“Okay, this is it,” John said as he slid over a piece of paper that contained, in detail, what he demanded from the gathered pirate crew. Well, pirate in name at least, as there was no indication who hired them and they were more like a spy agency stealing something out of a museum to give it back, showing security flaws in the process. Professional ransoming, something like that.

For where this little meeting took place: at a table underneath a wide umbrella at the side of the pool up at the VIP area. John thought he should show some good faith and niceness at least, there was no point in just rubbing in further how superior his negotiating position was. After all, Aclysia and Metra were standing right behind him and in his lap sat a certain person with sickly white skin and hair of the same colour that became azure blue from the neckline downwards.

He would have much rather had this discussion in the VIP area of the restaurant. Problem being that Tilgun had smashed it when he had climbed up to the bridge. It was still being fixed, Construction Slimes doing their best but working at a natural speed, which was quite slow in the rebuilding department. John would give some mana to the storage later; after all, he was supposed to help in case of emergency.

No idea why Sealy had not come to him with a question regarding that yet anyway, maybe he was just not nervous enough as the ‘emergency’ wasn’t that great a problem? The captain seemed to be on the cautious side, pushing back any action that could provoke a negative reaction until absolutely necessary.

‘I really need to extend a hand instead of teasing him just because I am bored,’ John reprimanded himself, ‘basically, John, stop being a dick.’

He took his hand off the paper and went back to eating the grilled meat in front of him. As promised Salamander was throwing her barbeque; the two events were happily coinciding.

Senior picked up the paper and began reading out loud for his whole crew, “Arrrrticle one…”

“No, no, NO!” John interrupted. “We are NOT doing that again. Speak normally.”

Junior waved with his tentacle beard in a way that look amused, “I told you that was out of fashion, old man.” Then he continued to guide cut pieces of meat to wherever his mouth was under these tendrils.

“Youngsters, no humour or respect for traditions,” Senior grumbled. “Okay fine, Article one…”

They went through the entirety of the contract as John had some small talk with Eliza. Small talk that began with the oldest and meanest thing boyfriends could say to their currently eating fuckbuddies. Or whatever was the correct term for Eliza at the current moment. He would have gone with something like ‘beloved’. The title girlfriend was reserved for Rave and harem member sounded to impersonal. If he had to take a guess what she would call herself, he would have put his money on side bitch.

Anyway, the words, “I think you are gaining weight,” came along with his hands travelling to either of her sides and gently pinching a little bit of excess skin between his thumbs and the sides of his index fingers. Of course, that was a lie; her skin, as sick and blueish as it looked, was as smooth and taut as ever over her subtle muscles.

Nevertheless, Eliza immediately dropped her fork, metal clattering on porcelain. “What? No, fuck, shit, cock, hairy asshole, fuck, ah, I thought I was taking care of that shit, no, cocksucking glutton,” she began to ramble on looked down on herself. “FUCK, yes, I am getting fat, shit,” something inside her brain gave her a false positive just because John had said it. “I will fix this, just let me get out and…”

“Wow, sorry,” John quickly apologized to her and changed his teasing grip to a deep, inescapable hug. He had massively underestimated that she still had some deeper sitting issues with her head and wouldn’t be able to take that as a joke. The more time they spent together and the more of her issues they managed to resolve in one way or another, the more John forgot that she still had some parts of her that would take eternities to fix. If that comment had come from anyone else, she would just flipped them off, from him, the person who she felt deeply indebted to and was in love with, it probably kicked forth something along the thought of ‘if HE says it, there must be something wrong with ME’, ending in the self-conviction that she had indeed gotten fat. “I was just trying to tease you.”

“Oh, fuck,” she muttered and became limp in his arms. He got to see a rare moment of Eliza blushing, her face turning into a red that dipped a little bit into the purple spectrum. It wasn’t the good embarrassed blush of a girl that did something cute, though, but the generally ashamed one of someone who felt stupid. John didn’t like those blushes. “Are you sure you were just joking, you ass?” she asked simultaneously judgemental and pleading. “I mean, just look at the enormous thighs! I could feed a fucking family with one of these. If they are creepy cannibals.”

“Okay, yeah, your thighs are a bit off proportion when seen in relation to the rest of your body,” John admitted and kissed her behind the ear. “However, A, they were that way from the start, and B, they aren’t grotesquely out of proportions or anything, they are just a bit thicker than the rest of you, and I like that.” To give his words that bit more believability, he lightly slapped her left thigh. Her body became a whole different kind of tense in response.

“Motherfucker,” she hissed back in a pleased tone, “when did you become so pussy-wetting daring in front of randoms?”

That was a good question actually. He had never been afraid of showing affection around other people, but somewhat uncomfortable with going further than that. Then he had eventually started resting his hands on his girls’ butts in public. Then he walked around an underground disco with a very obvious erection. Now he was feeling Eliza up pretty plainly. Just a few days ago he had told Metra that he wasn’t into exhibiting himself, and that remained true, but the aversion he felt, a deep discomfort clogging up his insides, was way less than it used to be.

‘Of course it is,’ Siena mentally commented as if that was too obvious to even warrant speaking about.

‘What do you mean by that?’ John wanted to know; he was a bit more confused as to what caused that transformation. Perhaps transformation sounded too sudden. A shift, over several weeks.

‘Just riddle me this, how did you start having sex? Was it vanilla, boring intercourse?’ she asked in a dismissive tone.

‘For the most part,’ John answered, thinking back to the times where he barely used any toys or gimmicks. A vast contrast to today, where they had very few sessions that didn’t at least involve some rope or roleplay.

‘I see you are catching my drift,’ the nightmare elemental laughed quietly. ‘You are still waking up from the shackles of societal standards, John. What seemed weird or unfit to your own kinks at first, you might eventually discover to like, and the more you discover, the more arbitrary your old limits seem. What is a little harmless fun where people can see you? What worth is their disapproval to you? Nothing. Why shouldn’t you just do what you want where you want it?’ Because Siena said it, John had a slight suspicion she didn’t stop at public sex and went all the way to gouging out the eyeballs of someone who stepped on his blanket. However, on closer inspection of her thoughts, she actually turned out to be completely reasonable this time around. She really was only talking about things that hurt nobody, all she wanted to get across was that caring about their opinions was just not worth taking his erection somewhere more private.

“I guess I am becoming more comfortable with the idea of being seen,” he answered thus, both Siena and Eliza. “Everyone who cares to find out already knows anyway and the people taking offense already have the slander machine in full swing. So I don’t have anything to lose other than getting some awkward photos or videos taken. Maybe I am just becoming jaded.”

“Well, I kind of like it,” she purred, “and judging by-“

Susie cleared her throat loudly enough to pull their attention back to the matter at hand. “Could you have this conversation later?”

“Talking about slandering shitboot,” Eliza growled, not at all happy with being interrupted, “there sits a person who really wants to experience how it fucking feels to get fucked by tentacles.”

“What?!” she blushed deeply. “No, I don’t!” she glanced over to Junior repeatedly.

“The obvious and very much unsuccessful relationship that is going to come about here aside,” John raised his voice with the intention of pulling the conversation under his control, “wh-“

“What obvious relationship?” asked Junior.

“What do you mean unsuccessful?!” Susie added.

“I care about neither of you enough to tell you,” John shot them down, shutting down even less flattering comments coming from Eliza by cutting some meat with a small Mana Blade at the tip of his finger and then fishing it off her plate, stuffing it into her mouth. First she ate it, then she sucked the meat juices off his fingers, and then she just sucked his fingers for the sake of it. Perverse little girl that she was. “Seriously, we and you have a passing relationship at best. All I would want is for you to agree to these terms and then we will never see each other again.”

“What you want…” Senior grumbled, “it’s too much!”

“Well, let’s count your criminal offenses,” John got a new piece of meat. “Going from what bothers me the least to most. You tried to take over the ship and threatened to lose me a day of my time, you broke out of your prison cell…” They were quiet on how Susie did that, but it didn’t take a genius to figure out that she was the Fateweaver of the crew. Someone had to keep the mobile barrier up on the ship and Junior was obviously not it.

So, what was most likely to have transpired was the following: Tilgun’s appearance set everyone on the ship into full alert for a solid minute or so. The Fateweavers that kept ownership over the barrier, making it so only people they wanted to leave it could, lost concentration in the business. The resulting gap was only big enough for Susie, who was a Fateweaver herself and thus knew how to exploit these things. Once out, she contacted Junior, who was hanging back with the yacht due to some ‘worst case’ protocol they had. Once that was found out, Sealy asked Senior where she was, who eventually couldn’t help himself from boasting that 199 man o’wars and a yacht were on their way. A panicked Sealy then went to John.

Something along those lines.

“…then you actually fought me in the middle of my vacation, and lastly, you had the audacity to slander me,” he finished. “I am not going to sit here and pretend that your boat isn’t a bit much to ask for as compensation, but I am also going to ensure that you will leave as free people, so silver-lining, right?”

“Our ship, our wonderful, state of the art, new ship!” Senior complained. “You are an evil man!”

“Evil? No, I don’t think I qualify for that,” John shook his head. “I used to think I am a good person, but that’s not quite it either,” he added. “I think I am mostly moral in most of my decisions, however.” He forcefully removed his fingers from a mouth that was playfully gnawing at them with teeth that could bite through mithril, replacing them with another piece of grilled meat. “It’s just that I care about myself more than about you, and it’s not like I am leaving you to die. Once we get close enough to the shore, I will provide you with one of the safety vessels, then you can make landfall further down the continent or wherever you like. Alternatively, you can just land with us in New York and go about your business.”

“”But MY ship!”” Junior and Senior said at the same time.

They were turning to stare at each other, but before they could start some sort of generational conflict, John threw a Shardbound between them. “You are hired criminals,” he reminded them. “I know that you aren’t out to cause any real harm, but that doesn’t change the fact that you deal in dirty business. You got no right to complain if things don’t go your way for a change.” He sighed, “Seriously, I am giving you a very nice deal here, what do you think the alternative is?”

That was met with silence, so John picked up the final piece of meat and fed it to his favourite sub. “They are going to keep you in that cell on the drive back. Sure, I won’t be there, but I heavily doubt they will slack on the security like that a second time. Even if they do, the only person to get out will be Susie, I am just going to doubt that you have a Captain Boss Junior Junior waiting around somewhere. Once you are back in the Netherlands, they will lock you up somewhere to either serve a sentence or talk about who hired you, your ship will be confiscated and your fleet of Jelly Colonies will meet either the same fate or just be killed or donated to a zoo or something.” He let all of that sink in for a moment, “Meanwhile I will just take your ship. The only way I am not the best option there is if you can escape or if Amalia hired you to get insurance money on this thing.”

He used Observe on everyone on the crew and found nothing resembling panic or shame or anything to that extend. So that idea was out of question.

“I will leave you with your Colonies, I won’t be asking anymore questions, and I won’t lock you up somewhere, I will just take your yacht,” he looked to the side and into the ocean waves below, where a group of three sailors from the Rising Tide were currently having the time of their life looking after the fully automatically navigated thing, whilst going through the stocked champagne.

John very much wanted to be those sailors, just with orgies instead of champagne. Or maybe an orgy with champagne. Either way, he wanted his own boat to have a private orgy on, that was the point, and this was a quick and cost-effective way to get it. In return he would be releasing a few harmless, pretty ethical criminals back into the Abyss, which was brimming with not harmless criminals. Especially on the side of the pond they were heading to.

“So, do we have a deal?” John asked and made a gesture over his shoulder. Without delay, Aclysia reacted, pulling a fountain pen from her inventory, circling the table and holding it out to Senior. The idea was that he would sign the contract. While nothing more than a formality, an unregistered boat would change hands from one Abyssal captain to one eighteen-year-old with awesome powers, John still found it kind of necessary. Even if it was pure symbolism.

“I know of another way to get out of this,” Junior was, raising halfway out of his seat, “we could take you hostage!”

John didn’t even warrant that with a response, just giving him a dead-eyed look. Metra smirked in the background. “Come on,” she dared him, “try, make my day… although it doesn’t look like you will live long enough to be beat up by me.”

“What is that even supposed to-“ Junior noticed the glinting spot of sunlight reflecting from a white mithril blade onto the table.

Aclysia, with Eclys raised above the daring kraken-man youth like the sword of Damocles, was looking at him with dangerous, green eyes. “Never threaten my master,” were the only words she uttered as the fountain pen still lay in her other hand.

“And this is why I am the captain, Junior,” Senior declared. “You have no sense of diplomacy. May I ask that we use one of the safety vessels from the yacht rather than one of the local ones?”

‘Said the guy who tried to shoot me with a stun bullet the first time we met,’ John thought, keeping it to himself as Senior signed the contract following a nod from the Gamer. Although he had to wonder what was so much better about their boats.

Aclysia took it the second the ink had dried into the parchment, putting it into her inventory. She also took the pen back and then returned to her place behind John, earning herself a kiss on the way.

“Well that was everything I wanted to get done,” John told them as he accepted the quest. The conditions were quite the bit of time investment, but he needed the reward. “I have, against a lot of protest from the captain, arranged for you to get a normal room in the case of this happening. So, have fun.” Of course, Sealy was baseline against all of this happening, but John had the advantage of being strong enough to get his will through at this point. There was the risk of Amalia taking this very badly, but he really wanted that boat and thus planned to make amends by making sure the mana batteries were charged enough for the rest of the cruise.

The ‘pirate’ crew looked at each other for a moment as if he was joking.

“You must be asking yourself if I am so stupid to not realize that you can steal the ship when I leave you out of my sight, to which I can only reply…” he lowered the tone of his voice in what he hoped sounded dangerous, “…I dare you to try.”

It had the somewhat intended effect with one of them paling and the rest making either sour or disappointed expressions. John would have gotten up and shook their hands, but he had an enormous erection due to someone grinding their butt against his hand as she was sucking his fingers as if she could somehow make him cum through them. It was much more likely that her gesture downstairs would soon succeed in that.

“Aclysia, please show them the quarters in question,” he, in a hurry to get rid of them and taking care of that problem, commanded.

“I will return as quickly as possible,” the artificial guardian replied with a bow, knowing exactly that she wanted to catch the tail end of what was going to happen. “Please follow me, esteemed trading partners, plus that one moron who dared threaten my John.”

They didn’t dare to speak up again as they were guided away.