03:00 AT, Day Forty-Three | Arce Lunae / Recovery Bay

  I open my eyes to a truly beautiful sight. Ray’s face is smooshed against the glass in front of me, her beautiful eyes looking right into mine. The glass is slightly fogged from her breath. Of course, she is super cute as always. “Ko, get yourself out here right now.” Her voice is slightly muffled by the glass, but I can hear the urgency in her tone.

  I step out of the pod, and her arms immediately encircle my waist and squeeze, hard. She doesn't ease off until I squeak. Then, I wrap my arms around her waist and squeeze, though I do it for a bit after she squeaks, as I know she likes.

  “So-” I start, only for her lips to immediately silence mine.

  After several minutes, she pulls back. She leans in and whispers into my ear. “I want waffles.”

  I have no choice but to comply with my super duper cute girlfriend’s demand for waffles. So, that is exactly what I do. We head into the mess hall and Ray watches me with those beautiful eyes of hers with much intensity. Every now and then she gets up and gives me a kiss on the cheek, only to sit back down again.

  I have no clue what sort of game she is playing, but I can't say I dislike it. Of course, this entire time various officers and such are trying to get us to do things. But what's the point of being a leader if you cant have some waffles before you deal with klackery?

  I finish cooking and Ray waits patiently as I set down the plates. Then, she drags me into her lap and wraps her arms around me. Interpreting her request, I feed her some waffles. Her smile is absolutely radiant, and I wish it would never disappear.

  She then proceeds to feed me some waffles. All the while we are both smiling and laughing like absolute fools. It is nice to slow down and relax. Especially after all the events that just occurred.

  “So-” I tried to say again, only to be silenced by yet another kiss from Ray.

  She leans against my shoulder and whispers. “Do we really have to deal with things? We could do more headrubs instead.” Her voice is so tempting, in any other situation I would capitulate instantly.

  But, I come up with a different idea. “Let's go see something.”

  We leave Arce Lunae and head into the surrounding industrial area. Ray walks alongside me, arm looped firmly in mine. I guide us down the streets, as we pass by, soldiers bow, salute or even both. It is strange to be respected by so many people. Yet that is simply our reality now.

  We spend a while walking around the city and talking to various soldiers. Lots of them nervously walk up to us and ask for pictures, autographs and the like. Naturally, we must please our ever devoted fans and soldiers.

  Being who we are, we obviously stop in a few bars along the way. Every time we enter a new place, people suddenly become tense and such. But after a few drinks everyone loosens up and it seems like people forget who we are. Thus is the power of alcohol.

  Snow still coats most of the buildings and streets. It seems that Luna managed to repair the snow machine, how unfortunate. But it is kind of pretty, to see everything coated in the pure white of snow.

  “Ko! I want to go there.” Ray drags me off into a building without waiting for my agreement. We enter a strange place, it is modeled after one of those super old arcade places.

  Ray drags me over to a VR racing game from the early ages of the reality revolution. “Koo, race me!”

  I take a seat and laugh. “Of course, but you are gonna regret it.” I strap into the motion rig and put on the goggles. It feels super weird and awkward compared to just streaming it right into the brain. I wonder how humanity ever managed to do anything without the NeuralSink.

  Predictably, I win the race, and it's not even close. Ray may be a super cute genius, but her videogame skills are no match for mine. Even when playing with such outdated tech, I’ll still beat her.

  Next, she challenges me to a dancing game called Dance Dance Give Up. We draw quite a large crowd as we pass through level after level of the game. At some point it stops being a competition between us and rather a challenge to see how far we can get in the game.

  Eventually it gets to a point where the movements are appearing faster than even our enhanced reaction times can process them and we fail. We exit the game and collapse against each other, completely exhausted. Our gathered crowd starts clapping and cheering at our performance, I bet it was epic. The clips are going to go crazy on the net for sure.

  Find this and other great novels on the author's preferred platform. Support original creators!

  “That was fun.” Ray says between breaths.

  “Yeah, it was.” I grab her hand in mine and smile.

  After we recover, we leave the arcade, much to the disappointment of those present. We make our way to a nearby park. It may be an industrial complex, but a bit of greenery here and there is important. After all, having good places to drink booze is important.

  We walk through the park for a while, hand in hand. Ray insists on leaning against my shoulder the entire time. Which just really isn't fair, I want to lean on her shoulder as well. But I let her have it this time, it just means I can extract more headrubs at a later date.

  “Woah look at that. It's so pretty still.” Ray says. We found a leftover ice sculpture that was left after the celebration. It is a large dragon, and it looks klacking awesome.

  I brush my fingers against the ice. “Heh, to think this is the last remembrance of our success. To think of how quickly the tables have turned.”

  Ray tightens her grip on my hand. “We have only lost a few forts, nothing too major. I read the reports.”

  “Yeah, but we were defeated. Who's to say the troops will even follow us? I simply wasn't good enough.”

  Ray cups my face with her hands and stares me in the eyes. “No one, not even my super cute genius boyfriend could predict Regulus would've been a core member.”

  “Still, I should've guessed they had something. It was far too easy for us to march up to their front door and knock. We should've been prepared to glass the entire area or something.”

  “Hmm, glassing things does sound fun. But fear not o great boyfriend, we will come up with something. After all, Regulus isn't unkillable, we proved that.” She stares deeply into my eyes, and I stare back. Her eyes are really cute and I wish I could stare into them for the rest of time.

  I give in and lean against Ray. She holds me super tightly, and even gives me a few headrubs. “Guess we will just have to show that klacker Luna what it means to win in style, huh?”

  “You better klacking believe it, darling.”

  Several moments of headrubs and assorted cuddling later.

  “So in summary, we are in a very precarious position.” Emil says, finishing his long speech about the state of the arena and such.

  “Thats definitely one way to put it.” Linda adds from her seat beside Emil. They really have been taking control of things lately. Ever since they woke up, they have been working tirelessly in an attempt to rebalance our military structure.

  Thankfully the interim general did quite a nice job at managing things in our absence. While we did lose a lot of territory, they did manage to shore up our defenses and keep production cycles going. It is helped that most of our actual logistics personnel did not die, as they don't fight on the front lines.

  Still, we have been quite shaken by the whole ordeal. Having lost nearly half of our new territory that we were just starting to utilize is not a good thing at all. As it stands, the area is split almost 50/50 between our two factions. However, Luna definitely has the advantage. In skill, but also momentum.

  “Dontcha worry guys, darling Ko is gonna come up with a brilliant plan, right?” Ray looks at me. Her eyes are full of expectation, hope, belief. How can I possibly disappoint her when she looks that cute?

  “Of course I have darling.” I lie. Do I have a plan? Absolutely not. Which means I have about one minute to come up with one. I use every mental technique and tool I have, ignoring the awkward silence that has filled the room.

  I smile. “Alright, the plan is very simple. Our first order of business is to reinforce everything. Mostly the frontline forts, but even those in the back need reinforcement. We need to massively increase defensive garrisons. However, to do this we will need to send out way more hunting parties so that we can massively expand our army.”

  “Oh I see.” Ray comments. “They are better trained, so we simply have to overwhelm them with sheer numbers.”

  “Thats right, darling.” I pat Ray gently on the head a few times. “They may have skill and ability. But we have one thing that no one else does. A bunch of absolutely insane fanatics that will literally charge into a nuclear blast if we ask them.”

  Emil and Linda both sigh at the same time. I hope this isn't going to cause too much work for them. Being a leader sure is nice, I can make decisions and stuff yet I never have to actually deal with the work required to implement them.

  “As you wish, Milord. It shall be done promptly, is there anything else?” Emil asks, always anticipating my next move.

  “Of course. The next order of business is to retake the mesa, jungle and floodplains. We want all the zones adjacent to us to be secure and well managed. While they cannot attack our castle without first taking the entire mesa, we don't want them to get up to any other sneaky shenanigans.”

  Emil and Linda sigh again. “As you wish.”

  “Oh, and one last thing.” I get up – much to Ray’s chagrin– and move to a nearby whiteboard. There, I draw out a bunch of plans and designs. “Im going to need six of these ready as soon as possible.” I shall dub this project ‘screw those klackers.’ When Ray realizes what the designs are, she turns to me and laughs like an evil anime villan.

  We may have suffered a defeat. But make no mistake.

  The Moonlight Alliance is undefeatable. We will show those snowflake klackers first hand, with our blades and rifles. Oh, and a few explosions too, those are cool.

  After all, luce lunae per aspera ad astra et ultra.

  I turn to Ray and she smiles at me. I hope I am not disappointing her. Despite all she says, I am still a worthless NEET at heart.

  Despite that, we will overcome everything in our way, together. After all, we are the Moonlight Duo.

  So, bring it on.

  End of Chapter 137

  Next: Chapter 138 | Ice Wall

  If you are enjoying the book, you could follow, favorite, rate, or review it, I'd really appreciate it.

  Checkout the official