‘Ahhh, feels good to level quickly,’ John thought at the end of the five-day marathon. There was just something deeply satisfying about getting experience quickly. ‘Or at least effectively quickly, technically it took me the same time as normally. Still though, feels good.’ He took his phone out of his inventory, waited for a moment as it reconnected to the internet and then began texting.

Jeehan: Am about to leave the barrier, can’t wait to speak to you again!

The ‘Neonlights is writing’ dots came and stayed for a while. Rave wasn’t a slow typer, but John was currently somewhere where the time was slightly different.

Neonlights: What? No great conversations with Aclysia?

Jeehan: Oh, there were a few, I will tell you all about in person and somewhere without microphones.

He half expected a quip from Thorne at that point, but nothing came. There was a lot he could read into that, but he had been theorizing too much already. ‘I really need to quit making unproductive, half-baked assumptions,’ John scolded himself as he looked with pride at the greatest achievement of the whole grinding action.

Sadly, the list of 4-type combinations was all recycled from the 2 and 3-types, but it still was a remarkably great skill to have simply because it allowed John to have two combinations active now. Whether that was a 2 and a 4-type or two 3-types didn’t matter either.

“Well, those were the agreed hours,” John said and waved the Magus family goodbye. Magoi, Magnus and Mabirl would stay within the yacht, Stefanie would take Lee back to northern India, before returning to New Atlantis (which, apparently, lay somewhere between Australia and southern Indonesia). For the moment, though, they were still a family on vacation, and John left them behind in the barrier so they could use every minute as long as possible.

Once outside, he put his phone back into his inventory. Rave met him halfway on his way back and fell around his neck, kissing him after they whirled around for a bit. In silence, they went towards the yacht. The likelihood that some part of the ship was still able to listen in on them was pretty low. John really had to wonder why Thorne came out to confirm his theory in the way she did. If she had just stayed quiet, he would have found some other explanations, hell, she could have faked some evidence herself.

The only logical explanation John could find for revealing herself was that she wanted to come into contact just as much as he did. Then again, he also didn’t expect her to come in person.

“How was your Jane-less week?” Rave asked once he put her down. They began making a beeline for the yacht; in her enthusiasm his girlfriend had only put on some light stuff atop her skimpy clothes and the March nights were still pretty cold.

“Terrible, only had conversations about stupid stuff and loving sex with everyone,” John answered, looking around to make sure there weren’t any potential microphones around. It wasn’t until after putting Rave’s phone into his inventory, he spoke freely. “Truth be told, I had almost all my conversations mentally; Aclysia and I had some nonsense talks to test if Thorne is omnipresent or just has the potential to always listen in.”

“Difference being between her knowing everything and her potentially knowing everything we say, right?” Rave asked, causing her boyfriend to nod. “Why don’tcha just ask her tomorrow?”

John snorted, “Right, like she is going to show up in person and tell us the truth about anything. Mark my words, she won’t be there herself, whoever is going to be there will be clad in anti-Observe magic and we will only be fed lies.”

_________________________________________________________________________

“Sit the fuck down,” demanded the scarlet haired woman. She was beautiful in a very odd way, having an androgynous face with clear skin and the kind of ruthless eyes that made him feel like she was about to buy up all his stocks and throw him out of his own company. There was the barest hint of breasts under the red shirt she wore beneath a casually opened suit vest.

That shirt, the tie she was wearing, her criminal eyes and her wild hair, they all had a bright red colour that reminded John of over-stylized blood. She lighted a cigarette, took a deep huff and then blew the smoke into the open room. It quickly travelled to the ceiling of the nearly vacant room; barely anybody visited a strip club at this early hour, even in the Abyss.

The few that did were concentrated around the bar at the centre, an oval, light oaken thing with a tribune in the middle where two very similar looking dark elves were currently busy feeling each other up in a teasing, dancing manner. Smaller podiums were scattered throughout the establishment, the standard, well-polished stripping pole on each of them. Currently they, and the seats around them, were vacant.

John sat down at the table, Rave, Aclysia and Eliza immediately following suit, removed in distance from even those vacant places, after Scarlett insisted. “Do it already, S-T-F-D, sit the fuck down, the day isn’t getting any longer.” Once he had placed himself firmly on the smooth, plastic leather of the admittedly well-fashioned and soft benches, Scarlett slid him a glass filled with a golden liquid.

After taking a whiff that felt like it would set the hairs in his nose on fire, identifying it as some sort of high-concentration alcoholic beverage, he put the glass right back down. “I don’t drink a lot,” he told the person across the table. Everything about this situation was dumbfounding him.

“Sounds like a problem with you, not the drink,” Scarlett kept pummelling whatever image he had of her. Simply by virtue of doing everything John didn’t expect her to do, she had near complete control over the conversation right now. After she threw the contents her own glass down her throat in a single gulp, as if the whole thing had been just a shot of cheap vodka, she put the glass back on the table and leaned back.

They were five on one side of the table, she was alone, they were highly combat proficient and she was a Technomancer without any tools around. Yet, she was sitting there with her legs crossed under the high table, making it impossible to get up quickly, and her elbows on the backrest of the bench, as if she had nothing to fear. Her scarlet eyes drilled into his with such intensity that the music in the background seemed to grow quieter, as if she was trying to decipher everything about him. He stared back, confused overall but not willing to back down in the slightest. The air was thick with questions and a sort of tension that John really didn’t expect to feel right now.

It was like he had gone to speed dating and just found someone he wanted to throw down and nail right there on the floor.

Scarlett wasn’t exactly his type, acting in no way like a woman, being dressed like a man, and she probably would have been able to pass as a (very feminine) guy if she tried to.

However, she was completely rocking that androgynous look and was in no way unattractive; she leaned just enough to the feminine side to remain a cause for boners, albeit somewhat insecure ones. As the Gamer’s and Scarlett’s mutual stare continued, she smiled as if she knew exactly that John liked what he saw. Maybe she just liked what she saw herself. John caught his own lips curving upwards.

She wasn’t his usual type, but neither were other girls in his harem. Sexy she was, that was without a doubt. What had started as a simple measurement of each other had turned into a weirdly comfortable staring contest.

“While ya two eye-bang each other,” Rave’s deeply amused voice chimed in as she grabbed the glass, “I’ll be taking this.”

“Darling, if you are feeling left out, I can mentally undress you just as much as this guy,” Scarlett offered, raising her eyes from John and looking over his whole following. “Although, given the choice to see any of you naked, I’d go with your boyfriend first, Aclysia second, you third, then Metra and lastly Eliza.”

“What the fuck do you mean I am last?” Eliza took offense to that.

“Nothing against ya,” Scarlett rolled her words, glancing at an approaching waitress and the real bunny ears she had, “but I am just not into pale, screaming shorties. Not saying I wouldn’t bang you, just saying you are the least attractive of this bunch.” There was a sheer flood of contradicting curses and compliments towards her companions coming out of Eliza’s mouth in response, stopping when the waitress arrived.

“I am very sorry for the delay,” the waitress stated and hastily placed a new bottle of whisky and two extra glasses on the table. Scarlett made a dismissive gesture, slapping her on the naked butt when she turned to leave. Their uniform was basically just a bikini top with a miniskirt and a thong. She left and John was minorly confused.

“Why did she apologize?” he wanted to know. As Scarlett was just looking at him with bemused intellect, he explained further, “I made sure you didn’t know it would be all five of us coming here, hence why you only got one extra glass. So why was she apologizing like you had been waiting for that since you got here.”

Scarlett undid her tie before answering, lazily throwing it next to a pair of sunglasses and a black fedora, much like the one John owned, with a red band wrapped around the base. “Kind of hot in here, sorry. Not sorry actually,” she said, removing her tie and opening the uppermost two buttons of her shirt.

Then the Technomancer, with hair the colour of running blood, rose out of her seat and bent halfway over the table. She winked John closer with a suggestive wiggle of her finger. His decision was largely boner oriented at that point.

“I’ll give you a tip,” Scarlett whispered into his ear, both of their heads above the middle of the table. “I picked this location because I know for a fact they recently upgraded their ordering system.”

They sat back down and John’s eyes stared at a lucky angle down her shirt in the movement. He realized that she wasn’t wearing a bra, saw her nipples standing completely erect underneath. They were a pretty pink, completely natural, both at odds and nicely accenting to the entire red theme she got going on. He looked upwards, only to get stuck at her lips to which the exact same description could be given, except they looked perfectly soft instead of diamond hard.

John distracted himself with logical thoughts. “You hacked into the system and told them your order was overdue?” At the moment he finished his question his phone vibrated a good 300% above the regular strength, right next to his erection. ‘Why do I even have this in my pocket?!’ John cursed himself; he had thought it a nice gesture to let Scarlett know he was approaching. After all, he was the one who didn’t know what his target would have looked like. Pulling it out, he quickly read the word ‘Bingo’ travelling over the screen. “Let me guess, you also gave a loan through another guy to this business a few months back explicitly so they could update to state-of-the-art technology from Thorne, solely so you could use this exact spot if you eventually wanted a meeting in private?”

This part of the city was close enough to the Thorne HQ that she had a low travel time with public utilities but also far enough that nobody would immediately be suspicious. John also assumed that she got some secret tunnel in and out of the headquarters so nobody would see her leave.

“And he is smart too, fuck me.” Looking back up, he saw Scarlett biting her lower lip in a manner only a heavily turned on lady could and that was incredibly hard to fake. Observe revealed that Lust had risen from fourth to second place. “How much would you pay me for a footjob under the table?” Scarlett asked out of nowhere.

“Oh, don’t lie, red rose, you would do it for free,” John answered in a deep, flirting voice. He just loved that he had arrived at a point in his confidence where he could deliver lines like that without batting an eyelash. “In other news, you are incredibly straightforward for a virgin.”

“Really, of all the things your famous scrying magic finds out, that’s the thing?” Scarlett raised a brow, still amused rather than shocked. Interestingly, she skipped to answer the allegation.

“You knew about Observe and didn’t take any precautions?” John was confused again, he had hoped to get control over the conversation this way, but Scarlett was as unmoved by that as by everything else that wasn’t his looks or his wit.

“When I first saw you, I just thought that that is a guy I would get naked for,” the horny Technomancer stated. “At least what you became, not what you were.”

“You have done your homework, didn’t you?” John asked. “What do you know about me?”

“Too little, although these helped,” Scarlett grabbed her phone and turned it for John to see. He was greeted by a photo of himself when he was still lanky, naked and only half awake. Rave must have shot it when he wasn’t looking, he knew she had done it a few times. The Technomancer had stumbled into one of the few definitive things John still got embarrassed over. She turned the device back towards herself and swiped without using her hands, lines of green and yellow dancing from her pupil outwards in a pattern that reminded John of the circuits on a motherboard. “Thank fuck you don’t still look like that, I would have way less to flirt with,” she looked up. “Would you be up for giving me some newer materials though? Real shame you didn’t have a camera in the bathroom.”

“You are STILL incredibly straightforward for a virgin,” John repeated his earlier statement, this time in a mildly shocked tone.

“There are three things I don’t have time for: sleeping, eating and arranging for a male prostitute who could get to know I exist and fuck me often enough that it’s worth the security breach. I don’t have to worry about that with you, you already found out,” Scarlett explained, finally opening the bottle of whiskey standing on the table. “Want some?”

“I think he could use some just so you get out of his fucking head,” Eliza hissed, still not over the earlier comments. “Come on, scatterbrain, she is so fucking obviously coming onto you just to get you easier to manipulate, easiest sociopath trick in the whole book of shit that is her brain!”

“Oh no, I was going to do the whole negotiation routine, overstate my goal and all that jank, but I am just moist right now,” the Technomancer stated, then pointed over her shoulder. “You are welcome to come to the toilet with me and check, hell, I extend that offer to all the ladies here. You can fix the problem while you are at it, don’t have a vibrator with me or I would just do it myself.”

“Get the fuck up then!” Eliza shouted, already half-climbed over the table. “Might already check if you are even a girl while we are at it, you look like a fucking guy who has been through twenty-three plastic surgeries!” John had to disagree there; if that would have been the case, the problem with the tightness of his pants wouldn’t have existed right now.

“Sorry, would ask you as well, John, but I am not having my first time in a dirty bathroom stall,” Scarlett knocked twice on the table as she got up. “See ya in a bit.”

“I like her,” Rave stated.

“I am unsure,” Aclysia added.

“I think she is the tits,” Metra shared.

“I think my opinion is obvious, right now,” John ended that chain.