Serious Talks

I wake up, yawning softly. I blink my eyes awake and look across at Mia to see her wide awake, staring back at me. “Good morning beautiful.” She whispers, kissing me on the forehead. “This is literally the best way to wake up.” I whisper back, smiling sleepily. “This beats waking up to a blowjob?” She asks with a raised eyebrow. “Well…maybe about equal.” I reply after thinking for a moment, and she giggles. “Naughty girl.” She whispers. “Guilty as charged.” I breathe, kissing her gently. Mia kisses me back happily and I pull her closer towards me.

A round of morning sex later, we continue to lay in bed for a few minutes. Mia traces her fingers over my body. Her gentle touch feels amazing. Just another part of having an amazing girlfriend that I’m thoroughly enjoying. For my part, I can’t keep my eyes off her face. Her simple beauty leaves me entranced, the way her blue eyes sparkle with joy, her smile radiating warmth and care for me.

“We’re skipping school today?” I ask. “Do you even have to ask at this point?” Mia giggles. I snort. “Look I want to as well, but are we really sure that it’s a good idea?” I point out. She looks up at me, a contemplative expression crossing over her face. “I suppose we should probably talk about what we really want to do for the immediate future.” She admits, and my heart drops slightly.

Mia seems to notice that something is off, and is quick to reassure me. “Honey don’t worry, I don’t mean that we need to talk about our relationship or anything bad. I just mean that it’s probably good to have something to work towards.” She elaborates. My face reddens slightly. “I knew that.” I reply, my tone not fooling her for a moment.

She puts her fingers under my chin and gently lifts my head to look her in the eyes. “I’m not going anywhere. You saw my relationship score. I love you too much to change my mind like the flick of a switch. I can’t promise that we’ll always be together, but I can promise that I’ll do my damned best to make this as happy, healthy and loving of a relationship as I can.” Mia promises. I smile at her gratefully. “And I’ll do the same. We’ll work through any issues we have, together. I love you Mia.” I affirm, kissing her gently. “I love you too Gemma.” She asserts, taking my hand in hers and squeezing it gently.

My brief internal crisis dealt with, we can now focus on what the original topic was supposed to be. “I guess the starting point would be to ask what you’d like to do?” I ask Mia. She thinks for a moment before answering. “I’m not too sure. I’ve always wanted to be able to change things in Sydney and make it a safer place, but I’ve never been able to.”

“I’m not personally powerful enough to be able to do that. With you around, that’s a little different. Neither of us are strong enough to be able to beat all of the gangs around Sydney, even if we can beat the majority.” She continues. “Wait, how do you know that?” I interrupt her to ask. Mia sighs. “I guess it’s time I told you about Mathias.”

“Mathias Vaughn is the leader of a guild called ‘Soul Seekers’. He’s the biggest guy around Sydney. You wouldn’t know it, most of the gangs around don’t even know his name. He’s not exactly the ruler, but he’s the one with all the power. If he wanted to, he could probably steamroll most other guilds easily and proclaim himself King or something. But, he doesn’t. I don’t know why. What I do know is that anybody who is a challenge to his power over the area, he dispatches ruthlessly. You mentioned a while ago that somebody from one of the gangs let slip that there was a price on your head.” She says, and I nod.

“It’s not him, because there’d be more powerful people after you if it was. But if we get on his radar, he won’t hesitate to set more people after us. So far we’ve been dealing with fairly small fish, all things considered. Mathias is the big fish.” Mia pauses and takes a deep breath.

“The reason I know all of this is because my family has an agreement with Mathias personally. We don’t mess with him and he doesn’t mess with us. He spreads the word that we aren’t to be touched, and we get immunity from whatever shenanigans he’s pulling in exchange for being completely neutral.”

“That’s why my family staying neutral is so important. If we take a side - if I get into a proper gang fight - my family loses that neutrality and we lose all protection from Mathias. We can only live this way, thanks to him keeping his end of the family deal.” She explains. I stay silent for a few moments, taking in all of the new information.

“So in order to make Sydney a safe place, he’s the guy we have to fight?” I ask. Mia shakes her head. “It’s not as simple as that. Mathias has a huge variety of alliances and people under his thumb. If this is our goal, then we not only have to contend with him, we have to contend with his allies too. We’d need to face a small army.” She says.

I take a deep breath and exhale slowly. “Well we’re going to need all the power and help we can get.” I reply. Mia sits up and looks at me. “Is this really what we’re going to do?” She asks. I nod slowly. “It’s a big goal, yes. I also think it’s an important one. I do not want to sit by and let be this lawless society where gangs run rampant and its kill or be killed. Not when I - we - might have the power to stop it.” I affirm.

Mia exhales in turn. “We’re gonna need a strong guild.” She says. I nod at that. “And we’re gonna need to train a lot.” I reply. “What’s our first step then?” She asks. I think for a moment, considering all the options. “You said that right now, we aren’t strong enough. I say we do our best to stay off of Mathias’ radar for the moment.”

“In the meantime, we need to get stronger and get more people into our guild. I’d like to get to about level 50. It’s an arbitrary goal but it gives us an endpoint to where we can start poking the bear so to speak, to get a look at what we’re up against.” Mia nods.

“I’ve been talking to that girl Paige, the Earth elementalist that we saw at the abyss auction outpost?” She says. I nod, laughing at the memory. “I can’t believe you just went up and talked to her like you’d known her for years. Poor girl looked traumatised.” She giggles at that. “After she got over the shock of the whole thing, she was quite a sweetheart. She’s quite shy and keeps to herself, but I think I could get her to join us.” She says.

“Good. Counting Skylar and Ivy, that’s 5 people.” I sigh. “That’s probably not enough. Any others?” “What about Olivia? We could try to convince her to join and help us.” Mia suggests. “Maybe. She’s intimidating but she did say that she’d be willing to consider at a later point. Oh! The other person there is, is that lady Belle. She is freaking terrifying, but given how staunch she seems to be to her principles of what’s right, she might help us.” I reply.

“That’d be amazing if we could have the both of them on our side.” She says. “And also unlikely right now. It’s gonna take some time for us to even have a chance at that.” I say, sighing. “Hey, if anybody can achieve miracles, it’s us. Don’t forget, you’re little miss bullshit.” She says, and I giggle. “That is true. Well in any case, the first step is to get stronger.”

“What about school?” She asks as the thought strikes her. “Hmm, let me think.” I say, contemplating the whole thing for a minute. I decide to verbalise my thought process. “Previously I didn’t want to give up studying and working on my degree because I wasn’t sure how sustainable this whole thing could be.”

“Currently, I have $125,000 in my inventory. I can easily afford to pay my own rent for ages now without lifting a finger, even though I don’t much go back there at this point.” “I wanna see your place sometime.” Mia interrupts and I smile. “It’s nothing fancy. I like it here much better.”

“Anyway, grinding out money this way is clearly sustainable. If Gaia decided to cap my powers here and that I’ve already reached max level or something, I’d still easily be able to grind enough to live a nice life in the mundane world. As it stands, I don’t need a degree or to get a job at all.”

“This world is dangerous as hell. It’s a flawed and lawless place, but it’s one that I am more than happy to have as the main focus of my life. I don’t know if I’ll call up and quit my degree yet, the campus might still be a good place to look around and keep our ear to the ground about gangs around. For now, I say let’s pretty much forget about studying and focus on getting stronger so we can create a safer place around here.”

Mia smiles at me affectionately. “You do ramble on a bit, you know that right? You could have said the same thing in about a quarter of the words.” She teases. My face reddens slightly. “Shut up! I like articulating myself properly. People can misunderstand you if you don’t make yourself clear!”

“Do you have any idea how autistic you sounded just now?” She says, and that catches me off guard. “W-what?” I ask, stuttering slightly in confusion. Mia gives me a funny look. “Um…I thought it was obvious? You easily fit a lot of the traits of autism. You don’t fit the same traits that are understood by the mainstream, but you have a lot of the lesser known traits.”

I shake my head in confusion. “Uh…um…how?” I manage to ask. “Oh honey, your parents really didn’t teach you awareness of any of this stuff, did they?” Mia consoles me warmly. She puts her arm around me and pulls me in closer. I hug her back, still a little bit in shock from what she’s just said. “Look, we’ll talk about this later, okay?” She coos, stroking my hair. “It seems like you need some time to process this.”

I nod gently against her chest, a part of me wondering how exactly the conversation switched topics so quickly. Is that part of it? Bouncing between ideas so quickly? “You should know then that I have ADHD, which has a lot of similar symptoms. It’s probably part of why we clicked so well.” Mia says. “Oh…thanks for telling me…” I reply, still not sure how to react.

She releases me and looks back into my eyes. “Oh, you poor thing!” She says without a hint of sarcasm in her voice. It seems like her carer mode is fully switched on. “Come downstairs and I’ll make us both breakfast. We’re gonna cuddle with Ivy for a bit too. She might not fully understand intimacy, but she does like cuddles with us.” Mia orders.

I giggle at her assertiveness. “There we go, that’s the lovely Gem I want to see! Come on honey, let’s go downstairs and have some breakfast.” She encourages, already getting up. My eyes are immediately glued to her naked form. She notices and chuckles. “Well, I suppose we do need a shower.” Mia invites.