“Huh, this is pretty impressive,” John said out loud as he stood in front of the local government building. It wasn’t exactly the design that stood out; sure, it looked good, but it was yet another palace-like building of huge proportions. Build in the style of the baroque era, it had a circular main building with two arms stretching outwards and then angling sharpy inwards to form a rectangular shaped court.

The impressive part was that this court wasn’t a wide garden or anything even of the sort. It was water and directly connected with the ocean, with piers upon piers. It wasn’t the main part of the port, but they nevertheless had built their governance right into the sea, a decorated bridge leading over a five-metre-wide gap between where John stood and the main entrance of the building. He only even saw the piers and everything thanks to Jack flapping his wings above. Having two perspectives at times like these was truly helpful, gave him a better scope at what size of a building he was actually entering.

“The arms even end in dockyards,” he told Rave, who gave him the kind of face that didn’t even try to act interested.

“Nobody fucking cares abo-“ Eliza started to voice the general opinion, but she, and everyone else, jumped as a quiet and monotone sound interrupted her.

“I like boats,” the pariah’s voice seemed to come from nowhere and had everyone search for her. They finally found her by looking over the side of the bridge, finding her standing in the (apparently pretty shallow) waters underneath. “Boats bring one close to seals. Seals are dogs in the water. I like dogs.”

“You are so FUCKING creepy,” Eliza screamed at Nia who just tilted her head questioningly. The long skirt of her uncoloured dress moved underwater exactly as it did on land, as did her hair although it had gotten kind of wet.

John spared himself the question whether or not she was cold. The voluminous gold of her top hair not clinging to her head from the wetness of the early-year ocean waters was a testimony to the fact that the blank had never been bothered by the cold. Which instantly caused John regret as the phrase together with Nia’s somewhat Elsa-ish haircut put the damned song right into his head.

“Let it go, Eliza,” he said and instantly hated himself, closing his eyes as if he had a sudden headache for a second as he wanted to get his mind somewhere else. “We are going inside, want to come with us or keep standing in the water?”

The answer came in the form of Nia jumping up several metres, landing with one bare foot on the railing before taking a gracile last dive from there down to the ground. “Sure,” she said afterwards.

“Do we have to get Salamander to dry you up,” Metra raised an eyebrow at the dripping blank, John instantly feeling the blaze elemental readying a complain upon that suggestion, “or will you do the usual blank thing?”

“Don’t know if…” Nia started the sentence, looked around, walked away with long steps, grabbed her white leather bag which she had hung on a nearby lantern, and then returned with the ‘Unsure’ card in her hand, ‘…if that is the usual thing, but I can do this.”

‘This’ was the fact that all of the mud on her bare feet and whatever water had been wetting her skin was falling off her. Because of the off-reality drifting nature of blanks, materials had no cohesion whatsoever to her skin if they dipped even a little bit into the Nirvana, which Nia now shifted towards a little bit more, to the point that she started to become slightly translucent. Not that she usually was all the way on this side, the only times John could think of where Nia was completely on this side was when they were having sex.

Anyway, she was dry now. “What are we doing?” Nia asked as they marched over the bridge. John couldn’t help but note that it was way too narrow to be worthy of a walk-up for a government building. That indicated that most people entered by boat, and the amount of people that rather used the channels than the streets reinforced that idea.

“Well, to give you the gist of it,” John told her how they had met the Dutch leader in the club yesterday and that he had called her after a very thorough breakfast only to be asked to visit her in the headquarters of the NTC. Apparently, what she wanted to talk about would be better seen in person. Half of John really hoped she meant her tits by that, the other half was genuinely curious.

“Are you going to try and sleep with her?” Nia asked with her head tilted in that questioning way that was the most obvious of the few physical clues one had for current mood. As always with the blank her question was threefold: blunt, naïve and cutely honest.

“Try? No. Do it if I think I have to give nothing in return? Totally,” John answered. “This isn’t Lydia, I don’t plan to stay here for months, so I don’t plan to build even a basic friendship. Just having a connection with one of the largest trading guilds on the planet sounds like a good idea… By the way, Jane,” his girlfriend looked into his direction at the mention of her name, “has your mother mentioned yet what they are going to do regarding her quote unquote failure?”

He had a personal interest in that topic. A previous idea had been to become the Hollmey clans new guarantee. Of course, Eliza, who had been around when he discussed this with Rave, had suggested the name ‘sugar daddy’. For that crime against decency, John had her hang out with Sylph for the rest of the day, one of the few times he ACTUALLY tortured the heavy masochist. The word ‘daddy’ was an anathema to John’s kinks.

Anyway, he had not only an interest in protecting hot Asians but also in protecting what was basically guaranteed to become his extended family down the line. Actually, he should probably ask about that; he had heard it said that ‘If you are wondering about the answer when you propose, you shouldn’t propose’. John realized that he was still 18 for a moment, but Rave stuck her voice into the shock process.

“Ah, no, she doesn’t really talk a lot about herself and makes it all about me, ya know, like she always does,” Rave rolled her eyes, “but I am gonna ask her. Want to at least know what happens to granny and grand daddy.”

“Uhm, sure, yes,” John was barely listening as he was wrestling with the realization of the fact that he was truthfully contemplating marrying this girl right now. Sure, they were in love and everything and it all worked and everything and they were happy and everything and she had a nice ass and everything, but… ‘Come on, I am 18… but it’s JANE, what am I thinking about?’

“Ya okay there, tiger?” Rave stopped and stepped right into his path and pushed her face up to his with a wide grin on her face, as if she knew what he was thinking about. How? Nothing against his girlfriend but she was not the smartest cookie. “Ya usually don’t stutter these days,” she giggled. “Not like the early days, ya know, like when you saw me naked for the first time and ya were all blushy and stuff? While still trying to look at my lady bits?”

“I was wondering if you had pink hair down there too,” John defended himself in the gigantic entrance hall of the building where the sheer volume of space made their corner fairly isolated. “A very reasonable question!”

“What question are ya pondering about right now, though, tiger?” Rave wondered and got that little bit closer, pushing him against a pillar he hadn’t even realized was there. Right hand resting next to his head on said marble rectangle work of masonry, it almost seemed like John was getting mugged here. “A penny for your thoughts, I know I ain’t the best at solving whatever your super-brain churns out, but I can at least try to help ya.”

“Well,” little did she know that only she could answer this question. However, now that John was in a situation where he was practically being forced into some kind of answer, his consciousness whispered to him one little question.

‘Food?’ No, that wasn’t his consciousness, that was a certain light crocodile, who was hungry again.

‘Why not marry her?’ and he had no answer to the negative aside from the fact that he would like her breasts to be one cup-size bigger and for someone to fix her sleeping habits and… actually he could think of a lot of little annoying things she did. But he also didn’t mind any of those because she was just… she was just the fun and colour in his life right now. He didn’t need her to function properly, but at the same time he couldn’t imagine how it would be to live without her at his point.

Proposing here and now felt royally wrong, however, so he worded his next question very carefully. “…Well…” he begun, and something in his tone must have had Rave listen very intently, as the smile on her face became an earnest expression. “I was just wondering… if, like, someday in the future, I would ask you…” he cleared his throat. “If the stars align and the situation is just right and something something I don’t know… just… if I were to ask you if you would…” even a proposal of the proposal was hard to voice, “if you would marry me, would you say yes?”

Rave looked at him with disbelieving eyes for one terrible second before she answered in no uncertain terms, “Of course, ya dingus, I would say ex-act-ly that. Why would ya even need to ask that?” John actually felt like he was going to faint there for a moment from the sheer relief. Getting supported by his girlfriend through a gentle kiss, he found control over his feet return in the warmth of her lips. “Ya always think for both of us, don’t ya?”

“Sorry, I like to overthink a lot, but that’s what I have you for,” John said and kissed her again, “but seriously, how can you just give an answer to something that important that quickly?”

“Cause I just feel that it’s right and that you can’t quit me anyway, so if push comes to shove, I will just use ya as my personal piggy bank,” Rave declared.

He laughed in a playfully offended manner, “Wow! You know what? I think YOU can’t quit ME actually, so in the worst case, I will just make you sex slave number 1.”

“And how do I lose there, mister wonderdick?” She booped him on the nose.

“You will fucking lose because I am about to literally vomit on the fucking carpet from the amount of sweet shit you’re ripping about,” Eliza shouted at them and reminded them that they weren’t quite alone.

Aclysia was standing there like usual, with the difference that she was clutching her mithril salver like she would be able to physically strangle her jealousy right now. “I am happy for you two,” she announced with a smile that was so well acted that John almost didn’t see the danger behind it. He blinked rapidly when he found that Aclysia was currently erecting some very strong walls around one corner of her normally completely open mind. She was up to something, but John was almost certain he would like it. Almost.

Nia was just looking at her dress and then back at John. “I am not getting married to you,” she announced in her empty voice. That line could be interpreted in so many ways; she didn’t even use a card to help. John just hoped she meant it was too early or something.

“Mhm, we gonna sort out how the harem and the marriage will work out over lady talk,” Rave promised the present girls, which at the very least caused Aclysia to have a very apparent physical reaction of stashing her salver away again. A very important reaction, seeing how that thing was also a very expensive and sharp dagger.

“You people get side-tracked every 22 seconds,” Metra told them, balancing her halberd on the tip of her index finger out of boredom. “Just do what every good emperor did and take as many wives as you damn well please. No need to make a fuss.”

“Oh fuck off, you want to be in that as well!” Eliza said.

“As a matter of fact, I don’t. I am married to the job as Metracana, so go f yourself, you shrieking shrimp,” the berserker babe said.

“Okay, okay, ladies,” Salamander suddenly spawned in the air as the word duel was about to go into its seventieth round, “before you go at each other boxing with insults again, how about you just fuck?”

“Shut the fuck up, Sally!” Eliza shouted at her.

“ONLY SYLPH CALLS ME THAT, AND I HATE THAT NAME, LIZ!”

“Do not,” Rave said in a grave voice, “call her Liz. Just don’t. I want to, in no way ever, think of Eliza and my sister in the same sentence.”

John sighed in honest relief as his worry-loaded question devolved into the usual group banter. It was nice to see that they were the same chaotic bunch as always.