Thrill [BNHA]

Chapter Fourteen

"Hey..." Nell looked down at Maria's white marble headstone overflowing with roses of all colors. It was a lone headstone in a public cemetery. Because she committed suicide she wasn't allowed to be buried in her family's mausoleum due to their religion. Tears clouded Nell's vision. She tried desperately to blink them away as she tightened her grip on her oversized duffel bag. "...I don't know if I'm coming back. Guess it's frowned upon to have a daughter that beats the shit out of scumbags and mutilates rapists, so I'm getting shipped off. I'll still talk to you everyday...but I don't know if you can hear me-." Nell paused, she didn't even know if Maria could hear her here.

"...Nelly..." Maria's beautiful voice sounded faintly in the back of her mind.

Tears trickled down Nell's pallid cheeks. A sob hitched in the back of her throat.

"...I love you...." Maria's voice enveloped her. "...I'm with you, always..."

Nell choked back a sob, "I love you."

SMACK!

"Ow!" Natsuo yelped and withdrew his hand from his itchy ankle. "What was that for?" He grumbled as he rubbed his now red hand and threw Nell a wary look.

"Don't scratch it!" Nell threateningly held her hand up to strike him again if he made a move to scratch at his fresh ink.

"It itches like crazy!" Natsuo groaned.

"Yeah, they do that. Put lotion on it and quit trying to scratch it." Nell pointed in the direction of her bathroom.

"What?"

"Put the lotion on the skin or else you get the slap again." Nell threatened, waving her hand in the air as he hesitated, causing him to laugh.

"So weird." He shook his head before getting up.

Natsuo trudged off to do as he was told. The first few days after getting his first tattoo had been completely fine, he'd been a little sore but now it itched like crazy. He stepped into the bathroom, turned on the light and nearly had a heart attack as he found a life size cardboard cutout of Pennywise standing in the corner.

"Why is there a murder clown in here?!" He yelped, nearly falling out of the bathroom.

"Where do you keep your murder clowns?" Nell retorted from the sofa.

"I don't have murder clowns!" Natsuo laughed and inched back into the bathroom.

"Then what are you even doing with your life?" Nell cackled from the sofa as she started on the next level, "hurry back I'm starting the next level and if we fail it's your fault!"

Natsuo hurriedly flung open the medicine cabinet in search of lotion and found about five bottles of unscented lotion and a plethora of prescription bottles. He hurriedly averted his gaze away from the bottles not wanting to invade her privacy and grabbed one of the bottles of lotion before racing back to her living room just in time to see his little chef avatar fall off a ledge because Nell's avatar bumped into him in her mad dash as she raced around the flaming kitchen in a panic.

"Why is everything on fire?!" Natsuo dropped the lotion and snatched up his controller as his character respawned.

"I don't know! Something is shooting at us!" Nell screamed as her little avatar pirouetted across the screen with a fire extinguisher in hand. "WE'RE UNDER ATTACK!" She cried dramatically.

Natsuo nearly toppled off the couch in a fit of laughter as Nell's avatar pirouetted off the ledge before realizing she'd taken the fire extinguisher with her and the game chose that moment to glitch and the fire extinguisher was lost and gone forever.

"I don't think we're winning this one." Natsuo chuckled.

"COOK DAMN YOU!" Nell roared. She never let them restart levels no matter how hopelessly futile it was that they'd get a single star.

After an hour of stress and hilarity. Nell threw her controller in a fit of rage and it went sailing out the open balcony doors and over the railing. A moment later there was a loud exclamation below as the controller shattered on the ground scaring the shit out of some random passerby. They shouted up a string of swears.

"Oops." Nell giggled.

Natsuo lost it. "I'm starting to think you have a problem. We may need to have an Overcooked Intervention."

Nell smiled. "It's not a problem it's a lifestyle."

Natsuo shook his head and looked down at the remaining controller, "now what?"

"To the store!" Nell hopped off the sofa and scrambled toward the door.

Natsuo chuckled and trailed after her, exiting her apartment in search of a new controller. As they stepped out of her apartment building, Natsuo glanced down at his hand and felt his cheeks flush with heat as he realized at some point between leaving her apartment and exiting the building their hands had become interlocked. A small smile stretched across his lips as he glanced up from their interlocked hands to Nell. She was very animated as she was setting a plan of action for their return to Overcooked. Her green eyes were impossibly bright with wonder and excitement and her painted lips were pulled into a big smile.

Watching her, Natsuo felt a sense of peace. Though Nell was undoubtedly one of the most crazy people he'd ever encountered, she somehow made him feel at ease. He gave her hand a gentle squeeze. He could listen to her crazy video game theories and plans forever.