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No matter where I looked, there was only death, only suffering… and the bright sinister colors that followed with it.

Christmas was just a sham. This game was tenser than any horror attraction. Swear to God.

And that was not including the amount of close-calls we kept encountering, and they were only mounting with every passing second.

I lost count how many times I had to scramble behind a tree to avoid being smoked by endless volleys of the rainbow. Everytime, I’d hear a rustle, a noise that wasn’t ours, it was like a warning, the ominous cackle of Mother Nature before death attempted another lunge at us from behind its depths. And if it weren’t for Adalia, I’d already be dead twenty times over.

It was her continuing to curb game-over at every turn. Her, with the reflexes, the instinct that kept near-misses as being only near-misses.

She faced every ambush, every snap of a branch, as if having already anticipated them twenty yards before. And with only the slightest adjustments of her body, the flick of her head, a raise of her arm, every attack just seemed to purposely shoot past her by mere inches – that’s just how much control she had of it all.

We whizzed past a violet-stained log, ducked beneath a clump of green hanging atop a branch, a dozen obstacles in every passing moment, every step taken, but no end seemed to loom over the horizon.

.....

Yet the snowballs continued to only fly, splat and terrify more and more.

“Three… on the left…” Adalia muttered, her steady, unblinking gaze forward encompassing all. “Two… right…”

And just as she had prophesied, five coloured volleys were hurled straight at us. The left zooming with a crowd of three and a pair closing in quickly on the right, both traps completely missing as my carry of a seer shielded us in another thick wall of trees.

This pattern of eluding and hiding repeated a few more times, and at this point, I was completely sure there was no possibly way a normal couple could go through this entire gauntlet unscathed, and whoever our assaulters were lurking nearby, no doubt they were probably thinking the same exact thing.

Maybe that’s why things were starting to ramp up even more now. Ten out of fifteen snowballs I witnessed whizz past by a hair’s breadth had our would-be demise dyed in bright blue.

“Three… again…” Adalia whispered, diverting our stride elsewhere.

And a second right after, three sprung, and three flew, and three blue balls laid splattered between our strides.

“More…” Adalia turned us to another direction. “Three…”

This time it was the closest yet. A barrage of blue streaking past us that had Adalia not halted us in that split-second would have definitely spelled our end.

“What’s going on?” I panted, as we began running again. “It’s just blue now. Where are the other colors?”

Even Adalia, in all her nonchalant, in all her barren calm, sounded almost concerned as she whispered, “Same three… again…”

Same three?

That was when I finally saw it. Like slow motion. A figure in red weaving through bushes. A dash of green lunging between the trees. And lastly, an outline of the brightest blue, smirking, leering directly at me, popping out from a mound of snow, a blue ball streaking past from her arm outstretched.

Same three… again.

Once again, at the last moment, Adalia turned every so slightly, the ball flying past and hurtling into a nearby bush, evading her ambush.

Blue’s ambush…

“You’re shitting me…” I whispered, feeling disbelief surging in my voice. “You three again?!”

“Merry Christmas, Boyfriend!” laughter erupted, soft, mischievous, derisive, three different in unison. “You missed us?”

“Cause we’re certainly fuckin’ missing you, alright!” flippantly echoed the bark of a distant tree.

“But not for long…” whispered a bush. “We’ll get you soon…”

And as one, they quickly dispersed, leaving only fleeting chuckles echoing in their wake.

Dread, panic, like demons in a pair, I felt their pitchforks poking every inch of my insides. Of all the people, of all the places…

That’s it, my life’s a comedy, and I am the punchline.

“You… know them…?” Adalia asked, slowing us down on account of my inexplicable stiff knees.

“Unfortunately…” I said, still struggling to swallow the cold, hard truth. “At least now I know why we’re seeing lots of blues lately…”

It wasn’t hard putting myself in their shoes, looking at the scene through their eyes – Irene’s dearly beloved – strolling hand-in-hand with a pretty stranger in a romantic even, on a most special day.

I’m no rookie detective, but even I can connect the pieces. Even if they had them connected all terribly wrong.

“Mmm…” Adalia drifted her gaze forward, perusing again through the unknown beyond and blink, sensed. “Three… again…”

Immediately I stepped ahead. I wasn’t gonna wait till they struck this time.

“What are you three doing here?!” I heard my voice carry over the treetops. “This doesn’t seem like typical detective work to me!”

“Hey, even gritty detectives like us deserve a holiday or two!” Blue echoed from her hiding place. “Besides, the big boss herself insisted! And who are we to directly refuse an order from our superior?”

“The biggest, funnest event of the year,” scoffed Green from hers. “We really seem like the type to pass it up to ya?!”

“We go to where the fun is…” Red quietly chimed from somewhere close. “And this is certainly fun…”

In perfect synergy, they attempted another volley. In three vastly three different directions came the pelting bright blue. Even with just a split-second to react, I knew there was no way to avoid one without also coming into contact with the other.

Adalia, the faster, sharper of us two had already arrived at the same conclusion long before. Which was why she didn’t even try to.

Faster than any other, I saw as she dredged up a branch from deep in the snow, and like a game of baseball, batted three for three, swinging widely, with every home run following with a violent explosion of powdered blue.

“Oh no fuckin’ way, again?!” exclaimed green, peeking wide-eyed atop a branch of a tree. “Who the hell is this girl?! And why is she a goddamn ninja?!”

“She looks pale…” Red expressed almost sympathetically. “She looks sick…”

“And definitely adorable enough for any gentleman of a man to be oh-so attempted to sin,” Blue stepped out from the crooked shadows of trees, flashing curved lips that were just as warped. “Isn’t that right, Boyfriend?”

“Look, girls, whatever you’re thinking, you got it all wrong,” I said, both hands in surrender in an attempt to placate. “I can explain this, alright? Give me a chance here.”

Stepping back a bit, it wasn’t lost on me that I did kinda sound like a pathetic sleazeball caught in a romantic affair of scandalous proportions, and yes, there really was no other way this looked here.

But fuck, what was I supposed to say that won’t just incriminate me even more? Any word of the truth now would just be digging myself one inch deeper to my grave.

Where’s a lawyer when you need one?

“No need to explain a thing,” Blue shook her head at me, tossing a ball back-and-forth between her palms. “The big boss already filled us in on the need-to-know.”

“She – what?”

“Yeah!” Green followed up, swinging from her branch and landing with finesse. “She had a hunch we might run into you somewhere in town. Said you were doing a girl-friend of yours a favor, yeah?”

Girl...friend? As in, with a dash between girl and friend? It sounds like it.

“Very frail friend. Never celebrated Christmas before since she’s so sick…” Red strolled forward the closest, wearing a look of brazen sympathy. “You want to take her out to experience it for the first time, to enjoy it. It’s sweet of you…”

“Very sweet of you,” Blue spoke once more in turn. “Maybe a bit too sweet, I’d say. Best couple contest? Seriously? Don’t you think that’s a little in poor taste? Considering, you know, you’re already in a prior engagement?”

“That’s…” I quickly spoke up, unknowing of what I was even gonna say only to be immediately interrupted.

“It’s only… for now…” Adalia muttered. “It’s only… for today…” She blinked at them. “Please…?”

Maybe it was the feebleness in Adalia’s voice, or the fragility that exudes with her presence, but all three girls reacted in resistance and reluctance in their own multi-colored ways.

“Big boss gave specific orders not to disturb you,” Blue said, heaving a sigh. “But who are we to just blindly follow orders from our superior?”

Didn’t she just say…?

“All’s we are sayin’, Boyfriend,” chimed in Green, shrugging her shoulders. “We already saw you and Irene as the best couple. So this little stunt you’re pulling here? Yeah, no.”

“But we are not unreasonable…” Red gently reassured. “If you really think you are the best couple…”

Blue tossed her ball in the air again, catching it, gripping it, a mischievous smile on full-display.

“Prove it,” She simply said.