With the goddess of the isle officially befriended—or at least, pacified, they came up with a plan together. In order to prove Fenrir’s worth, and to not piss off her “sister,” Astika agreed to take them back to their home. In order to do this, she needed to take down the illusionary barrier surrounding the isle… and then move the isle itself considering that The Shoebill was out of operation with its hull not even found yet. They were sure that it was somewhere on the island, but none of them had any idea where. A proper search party was going to need sent for it once they were back home.

But for now, using the island itself as a vessel to travel across the ocean, the entire island set sail with Nameless as its destination.

As for the trio, they returned to the apes’ village to pick up Rock before heading back to the beach where they could watch and wait for Nameless to come into view. They were sure they were going to need to quickly explain the situation to everybody before they assumed the worst and got into defensive positions.

So, without anything else to do since Astika had to focus on moving the island, the trio decided to pass the time by doing what they never got tired of: talking to each other.

And it didn’t take long for Eva to come up with a question to ask.

“So, idea,” Eva said. “What if we get the apes and Astika to help us out? Against the End Bringers, I mean.”

Fenrir didn’t waste any time in shaking his head to her question. “I would be lying if I said I didn’t think about it, but we can’t. That wouldn’t be right… even if she did wreck The Shoebill.”

“How come?”

“Because this is player versus player. We shouldn’t be dragging NPCs into our fight.”

“To be fair, they attacked, or have tried to attack, Nameless multiple times now, and Nameless does have NPCs living there.”

“But not these NPCs. Besides, even if they were attacked, I would feel guilty about dragging them into our conflict. The way I see it, they’re just innocent bystanders, not the real targets. Don’t get me wrong, I would love to have a mobile island base that we can bring right up to their territory and launch attacks from, and send an army of giant apes to crush them into pancakes, but this isn’t their fight. And if they die, that’s it for them. If we die, it’s no big deal.”

“I can’t say I don’t understand your point… but you should be careful or else you’re going to dip into savior complex territory.”

Cassiel chuckled when she heard that. “It’s too late for that. He dived into his savior complex long before he met us.”

Fenrir rubbed the back of his head with a guilty little smile. “Yeah… I’d be lying again if I said I wasn’t aware of that.”

“Let’s see… you punched that guy harassing me, made it your mission to save Nell, the whole reason you founded Nameless was because you wanted to set up a safe haven for NPCs before they even started becoming… alive or whatever it is they are now, and—yeah. You’ve always been a white knight.”

“Please, it hurts when my own girlfriend calls me a white knight.”

“Then stop being a white knight.”

“Fine. I’ll become an edgy dark knight of pain and suffering.”

“Hearing you say that is already making me suffer.”

“So cruel. Wait, that’s the point. Wait… no it’s not. I’m supposed to make you suffer from being evil and villainous, not cringe.”

“Good luck with that.”

Eva couldn’t help but laugh a little while watching them before joining in on the teasing herself. “Come on, Fen. Weren’t you some super cool and badass griefer before or something? Shouldn’t you know how to properly act the part?”

“Listen,” Fenrir said, “you see, back in my day, we griefed people by messing with them. We didn’t act like a bunch of edgelords. If anything, sometimes, we would act like a bunch of literal babies. There was one time me, Olly, and Bone got surrounded. They were trying to act tough about surrounding us and trying to get us to submit to them in exchange for letting us go, because, to them, us submitting and begging not to die would have been more satisfying than just killing us. So me and Olly started baby talking them, acting like stupid little brats who had no idea what was going on, asking the ones with girl avatars for ‘mommy milk,’ and stuff like that. Bone killed himself within seconds of us starting. It took about two minutes before we annoyed our enemies into killing us. So ultimately, I’d say we won that. We trolled them into killing us, which is the opposite of what they wanted to do. That’s how you do it. Turn everything into a victory. Nothing pisses your enemies off more than genuinely viewing everything as a victory since it makes all of what they view as victories feel less legitimate.”

“All I got from that was that I want to hear you try baby talking me.”

“I—I can’t just do it on command.”

“Come on. Baby talk me. I want to hear it now.”

Fenrir sighed and took a deep breath to mentally prepare himself for it. Then, looking into Eva’s eyes, he said, “M-Mommy Eva… pwease give me some milky wilky. I’m so hungwy… pwetty pwea—I can’t.” He broke and returned to his normal voice. “Those years are behind me.”

While Eva looked smugly amused, Cassiel… was wearing the strongest cringe on her face that he had ever seen from her. Fenrir had no idea that she could cringe that much, and he felt thoroughly judged by looking at her expression.

Yet.

It was in his blood.

Now, a good boyfriend would never purposely do something that he knew his girlfriend disliked.

But no matter how much Fenrir thought that he left those years behind, he just could not resist.

“M-Mommy?” Fenrir said, looking Cassiel directly in her eyes as he curled his bottom lip outward and batted his eyes at her. “Can I have some milkies?”

“I will kill you,” Cassiel threatened. “Don’t test me.”

“But… but milkies… pwease, Mommy Cass Cass? I want your booby milk.”

Cassiel, glaring death itself into Fenrir’s eyes, had an idea and turned her attention toward Eva instead. “Hey, have we ever told you about the weird tentacle porn he used to draw?”

Fenrir immediately broke his baby character and flailed around in a desperate attempt to cover up Eva’s ears and, for some reason, her eyes as well.

Unfortunately for Fenrir, Eva was more than capable of handling him. All she had to do was zap him with the electricity from her thunderbird wing to get him off of her, stunning him as well for a few moments.

That gave Cassiel the opportunity to continue. “And then there’s the time we ordered Thai food and he assured the guy over the phone that he could ‘definitely, totally handle the hottest heat.’ Guess what? He couldn’t and spent the next day on and off the toilet whining about how his ass felt like it was on fire and begging us to put him out of his misery.”

While Fenrir was still recovering from the stun, Eva went up to Cassiel and asked, “What else? Come on, give me all the dirt. I want to hear it all.”

“He once mumbled something like ‘please, I don’t want to eat any more poop’ in his sleep, but he refuses that he knows anything about what he was dreaming to have said something like that.”

“I didn’t!” Fenrir shouted, finally able to move and speak again. “I wouldn’t dream about that! This is gaslighting!”

“Whatever you say, shit eater.”

“I’m not, never have been, and never will be into that! And even if I did dream something where I said that, it’s not my fault! It’s not like I can control my dreams!”

“Uh-huh, just like how you can’t control how much shit you eat in them?”

Fenrir felt tempted to try and embarrass her back… but, instead, he slumped his shoulders and sighed. He was the one who purposely did something she clearly wasn’t amused by in the first place, and then kept on pushing it even after she threatened him. So, it wouldn’t be fair to retaliate to her retaliation. “Alright. Let’s call it a draw.”

“Hey… you sound… upset.” Cassiel took a step toward him, holding her arm. “Did… I uh… go too far? I mean… I wouldn’t have said any of that if I didn’t think you’d be alright with it. I didn’t want to actually make you upset or anything.”

And once again, Fenrir found himself unable to resist.

But this time, what he was unable to resist was hugging her.

“You’re too damn cute,” Fenrir told Cassiel, his arms wrapped around her. “Don’t worry. I’m… embarrassed, but I’m not upset. I was just trying to hold back saying anything back since I was the one who started it and you were just getting even.”

“Why? I mean, I said all that thinking you were going to shit talk me back. Do you really think I’d call you a shit eater and not expect you to fuck with me back?”

Fenrir pulled away and blinked at her a few times. “Well, I mean… yeah? I thought you were only saying that stuff because you were annoyed and getting even.”

“Seriously? One, if you annoyed me, I’d tell you to seriously stop. Two, I wouldn’t try to ‘get even’ with you unless it was to joke around. You make me cringe, I make you cringe, then you make me cringe again. Isn’t that how it’s supposed to work?”

“I mean, yeah, but—”

“What? You afraid that you have to be careful because I’m your girlfriend instead of Olly or Rao? Come on, I can handle it. And I’d rather you try to embarrass me than talk like a baby.”

“I’d rather just fuck you. Also, I… have no idea what to tease you about other than your squeaks. I don’t think there’s anything embarrassing that I can tease you about.”

“You don’t have to hold back around us, you know. Well… maybe hold back against Aza. I think she might just cry if you try messing with her.”

“Yeah, that’s probably true.”

“Shit eater.”

“Squeaker… yeah, it doesn’t have the same effect.”

With that, Cassiel flicked Fenrir’s forehead and stepped back before looking at Eva, noticing that she was in mental note taking mode going by the expression on her face. “What’s up?” Cassiel asked her.

Eva jumped a little as if she was surprised that they noticed her. “Oh, I was just taking some mental notes. I thought you guys were having a little fight, but I guess it wasn’t really a fight at all, and now I know that playfully insulting and embarrassing each other is on the table for teasing… I think?”

“Wait, have you ever been in a relationship before?”

“Nope.”

“So, you’ve never seen what it’s like when a couple is actually fighting then.”

“I guess not. But I feel like I’d be happy never having to learn what that’s like.”

“Yeah… if there’s one thing that makes Fen better than every asshole I dated before him, it’s that he never gives me a reason to actually fight with him. He doesn’t cheat, doesn’t neg me, try to pressure me into anything… other than wearing sweaters, but I’d rather be pressured into wearing cute sweaters than pressured into taking some shady drugs or worse.”

“Or… or worse? You uh… have had some pretty bad relationships, huh?”

“Trust me, that’s only the tip of the iceberg. But lucky for our boyfriend here, it’s because I’ve dated nothing but living shit before him that now all he has to do is the absolute bare minimum of being a decent person and I’ll think he’s the best damn boyfriend that could ever exist.”

“I’m the best,” Fenrir said, nodding to himself.

“He’s obviously better than the bare minimum, but still. He would have to purposely try to get me to break up with him while everybody else had to try their hardest just to keep me around for another day.”

Eva brought a hand up to her chin and said, “Now that I think about it… have any of us other than you dated before this relationship?”

Fenrir raised his hand to say, “I kind of dated a few girls before… but those barely even count. I was only with them for a few days usually, and they were also strictly online.”

“Yeah, doesn’t count. What about Serra? Aza? Nell?”

“Nope,” Cassiel answered. “Serra was too shy before us. Everybody else was afraid of approaching Nell and dating her. Aza… completely lacked all confidence and still kind of does. I think she forgets that she’s even in a relationship with us sometimes, like she still can’t believe it.”

“Idea,” Fenrir said. “We should come up with a plan to pamper the heck out of Aza. Make sure that she never forgets she’s our girlfriend and that she feels just as appreciated as everybody else in the relationship.”

“I’m down,” Eva said.

“Same,” Cassiel joined in. “Plus there are a bunch of times we would have gotten destroyed without her, so we should do something nice for her.”

“I think I have a pretty good idea for that, but we’re going to need Nell’s and Serra’s help, too.”

Fenrir huddled together with Cassiel and Eva to share the beginnings of his plan with them while Nameless’s coast began coming into view in the distance. There were still things they needed to take care of before they could give Azalabulia all the pampering and spoiling that she deserved, but it was definitely going to come and most likely take her utterly by surprise.