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Disbelief, it's the only word to describe the sensation both of them were feeling.
Caesar and Lucy had been on one of their usual days out around Lumina Square, casually strolling from place to place, store to store; you know, the usual. There was absolutely nothing romantic about these little hangouts of theirs, and that's the way they should stay, but, of course, if one of them was going to suddenly skyrocket the tension between them, it would be Caesar.
It was supposed to be harmless. It was supposed to be a bit of fun before they set back for the Outer Ring, but, as what happens to all things relating to love when coming into contact with Caesar, it obviously wouldn't end well…
“T-The machine thingy must be broken!” Caesar spluttered, her face red like the light beaming at the top of the love tester.
And that's how it was going…
–
It all started with an innocent off handed comment from Caesar. She’d spotted the machine in a seemingly abandoned corner on their way out of the mall after a ‘quick’ trip in for what was supposed to be groceries that quickly turned into one of Lucy's many self indulgent fashion trips. Before the bend that led out of the double doors to the rest of Lumina, the machine stood there, isolated and alone… C’mon, it was basically begging to be used! It looked so sad!
Her deluded, romantic curiosity just had to get the better of her… She pressed her fingers together like a nervous schoolgirl and tugged on Lucy's jacket for her attention, glancing back and forth from her supervisor to the machine; she was much more like a dog trying to silently indicate to its owner that it wanted to go for a walk more than accidentally guilt tripping her into taking what was effectively a gimmick made to take her money with her.
Lucy swiped at her prosthetics hold on her jacket and snarled, looking up at her and then to the tester. “Seriously?!” Lucy scoffed. “You want to waste your money on that pseudoscientific nonsense? You can't be that desperate!”
“B-But what if it works! What if I can finally know my compatibility with the manag- I-I MEAN, W-WITH-.”
“Just shut up!” The last thing Lucy wanted to hear about on their day out was her pathetic crush on the proxy. She had to hear enough about how she ‘totally didn't want the newest volume of the latest manga she'd lost herself in’ instead of doing her duties as Overlord, so being forced to hear about an actual, real crush she had only added to that naturally aggravating quality she seemed to so effortlessly emit.
Caesar dropped her head and the pale, green vents flowing down each side of her hair drooped down in tandem too. “A-Alright Lucy… Let's get outta here…”
Here it is, Lucy's biggest weakness… Caesar being cute… Why was this woman who was much, much taller than her, and battle hardened from nearly a decade of tireless combat and training so damn good at imitating a stray dog left out in the rain?! She's not supposed to be cute, she's supposed to be imposing, scary, intimidating, fearful, terrifyi-. “Argh, stop looking at me like that!” Lucy yelled, waving her hands in a desperate attempt to get Caesar to stop.
She was going to cave, wasn't she?
“Lookin’ at you like what…?” She moped with her head still held low and the rest of her posture even lower.
“Like that!” Lucy damn near cried in anguish. “Stop looking so cute, Caesar, it hurts!”
Now that got her attention. Caesar ever so slightly raised her head to meet Lucy's gaze, her cheeks glowing a faint pink and her eyes wide with a strange mix of confusion and fluster. She audibly gulped before she spoke. “Y-You think I'm….cute?” Caesar whispered, her words said half to herself and half to Lucy.
Having a stake ran right through her heart might've ached less than watching Caesar do whatever the hell this was. She had to do something, anything to stop this unfiltered attack of pure cuteness on her psyche! Lucy needed an idea to distract her, to dissuade Caesar from letting her mind wonder any more about this so-called ‘cuteness’ she'd been ascribed to by her assistant. If Caesar thought about it just a little harder then, well …she might suspect Lucy has a crush on her…
Caesar bunched the olive mess of hair called her fringe into her metal fist and turned her head up with a look that spelled out all Lucy needed to know. Caesar was kinda sorta freaking about at being called ‘cute’ by the queen of cuteness herself, and it was showing on not just her cheeks, but her wide, diluted golden pupils, her jittery hand that held her hair and, most apparent of all, her rosy red cheeks that could probably cook an egg if someone (probably Burnice) tried.
“Y-Yo, um, L-Lucy…” Caesar’s shaky voice said. “D-Do you call all your f-friends c-cu-.”
“LET'S USE THE LOVE TESTER THING!” Oh, god! What an awful thing to pivot to! She was trying to get Caesar off her trail, not leave a line of candy for her to follow straight to her ultimate secret!
Welp, she'd already said it now, and Caesar looked oddly enthused instead of flustered… or was that suspicion? Now they're both flustered!
The two women stared at each other in an agonizing silence, lower lips trembling and their faces seemingly incapable of not flushing themselves red with embarrassment. Caesar finally lost the awkward staring contest and blinked, gently shaking her head back and forth to reality. “O-Oh, uhh, s-sure!” She stammered, slapping her hand against Lucy's back. “L-Let's go!”
A strange device to be sure, but something Caesar actually had some experience when it came to using. She'd seen one of these machines in a scrap heap long, long ago with Big Daddy; the same trip when the pair also happened to stumble upon the ever vexing ‘piono’. Caesar's other experience that wasn't just fidgeting with a defunct machine that was barely anything more than an antique was a good deal more embarrassing however… She definitely did not use one by herself and pretend her prosthetic was an imaginary boyfriend; that would be sooo weird!
“Do you know how to use one of these, Caesar?” Lucy narrowed her brows and leaned in close to get a better look at the tester.
“Oh, sure I do! Look, I'll show you.” She took Lucy's suddenly sweating right hand into her own (no idea what could've caused that) and placed it down against her side of the machine, palm facing down and sprawled out against the graphic. “Now all you gotta do is keep yer hand steady and I'll put mine over here, ‘kay.”
“O-Okay…” This had a sort of strange air to it all of a sudden. Even after Caesar had let go, that brief moment of quiet trust, of intimacy without so much as a word like ‘Can I hold your hand?’ being used so brazenly by the one who would probably hyperventilate to death if her hand got so much as an inch from a boys made Lucy's heart flutter in her chest. Perhaps she'd taken for granted just how much they trusted each other… “S-So, now what?” She mumbled, visibly nervous as she shifted from side to side.
“And nooow…!” She slapped her hand down on the right side of the tester and grinned from ear to ear. “And now we-. Wait, the hell's goin’ on with the machine? Why ain't it workin’?”
It fell in almost immediately for Lucy what was wrong, causing her to scoff in between a quiet giggle. “Dumbass…” She reached into her jacket with her right hand and rustled through what sounded like a purse before presenting one whole Denny and slotting it into the machine, rolling her eyes as Caesar's lit up.
“Ohhh! Haha, I totally forgot!”
“Fool…” Lucy smiled.
And now Caesar's palm was sweating… Weird… It's definitely because it's really, really hot in the mall today! She's ain't nervous about taking some dumb compatibility test with Lucy of all people, that would be so stupid! She's been into Hollows so dangerous even the HIA makes sure to warn veterans before their expedition! She wouldn't let some dumbass machine get her all riled up over nothing. Besides, she likes guys, and Lucy is a girl, so, at best, they'd score maybe a four or a five. Actually, they fight up to three times a day over basically nothing, so it was probably more likely they'd score a one or two. Caesar hadn't realized it, but she'd been hopping up and down on the spot the entire time as they waited for the machine to spill all.
Lucy noticed this obvious anxiety and gave her a swift kick to the shins and growled. “Stop moving! There's a reason the stupid test isn't starting!”
“Oh, oops, haha! My bad, my bad, I'll stop!” Caesar said, still hopping up and down like a rabbit. “S-So, what do you think we're gonna score, Lucy? I think it's totally gonna be a”
“zero.”
“Zero.”
They both laughed in tandem. This stupid test didn't seem so scary after all! So why was she still so damn scared though?! Why did the thought of actually getting a zero make her a little sad? They were rivals, sure, some may even go as far to call them the others' nemesis, but they weren't that incompatible… right? Caesar didn't want to believe so… and neither did Lucy.
Buzz
“Oh, it's starting!”
1- Dead In The Water
“A one?!” Caesar blinked, her mouth agape. “A-A one seems kinda lo-.”
“It's still going moron!”
2- I Give It A Week
“Ok, a two…” It still wasn't done either… Oh, god! Here comes her anxiety again! Did she want it all to just stop, or did she want it to go higher? N-No, surely not! Maybe if it stopped at five or something she'd be in the clear.
3- I Give It A Month
4- I Give It A Year
“F-Four, h-.”
5- It Works
Lucy had gone completely silent, not a single part of her body so much as twitched as the buzzer rang out in her ears with every number it climbed up.
6- Sparks ‘A Flyin’
Caesar on the other hand was sweating like a pig. The nagging feeling to just swipe her palm off of the machine and wipe herself clean of the whole thing was starting to cement itself more as an actual plan instead of just a silly intrusive thought she could hand wave away. She glanced at Lucy who was still unshaken in her stoicism in the face of absolute embarrassment. What was it that made Lucy so calm in this romantic nightmare scenario between rivals?! Was it her very open attraction to women? No, she hated her! That logic didn't even apply! Shit, now wha-.”
7- It's Love, That's For Sure
“S-Seven?!” Caesar blurted out before she slammed her prosthetic over her mouth.
8- Made For Each Other
For a master of keeping her composure when it was absolutely necessary, Lucy was starting to show signs of breaking. She hadn't even attempted the Herculean task of so much as glancing at Caesar. Her crimson eyes stung as her unwillingness to blink somehow prevailed over her need to show any signs of life, and each cherry red cheek itched more and more the longer the buzzer stalled between each grade. Just stay quiet and brainstorm excuses… That's all she had to do…
9- Together Forever
“WH- AM I INTO GIRLS?!”
Silence… Seconds of irrational refusal to meet the others' gaze quickly turned to minutes… Lucy was a mess, a well composed mess all things considered, but a mess nonetheless. She blinked down as hard as she could in some vain hope the machine had lied. What if this was some mass hallucination caused by Caesar's overwhelming cuteness?! There's never been an official study on the side effects of being in such close proximity to one as unimaginably cute as Caesar, so perhaps that was it, right? Right?!
Caesar dared not speak. Her hand still laid flat against the station, quietly trembling as she tried to regain what little composure she could will back into her body. She shot Lucy a lightning fast side eye and squeaked in mortal fear when she did the same.
“T-The m-machine is broken!” Lucy practically yelled, her voice breaking the second she opened her mouth. “A-A-And it's just some stupid scam made to con couples out of their Dennys! Taking this as fact would be h-highly i-immature!”
Caesar nodded back at light speed. “Yep! Yep, yep, yep, all true! T-The machine thingy must be broken! I-It’s l-like you said!” Caesar spluttered, her face red like the light beaming at the top of the love tester.
Lucy took a single step back and dug her foot into the ground before lunging at the accursed tester and slamming her right boar heel straight into the base of the machine… “Ow…” And now she was paralyzed on the floor with her boot cradled in her hand like a newborn…
“Y-You want me to give it a shot?” Caesar pointed to the machine and asked. “I'm pretty strong. I bet I'll fix it with one kick!”
“K-Knock yourself o- Owww…”
Thud
Oh, finally, some hope! The machine was buzzing again! Maybe it would drop to the actual score they were always destined to-.
10- ETERNAL SOULMATES
Falling to the floor alongside her soul mate, Caesar laid next to her and stared into the dim ceiling light illuminating both her and Lucy in this moment of cooperative humiliation. There was nothing more to be done. They'd lost. They were… lovers?
“Y-Yo, Lucy…”
“Yes…?”
Caesar rolled over on her side and cupped the side of her head with her hand, looking more like a romantic cliche than ever. “W-We girlfriends n-now?” Caesar stammered. “T-The machine doesn't l-lie, y'know…”
Lucy blinked the tiny dots away from her vision and sat up to meet her gaze. “Sure…”
Caesar stood up and took Lucy's hand into hers, pulling her up off of the floor… but not letting go. “Y-You wanna… You wanna go do g-girlfriend things before we g-go?”
She stared back at her with hollow eyes and shrugged. “Sure… I'll take you out for dinner, okay?”
“O-Ok…”
Hand in hand, soul in soul, the Overlord and her second in command walked out of the mall in silence. Whatever just happened wasn't what either of them were expecting, but, as Caesar so elegantly put it ‘The Machine doesn't lie’.
“S-Should I give you a k-kiss now, Lucy…?”
“SILENCE!”