Harley unlocked her lips from mine and stepped back, surveying the surroundings. When she saw what was beneath our feet, her eyebrows rose.

  “Are we—no, no way! We’re not in Fraction Fever are we? Stuck in a math game?" my beloved asked in horror. “Of all the bullshit. It couldn’t be ‘Days In Faerie,’ could it? We didn’t get sucked into a game with a fantastical magical forest with princesses and fae; we got portaled into math hell.”

  I wrapped my arms around her waist, pulling her close. “‘We’ being the operative word here, Har. You’re not alone; you’ve got me. Just like always, and math is not hell to everyone.”

  “Especially not to you,” she snorted, nose touching mine. Her lips covered my upper, but she pulled back. “That candy cane is fruity? Not peppermint? Ummm. Blueberry. Yummy,” she said, licking my lips again.

  I sighed into her mouth, but, of course, it was cut short because of our nemesis, and I had been keeping a tally. Three kisses tonight had been interrupted by this beastly game, so it was time to end it.

  Faces so close we practically breathed each other’s carbon dioxide, I challenged the woman I loved, “You ready to show this bbeg it fucked with the wrong gamer gals? Whaddaya say, Harley? We gonna take it down?”

  “No one ruins ‘Unchained Melody’ and gets away with it. That vile fiend shall be ended, then I’m taking you home and finishing that kiss!” my wife declared, and it was a call to battle.

  But before I could form words that would lead to a plan, green text filled my vision.

  Mission Accepted: Save The Damsel

  Skill Activated: Bouncy House Mode

  “Oh, for fucks’ sake!” I whined. I wasn’t a simpering maiden—well. Correction, I was literally a fucking-foaming-hand-soap princess, but a damned-powerful one.

  I reminded myself to lick the candy cane so my Vigor would stay activated, and hopefully, more Skills would come online. That was what I needed, my own Skills, not my wife to fucking Save me on some misguided quest!

  Talk about patronizing! What was worse than someone stepping in to save the day and pushing perfectly capable people outta the way?

  If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

  Not much, but that wasn’t my Harley. She looked after me, but didn’t keep me out of things I wanted to be involved in. A memory came to me of last Halloween when we’d faced down the Murder Pizza.

  Me, speeding through the streets of Seattle with Harley in a fireman’s carry. Harley hadn’t been dead weight, though, once we’d gotten to Gas Works Park, she’d faced down the monster with me. And it’d been my ordinary wife who’d delivered the vanquishing blow, not me with my super powers.

  So maybe that was exactly like life: sometimes in relationships we needed to take turns carrying each other, and that didn’t mean the one who needed carrying was dead weight.

  No, it meant they just needed a moment to get their feet back under them so they could be ready to stand firm and face whatever life would throw at them next.

  Okay, life, what’re you throwing at me now? I thought to myself.

  Harley was standing nearby, bouncing on the balls of her feet, opening and closing her hands, and looking like she was about to jump off the starting block.

  It was time for me to trust my wife to be the most powerful one on the stage for a bit. I could focus on what I did best and strategize a way out while she handled the big bad.

  I looked at the fractions in the floor beneath us, and knew exactly where we were in the game. Smack dab in the middle. 284/4.

  If we had answered this correctly while playing the game in the real world, the floor tile would've propelled us up through the ceiling to the next level.

  If we got it wrong, nothing would've happened, but the game would've kept us moving forward, and eventually there would've been no floor. We would’ve fallen into oblivion, and it would’ve been game over.

  I didn’t want to find out what would happen to me and Harley once there was no more floor in this alternate reality version of Fraction Fever.

  That flaming log had come from somewhere, and I didn’t want to know if there was a literal fiery pit of hell beneath us. While I was considering the best approach for solving the puzzle, Harley was squatting, two hands on the floor, pushing.

  Then suddenly, she was no longer crouching down. She leapt up, cackling, and just like a frog, she took off into the air and came back down, but when she landed, the floor seemed to meet her like a springy mattress.

  It looked the same: just a flat surface, but Harley sprang off of it as though she were a rubber ball.

  Her laugh was positively gleeful, and there was no way I could resent anything about it. She pinged to the left wall, bouncing off it, and spun towards the right, then angled herself to the ceiling.

  Now, my wife can be dramatic and impulsive, so understand me when I say that we are unlike each other. I am not the excitable type. “Boring” is my modus operandi, and I like living life in a predictable set of steps, but the chaos my love brings to my routine is welcome.

  She has a proclivity for things like mocha lattes and chocolate-covered coffee beans, and “spazzy" is a regular thing for her. So watching her literally bounce off the walls was one of the most hilarious moments of my life! I stood there soaking it in, recording it in my memories for all eternity as her gleeful laughter filled the corridor.

  But I wasn’t the only one paying attention. We had an adversary to face down, and its thumping came closer as we heard the fevered roaring, “I need your love!”

  “Oh, no you don’t, fell beast!” my wife spat. “No one disgraces the Righteous Brothers with the fires of Hell. The moment has come for you to meet your end, so ready yourself, fiend. You shall die by my hand as I Save The Damsel.”

  Then she looked at me, and I nodded once, knowing it was time for me to let her shine.