“When and why?” John wanted to know, his growl anything but that of friends that met recently.

His mother jumped into there, giving her son a scolding glance, “John Newman, you will behave when addressing my guest.” She gestured for Maximillian to come inside, the gravity king stepping in without any further hesitation. Having recovered from the initial shock, it seemed like he knew very well that the situation was to his advantage today. “So, I hear you two are friends?”

“Something like that,” Maximillian nodded. “And about three weeks ago in a bar, because she is my type. If I had known she was your mother…” he looked over to Brenda, “…I still would have done it.”

John’s left eye twitched dangerously as he heard his mother giggle girlishly and guide the royal inside. “Take a minute to calm down,” she told her son, “we’ll be in the living room.”

John didn’t need a minute, he needed an aspirin. Of all the possible guys in the whole damn nation, it had to be the one he knew. What were the odds of that? Now, he could do effectively nothing about this. Yes, sure, he could have forced his will on Maximillian, kicking him out of the house and out of her life, but in doing so he would have gone against the wishes of both his mother and someone he did call a friend after all.

‘I am going to punch him in the face for this,’ the Gamer made a bargain with himself and then went into the living room. The best way to handle this situation was to suck it up and listen to the sound of silence whenever the two of them did anything remotely resembling a flirt. He had come knowing full well that he would meet SOME lover of his mother, now it was just about three times more awkward.

“A true coincidence that I meet all of you here,” he heard Maximillian say as he entered the living room. The gravity mage, predictably, took the seat as far removed from Eliza as possible. “Especially you, Lydia, didn’t know you were in America. Probably my fault for not checking the news.”

“My, my, you all seem interconnected,” Brenda was sitting closer to Maximillian than was normal for a host, but the guy’s purpose in being here was literally to screw her brains out repeatedly over the next week. More than ever, John hoped that the walls were really, really thick. “How do you know each other?”

Lydia answered quickly and without hesitation, “We went to the same university. He and John know each other through me.” Yet another lie they had to tell her. It was much more believable than ‘he was my enemy in a tournament over the crown of Germany’, but that didn’t make John feel any better about any of this.

These last few minutes were a real tumble of emotions.

Luckily, it seemed that this was about as bad as it got, as the rest of the talk went about pretty calmly, talking about easy topics and exchanging harmless stories of their lives. Aclysia and Beatrice eventually joined them. The two maids appeared with black hair for a change, wearing plain grey t-shirts and yoga pants.

John was hit by a couple of jokes about twins in his harem by his mother, alongside with some light jabs by Maximillian about the addition of Beatrice to his list of creations, veiled in obscure puns. It was about three in the afternoon when Brenda finally broke the chatter. “Ah, I need to prepare dinner soon,” she said.

“Oh no, sorry, we will eat out,” John informed her, gesturing at Aclysia and Beatrice, “they are Jewish, so we made some appointments in restaurants.” The disappointed look of his mother was something he had not expected. “Don’t worry, we’ll come back for the promised cake afterwards,” he promised.

Yet another lie, one aimed at keeping the unpleasantry of eating real food away from the artificial spirits. They could do it, but the biological material needed to be removed fairly quickly, lest it began to rot inside their bodies. John was assured that this was a highly unpleasant process and he could imagine.

“Jewish twins, that has to be a rarity in some way,” Brenda joked, touching Maximillian a slight bit with every movement. Her chair had wandered closer to his a slight bit more at any opportunity, at this point they were basically shoulder to shoulder. “Well, let me show you the guest rooms before you go then.”

She guided them up a narrow flight of stairs. The second storey held all three guest rooms, with one shared kitchen and bathroom. As Brenda had initially let him know, the room he and his girls were to stay in was rather small, basically just a two-person bed with a nightstand on each side and a wardrobe against one wall. For a change, it was an actual two-person bed, not something designed for a royal pair to sleep in and have enough room to fit half a battalion inside. Which made the situation pretty problematic.

“This isn’t really going to work,” John slowly suggested. On one hand, that saddened him a bit. Part of him had looked strangely forwards to sleeping over at his parent’s place. On the other, this did give him a pretty good excuse to put several kilometres between his bed and wherever his parents would have a devil’s threesome with Maximilian. Something that, going by the royal’s comments, was doubtlessly going to happen.

“I could stay in your bedroom, Brenda, I am sure Ben wouldn’t mind,” the fact that Maximillian was on nickname basis with his father caused John’s annoyance to flare up again quite a bit.

“Ah, some nights my husband and I do prefer to be alone… or pick and choose who we invite that night,” Brenda softly blocked that advance, blushing slightly. It was pretty apparent that her Libido, in all its 36-pointed glory, was revving up for an afternoon snack. Her mind went to the same place as John’s; even if she didn’t mind her son knowing about sex life, she wasn’t quite liberal enough about it for him to be around for it. “Well, perhaps you should look for a hotel, sweetie. I am sure you could use the extra room.”

“Yeah,” John agreed; the group only leaving their swimwear behind to be worn later in the week. The rest of their luggage stayed in the trolleys and was to be taken with them. As they went towards the front door, the Gamer had only one more small question, “Oh, where is that Hex girl by the way?”

In reality, he already knew the answer. Since he was here, protecting his mother of most anything that could happen, the hired gun was looking over his father at work. Simple and effective. Still, he had to play the role of the unknowing son.

“Ah, that is good question, normally she’d be around by now…” Brenda sighed lustfully, which was John’s signal to leave in a hurry.

_______________________________________________________________________

Naturally, they weren’t going to actually stay in a hotel. Even if John was willing to put money down for that frivolity, he couldn’t imagine any of them having a better bed than the absurdly sized one he got, not to mention the sex room and a chef at Aclysia’s level.

“Ya took that surprisingly well, tiger,” Rave said, holding his hand and smiling.

“As little as I like it, there is just no use grumbling about it,” John put it short. “Can’t do anything about either them having sex or the fact that I have to lie to her and my dad.” He looked over to the assembled girls as if to prove him wrong.

Surprisingly, Lydia did raise her voice, “Mundane people can be initiated into the Abyss, John,” she let him know. In the urging silence, she continued on, “Innate Ability holders aside, even those who have no natural gift in the supernatural can be awoken to it. A martial artist that practices the right way or a religious fellow that prays enough may awaken to either of the two disciplines of the Abyss. Then they are technically part of it. Once they can light a candle, you can show them the inferno.”

“Huh,” John let out an understanding sound. “Alright, so it is possible… if I can somehow get my parents to become awesome martial artists or get them into paganism.”

“Taijiquan,” Lydia told him, “if guided by a proper martial artist,” she gestured towards Rave, “it is one of the more reliable ways to awaken to one’s ki-centre.” She gave him a long stare. “But you will exchange the absolute protection of Gaia for the satisfaction of being able to tell your parents the truth. Are you certain that is the path forwards?”

The Gamer shook his head, “No, I am not. I will have to think about that some more.” Both ways had drawbacks and advantages. His wants were also conflicting with the fact that he would shove them into a world of darkness and dangers. Currently, they were living in blissful ignorance about an Abyss that didn’t concern them in the first place. Selfishness was not a good reason to tear down that veil.

He would take at least a few days to come to a decision on that. “Well, aside from my family worries, surprised you didn’t have more to say to Max,” John shifted the topic slightly.

“I have a myriad of things to say,” Lydia would have crossed her arms if she didn’t have to drag her trolley. Having to transport their luggage like normal people was a true nuisance. “However, all of them involve unexplainable topics, like a steampunk giant and hovering monorails.”

“I really want to visit Vienna right about now,” John had to admit.

“She is turning it into a technologic wonderland… to the tune of billions and billions of dollars,” Lydia agreed. “Basically, Ria is melting away whatever savings Maximillian created.”

“I find it really fucking hard to believe that pompous ass ever saved any money,” Eliza cussed. “Let’s talk about someone I don’t want to violently rip apart.”

It was at that moment that they entered the harbour barrier. The cleaning process had made massive progress, only a few sprinkles of blood remaining on some hard to reach places. Over a large fire sat a massive pot that spread the pleasant aroma of cooking seafood. The workers were sitting around there, taking a break. Raising their hands and waving towards Aclysia with thankful shouts on their lips, it was pretty clear that John’s intention to get on the people’s good side had been successful.

Chemilia was nowhere to be seen, however. After having made sure everything was running smoothly, she must have retreated elsewhere. As much as John was into the taste of the eel, he had filled up on them over breakfast and could go for something else right about now. Something a bit more solid and sweet.

“I suggest pancakes,” Aclysia stated, reading his thoughts, as they walked up the yacht’s outstretched walkway. “Sugar has been low in the recent diet.”

“Mhm, I do like the sound of that.”

“I fucking LOVE the sound of that,” Eliza added.

The rest of the group also agreed, so pancakes it would be. “Please leave your luggage here,” Aclysia gestured at an empty spot in the entrance hall, “I will attend to it as soon as possible.”

Most of them did, only Lydia insisted on taking care of her own stuff, and the maid duo went to the kitchen. They were still working on creating the necessary mountain of pancakes when the queen returned to the cantina. “We should create a list of locations we want to traverse during our stay here,” she suggested. “This is the first time I am in Washington DC myself, I would like to see some stuff during the visit.” The queen looked down to John’s pants. “But it seems your attention lies elsewhere right now.”

The genes of Brenda Newman were strong in her son and so it was to nobody’s surprise that, now that he was sitting in his own halls again, John had a massive erection. Having grown past the belt, a fair bit of his cock was peeking out from his trousers. “Yup,” the Gamer agreed, getting a text message at that moment.

Scarlett: Yo, if you are horny, I am hanging out in the sex room right now.

Scarlett: You have some really great stuff I want to try being tied on.