John’s hand came to a stop on the table dominating his yacht’s conference room, after he put the pen down. Disapprovingly, he looked at his completely artless and scraggly signature. The pompous guy inside him wanted it to look better and that urge was quite strong. Something would need to be done about it in the future. “Okay, so here we have it in print,” he slid the piece of paper over to Magoi. It was a not long formulation about Magoi being the temporally highest authority of Fusion.

An email spelling out the same details had been sent to basically all of the guilds that were part of this great collective. They were not informed of the exact details, of course; John wasn’t going to shout out to the world ‘MY MOTHER – WHO IS MUNDANE – LIVES HERE!!!!’ like an utter moron. Not that they could do a lot with that information as long as Hex was around.

The thing with Abyssals trying to abduct mundanes was that they couldn’t use any magic in the process. If they did, that would lead to an immediate end of the attempt via divine intervention. Thus, despite their rather large toolboxes, Abyssals could only kidnap ordinary people as well as other ordinary people could.

Problem with that was that that was still a very real possibility. It wasn’t like there were no abductions ever in the real world, quite the contrary. Worst case scenario would be if Hex decided to turn around and stab him in the proverbial back. He had no idea what she would gain from that, but given time he may acquire something the hired bodyguard wanted.

Which was just another reason for John to visit his parents and see exactly how else he could introduce some more elements into their security. The main one was that he had been previously unable to afford more and he desperately wanted more than one person to oversee his two parents.

He had found a number of possibilities online, but Scarlett had ultimately shown him the best solution, which was the introduction of high-tech golems or proper artificial spirits disguised as people as his parents’ neighbours or co-workers and putting them on permanent watch duty.

‘Wonder how widespread that is… can’t be particularly by how hard it is to make a creation of that degree and pay for the whole thing,’ John finished that train of thought, and Magoi took the contract.

“Alright, then, I am just going to keep things on the down low and running while you are gone,” Magoi confirmed what John wanted to hear. They were still gauging the impact of the Horned Rat’s derailment of their public broadcast. So far, nothing seemed to come of it, but one couldn’t be too careful. Good traps were invisible until they sprung.

“You do that,” Scarlett was drinking water for a change and chewing on some gum to keep her mind off the cigarettes. The fact that she had been there before John even called for her had been surprising. He hadn’t told her that she was to come with him, had even hoped to get her on the wrong foot with the announcement just to see her bamboozled, but she must have figured it out on her lonesome.

Not that it had been hard to gather that information, John just didn’t expect her to tag along without an argument. Her ability was vastly stronger if she sat at the centre of her network rather than sent signals through mediocre Wi-Fi. Technomancers worked much like any other computing unit, where they could only work with the data they were sent as quickly as they were powerful. As Scarlett was possibly the strongest of her niche magecraft on the planet (although, who really knew, with how low-key Technomancers were), the raw amount of data she could process at any given second was more limited by the amount of it she could receive.

To put it more easily, putting her on the ship and having her work from there was like writing a story in the Text Editor on the Titan supercomputer. It worked, there was just absolutely no reason to use that powerful a tool for such easy a task and interrupt some important physical calculations while doing it.

Nevertheless, the bloodstained technocrat wasn’t complaining with a single syllable, simply giving John an annoyed look every now and again. She knew that this whole thing was necessary due to their relationship resting not on John trusting her but in his own ability to end her should she betray them. Eventually, he hoped that would change, but that time was not yet.

“Well then,” Magoi looked around the room. There was not a whole lot to see, as it was just him, John and Scarlett. Apparently, the girls had agreed to go out shopping in the New York shopping centre, the proper Abyssal one that had been previously run by Thorne and was now managed by Scarlett Thorne. As one could imagine, the transition had gone rather smoothly. He cleared his throat, a somewhat awkward silence settling in as the trio had nothing to really talk about. “If you don’t mind, I will leave.” John didn’t, so the raptor faced Fateweaver wished him a nice vacation and then went off.

The silence left with him. “Business all done, great,” Scarlett spat her bubblegum into her now empty glass of water and went straight for the inside of her suit. A few seconds later, she had a cigarette in her mouth and was lighting it.

“Could you not?” John requested.

“Yes,” Scarlett answered, taking a deep huff. Rather than put her cigarette out afterwards, she continued as if he hadn’t even asked.

The Gamer crossed his arms. “Do you really want to play the ‘Could you, would you’ game?” he asked.

“No, I want to have a smoke without leaving the room,” the redhead answered. “Which Aclysia, Gaia bless her whiskey carrying, perfect ass, normally prevents me from. Unlike her, you won’t come over and slice the burning part off the cigarette if I do.”

“What makes you so sure about that, huh?” John asked, getting out of his seat and walking over. Purgatory engulfed his left arm in fire for a moment as it transformed into its dragonclaw-esque shape. “Granted, if you want to be so semantic about things, I can’t cut it like that, but I can perfectly well rip it out of your hand.”

“Sure, but you won’t,” Scarlett ashed off the cigarette at the rim of the glass. The black remains gathered atop of the small bit of remaining water inside. Her red eyes looked challengingly as the cigarette wandered back to her lips.

Grumbling, John passed by her seat, giving up on trying to seem menacing, and opened a window. “I will take you down to the basement if you continue like tha-“ he threatened, but when he turned around, Scarlett was already halfway through opening the buttons of her red-shirt, tie slung over the back of her armchair. “Would you stop reading me like a book?”

“No,” smoke left her lungs together with that word. The rest she blew out as a ring that travelled in John’s direction. It hit his chest and scattered into smaller clouds from there. “I have fun doing it; don’t act like you don’t try to do the same right now.”

“I feel like I am reading myself, honestly,” John retorted and then sat down in the chair next to hers, swatting away some of the smoke. “Let me guess, you just know that I am just too nice to girls I am haremantically involved with.”

Scarlett laughed quietly into the butt of her cigarette, “That was a terrible pun. But yes, you are, especially if no one else is around. If I made this a habit, you would stop me, I reckon.”

“I most certainly would, I don’t want my conference room to smell like tobacco,” John confirmed. “Now, why would you do this now?”

“I already said, because I want to have a smoke somewhere I can still feel my hands afterwards,” the redhead said.

“You could do that anywhere else,” John told her. “We have numerous unused rooms, plus its not even THAT cold outside.” Winter was quickly coming to an end, and at eleven degrees Celsius, the day was still getting warmer. “You could have that smoke anywhere else, but you chose to have it under my eyes. The obvious answer is that you want me to spank your ass until it’s as red as your eyes.”

Scarlett spread her arms out wide in a gesture of helplessness, but her smug smile said something entirely different. In a definitely calculated fashion, that also stretched her largely unbuttoned shirt, the two halves pulling apart in a V-shape just enough that John could spy the edge of her nipples. Right until she dropped her arms again.

“You were gone for a day. Sure, Metra was nice to fuck with, literally, but that’s nothing against your dick.”

“And you like me,” John pointed out.

The Technomancer raised an eyebrow and she threw the smoked down cigarette into the glass. “Pardon?” she asked.

“You heard me,” John leaned back in his chair, feeling like he was finally in control of a conversation with her. “You go on about how you want to fuck me, because I am attractive and all that-“

“Yes, which is exactly the truth,” Scarlett interrupted, but John paid that no mind and just continued.

“-but if you were just seeing me as a boytoy and boss you need to please, there would be no way you would keep throwing these little games at me,” he stated. “There is a difference between a girl that tries to get your attention and a scheming genius that tries to butter you up. Looks to me like you are playing the former game right now.”

Scarlett hesitated for a second. “That is entirely stupid,” she then stated. “If I wanted to make you trust me, I would be doing exactly what I am doing now.”

John pulled out his phone, checking his gallery. “Where in that plan is it necessary to send me ten nudes, exactly one for each day I was inside the barrier, exactly 24 hours apart?” he asked, smirking at the very lewd poses. “Or how does it help you that we keep having conversations like this? You would want me to look at you as just harmless enough that I stop giving you attention and allow you to create a conspiracy, even if it’s just a backup one. Instead you keep pulling my eyes back to you,” he put the phone on the table and leaned forwards toward her, as if he was to kiss her. Scarlett stayed perfectly still, her lips parting slightly. “So why look for my attention when it’s in your ‘best interest’ to be a footnote in my day?”

And again, Scarlett hesitated. This time for longer than a second. “Entirely stupid,” she repeated herself, pulling out a second cigarette.

“If you smoke more, Aclysia will notice,” John warned.

“I don’t give a fuck, let me think,” Scarlett retorted, her finger ripping the metal wheel of the lighter once, then a second time. “Fucking…” she cursed and then, after a particular rough third attempt, finally managed to ignite her cigarette.

John gave her the quiet she wanted and waited patiently. A small part of him had honestly expected her to just storm out of the room in denial of the accusations, followed by a several day period of her going out of his way just to prove him wrong. Maybe he had been watching too much anime lately, as that seemed to be the go to response of girls in those shows.

Some would have said that he was gambling with emotions here, just confronting Scarlett about her feelings for him, whatever they may be, was somewhat dangerous. Those people would have missed that he was working with loaded dice; after all, Observe already told him that her Relationship Points towards him were steadily rising.

Did she love him? No, but John was deliberately going for ‘like’ rather than ‘love’.

Scarlett slowly let all of the smoke out of her lungs before narrowing her eyes and asking, “Is this how you want to win me over, John?”

“I am just stating what seems to be the truth from my position,” he told her with a shrug. “Look, I am a bit crazy. Something inside me just wants me to love and be loved by as many attractive girls as possible… Well, I guess you could call that something male wish fulfilment paired with an unhealthy dose of making up for an awful social life prior to all of this happening… but I am rambling,” he reached out and put out her cigarette with his clawed hand. “Point is, I really want to trust and love you, but I am also not stupid enough to just go ahead and do both of these things when you are such a power player.”

Scarlett scuffed at her extinguished cigarette and tossed it into the glass, she crossed her legs and buttoned up her shirt. “The unfair thing here is that you can see how I feel in numbers while I have to decipher my own brain,” she stated.

“Yup,” John freely admitted to that.

The Technomancer hummed a little tune and then smirked. “You know confidence is sexy, but right now you are mildly infuriating with your cockiness.”

“I can live with that.”

“I am sure you can… but sure, I like you,” Scarlett finally conceded the point. “Although the whole thing about wanting your attention deserves larger scrutiny.”

“Hey, you don’t need me to analyse your actions,” John smiled back. “I just made you aware of the happenstance, it’s on you to gather the evidence to disprove my claims now that I backed them up.”

“Proving infatuation through the scientific method,” Scarlett pinched the bridge of her nose and shook her head, but the smirk stayed.