A Troubled Regrouping

The butler had been excused from the Vault... and the rest of John’s actions followed as he had been planning them for almost a day.

Small discs of gray rapidly winked over John’s irises as he remotely navigated the known parts of the Brighton Manor. His allies had been concentrated into the front courtyard and foyer as their battleground; he rescued them in short order. With one hand he reached into small portals to teleport Rave and Travolta out of their situations; his other worked his inventory, moving the contents of his backpack out and shoving a portion of his cash in. His inventory swelled as loose items filled it; the moment Rave and Travolta were safe, he called a sketchbook and pen and hastily scrambled Ophelia’s name and address on there, along with “please hide my mom” scrawled in pen. Tearing and rolling the sheet in one fluid motion, he finished it with the only note to his mother bearing his name.

It was a gamble, and one John hesitated to commit to even as his roaming portal-eyes found exactly one bedroom door on the second floor still flanked by guards. He checked outside through the window and confirmed it: his mother was therein, on the bed and hugging her knees. He had to get her out... and the Order would probably lock down every road leading out of Springfield, the airport, and the trains to make sure that she, or anyone else John associated with, couldn’t leave the city. They had no other family in this place, and John had no one else to trust. Ophelia took his gold; would she take his money? Could she be relied on to protect his mother, at least until he could find her again?

John couldn’t afford to hesitate; his mother wasn’t some savvy rogue, and the Order would find her in minutes without guidance, or so the Gamer believed. He shoved the backpack through the portal; his fingers briefly brushed hers. It was all the contact he had time to have, for now. She was gone the next minute, whisked away to an alley near Ophelia’s apartment. It was in the retired soldier’s hands, now.

John reassessed the Vault and its contents, now with Collide and Tricia present... and only now did he notice Travolta wasn’t moving on his own.

Travolta Meyer
Level 43 Martial Artist
<Collide>
HP -71/5,491
MP 900/900
Stats: Str 103 Agi 59 End 104 Int 18 Wis 10 Cha 20 Lib 13
Status Effects: Dying, Minor Withdrawal [Addiction: Blood of Thana]
Qualities: None
The founder and leader of Collide; a headstrong warrior with formidable, arguably superhuman strength. A consumer of cursed blood, a meddling mage recently and slowly committed sorcerous dialysis, removing the cursed blood to weaken Travolta as he became stronger in the Game. The cleansing was nearly complete.
Relationship: +2

He tapped heals into Travolta until the bulky stranger stirred. Satisfied, John then healed Alysha to full.

Heal Monster is now level 13! Heal Monster mana-to-health efficiency improved from 25% to 20%!

John let his tension ease now that no one was dying or hideously crippled. The dark elf stood; her armor was cracked and dented on almost every surface, yet she remained defiant before him even now. He looked down to Alysha’s flat belly, but said nothing as he moved on to the rest. Lily, now fully healed, somehow managed to fall into a loudly-snoring slumber; Greenpaw, alert and hesitant, looked between John and Tricia for guidance; Fairy, the first to be healed, now hovered over the hoard of magical items, gold, and the odd bits of what remained of Reginald's carry-along armory.

John started to dismiss each summon—save Durr and the humans—to his temple. Durr, Rosa: focus on protecting and backing up Galley. Let her know we’ll regroup shortly. John paused a moment The order to not kill is still standing.

<A frustrating restraint,> Durr alone replied, <but I must accept.>

With quick glances John confirmed the impressive stats of his rescuers.

Jane Hollmey
Level 34 Chosen
<Collide>
HP 990/2,190
MP 2,098/2,098
Stats: Str 50 Agi 49 End 42 Int 49 Wis 54 Cha 39 Lib 30
Status Effects: None
Qualities: Chosen Soul (Light), Dreambreath, Lightbearer
Member of Collide with family ties to the Abyss Auction. She comes from a line of those chosen to wield the Innate Light, a potent and malleable energy **** that she is able to enhance and cast. As such a wielder, she is also gifted with the ability to rapidly regenerate mana simply by breathing. Normally resolved to just live and let live while having fun, she's currently eager to step up Collide's game and finally make a name for herself.
Relationship: +38

But where Travolta and Rave raised some interesting questions, Tricia...

Tricia Gorbachev
Level 34 Invoker of the First Truth
<Gorbachev Exile>
HP 1,328 / 1,590
MP 2,245 / 3,980
Stats: Str 19 Agi 18 End 24 Int 124 Wis 20 Cha 26 Lib 28
Status Effects: Calm of the First Truth
Qualities: Gorbachev, Eye of the First Truth
The troubled daughter of two unknowing Gorbachev descendants, she was once the gifted, but cursed, child of the Gorbachev Opekuny. She had denied herself using technology she developed with her prodigious intellect; that changed when the Gamer brought a rapid onset of her emotional and social development, although she is still troubled in both arenas. She now possesses all of her Eyes and has all but mastered calling upon them with a combination of leveling up and combat training normally unheard of among her kind.
Relationship: +91

Calm of the First Truth: this invoker has mastered her Eyes but not her heart, leaving her ****. The First Truth consumes and stores her excess emotion. Status: 94.301%.

Eye of the First Truth: unique quality for Gorbachevs. The permanently manifested Eye of the First Truth, which slumbers. Upon being filled with the excess of the Invoker's soul, the Eye shall well and truly open.

What the fuck is all that...? Is this because she leveled up, or because she had to spend 90 days in- wait, forget that, why did her relationship score get so low?! John didn’t have time to wonder: he had his plan, and he needed to execute it. “Guys, I need to make a stop in Ireland, then inside my own head, and then I’ll be right back to take care of things here.” The room stared back at him. Greenpaw suddenly phased away, dismissed to the temple.

Fairy, the last to be dismissed, half-hissed, half-yelled her dissent. “What do you mean, back? You’re getting the fuck out of here, you spoiled testicle, or-”

Fairy has been dismissed.

Only Lily and the humans remained, and the former now groped the vault door’s edge as she tried to cuddle it in her sleep. “Oh, Mastur… I’m still a vurginn-aaaah...” How she could sleep through this was anyone’s guess.

Tricia took a step towards John. Her regular eyes searched John’s, and her mouth hung open to speak... but John, with a smile, saw only a long-awaited kiss. He moved in to hug her, held her stiffening body, and pressed his lips to hers. The blonde was shocked... and then hugged him back.

Rave stared at the Gamer’s back, and Tricia’s gloved hands, with a frustrated sigh. Travolta drank the last potion in his gear with a grimace.

Travolta uses Maximized Enlarged Healing Potion IX+ Alpha Nu, healing 4,910HP!

The Eye of the First Truth consumes Tricia's excess emotion. Status: 94.452%.

John broke his kiss and passed his hand through Tricia’s hair. Her relationship score went up five points; to him, it was a sign that they had lost time to make up, and then all would be well. He couldn’t identify the tension in her body. “I promise we’ll take some time together... once I take care of the Order.”

Tricia continued to hang on some unspoken word... and continued to not speak it when her husband vanished from her arms. Stunned, the Gorbachev looked to Rave for some guidance.

The punk shook her head. “Be quicker, next time; he needs to hear it from you.”

A few minutes later, in the quiet town of Mullingar in Ireland...

"Hope it's not too tepid, dear? We'll be out of salt for another day or so," half-apologized, half-complained Aileen, mother and caretaker to her only and most **** daughter.

Regan happily closed her mouth around the spoon as her mother brought it near. I wish Mum wouldn't complain about Daddy like that... oh... Regan couldn't turn her head to look at her father, but she was sure he was giving his wife a proper stink-eye from his end of the table. The three were in the dining room, a rustic wooden and stone affair with all the picture frames, colorful cloths, and queer little baubles the woman of the house collected and put on display on the walls and counters.

The family sat and ate dinner together as they often did: with all the window shutters down and with Regan's head propped on the kitchen pillow. That pillow, handmade by her mother, had little pillow railings to keep her head from tipping or moving while unattended; such pillows occupied various corners of the house, justified to any unknowing guests as perches for the cat. The O'Sullivans hadn't had a cat in seven years, but none of their visitors needed to know that.

"Mmmm! Not at all Mum, it's wonderful, really!" Regan hoped her mother caught on to her wish with her pleading pink-eyes. She arched her eyebrows in support of this wish. Her mother was too busy glaring at the breadwinner.

Like her hair, Regan’s brows had remained largely untrimmed and longer than was fashionable. Her black locks on her head spilled out and over the edge of the kitchen table behind her, though Regan had no reason to fidget or worry about hair that wasn't in the way of her eyes. Long hair also meant less unreachable itches, one of the many little things her and her family had to come to terms with after the kidnappers took her body.

Regan’s thoughts drifted to her body as she felt movement on the bed upon which she sat. Something happened to the odd, steel underwear she had worn for years now... but Regan only grew alarmed and wide-eyed as she felt hands shoving her down and quickly sweeping her underwear off while she laid.

Aileen knew her daughter well enough to ask, "What's wrong, sweetie?"

"Someone's... someone's... uhh..." Who's taking off my panties?! What are they going to do with-?! Regan suddenly felt a body press upon hers as she tried to sit up from her bed. Regan’s head panicked with a yelp-

… and vanished. Standing at the edge of the table, where nothing but Regan’s hanging hair had once been, was now an oddly-armored man with messy black hair and a fairly passive expression.

Aileen stared at the pillow where her daughter was. Jack, her husband, slowly looked up from the paper to the man.

"I'm... wow, I'm really in Ireland," John muttered as his minimap updated.

Both civilians began to holler as their minds tried to make sense of what had happened. The Gamer ignored them and instead tried to reach out to the dullahan. Regan, can you hear me?

<Where am I?! What is- my- that's my body! I'm- that's me! That's ME! I'm naked, but that's- I’m holding me!>

So you’re holding your head, right?

<What- who are- yes, I am- who are you?!>

We’ll talk later.

"Wh-where is our daughter," the furious man bellowed as he smashed his beer into a weapon, "tell me you demon son of a bitch-?!"

"Right here," John replied before blinking back out of existence... and being replaced by Regan.

All of Regan: naked as the day she was born, her body an almost gray pale at odds with her occasionally sunbathed face, and her shocked and crying face cradled in her own bosom.

The whole O'Sullivan family fell into hysterics, then crying, then tears of joy at the bizarre miracle that returned their daughter's body.

Laksha didn't want to think about how long it took her to realize that the teleportation-resistant barrier was down. In truth, she hadn't really sensed it: in her frustration at trying to dig herself out of the Gorbachev’s construct, she had only willed herself to teleport as a futile gesture of anger. Despite this, as her spear struck for the 400th or so time, Laksha found herself standing on her stone-metal prison. The Warden of the Spear, still nude and now covered in a fine layer of dust, began to flex and happily stretch her limbs.

Now with a rematch in mind, she took in her surroundings... and noticed two glaring absences: the Gorbachev, which she expected... but also the corrupted Slayer, now nowhere to be found despite lacking what should have been the intact sort of spinal cord one required to walk away. With the hallway still blocked by debris, Laksha had only one direction to follow. If I'm not too late... Lady help us, but even if I can't stop her shoddy boyfriend from leaving, I'm at least going to save Moira!

John reappeared and leapt to the nearest pile of treasures: his old gear, still bloodied and cut from the injury that trapped him, and the bracers he had made to escape the first time. Scooping it all into his inventory, and before he could turn and notice Tricia’s mouth opening to confront him, he hastily vanished anew.

Tricia’s Eye opened thrice in a row; by now Rave knew the meaning. “Relax,” Rave muttered as she leaned against the lip of the vault, “and help Travolta loot this place for good weapons. We’ll probably need them to...”

Rave’s voice trailed off as her eyes caught something low to the ground. Tricia stepped back into the hall to see... and stiffened as she saw it: a blood-coated hand gripping the rough floor as it helped pull a monster deeper into the hall. Its hair was black and wet with bits of meat stuck in it; its breasts dragged painfully across the stone; and its eyes, filled with an intensity that seemed to glow from behind errant bangs of its matted hair, remained fixated on the Gorbachev.

Tricia shook her head. “The critical damage remaining to your nervous system should have rendered you... ****, certainly immovable, or-”

All that Kim Moon was, damaged and delirious as she had been, could not articulate the impending threat of the creature in front of her. The damage Tricia had let remain had indeed made Kim largely unaware of her surroundings... but she had a duty, bound by soul even where the soul was salvage. Kim felt, more than saw, what Tricia was… and her new, vicious intent spoke in her place. “Outsider,” hissed the Slayer.

Lily continued to growl her snores. Travolta and Rave raised their fists for what looked to be an off-putting fight. Tricia could only back away a step as she tried to focus on defending herself from the broken, maimed thing she had felt once before.

Rave didn’t let her eyes leave the blood-soaked horror as she asked, “Blondie, you know this Ringu girl knock-off, or is this one of John’s-?”

With a twist of her body and arms, the Slayer launched herself at Tricia.

With almost no mana left, the Gamer was grateful for the respite. He almost couldn’t believe he was returning to the Summoner’s Temple... and for a moment, he doubted that he had.

John’s gaze looked about the foyer with a naked confusion. The first thing out of place was the absence of sunlight: the infinite day of his temple had become a blanket of stars, albeit still visible through the glass ceiling. His white marble construct had become black with lightning streaks of gray, and each such errant pattern seemed to dance when lit by unnaturally bright-glowing flames. Each fire sat upon a golden plate, and each plate either topped familiar structures or hung from three golden chains suspended from hooks near the ceiling. His wooden doors were now metallic or silver; his fountain had become smoother and was now made from the same pale metal, contrasting in the chaotic light against the emerald waters it poured onto itself.

He looked down to the platform—now a polished ebony with his purple sigil glowing bright—and then walked through his temple as he reviewed all his other dismissed pop-ups.

Achievement unlocked! “Squad Goals”!
Have 25 or more branded minions! Your legion’s humble beginnings?
+3 CHA
+temple capacity doubled

Achievement unlocked! “Globetrotter”!
Reach another continent of Earth. Get a souvenir next time!
+3,000XP
+2 WIS

Along with his small victories against Order minions, he was left with a fair amount of experience points to open new rooms. But this was hardly the moment: even as real time passed much slower, it was still passing, and every minute the Order got from him was too much. But why did the temple change...? John suspected the reason but left it for later reflection.

John’s first stop was the armory... and his unfortunate keeper therein. “Master,” Thumalk called with tears of joy streaming down his face, “we feared the worst-!”

You used Equilibrium, sacrificing 600HP to gain 1,500MP.

You cast Restore on Thumalk! He’s already at full health. He’s been cured of all of his fairy dust corruption.

John had put all his mana into the touch, and the elf blinked in surprise as he had finally received that longed-for contact, even if only on his forehead. But the elf was not elated... and now, with an embarrassed glance to the floor, muttered, “What have I... what have I been doing...?”

“Continue manning the armory; we’ll discuss your proper training later,” John tersely ordered before continuing to the Psychosphere.

“... Yes, M... Master,” Thumalk hesitantly answered.

The Psychosphere door was open... and an exhausted-looking Juniluny remained bent over on the console, her naked, heavy little body all but perched on the slab as her hands remained flat against it. Her connection was lost... but she could hardly believe it, and so she continued to stare up at the sphere, lost. It wasn’t until John’s voice whispered behind her that she finally snapped from her daze.

“You can step from the console while I’m in the temple,” John explained.

Juniluny rose and turned, her bare feet still on the makeshift stool of books from the study. Her eyes seemed worried and, to John’s surprise, glassy. “You... you contemptuous, callous, calculating little... cock...”

She didn’t articulate it, but John knew: she had faced his tortures with him, felt them as he did... “So for all the fucked up shit you’ve done,” John chuckled, “I guess you weren’t ready to even perceive being on the receiving end.”

Juniluny met his taunting gaze with naked contempt and, a beat later, coy amusement. “There’s nothing about being the master that prepares you to be the ****... and at least I know that better than you, Master, so don’t play wise-arse with me.”

“Yeah... well, we’ll talk about your continuing punishment later. Once the ogre is in here, I’m temporarily relieving you from this duty: I need you to assess his knowledge, compare it to your own, and then report what kind of information I’ve got covered between you two.” John wished he could say ‘you three’; the loss of Kazex was more practical than emotional, though John felt a pittance of guilt for feeling so little for the ended goblin. Secretly and uselessly, John had hoped for some second chance, a revival room, or some other mechanic revealed upon entering the temple that would let him bring the goblin back… but no such function had manifested thus far.

“And what are you going to do? Hide in here until those sanctimonious simpletons move out of their vacation home?”

“No... but I have lots of catching up to do in here and a ton of training XP to give to...” John turned as he felt their presence: Alysha stood in the doorway, her white hair a dark gray in the torchlight, and the hints of Fairy’s beating wings could be seen at the edge of the doorway where she eavesdropped. Greenpaw was nowhere to be found, but John knew him to be the third candidate: all three had received more experience in the barrier than John had outside of it. If his estimate and understanding were correct, he could probably raise any one of them to be at his level and serve as a powerful addition to the team he was assembling for his final move against the Order.