The difference between the battlefield and the busy city of Warsaw was staggering. Of course, all the elementals had gone incorporeal, and Aclysia had shifted into an outfit more fitting. They had to buy new clothes for Rave, Lydia and Metra, who waited for them inside another barrier, before they could move on though. The battle suit and the destroyed military uniform weren’t exactly normal clothes, and neither naked nor a living armour were acceptable.

Once that was over and done with, John punched in Eliza’s number into the cell phone and asked where she was exactly.

_________________________________________________________________

“Pffff-hihihi,” Rave failed to contain her snickering when they entered the hotel room where Eliza was located. The reason for this was pretty simple; for a start, she was wearing normal clothes, a pretty blue blouse with a long black skirt; a jacket of the same colour was casually thrown over the backrest of the comfortably looking armchair the blood mage was resting in.

The true reason for the amusement, however, was her hair. Currently black, as the illusion from her scarf hid her from looking abnormal, it had grown so long that it reached the ground from where she was sitting and piled there in the form of an overgrown messy braid.

“What are you fucking laughing about, seizure hands?!” Eliza cussed her out immediately; “If your answer is in ANY part a joke about Rapunzel, I will kick the ever-loving SHIT out of you!”

“How did that even happen?” John wanted to know while Rave just continued to laugh. Clearly, she was not particularly intimidated, and why would she be? The two of them, despite their more than bumpy first encounter, got along splendidly, and the blood mage was always a lot of bark.

“Apparently each time Thana gets control,” Eliza could say that name without immediately bursting into a violent headache, which was welcome progress, “the burst of power makes my hair grow… I guess my nails would grow too if they weren’t made from blood already.”

John looked at the length of her hair and was now rather alarmed. “How often did she take over? Three times?”

“Yes, but none of them were just sudden takeovers; I just kind of let it fucking happen because Romulus said it was okay… then he smacked me about for an hour or two, and eventually I managed to wrestle control from Thana again,” Eliza answered; “Although I wouldn’t say that I got that down yet.”

“Nevertheless, that sounds good,” John said with a wide smile. There seemed to be hope for the future yet.

Lydia cleared her throat. “It is good to see you again… Eliza,” she opened up.

“Yeah, hello, anal-queen. Want to make a fucking scene or why do you look like I just pushed a dildo down your throat until it poked out of your ass?” the blood mage wanted to know; “Although you would be happy if I did it the other way around, probably? Why can’t you have a normal fetish, like getting slapped on the ass hard enough to make you cum?”

“Are you not angry?” the princess wondered; “For the whole thing that went down before I was abducted?”

“I am seething,” Eliza laughed out loudly, “but I am not mad at YOU. I am fucking angry at just about everyone who was involved in the whole making of that THING that now lives inside me, and I am pissed about the fucking fact that I will probably have to stay with Romulus for as long as I need to get a handle on this situation. I can feel that bony bitch trying to get involved into my thought process right now. I don’t blame you for any of this shit though.”

Lydia took a sigh of relief. “Thank the mother, and here I thought you would be irrationally mad at me for an emotional reason. I would have understood, after all it was my decision to send you down to the arena, which surely hastened the process.”

“Oh fuck off,” Eliza rolled her, currently brown, eyes; “I know that this whole thing went down about as well as it could have. Could you imagine the consequences if Thana had woken up a week later in our living room instead of the middle of an invasion? You all would be so fucking dead it wouldn’t even be funny, and so would I. Also, I would have wanted to go down there even if you told me no; I can make my own decisions.”

“Yeah,” John plopped down on the bed, “how do you Germans say? It was luck within bad luck? If Thana had awoken anywhere else and had spent her time slaughtering civilians in the hundreds instead of some elite invader force, that would have been way worse than what we got. Although I still disagree with the fact that you made her fight in the first place, it all worked out as best it could in the end. No reason to be really angry.”

“We are going to live, learn and move the fuck on,” Eliza nodded; “Now get some fucking scissors, I don’t trust other people to cut my hair, Lyly!”

The princess just gave a wry smile, “I cannot believe I missed you bunch of chaotic individuals. You will have to excuse me, however; I need to take a shower before doing anything else.”

“And just like that, the Hollmey motto keeps spreading,” Rave giggled as she jumped on the bed with John, Aclysia quickly following as well. Momo went for a relatively isolated part of the room and began reading, as always.

“Can you really still call it the Hollmey motto? I doubt that your mother operates under it,” John said; his hopefully future mother-in-law was staying in another hotel nearby. With the explanation that, now that Romulus was on the battlefield and they had gotten Lydia secured, her daughter would hopefully be less reckless, she had retreated out of the conflict at large.

“Last I asked, which was in Graz, she also used it, actually,” Rave corrected him; “She said it actually got her a lot of promotions over the years.”

“Huh,” John was amazed that the motto he had always mentally attributed to a kind of laid back lifestyle could also be useful for a person whose whole life was basically her career. Anyway, there was a lot of other stuff he wanted to get done right now, starting with the SEP.

“Also can someone fucking tell me who that bitch is?” Eliza interrupted his thought process and pointed at Metra. The berserker babe was wearing pretty skimpy clothes, legs clad in stockings with just hot pants stretching around her waist. Her midriff was completely revealed, the cropped top doing basically nothing to hide anything, not even the black sports-bra underneath. She had been very insistent on getting those clothes; they managed to hide her from the public by putting her in a very long mantle. “How come that I am gone for like 4 days and the second you show up again you have a new blonde, tall fucking bitch on your si-.”

“Call me a bitch again and I will fuck you up so hard you wish you knew how to keep your mouth shut,” Metra interrupted the blood mage.

“The shit did you just say, you piece of whoring garbage?” Eliza asked and jumped to her feet; “You want to go at it? I will wreck your ass!”

“I will put you back into the coma I kept you in, you insane maniac!” Metra growled.

A shrill laughter preceded the answer. “What the fuck does that even mean?! The only thing that ever fucking sedated me was that…” her eyes widened as she realized; “Noooooo, John, you did fucking do it after all. Why the fuck would you turn that thing that was put into my head into a sexy blonde bimbo bitch babe, now I am jealous, furious and confused. EXPLAIN!”

“It was kind of a clutch decision,” John started and then went over the whole happenings of the past couple of days.

___________________________________________________________________

“…Can somebody smack me over the face? Like really hard?” Eliza requested, and Metra obliged in an instant, punching her in the face without hesitation; “Okay, so this is real,” Eliza said, rolling her jaw; “WHAT THE FUCK?!”

“Calm down,” John urged her.

“I am as calm as I will get, you dick-weeb,” the blood mage flailed in her chair; “Why did you have to give that weird scorpion thing a vagina; you are getting so close to having one girl for each waking hour in the day that it makes me just want to crush your balls in my hand!”

“I still think we should fight this out,” Metra said; “Not like I have a lot to say about this whole thing, neither did I have a lot to do with the decision to be put into your head. Wasn’t the most fun 70 years for me as well, you know?”

“Well they were literal torture for me!” Eliza screamed at her.

“I was hooked up to your nervous system, I know,” Metra kicked her shin; “Stop screaming about it; I want to murder that Mengele fucker as well, just not as much as you do.”

That made the blood mage hesitate for a moment, and then she threw her arms up into the air, “Fuck it, there is this bitch in the harem now. Whatever, I will just try to forget where you came from and look at you for the bitch that you are right now.”

“You really want to have a go at it, little girl?” the berserker babe stared downwards.

“What did you just call me? Do you want to die?” Eliza’s perfectly calm voice was oxymoron to the enraged grin that spanned over her pale face; “I have bitten apart Mithril; I can probably learn how to rip your fucking hide apart, you star-forged cunt. You just wait until I get a handle on this whole Thana thing, then I will rip you apart!”

“Yeah, right, I am the first Metracana, like I am going to be wasted by a potty-mouthed brat,” Metra returned.

“Would you… hello? Anyone?” John tried to intervene, but his complaints were just drowned by the two of them throwing ever more shade at each other. Eventually, he ceased to try to intervene and just blinked in confusion as the whole fight turned into something like a friendly conversation.

“I guarantee you that I could throw a rock further than you,” Metra crossed her arms, “just give me a few minutes to get really angry.”

“Wow, rock-tossing, what’s next, are we going to play fucking checkers?” Eliza scoffed; “Going by that punch earlier, you are about as dangerous to me as a fly is to an elephant. A very tiny, shit-covered fly and a very big, sexy elephant!”

“Are you calling yourself fat?” the grin that appeared on Metra’s face seemed remarkably friendly; “You seem pretty well-built if you ask me.”

“Said the girl with a midriff of steel, fucking hell, give me that!” the blood mage demanded.

“What is happening?” John wanted to know.

‘You know that there are many instances of guys that want to fight behind the pub and them becoming really good friends afterwards?’ Momo sent a question back to him; ‘I guess we are witnessing what happens if you have two overly aggressive personalities go at each other and they somehow get along.’

Indeed, it seemed like the whole insult throwing had now resulted in something like mutual respect for the other’s abilities. The fact that Eliza had barely reacted to the earlier punch seemed to have impressed Metra, just as the fact that she even felt it had left an impact on Eliza.

“Can you grow a cock like our sex-doll slash maid Aclysia though?” Eliza suddenly moved on to another topic.

“Nah, I have no dick this time, thank god,” Metra said; “I am bound to whatever shape I get when I am contracted, and I would rather not have something flopping between my legs all the time.” The living weapon hesitated and then added, “Wait a second, can she just grow hers whenever she wants?”

“Yup,” Eliza affirmed.

“Okay, that is horseshit, I just don’t want the whole floppage; I wouldn’t be against having a feeling strap-on, oy, show me!” Metra turned to Aclysia with a demanding tone; “Right now, I want to see that!”

“Should I, Master?” Aclysia asked John, who was still watching this whole thing unfold.

“It’s just your genitals, no need to bother John over it,” Metra rolled her eyes; “Show some independence girl.”

“I am perfectly independent; I just value Master’s opinion more than your demands,” Aclysia returned and repeated the question to John, whispering it into his ear amongst some other nice things; “Should I go futanari? We can fuck her together. It has been over a day since you last released your seed, and I know you are pent-up. What better way to commemorate our survival than adding another beautiful girl to your harem?”

She was absolutely right, John had an erection ever since sitting down on this bed. Now that he was safe, his thoughts had time to revolve around perversions again.