Disclaimer: I had received permission to use the image for this fic by the artist, SDei, on deviantart.
"Agh...shit...bitch...bitch...bitch...every single time, she has to get the last say..."
Continuing to string along a nonsensical chain of swear words, grunts and groans under her breath, a bruised and slightly crispy Candice Catnipp dragged herself through the empty halls of the Vandenreich's castle grounds. With a huff and a wince of pain, the Quincy woman stopped moving, pressed her back against the wall to try and support herself, but eventually surrendered entirely and slid down to the floor in defeat. Everything ached, and she could have sworn she was still smoking a little bit somewhere, judging by the smell. She was feeling pretty pissed off about it too. It was only because she was so worn out that she hadn't destroyed the entire corridor with an explosion of electrical energy yet.
Candice swore even more venomously, but a little louder this time, at average speaking volume. "Freaking bitch Bambietta...! What the hell is wrong with you?" Oh, how she wished she had been able to scream that right to said bitch's face when she had the chance. Too bad she too busy trying to avoid being blown to pieces at the time.
"You pissed off Bambi by running your mouth again, huh, Candy?"
Candice looked up, eyes locking with another woman her own age. Fluffy, well-kept hair the color of pink bubblegum hung far over her shoulders as she bent over slightly to put her face more on level with Candice's. She had the type of body modern humans called 'hourglass', her breasts and hips quite prominent in her cute little frilled uniform, and it was so much so that even Candice had begrudgingly admitted the girl's curvy frame gave her own self-proclaimed 'smoking hot bod' a run for its money. The woman smiled sweetly, if not outright patronisingly, at Candice with her plump lips.
"Meninas...!" Candice grimaced. She really didn't want the other girl seeing her this way for a myriad of different reasons, several of them having to do with the current state of her hair and attire.
"You okay? Are you hurt?"
Candice coughed. "I'm fine, I'm fine, okay? My Blut Vene was able to take most of the attack..."
"You don't look like you're fine. Did you really use your Blut Vene in time? I seem to recall you had trouble using it effectively during our training years back,"
"W-Well...maybe I did get a little caught off-guard at first..." Candice glanced away.
Meninas sat down beside her.
"What did you do, Candy?"
"Okay, that's another thing, don't call me 'Candy' anymore! It's, like, super embarrassing!"
"Alright. What about Kitty? Or Cat? Or Sugar? Or Sweet Puss-"
"Gah! Stop it! Stop it! 'Candy' is fine!" Candice's face was burning brighter than Buzzbee's heat, and she felt just as hot too. Meninas seemed unfazed by the girl's reaction, but she silently agreed to drop it nonetheless.
"So what happened?" she asked.
Candice sighed. "That bitch Bambietta thought she could get away telling me that MY fashion sense was dumb,"
"So you provoked her?"
"SHE provoked ME! So I told her back that she had the face of a little kid, and it looked really gross when she tries to act all sexy around the boys! Then she made me explode! She didn't even give me a chance to fight back! She even has the maturity of a kid too!"
Meninas pat Candice's head several times. "There, there."
"What are you doing here anyway?"
"Bambietta told me you went this way."
"W-Wha-?! You idiot, what're you doing? Gah...geez...okay, fine, what do you want from me?"
"It's time for our bath together, isn't it?" Meninas asked matter-of-factly, although it was said actually less like a real question and more of a demand spoken in the form of question. Candice shrugged.
"I am gonna have to clean myself up after what that bitch did to me,"
Meninas sneakily slipped her hand over Candice's. "So then..."
"Eh?"
The bubblegum-haired girl leaned over and placed a tiny kiss on the green-haired woman's charred cheek. It was so alarmingly sweet she could have left a heart-shaped lipstick mark in her wake. Candice shivered, but it was a good kind of shiver, although it made her angrier all the same.
"So let's take it together." Meninas purred into the girl's ear, like a stream of wind as soft as velvet.
Candice didn't want to start blushing again, that would have been terribly uncool, but she couldn't help it as the other girl started to stroke her fingers. She touched them and squeezed them, caressing them with all of the gentle, skilled care of a master masseuse. You wouldn't believe this girl had the strength to lift entire buildings over her head with a single hand. Candice felt that familiar shiver again.
"O-Okay."
Meninas smiled. She stood up and scooped the wounded Candice into her arms without any semblance of effort; she had been granted 'P - The Power' by His Majesty, after all. Picking up her girlfriend was probably one of the easiest things she could have done. Candice squealed a little as she was raised off of the ground, but when she put two and two together, realizing that Meninas apparently intended to carry her bridal-style back to the bathroom, she was just about ready to fling herself into a conniption.
"P-Put me down! I can walk, really! C'mon, Meninas! Stop being stupid, for crying out loud!"
"Oh, but how could I be so uncaring, to expect you to walk all the way on your own power like this? Knowing what you are?"
"What the-? The hell you talking about? What am I then?"
"You're my lovely loser," Meninas giggled. "You're not much of a winner, but I will still love you all the same, so you don't have to worry about losing favor in my eyes by trying to be tough."
If it had been anyone else, absolutely anyone else barring His Majesty, that had dared to look her straight in the eye, put on a smile that stretched from ear to ear, and called her a 'lovely loser'...they would have been even less than a pile of smoldering hot ashes underneath her boot right now, and that was something Candice would have made especially sure of. Meninas, however, was that one very, very special exception, and she was also the exception to an iron-clad rule, to never mock Candice to her face. So, instead of releasing the entirety of her rage and humiliation in the form of an all-obliterating electrical storm, the chagrined young Quincy simply huffed and placed a hand on her chin, rotating her head to the side so Meninas wouldn't be able to comment on the crimson-hot taint of her cheeks. Honestly, something about this woman took away all of her will to fight back.
Candice clicked her tongue on the roof of her mouth. "...So stupid..."
"Are you ready, Candy?" Meninas asked.
"Y-Yeah...and thanks..." Candice murmured so quietly that her girlfriend could barely pick it up.
"No problem!"
"Make sure we take the back-routes and the other halls too, so no one sees us, got it?"
"Got~cha!"
Meninas trotted away with her girlfriend clutched protectively in her arms, all the while humming a happy little tune under her breath. As she ran down the hall, she failed to notice, or maybe she had simply chosen to ignore, the fact that, from around the other end of the corridor, their fellow Quincies Liltotto Lamperd and Giselle Gewelle were watching them. They had been spying on the two lovebirds the entire time.
"Wow..." Giselle was amazed.
"See? I was right. Candice talks a lot of shit, but she's totally the sub in their relationship, if you want to put it in that way." Liltotto sniffed. She was rather proud that she got to prove herself right.
"Yeah, I never would have thought it. Meninas is pretty good at handling her. How very 'tsun tsun' of Candy to be so begrudgingly accepting about it."
Liltotto held out her hand. "Well? You bet it and you lost, so pay up!"
"Ah, okay, okay. Here you go." Giselle reluctantly placed a pudding cup into the smaller girl's palm. Liltotto tore off the seal and downed the entire contents of the pudding cup in a single gulp. As Giselle watched on, her bottom lip started to tremble. She should never have put her precious chocolate pudding cup on the line like that; she had been saving it as a snack with her lunch today.