System's POV

Chapter 1408: Emergency Meeting Inside The Mobile Fortress

"Stella, do you like me?"

The young lady felt her body chill, as if a cold bucket of water was poured over her head.

Even Chiffon couldn’t help but facepalm.

Zion really had no breaks. More accurately, he didn’t have any social common sense, directly asking such an awkward question without beating around the bush.

"D-Do I like you?" Stella stuttered.

"Yes." Thirteen nodded. "Do you like me? What do you like about me? When did you start liking me? Did you feel good after you tasted my tralala?"

Chiffon and Stella almost puked blood after hearing the teenage boy’s last question. The only saving grace was that Maple and Cinnamon didn’t hear this conversation, busy playing with Giga and Blacky in the distance.

"W-Wait! One question at a time!" Stella placed her hand on Zion’s lips, stopping him from asking any more questions.

When she was certain that Zion would no longer ask any question, she lowered the hands that covered his lips and averted his gaze.

"Um, about your first question, I think I like you?" Stella replied with a beet-red face.

"You’re unsure whether you like me or not?" Thirteen asked calmly.

"Y-Yes," Stella replied.

"Then how about my Tralala? Did you like it?"

"Huh?! Are you talking about your Ding Ding Dong?!"

The teenage boy stared long and hard at Stella’s beet-red face before coming to a conclusion.

"Understood." Thirteen nodded before calling out to Giga and Blacky to return to his side.

Maple and Cinnamon thanked the two for playing with them but wondered why their Big Brother suddenly called his friends back.

"We have an emergency meeting," Thirteen said in a serious tone. "We’re going inside the Mobile Fortress. Rocky, take us."

As soon as the order was given, Thirteen, Giga, and Blacky disappeared from where they stood.

They had been taken inside the Mobile Fortress where an important meeting was about to take place.

"I need everyone’s opinion," Thirteen said in a serious tone. "How do I convince Stella’s father to let me marry his daughter?"

The eyes of all the monsters widened in shock, not expecting their emergency meeting to be for something like this.

When their Master rounded them all up, he looked so serious that they assumed he was about to wage war on someone.

"I see. So you want a shotgun wedding huh?" Pico nodded in understanding. "I remember that our Ma and Pa had a shotgun wedding too."

"They did?" Thirteen blinked. "When did that happen?"

"We don’t talk about that here," Pica interjected. "It’s a Poco Poco trade secret."

Giga patted Thirteen’s shoulder before patting its own chest with confidence.

It was telling the teenage boy that he had nothing to worry about because Giga was a Love Master.

Stacy rolled her eyes at her partner, who was talking smug about its lovelife.

(A/N: From here on out, I will be translating the monster language for you guys. Aren’t I nice?)

"Fathers are very overprotective with their daughters," Giga said with confidence. "If it were their sons, they wouldn’t even give a flying f*ck about who they want to marry. But daughters are different. Dads can become fierce beasts when the talk shifts to their daughters."

Blacky, Hercules, the Trolls, and the Ogres gave Giga the, "Damn! This guy knows what he is talking about," gaze and decided to listen to his love advice more seriously.

Giga then magically took out some framed glasses and put them on, making him look a little smarter than the average Blaze Emperor Skunk.

"I will now give you tips on how to convince an overprotective father to let you marry their daughter," Giga said, while fixing his glasses. "Let me just clarify—you plan to ask Stella’s parents for her hand in marriage, correct?"

"Marrying her was not my original plan, but I changed my mind," Thirteen admitted. "I’m now serious about her."

"How serious are you?" Blacky asked with genuine curiosity.

"Serious enough to have this conversation," Thirteen answered.

All the monsters nodded in understanding.

"Very well. Let’s start with tip number one. Always keep in mind that when the father looks at you..." Giga said gravely, "He is imagining seventeen ways on how you might ruin his daughter’s life."

Thirteen arched an eyebrow. "Only seventeen?"

"That’s the beginner level," Giga replied. "Veteran dads reach fifty. Those with wives numbering over fifty only think about ways on how to invite the bastard that is courting their daughter into a fishing trip."

"I like fishing," Thirteen replied.

"That’s not the point." Giga shook his head. "When a father invites you to a fishing trip, you should always say no. Now, let’s go back to the topic. When facing a father, you must maintain eye contact."

The trolls could be seen taking notes by writing Giga’s words on the ground with a stick.

"Do not puff your chest. Do not grin like an idiot. And DO NOT say baseball jokes," Giga stated.

"But... I already told him a baseball joke when we met for the first time," Thirteen replied.

Everyone slowly turned to look at Thirteen.

An awkward silence descended inside the mobile fortress. Pica and Pico dropped the nuts that they were chewing on their mouths.

While Giga seemed to be having a seizure on the spot.

"Y-You told Stella’s father a baseball joke?"

Thirteen nodded before telling everyone word per word about what he said on that day.

——

"Sir, I assure you that Stella held my bat for a long time. Even after three strikes, she didn’t let go and kept going."

"She said no stealing bases and no sliding without permission. But in the end, she begged me to play rough, so I hit a homerun, stole some bases, and slid inside with her permission."

———

"What the F*ck..." Pico blinked.

"He’s screwed," Pica stated.

"Haiyaaah..." Giga face palmed. "So the baseball joke was already used. This is a problem."

It was at that moment when all the monsters inside the mobile fortress realized that their Master had f*cked up.

"Don’t worry, we can still salvage the situation!" Giga lightly slapped its own cheeks to bring it back to the game. "Master, how good are you at singing?"

Thirteen couldn’t recall if he ever sang in his life. Because of that, he decided to sing a nursery rhyme to let his minions know his singing skills.

"What the F*ck..." Pico blinked.

"Even his singing is screwed," Pica stated.

"Okay. So singing is out of the question. But don’t worry. We got you!" Giga glanced at his comrades at arms, and they all looked at him as if they already knew what they needed to do.

"This is war my brothers and sisters!" Giga raised its paw. "A war that must be won for the sake of our Master’s happiness. Are you all with me?!"

"""Yeah!"""

"Louder!"

"""Yeah!"""

Giga nodded in satisfaction before patting its Master’s shoulder.

"Leave the rest to us, Master. All you need to do is follow the script, and we are good to go."

Thirteen didn’t know what Giga had in mind, but since the skunk looked extremely confident, he decided to trust them in regards to this matter.

’What could possibly go wrong?’ Thirteen thought.

He would discover the answer to this question by the time the day was over.

The aftermath of Thirteen’s and William’s meeting was something that not even the Gods that were observing from the Celestial Realm were able to predict.

A meeting that would be written in the pages of the Ainsworth Empire, which would be talked about for many generations to come.

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