“Well, this is thoroughly disappointing,” John said out loud as they walked through the sex museum. It was all static, boring, and even the room that warned that it had photos of heavy SM kinky stuff must have been working by Christian standards because John looked at those things and just shrugged it off as someone that had already done or was going to do them.

Granted, he had done a lot of things, but when someone warned that it was about to get dirty and then the worst he saw was a girl bound in a way that her crotch grinded on top of a wooden horse, it was thoroughly disappointing.

“I want to do that shit,” Eliza exclaimed and pointed at that photo. “And that shit, and that shit, and FUCK ME RIGHT HERE ON THE FLOOR, THAT LOOKS SO FUCKING HOT!” Her rather loud enthusiasm was expressed by a giant, lewd grin that was first aimed at John, then switched into a rather scary one as she looked intimidatingly at everyone else in the room. While all the other customers were busy fleeing from the crazy girl, they chattered about her being crazy and that she was probably crazy.

The fact that Eliza laughed out loud with her unsteady, mostly shrill but sometimes dropping into deep tones voice after them, as her supernatural ears caught their mostly accurate guesses, didn’t exactly help their public image. Well, not that John cared.

He did care about what had Eliza this wanting though, the answer was a rather simple picture of someone, gagged and blindfolded, hanging from the ceiling by a bundle of their hands and feet behind their back.

“You really are a degenerate piece of filth,” John said and got himself a bit of a moan out of that, “…and you get worse by the day. When we started this you weren’t that much into getting verbally abused.”

“Well, I am way hornier than I was back then and WAY more obsessed with you,” Eliza laid down. “You stuck your dick in crazy, you fucking moron, now live with the consequences.”

“I can do that,” John shrugged and raised his hand to pat her on the head. Wisely, he stopped when her smile fell and she growled like a particularly hungry and vicious dog. “What’s up?” he asked after checking her eyes. They were still brown and the dots were hidden, so he couldn’t check on his suspicion through them. That kind of sound always made him weary that her other side was taking a swing, but Thana continued to lay low as the blood mage’s next action lay testament to.

“I don’t want your fucking patronizing pat, you tall ass, pat yourself,” she kicked his shin with as much power as was normal-humanly possible. That barely hurt him, but the gesture was rather clear. “Or go fuck yourself, I don’t care,” she whirled around and walked off, cursing the fact that she had to wear shoes in the process.

John let her go, scratching his head as he prepared to let her cool off for a couple of minutes and get his excuse in order in the meantime. That turned out to be a useless endeavour, as Eliza hadn’t left the room for more than 3 seconds before she came jogging back and threw herself at him with enough force that they fell to the ground.

“Argh, fuck, sorry, just stupid bullshit feelings and gaaah,” Eliza said as she buried her head in his chest and then took a deep breath. The smell of his choice of body oil (they were slowly closing in on what Nathalia had brought him all the time) seemed to calm her a fair bit. John left her to it for a few more breaths and then gently patted her on the head. The fact that she looked up immediately after that, eyes reflecting a mix of rage and love, with rage clearly winning, made him realize that he had to take a bit more direct approach.

He grabbed her by the chin and aggressively kissed her. Immediately her anger seemed to melt away and instead her tongue roamed forwards to meet his own. Her hands crumpled the vest of his suit as she pressed against him, lids closed and only the occasional sound of their wet lips parting.

Then Aclysia cleared her throat and pulled them out of it. “I must advise that we stop attracting this much attention, or we will get thrown out,” she informed them.

“This place sucks anyway,” Eliza declared, despite her earlier enthusiasm about the photos. She also didn’t protest anymore when John got them both back on their feet.

“You know, I never really understood why you fell in love with me as quickly as you did,” John told her as they walked up winding stairs and finally arrived at a bad plastic recreation of the famous photo of Marylin Monroe where the wind was blowing upwards her skirt. That was a question he had asked himself about all his girls, actually.

He had come to various answers. For his familiars it made a large degree of sense, they had an easier time falling for him (as he did for them) given that they were literal soulmates. Rave was more a stroke of fate than anything else, and when asked on the matter, she would just boop him on the nose. Lydia had seen him as a friend that she also fucked for a long time before she actually let herself fall to love. Metra didn’t really love John (hopefully that came with a yet). Nathalia had fallen for him because he was a good fuck and powerful enough to be worthy of her, or at least that’s what her current self-removal from his life was about.

Nia seemed to not see more in John than a friend and a way into getting her own petting zoo, going by her relationship scores, but that was hard to determine, and much less did John know the pariah’s reasoning. It probably was just that he was the first guy in her life who promised her a petting zoo; on a less humorous note, it was likely because her social circle was basically non-existent outside of them. Something like that was true for Eliza as well, but he wanted to know.

“Honest talk? Because you were there,” Eliza told him. “I think it could have really been any bland motherfucker as long as he was the one who I saw last before my failing cumstain of a body fell apart and heard first again when I got a new pair of functioning ears. Just someone, anyone, really just any gay cocksucker who would have had enough human decency to not ram a fucking knife into me or thought raping me was a fine line of experimentation.” She reached up to his head, stood on her toes and did her best at a smile that didn’t look completely insane. Failing miserably, it went from ear to ear and revealed more than just her teeth, “But fuck me if I am not happy that it was you.”

“You have no idea how happy I am that it was me as well,” John smirked and bowed down to give her a loving and short peck on the lips. “I do love you, Eliza.”

“I love you as well, you crazy bastard,” she answered and forced his head back down to give her a longer kiss. By the end of it she asked, “So where are we on the whole ‘putting a baby inside this hot piece of ass’ front?”

“You are no way close to being ready to be a mother yet,” John told her, seeing that smile on her face, “and there are other factors that we have to take into account, like how there will be a lot of moving in the next months and the fact that I don’t feel anymore close to wanting to be a father than last month.”

“Don’t forget that fucking jackass in my head,” Eliza addressed the elephant in the room. “Fucking fine, we will postpone this, but I will have that baby!”

“Sure, one day,” John assured her, to see her smile some more. ‘One day,’ he told himself mentally, albeit he was wrestling with what Rodaclam had told him. In the past and as a gamer who preferred to sit inside all day, he had never been one to dream about a family and kids. Now that he had a whole lot of girls he wanted to live with and protect, however, that was slowly changing. ‘One day I will have kids,’ he told himself, ‘but not anytime soon, not this year and not the next and probably not even in the next five. But one day.’

They went through the rest of the museum with little care. It really wasn’t that interesting. Gnome had to pull a few tricks to make her body lighter and feel squishy like a normal person to not run into the risk of being discovered by someone and getting them all into some serious trouble with Gaia.

They went outside, ate something at the restaurant basically next door, took a peek into the tourist shop and then went deeper into the guts of the inner city.

“They have a lot of narrow passages here,” John said as they walked around without any real goals. The houses were charming, not particularly tall and no two really looked alike, although they all had a typical western design. It was pretty apparent which buildings were older than others by style alone, which was fascinating to behold.

John peeked into one of these many passages and found one of these thing Amsterdam was infamous for: a shop that sold weed with such utter transparency that it would have summoned a lynch mob from ten towns over back in the USA. The drug itself was of little concern to John. Rave tried to talk him into trying the stuff, but he imagined that he would just cough through the whole experience as he had never smoked anything before.

What he took a bit of an issue with was the whole culture surrounding it. Although “issue” was a strong word. ‘I just don’t really see why so many people attach part of their personality to something they do to… waste time and relax.’ John got woke on how hypocritical the thing he was thinking was as he was thinking it and glanced over to Aclysia, the girl he literally made from a figurine he bought because he liked the character so much. It was then that he decided to never make fun of someone who owned a ‘Free the Weed’ flag or a particularly elaborate set of bongs.

“I do very much like this body,” Aclysia suddenly assured him as they went on. It was really a testament to the times they lived in that nobody around even raised an eyebrow at someone saying that in the middle of a crowded street. “You desire me, I want you to do that, thus I am content.”

“Well, I love seeing you in cosplay,” John went ahead with the conversation even if he wasn’t quite sure why Aclysia wanted to have it. “Especially because you look so damn sexy in it.”

“I would wear anything for you, John,” she stated, using his name due to this being a public setting. Noticing her hand close in on his but then go back, the artificial guardian instead folding them in front of her lap, John put an arm around her and pulled her close. “I am so happy,” she whispered, blushing a bit as she snuggled up even closer to him and smiled that slight smile she showed in situations like this.

“While we are on the subject of you wearing something else,” John said, keeping control of his arm and thus preventing it from travelling from the place on her shoulder all the way to her butt, “I have been thinking of expanding your outfits to some original designs.”

“Are you tired of cosplay, John?” Aclysia asked, unable to hide her confusion over this. That didn’t sound whatsoever like the master she knew. Which was right, of course.

“No, not at all tired. Actually, I just realized I never fucked you while you still had it on…” That sentence finally did earn him a bit of a glare by a passerby. He was definitely skirting outside of acceptable boundaries here. Also, Eliza was constantly drilling holes into their heads with her eyes. It seemed, after getting her fair share of attention in the museum, she was trying to let the other girls have some of John’s time. That didn’t work out quite well with her jealous nature, but John was proud of her trying. Gnome and Nia, in the meanwhile, were just silently following them. One of them truly silent, the other too embarrassed to appear as talking publicly to thin air. Eliza eventually started chattering it up with the stone elemental just to concentrate on something else.

John cleared his throat and picked his words in a more socially acceptable manner. “I still want to see you in that cosplay, but I am thinking I should get you an everyday get-up that makes people think more of ‘that’s the artificial spirit of the Gamer’ and less ‘that’s A2 from Nier;Automata but with green eyes’ you know?”

“So… you want to make me more of yours?” Aclysia asked and looked at him lovingly. “John,” she almost moaned his name, “nothing would bring me greater joy than being all yours.”

“Sentences like that make it sound like you are literally just here to fulfil my every whim and have no free will,” John joked. It was in pretty bad taste, but he wanted to hear the answer to that.

“I am here to fulfil almost every single one of your whims, unless I think they are bad for you in the long-term. If you act in a way that I don’t think you should, when you harm yourself and those around you, when you are in your darkest moments, I will do what is best for you by not listening to you,” Aclysia informed him. “You yourself have allowed me to developed free will, and Momo’s independence shows that your wish for me to be my own person is genuine and that I am not under some mind-bending order by you. I would never dismiss the freedom you have given me in order to take the easy path to please you. It is so much more fulfilling to put a great meal that I wanted to cook in front of you than you having to decide what you want for dinner.”

“Huh,” John had never thought of something as simple as cooking as an act of free will, but it was true that Aclysia would have had to ask him at every turn what he wanted to eat if she was just a slave to his whims rather than a devoted servant. “So… I shouldn’t be giving requests on what I want to eat.”

“Of course not, you can request what you want all day,” Aclysia told him, “but for your own good, I hold the right to deny the request in favour of keeping your diet balanced. Which reminds me that you need to eat broccoli tomorrow. You have had little iron the past two days.”

“Okay, okay,” John laughed and kissed her on the cheek, “let’s hope the apartment on the cruiser has a kitchen. It’s only been two days since you cooked for me and I already miss it.” That comment made Aclysia happier than anything else he had said so far.

“You really mean that?” she asked in the kind of voice only a cute girl whose efforts have been acknowledged could smile into words. “I am so glad. Not that I want you to feel like eating something that isn’t from me is bad or anything. It is just…”

“It’s fine, I get it,” John tried to interrupt her with a calming gesture, but in typical Aclysia fashion, she still finished her statement.

“…that I really enjoy cooking for you and doing all sorts of chores so I try my best to improve and you missing what I make for you feels like the greatest gratification I could ever receive.” She finally finished and bowed her head slightly, reacting to what he said, “I see, I will continue doing my best then.”

“You do that… I feel like I should tell you that you are the best again, because it can’t be said often enough,” John squeezed her bubble butt with those words, realizing he had failed. Aclysia didn’t care; she actually very much liked it and hummed a little tune as John found himself unable to move his hand.