De-Procrastinating Finale – Purpose Defined (Patreon)

“I call this meeting to order!” Rave shouted over the chatting haremettes. All of them fell silent and looked at her with various expressions of bafflement. “Just wanted to say that.” The feline Lightbearer giggled, ears flicking. “Anyhowzels, we gotta talk about our resident lazy gal having decided she’d become a drop-out.”

“Oy, I won’t be called lazy by someone that literally curls up and sleeps for three hours in the middle of the day.”

“One, I also work up to 60 hours a week, so your statement is dismissed,” Rave declared, index finger raised. “B…” her thumb pointed out, creating the shape of an L, “…let’s stay on topic.”

“We never stay on topic,” Nia chimed in.

“We can try!”

“Try being the operative word,” Scarlett muttered into her whiskey glass.

The chatter around the table rapidly rose again in volume as the various haremettes either joined or strayed from the banter. Lee herself sat at the side of the table, between Nia and Metra, and just watched all of the people she loved most in the world. It gave her a warm and fuzzy feeling, to have a face that she adored in every direction.

A snap of his fingers caused Lee’s body to shiver with anticipation. Her spine straightened, her thoughts became foggy, and the bliss of letting go was just a few words away. Submissiveness begged for an opportunity to hand the wheel over to her dom. Then her active mind shoved away the part-Pavlovian, part-magical response to John’s gesture. Everyone’s attention shifted to him, their responses similar to Lee’s.

He smirked. He always smirked when he used that tool to tease them. A dead giveaway that there was nothing else coming on the lewd front, at least not now. Whenever he was serious about doing something with the hypnotism, his expression reflected intent and his eyes were hungry, rather than teasing. Although she knew the difference, her body was not quite as immediately understanding.

The spike in Lee’s desire left her slightly horny, like looking at a porn picture in public accidentally. All around the table, the girls shifted in their seats, leaving little, sticky trails on the leather. Lee had always been easily turned on and sensitive, but that had been upped to ridiculous levels since moving in with John. Not that she was complaining. Leaving snail trails wherever she sat was not an issue in a household this clean.

“Can ya not make everyone horny, tiger?” Rave complained.

“Well, it was the quickest way to get you to listen,” John defended himself half-heartedly. “Let’s get this over with as fast as possible. I’ve had a horny day and we have to prepare for tomorrow.” He flashed a smile at the woman next to Lee.

The young Fateweaver herself grabbed Nia’s hand and squeezed. It was the blonde’s birthday tomorrow. Stone-faced, the pariah oozed a weirdness that was little more than a mildly unpleasant draft to Lee’s highly accustomed mind. “I don’t want anything.”

“Well, I want to do something though. At least something small.” John kept it enigmatic and gestured at Lee. “Her first, though. Now, Lee, you’ll open some kind of business or what is your plan?”

“Can I just spend all my time training or gaming?” she asked. John put his chin on his knuckles and stared at her in a disapproving manner. It made her lips tremble, almost curving in a grin. “Come oooon, pamper me?” she pleaded in a squeaky tone. “You know you want to, dude.”

“Don’t make me hunt you down and spank you,” he threatened.

“Ooooh nooooooo,” Lee exclaimed in a slow, dry voice. “Whatever would I do? The big bad wolf is going to devour me, how terrible. I might cum my brains out. That’s such a hardcore threat.” She could see the fingers of his left hand twitch, threatening another snap. She was craving it, just as much as she craved sassing him. “Do it,” she egged him on.

John took a deep inhale and put his hand flat on the table. “No. Serious talk time.”

“A modicum of self-control, how pleasing,” Lydia chimed in. Lee didn’t know when exactly the queen had arrived, nor when she had found the time to strip down. Her arrival in the middle of discussions had become somewhat of a regular occasion.

The blue eyes of the queen locked on Lee and immediately turned into a deep, menacing grey. ‘Oh Gaia, and I thought facing my dad would be uncomfortable,’ the gamer girl thought. Someone in lingerie should not have been that threatening, yet the copper-haired monarch gave Lee goosebumps.

If there was anyone in the harem that embodied expectations, then it was Lydia. She walked up to John and gave her love a quick kiss on the lips, before taking his lap as her throne. One arm around his neck, her back supported by a half-embrace, Lydia had every bit the appearance of a regal royal, lounging in her seat of power, and deciding on the fate of an unruly subject.

“Where are we in this discussion?” Lydia requested an update.

“Lee just decided she’d rather only train and game than take up any job,” John summarized and gave her an amused stare. Squirming, Lee cursed her luck for having her go down that route just before the queen arrived.

“Would it be viable for her to do so and train for about 12 hours a day?” Lydia asked.

“I assume no,” John said and looked at Lee. “Usually, you’re tapped out after a couple of hours. Tapped out and bored.”

“Can’t blame ya, training is hard for people who don’t have Gamer’s Body,” Rave weighed in.

“Can you list your options?” Nia asked. “That would make it easiest to decide.”

“Yeah, okay, no jokes this time around.” Lee ordered her thoughts; she’d been thinking about this for a few hours. “Option 1 is what John mentioned and I open some kind of private Fateweaving business to try and justify my existence.”

“You don’t need to justify your existence; you are required to add value to this assortment of talented and odd people,” Lydia interrupted her. “I almost barred you from becoming part of this circle, but decided to approve on your promise to overcome your procrastination habits and to use your talents optimally.” The queen massaged the neck of their man. “We’re an exceptional group. I would not demand that each new haremette brings to us a new skill of world moving proportion – although it is most welcome when you do.” Hailey waved from across the table. “It can, and indeed should, be demanded that you do what is within your ability. We are the inheritors of the Abyss, by the power of our love’s absurd Perks, and we must act as such.”

Lee took the lecture in, respecting the words of her fellow haremette. Lydia was only about a year her senior and yet so much more mature. The differences in the lives lived between them was stark. Looking up to John as her provider, protector, and just general hunk of a man was one thing. Lydia, as a fellow woman of character, was somewhat more easily emulated.

“Sorry, didn’t want to make it sound like you’d drop me like a hot potato,” Lee apologized. “Just… yeah… I should be doing something that at least makes me not a burden… On that note, I was being kinda serious about only training and gaming. We’re all agreeing that my primary responsibility should be to approach my dad’s skill at making Illusion Barriers, right?”

There were a few nods around the table, by all those that had enough of a tactical mind to understand the value of that. Even putting aside the value John derived from time dilation, they needed a Fateweaver for various reasons of convenience. Sure, John could do some of the jobs she did at the moment, but she could learn to do them better than his Perks currently could. Probably, she could learn to do it better period. Whenever the Gamer found someone who had an ability that was specifically similar to the ones he acquired via Perks, his seemed weaker. The weakness was more than offset by the broad spectrum of abilities he had available. Still, either his Innate Ability lent itself best to a generalist style or the way John utilized it had shaped it that way. Whichever it was, he would not be invalidating Lee’s efforts by outclassing her along all metrics of what a Fateweaver was supposed to do.

Plus, John may have had the ability to do something, but he lacked the deep education required to do research on something. Like her brother, Lee was certain that she could push the field of Fateweaving forwards. All she needed was time, experience, and experimentation.

“How much more training would you get in if you focused on it primarily?” John asked.

“An hour, maybe two more?” Lee answered in a hesitant tone. “Difficult to say, I’ve usually just trained until my mana and mental state were taxed.” There were some more nods, and she continued, “Option three would be that I… do housework.”

“…Wat?” Sylph asked. “You? I saw your room. It looked like I went through there. Twice. As a tornado. A hurricane. A tornadocane. Ooooh, that would be a great name for a cane that shoots wind and lightning!”

“Don’t get us side-tracked,” Undine demanded and turned back to Lee. “You are sure that is an option that’s on the table?”

“It should be!” Aclysia enthusiastically declared.

“Since when do you need the fucking help?” Eliana weighed in, eyes dashing from Aclysia, to Beatrice, then Claire, Delicia, and finally Momo in quick succession. “Not like you have a shortage of fellow dust swipers, you perfect example of wife husbandry.”

Lee was equally impressed by Eliana’s ability to always find new insults and the happiness the maid showed at this one. “While I detest the idea that I love John out of ‘wife husbandry’…”

“Not a wife, no husband here,” Rave added.

“…I do take it as a point of pride that I am seen as a perfect keeper of the house. While I am not in strict need of additional hands, having some help would mean that the other maids are not required to use more of their time to support me and would let me shift my scope to other duties as well. I do have an academy to teach at, alongside other projects. Additionally, it is my deeply held belief that providing for one’s beloved should be an option for everyone.”

Lee felt a little moved by Aclysia’s little speech. There was just so much conviction in the maid’s words. Clearing her throat, she put out the last option, “I could also try my hand at being a tutor for someone who wants to dodge the academy like me or is too young to start it... if I can find someone like that.”

“A connection could be established,” Nightingale assured. The harpy had been quietly listening so far and said nothing else. Lee could only marvel at how quickly she had embedded herself in Fusion’s upper circles. Extroverted socialites really were something else.

“So your four options are business, more training, housekeeping, and tutoring,” John listed. “Now, we all agree that you will have to focus on training and research whatever you do. That’s where the true value of your abilities lies… beyond that, which of those four attracts you the most? Or, if that’s easier, the least?”

“I… really don’t care about tutoring,” she confessed and made a sour face. “Don’t like strangers – shocker, I know, I’m so sociable – and I just escaped school. I don’t want to think about anything like that for a while. I… yeah, I know it’s weird, but I think I’d actually prefer to try the housekeeping for a while.”

John, to her relief, nodded. “Makes enough sense. You get to stay indoors, close to your PC, don’t have to interact much with people you don’t know…”

“Exactly!” Lee said and pointed at him. “It sounds great! I don’t even know why I teased Mom over it for years.”

“To be fair, your mother did it to take care of your father and her kids. You do it to dodge people,” John responded.

“Equally valid,” Lee insisted. “People suck.”

“Hmmm, well, I’m not in charge of housekeeping. First question, do the gathered haremettes think that’s enough of a contribution?”

“Ja,” Rave answered for everyone. “Duh, Aclysia is the best; if she even does a tenth of what Aclysia does, it’s obviously enough.”

“Alright. Aclysia, it sounded like you would appreciate the additional help?”

“I would indeed, Master, although a confirmation of this path creates a few new questions.” Aclysia’s face took a somewhat absent expression, one that Lee identified as her exchanging mental communications with the other maids on the table. Beatrice was the only one whose demeanour did not change at all. Claire sat a little straighter, Delicia obviously concentrated, and Momo’s eyes stopped tracking the lines on her e-reader. “After swift deliberation, we have decided that Lee cannot join the ranks of us maids properly.”

“Reason: aesthetic differences,” Beatrice stated.

“Also you need to sleep, so that’d make it difficult to schedule you properly,” Claire added.

“You’re invited to join the housekeepers, but we do not grant you the uniform of us maids.”

Lee looked at John; he softly shook his head and tried to suppress a grin. She tried to resist it. She really did. “What?” she asked, her feigned outrage as convincing as she could make it. “How can you do this? This is outrageous, it’s unfair. How can you be a housekeeper and not be a maid?”

John burst out laughing. “Goddamn Prequel memes!” he shouted, only to be playfully slapped by the queen still sitting in his lap. That was what made Lee’s façade crack as well. The gamer girl joined her lover in laughing loudly at the table.

It took almost two minutes for them to suppress the last chortles. Afterwards, Aclysia spoke up, “I know that was a joke, but I should still clarify: you’re capable of becoming a maid, you’re just not one of us.” She gestured at the other Artificial and Natural Spirits. “We’re the core maid cadre. You’re welcome to put in an application and earn the uniform at a later time.”

“I’ll still work under you though, right? ‘Cause I don’t know where to start and what I would interfere with if you didn’t give me some pointers.”

“Affirmative.” Aclysia nodded with a smile.

And thus the choice was made.