Book 4: Chapter 57: Patch 10.0

“By the way, Azawaza,” Fenrir says.

“Is – is that really my nickname now?” Azalabulia asks.

“Yep. Anyways, by the way, I’m winning our next duel.”

“Heh, I’d like to see you try! You’ll never be able to defeat me! Not even in a million years! Not even after the heat death of the universe!”

“To be fair, I don’t think anything is going to happen after the heat death of the universe. I mean, it’s kind of the death of the universeand all that. I’d be really surprised if anything could happen after that.”

“You – you get my point. Besides! Not even the heat death of the universe could dream of stopping me!”

“You may have a point. How could the heat death of the universe ever compete with the great and awesome Azawaza?”

“Exactly! Even if the universe itself comes against me, I will destroy it and anything else that wishes to stand in my way!”

“Can the universe even stand?” Right after saying that, Fenrir realizes the potential to make one of the best possible references that he could make in this situation. “The universe is my stand!”

“E-eh? It’s your ‘stand?’” Azalabulia asks, breaking character out of confusion.

“I’m guessing you’re not good with memes.”

“I – I don’t really understand memes that much.”

“Don’t worry, Azawaza. I’ll teach you to be a queen of memes, and then you can relate to your students better.”

“But—”

“There are explosion and darkness memes.”

Fenrir hears a muffled, excited squeak come from Azalabulia’s closed mouth.

She likes her explosions and darkness to an unhealthy degree, but that’s part of what makes her so cute.

“By the way… where do you live?” Fenrir asks.

“E-eh? Don’t – don’t you know you’re never supposed to tell people on the internet something like that?” Azalabulia asks, sounding genuinely shocked that he’d actually ask such a risky question!

“You know we’re dating now, right?”

“A-ah… right.”

“So… where do you live?”

“Alaska!”

“Seriously?”

“Y-yeah. Is that weird?”

“If you live in Alaska, do you own lots of sweaters and other winter clothes?”

“Umm, not any sweaters, but—”

Fenrir sighs a sigh of disappointment.

“You – you really do love sweaters, don’t you?”

“Sweaters represent everything that is right in this world. Without sweaters, there is no light, there is no point in living, and the world may as well be devoid of all color and emotion! They’re even better than dark explosions!”

“Never! There is nothing that can compare to the awesome power of dark explosions! Sweaters would get blown away and burnt to crisps!”

“Wrong! Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong! Sweaters are naturally powerful enough to resist all manners of explosions! A sweater’s spirit is powerful enough to resist even a supernova or black hole!”

“A sweater may be able to resist such child’s play, but explosions can destroy those!”

As Fenrir and Azalabulia get into an argument of sweaters versuses explosions, their girlfriends, still watching from the bushes, sigh and realize that they should have expected something like this to happen.

“We should have known this would happen. They’re both huge dorks when they’re not being awkward around each other,” Cassiel says. “I swear… even though I always wear sweaters for him, he just doesn’t get tired of them.”

“He does have quite the powerful fetish for sweaters! I am surprised that we are not ‘The Sweater Wolves’ rather than ‘The Soaring Wolves!’ Truth be told, the former does sound much cuter,” Nell says.

“I wanted to watch them fuck,” Serra says, sounding just as disappointed as Fenrir did when Azalabulia revealed her lack of sweaters to him.

“We’d go away if they were doing that,” Cassiel says.

“No fun. I wanna watch.”

“Serra, as erotic as it would be to watch them passionately engage in lovemaking in the middle of the forest, one should not be a voyeur without consent of the watched parties!” Nell explains.

Serra pouts and sighs. “You sound like that hentai series he reads,” she says.

“Which series would that be?”

“The one where the guy with the tentacles is obsessed with consent.”

“Well, that sounds like a very positive thing to be obsessed about! I will be the first to admit that consent ruins the vast majority of my fantasies, but in practice, it is too important to skip!”

“Yeah, but at least Fen knows how to read us and doesn’t bother asking for consent every five seconds. My dad is like that. Every time I’ve ever seen him with a girl, he asks for permission to do every single tiny little thing. It’s why he’s still single. God, it frustrates me just to think about it,” Cassiel explains with a groan.

“There is nothing wrong with wanting to ensure consent to that degree!” Nell says.

“Can I hold your hand?”

“Of course! You do not need to ask for permiss—”

“Can I hug you?”

“Y-yes, Cassiel, of course you may—”

“Can I whisper into your ear? Can I kiss your neck? Can I touch your side?”

“Alright! I – I see your point. I can see how that would not only be frustrating, but… incredibly mood-killing.”

While Nell is distracted with Cassiel, Serra gets behind Nell, wraps her arms around Nell’s waist, and then places her lips against Nell’s neck to kiss before saying, “Can’t surprise with consent.”

“Just… make sure they’re good surprises and not the rape kind,” Cassiel says.

“Now that I think about it, all surprises are nonconsensual! Are they not?” Nell asks.

“Don’t know. Ask Fen that sometime. It sounds like the kind of question he’d want to overanalyze and go into way too much detail with.”

“And that,” Fenrir says to Azalabulia, “is my top list of the twenty best reasons for why sweaters are the objectively-best piece of clothing to ever exist and that ever will exist! Perhaps, perhaps if you could turn explosions into clothes, then they might be able to compare. But, you can’t. Explosions are explosions, not clothes. At the end of the day, you will deal with clothes more than explosions, so it only makes sense to have the best possible clothes for the situation! And, in any and all situations, sweaters are the answers!”

Azalabulia’s eyes are spinning in their sockets. She never knew that there was anybody who could actually list twenty distinct reasons in support of sweater superiority. Half of them sounded similar to the other points he made, yes, but each one sounded original enough to count by her standards!

“Then – then, I will give you a list of one hundred reasons for the superiority of explosions and darkness over clothes!” Azalabulia declares, trying to think up a quick list of one hundred reasons in her head. To even her own surprise, thinking up so many reasons is actually easy and comes naturally to her.

Back in the bushes again, the three girlfriends are just happy to see Fenrir and Azalabulia getting along well again even if it means being dorks or not giving Serra the sexy show that she wanted to watch.

“A-ah. I just… noticed something,” Nell says.

“What?” Cassiel asks.

“She… is like a combined, upgraded version of us, is she not?”

“What do you mean?”

“She has larger breasts than you, hips at least as wide as Serra’s, and her thighs are even nicer than mine are! Not to mention that she is considerably more powerful than us when it comes to fighting. She… her body is challenging us!”

“Eh, I don’t really care about that sort of thing. I know Fen will love our bodies no matter what, even if she’s available to him now.”

“Just imagine it, though! Our loving boyfriend and husband-to-be, always praising us for our bodies, being swept away by a new woman and obsessing over her body! What once helped us stand out has now been consolidated and monopolized by the new woman! Rather than give us any of the attention that we so desperately crave, he would just go to her for comfort every night!”

“That sounds like a pretty crazy fantasy,” Fenrir says.

“I know, my hero! It—”

Nell, Serra, and Cassiel turn around and look up.

Fenrir is standing over them with his arms crossed over his chest.

“Were you all seriously watching this whole time?” Fenrir asks.

Serra is the only one to proudly nod her head and give him a thumbs-up. Cassiel and Nell both look away and sweat.

“F-Fen! I thought of the other sixty-two reasons!” Azalabulia shouts over to him.