The Gamer Chapter 1653 – Days until the Wedding 2 – Bunny and Cat (Patreon)

“Ya ever wonder if we could Combine?”

The question alone gave John a headache. It had been posed by Rave and was now being contemplated by Sylph. “I’d rather not deal with… Rylph?” he groaned and was promptly stabbed in the cheek by his unhappy fiancée’s index finger. “What?”

“Ya still think of me as Rave sometimes – ya call me Jane! It’s been literal years, tiger.”

“Well, I do address you as and call you Jane in my thoughts it’s just in the… you know, wordless thoughts, you’re Rave? Not sure if that makes sense?”

“It does and doesn’t.”

“Also Jylph sounds even worse and you two together definitely wouldn’t be Sane.”

The pun caught off-guard both cat and bun. Rave laughed louder, mostly because her dad had positively predisposed her towards puns. “My dad’s good,” she answered before he could ask.

“Get out of his head, woman!” Sylph complained, trying to mimic John’s playfully upset tone. “That grey matter is for me and mine to snuggle with! It is warm, cozy and kinda moist, like a less comfortable Undine! Hmmm, should sleep on Undine again. Undine best pillow, every day, every year.”

“Why wouldn’t ya want this airhead to fuse with me?” Rave asked. “We’d be all the talk of the town.”

“Yeah, you would talk for the entire town.”

“That’s what I just said.”

“I was having your back.”

“In stabbing myself. How come Eliana always gets all the, ‘Don’t be mean to yourself,’ but when I do it, ya double down on me?”

“Well, maybe she is just cuter than you.”

Rave gasped, scandalized and appalled. “How dare you suggest something that’s probably true!”

“Hmm… hmmm.” Swaying her head rhythmically left to right, Sylph made her green bunny ears slope one way, then another. “Who is cuter, who is cuter?” she thought out loud. A couple of her lesser kin twirled through the nearby air. The boat they sat in was drifting down the channel between the new outer layer of mountains and the coast between Earth and Shadow Island. “Eliana do be shorter, and shorter girls are always cuter, but Jane do be having cat ears, and animal ears are always cuter. What a conundrum, what a conundrum… I wonder if the word conundrum has anything to do with the word colander.”

“It almost certainly does not,” John said.

Rave put her head in his lap and her heels on the edge of the boat. “Ya don’t got a certain answer on that?” A tap on his nose made both of them chuckle.

“Etymology is not my field of expertise.”

“What is your field of expertise? Knowing the names of scientific fields no one cares about?”

“That and ear scratching.”

John demonstrated his ability by rubbing his feline first fiancée’s additional ears. Purring started soon thereafter. “Yeah… you’re gooooood at that,” she sighed, her voice slowed by the relaxation. A little hiss escaped her when Sylph threw herself on top.

“Me too, me too, me too!” the volt bunny requested.

“Your wish is my pleasure.” John scratched the green-haired elemental behind her tall bunny ears. The different sensations were interesting. The base of the bunny ears was fuzzier and less firm compared to the much smaller cat ears. Both were warm. Both were rewarding to keep playing with. Tactile satisfaction mixed with the simple joy of watching his women be content and pleased.

Following an instinct, John pulled his hand back just before Rave could nom it. “Get out of my head, dude!” Rave demanded.

“I don’t need to be in your head to know you’ll bite me when I pet you. That’s just pattern recognition.” John focused the effort of both hands on Sylph, who began to proverbially melt under the touch. Adorable little chortles were all the bubbly air spirit managed to produce.  “I do know you’re still interested in Sylph’s answer to who is cuter, though.”

“Aha!” Rave circled around him like a playful cat. Scratching him behind his very human ear, she whispered, “so you do live in my head?”

The proximity and sensuousness of her voice made shivers run down his spine. “It’s located in a high value neighbourhood,” he answered, to her snorting amusement. “Prime real estate.”

“Ya ever wonder if our daughters would get half my awesome and half Bren’s huge tits?”

“Yes, although I do not think of my mother’s breasts in those words.”

“Oy! Why did the scratches stop!” Sylph complained when exactly that happened. “I demand more scratches. I want a scratch-gasm!”

“Can that even happen?”

“Scratch me until it does. If it never happens, never stop! If it does happen, I get a scratch-gasm, everyone wins. Unless… Audible gasp! Do you not want to scratch my ears! How dastardly of you, to refuse to scratch the bunny ears of a woman that only got them because of you! I grew them for you! Sniff, sniff.” Sylph wiped imaginary tears away. “Anyway, what were you doing? Something about me being the cutest?”

“Who is cuter, Jane or Eliana?” John repeated the question.

“Hmmm… hmmmmmmmm….” Sylph swayed left to right to some personal rhythm. “Chip-pa-pa… chup-pa-pa…” She sang her little nonsenses. “Small or animal ears… what’s cuter… hmmmmmm.” Her ears suddenly perked up. “Eliana is cuter!”

“Ya got a lot of nerve for someone in pouncing range,” Rave threatened with a wink. “Why did she win?”

“I dunno, I just feel it in my soul. You are super, duper sexy and confident and you could probably run a construction company on your own or something, but Eliana is all ‘I want to rub her cheeks’ and ‘must protecc’ so I think she’s cuter because you’re also other things?” Sylph palavered.

“Makes sense to me.” John was about to go back to scratching Sylph’s ears when he realized they had arrived.

Throughout the entire conversation, the boat had kept on moving east. Now, it pulled up to an isolated spot along the shore. There was no reason for anyone to ever be there nor was there a way for the average person to get to that point. Yet there was a table there, complete with a person sitting at it.

Straight as a rod, Fianna Valentine awaited his approach. Ehtra had settled his hour to be free, but Rave had decided to pull two events together. The mercenary turned special operative awaited her commander in chief without moving more than her eyes. From the corner to the centre, they wandered with him. John took the seat opposite of her. Sylph zapped into his lap, much to the chagrin of the feline Lightbearer that usually claimed the spot. She took her vengeance by scratching Sylph’s ears.

“John does it better,” Sylph mumbled.

“John gets more practice,” Rave defended herself.

“I’ve heard you have come to a decision?” John asked. When he had first spoken to Fianna, there had been a hint of mutual interest. An interest of what kind, neither of them were completely sure. John was attractive because he offered power and lots of it. A woman like her, with more personal ambition than talent, could benefit greatly from it.

Too bad that John couldn’t just hand out that power. The requisite was love, true love, on both sides, and that made even pursuing that power messy in a unique way. It was assurance for John on multiple levels.

“I have,” Fianna answered with a mechanical nod. “I have opted not to attempt to enter a relationship with you.”

John leaned back in his chair. “Gotta say that’s surprising,” Rave said what he was thinking. An elbow on his shoulder, she leaned forwards until her face was next to his. “Didn’t think ya would ask me for a meeting with him to tell him ya ain’t gunning for him.”

“Totally reverse psychology!” Sylph declared. “She’s telling John that he can’t have her, so he’ll absolutely want her! John loves to mess with things he shouldn’t!”

“Shush,” the Gamer reprimanded his bunny-eared menace.

“You can’t silence the truth, I can babble on and on! The sky is blue! Lydia loves it up the ass! Grass is green! I’m the horniest of the horny! 2 plus 2 equals 4! I have the mental focus of a praying mantis, the accuracy of a praying mantis, the creativity of a praying mantis, the attention of pray- Oh, a giant gummy bear!”

John practically stuffed the oversized sweet in Sylph’s mouth. Adorable nibbling and quiet ensued. ‘Thankfully, her sugar rush days are over,’ John thought. ‘Or, well, just takes a lot more these days.’

“Is she the horniest again?” Rave asked.

“Probably, I haven’t checked recently.”

“That’s the most important thing! You should always check on it,” Rave translated muffled exclamations of the air spirit, her mouth stuffed with sugary gelatine.

“Maybe. Back to the topic at hand.” John locked eyes with Fianna, who had been patiently waiting. “I can see why this chaos wouldn’t appeal to you.”

“I do not mind. If you wish to verify my feelings on the matter, you may use Observe.”

“I already have,” John revealed to her. She was not surprised by that answer, nor should she have been. Part of being in Nightfall meant that every agent could and would be subjected to Observe at some point. John respected the privacy of his citizenry. His agents and government employees were a different matter entirely.

Those people had additional power over the state by virtue of their position and thus were subject to additional scrutiny. The Gamer was very clear about this arrangement and most chose to take it anyway. The naïve thought they were too small a cog to ever get inspected, the greedy thought the money was worth it, and most actually did not think about it. It mattered to them as little as the phone most people carried in their pocket.

“It is, as ever, an unreliable summary,” John continued. “If you would indulge me, I’d be interested in your reasoning.”

“After careful analysis, I have worked out that I do not want such a relationship to define me,” Fianna answered. “I find it improper to engage in flirtation with the ulterior motive of my career. Even if the mechanics of your power assure that it would require a true bond between us to work, I would always question whether I have done the right thing in finding love in my pursuit of power.”

“Good reasons,” John agreed. “Then what will you do now?”

“What I am certain of doing. Serve Fusion in my current role. Achieve what power I can. Be given the honours I deserve. I shall seek no greater position than my merit grants me.” Her soft Irish accent mixed with the military manner of speaking created an enticing interplay.

John considered his options, then picked one. He reached into his inventory and withdrew a stack of specifically decorated paper slips. One was placed on the table, the others wandered back into his pocket dimension. A pen came out next. “Have you made any trustworthy contacts within Nightfall yet?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Your organization is small. I prefer to work alone.”

“Well, it doesn’t make much of a difference ultimately.” John finished writing up his orders, then slipped the paper across the table. “Hand this to the bureaucrats, they will give you high level access. You’ll be first called for missions I deem personally important.”

“Sir, I-“

John cut her off with a raised hand. “I’m giving you this promotion because of merit – the merit that you truly do not want anything besides proving yourself to yourself,” he explained to her. “Everyone else has some kind of chip on their shoulder, some kind of agenda they want to push, however slight. I cannot fault them for it, that’s only human, and who would want to risk their life in deployments like this without some opportunity to nudge the world one way or another?” He stopped there for a second. “You want to perform, then perform as my spy. Claire covers the areas we frequent, Nightingale covers my tracks, and Lorelei hints me towards the future, but you can be my ear to the ground. From this point onwards, we will never be seen in public together – at least not while you are wearing that face. It’ll be your personal duty to arrive in locations I aim to visit before me and scout them out.”

“I am being assigned as your security detail?”

“I don’t need protection,” John stated flatly. “I’ll put it in unblemished terms: your purpose is to make me look even more prescient. You’ll gather local rumours, scan the lay of the land, get in contact with the underworld – you’ll bribe, steal, break in, and avoid. Your job will have very little to do with sniping targets. I don’t need a killer. If I want someone dead, I can do it myself. I need someone with me that doesn’t ping on every magical radar like a volcanic eruption and yet someone strong enough that I’m not sending them somewhere to die. You’ll need to balance being unassuming and influential, anonymous and yet affiliated with me. If you can do that…” he slipped the paper across the table, “…take this.”

Fiana let his words sink in for a full minute, before putting two fingers on the paper and pulling it the rest of the way to herself. “Affirmative,” she finally said. “I’ll be your intel vanguard.”

That was a way to describe this.

“Dismissed,” John stated and Fianna went for the boat that she had arrived in. Unable to help himself, he stared at her swaying ass as she left. She did have quite the rump on her and her choice of civilian attire, yoga pants, did nothing to obscure that fact.

“Do ya want her?” Rave asked, genuinely curious, once Fianna was out on the water.

“Not going to read my mind on this one?”

“I’m really good at it, but we still have to talk about stuff.”

The Gamer hummed in thoughtful agreement. “Physically, she remains attractive. You know what I think about white-haired women with big butts and attitude.”

Sylph swallowed the last of the gummy bear. “Maid them?”

“Exactly.” The Gamer patted his lap, inviting Rave to share it with Sylph. It was a crammed situation, but he was just about broad and tall enough that it was mostly comfortable. “That attraction put aside, I’m respecting her wish. She wants to be herself first and whatever we might become second. This position will give her plenty of opportunity to do so.”

“Ya did lie to her a little bit – Claire is perfectly capable of masking herself, ain’t she?”

“Well, only during the night. Fianna doesn’t need to know that either way. Best to have many operatives on the ground.” John sighed deeply. “Truth be told, I loathe sending an attractive woman in the path of my danger, but that’s my mundane sensibilities talking. She’ll be useful in this position. I genuinely wanted someone that could be my ‘covert hand’.”

“Doesn’t this mean that, and I am sorry if I sound stupid for I do have my head in the clouds, if she does join you as one of us, she’d be out of that role because, ya know, woooooah, so powerful, oh my Mother!” Sylph babbled.

“Yes, we would have to renegotiate the position if it comes to that. I’m not sure it will. She was serious when she said she wasn’t interested in pursuing me. She did skip on the detail that she wouldn’t mind me pursuing her.”

“Which you will…” Rave’s deliberate pause urged him to complete that sentence.

“…not do. I probably would have ten haremettes ago… but that’s not now. As Lydia said, I’m a man that has a harem, not a man that is building one. If,” he lingered on that word for a moment, “not when – if I go for her, it will be not because of an initial fascination with her looks or her cute Irish accent. No more chasing women after just a few days. From now on it’s two weeks of regular contact minimum.”

“Look at you, being all responsible,” Rave said, completely unironically.

His was a weird life.