The Gamer Chapter 554 – Meetings 4 – Bloodmother (Patreon)

“Somebody out there is about to be very happy with their business day,” John dared to hypothesize as he got off the teleporter and immediately entered the real world. The streets around them went from empty to busy with people. To be fair, they were all the way in Manhattan,  Broadway, specifically. No wonder that there were a lot of people here.

John had placed his fourth teleporting beacon up here, for pure convenience. As the Transport Station was Tier 2 now, he had a total of five normal and one long range outpost to place. He planned to get the last normal range one down somewhere on Staten Island, that would make it pretty easy for him to get around the Hudson Barrier.

“Either that or I have to get a suit from the store… really depends.” Being Manhattan, John expected there to be a decent tailor somewhere. As a matter of fact, Google promised him there were half a dozen around.

“Remind me again why we are getting a normal suit for ya?” Rave asked as they became part of the crowd, much to the dismay of Eliza, who became more attached to John’s side than a sloth did to a branch. It was up to interpretation whether that small girl, clothed in gothic themed summer attire, was holding onto him because she was afraid of the people or about to tear some random passenger apart for looking at her funny.

All things considered; it was probably the latter. Since Gaia would get uppity if she did that (and John didn’t really want innocent people to get violently murdered), he put an arm around her, shielding her from the crowd. Together with Aclysia, shooting envious glances, they were the usual quartet for trips into the normal world, camouflage active and all.

John would have lied if he said he didn’t feel alien in the crowd himself. He had spent so much time around people with unnatural hair and eye colours, with biomechanical limbs, people running quicker than the cars that drove by, elves, goblins, people made entirely from metal and all that jazz that this dense, exclusively human crowd, where all weird hair was dyed and the loudest noises were from engines, was just weird. Hell, he had gotten interviewed by a catgirl and a praying mantis-person.

That last thing was also the answer to Rave’s question. “Because I don’t think I can get away buying a suit over in the Hudson Barrier,” he explained. “I know there is at least one tailor who makes what I need in Thorne’s old mall,” they still had to rename that, “but it’s been two very exciting days. The second one of us is recognized, the press will descend on us like vultures and we won’t be able to move for… forever.”

“I could tear their fucking throats out?” Eliza suggested.

“For people that annoy Master, that sounds adequate,” Aclysia agreed.

Rave, walking one step ahead of them, chuckled, turned around, and claimed John’s right side for herself. It was an energetic movement that crooked John’s vision. With a quick move of her slender fingers, she put his glasses back on right. He wasn’t confident enough in the lenses yet to take them out on a walk.

Now that he had two beautiful ladies attached to him and a third walking nearby, he was… actually, he barely got any attention whatsoever. This was odd, even in the Abyss most people were fuming with envy at these times. After a few moments, John realized why nobody cared. He was at the Broadway. If there was a place in the normal world where rich people showed off the models they went out with, it would be here.

They probably just thought he was some young producer who had gotten lucky with his early clients and was now on his off day, gambling away his money on foolish love and overpriced souvenirs.

“Ya two need to chill,” Rave told the other two women in the group. “How about ya just think about something nice? Not like we have to deal with the paparazzi now.” Winking at her boyfriend she added, “Good thinking then, tiger.”

“I am going to have to explain enough when I make the official announcement,” John grumbled while they followed Aclysia. Now that he had no hand free anymore, the weaponized maid was the one who had to read the map on her phone display. The way her silky hair reflected the sunlight in its current black state was breath-taking. He still preferred her natural silvery white though. Just gave her that extra magical vibe he was looking for in his girls nowadays, not to mention the continued A2 factor. “I want to be on that CPDI show again…”

“Ya never did get to fuck that catgirl, didcha?” his girlfriend joked and purred softly into his ear. “Want meow to become a good pussy tonyaght?”

John couldn’t help but laugh while his pants got tighter, remembering yesterday’s display of a submissive girlfriend. “There have to be better ways to phrase that,” he claimed. “With less cheese and puns and more my dick in your vagina.”

“Of all fucking people,” Eliza chimed in, “YOU cockslapping soft-hearted cunt don’t get to call anyone out for either cheesy lines or puns that make me want to kill myself by choking on French fries crusted over with old semen.”

“…That’s a picture,” John immediately hated himself for imagining how that meal would even look like. The white stains on cold fries that had turned soggy from that load beforehand. “Topic change, quick, my brain is going places!”

“Your brain is always going places,” Rave rolled her eyes. “Aclysia, can ya look in there and tell me if my guess is correct? Because I would say, Brainiac here is thinking, in rapid succession about: Lydia’s lips glistening after she ate a buttered bread, something about the governmental philosophy of some dude whose name I can’t pronounce, how he wants to show that to Scarlett later, how those fries maybe could be a decent meal if it was him who jerked on them, that he wants steak later and how he loves me.”

“The philosopher was Thomas Hobbes, I think you can pronounce that,” Aclysia confirmed most of what she said by pointing out no further flaws. “And you missed that he thought about the fries could only work after somebody else jerked him off for said fresh semen.”

“Sure, sure, that’s how his skills work or something,” Rave waved off and kissed her man; after all, he had thought that he loved her and was now leaning into that gesture of affection.

There was no sense even questioning how she knew that. She was living rent free in his head, that was about all there was to it. “Too bad you can’t use that freaky mind reading on people not madly in love with you,” the Gamer complained. “Would make my life a whole lot easier.”

“Not my fault I know ya better than the back of my hand,” she smirked and gave him another peck on the lips. “Can ya believe how much I love ya despite how stupidly quick we got together?”

“I cannot and yet here we are,” John whispered back. “I don’t need to believe in things that are so clearly real.”

At his left side, Eliza let out a jealous cascade of quiet curses, silenced when John slapped her on the ass hard enough that several people turned their heads. Evidently, they were used to models getting shown off, but such brazen acts of sexuality were still above the norm. As the guy infamous for fucking his harem between board meetings, the Gamer had no care to spend on any of the raised eyebrows he got. He just grinned back like the happiest man in the world. Even with the sunglasses on his nose, he generally identified as that.

“We have arrived,” Aclysia suddenly announced; through all the bantering, John hadn’t even noticed where she had guided them. Nevertheless, she was right, there was a rather prominent looking tailor right next to him. “This wouldn’t be necessary if I learned how to sew…”

“Don’t beat yourself up over not being the ABSOLUTELY perfect housemaid,” John said, parting from the other two girls to give her some attention as well. He gave her a nice hug, one arm around her, the other hand resting on her head and gently patting. Her hair was hot from the sunlight it had absorbed and she smelled of cherries. Tasted of them as well, not some cheap aroma, the genuine stuff. Ripe cherries, freshly plucked and washed with cold, crystal clear water. “But hey, maybe Gaia will have something for you in the next Special Perk selection? Would save you the time learning it.”

“Didn’t you want to spend that on the sexual upgrades?” Aclysia made sure. “My wish to have tailoring capabilities for rare cases like this shouldn’t get in the way of our daily fucks.”

“I love how you made all of that sound totally elaborated and then ended it rather crudely,” John snickered as he headed inside. The tailor shop was neither big nor small, it was just a normal size, with a couple of employees walking around bored or keeping the store clean. Some doors led to back rooms, presumably for measuring or sewing. As John already knew his measurements from the last time he had gotten a suit, all he had to do was tell an employee and the whole thing went into motion, with the group just having to wait.

‘Take a step to the left,’ Siena’s voice suddenly echoed in John’s mind. Although the shadow spirit could not accompany the group out in the open, she was the only elemental that could still follow him around by staying in his shadow. The Gamer didn’t like it when she did that without telling him. Sure, if he had checked, he would have noticed immediately, but he hadn’t, so this took him by surprise somewhat. Also, as minimal as it was, there was the risk of her getting ousted if John’s shadow got eliminated by some sort of flash, however short.

‘Could you warn me the next time you are hanging out below me?’ he asked; her request (or command, judging by the tone) hadn’t been urgent, so he didn’t see why he would just go along with it. Didn’t take time to figure out what she wanted either, one step to the left and she could drop into a shadow that allowed her to move around more, even to the outside, if John’s eyes saw all of this correctly.

‘Hmmmm,’ she made a moaning sound that was remotely thoughtful and then followed that up with a very decisive, ‘No.’ After a moment worth of giggling she continued, ‘Just view me as a pleasant surprise when you are stuck somewhere alone, begging for someone to touch you gently since you can’t yourself anymore.’

‘If I am ever THAT deprived of sex, I will just spend a teleport cooldown,’ John informed her. ‘Because you and I both know that you would either completely dry me up or keep me edging for hours… OR BOTH!’

‘You make a very deeply,’ her voice was filled with lust, ‘penetrating,’ it made it hard for John to hide his growing erection, ‘argument there.’ While the Gamer adjusted his pants, she continued, ‘Anyhow, in this limited confinement I can’t properly play, so would you kindly take step to the left?’

‘You made movement a non-option right now,’ John told her. He was afraid that his dick would push past the rubber band around his waist if he moved too much right now. Their back and forth was, however, interrupted as John’s attention was pulled to another customer entering to the sound of a ringing bell.

The woman that entered looked like she was supposed to be in her mid-twenties, but the fallen features of her face and general thinness had made her visibly age beyond that. Clothes that had supposedly once fit her were hanging from her body like rags over a scarecrow. At least her hair was in surprisingly good condition, brown locks that flew around as she took a hasty look at her surroundings.

The moment she spied John, she began moving in his direction, ignoring an employee. “I found you!” the woman cried out and actually tripped, fell and crawled the rest of the way.

‘That’s one dedicated reporter,’ John thought, but quickly realized his error when the woman wasn’t going for his feet but for Eliza’s instead.

“What the fuck?!” the blood mage reacted with an understandable amount of shock as the woman clawed into her ankles like a coke fiend that had just been promised a new doses. “Let go, you creepy piece of shit!” At that point several employees were coming to check on this. All of those mundane people looking prevented Eliza from turning the woman’s head into a football.

That and the word she uttered repeatedly afterwards. “Bloodmother, Bloodmother, I finally found you, Bloodmother, give me more! Please!”

John and Eliza realized at the same time what this person was. Even Rave made the connection and they all formed a quick and silent agreement over how to proceed. “Get off her, you creep!” the Gamer fell into the blood mage’s line of response and dragged the woman away. Although he needed to use more of his strength than he thought, to the employees it just looked like a man dragging a bony looking woman away from another and off the floor.

It didn’t take long for the manager, or at least the currently present highest member of the shop, to appear and ask what was going on. With just a few words, John made clear that they didn’t know this woman but that he would take care of it by calling the police. What the manager thought of the believability of both of those statements wasn’t important, he would just be happy to have this affair removed from his grounds. For the suit, John left behind Aclysia.

Then he, Eliza and Rave went out with the seemingly insane woman. She didn’t make anymore odd moves, aside from staying uncomfortably close to the blood mage and continuously muttering the same sentence, she was pretty docile. Outside, they quickly entered an Illusion Barrier.

“Sit down,” John told the woman, taking the copied chairs from some nearby café’s veranda and plopping them down on the empty street. No reaction, the woman didn’t even acknowledge his existence. “Tamara, that’s your name, right?” as usual, Observe had already told him he was right. Still no reaction. “Eliza, could you?”

“No, she is Thana, Bloodmother!” the woman immediately reacted to that, seemingly ready to attack John. Just like her hair, her fingernails were in surprisingly good shape and looked pretty sharp. There was no reason to be afraid of a little scratch, but John still would rather avoid it.

“Shut the fuck up and sit the fuck down,” Eliza growled and Tamara obeyed like a well-trained puppy. There was absolutely no more question at that point, they were looking at one of the people that had drunk the blood of Thana, a ‘gift’ from the Bloodfallen for the loyalty of the subject guilds. A single dose should eventually have faded away, but there had to be several people out there that had taken the blood numerous times over the several decades that the Bloodfallen had operated.

Administered often enough, diluted or not, there had to be some sort of side effect. Travolta had experimented on himself to vastly increase the potency of what he had been given. This woman was still in a less damaged state than he had been at the very end. She just seemed like a junkie with a desperate need for the next fix.

“Bloodmother,” Tamara said again and became very small when Eliza stared at her with a menacingly blank face. “Are you not happy today, Bloodmother?”

They had already known that there were people like this out there, Eliza herself had told John that she still felt some people connected to her. It had only been a question of time until somebody damaged badly enough would seek out Eliza. Seemed like a lack of cohesive thoughts delayed that intention by a bit.

“What do we do with her?” Rave asked.