As the dust and rubble settles, and the noise from the explosion and collapsing surroundings dies down, I kick at the crumbled pile of caved-in stone and bent metal with an impressed nod.

“Fwah! That was cool! It was a little different to the one you used in the Spire. It was hotter! More burny!”

“It was.” Mei-Mei nods, brushing the dust from the explosion off her oversized coat. “The explosive putty I used in Surstrom Spire was created more with structural damage in mind. I specifically designed the type I was carrying inside the troll to be effective on more organic targets. Specifically, an oni. Fortunately, it looks to be just as effective on giant, rabid elves as well.”

Ah, I see. I guess Mei-Mei had pre-packed the dead troll she was puppeteering with a load of explosives in the event that I wasn’t strong enough to kill the oni we were expecting to fight today. If I wasn’t, I imagine Mei-Mei was planning to send it up in a flaming fireball the same way she did to Lust just now.

“Well, I suppose that settles that," Mei-Mei says, turning her back to the collapsed room and making her way out. "Let's see if we can milk some kind of reward out of this whole ordeal, shall we?"

“Mm!” I nod in agreement as I move to follow her out. “Lust should be much easier to beat now! But maybe we should wait until after we beat her before we ask for a reward? We might get an even bigger one if we do!”

“... What?” At my words, Mei-Mei pauses in her tracks and turns back to me with a puzzled frown. “What are you talking about? There’s no way anybody could’ve survived that. Lust is definitely—”

“Gyahahaha!”

Mei-Mei’s words are abruptly cut short by the muffled sound of familiar laughter somewhere deeper in the stadium.

“Fwah! It sounds like you blew her into the lower levels,” I comment, flexing my ears to the sound of distant destruction somewhere below my feet. “We’ll have to find the stairs down if we want to finish beating her up!”

“Seriously...? How are you gorillas so...?” Mei-Mei sighs, a look of annoyed resignation on her face. Eventually, she turns back up towards me. “Alright, I’ve got a new plan.”

“Oh! Already? Hit me with it!”

“Let’s just leave.”

“... Fweh?”

“Look, there’s no reason for us to stick around any longer,” Mei-Mei explains. “I imagine most of the other slaves have already made their escape, and with the sheer number of escapees from both the incident at the Spire and today, attempting to track us all down would be a pointlessly monumental waste of time and resources. And the only reason they’d try and track us down specifically is if that sweaty idiot of a slaver that ‘owns’ us decided to rat us out as missing, which I somehow doubt he’d do.”

“Hmm...”

Just leave, huh? Ditch Lust, Mash, Cinnamon, and the rest of this tournament to skip off into the sunset as a relatively free woman.

I ponder the thought for a moment, before quickly coming to an answer.

“Don’t wanna.”

I want to fight Lust, make up with Cinnamon, kiss the Queen on the mouth, and ask her to make slaves cost less as my reward for winning the tournament so I can finally afford to buy all the cute girls I saw being sold in the plaza the other day! Leaving now would just be really lame!

Mei-Mei sighs and shakes her head at my answer.

“You’re an idiot,” she replies bluntly. “A moronically stupid, brain-dead idiot. Do you even realize the state you’re in right now?”

Rather than her usual tone of annoyance, Mei-Mei sounds almost upset as she criticizes my intelligence this time.

I tilt my head in confusion. “What’re you talking about?”

“Look at yourself!” she shouts, thrusting a finger up at me. “You need to see a doctor! Not pick a fight with a much bigger, stupider gorilla than you!”

I shrug. “It’s just a few scrapes and bruises. I’m—”

“You’re not fine! It’s not ‘scrapes and bruises’, it’s open wounds and internal bleeding!” Mei-Mei complains. “Those black ‘bruises’ across your body definitely run a lot deeper than you think they do! I mean, the entirety of your left arm from the elbow to the wrist has turned completely black! There’s no way you should even be able to move that! And I don’t know how you can even think about fighting with those ‘scrapes’ across your knuckles! Or rather, the fact that they’ve been completely scraped away! Understandable you didn’t notice the bone peeking through with all that mangled skin dripping off the back of your hands! Or maybe you had trouble seeing it through all that blood dripping down your face? You know, from that gash on your forehead? The one still leaking at a very medically alarming rate! Not to mention how clearly broken your nose is right now. But I’d say that’s probably the least of your—”

“Fweh?!” Reaching up, I grab a hold of my nose and carefully crunch it back into place. “Fwah~! How embarrassing! I thought it felt a little off! I must’ve looked really silly this whole time! Thanks for telling me! How is it now? Good? Still cute?”

“Idiot!” Mei-Mei shouts back, clearly upset at me for some reason. “You realize you only got lucky back at the Spire, right!?”

I give another confused tilt of my head. “Back at the Spire?”

Mei-Mei balls her little hands up in frustration and looks down at the floor. There’s clearly something bothering her. I don’t think I’ve ever seen her like this before...

“When Lust grabbed you...” she continues, trailing off slightly as she recalls the memory. “With all my tricks and planning, there wasn’t a single thing I could do. All I could do was watch. If the Warden didn’t jump in when he did...”

As Mei-Mei trails off, I finally understand what it is that’s bothering her. Why she’s so upset at me. I can’t help but grin at the realization.

She’s worried.

She’s worried Lust will beat me into a pulp like the many others that have stood before her, and there’s nothing she could do to stop it happening.

The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

“What’s with that stupid look on your face?” Mei-Mei asks, finally looking back up to see me still grinning away. “You don’t get it at all, do you?!”

“No, I get it.” Shaking my head, I crouch down to her level and rest a hand on her tiny shoulder. “You know, I got pretty scared back there when Lust dragged you away. I was too slow to react, and too slow to stop it happening. I was scared I’d find nothing but a tiny dwarf-sized puddle once I finally caught up. But in the end it was fine! Turns out you had it all under control from the start!”

“Well, of course I did,” Mei-Mei replies, abashedly averting her eyes from mine. “Outsmarting that hulking ape is child’s play for a genius like me. I’m not some reckless, meat-headed idiot like you. I told you I had a plan.”

Standing back up, I puff out my chest and slam a heavy fist against it, a grin still on my face.

“Well, beating up that wounded elf is child’s play for a demon like me! I’m not some squishy, noodle-armed brainiac like you! I told you I’m fine!”

“...” After taking a moment to think over my words, Mei-Mei finally speaks up again, eyes still averted. “Sorry... For worrying you...”

“Mm! Likewise!” I reply, my grin widening. “Now! How about we go finish off Lust and win this tournament, huh?”

“Keh...” With a short cackle, Mei-Mei finally meets my gaze, a light smile on her face. “The tournament’s obviously over, moron. But I suppose I don’t mind accompanying you to the after-party. Ah, here, carry me on your shoulders while you find the stairs down.”

“Fweh? Why?”

“So I can patch up that head wound of yours on the way because it’s still bleeding and—”

“No, I mean, why would the tournament be over?” I ask, immediately scooping up the dwarf and planting her on my shoulders without questioning it. “Did we win?”

“No, we didn’t win!” Mei-Mei snaps back. “It’s obviously cancelled, idiot! How have you not figured that out by now?! You realize this isn’t still part of the tournament, right?! I haven’t just agreed to follow some clueless buffoon to her inevitable death on the basis of wanting to win an expired game of theatrical combat sport?! Let me down! I change my mind! I want to get off right now!”

“Ah, settle down,” I tell her, securing the squirming woman firmly above me and manoeuvring the two of us through the collapsing debris of Lust’s rampage. “Quit complaining so much. I think you’ve been hanging around those other two too much lately. You’re starting to sound a lot like— Hm?”

As I duck beneath a collapsed doorway and into a more intact part of the stadium, I suddenly become aware of a man’s voice echoing down the hall around us, calling my name. As I look toward the direction of the voice, I notice crowds of people shifting through the destruction in the distance. Slaves, it looks like. And most of them seem to be carrying people on their backs through the rubble and debris—knights, slavers, and civilians alike—too injured to make the escape themselves.

I figured the slaves would’ve all left by now. Why are they carrying all the injured out of the stadium...?

“Where are you guys?! Pepper!? Mei-Mei!?” The voice calls out again, before its owner finally steps into view, revealing the familiar friendly figure of a man shuffling awkwardly through the crowd. “Dammit! Gorilla! Zombie! Where the hell are you?! This is really bad!”

Much like the other slaves, he seems to be carrying somebody on his back too.

Having also spotted the man, Mei-Mei leans down and whispers quietly in my ear.

“It looks like he hasn’t seen us yet. We still have time to turn around and—”

“Ah! Gorri— Pepper! There you are! Mei-Mei too!”

“Tch. Dammit,” Mei-Mei whispers under her breath with a click of her tongue.

“Fwah! It’s Bran! I’m glad you’re okay! What’s up?”

It’s Bran. Fortunately, it looks like my whiny, purple-haired prison pal wasn’t crushed beneath all the initial devastation Lust caused to the stadium with her first kick.

“I’m not okay!” Bran complains, making his way through the crowd and clambering over the fallen debris between us. “I’m not okay at all! This is really bad!”

Breathing heavily as he comes to a stop in front of us, I again notice the person on his back. Though I can’t see their face, it’s clearly a girl. A young girl, judging by her size. Bran’s arms are tucked beneath her little legs as they stick out in front of him, and her arms are wrapped lightly around his neck. A standard piggyback. Despite her face being obscured behind Bran’s, however, I can see the girl’s hair spiralling out on either side of him. Her honey-coloured curls—twisted into long, drill-like twintails—bounce and sway at Bran’s sides with every movement.

Hm? Where have I seen such a familiar hairstyle before...?

“Yes, Bran,” Mei-Mei sighs, still atop my shoulders. “We know it’s bad! The entire stadium is collapsing around us, Lust is still alive, and now there’s some idiot stood in front of me, complaining about how bad things are! Any moron with half a brain can very clearly recognize that this situation is ‘really bad’! You don’t have to tell us about it!”

“No, no, it’s not that! That’s not what’s really bad!” Bran replies, still catching his breath. “W-well, actually that is really bad, you’re right. But there’s another thing that’s really bad! It’s—!”

“Hey,” I interrupt, gesturing behind him. “Why’s there a girl on your back? She cute?”

“No! She’s—!” Bran begins to argue, before taking a moment to process the question. “O-okay, well, yes she is, I suppose. But that’s not important right now! We need to—!”

“Hah?” I give Bran a cold glare in response. “Why’s there a cute girl on your back? That feels pretty important to me.”

“Bran, don’t tell me...” Mei-Mei starts from above. “Your desperation finally got the best of you and you decided to take advantage of the ensuing chaos to kidnap a poor young girl. I thought you were better than that, Bran. Well, no I didn’t. But I’m somewhat impressed you had the guts to go through with it.”

“Fweh?! You went and kidnapped a girl?! How could you do that?! How could you do that without me?! We could’ve picked one out together! What happened to the promise we made on that fateful day when you agreed to share your first girlfriend with me?”

“When?!” Bran complains. “When did I make such a ridiculous promise?! I have no recollection of any such day! Stop making up important events and promises that never happened! And I didn’t kidnap anybody either! Stop listening to that sadistic zombie! She’s clearly just teasing me because she finds it funny for some reason!”

An amused snort from above my head confirms that she indeed does find it funny for some reason.

“Look, just let me explain,” Bran continues. “Before the match started, I was up in the audience with everybody else, waiting to watch the fight. And then Lust happened and suddenly the whole building is collapsing around me and people are falling from the stands above! So I dug around for any survivors to help carry to safety and—”

“Hold on...” Mei-Mei interrupts accusingly. “This story doesn’t add up. Why were you helping people? You would never do that.”

“W-what’re you talking about? O-of course I’d be helping people in a tragedy like this!”

“...”

Bran’s awkwardly defensive stammering is only met with silent stares in response.

“Okay, fine!” Bran snaps. “I wasn’t trying to help people! I was trying to escape on my own, obviously! But when I tried to leave, a bunch of slaves rushed out and started picking up all the survivors and rushing them out, droning on about how their Leader wants them to save everybody! Whatever that means! And every time I tried to head towards the exit, all the other slaves would glare at me as if I was the bad guy for not helping out! Why?! There’s nothing wrong with putting yourself first in situations like these! It’s only natural! But in the end, I caved into the peer pressure and picked up the lightest survivor I could find and followed the rest of the evacuees out. After that, I tried calling out for you two, and ended up finding you over here.”

“Yes, that sounds more like you.”

“Mm! Very Bran-like!”

Mei-Mei and I share a nod in agreement having heard Bran’s tale of cowardice and self victimization.

“So,” Mei-Mei responds. “The reason you were looking for us is because something ‘really bad’ happened, right? You still haven’t told us what that was.”

“Oh, right!” Panic returns to Bran’s voice as he turns to the side, finally showing us the petite passenger that’s been glued to his back this whole time. “I didn’t notice until I was already shuffling through the crowd, but—”

As Bran gives us a good view of the girl on his back, both me and Mei-Mei are shocked into a stunned silence as we immediately recognize who it is he happens to be carrying.

“Fwuh—?!”

“Keh—?!”

That adorable little figure. Those chubby cheeks and perfect complexion. The regal robes and elegant curls. There’s no mistaking who this is...

“Why?!” Bran complains, tears almost forming in his eyes as he gestures behind him to the girl—No, the woman—riding on his back. “Why am I giving the Queen a piggyback?!”

From atop Bran’s back, Queen Kokoro la Peppyseed—The all-knowing Omniscient Overlord and Greed of the Seven—gives us a mischievous smirk.