John tried to keep calm. He mostly succeeded. Quivering hands placed his shoes on the floor. “Uhm… so…” he cleared his throat. Everyone around was looking at him, having caught on his obviously odd behaviour. He wasn’t sure how to express what he thought. He wasn’t even sure what he thought.
“Whaddaya wanna say, John?” Rave, ever impatient, asked.
“So… basically… and I feel like I should have… no, that’s too late now…,” John cleared his throat again. Regrets about not asking more questions about the workings of Abyssal birth control could be put later. Exhaling audibly and swiftly, he just got it out with. “One of you is pregnant. Gaia gave me an Achievement for it.”
A moment of silence, then there was nervous, loud laughter.
“What are you laughing about?” Lydia wanted to know, her voice steady and almost unconcerned.
“An Achievement for knocking someone up, that’s fucking hilarious!” Thana answered, still cackling, her tone swinging wildly between panicked and nervous. “I mean, who the fuck doesn’t have their womb in check here?! Guess no one else is infertile!”
“Thana, ya idiot, it’s 100 percent you!” Rave pointed at the blood mage. “Elementals and Artificial Spirits don’t get preggers, Lydia and I are protected and we’ve been having creampies for like days and or weeks or months, it can only be you!”
“Not to mention that a regular human pregnancy should not take that fast,” Lydia added. “By process of elimination, it has to be you.”
“W-what – I mean – I….” The bloodmage stammered. “They tried to get me pregnant it never-“ She looked around the room, noticing everyone was now staring at her. She began to tremble all over. Her eyes turned glassy for a moment. One of her hands was placed over her womb. “What the fuck?” she mumbled, oddly calm. Her eyes opened up again. Now her expression was truly panicked, something that John saw on his own face through the reflection of her eyes.
‘She’s the last person in the room that should be a mother right now,’ he thought. “Herman must have fixed you up or… I don’t know.” The Gamer tried to take a bit of the panic out of the situation, before anyone could freak out for real.
“…Where is the nearest toilet?!” Thana asked out loud.
“Ya gonna throw up?” Rave asked.
“I’m just going to give myself an emergency period! Kill it before I lay eggs!” The attempt at humour failed to land with everyone, even herself. “TOILET?! WHERE?!” she screeched. “What if I get hyper-pregnancy?!”
A valid question and not one anyone wanted answered. Lydia pointed her in the correct direction and Thana rapidly walked off. Watching the small woman walk away in this situation to do what she was going to do gave John a whole host of complicated feelings. Within one hour of conception was definitely within his moral framework of dealing with such things the ugly way, but that did not change the fact that all of this was making his heart drum in his chest. He wondered what would happen if he stopped her now…
…but he did not. Thana vanished around the corner and at that point it was out of his control. They continued to stand there for a little while.
“So that practically eliminates my last doubts whether or not she is human.” Lydia broke the silence and then headed into the living room.
“What else was she going to be?” John asked.
“A goddess,” the princess simply stated, “a tortured, malformed, goddess. However, the chances of a goddess becoming pregnant the first time she has sex is next to null. Not to mention that Romulus wouldn’t have let a god participate in the tournament in the first place. Thana being the weird case that she is, I wanted to have additional certainty. This works.”
She sat down on a bigger version of the familiar table and, as if on cue, Aclysia placed an exact twin of the tea-set in front of Lydia. “Well, that was a shocker,” John mumbled as he and Rave sat down on the comfortable couch. Like the rest of the furniture, it was scaled up for the larger environment. Rather than one couch, there were two, and an armchair to boot.
Shocker was an understatement. For a moment there his whole world had threatened to collapse over the span of 9 to 10 months. Would that have been so terrible? He had no idea, he just knew that he felt too young for that kind of responsibility. ‘Great thing for Thana that she isn’t actually infertile, probably, but I would have preferred to find out in a less scary way.’
“Ya can say that out loud. I’d blown a gasket if she kept the kid. She can’t take your name AND the first kid, imma have to get one or the other.”
“You want to have one?” John raised the question carefully. They had never talked about it before.
“In a few years, not now,” Rave clarified. “Like, five years or something. I’m twenty, no reason to hurry along, I can be a kickass mom later in life.”
“You are definitely going to be a kickass mom,” John agreed and earned himself a kiss on the cheek for that. The known soft warmth of her glossy lips made the remaining tension fall off. He rested his head on hers, which, in turn, lay on his shoulder.
“Well, I am fucking not going to be,” Thana announced as she slammed the northern door of the living room shut. She didn’t break it, which was good, but it still caused Lydia to wrinkle her forehead as the slamming noise reverberated through the whole building. “I… got rid of it cleanly. Just had the usual processes of dealing with the unviable eggs take care of it…” The blood mage threw herself into one of the chairs and rubbed her face with both hands. “Fucking… I didn’t think this would be the consequence of getting pounded into the ground…”
“Isn’t that good news?” Aclysia asked; “Bearing Master’s child sounds like wonderful news.”
“To you it is, you mindless automaton,” Thana spat out and made a disappointed face, “but I am absolutely not ready to be within a 100 metres of kids, less even to have some myself.”
“I am not mindless,” Aclysia said once Thana had ended her sentence, “retract that statement at once.”
“Or fucking what?” Thana laughed, “you are going to threaten me with even less dessert? I am not in the mood for your bullshit threats.”
“I – am – not – mindless,” Aclysia spelled out. “I serve John out of my own volition, representing it as anything else undermines my free will. Apologize.”
“And what if I don’t want to?” Thana growled. “Learn to take a fucking joke.”
“My sapience is not a topic for jokes. Declaring me a being without autonomy makes John a slaver. I will not have you undermine my own decision making abilities nor my beloved’s moral fibre.” Aclysia firmly stated. “Apologize.”
“Fuck off.”
“Ladies,” John intervened, the air was getting dangerously thick. “I am sure Thana didn’t mean it that way. Just take a deep breath Thana, calm down, and…”
“No.” The blood mage crossed her arms and, after trying to punch a random point in the air, laughed. “This is retarded. Your artificial maid not being able to take a beating to her pride is nothing I have to calm down over.”
“Thana, ya really should…”
“Shut the fuck up, gum crotch, I don’t care what your cat-brain can produce. Learn to be anything more useful than my punching bag before you annoy me again,” Thana interrupted Rave before she could even state anything.
John rushed over to Thana and grabbed her by the wrist. He pulled her to her feet and she obliged. “We are going outside for a bit.”
A smile was still plastered over Thana’s face, but it was empty and her eyes were cold. “Fucking fine,” she agreed after glancing over to the rest of the angry crowd. John didn’t even bother with getting his shoes, instead they simply went out the back.
The cold air on his skin was still warmer than the silence that followed once they were alone. “The hell do you think you are doing?” John’s tone was sharper than he intended it to be. Everything about his emotions at this moment was difficult to express. He was wise enough to realize that he was using the wrong tone, but not charismatic enough to do anything about it. He wanted to sound earnest, but he sounded like an accuser.
“What am I doing?!” Thana’s voice was high-pitched. “It’s you fuckers who can’t be the slightest bit flexible! Take a joke!”
John bit back his tongue. There was one thing he could do to keep his tone in check and that was to speak very slowly, with deep breaths in between. “I am sorry if that came out wrong,” he started with an apology. He pinched the bridge of his nose. Too late did he realize that the gesture was condescending.
“I am not a child, you ass,” the blood mage growled. “I’m an adult fucking female, evident by me almost having yours just a minute ago.”
“Thana, just…”
“Just shut the fuck up!” Thana demanded. “I am not here to be judged by you! You fuckers need me, not the other way around.”
And that’s where John made the big mistake of almost laughing. He repressed that urge to ask ‘What would you do without us?’ but not all could be held back. It was just a slightly ridiculing blow of air, but the golden ring in Thana’s eyes that formed in response left no doubt about what she thought of that.
“WHAT?! You think I am useless without you? That I am helpless?! Bitch, without you holding me back, I could take whatever I want. Who could stop me? The top 2% of people in the Abyss? Gods? Just a matter of time before I evolve past all of those assholes, I don’t need you to survive and if you are telling me that… are you being for fucking real right now?”
The blood mage stopped and crossed her arms, lowering her eyes towards the ground. She looked at the Mana Blade that was stabbed into her lower abdomen.
John drew the weapon back and let the wound re-seal itself. He took no pleasure in having caused it. Where his charisma failed him, his calculating mind had told him to work with one of the extremely unhealthy ways to calm her down that worked: pain.
“Listen here, you socially inept potato.” Speaking her language got him a little giggle from Thana. That was progress. “We both know you are a fuck-up when it comes to behaving like a human, and, whenever you have one of your panic attacks, you manage to seriously screw everything up.” The blood mage nodded at that, evidently capable of listening. “We are willing to help you,” John said very slowly. “That offer requires that you at least try to work with us. Nobody expects you to be perfect, but if you insult Aclysia and my girlfriend and refuse to apologize when you clearly go too far, then I have no patience to entertain liking you. Friendship is-“
“You don’t entertain liking me anyway,” Thana mumbled so quietly John almost missed it.
“That’s not true,” John stated fervently. “I want to like you. I want to believe that you deserve something better. However, friendship is a two way street. If you think you’re that much better on your own.” He gestured towards the edge of the island. “Just jump”
Thana turned her eyes in that direction. The golden circle in her eyes had slowed down enough that the seven dots were individually visible again. Turning her eyes in his direction, they sped up a little again. Thana looked at her feet and took a deep breath. “I wanted that kid.”
“What?” John asked, all emotions emptied from his voice by the surprise.
“You heard me, you gaping anus,” Thana kept her gaze decisively away from him. “I just felt, ‘hey, maybe, that’s a way to repay the guy, that you spent the last days of your life and the first days of your new life parasitically abusing’, or something like that. Then I saw that expression on your face when you realized that you would be a dad, then I saw the panic once you realized that it was me and I just, I felt so… helpless… so thoroughly disappointed in somebody that I thought I could trust. Then I panicked because I wondered why I would even want that. Seriously, why would I want to be a mom? I am CLEARLY not fucking ready to raise a kid, for fuck’s sake I need people to look after me myself. Then something in my brain went ‘fuck everything, if I can’t get what I want, neither can anyone else’. I hate kids, I think, why do I even want some. I don’t understand myself. Feelings are bullshit.” She stared at the sky now. “What the fuck am I doing?”
John quietly listened to all of that and, unsure what else to do, stepped closer.
“If you dare to fucking hug me now I will rip out your spine and reinsert it through your ass,” Thana warned him.
“Not doing that then,” John firmly agreed. “Well, I could punch you instead,” he joked.
Thana nodded in earnest. “Yeah, that sounds about right.”
A knot formed in John’s stomach. The regret of having stabbed her settled in. “I don’t actually…” John tried to evade actually doing it but then sighed, “you are seriously wrong in the head.”
“Yup,” Thana agreed, “and I doubt it will ever get much fucking better…. W-will you still keep your promise to stick by me?”
“As long as you learn to apologize from time to time,” John countered and reluctantly pulled his fist back.
“Cool. Now punch me.”
“Thana, I-“
“Fucking do it or I am jumping.”
The Gamer stared at her for a few moments, trying to work out if she was serious. By all that he could see, she was, and that was the worst of it. “This will be the last time I do anything like that, understand?” he told her. She rolled her eyes. “I mean it. I’m not letting you keep this habit of needing to get tormented to calm down.”
“…Fucking fine. Do it, pussy.” John pulled his arm back and hit her in the forehead. She stood there, unbothered. His fist, however, was in great pain. “Are you for fucking real?” Thana laughed when he pulled his hand back. “That’s the best you can do?!”
“Yup,” John answered and shook his hand.
“And I even hardened my skin on reflex, wow, sorry, didn’t think you were that weak,” Thana ridiculed him.
“You can do that?” John asked, “do you have nanomachines, son?”
“No, I have fucking crystallisable blood?” Thana gestured wildly, a tone of utter confusion, claws appearing on her hands for a moment before vanishing into her bloodstream again.
“That one was a reference… ah, whatever,” John decided. “So, I will keep you being baby-crazy a secret. Okay… from Lydia and Rave at least, the rest are in my thoughts and already know by now.”
“Yeah…” Thana kicked a pebble with a downtrodden expression. “What drove me to get it in the first place?!”
John gulped down the ‘I’ joke. Instead, he tried his hand at a reassuring smile, “Hey, how about this: if you get into a state where you can be a normal member of society without my help, we can give this whole child thing another thought.”
“You serious?” Thana looked conflicted about that, happy but also heavily annoyed, “Why would you even say that, I just told you that it was a fucking awful idea.”
“But you still want it, don’t you?” The question created a whole series of gremlin noises in response. “And, while I am not even remotely prepared to be a dad now, I will be one day. If I can have a harem, might as well go all the way through and have beautiful kids with all of you.”
“So, you are telling me, that my primary motivation for being not mind-murdering, ass-whooping, cunt-crashing insane…,” she stopped to stomp at a random point of the floor and then grinded her foot on the ground like she was extinguishing a cigarette. “Interrupting asshole,” she growled before continuing. “…should be to be a child-carrying bitch in your girls-club?”
“Only if you want that,” John clarified. “I would be more than happy to just have you in my ‘girls-club’. I like you, despite you being an insufferable bitch at times, and in time I may even come to love you. It all depends on how much effort you are willing to put in.”
“You ass,” Thana gestured him to lower his head, “It’s not nice to tell a lady that loves you that you don’t love her yet.”
“Good that I am not talking to a lady but a bloody angel,” John pointed out as he followed her request.
Extremely carefully she framed his face between her hands. Her touch was soft, delicate. Controlled. “You know, you are neither particularly handsome, nor ugly, and that weird mixture between selfishness and niceness will be the end of you,” she told him, all sober and serious.
“I survived you,” John pointed out. “Anything after that is child’s play.”
“And you say that there is a chance that, one day, you won’t look utterly panicked when you hear that I am pregnant with your kid?” Thana asked with a snicker.
“Oh, I will still panic,” John assured her, “but the reason won’t be because it’s you, but because it would be me.”
“And you say that you will continue to be patient with dumbass me?” Thana asked.
“As long as you keep learning and keep giving in when you are wrong, we will probably forgive you. I cannot speak for anyone but myself though.”
“And you say that one day you might love me?” Thana asked.
John smirked. “I’m already starting to, you adorable bundle of power, madness and insecurity.”
He was lost in her violet eyes. That fascinating, faceted structure, the golden rings, the humanity buried underneath mountains of shattered glass. These eyes got closer. Her lips laid on his, a kiss without tongue or any sexual meaning.
“I don’t know what I would do without you,” Thana whispered, “but I would be lost without YOU. Fucking confusing.”
“Welcome to the world of humans, where we all get along, or try to, and nobody has an idea how or why,” John picked her up.
“What the hell are you doing?!” Thana screeched when he put her over his shoulder. “Bringing the bad girl back inside so she can apologize to everyone,” John announced, slapped her on the ass and opened the door. Sure, his strength was stupendously low for the level of the Abyss he was at now, but it was still superhuman and she was small.
“This is unfair! If I struggle I may break your fucking neck!” Thana complained.
John just slapped her hindquarters a second time and that was the end of that discussion. This was the acceptable degree of violence to administer. He arrived back in the living room, put Thana into the chair she had been in and looked at her expectantly.
She made a sour expression and mumbled something inaudible. “Excuse me,” Aclysia, who of course knew what had happened outside, asked with an understanding smile. “I shouldn’t have been so pushy.”
“Urgh, you are too fucking NICE,” Thana made a disgusted noise. “AHHHH FEELINGS SUUUCK!!!” she screamed, ruffling her hair as she shifted violently in her seat; “You win, I am sorry, just stab me in the shoulder next time I say something out of line. Don’t know. Change of topic, please, before my brain explodes from stupid niceness. I have really bad ideas right now, that involve murdering AT LEAST half of you, just to escape this piss pool of cringe. Give me something else to think about. NOW!” She pulled herself into a tight bundle. “I’m so sorry… please?”
“How about we tour the house?” John suggested, while patting the insecure bundle’s head.
John tried to keep calm. He mostly succeeded. Quivering hands placed his shoes on the floor. “Uhm… so…” he cleared his throat. Everyone around was looking at him, having caught on his obviously odd behaviour. He wasn’t sure how to express what he thought. He wasn’t even sure what he thought.
“Whaddaya wanna say, John?” Rave, ever impatient, asked.
“So… basically… and I feel like I should have… no, that’s too late now…,” John cleared his throat again. Regrets about not asking more questions about the workings of Abyssal birth control could be put later. Exhaling audibly and swiftly, he just got it out with. “One of you is pregnant. Gaia gave me an Achievement for it.”
A moment of silence, then there was nervous, loud laughter.
“What are you laughing about?” Lydia wanted to know, her voice steady and almost unconcerned.
“An Achievement for knocking someone up, that’s fucking hilarious!” Thana answered, still cackling, her tone swinging wildly between panicked and nervous. “I mean, who the fuck doesn’t have their womb in check here?! Guess no one else is infertile!”
“Thana, ya idiot, it’s 100 percent you!” Rave pointed at the blood mage. “Elementals and Artificial Spirits don’t get preggers, Lydia and I are protected and we’ve been having creampies for like days and or weeks or months, it can only be you!”
“Not to mention that a regular human pregnancy should not take that fast,” Lydia added. “By process of elimination, it has to be you.”
“W-what – I mean – I….” The bloodmage stammered. “They tried to get me pregnant it never-“ She looked around the room, noticing everyone was now staring at her. She began to tremble all over. Her eyes turned glassy for a moment. One of her hands was placed over her womb. “What the fuck?” she mumbled, oddly calm. Her eyes opened up again. Now her expression was truly panicked, something that John saw on his own face through the reflection of her eyes.
‘She’s the last person in the room that should be a mother right now,’ he thought. “Herman must have fixed you up or… I don’t know.” The Gamer tried to take a bit of the panic out of the situation, before anyone could freak out for real.
“…Where is the nearest toilet?!” Thana asked out loud.
“Ya gonna throw up?” Rave asked.
“I’m just going to give myself an emergency period! Kill it before I lay eggs!” The attempt at humour failed to land with everyone, even herself. “TOILET?! WHERE?!” she screeched. “What if I get hyper-pregnancy?!”
A valid question and not one anyone wanted answered. Lydia pointed her in the correct direction and Thana rapidly walked off. Watching the small woman walk away in this situation to do what she was going to do gave John a whole host of complicated feelings. Within one hour of conception was definitely within his moral framework of dealing with such things the ugly way, but that did not change the fact that all of this was making his heart drum in his chest. He wondered what would happen if he stopped her now…
…but he did not. Thana vanished around the corner and at that point it was out of his control. They continued to stand there for a little while.
“So that practically eliminates my last doubts whether or not she is human.” Lydia broke the silence and then headed into the living room.
“What else was she going to be?” John asked.
“A goddess,” the princess simply stated, “a tortured, malformed, goddess. However, the chances of a goddess becoming pregnant the first time she has sex is next to null. Not to mention that Romulus wouldn’t have let a god participate in the tournament in the first place. Thana being the weird case that she is, I wanted to have additional certainty. This works.”
She sat down on a bigger version of the familiar table and, as if on cue, Aclysia placed an exact twin of the tea-set in front of Lydia. “Well, that was a shocker,” John mumbled as he and Rave sat down on the comfortable couch. Like the rest of the furniture, it was scaled up for the larger environment. Rather than one couch, there were two, and an armchair to boot.
Shocker was an understatement. For a moment there his whole world had threatened to collapse over the span of 9 to 10 months. Would that have been so terrible? He had no idea, he just knew that he felt too young for that kind of responsibility. ‘Great thing for Thana that she isn’t actually infertile, probably, but I would have preferred to find out in a less scary way.’
“Ya can say that out loud. I’d blown a gasket if she kept the kid. She can’t take your name AND the first kid, imma have to get one or the other.”
“You want to have one?” John raised the question carefully. They had never talked about it before.
“In a few years, not now,” Rave clarified. “Like, five years or something. I’m twenty, no reason to hurry along, I can be a kickass mom later in life.”
“You are definitely going to be a kickass mom,” John agreed and earned himself a kiss on the cheek for that. The known soft warmth of her glossy lips made the remaining tension fall off. He rested his head on hers, which, in turn, lay on his shoulder.
“Well, I am fucking not going to be,” Thana announced as she slammed the northern door of the living room shut. She didn’t break it, which was good, but it still caused Lydia to wrinkle her forehead as the slamming noise reverberated through the whole building. “I… got rid of it cleanly. Just had the usual processes of dealing with the unviable eggs take care of it…” The blood mage threw herself into one of the chairs and rubbed her face with both hands. “Fucking… I didn’t think this would be the consequence of getting pounded into the ground…”
“Isn’t that good news?” Aclysia asked; “Bearing Master’s child sounds like wonderful news.”
“To you it is, you mindless automaton,” Thana spat out and made a disappointed face, “but I am absolutely not ready to be within a 100 metres of kids, less even to have some myself.”
“I am not mindless,” Aclysia said once Thana had ended her sentence, “retract that statement at once.”
“Or fucking what?” Thana laughed, “you are going to threaten me with even less dessert? I am not in the mood for your bullshit threats.”
“I – am – not – mindless,” Aclysia spelled out. “I serve John out of my own volition, representing it as anything else undermines my free will. Apologize.”
“And what if I don’t want to?” Thana growled. “Learn to take a fucking joke.”
“My sapience is not a topic for jokes. Declaring me a being without autonomy makes John a slaver. I will not have you undermine my own decision making abilities nor my beloved’s moral fibre.” Aclysia firmly stated. “Apologize.”
“Fuck off.”
“Ladies,” John intervened, the air was getting dangerously thick. “I am sure Thana didn’t mean it that way. Just take a deep breath Thana, calm down, and…”
“No.” The blood mage crossed her arms and, after trying to punch a random point in the air, laughed. “This is retarded. Your artificial maid not being able to take a beating to her pride is nothing I have to calm down over.”
“Thana, ya really should…”
“Shut the fuck up, gum crotch, I don’t care what your cat-brain can produce. Learn to be anything more useful than my punching bag before you annoy me again,” Thana interrupted Rave before she could even state anything.
John rushed over to Thana and grabbed her by the wrist. He pulled her to her feet and she obliged. “We are going outside for a bit.”
A smile was still plastered over Thana’s face, but it was empty and her eyes were cold. “Fucking fine,” she agreed after glancing over to the rest of the angry crowd. John didn’t even bother with getting his shoes, instead they simply went out the back.
The cold air on his skin was still warmer than the silence that followed once they were alone. “The hell do you think you are doing?” John’s tone was sharper than he intended it to be. Everything about his emotions at this moment was difficult to express. He was wise enough to realize that he was using the wrong tone, but not charismatic enough to do anything about it. He wanted to sound earnest, but he sounded like an accuser.
“What am I doing?!” Thana’s voice was high-pitched. “It’s you fuckers who can’t be the slightest bit flexible! Take a joke!”
John bit back his tongue. There was one thing he could do to keep his tone in check and that was to speak very slowly, with deep breaths in between. “I am sorry if that came out wrong,” he started with an apology. He pinched the bridge of his nose. Too late did he realize that the gesture was condescending.
“I am not a child, you ass,” the blood mage growled. “I’m an adult fucking female, evident by me almost having yours just a minute ago.”
“Thana, just…”
“Just shut the fuck up!” Thana demanded. “I am not here to be judged by you! You fuckers need me, not the other way around.”
And that’s where John made the big mistake of almost laughing. He repressed that urge to ask ‘What would you do without us?’ but not all could be held back. It was just a slightly ridiculing blow of air, but the golden ring in Thana’s eyes that formed in response left no doubt about what she thought of that.
“WHAT?! You think I am useless without you? That I am helpless?! Bitch, without you holding me back, I could take whatever I want. Who could stop me? The top 2% of people in the Abyss? Gods? Just a matter of time before I evolve past all of those assholes, I don’t need you to survive and if you are telling me that… are you being for fucking real right now?”
The blood mage stopped and crossed her arms, lowering her eyes towards the ground. She looked at the Mana Blade that was stabbed into her lower abdomen.
John drew the weapon back and let the wound re-seal itself. He took no pleasure in having caused it. Where his charisma failed him, his calculating mind had told him to work with one of the extremely unhealthy ways to calm her down that worked: pain.
“Listen here, you socially inept potato.” Speaking her language got him a little giggle from Thana. That was progress. “We both know you are a fuck-up when it comes to behaving like a human, and, whenever you have one of your panic attacks, you manage to seriously screw everything up.” The blood mage nodded at that, evidently capable of listening. “We are willing to help you,” John said very slowly. “That offer requires that you at least try to work with us. Nobody expects you to be perfect, but if you insult Aclysia and my girlfriend and refuse to apologize when you clearly go too far, then I have no patience to entertain liking you. Friendship is-“
“You don’t entertain liking me anyway,” Thana mumbled so quietly John almost missed it.
“That’s not true,” John stated fervently. “I want to like you. I want to believe that you deserve something better. However, friendship is a two way street. If you think you’re that much better on your own.” He gestured towards the edge of the island. “Just jump”
Thana turned her eyes in that direction. The golden circle in her eyes had slowed down enough that the seven dots were individually visible again. Turning her eyes in his direction, they sped up a little again. Thana looked at her feet and took a deep breath. “I wanted that kid.”
“What?” John asked, all emotions emptied from his voice by the surprise.
“You heard me, you gaping anus,” Thana kept her gaze decisively away from him. “I just felt, ‘hey, maybe, that’s a way to repay the guy, that you spent the last days of your life and the first days of your new life parasitically abusing’, or something like that. Then I saw that expression on your face when you realized that you would be a dad, then I saw the panic once you realized that it was me and I just, I felt so… helpless… so thoroughly disappointed in somebody that I thought I could trust. Then I panicked because I wondered why I would even want that. Seriously, why would I want to be a mom? I am CLEARLY not fucking ready to raise a kid, for fuck’s sake I need people to look after me myself. Then something in my brain went ‘fuck everything, if I can’t get what I want, neither can anyone else’. I hate kids, I think, why do I even want some. I don’t understand myself. Feelings are bullshit.” She stared at the sky now. “What the fuck am I doing?”
John quietly listened to all of that and, unsure what else to do, stepped closer.
“If you dare to fucking hug me now I will rip out your spine and reinsert it through your ass,” Thana warned him.
“Not doing that then,” John firmly agreed. “Well, I could punch you instead,” he joked.
Thana nodded in earnest. “Yeah, that sounds about right.”
A knot formed in John’s stomach. The regret of having stabbed her settled in. “I don’t actually…” John tried to evade actually doing it but then sighed, “you are seriously wrong in the head.”
“Yup,” Thana agreed, “and I doubt it will ever get much fucking better…. W-will you still keep your promise to stick by me?”
“As long as you learn to apologize from time to time,” John countered and reluctantly pulled his fist back.
“Cool. Now punch me.”
“Thana, I-“
“Fucking do it or I am jumping.”
The Gamer stared at her for a few moments, trying to work out if she was serious. By all that he could see, she was, and that was the worst of it. “This will be the last time I do anything like that, understand?” he told her. She rolled her eyes. “I mean it. I’m not letting you keep this habit of needing to get tormented to calm down.”
“…Fucking fine. Do it, pussy.” John pulled his arm back and hit her in the forehead. She stood there, unbothered. His fist, however, was in great pain. “Are you for fucking real?” Thana laughed when he pulled his hand back. “That’s the best you can do?!”
“Yup,” John answered and shook his hand.
“And I even hardened my skin on reflex, wow, sorry, didn’t think you were that weak,” Thana ridiculed him.
“You can do that?” John asked, “do you have nanomachines, son?”
“No, I have fucking crystallisable blood?” Thana gestured wildly, a tone of utter confusion, claws appearing on her hands for a moment before vanishing into her bloodstream again.
“That one was a reference… ah, whatever,” John decided. “So, I will keep you being baby-crazy a secret. Okay… from Lydia and Rave at least, the rest are in my thoughts and already know by now.”
“Yeah…” Thana kicked a pebble with a downtrodden expression. “What drove me to get it in the first place?!”
John gulped down the ‘I’ joke. Instead, he tried his hand at a reassuring smile, “Hey, how about this: if you get into a state where you can be a normal member of society without my help, we can give this whole child thing another thought.”
“You serious?” Thana looked conflicted about that, happy but also heavily annoyed, “Why would you even say that, I just told you that it was a fucking awful idea.”
“But you still want it, don’t you?” The question created a whole series of gremlin noises in response. “And, while I am not even remotely prepared to be a dad now, I will be one day. If I can have a harem, might as well go all the way through and have beautiful kids with all of you.”
“So, you are telling me, that my primary motivation for being not mind-murdering, ass-whooping, cunt-crashing insane…,” she stopped to stomp at a random point of the floor and then grinded her foot on the ground like she was extinguishing a cigarette. “Interrupting asshole,” she growled before continuing. “…should be to be a child-carrying bitch in your girls-club?”
“Only if you want that,” John clarified. “I would be more than happy to just have you in my ‘girls-club’. I like you, despite you being an insufferable bitch at times, and in time I may even come to love you. It all depends on how much effort you are willing to put in.”
“You ass,” Thana gestured him to lower his head, “It’s not nice to tell a lady that loves you that you don’t love her yet.”
“Good that I am not talking to a lady but a bloody angel,” John pointed out as he followed her request.
Extremely carefully she framed his face between her hands. Her touch was soft, delicate. Controlled. “You know, you are neither particularly handsome, nor ugly, and that weird mixture between selfishness and niceness will be the end of you,” she told him, all sober and serious.
“I survived you,” John pointed out. “Anything after that is child’s play.”
“And you say that there is a chance that, one day, you won’t look utterly panicked when you hear that I am pregnant with your kid?” Thana asked with a snicker.
“Oh, I will still panic,” John assured her, “but the reason won’t be because it’s you, but because it would be me.”
“And you say that you will continue to be patient with dumbass me?” Thana asked.
“As long as you keep learning and keep giving in when you are wrong, we will probably forgive you. I cannot speak for anyone but myself though.”
“And you say that one day you might love me?” Thana asked.
John smirked. “I’m already starting to, you adorable bundle of power, madness and insecurity.”
He was lost in her violet eyes. That fascinating, faceted structure, the golden rings, the humanity buried underneath mountains of shattered glass. These eyes got closer. Her lips laid on his, a kiss without tongue or any sexual meaning.
“I don’t know what I would do without you,” Thana whispered, “but I would be lost without YOU. Fucking confusing.”
“Welcome to the world of humans, where we all get along, or try to, and nobody has an idea how or why,” John picked her up.
“What the hell are you doing?!” Thana screeched when he put her over his shoulder. “Bringing the bad girl back inside so she can apologize to everyone,” John announced, slapped her on the ass and opened the door. Sure, his strength was stupendously low for the level of the Abyss he was at now, but it was still superhuman and she was small.
“This is unfair! If I struggle I may break your fucking neck!” Thana complained.
John just slapped her hindquarters a second time and that was the end of that discussion. This was the acceptable degree of violence to administer. He arrived back in the living room, put Thana into the chair she had been in and looked at her expectantly.
She made a sour expression and mumbled something inaudible. “Excuse me,” Aclysia, who of course knew what had happened outside, asked with an understanding smile. “I shouldn’t have been so pushy.”
“Urgh, you are too fucking NICE,” Thana made a disgusted noise. “AHHHH FEELINGS SUUUCK!!!” she screamed, ruffling her hair as she shifted violently in her seat; “You win, I am sorry, just stab me in the shoulder next time I say something out of line. Don’t know. Change of topic, please, before my brain explodes from stupid niceness. I have really bad ideas right now, that involve murdering AT LEAST half of you, just to escape this piss pool of cringe. Give me something else to think about. NOW!” She pulled herself into a tight bundle. “I’m so sorry… please?”
“How about we tour the house?” John suggested, while patting the insecure bundle’s head.
