Evolutionarily Advantageous

With Lerianna somewhat calmed down, it was a bit easier for them to take a breather before diving into their conversation. Shockingly, removing most of Lerianna's libido seemed to have done wonders for her temperament... though she did have some issues with her attitude flaring up every time she noticed John's rigid erection. Still, they managed to sit across from each other after another minute with a reasonable degree of composure.

"So, why all the shyness and denial?" John asked her when they'd settled down.

"I'm not shy!" Lerianna said, though her immediate denial didn't help her case at all. "I just... I know what happens if I get too close to someone. Especially someone like you."

"I'm pretty sure I should be offended," John said, only the barest hint of humor in his voice. "Someone like me, meaning...?"

"Men," Lerianna said bluntly, huffing as she crossed her legs and turned her head away.

"Ah, so you had a bad experience with some guy?" John asked. Lerianna blushed, and didn't say anything for a long while. John took her silence as reflecting on some painful memory and continued so as to avoid the awkwardness. "Well, whatever it was, I'm sure we can-"

"...vn't had any."

"Sorry, what was that?" John asked.

"I haven't... I haven't had any," Lerianna repeated, her ears twitching as she refused to meet his eyes.

"Any...?" John said, leaving the sentence unfinished. Lerianna's eyes scrunched up with a mixture of embarrassment and annoyance, and her hands began to shake as she clenched them even harder. Just before John was ready to change the subject, Lerianna slammed her fists into her thighs angrily and opened her eyes to stare directly at John.

"I haven't had any experience with men!" Lerianna shouted. The angered rabbit-girl crossed her arms and stared down at the floor, scoffing in annoyance.

"Then... why do you hate men?"

"Because I'm mostly into men!" Lerianna responded instantly, and rather confusingly for John.

"I'm... not following," John said. "You like men, so you hate them?"

"I never said I hate men, I said I know what happens if I get too close to someone," Lerianna said, sighing. "Do you know anything about my species?"

"Not really. Evellyn has some basic info, but mostly just things like diet, preferred environment, that kind of thing," John said, shrugging. "Beyond that she mostly logs info as I learn it."

"Well, in adolescence my species undergoes a very aggressive period of growth. Our hormones change, our bodies begin to grow more rapidly, and our sex drives... well, to put it politely they begin to make themselves known for the first time."

"Yeah, humans do something like that too. We call it puberty. Pretty awkward phase, but usually nothing horrific – at least not after you've had a couple of years to get over it," John said, shrugging.

"Ours is... more aggressive," Lerianna said, flushing although she didn't seem to notice it. "At least in certain areas. It's also a bit later in life; ours usually starts shortly before we turn thirty."

John fought back the urge to ask how old Lerianna was, a question he somehow always failed to ask his new creations. Something about asking how old they were immediately after they were "born" always sat wrong with him. Instead he remained silent until Lerianna continued.

"I spent the first ten years of my life learning how to function, like most children," Lerianna said, her voice low and somber. John was startled by the sudden shift from embarrassment to sadness, but he managed to remain silent as Lerianna trudged onward through her story. "By the time I was twelve, I had a few idols – my six favorite sisters and my four favorite brothers had given me a lot to live up to, and I saw the way they excelled in everything they pursued. Sports, academics, crafts, professions, even technological advancements – that was mostly Lica, she was always the smartest."

"Hang on, just a second, did you say six favorite sisters, and four favorite brothers?" John asked, sure he'd have spat out a drink if he had one.

"What? We had a small family," Lerianna said, shrugging. "For the first fifteen years of my life or so, everything was pretty great. But a little before my twentieth birthday, I started to realize what was really happening with our species, why there was such a major difference in the way the adults were acting versus us. Why I never had any adults I really looked up to, and hated most of them."

"Wait, did you hate them because of... puberty?" John said, trying to put together what felt like two very separate parts of the conversation. "And that's also the reason you don't like getting close to men?"

"More or less, yeah," Lerianna said, sighing. Something shifted in her posture, the way she was carrying herself. It still seemed sad, and yet... almost angry. "I thought at first it was a generational thing. Maybe my parents and their friends were just too old, too out of touch, too... antique to understand the kind of things that my siblings and my friends were capable of, the things we accomplished in our early years. It was why I was so close to my siblings, and why I hated my parents."

"You even hated your parents?" John asked, shocked at the bluntness of the statement.

"I mean, they were good enough people. Decent parents... sometimes," Lerianna said, sighing. "I just hated the way they lived their lives – them and all the other adults too. None of them had even the slightest interest in improving their lives, in getting better, doing greater things. The worst part was hearing them talk about their younger days, especially my parents... my mother was an amazing short-distance sprinter. She held the world records for the two, three, and five mile sprints, and she held high times in a lot of longer-distance events. My father was an engineer, and he'd been one of the leads on military contracts a half-dozen times before he finally retired.

"Then they got older and... they just gave up on all of it. Nothing mattered to them anymore. They worked easy jobs to pay the bills, they did the bare minimum parenting to get us kids set on our paths in life... and then they fucked. They fucked a lot. Barely even bothered hiding it from us – sometimes they barely had the decency to shut the door when they snuck off to another room, much less try to be quiet."

John remained silent, starting to see where this was going. Lerianna's eyes were a bit hazy, and he could tell that the story she was weaving now was bringing back some unpleasant memories. She didn't even notice as John stood up from his chair and walked over to her, silently walking up behind the reminiscing rabbit-girl.

"Then it started to happen to my siblings, one by one. It was like they completely changed as people. They all hit it at different times, different ages, but it was the same thing for all of them. They all started growing a little more rapidly, usually in a burst over three or four months, and the last changes to their bodies would wrap up just as the hormones hit. Even my siblings that were shy or asocial were suddenly out late at night, spending time with their coworkers, their best friends, meeting up with long-lost buddies they hadn't spoken to... and then fucking all of them. I watched all the people I looked up to for their skills and ambitions abandon all of them in the name of an easy, carefree, hedonistic lifestyle."

"But- hang on," John said, holding up a hand. "You're far from uneducated, and you don't seem shocked at the technology you see very often – even Tricia's drones only interested you for a few days. You mentioned engineering and global competitions for sports, so it seems like your culture and society were pretty well advanced. How did they get to that point if everyone gives up and just starts fucking away the rest of their lives?"

"I've asked myself the same question countless times," Lerianna said, sighing. "We shared our world with several other races, most of which did not share our overly-sexual late-blossoming, at least not to the same degree. Yet our race never ended up as sex slaves, domesticated pets, or simply wiped off the face of the planet in the early years by the others due to their focus. There was also never a time when I felt like any older member of our species failed to understand technology developed by another race – even when it was more advanced than what we had available to ourselves. After a period of adjustment, that new technology folded into our society almost seamlessly."

"Did you ever find your answers?"

"I did... though I can't say they helped me deal with what I was witnessing," Lerianna said, sighing. "My eldest sister, Tiyaka... I wanted to follow in her footsteps. I wanted to become an amazing athlete and warrior, someone who could stand in the face of any adversity. When she succumbed to the same calling for reproduction and mindless pleasure-seeking as our parents, I began to seek out answers on what **** could be so powerful, so all-consuming as to overpower the drive I'd seen in that woman. The answer was as simple as it was horrifying – our society made progress in any given field one generation at a time in short, decade-long bursts."

Lerianna's body was tense and her gaze was still distant. John didn't want to do anything too distracting for her, but he couldn't stand seeing the pain on Lerianna's face without at least trying to comfort her. Slowly, John reached up and gently ran his fingers through Lerianna's snow-white hair, gently lacing his fingers through the soft locks of his creation as she continued to speak. She didn't acknowledge his touch as he gently tugged and twirled her hair, nor did she reject his touch as she normally would have.

"It was basically pure luck and the evolutionary lottery that we lived as long as we did," Lerianna said, shaking her head sadly. "We were the first relatively smart species in our world. We didn't advance much beyond our base hormones for a long time, but we had a big advantage – our hormones didn't just drive our reproductive urges, they also pushed our bodies to their limit, even in the early days before we learned about mana and how to further enhance ourselves. Our sex drives would've driven a lesser race to extinction when they fell victim to predators and competitors while rutting themselves literally to ****. Somehow, our bodies were able to keep up with our drives... at least enough to get us past the point of sapience, and then into the earliest stages of technological advancement. From there, it was just a matter of how far we could go."

"One decade at a time? How do you mean that?" John asked curiously, wondering how Lerianna would react if he broke the spell of silence. She cast her gaze to him but only smiled softly as she watched John's fingers running through her long, ivory locks.

"Exactly as I said it. We have a few notable accomplishments in our history – our physical prowess, in both natural and mana-enhanced terms, has always been more or less on par with the other species of our world. Occasionally, we even made technological advancements... though it was usually by accident, or as a result of assisting with the research of other species when they caught up to us. But there was almost no-one of our species, not one person in all of our history, who had withstood the test of time.

"By thirty - or as late as thirty-five for a few late bloomers - all of our most talented, intelligent, or determined individuals gave up on their pursuits. They found someone – or several someones – they got along with, discovered the true depths of their perversions and depravities... then they threw their entire lives away to scrape together a meager living, just enough to keep themselves and however many children they pumped out comfortable. They settled for mediocrity and comfort, and whittled away the rest of their lives endlessly rutting away the time."

"So that's what you meant by hedonism," John noted, a bit surprised. His fingers continued to slowly twirl through Lerianna's hair, finding a rhythm all their own. "They really just gave up on everything? How did your species manage to advance?"

"Remember how you asked me why I was comfortable with technology and magic, even though our species is a pathetic excuse for an intelligent race? In time the other races of our own world achieved a balance with us – they would advance any given field of technology or science farther than we ever could, and in exchange, our hormonally-driven children would protect their more frail species in the early days, when our world was wild and untamed. Once we advanced enough to build cities and tame our wilds... I guess we just got lucky.

"Our youth were always fit and skilled enough to keep our independence, or win it back, whenever another faction got too aggressive and thought themselves as conquerors. Aside from that, peace mostly reigned out there. Eventually our societies became mixed and accepting enough that any conflict was geographical, rather than based on species. With the advent of that kind of civilization, we found a kind of... equilibrium with society. Our youth grew up, made their fortunes, found their passions... then abandoned them, used their stored wealth to set themselves up for life, and accepted lives of mediocrity and ease in exchange for never-ending sexual gratification."

John paused for a moment. His fingers shifted in their efforts as his mind turned over what Lerianna had just explained. When they resumed, they moved with a purpose – John began to separate Lerianna's lengthy hair into sections, slowly weaving them together.

"You sound really knowledgeable about all of this," John said as he managed to get his hands into a rhythm smooth enough that he could focus on the conversation again.

"Do I normally sound ignorant?" Lerianna asked, her voice halfway annoyed.

"No, it's just... this seems like something you've put a lot of time and thought into, sure, but also a lot of research," John said honestly. "Like, real historical study."

"Sociology, Psychology, Evolutionary Biology, Anthropology, Geopolitical Science, and about a half-dozen assorted history degrees," Lerianna listed off, in a surprisingly practiced manner.

"And those were... the things you were interested in?"

"More than interested," Lerianna continued, chuckling. "Those were my master’s degrees."

"Y-you have..." John paused to re-count the terms he'd just heard, "somewhere 'about' eleven master’s degrees?!"

"Actually, a couple of the history degrees overlapped, so it was really only the coursework for about nine masters," Lerianna said casually, as if the fact some of her credits could be shared somehow negated the massive amount of work she had put in. "I considered going for doctorates, but it seemed excessive."

"That's... that's a lot of work. I didn't realize how much time you spent studying. You really wanted to understand your species, didn't you?"

"I did... at first," Lerianna whispered. "I started advanced schooling fairly early thanks to constantly trying to catch up to my older siblings and be less like my parents. I secured enough scholarships that with my parents' aid I could dedicate myself to studying... for a while. I took double classloads and buried myself in my studies – it was the most satisfying thing that I'd ever done. By the time I was thirty I had completed six of those degrees, and was well on my way to a seventh. That was... that was the year I finally felt my hormones beginning to change."

Lerianna grunted, low in her throat.

"It was like nothing I'd ever imagined. I went from hating my parents and the other adults of my race to wanting nothing more than to be like them, all in a single night, and I despised myself for it. Merely reading the words on a page became a task fit for the divine – my body cried out for release at every hour of the day. My study schedule and drive for knowledge had left me without much of a social life, but I quickly found that was no reprieve. When I was alone in my dorm room, random men and women I passed in the hallways became fixations – celebrities and fictional characters became obsessions. It didn't matter how real or imagined a relationship was to my hormones – any target of lust was enough to drive me into a frenzy."

"But you managed to resist?" John said, more of a statement than a question. "It sounds like you kept going to school in spite of it."

"I did... for a time," Lerianna said, almost an admission of failure. "It was all I really knew how to do back then. I **** my desires down as best as I could, but... it took its toll, in time. I went from a double schedule to a normal schedule, finished two more degrees, began a third, and then went part-time. I thought that reducing my schedule further would give me the time to... attend to my desires, but it only gave me more free time to think about the others I knew. That cute girl in my Chemistry classes, the busty professor teaching Civics and Political History..."

Lerianna tensed a little, and John's hands paused for a moment as the rabbit-girl's whole body seemed to shift uncomfortably. After a moment she released a sigh and glanced up at him, her eyes filled with longing. John slowly resumed his braiding and Lerianna visibly relaxed at the feeling of his fingers running through her hair.

"...the point being, studying was simultaneously too difficult to focus on and yet not tiring enough to quell my new desires. I finished up what I could of my studies, but eventually I had **** but to abandon academia. I was spending more time fantasizing about the cute students in class than I was advancing my knowledge any further. I still wanted to achieve greatness, though... and my newly hormonal body gave me plenty of motivation to regularly tire myself out. I ended up pursuing an athletic career, a bodybuilding career, even a military career... all at the same time, eventually. I suppose I was always an overperformer. Making sure that I spent every waking moment pushed to the point of exhaustion... it was the only way I knew to deal with my urges."

"So all this is why you're always acting so shy and embarrassed whenever you're around anything sexual?" John asked, quirking an eyebrow. The rabbit-girl didn't even like being around displays of affection; he'd caught her averting her eyes and showing visible annoyance multiple times when John kissed one of his lovers goodbye, or when the Nekos showered him with their affectionate kisses and licks. "You hate it now?"

"I... I don't hate it," Lerianna mumbled. "I wish I did sometimes, but... I just hate how it made my family act. I'm not a fool. I saw plenty of loving, caring relationships – many sexual – that never became as lazy and hedonistic as those of my species. You and the others, you all manage to find time to train, to study, to build, to evolve, to improve... and still find comfort in each other's embrace without losing yourselves to the madness of pleasure. I don't hate sex, I'm... I..."

Lerianna paused for a long moment. She inhaled, a long and shuddering thing that shook her to her core.

"I'm... I'm scared of it. Terrified, honestly."

The words were spoken quietly, but with a severity that transcended volume. Lerianna tensed every muscle in her highly trained body, turning her head so that she could look at John.

"If it wasn't for that spell, or technique, or whatever it is you just did to me... even you touching my hair like this would be driving me crazy. It's still a little uncomfortable, but at least now it's manageable."

"Sorry, I thought this would help comfort you. The Nekos seem to particularly love it," John said. "Should I stop?"

"N-no," Lerianna said, blushing slightly as she turned away again. "I appreciate what you've done... no one has ever been able to develop a cure for our condition. I wish I could go back to my people and-"

"It's not exactly a cure," John interrupted. "You know that ability I use when we train that lets me transfer strength between people? How I can make one of us weaker and another one stronger in exchange? Yeah... it works with Libido too."

"So this is only temporary?" Lerianna said, sounding somewhat frustrated but mostly resigned.

"Afraid so," John warned. "It'll wear off in under an hour, or when I go too far away from you."

"Then could we spend a little more time together?" Lerianna asked, a note of desperation to her voice. "It's been a long time since I was able to focus this well."

"Sure, I'm just glad to be able to be around you again without you kicking me into a wall," John said, grinning wryly.

"I... I apologize. I was afraid in the state that I was in, the slightest touch and I'd have lost control," Lerianna admitted. "B-but you still shouldn't just feel like because you have this skill you can go around touching me without my permission!"

"Of course, of course," John said, stepping back from Lerianna and withdrawing his hands from her head.

"N-not that, you can keep doing that," Lerianna mumbled quietly.

"But I'm done."

"Done? Done with what?" Lerianna asked, quirking an eyebrow.

"Done with- oh, right, you don't have a mirror in here. Hang on, one sec..." John mumbled, bringing up his Crafting menu. He didn't happen to have any glass on him, but a few taps scrapped some armor and converted it into some highly polished, highly reflective metal – good enough for a hand mirror, which he promptly handed to Lerianna.

"Oh? You... braided it?" Lerianna noted, staring at the lengthy weaving job that John had done, folding all of her long, ivory hair into a delicate braid, secured at the end with a tie he'd slipped from his inventory without her even noticing.

"You always complain about your hair getting in the way during particularly vigorous fights, and how much you hate wearing headbands. I thought this would keep some of the loose strands out of the way," John explained, watching as Lerianna examined his handiwork. "It's not exactly professional, but I think it looks okay, and it should hold up... well, at least until your next shower."

"I... th-that was very thoughtful, but don't think just because you did something nice for me, I'm going to do all the work for you in our next training session!"

John just laughed. "I wouldn't dream of it. Come on, Lerianna, let's go."

"Go? Are we training right now?" Lerianna asked, sounding surprised. "I thought everyone was asleep."

"They are, mostly. But I was thinking about how the Nekos like having their hair played with too, and I think I know six rambunctious rascals who happen to love being awake long after everyone else has fallen asleep, just like you," John said, grinning.