A Surprise Visit

We reunite outside the mana factory with Mia. “A resounding success, from the sounds of it.” She remarks, a huge grin on her face. I hug her happily without a word. Skylar speaks for me instead. “We killed Sarah. The bounty on Gemma’s head is no more, we freed a lot of slaves and we’ve hopefully stopped a lot of people from being targeted. An absolute success.”

My eyes widen at the achievement rewards. Holy shit, that’s a lot. I am once again a millionaire, which I’m happy about. The level up and the percentage increase to my physical stats are the most awesome part though. After debating what my stats goal should be next, I decide to work on raising agility to 50. I’ve always preferred the idea of speed over strength in melee combat, so I’m going to take that approach with my stats.

On the bus ride home, there is a general sense of relief and pride. Relief because we didn’t die, because Mia didn’t have to intervene and because we were able to achieve our objective. Pride because we were able to set a group of abyssals free and make a difference in the world, as well as get rid of a **** that has terrorised us and others in this area of Sydney. It’s a really nice feeling.

As we get home, I spend Ivy’s statpoints as well. Still working on her wisdom stat, we’re getting ever close to that 100 threshold that should hopefully mean that she can regenerate a lot quicker. Being able to heal infinitely would be amazing but I highly doubt that Gaia would let that happen, even if we invested every point that Ivy gets into wisdom. It would be incredibly unbalanced.

When we get inside, we’re still feeling generally pretty elated. Mia, Ivy and I celebrate with a small cuddle pile on the couch, one that we invite Skylar to join. She hesitantly declines, and we refrain from kissing or touching each other too much, as we don’t want to make her uncomfortable. We put on a movie after Ivy fetches us some snacks, the movie being Grown Ups 2.

I settle in between Ivy and Mia, enjoying the warmth and comfort of both of them at my sides. While the three of us are sitting on the couch directly facing the tv, Skylar is sitting on the couch against the wall. Every so often, I catch her stealing glances at us. It might just be my imagination, but I feel like I can see her cheeks turning ever so slightly red.

After a while, I ask her about it. “Skylar, are you okay?” She sighs and smiles at me, the imagined blush from before turning into a real blush, albeit still fairly light and relatively difficult to notice. “Yeah it’s just…you three are adorable when you’re happy and relaxed like this.” She replies. “Look who’s talking, cute stuff.” Mia flirts, and Skylar’s cheeks redden further.

I nudge Mia and she winks at me as Skylar turns away. I don’t bring it up again, not wanting to push things. Eventually the movie ends, and Skylar needs to go home. We each hug her goodbye, and the contact seems to embarrass her a little more than usual. With her being good at masking her emotions, it’s difficult to tell.

After she’s gone, Ivy makes dinner for the three of us. It’s one of our collective favourites, especially since she’s gotten so good at making it: spaghetti and meatballs. The process of cooking and serving the food doesn’t take her a whole lot of time, and soon enough, we’re sitting down to eat a lovingly prepared meal.

A knock on the door stops us in our tracks.

Exchanging confused glances with us, Mia gets up to answer the door. Ivy and I follow, curious to see who is interrupting our dinner. The only two people that immediately come to mind are either Mia’s father Alex, or Skylar coming back for some reason. If it’s not either of them, I’m not sure who it could be. Mia opens the door and lets out a squeal.

“Georgia, oh my Gaia! What are you doing here?” Mia asks excitedly, hugging the woman at the door. Georgia smiles broadly as she hugs Mia back. “I’m back silly. I decided to end my vacation a little early.” “Well I’m glad you’re back!” Mia releases her and turns to us. “Gemma, Ivy, this is my sister Georgia. Georgia, these are my girlfriends, Gemma and Ivy.”

“Lovely to meet you.” I say, smiling at Mia’s sister. She raises an eyebrow at Mia. “Girlfriends? I knew you swung that way, I didn’t know you were into polyamory.” She says, giving her a cheeky grin. “Bet things in the bedroom are fun huh?” Georgia turns back to me and takes my outstretched hand, pulling me into a hug. “I hope you’re treating my sister well.” She pats me on the back and pulls back, winking at me.

“Your sister is an amazing person, and we love her very much.” Ivy reassures, hugging the newcomer with the same enthusiasm and radiance that I’ve come to know and love from her. Georgia chuckles at that answer, looking back at Mia. “She’s quite something. An annoyance when we were growing up though.” “Oi!” Mia exclaims and we laugh.

“Have you eaten?” Mia continues. Her sister shakes her head. “Nope, just got here after seeing dad. Figured I’d rather fix myself something than buy bad tasting airport food.” “Ivy already made dinner, she’s a really good cook. We’ve got enough leftover for another plate, so come eat with us.” Mia suggests and Georgia happily agrees.

She vanishes upstairs for a few minutes with her bags, and comes back down changed into a comfortable outfit. She sits down at the table with us, and the light hearted grilling begins almost immediately. She asks us about how we met, the details of our relationship, how everything’s going. Mia does a lot of the talking, while I fill in other information every now and then.

“Gemma and I met at school, when I felt her scrying magic. I confronted her on it and I liked her vibes. It turned out that she was new to the abyss, a latebloomer with a really weird video game themed power.” Mia looks to me to explain the details and I’m happy to describe the broader strokes of what my powers let me do, given that this is Mia’s sister.

“If you’ve ever played an RPG like Fallout or Dark Souls, I sort of have some of the same systems. I get windows that pop up in the middle of the air about achievements and quests, I can gain experience points from killing monsters in barriers I create, level up and allocate statpoints. It’s a really fun power and it has some pretty reality breaking aspects, like being able to pick up loot from monsters in dungeons.”

Her eyes widen. “Wait what? So your power creates loot items from nothing after you kill fake monsters that you create?” I nod, smiling at her surprised reaction. “She’s only been in the abyss for three weeks and she’s already surpassed 95% of abyssals in power.” Mia churps happily, proud of the accomplishments I’ve made in such little time. “Three weeks? That’s insane…” Georgia mumbles, trying to process everything we’ve just said.

“Oh yeah! So that scrying magic she was using turned out to be an ability called observe. She has her own character sheet of all her skills, stats and level, just like in RPGs. She’s levelled up that observe skill enough that she can see other people’s character sheets too, including their level and stats. She’s level 42 at the moment, and I’m level 52.” Mia declares proudly.

“You’re a higher level than she is? My god, how much stronger did you get while I’ve been away? It’s only been three months and everything has changed so much…hey wait, can you observe me? I wanna know what my level is now!” Georgia demands. I shrug my shoulders and use the skill, curious as to what I’m going to find.

“You’re level 24.” I report, noting that Georgia is the older sister and reasoning that this must be the reason for her title. Her shoulders slump and she pouts in a joking manner. “Aw man, and we were about equals before! That’s so unfair, how have you gotten so much stronger so quickly?” She complains and Mia laughs. “Training! If you did more of it instead of partying so much, you’d be stronger too!”

Georgia sticks her tongue out at my girlfriend. “Don’t start with that, I get enough of it from dad.” Mia giggles at that. “Yeah yeah I know, just messing with you. Well part of it is that I use swords now, training with that kinda helped me do different things and train different parts of my magic. As for the rest of it? Probably due to the influence of my gorgeous girlfriends.” She smiles at us, and Ivy and I smile back happily.