Chapter 319 – Stretching out<h1></h1>


    John dangled a Toblerone above Nia’s head. He ignored the jealous growling from both Thana and Nathalia in the background and slowly lowered it into her mouth. “Good girl,” he said and patted the fluffy upper side of her hair as she took a bite.


    She was currentlyying with her head on hisp and was getting fed an array of different choctes. She preferred the white ones, which John found a bit too sweet. Personally, he preferred milk chocte, striking a nice bnce between the bitterness of dark and the overly sugary taste of white chocte.


    But this wasn’t about him, this was about a French pariah doing a very good job and getting rewarded for it because they all thought (and constantly had let her know) that she was going to lose when the reality had been that she had scored the second quickest win in the tournament thus far. Itnded right between Alexej giving up and Alexej giving up the second time.


    Nia was as expressionless as ever as she got fed from all sides, but John didn’t miss that happy little way she was wiggling her toes and scratching Copernicus, who had rolled up on her stomach. With her other hand, she was keeping the ‘Happy’ card above her corbone.


    “You are supposed to smile, ya silly goose,” Raveughed and pulled the edge of the nk’s lips up with her index fingers.


    She pulled back, and Nia kept the expression, which looked more like someone had taken advice from the Joker and put it in ce by using tons of dangerous chemicals and torture.


    “Yeah, we gonna train that again another day,” the Lightbearer must have shared John’s impression as she quickly put the nk’s expression back into the normal resting position. The wiggling of her toes continued.


    “Okay, so let’s see how all of this went for us so far,” John said letting Nia nibble on some Mikado sticks, like a cartoon rabbit on a carrot, as he turned to talk to Lydia. “Momo, would you do the honours?”


    “When did I be your secretary?” the support replied.


    “Well, Aclysia is my maid, Jane is my girlfriend, the elementals are something between concubines…”


    “CONCUBINES and HEAD COURTESAN!” Sylph shouted, flying by as she got chased by Smander for whatever feud they were having today.


    John just continued as if nothing happened, “…and extensions of myself, Thana is my cute little sub-ve…” the blood mage raised a finger in protest but then just smirked and nodded enthusiastically, “…Nathalia is my hot cocksleeve…”


    “You are lucky I am infatuated with you still,” the dragoness grumbled a warning.


    “…Noted,” he decided to not push it too far; he had managed to avoid one of her temper tantrums for a while, and he very much liked this house not burning, “…and Lydia is my current superior. You are like the buddy that tags along. Might as well make yourself, and that giant Intellect of yours, useful by bing my secretary.”


    “So in short: just now,” Momo sighed heavily. “You know what? Fine. Have it your way. I guess I can do your paperwork instead of Lydia’s sometimes.”


    “How nice of you,” John smirked and dropped more chocte into Nia’s mouth. Rapidly blinking while chewing, the nk seemed to try and build up the courage to ask a question. “You are what I want to have in the future,” John said and booped her on the nose. “If you decide toe with me, you will be my zookeeper.”


    The matter of whether or not she woulde with him was still up in the air. Her initial enthusiasm had been dampened when he had next asked what her decision was after she returned home following her disappearance after the fight.


    Or, to be more exact, she actually thought about this. Instead of blindly following John; although he knew she regarded him somewhat highly, he still was a guy she had only met about two and a half weeks ago.


    Sure, sitting together in the same mansion and having sex helped getting close and rid of any sort of ice, but that didn’t make him inherently trustworthy. By that logic, he was actually happy that she was considering this outside of the ‘this will give me ess to cute animals’-viewpoint.


    If she actually chose him by the end, that would be great, and it hadn’t been just a spur of a moment deal. If she didn’t, well, that would sting, and it was unlikely the two of them would ever meet again under such close circumstances. He was going back to the USA, and she…wasn’t.


    “Well then, to put it bluntly: our situation seems tremendous,” Momo started her exnation; “We already establishedst meeting that our chances of winning are high even if we enter the next round on a tie. Now, given that we win the group fight, we actually will be 2 points ahead.”


    “Which begs the question of how likely we are to win the group fight,” John picked up.


    “My answer to that remains: With high probability,” Lydia took a sip of tea; “It is pretty much a foregone conclusion in a 2 versus 2, with chances lowering but never dropping out of our favour the more people are involved.”


    “What anal queen is saying there is,” Thana giggled and wrapped her arms around John’s neck, embracing him from her position behind the couch and using his head as a resting ce for her breasts, “that you and me will have to carry these fuckers, John. The Newman duo.”


    “Could ya stop?” Rave pouted.


    “Not while I am this fucking horny; I already suppress my daddy-calling urge,” the blood mage retorted.


    “Why are you horny all of a sudden?” John asked.


    “You mean aside from my moods just jumping all over this cumstain that is the emotional range all the time? Remember how you called me your cute little sub-ve,” she moaned thesest words into his ears.


    “See, Siena,” John, grinning, said to his shadow. “This is the proper kind of fucked in the head.”


    “Only because you are such a bore and won’t let me make you MY cute little sub-ve,” Siena sighed, only surfacing her head before dropping out of the conversation again.


    “Thana’s words are imprecise, but their meaning remains factual,” Lydia said. “Rave might be able to stand up for herself, and Nia has her special talents, but the enemy fighters still, generally, outss us. You two, however, are able to beat their strongest fighters. It already takes two of them to just bind Thana down… is something the matter?”


    John turned his head to see the blood mage shaking her head as if she was trying to regain her sense of bnce after being spun around for a few minutes. “Nothing, just warded off a small, shitty panic attack,” she said. “You know, the usual ‘fucked in the head’ business. Don’t worry about it.”


    Everyone did, however, worry about it. Quietly. John stopped feeding Nia for a moment to grab Thana’s left and calmly kept it there. “Okay, but now let’s look at what could throw a stone between us and our victory,” he decided to move on with the normal topics to not dwell on this for too long.


    Generally speaking, Thana had made a lot of improvements in pretty much all regards of her overall state. Saying she was on the road to healing would have been an overstatement, but she was getting to the desired ‘socially functioning’ state. He didn’t want to get on her case too much.


    “The easy answer to that is Hawpler, the elemental none of us knew about before this,” Lydia spoke this with barely concealed bitterness. The fact that Maximillian had actually kept secrets from her seemed to have hit her deeply. John noted that as lingering feelings causing it to feel like betrayal or something.


    “It adds a certain danger to the encounter with him,” Momo said, having picked up her e-reader again, “but there is no way that, even stacking the help from the elemental and Alexej, that it is going to be potent enough to counter Soulburn.”


    “That is true as fuck,” Thana agreed, having recovered.


    “Most certainly,” Nathalia, stealing some of the candy from the table, chimed in, “the ability was able to force me to transform. To keep her down in that state would mean that youngling Maximillian has powers rivalling Romulus’… at least in one field.”


    “And even if he manages to bind you for a minute or so, there is still me and all my girls,” John added. “


    Yeah, it actually looks like there is no way to lose this,” Rave nodded. “I would congratte ya for being queen in advance and all that, but I don’t wanna jinx it.”


    “I don’t believe in my ascension unless the two-headed eagle rests upon the lean of my chair,” Lydia soberly stated and downed the rest of her tea. “I, however, see that we are in agreement,” she said as the cking of her put down cup still echoed through the room, “Our chances to lose are slim. Normally, this would be cause for celebration, but that single win might be where the crux of the tournament will lie. I will therefore postpone festivities until an appropriate, real asion.” With that she rose, “And now I will rest for the night. I hope to see you all well tomorrow.”


    “Yeah, let’s also go hit the mattress,” Rave said and stretched. “Exciting day tomorrow.”


    “I will do you the honours and let you sleep without fucking me for once,” Nathalia said and snapped her fingers. “Aclysia, you will have to entertain me in his stead.”


    “Most certainly, mistress,” the weaponized maid said with a bow. John could feel that she was also looking forward to that.


    Everyone else agreed to go sleep early as well, and so they separated in anticipation of the next big fight tomorrow.


    John woke up again when he heard a knock on his door. “Noooo,” Rave grumbled when he rolled away to see who it was, freeing himself from her full-body hug (including her legs being wrapped around his stomach) in the process.


    “You just keepying there,” he whispered; “I’ll be back in a sec.”


    “Okay,” she yawned and snoozed off again, having never opened her eyes. Now John wondered who this was as he rubbed the burning of short sleep from his eyes. He wasn’t particrly psyched about the interruption. When he had done the same to Lydia the other day, he had at least checked if she had been still awake.


    He opened the door, ready to tell Nia that she couldn’t pat Copernicus at this hour but instead found a frightened looking girl. She was smaller than him, considerably so, white hair that became blue from the shoulder-length downwards, shattered eyes of violet with two golden rings, one thin and barely visible, the other seven golden dots around her iris.


    She wore her ck robe like an open bathrobe; her other clothes had been hastily thrown on and barely hid her nudity. Only the scarf, which she nervously kneaded with her left hand, seemed to have been where it belonged, as was the teddy bear she pressed to her chest.


    “Look, I know I am annoying the fuck out of you right now,” Thana cast her gaze aside, “but can I sleep here tonight? Feel free to ravage me however you want in the process.” At any other asion, that suggestion may have led to exactly that happening, or at least to a very stable erection. However, John was barely able to see the usual insane and confident Thana in the girl in front of him.


    She seemed to have hit some sort of realization or a new mental defect was acting up. Whatever it was, John would not take this situation and solve it through sex. That couldn’t have been called solving in the first ce.


    “Come inside,” he simply said, gesturing for her to undress, and they both climbed into the bed.


    “I don’t feel like sexing right now,” Raveined, opening her eyes a gap and seeing Thana.


    “We are just going to cuddle,” her boyfriend promised and, one arm wrapped around Thana, the other around his girlfriend, gotfortable in the middle of the bed.


    He kissed both of them on the head before his eyes slowly fell closed again. In thest moments of consciousness, through the fuzziness of Rave’s hair John could see their electronic clock on the nightstand.


    It was 23:59.