Nympholympics 8 – Morning Banter and Fluff

John awoke on the couch.

Ehtra was draped over him, her tall and sticky form comfortable on his chest like a particularly heavy dog. This did make it a little hard to breathe, but he did not look the gift horse in the mouth. The First of Hatred was passed out on top of him, her mind entering a sleep-like state of shutdown. Unlike humans, Artificial Spirits did not need sleep nor did they dream. Metracanas were no exception to this. However, they could still choose to ‘shut down’ for a time to conserve energy or to give their minds some rest.

John combed through her hair. It was always decoratively messy and being an entity made from metal and magic had the advantage of keeping it that way even after a wild night. His touch made the dark-skinned woman gently shift, her head finding a nicer rest between his pectorals. He continued to administer the rhythmic trailing of his fingers through her silvery-white tresses. She purred like a particularly heavy cat.

‘Which one is it?’ he asked himself, then dispensed with the question altogether. He was feeling weird and he quickly identified it as born from a lack of sleep. He did not suffer that feeling often… then again, he probably suffered it more regularly than many other people. His superhuman status allowed him to stay up for ungodly hours and he pushed that with frequency. During the Aztec expedition, he had been awake for several days straight. ‘It occurs to me that I haven’t had to stay overnight in the office since Ehtra took on the job as secretary.’

The revelation was an interesting one. It meant that Beatrice had not managed his schedule in the same way. Incompetence could not be assumed on part of the passive maid, so it was more likely a lack of care. Beatrice was a machine that tick-tocked away like a Swiss watch. She perhaps just hadn’t considered the occasional overtime an issue.

‘Well, whatever it is, I am happy to be right here, right now,’ John thought and blinked. His lids felt heavy, but not heavy enough to stay shut. His hand travelled down to Ehtra’s back. He liked studying the shape of it with his fingers. The bump of her shoulder blades interrupted a tantalizingly smooth journey over the chocolate landscape. Under the flawless skin, the fibres of lax muscles, copied from standard human physique, provided a pleasant level of firmness.

He reached the furrow of her spine. His fingers bumped down the vertebrae. He quietly counted them, each a lovable part of his grey angel. Eventually, his exploration ended. His hands were flat on her back. The thumb drew little circles. He enjoyed the tactile confirmation that she was there in every moment, in every breath.

His eyes wandered to the nearby table. An empty glass on it spoke to a memory. He vaguely recalled Ehtra putting it into his hands with one of her usual sour remarks. He had drunk it quickly, a glass of water to round out an evening, then pulled the grey angel into his arms to sleep with her, the non-sexual way.

He turned his mind to earlier memories of the evening. Specifically, it was a bit hard to recall the time between the spars and that glass of water. Hard, but not impossible. A thread weaved through his memory of his maids always providing him with a fresh drink before he could really ask for one. Evidently, they had measured his **** level with such perfection that he was always between tipsy and drunk, without getting truly wasted.

‘Those women are too good for me,’ he thought. He recalled the rest of the night. Nothing of particular importance had happened. Drunken talks about principles, goals and how to achieve them. Debates over whether oral or anal was second place after regular sex. Arm wrestling, Delicia and Eliana getting used as cumdumps, drinks, laughs, and all the usual. John had met powerful men and women that night, but ultimately these relationships were unlikely to have an impact. He already had friends in higher places.

Ehtra stirred a little more than before. He was still rubbing her back, still combing her hair with his fingers, when her lids opened up. Green eyes stared up into his. “Morning…” she muttered, offering him a loving smile.

“Good morning,” he answered in kind. He would have kissed her, but that would have demanded she move her head up and she seemed too comfortable on his chest.

The First of Hatred’s smile dropped a little bit. A blush tinged her dark skin red. Her mind reached to be fully awake, yet she remained right where she was. “Am I not heavy?” she asked.

“You’re perfect,” John answered, continuing to feel her silky hair and skin.

Sour as Ehtra so often was, she was every bit as capable of being sweet as Momo and other women of abrasive character in his harem. She wiggled to the side, shifting her weight off from the centre of his chest and more to his shoulder. A much more pleasant way for him to be, he had to admit. “You can say when I am heavy,” she grumbled.

“But you moved yourself, because you’re perfect.”

“I’m a basic bitch,” Ehtra mumbled. “I like tall guys with money and power…”

“And? I like cute women with submissive streaks. We all have our base desires.” Her new position allowed him to press a kiss on her forehead. “You chose this tall guy with money and power and I think you are perfect for it.”

“That word should mean so little out of your mouth… yet I love you all the same,” Ehtra sighed dreamily. “Thank you for letting me be part of this.”

“Thank you for being part of it,” he told her in equal measure.

“Stop being so frustratingly even, Master creature.” She flicked the downside of his chin. “I am attempting to compliment you.”

“You are complimenting me with every moment you remain in my arms.”

Ehtra rolled her green eyes. Her wings manifested with a fluttering sound. Grey feathers, soft as a pillow, formed a blanket over them. Beneath it, she stretched up to him. “Then I shall compliment you,” she spoke and pressed her dark lips on his.

John responded to the advances of her tongue in equal measure. He did not attempt to dominate this kiss. This was a true kiss, made without arousal and yet filled with the passion of love. He tasted her lips, biting the thicker, lower one teasingly. Ehtra always had a note of cinnamon to her, deliciously sweet.

A taste that soon mixed with the scent of pancakes and sourdough bread.

The scent reminded John that he had not eaten anything proper since fishing a sausage from Salamander’s grill. Ehtra’s lips were satiating for the soul. Alas, his body also had its needs. Acknowledging this, the First of Hatred disentangled from him.

To look into the kitchen, all they had to do was raise their heads. As was John’s preferred style of housing, the large living room and the kitchen were separated only by a row of kitchen counters. Behind them, by the stove, a goblin Delicia, currently without her collar, stood on a stool, watching the pancakes while Aclysia chopped up a steady supply of bell peppers to be tossed into it.

John stretched after Ehtra was off him. He felt strangely naked without her covering him. He also felt strangely not aroused. ‘Guess it’s just a wholesome morning,’ he thought and moved over to the table.

Several of his women had passed out on the cushioned furniture of the living room. Most had made it to the bedroom, having retired over the course of the evening rather than lasting right up until the very end.

The sound of one of the showers deeper in the mansion was the only sign that someone else was up. John caught Salamander opening an eye for a moment, before deciding remaining cuddled up to Siena was the more enticing prospect.

“Good morning, Master,” Aclysia greeted him.

“Hope you brought big hunger, stud,” Delicia added. “We’ll have an overabundance of food.”

“I did,” he assured. “One of the drawbacks of being way less skinny is that I feel like I eat three times as much.”

“Your food intake has increased by roughly 33% since records began,” Aclysia responded.

“Which is a lot, considering that you used to eat absolute garbage,” Delicia stated. “Frozen pizza twice a day?”

John snorted at her criticizing tone and the memory. It was so far back now, the time back in Springfield, with only him and Aclysia in his home, with Rave staying over more often than not. It had been a short and simple time, between his mother leaving him to live on his own and the day he had attempted to save Thana from the base of the Bloodfallen. He had been a different person back then, more naïve and untampered in his enthusiasm by real experience and wielding powers barely above the average Abyssal.

In a joyous yet melancholic mood, he sat down. “It’s strange to think back to those times,” he said. “I struggled with people below level 100 then. My power was so much less rounded, my kit hadn’t been given time to mature… I felt like I was so big and yet I was scarcely anything and yet I was not small either….” The image of Victoria appeared before his mind’s eye. He didn’t think about the Slavic sniper often. She had joined Collide under pretenses, gotten found out quickly, but not before turning the Gamer’s life for the worse. Nowadays, the idea that someone could stroll into his life, become part of it, and then push it for the worse seemed almost laughable.

“We outgrew our humble origins,” Aclysia stated.

“That is a way to put it… do you miss it sometimes?” he asked.

“Do I miss what?”

“Being limited… more limited,” he clarified and looked at the ceiling. A mild headache hinted at how well the distribution of drinks had worked at preventing a much worse hangover. “Waking up at 8 and going to sleep at midnight. Grinding away at each individual level. Chasing a singular Skill Evolution Point because it makes the difference between us being doomed or us having a fighting chance. A singular body in a singular house with only the goal we set for ourselves for the day.”

Aclysia remained quiet for several seconds. “I do miss it… but I would not forsake what we have for it. I enjoy the larger house. I enjoy the smile on your face when you change the world. I enjoy the security of being above the Abyss.” She handed another delivery of bell peppers over to Delicia. “Above all, I enjoy us all being together. With limitations would come the surrender of many things we have, John.”

“I know,” the Gamer said.

“Beyond that, I believe that even this is transitory. There will come the day when you can retire from politics and we will live a simpler life again. We will wake up at 8, go to bed at midnight, and enjoy whatever mansion you decide we shall live in.”

“That does sound nice.” John imagined such a future. It felt terribly far away, but it did not have to be. The world could change a lot in a few years and Fusion was already mostly self-sufficient. The problem the country would face right now was not one of administration but that his might was necessary to guarantee they weren’t rolled over by another major power. He could project that threat from anywhere. “Maybe I will have my ambitions change after I have painted the map as far as I want…”

“How much further is that anyway?” Delicia asked with a squeak.

“A splendid question,” John answered. “After the Nympholympics, Fusion will integrate the Gobbo and Catto Nations. The former tributaries of the Mandate of Heaven will join us soon thereafter. With the exception of some smaller guilds and the Grim Reaper’s territories, we will effectively have finished up the American project… after that, there is the matter of Japan… that’s about it.” He scratched the back of his head. “That’s the ambition I had territorially… maybe I’ll retire from politics afterwards for a limited time and concentrate more on grinding again. A proper test run of what the nation will do without me.”

“Time to hold elections to replace you at that time, then?” Delicia asked.

“…Yes,” John said after a short consideration. Giving his nation project away to a person he potentially did not know was scary, but that was the viewpoint of continuing to see it as his project. He wanted the people to be the sovereign and that meant Fusion was theirs. Like a father releasing his child to let it take steps on their own, so too did he have to let the nation walk on its own if he wanted it to be more than his personal domain.

The alternative was to go back on his goal of making it a republic and he still hoped that he would prove common expectations on the matter wrong.

“Hearing some **** there,” Delicia teased him.

“I think everyone will know that my hand will hover above it all to take hold again if it goes tits up,” John put it bluntly, “and I would… which makes me introspective of the reality of power.” He shrugged. “But that’s a reality I was already aware of. Can I get cheese on those pancakes?”

“Not on this one,” Delicia told him. “If I add cheese to it now, it’ll be black at the bottom by the time it’s molten.”

“Bah, all this babbling cost me cheese… why do I ever talk about politics,” John grumbled. Then he was stabbed in the ribs by Ehtra’s index finger. “Why?”

“It looked fun,” she answered and stabbed him again. He cringed away from her, but she kept teasing him.

“You’re playing with fire,” he warned her.

“I am faster than you, arrogant creature.”

“You know I have access to your mana flow slider, right?”

“You would diminish me as a punishment as you would Enki?” Ehtra gave him a scornful glare.

“…I would not,” John confessed.

“…I would not…” Ehtra repeated the words to herself, tasting the truth in them, before smirking like only a lover in a bratty mood could smirk and stabbing him again. This time, he smacked her hand aside.

It was nice to be normal sometimes.