For some reason, John was much more impressed by the cathedral than he was by the White House. The uncreatively named Washington National Cathedral was just more imposing, with its many spires and arches and sombre grey colour. The way the shadows were caught in the carvings, fell from the segmenting stone constructs that spanned between the massive windows and the ground, an entire building dedicated to the inconclusive existence of some almighty creator.

To John, who did not believe in one god, this building was impressive not because of what was prayed to in it but because of the will and two-thousand years of history that had produced it. “Do you want to wait outside or…?” he asked the typically anti-religious blood mage at his side.

“All you want to do is get through that fucking quest, right?” Eliza asked, plopping her ass down on a shallow stone barrier that swung elegantly around a green area. “Make it quick.”

“You will have to wait on your lonesome,” Lydia pointed out, intending to inspect the architecture from within. Although her reaction was less than John’s, she too was quite impressed by this building.

“You and your love for dumbass stone stacked on top of more fucking stone,” Eliza went from sitting to lying on the stone, her legs kicking up into the air one after the other. “Get in there, do it, I want to go home or see Brenda or eat some ice cream, whatever the fuck you pick, just not be here.”

“Alright, I’ll be back in a moment,” John promised and they went inside. ‘Now, the quest just says visit, so did I already clear it?’ he thought as they followed the central walkway.

Furrowing his eyebrows, John was quickly distracted from his annoyance by the silence inside the church breaking through the whisper of feathers. In front of the central piece of the cathedral, a large depiction of the life of Christ centring around his crucifixion, appeared a pair of golden wings with the featureless outline of a person between them.

The golden feathers whispered into the melody of the church’s divine silence something beautiful and soothing. No words, just choirs of the lowest possible volume. The silhouette remained hovering there for a second.

This had happened before, albeit much shorter in scope, back in Amsterdam. Another cathedral, another angel, and just like last time, it disappeared as quickly as it came, one blink of his eyes and the figure was gone. “Did you see that?” he whispered towards Lydia.

“See what?” the queen asked just as quietly, too busy scanning the impressive quality of the benches and the masonry of the ceiling.

‘Well, where is my booty?’ John thought as he tried to solve what this was exactly. Once the trio was back together outside, he presented a theory. “Seems like Gaia is trying to reincarnate somebody,” he told them.

“That is positively ridiculous,” Lydia smote that idea down. “Revival is already immensely rare,” Eliza waved with a giant grin on her face, “reincarnation is unheard of.”

“So is someone wielding 5 elemental items at once or combining several elementals into one,” John put both Siegmund and himself up as examples. “Just because it’s basically never seen doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. You should know that, you are standing next to a human goddess.”

“HOST! I am a fucking host for a human goddess,” Eliza was quick to correct.

“I know, I know,” John laughed and patted her head. “You only try to bite me playfully, that’s how I tell the difference.” To prove him right, the blood mage snapped her teeth at his hand and missed on purpose. “Anyway, she basically stated it in the Achievement I got last time, I just didn’t give it any thought because it seemed unrelated to me.”

“Why would she weave your presence into this affair at the current time, then?” Lydia crossed her arms.

Shrugging, John answered, “Beats me,” he glanced at the cathedral and then, overly cheeky, added, “Gaia works in mysterious ways.”

_________________________________________________________________________

The vacation continued on pretty eventlessly. John spent the days wandering the city with the girls and keeping up with business emails he received from the people in New York. It became apparent rather quickly that the people he had appointed more or less spontaneously were varying immensely in their fitness for their new jobs. He would have to carefully coerce them out of those positions and see who he could promote into their position instead.

He had expected something like that to happen; he would have been stupid not to when he picked people based on arbitrary categories like ‘talked back to me during the battle with Thorne’. It was a strategy born out of the fact that there were no ways to prove who was qualified for what, since the former economy had run on strength and wit alone. The hope was that the randomly appointed would keep the system running long enough for people that were better at it to rise from the masses and take their place.

For the stress he put them through, John fully planned to give the unfitting many a nice, large sum of money to settle or start a business more closely aligned with their interests. Anyway, that was a thing he had to deal with when he got back. Other things such as handing out loans, checking on progress on numerous construction efforts and so on he could deal with on the fly even without being there.

On one day he was invited to a meal with Abraham, to which he took Rave, and they had a nice time together. Which was odd, but once they were done, he had a much better understanding of people that had good things to say about dictators. All their horribleness aside, they could still be nice people. Not everyone’s personality was as rotten as their goals were.

Although John had no idea why Abraham was running his country the way he was. That would be an interesting discussion. Maybe they would get to have that on another day. Maybe during the meeting for golf they had set up.

The evenings and nights, John spent over at his parents’ place. They were just having idle conversation over coffee and cake, sometimes for several hours, other times for barely one. Nothing much happened during those, just his parents getting used to the many girls and teasing their son with old stories about how awkward a kid he used to be.

Stories everyone but him found great delight in.

As everyone was having a great time with it, he lived through it though. They weren’t doing it with any maliciousness, they were his family and loves, he could shoulder a bit of shame for them. That was how three more days passed.

Lydia’s vacation was halfway over at that point.

______________________________________________________________________________

It was shortly before noon on the Saturday. This day was planned a bit differently than the previous ones; Brenda had insisted they came over early today. “Your father has taken off the weekend, so this will be a nice family day,” she had told him over the phone.

Interesting enough that she only wanted him over on the Saturday though. Something told him they wanted the house empty on the day afterwards for some activities he knew but rather not think off in context with his parents. Either way, his golfing trip with Abraham was on Sunday, so it fit his plans as well.

They were set to leave in a bit, but John still had some time kill. Time he choose to use by paying Scarlett a visit. Like some of the other girls, the Technomancer had claimed a room for herself even though she spent most of the nights somewhere in or around John’s bed. Some nights, mass cuddles weren’t what people were out for, apparently. John didn’t get that, he hadn’t spent a single night alone since having the chance not to. Missing the warmth of a partner at his side was a depressing thought on its lonesome.

‘I may have gotten addicted to female companionship,’ John thought and immediately decided that was a drug he wouldn’t even attempt to quit. He knocked on Scarlett’s door and entered once he heard her voice from the other side.

What he saw was largely what he expected. The formerly empty room had been cleared of everything that wasn’t the standard issue dark-oaken desk and the bed and replaced with a technological landscape of screens and cables. They were bolted to the walls and ceiling, a few touch screens even lying on the edges of the floor.

The answer how Scarlett had even set all of this up in such a short amount of time came in the shape of mechanical tendrils with multi-purpose tools set on their ends, installed at several points inside the room. Most of them were folded up, retreated into their base like the cable of a vacuum cleaner. Nevertheless, their presence had made this whole work possible for the otherwise almost mundanely weak Scarlett.

The redhead herself was sitting with closed eyes inside her chair. A bunch of the tendrils, working above a workbench of steel, suddenly stopped moving when she opened them up. The circuits in her red eyes fizzled out as she stopped working her magic and addressed her visitor, “What brings you here?”

“Just checking on you, since I will be spending the rest of the day with the other girls,” John explained and looked over to what was being worked on. He saw curved plates of a well-known bronze colour, Baelementium, lying around, along with the material’s purple and gold tinted alternatives, S and L-Baelementium, respectively. A sphere of rails and sockets sat halfway completed in the middle of it all. “Didn’t expect you to work on my request yourself.”

“If you want something done right, do it yourself,” Scarlett stated the simple truth of her life. “I have no idea how to craft with my own two hands, but I know my tools.” Her chair creaked the slightest bit when she turned it towards John. As she spoke, a tendril nonchalantly reached out from under the desk and put some oil on the axis. “I have to outsource the more specialized parts, but I can do most of the welding, shaping and screwing. Cuts the cost immensely.”

“And also keeps it more secretive,” John approved of that. “Still thought you would tell me if you could do that.”

Shrugging, Scarlett yawned and stretched, “I thought you would guess it yourself. I was involved in research and development for years. Thorne didn’t just start producing drones out of nowhere, someone needed to design those.” She gestured at herself. “Who better than someone who can control the entire factory line to build different iterations?”

“Fair point,” John conceded and moved on. “So, what can you build from scratch?”

“From scratch? Basically nothing,” the redhead laughed it off, wiggling her fingers in the air. “Again, these haven’t held a hammer in their life. What I can build is entirely dependant on what I can get my hands on,” she smiled in that dangerous way that made John think he was about to get an offer he couldn’t refuse, “with money and coercion that usually means whatever I want. Feels good to have worked to the top, but that’s besides the point. As long as I have an idea and the necessary parts, I can do basically everything. You may call me a puzzle-master, rather than an actual crafter.”

“Wouldn’t that be puzzle-mistress or do you want to go full male?” John couldn’t resist making a joke about her androgynous appearance. The fact that she was wearing her suit, like always, didn’t help.

“If I look like a guy and you still fuck me, that’s pretty gay,” Scarlett threw the banter right back at him.

“If you suddenly have a dick, don’t expect me to keep fucking you,” the Gamer made that clear. “Until then, I have seen you naked, and no matter how small your tits are, the way you moan is definitely that of a common whore.”

Scarlett narrowed her eyes, “You are getting pretty disrespectful. Do I need to make you take me to the playroom again?”

“Like I need the room,” John walked up to her and dragged her out of the chair. Struggling against his strong hands, Scarlett put up a bit of a play fight as he shoved her on the table. Laying her on her back, John fixed her against the wooden surface by keeping a hand on her throat. Although she was grabbing that arm, she didn’t try to free herself. Only struggle more. “I could take you right here…” a throaty moan left Scarlett’s mouth, words failing her due to the constraints on her windpipe, “…but I have to go, so that will have to wait.”

He let her go, much to her disappointment. “Fucking clam-jammer,” she complained when she fixed her collar. “Get me all worked up for nothing,” she looked after him as he turned to leave. “This will delay the ETA on this thing by at least 30 minutes!”

“I’ll make it up to you when I get back,” John promised and went out the door.