Rave stared at her phone with nervous anticipation. They were back at home and sitting at the dinner table. After he had come back, John had quickly summarized the events that had transpired after she had stormed off. He kept his personal opinions light. Rave had requested him to stay out of her family business and he was going to honour that until he thought he had enough of a handle on it to not make it catastrophically worse.
Lydia was nowhere to be found, which was worrisome, but when John had checked her room, he had heard a piano melody that was rather upheaved in nature. Satisfied to know that she was home, he had turned around.
“Did you know that her parents were dead?” John asked as they kept waiting for Regan to get the news and call his daughter. There surely were nicer things that could be discussed. The air in the room was not for niceties, however.
“Lydia’s? Nah, all I knew about her past is that Frederik one day declared her heiress to his lands. She came out of nowhere, but that’s not that unusual with these abyssal noble houses and their weird intermixture of succession based on both old blood and new powers.” Rave gave her phone a tap, causing it to spin on the tabletop.
John nodded. “I see.” There were a few moments of silence, then he tilted his head back and shouted. Aggressively, he ran both his hands through his short hair, until it was dishevelled. “Urgh, why do things like these keep happening whenever we are just on top of the world?!” He flopped forwards, putting his head on the table. “…You think your dad will be very mad?”
“Dunno, ya know he is pretty liberal with porn, but he is also super-protective of me, have no idea what side is stronger here,” Rave said and joined in laying down her head. They sighed at the same time. “Gimme your hand, John,” Rave demanded.
“Here,” he floppily put it within her reach. She put her hand on top. “Can we do this?” John asked.
“How can we NOT do this?” Rave questioned back. “Ya assured me that you love me enough to not break up with me for a myriad different women, don’t tell me ya are afraid of my parents.”
“Your dad is scary,” John told her.
“Pff, ya could throw Aclysia at him and she would win on her own,” Rave laughed at him.
“Your… cookies…” A quivering, forcefully happy voice pushed those words out, while the tray was placed on the table. It was Siena, her hair bound back into a ponytail, her killer curves clad in a French maid outfit. The smile on her face was constantly quivering, trying to turn into a frown.
“Master,” Aclysia shouted from the kitchen.
“Your…cookies…massster,” Siena hissed with all of the poison she could muster while also keeping her smile in place.
This was her punishment for speaking out of line. John had temporarily changed the fifth rule to ‘Obey whatever Aclysia tells you to do’.
The result was Siena acting as the primary housekeeper’s assistant. Guessing that somebody like Siena, who was definitely a sadist, would hate being forced to follow orders that entailed serving tea and doing laundry, had been entirely accurate. The nightmare elemental hated every second of this.
“C-can… I…” Siena tried to make herself shut up, but the magic compelling her was stronger than any willpower she could muster, “…bring… you… something… else?”
“Ja, milk for the freshly baked cookies please,” Rave said and Siena, her high heels clacking with every step, moved away.
“I love to see her leave,” John said, looking beneath the entirely too short skirt of her uniform.
“She does have a nice ass,” Rave admitted. “She is still at fault for this whole thing.”
“Ah, well, it would have happened eventually.” John fished a cookie off the plate, for himself. He was about to eat it too when he noticed Rave pouting.
“Feed me,” his girlfriend pleaded with big, blue eyes. John complied and guided the cookie to her mouth instead, repressing his urge to tease her for a later, more appropriate time.
Finally, a phone rang and they both straightened up. They looked at the deactivated display of Rave’s phone with confusion, then John realized the noise was coming from his pocket. “Note to self, we need different ring tones,” he stated as he pulled out his phone.
“Dibs on Worlds Collide,” Rave said, causing John to snort with laughter.
“I don’t even want that,” he said, then looked at the display.
For a moment he had feared Regan had jumped his daughter and went straight to him, but the screen said something else entirely. Well, not entirely, the person that was calling him now was still somewhat related to the whole situation. John swiped to unlock his phone and held it to his ear.
“Hi mom,” he said, “I am in the middle of a minor crisis right now, so if we could make this fast, that’d be great.”
“Is your crisis that your girlfriend’s dad found out that you have been sleeping with other girls, sweetie?” his mother asked from the other end. John froze, she didn’t sound annoyed or anything, but that question was still concerning.
“How do you…? Did Regan call you?” John sent Rave a loaded glance.
Rave’s lips formed a silent sentence, “In how much shit are ya?”
John gave her an uncertain shrug. He genuinely had no idea. His parents were pretty liberal when it came to relationship stuff, at least as far he guessed. They had never really had a talk about this, largely because the Gamer hadn’t had any female friends since kindergarten.
“Call? No, he actually visited us in person. He was very nice about everything, even brought some gifts, we had some small talk and then he suddenly let loose with the big news. Your dad was coughing for a solid ten minutes,” his mom told him.
“Is that good or bad?” John, taut like a bow string, asked.
“Well, he was laughing, first in disbelief and then in approval. You think we’d be unhappy about our son having the time of his life?”
John smirked, giving his girlfriend a thumbs-up. Smiling right back, Rave winked. “It’s not all bad, nice,” she whispered.
“To think that you would muster up the confidence to actually get more than one girl to sleep with you. I must say, I never expected that from you. Pardon me if that’s rude, sweetie,” Brenda continued all the while. “How many girls do you have around? Two, three?”
“Well… nine,” John admitted. That figure included a couple of girls (Momo, mostly) who might have objected to the description of being ‘his’. He just felt like boasting
“NINE?!” his mother shouted and turned away from the phone, “Do you hear that? Our baby boy has nine girls in his harem.” An impressed shout came back. “You better treat them all right! I haven’t raised a heartbreaker!”
“You’re weird parents,” John spoke his thoughts when he thought his mother’s ear had returned to the phone.
“We are liberals, monogamy is what works for most people, if you can make polygamy work for you, go for it, it is more fun. Honestly, your dad and I have both been seeing people on the side ourselves.”
‘Oh please God no,’ John thought as he was locked into listening to his mother ramble about her love life. It was only fair, but that didn’t make it any less weird. After seeing his mother’s Libido score, he honestly wasn’t surprised that they had an open relationship, still, when his mother told him about a date she had with a Steve, he just wanted to run away. While he was happy his polygyny was being accepted, he was both not comfortable to hear about his parents’ love life and not sure what to make of them being swingers. He was still working out how exactly he preferred polyamory to take shape, but he was certain he wanted to be the only male involved.
While that conversation, to which Rave was listening as best she could with a broad grin, was happening, his girlfriend’s phone started vibrating.
John saw the dreaded name on the display and wished his girlfriend best of luck by squeezing her hand. From the moment she took up her phone it was clear that she was being barraged. Then she shot back. Then she was screamed at. Then her voice got louder. Soon they were in a heated debate that could only end badly.
What was he going to do though? He couldn’t just step in, Regan would mop the floor with him. Except that he wouldn’t. Aclysia was level 80 now, so was Momo, thanks to Nathalia’s scales. He hadn’t spent the Stat Points yet, but Rave was right when she said that Aclysia could probably use Regan as a cleaning rag on her own. John himself wasn’t exactly helpless anymore either. Even Nariko, who was more than 20 levels above him, probably would have had trouble beating him, considering all the elementals he had. He was really quite powerful.
‘Probably time that I start acting like it.’ John waved to get his girlfriend’s attention. Rave saw him and raised an eyebrow. She was listening to him, ignoring the endless tirade at the other end of the phone for the moment. “Hey mom, would you be okay with talking to my girlfriend for a bit?” he said as soon as he got a chance to chime into her endless talks.
“Of course, sweetie! Got to make sure you’re doing right by them!” Brenda responded immediately.
“You really want to do this?” Rave’s lips formed the silent question.
John just winked in response. With a relieved shrug, Rave snatched his phone and interchanged it for her own with no further questions asked. Giving her the break was worth whatever he had to take in return.
“Hey, Brenda, I can still call ya that, right?... Oh, I am doing great, dad is less psyched about all of this though… yeah, let’s not talk about it… Germany is treating your son very well, ya should see the abs he’s gotten… no, I am not kidding ACTUAL abs, like, ya could grind meat on that body.” They quickly engaged in happy chatter.
John, meanwhile, had to deal with Regan’s curses.
“And the only good thing about that boy in the first place is that he plays Warhammer and that he has a useful ability. He is bad for you, young lady, and he is like a merger between FedEx and UPS, because I am Fed-Up with his bullshit. You are coming home with the next flight, that princess can find someone else to fight for her.”
“Sorry, but that won’t happen,” John informed him and Regan instantly ceased his complaints.
“Mister Newman,” the abyssal dad said in a threatening voice.
“Please, Mister Newman is my father, who you’ve met now. Call me John,” he responded, gulping down his remaining nervousness. Assertiveness was sexy, Rave had taught him that, and he was going to leverage that today. ‘Just think of this as a boss fight,’ he told himself. His Gamer instincts kicked in. ‘The loot is a continuation of your girlfriend subscription, best loot in the game.’
“John, then,” Regan agreed, “I demand that you explain yourself to me.”
“What is there to explain? I wanted to sleep with more than one girl, your daughter agreed, we are in a happy, albeit weird, relationship,” John laid the facts down.
“And you think I will just be fine with this?! My daughter deserves better than being one girl in many!”
“First off: She is the first amongst many,” John shot back instantly. “Second, and much more importantly, it is entirely irrelevant what you think. Jane decided this was okay and we are both old enough to decide on our own. We know, today better than ever, that this isn’t normal or easy, but it's what we want.”
“If you think you can get away with this just like that, then…” Regan growled.
“Then what?” John called his bluff, “Are you going to get my parents involved? You must have noticed that they are normal folk, so Gaia protects them. If you try to convince me by force it will end badly for you.”
“Are you threatening me?” Regan was baffled that John would turn things around like this.
“No, I am telling you that you can’t threaten me any longer,” John leaned back in his chair. “Aside from that, do you really think that I would give your daughter up just because you beat me up successfully? I love her with all my heart, even if you can’t believe it.”
“That is just… are you made out of paper? Cause you are tearable!” Regan’s sudden pun did succeed in making John laugh out loud.
“I really don’t want things between us to be bad, Regan,” John spoke into the phone, “but if the only choice here is you dictating my life or us becoming completely independent, then I will gladly choose the latter.”
A long stretch of silence ensued. “…Fine, I can respect that. I don’t like it, but at least you got guts, young man.” Regan took another pause, then let out a long sigh. “Fine, if you want it to be that way, so be it. You can tell Jane that she will get no more money from me. If you want to be independent you can surely handle that much.”
John shrugged and answered in a nonchalant tone, “Money is literally the least of my problems. Have a nice day, Regan.”
“Mister Hollmey for you!” Rave’s dad had the last word, but for all his outraged tone, there was no real bite to it. Even the way the phone was put down felt almost calm.
‘That went okay,’ he thought and put his girlfriend’s phone down. Rave was on his for a lot longer.
Rave stared at her phone with nervous anticipation. They were back at home and sitting at the dinner table. After he had come back, John had quickly summarized the events that had transpired after she had stormed off. He kept his personal opinions light. Rave had requested him to stay out of her family business and he was going to honour that until he thought he had enough of a handle on it to not make it catastrophically worse.
Lydia was nowhere to be found, which was worrisome, but when John had checked her room, he had heard a piano melody that was rather upheaved in nature. Satisfied to know that she was home, he had turned around.
“Did you know that her parents were dead?” John asked as they kept waiting for Regan to get the news and call his daughter. There surely were nicer things that could be discussed. The air in the room was not for niceties, however.
“Lydia’s? Nah, all I knew about her past is that Frederik one day declared her heiress to his lands. She came out of nowhere, but that’s not that unusual with these abyssal noble houses and their weird intermixture of succession based on both old blood and new powers.” Rave gave her phone a tap, causing it to spin on the tabletop.
John nodded. “I see.” There were a few moments of silence, then he tilted his head back and shouted. Aggressively, he ran both his hands through his short hair, until it was dishevelled. “Urgh, why do things like these keep happening whenever we are just on top of the world?!” He flopped forwards, putting his head on the table. “…You think your dad will be very mad?”
“Dunno, ya know he is pretty liberal with porn, but he is also super-protective of me, have no idea what side is stronger here,” Rave said and joined in laying down her head. They sighed at the same time. “Gimme your hand, John,” Rave demanded.
“Here,” he floppily put it within her reach. She put her hand on top. “Can we do this?” John asked.
“How can we NOT do this?” Rave questioned back. “Ya assured me that you love me enough to not break up with me for a myriad different women, don’t tell me ya are afraid of my parents.”
“Your dad is scary,” John told her.
“Pff, ya could throw Aclysia at him and she would win on her own,” Rave laughed at him.
“Your… cookies…” A quivering, forcefully happy voice pushed those words out, while the tray was placed on the table. It was Siena, her hair bound back into a ponytail, her killer curves clad in a French maid outfit. The smile on her face was constantly quivering, trying to turn into a frown.
“Master,” Aclysia shouted from the kitchen.
“Your…cookies…massster,” Siena hissed with all of the poison she could muster while also keeping her smile in place.
This was her punishment for speaking out of line. John had temporarily changed the fifth rule to ‘Obey whatever Aclysia tells you to do’.
The result was Siena acting as the primary housekeeper’s assistant. Guessing that somebody like Siena, who was definitely a sadist, would hate being forced to follow orders that entailed serving tea and doing laundry, had been entirely accurate. The nightmare elemental hated every second of this.
“C-can… I…” Siena tried to make herself shut up, but the magic compelling her was stronger than any willpower she could muster, “…bring… you… something… else?”
“Ja, milk for the freshly baked cookies please,” Rave said and Siena, her high heels clacking with every step, moved away.
“I love to see her leave,” John said, looking beneath the entirely too short skirt of her uniform.
“She does have a nice ass,” Rave admitted. “She is still at fault for this whole thing.”
“Ah, well, it would have happened eventually.” John fished a cookie off the plate, for himself. He was about to eat it too when he noticed Rave pouting.
“Feed me,” his girlfriend pleaded with big, blue eyes. John complied and guided the cookie to her mouth instead, repressing his urge to tease her for a later, more appropriate time.
Finally, a phone rang and they both straightened up. They looked at the deactivated display of Rave’s phone with confusion, then John realized the noise was coming from his pocket. “Note to self, we need different ring tones,” he stated as he pulled out his phone.
“Dibs on Worlds Collide,” Rave said, causing John to snort with laughter.
“I don’t even want that,” he said, then looked at the display.
For a moment he had feared Regan had jumped his daughter and went straight to him, but the screen said something else entirely. Well, not entirely, the person that was calling him now was still somewhat related to the whole situation. John swiped to unlock his phone and held it to his ear.
“Hi mom,” he said, “I am in the middle of a minor crisis right now, so if we could make this fast, that’d be great.”
“Is your crisis that your girlfriend’s dad found out that you have been sleeping with other girls, sweetie?” his mother asked from the other end. John froze, she didn’t sound annoyed or anything, but that question was still concerning.
“How do you…? Did Regan call you?” John sent Rave a loaded glance.
Rave’s lips formed a silent sentence, “In how much shit are ya?”
John gave her an uncertain shrug. He genuinely had no idea. His parents were pretty liberal when it came to relationship stuff, at least as far he guessed. They had never really had a talk about this, largely because the Gamer hadn’t had any female friends since kindergarten.
“Call? No, he actually visited us in person. He was very nice about everything, even brought some gifts, we had some small talk and then he suddenly let loose with the big news. Your dad was coughing for a solid ten minutes,” his mom told him.
“Is that good or bad?” John, taut like a bow string, asked.
“Well, he was laughing, first in disbelief and then in approval. You think we’d be unhappy about our son having the time of his life?”
John smirked, giving his girlfriend a thumbs-up. Smiling right back, Rave winked. “It’s not all bad, nice,” she whispered.
“To think that you would muster up the confidence to actually get more than one girl to sleep with you. I must say, I never expected that from you. Pardon me if that’s rude, sweetie,” Brenda continued all the while. “How many girls do you have around? Two, three?”
“Well… nine,” John admitted. That figure included a couple of girls (Momo, mostly) who might have objected to the description of being ‘his’. He just felt like boasting
“NINE?!” his mother shouted and turned away from the phone, “Do you hear that? Our baby boy has nine girls in his harem.” An impressed shout came back. “You better treat them all right! I haven’t raised a heartbreaker!”
“You’re weird parents,” John spoke his thoughts when he thought his mother’s ear had returned to the phone.
“We are liberals, monogamy is what works for most people, if you can make polygamy work for you, go for it, it is more fun. Honestly, your dad and I have both been seeing people on the side ourselves.”
‘Oh please God no,’ John thought as he was locked into listening to his mother ramble about her love life. It was only fair, but that didn’t make it any less weird. After seeing his mother’s Libido score, he honestly wasn’t surprised that they had an open relationship, still, when his mother told him about a date she had with a Steve, he just wanted to run away. While he was happy his polygyny was being accepted, he was both not comfortable to hear about his parents’ love life and not sure what to make of them being swingers. He was still working out how exactly he preferred polyamory to take shape, but he was certain he wanted to be the only male involved.
While that conversation, to which Rave was listening as best she could with a broad grin, was happening, his girlfriend’s phone started vibrating.
John saw the dreaded name on the display and wished his girlfriend best of luck by squeezing her hand. From the moment she took up her phone it was clear that she was being barraged. Then she shot back. Then she was screamed at. Then her voice got louder. Soon they were in a heated debate that could only end badly.
What was he going to do though? He couldn’t just step in, Regan would mop the floor with him. Except that he wouldn’t. Aclysia was level 80 now, so was Momo, thanks to Nathalia’s scales. He hadn’t spent the Stat Points yet, but Rave was right when she said that Aclysia could probably use Regan as a cleaning rag on her own. John himself wasn’t exactly helpless anymore either. Even Nariko, who was more than 20 levels above him, probably would have had trouble beating him, considering all the elementals he had. He was really quite powerful.
‘Probably time that I start acting like it.’ John waved to get his girlfriend’s attention. Rave saw him and raised an eyebrow. She was listening to him, ignoring the endless tirade at the other end of the phone for the moment. “Hey mom, would you be okay with talking to my girlfriend for a bit?” he said as soon as he got a chance to chime into her endless talks.
“Of course, sweetie! Got to make sure you’re doing right by them!” Brenda responded immediately.
“You really want to do this?” Rave’s lips formed the silent question.
John just winked in response. With a relieved shrug, Rave snatched his phone and interchanged it for her own with no further questions asked. Giving her the break was worth whatever he had to take in return.
“Hey, Brenda, I can still call ya that, right?... Oh, I am doing great, dad is less psyched about all of this though… yeah, let’s not talk about it… Germany is treating your son very well, ya should see the abs he’s gotten… no, I am not kidding ACTUAL abs, like, ya could grind meat on that body.” They quickly engaged in happy chatter.
John, meanwhile, had to deal with Regan’s curses.
“And the only good thing about that boy in the first place is that he plays Warhammer and that he has a useful ability. He is bad for you, young lady, and he is like a merger between FedEx and UPS, because I am Fed-Up with his bullshit. You are coming home with the next flight, that princess can find someone else to fight for her.”
“Sorry, but that won’t happen,” John informed him and Regan instantly ceased his complaints.
“Mister Newman,” the abyssal dad said in a threatening voice.
“Please, Mister Newman is my father, who you’ve met now. Call me John,” he responded, gulping down his remaining nervousness. Assertiveness was sexy, Rave had taught him that, and he was going to leverage that today. ‘Just think of this as a boss fight,’ he told himself. His Gamer instincts kicked in. ‘The loot is a continuation of your girlfriend subscription, best loot in the game.’
“John, then,” Regan agreed, “I demand that you explain yourself to me.”
“What is there to explain? I wanted to sleep with more than one girl, your daughter agreed, we are in a happy, albeit weird, relationship,” John laid the facts down.
“And you think I will just be fine with this?! My daughter deserves better than being one girl in many!”
“First off: She is the first amongst many,” John shot back instantly. “Second, and much more importantly, it is entirely irrelevant what you think. Jane decided this was okay and we are both old enough to decide on our own. We know, today better than ever, that this isn’t normal or easy, but it's what we want.”
“If you think you can get away with this just like that, then…” Regan growled.
“Then what?” John called his bluff, “Are you going to get my parents involved? You must have noticed that they are normal folk, so Gaia protects them. If you try to convince me by force it will end badly for you.”
“Are you threatening me?” Regan was baffled that John would turn things around like this.
“No, I am telling you that you can’t threaten me any longer,” John leaned back in his chair. “Aside from that, do you really think that I would give your daughter up just because you beat me up successfully? I love her with all my heart, even if you can’t believe it.”
“That is just… are you made out of paper? Cause you are tearable!” Regan’s sudden pun did succeed in making John laugh out loud.
“I really don’t want things between us to be bad, Regan,” John spoke into the phone, “but if the only choice here is you dictating my life or us becoming completely independent, then I will gladly choose the latter.”
A long stretch of silence ensued. “…Fine, I can respect that. I don’t like it, but at least you got guts, young man.” Regan took another pause, then let out a long sigh. “Fine, if you want it to be that way, so be it. You can tell Jane that she will get no more money from me. If you want to be independent you can surely handle that much.”
John shrugged and answered in a nonchalant tone, “Money is literally the least of my problems. Have a nice day, Regan.”
“Mister Hollmey for you!” Rave’s dad had the last word, but for all his outraged tone, there was no real bite to it. Even the way the phone was put down felt almost calm.
‘That went okay,’ he thought and put his girlfriend’s phone down. Rave was on his for a lot longer.
