Where Winter Meets Summer (Rusame Countryhumans)

Momentary Peace

(CHINA POV)

"How... how are you here?" Russia's chilling grey eyes wandered over my face, searching aimlessly for answers, ones that he would not find as I buried my inner giddiness. "We already defeated-"

"We already defeated you and South Korea! There's no way you could have recovered so quickly, certainly not enough to best America in a fight!" I folded my arms casually as I stole the words right from his mouth. "Does that sound about right?"

"Yeah..."

I couldn't help but snicker to myself in my head as I watched the Russian's face cycle through an array of confusion, denial, fury, and perhaps, intrigue. Just what was it that made so many believe in the Superpower's capabilities, I never quite understood.

"It was actually pretty simple; I mostly relied on the element of surprise and a little bit of luck. Nothing else. I didn't even need much of my Awakening to pull it off, haha!"

I caught myself midsentence and cleared my throat, forcing my mind to quiet down again as I collected my thoughts. He folded his arms and waited for me to clarify.

"You see, a little while ago, I stumbled into a special little trial, and with a little testing, I figured a couple of nifty tricks out," I explained slowly, doing my absolute best to ignore the other's petrifying glare. "The challenges are all presets and cycle through the entire area. They're all interconnected in some way, like a train and the stations they visit. Except with this analogy, the train forcibly boots you off once they reach the end of its loop. But what if one was able to stay aboard this train? Thankfully, there was a 'stop' near the door and the swarm of puppets helped push him right into the trap."

"You... you ambushed him from within a trial subspace?" Russia muttered slowly as if he couldn't remember the meaning of those words. "You are insane. Who in their right mind would try something as risky as gambling with space? Even America isn't that dumb."

He furrowed his brows before adding a quick, "I think," onto the end of his sentence.

I nodded in agreement– it was indeed a wild and unconventional thing to be thinking about. These games ran on systems that were built by the Powers, ASEAN, specifically but after getting to know our sly Branchmaster, these were natural things to wonder about.

"Ahhhya, give me a little more credit, would you? I have common sense, you know..." I finished the rest of my sentence in my head just to be safe and avoid any offense. "No, this is where my Awakening played its minor part. I kept one of my summons in the space while I was returned to the arena. There, it lay in wait for the remaining duration of the game while making small adjustments to fulfill my requirements should I need it later."

"So, that's why you were hiding behind South Korea this whole time? Because your pets were busy elsewhere?"

"Uh... sure, more or less..."

Russia turned away, sinking deep in thought as he began to fervently pace around like a caged animal. The ascended chamber held only the two of us, just like how a treasure box would hold its gleaming gems.