When Worlds Collide (MxM)?

Only a handful of humans survived the explosion, and were immediately captured.

Knowing the likelihood of them harming themselves, Nyx made sure to use very secure padded cells and take all dangerous objects away from them.

Kade was asked to work as a mediator, and begrudgingly obliged even though he wanted to stay with Aino.

Ever since the attack, the inventor had been locked in his room and refused to attend meetings. At night, Kade would try to talk to him, but the Terran would grow more distant the harder he tried.

King Toca had ordered Aino to meet with the nobles so he could be properly congratulated. The king had hoped the party could cheer him up, but Aino refused to attend.

Kade was stuck between a rock and a hard place with this.

In the back of his mind, Kade couldn't help but wish that none of the humans had survived. At least then he'd be able to focus solely on Aino. But such thinking was crude, and he regretted it immediately. After all, Kade was the one who stranded them here in the first place.

"I made some flashcards for the humans to study." He said one night as the two lay in Aino's bed. He gently held the Terran's hand, running his thumb over his knuckles. "But Pet-um, one of them tore them up. They don't appreciate how hard paper is to come by on Terra. It was a common commodity back on earth."

"Hmm." Aino hummed, lying on his back and staring at the ceiling.

"I'll try again. The two scientists are being a lot more cooperative. I'm going to focus my language lessons on them and then convince them to work with the soldiers."

"How many?"

Kade's head perked up when Aino showed interest in the conversation. "Seven."

"Out of nearly a hundred..." The despair in the Terran's voice was audible.

Kade didn't mean to remind him of the extent of the devastation that his train bomb had caused.

"There wasn't any other way Aino. If they returned to the jungle, the Twilups would have gotten them. If they were captured, the soldiers were trained to kill themselves. And if we fought them, there would have been hundreds more casualties." He left out the fact that there were actually more captives at first, but they had managed to bite their own tongues before Nyx found a way to restrain them.

"That's not..." Aino sighed. "I've introduced a horrible weapon to the world. Regardless of the outcome of this war, gunpowder and bombs will change the way we fight. Death will happen in much larger quantities in the future. All because of me."

"No! That's that true! You did everything you could to protect the people."

"I'm tired." Aino rolled over.

"Oh...Okay." Kade got up and left him alone.

Aino was horrified that his technology was turned into a weapon. And worse, that this would be what he became known for. Kade had to do something.

Feeling desperate, he hurried to the lab where a couple of the Royal scientists remained. Most of them had returned to Toca's land once the threat was taken care of, and the Carnivore citizens were slowly coming back to Nyx's Kingdom.

On the surface, everything was returning to normal. It was decided that King Nyx would remain in charge of the human captives since his land was the one that endured the most damage from them. Meanwhile, Kade and Aino would return to the Terran kingdom after prepping the carnivores on how to break the language barrier.

"I don't understand why he's moping so much." King Nyx startled Kade as he emerged from a nearby hallway, stopping him from entering the lab. "Having such a high kill count is commendable in battle. Seeing such raw rage from that quiet man made me fall for him all over again."