It took a while for John to calm down again. All of the shocks had settled deeper in his bones than he had thought. He thought he was fine when he had Rave in his arms in the hospital bed. Now, he wasn’t so sure anymore. The blindness was not the only punishment he had to endure, by far not. Many things needed settling, many wounds mental that only time and prolonged effort would close.

Once calmed down sufficiently, Beatrice and Metra keeping a lookout that nobody saw him in his weakened state, John took out the contact lenses again and went with the glasses. Although still imperfect, the single static point of view at least didn’t make him lose his balance over and over again.

“That’s gonna be weird for a while,” Rave attempted to breathe some life back into their talks by tapping against the black glasses. Her smile and cheerful tone were both clearly forced, but they weren’t fake. They lived, they were learning, they were moving on, the old Hollmey motto. Brash but increasingly more necessary as life got more chaotic and cruel. “Can’t see whose butt you’re staring at anymore.”

John let out a dry laugh, that was all he could produce. It was good enough though. The warmth of Rave’s hand in his felt more intense than ever. In all likelihood, his body was slowly recognizing the reality of the situation and diverting resources normally dedicated to sight to strengthen his other senses instead. Doubtful that something marvellous would come of that. However, it was still interesting to mark human adaptiveness. What sight he had right now was, after all, not tied to any biological components but his very soul.

“Well, you can just assume that I am looking at all of them all the time,” he joked back, his hand disjoining from hers to reach down to her hips and rest it there. For the bodies of his girls and his girlfriend in particular, he needed no eyes to find his way over them. For a moment they were just as happy as always, then John was reminded of his losses by a pop-up informing him that Purgatory had been successfully repaired.

The World Ender set had survived the clash with the Contender, thanks to their Indestructible Attribute making it impossible to completely destroy them. Same couldn’t be said for most of John’s equipment. Aside from the shoes, everything had been reduced to ash and cinders. On their own, the important enchantments on the stylish pieces of leather weren’t active. Unless Gaia sent some new Tokens his way, it would be best to retire those and get working on some new equipment.

Although also Indestructible, Untouchable, his hat, was also gone. It was enchanted to keep sitting on his wearer’s head even under illogical conditions, but even that must have had a limit. However it had happened, the fedora hadn’t been around John when they found him, and with his knocked out state and apparent permanent eye injury, they had bigger worries than searching for the hat. Maybe it would resurface from the ruins of the White House, but John had an inkling that it would at least take a while until it found its way back to him.

He would have to check later today if the Mandala Sphere was still repairable with Create. If not, they would have to smelt it down for the base materials and reconstruct it. The second construction should be much quicker than the first, but it would be costly nonetheless.

“Aclysia, do you happen to carry any of my spare clothes with you?” he asked the maid. She did and so they quickly retreated into one of the many empty rooms around. Rather than go through the unnecessary task of fumbling into a t-shirt with glasses on his nose, the articles were simple swapped from one inventory into another and John used his to get into those.

They were more nerdy clothes than usual, stuff he would wear in his free time. A black shirt with a sceptre in 16-Bit style printed on it with the word ARCADE above and POWER underneath. John had found it humorous at the time of buying, with how much he relied on arcane magic and all that. Below that were pants designed to go out on a jog with, but he just used them to laze around. Not his fault that sportswear was usually the most comfortable as well. Although he had decided to get rid of them, the black, polished leather Gamer’s Shoes were the only footwear he had available. At least he had fresh underwear; even though he had had ever-clean underwear in the shape of the Preserver, wearing the same trunks every day would have felt dirty. A decision that now blessed him; running around with his member dangling with every step, rubbing against the inside of his pants, would have been awkward and long-term unpleasant.

Nevertheless, this was anything but the usual smooth appearance he publicly displayed. Everything was better than the hospital gown though, which he left behind on the empty bed without thinking about it any further. ‘Note to self: donate to this hospital,’ he thought, remembering that they owed them a fix for their floors. Then again, he would get a hefty bill from them anyway, that he was pretty certain of. For more than his own treatment.

The group made their way over to a different wing of the building, populated by all the soldiers that had been injured in a way that needed further medical attention than leaving the barrier could fix. Even though John was a bit harder to identify, the ladies at his side, with their unordinary hair colours and/or eye-catching beauty, left very little doubt over who he was.

Some of them still looked with scepticism towards him, many more with relief, most of them were just too drained to care. It wasn’t a big group, twenty people at best, sitting around in a public gathering and watching television with nothing else to do. Bloody lines stretched over some parts of their bodies, clean and very red. Others just waved around stumps where fingers or entire limbs had been.

John went to one of the nearby rooms and knocked on the door. “Come in,” a female voice echoed from the inside and John pushed down the handle and stepped inside. Chemilia’s face greeted him with a drained smile, a fitting expression. “Well, look at that, I was wondering if you survived.”

“Thanks to Abraham, of all people,” John admitted as he made his way over to sit down on a stool at the feet of the bed the general was lying in. From there, he could look both at her and her husband, lying one bed over. His view got stuck on their injuries. Chemilia’s leg remained nothing but a clean stump, right from below the hips, a disturbing flatness under the blanket. Ted, who had lost both legs and an arm in the battle, miraculously had regained the former, hanging in straightening binds. Where everyone else had a straight, crusted over line, his leg looked like it had ants devour part of it, numerous tiny holes slowly closing. Despite the unappetizing sight, it seemed to work. “At least they found some of your limbs, huh?”

The exact working of this was unknown to John, but the Gamer knew that losses of limbs within barriers normally lead to their loss in the real world a few days or weeks after, usually by means of necrotic tissue. Unless an Apothecary managed to, for the lack of a better term, staple them back on before they began to rot. In that case, they could restore the body as a whole. He could only assume that both Chemilia’s leg and Ted’s arm hadn’t been found, making the healing impossible.

“Aye,” Ted answered in his usual short-bound fashion, reaching out to a bowl of peanuts standing on a tablet hanging from a metal arm next to his bed. “Could be worse.”

“Seems like you got away unharmed,” Chemilia didn’t make an accusation out of it. As a comrade of his, recent or not, she was happy to see anyone get away with little injuries. Which made John doubly sorry to rain in her parade.

“I can’t say I did,” he took off his glasses, revealing his milky gaze. He heard their heavy inhales and quickly put the glasses back on to be able to see their reactions. Neither of them looked like they were going to start cursing profusely, but Chemilia’s eyes had widened in shock. “I am using Possession on these,” he tapped on his glasses, “to emulate sight. My eyes themselves are lost, however.”

“Are you doing okay?” Chemilia asked after gulping, a dark red scar in the shape of Sigmund’s hand on her throat. An ironic question coming from someone that couldn’t even stand up without a crutch.

“Honestly? I have no idea,” John chuckled and shrugged. “I thought I was, but I am just generally overwhelmed by this. I haven’t really lost anything since becoming the Gamer… all of this makes me feel like a powerless shut-in again…” He felt Rave’s arms around his neck. She bowed down to whisper something, but he met her with a quick kiss instead. “…but I’ll manage.”

“Good,” Chemilia nodded and made a grimace. “We’ll be useless now though, especially me.” She moved her stump around under the blanket. “A martial artist without two legs is nothing short of a cripple. Can’t even fling fireballs from a wheelchair or anything.”

“I have absorbed what Thorne was into my guild,” John stated. With or without Scarlett, he had access to a series of engineers that was specialized in cases exactly like this. “I’ll make sure you get the best prosthetic limbs we can fabricate as quickly as possible.” With a stupid grin, he added, “We can make you better, better than you were before. Better, stronger, faster.”

Ted got the reference and chuckled in his bed. “What about yourself?” the general asked.

“My body is too different for bionics to work, apparently,” John informed them. “It’ll take me some time, but I can replace my sight by Possessing contact lenses.”

“Do we have time?” Chemilia asked, a clear reference to the situation with the Lake Alliance, that she was informed about, from some source. Nodding, hesitatingly, John quickly broke down what he himself knew of the situation with the southern territories of the Little Maryland, former territories may have been more fitting, and the more important bit about the Hidden Tradition. “That’s… unusual. That guild is highly isolationist.”

“Can’t exactly blame them,” John muttered. The Hidden Tradition was a united front of all the Native American guilds, formerly scattered over the continent, gathered on the southern half of the Appalachian Mountains. It had originally formed when the first colonists hit the continent and grew as more and more tribes saw the necessity of standing together.

They made up a formidable force in the area, not as strong as the Lake Alliance but not to be underestimated. Attacks against them were also difficult, the mountains were hard to traverse and easy to hide barriers in. Protected Spaces set up and maintained over hundreds of years by people that knew some special shamanistic kind of magic.

Being the descendant of Native Americans, John was pretty sure they didn’t exactly look favourable towards all of the guilds made up by ‘invaders’ around them. Isolating themselves was a sensible thing to do. Which only made the question what they planned with Eliza and, more likely, the goddess of genocide inside her, more pressing.

“I am going to meet a diplomat of theirs in a few hours,” John continued on. “That’ll give us some answers, hopefully. You two should go to New York. It’s easier if you meet the experts there for the construction of your replacements.”

“Are we going to meet your mysterious Technomancer?” Chemilia asked with sharp blue eyes looking expectantly.

“I am afraid I can’t answer that,” John stated and stood up. “I’ll come see you again after the meeting with the Hidden Tradition, then we can discuss what exactly we’ll do in the future,” he promised, “… and how we honour the fallen.”

They let him go with supporting gestures, and John headed right out the door. “What now?” Rave asked as John lead the way.

“Now, we are going to some place where I can shovel some food into me,” John answered quickly while reaching into his inventory and pulling out his phone. “…You already called back home, right?”

Rave didn’t need to answer and was outdone by Eliza anyway. “How the fuck would I be here if your main bitch didn’t?! I jumped on the first crowded, stuffy, fucky, asshole people, baby crying plane to get here!” The image of the paranoid psychopath flying anywhere out of her own volition was a hard one to conjure. Also, one that made him feel doubly thankful that she was here for him. If he hadn’t needed his hand to make a call, he would have put the unoccupied arm around Eliza.

As it was, he walked with Rave at his side, like usual, as the beeping of his phone waited for the recipient to pick up.

The clacking sound of a call being accepted, followed by the regal tone of the Queen of Steel. “What is it, John? I am in a meeting right now,” Lydia didn’t sound amused by this, the Gamer knew better than to call her during her work hours except when he did it on accident, when he was especially horny or when he was drunk.

“Is it important?” John asked; he was about to drop all the bad news on her and didn’t want to impact her day too badly. The proper thing would have been to send her a text message, asking for her to call when she had time, but he could already hear her scolding that he should inform her about such important things as quickly as possible. When it came to worrying about him, even the queen managed to subordinate her work to that feeling.

“Not particularly… did something important happen?” Lydia caught onto his tired tone immediately. He confirmed and she quickly dissolved the meeting.