And now she was standing here telling Alexandra she wanted to see her happy, and the blonde’s composure cracked before she could stop it.

"T-thank you, Aria," she managed, blinking fast, and her voice wobbled on the name in a way that made the Moon Valkyrie’s silver eyes soften.

Alexandra’s hands dropped to her sides. She glanced between Aria and Kaiden, and while the blush on her face had not faded, the set of her mouth had changed.

"B-but, you know," she muttered quietly, "while you were all out fighting... I wasn’t just cleaning and cooking. Not in the past few days."

The room went still.

"I started watching your combat streams recently." She swallowed hard, and her fingers twisted together in front of her apron. "At first I could barely last thirty seconds before I had to turn it off because my knees wouldn’t stop shaking and my chest felt like it was caving in."

She looked at Kaiden, and the glance was so openly vulnerable that multiple people nearly died of a heart attack in that moment.

"But I kept going back." Her voice was small, fragile, yet harboring a distinct pride. "Every day, a little more. I watched your fights. Replayed the dungeon raids. The swarm clears. I watched Aria face things that should have killed her, and Luna get hurt so badly I cried, and Calypso laugh while bleeding from wounds I couldn’t even look at." Her fingers stopped twisting. "And the more I watched... the less I shook."

She took a breath.

"Even against your level 100 enemies... Terrible monsters who are born to terrorize... I was okay." A timid laugh escaped her, disbelieving and proud and terrified all at once. "I know that’s not the same as actually being there. I know watching a screen is nothing compared to what you do. But... I’ve realized something."

Her blue eyes found Kaiden’s one more time, and this time she didn’t look away.

"Compared to Maximilian Vice, even the Kaiju outside is nothing but a cute puppy in my eyes."

The words landed in the silence like a stone in still water.

The girl who flinched when men raised their voices, who couldn’t be in a room with a stranger without her hands going numb, stood in front of the most amazing people she’d ever known and told them that the worst monster she would ever face was already behind her.

And she was smiling.

Small, shaky, devastatingly cute, the kind of pretty that five S-tier women in various states of undress couldn’t overshadow, with her cheeks still burning and her blue eyes glistening and her whole body radiating the stubborn warmth of someone who had decided to stop being afraid.

Arms wrapped around her from behind, holding her tightly.

"I’m really proud of you, Alex~"

Nyx’s chin rested on Alexandra’s shoulder, her pink hair spilling against the blonde’s neck, and the smug satisfaction radiating off her could have powered the lanterns by itself.

She’d known. Of course she had.

She hadn’t been forcing her childhood best friend into something she didn’t want. She’d just asked the question she already knew the answer to, because Nyx Cosmos did not gamble on the people she loved.

"N-Nyx?!" Alexandra went rigid in the hug, her blush climbing from her cheeks to her ears to the back of her neck. "Where did you even come from?!"

"I got sad when Kai scolded me," Nyx said, turning enormous, glistening pink eyes toward Kaiden, "so I went on a little prowl to mend my broken heart."

Her lips trembled mightily and her eyes sparkled with tears so perfectly formed they could have been bottled and sold.

Kaiden looked back at her with the flattest expression he’d worn all day.

"I didn’t scold-"

"You did." Nyx cut him off without raising her voice, without breaking the hug, without even shifting her chin from Alexandra’s shoulder.

"Nyx," she spoke with the deepest voice she could muster, mimicking him. "Don’t..." well, that was as far as Kaiden’s quote went, but the space babe didn’t feel it was enough, so she continued, "...coerce your childhood bestie with whom you suffered through a terrible upbringing into joining our lives of constant danger. She deserves better and you should know better. I’m disappointed in you, thoroughly. Now face the wall and think about your cruel actions."

Her pink eyes held his, serene and immovable. She’d already tried, convicted, and sentenced him in the time it took him to open his mouth.

The playful curl at the corner of her lips made it clear she was enjoying every second of this, but the verdict was final regardless.

Kaiden stared at her. Dryly. "I didn’t..."

"Kaiden Grey." Nyx purred with one eyebrow raised, still hugging Alexandra like a warm, smug backpack. "The verdict is guilty."

’I’m not getting head tonight, I guess,’ he realized with the grim clarity of a man who had just done the math.

Or at least not until Nyx decided the charges were dropped, which, knowing her, could take anywhere from three seconds to an entire evening depending on how much entertainment she extracted from his suffering first.

Then he sighed, and the comedy left his face.

Kaiden stepped forward, and Alexandra’s breath caught as the full height of him filled her vision.

He stopped close enough that she had to tilt her chin up to hold his gaze, and the man looking down at her had gone still in the way that made his household stop talking.

Alexandra’s fingers curled into fists at her sides so tight the knuckles went pale.

But she didn’t look away.