“We offer our support for the current situation with the Lake Alliance and hope you agree to talk to us for a potential separation of Eliza from the dangerous goddess inside her,” Beatrice quoted how she remembered what had been said during John’s time unconscious. Now, the Gamer absolutely couldn’t blame her for spinning that into what she had.

The message John had gotten had been: ‘We will do this under the condition that you give us.’ Apparently, the true meaning was: ‘We will do this, just promise us that we will talk about maybe doing that.’ In other words, Eliza running through that experiment wasn’t necessary for an alliance. The Hidden Tradition wanted to help Fusion either way.

John didn’t get it.

“We had a long talk since you made that public broadcast, us over at the leadership of the Hidden Tradition,” Elu let him know. “We haven’t quite concluded that little discussion, but we hardly can when you are no longer there, can we?”

“Yeah, okay, but… why?” The Gamer could actually not believe that people would just help him because they could. So far, all he had gotten was pushback, the subversion with Scarlett aside. “What’s in it for you when you help me?”

“The potential of joining your federation,” Elu answered and dumped two sugar cubes in her tea. “The Hidden Tradition has a long tradition of being peaceful and isolating ourselves in our mountains. We aren’t necessarily against becoming part of a collective American guild, as long as it’s a rule of prosperity and we are given large autonomy.”

“Aren’t you resentful towards the Americans for pushing you off your lands though?” John had to ask. Elu had already been over a hundred years old when the first European explorers arrived and she must have seen how they took what many nowadays considered to have been their land.

However, all Elu had in response was a shrug. “Would I prefer to have seen my people spread naturally over our ancestral land? Yes, but the situation has never been that easy.” She took a sip of her sweetened tea. “We had our petty squabbles and wars before the colonizers came; nowadays at least the Abyssals have formed a unified faction under the Hidden Tradition. Being resentful isn’t going to get us anywhere. We can’t beat all of you, so we have to accept reality and find a path that will leave our children fertile land.”

John nodded, it was a remarkably sombre way to look at all of this. It was also the only one that would keep her people from vanishing into obscurity. The Natives couldn’t afford to wage war on all sides, they would be quashed within two generations tops. He followed Elu’s spotty skinned hand to the plate of cookies.

“Although our cultures may have found their way there differently,” she snapped the cookie in two uneven parts, “we, too, abhor the practices of slavery and tyranny.” The matriarch dipped the smaller part in the tea and let it soak up some of the liquid before throwing it into her mouth. “The Lake Alliance still practices in both of those. Even though they aren’t in favour of people getting abducted and put into mana factories against their will, they also don’t prosecute it. They are unfit for us to join. I was in talks with Abraham…” she stopped for a moment, “the Lincoln one, I should specify, to join him all those years ago. He was assassinated before it came to that. For all his diplomatic prowess, he was not strong enough to stop a bullet.”

“…You really are considering joining Fusion?” John was still in disbelief about this. After a morning of terrible news, this was like a golden streak of sunlight following a long night spent waiting for a hurricane to pass.

“Again,” she raised the bigger half of the cookie, “still debating about that. Ultimately, we are sure that a strong, moral and righteous federation of American guilds is necessary. For prosperity and to be secure against future threats…” She ate that second bit without soaking it beforehand. “It’s easy to forget…” she mumbled while munching, “…that there is a bunch of literal Nazis sitting in Brazil… and I know for a fact…” she gulped and rinsed the remains down by emptying her cup, “…they have at least some outposts in ‘real’ Mexico and the southern US coast. Can’t be too long until they are done recuperating from their losses and decide that outposts aren’t enough. I would rather not be ruled by Nazis… or European imperialists… or Chinese zealots. American, self-proclaimed freedom lovers sound a bit more sympathetic to little old me.” She cackled; it was drier and less honest than usual, this was a pragmatic line of logic after all.

“You have obviously given this whole thing a lot of thought,” John stated and bowed his head in respect. “Sorry for my outburst earlier… I had a rough couple of days and my nerves are a bit shot.”

“No, no, I get it,” Elu waved off, “been a while since I had to do political stuff, guess I should have double-checked my message for potential misinterpretations. Really sorry about the awkwardness this caused.” She reached out to pour herself a new cup, but found it already refilled.

Aclysia put down the pot. “Those friendly to my master are deserving of my service,” the weaponized maid informed the old lady, who narrowed her eyes and then recognized Aclysia from the broadcasts. It was admittedly hard, since she was currently in her black-haired, casual summer clothed self. The person in the background of John’s speeches was a white-haired woman in a pretty distinct maid outfit.

“Right, I heard you were a creator of Artificial Spirits… you have two of them or is that blonde a third one?” The true nature of Metra still eluded most, evidently. Even when hearing the name Metracana, that information was not so easily dug up.

“For convenience, let’s just say I have four,” John answered, counting Momo in as well. “Since that cat is already out of the bag, the fact that I can even see you is thanks to the Possession spell from the same school of magic.” He tapped against his glasses, “these are my eyes right now.”

“Is it true then that Sigmund appeared on the battlefield?” Elu asked, and John just nodded. This was information he had expected to leak very quickly, when several hundred people were involved a secret was hardly able to be kept. “Just another reason why we need some sort of unified America. Whatever events created that monster should never have been allowed to happen, and now if not even you with an entire army as your help could stop him, then we have a big problem on our hands.”

“Did he harass your territories as well?” John asked. Not that it would have surprised him, whatever was a challenge seemed good enough for the Contender, an unpredictable man now strong enough to count as a force of nature. ‘If the world wants to fuck me over even more, he will appear before me exactly when it’s the most inconvenient to me.”

“Every now and again. He eliminated some settlements and sacred gravesites, then vanished off to wherever again,” Elu affirmed. “He killed several dozen of our members and eludes all capture… not that I would even dare to try that now…” The old woman reached up to her temples and began massaging them. “The true monsters of the Abyss are always hard to handle like this. They wreak havoc on whoever they want and then just appear somewhere else again. It’s not like I have any right to complain about this, but… let’s just say I find it really fortunate that the great earth mother has separated mundane from magical so clearly.”

John just assumed that she meant Gaia by that and kept silent on the truth about this matter. Not like she was wrong on this. Advised by her ‘father’ or not, Gaia had put the separation in place. Also, he was in agreement, so this topic didn’t really deserve any more attention.

“Do you mean to keep the thing with your eyes a secret?” Elu asked.

“Not for long, it would come out sooner or later anyway,” John stated. “There will be a ceremony for the fallen soon; I will announce it then.” The elderly lady nodded approvingly; her ever present smile had a motherly nuance to it.

“It is good to be honest with your people. Grey secrets can only darken when never exposed to the light. Well, you will manage that,” Elu recommitted to her tea. “Not like you need my advice if you made it this far.” Giggling she added, “Now that my friend behind the counter knows about this, it won’t be a secret for long anyway.”

“Yes… back to the topic at hand,” John tried to get the discussion back on track and stretched his limbs, now more relaxed than before. He still wasn’t convinced that the Hidden Tradition was acting without ulterior motive, but for the moment it seemed like they had common interests. Either way, he didn’t really have another choice in the matter. “So I can expect you to come to my aid should the Lake Alliance attack?”

“We would much rather there won’t be outright warfare,” Elu shook her head. “We’ll commit to an alliance, purely defensive, as soon as this talk is over, unless you’re against that for some reason.”

“Oh no, that sounds fantastic,” John hastily assured her. No blood spilled was also in his interest. War was chaos, once it broke out everything could happen. Until the Gamer had a precise strategy how to swiftly knock out all enemy command centres, best pushing it all to one decisive battle where he had the advantage, he decisively was in favour of no enemy contact whatsoever. He had always preferred late game strategies over zerging down the enemy. “We can have all the talks about whether and how the two of us want to merge forces afterwards.”

“Yup,” the jolly grandma nodded and audibly sipped her tea. “Which brings us to the second topic. What do you think, can we try?” The question was guided directly at Eliza herself.

Having spent this entire time devouring cookies and sugar cubes, the blood mage was caught with her mouth full and lips decorated with sticky crumbs. Before she could answer, she needed to get her teeth unglued. Her brown eyes, like Aclysia she was in her mundane get-up, landed on the teapot. She grabbed the thing and simply put the spout to her lips, gulping down the entire remains in a few seconds.

“Fuck me, that’s hot,” she cursed and threw the porcelain back on the table; everything rattled, but nothing broke. “Thank all of the searing spunk I have swallowed fresh from the cock, that I am good at that shit. Are we finally talking about the bonemongling claim that you can rip that retarded murder-ass out of me?”

“…She always talks like that,” John said in a dry, apologetic tone.

“I’m aware,” Elu smiled. “Was rather potty mouthed myself when I was younger.”

“Yeah, right,” Eliza snorted, glaring the old woman up and down. Slowly it dawned on John that her increased melding with Thana from earlier may have once more spiked her misanthropy. This had happened the last two times a dot had turned into a line as well, and Eliza was in a considerable bad mood anyway. An idea that crept up on him a bit too late, the pretty little psycho was already in full rant mode. “Like a rancid old cunt like you could ever properly curse around, fuck off into your hut, at least then I would get this stinking tobacco stick out of my face.

“Seriously, how the fuck are you still alive? Did the tar turn your lungs into a conserved piece of mummy meat? Fits the rest of your Grand Canyon of a visage. I am about 80% certain that I would get a picture of the moon if I tried face recognition on your ugly, old ass. What a disgusting crater landscape.”

A small pause, Eliza either realizing what she was doing or simply waiting for the old woman to die of a heart attack from the frivolity of it all. Instead, Elu said five words. “You are small and chubby.” The blood mage froze and was immediately assaulted by the follow up. “Also, your ass isn’t nearly as nice as your boyfriend tells you it is.”

And just with that, Eliza’s mood swung from needlessly aggressive, to insecure and frightened. Reaching past Rave and grabbing John’s shirt, she pulled herself towards the Gamer. “John, help, this scary fucking grandma knows how to hurt me!” Her eyes were actually widened from shock.

“Shhhh, it’s okay,” John promised her, pulling her over and into his lap. After brushing her long, currently black, hair over her shoulder, making the tips fall all the way down to her thighs, he held her in a tight embrace and whispered. “Your ass is as nice as I say, and even if she disagrees with that, who cares, right? Because whose ass is that?”

“M-mine?” Eliza asked, more insecure than she had been in a while.

“Wrong,” he whispered in her left ear, gently biting it. “Try again.”

“Yours?” the masochistic amalgamation of character defects tried again.

“That’s right, Eliza, you are my property and you don’t have to care what others say about how you look. All that is important is that your thick thighs, round ass and slutty body please me, alright?” he looked up to Elu, about to assure that this was purely a consensual thing and not some sort of slavery, but the Native got it without an exchange of words needed. Given her rather immense sexual score… it was an easy guess to make that this matriarch had gone through her own series of experiences.

“Fuck me, yes, that is all kinds of right,” the blood mage hummed and nestled closer to his chest. “Throw it you arrogant sack of bo-“

“Quiet!” John’s voice was a whiplash in Eliza’s ears, and she immediately shut her mouth with an audible clacking of her teeth. His embrace became constricting around her chest, as if to press the air out of her. Of course, she was much too enduring to be pressured by his Strength, so all it did was act as a symbolic gesture. Well, it also made him feel her soft boobs rather well against his arm. “Good girls don’t insult their master’s allies. You will answer questions quickly and keep it short, maybe I’ll do more than let you watch tonight if you do. You understand?”

She nodded.

“Say ‘yes, master’.”

“Yes, Master,” she sheepishly stated, her eyes blazing with desire. Needless to say, he could currently feel her leather pants with his erection.

“Good girl,” he stated. “Sorry about that, she gets like this sometimes.”

“If I were 500 years younger,” Elu shook her head. “Ah, so sad. Do that girl a favour and knock her up at least three times. Big families are fun.”

John doubted he had to convince Eliza of liking that woman any longer. ‘Why does every older woman out there want me to get my cute little Eliza pregnant?’ he thought, as the girl in question grinned up to him with triumphant insanity. Despite his command to be silent, she let out a series of happy giggles, complete in her unsteady tone that ranged from way too high to throaty deep. The owner of the café was the only one unnerved by those sounds and made himself a little bit smaller behind the bar. “No baby is planned in the foreseeable future,” he made it clear, Eliza still giggled, grinding her ass against his cock.

“My first partner also used to say that, then I was a mother of seven,” Elu looked a bit dreamy. “All happens so fast. Hmmm, good times.”

John really disliked the direction this conversation was taking. He didn’t doubt that the woman in front of him had once been beautiful, but she wasn’t anymore, and old people fucking was an uncomfortable image to him. Old looking people, rather, since he had no problem with the image of Nathalia bouncing on his hips.

‘Fantastic, now I am horny,’ he thought and tried really hard to concentrate on the negotiations at hand. “So, what is this about separating Eliza from Thana? Can you really do that? Why would you?”

“Theoretically, we guess we can,” Elu answered with her lips on her cup. “The Hidden Tradition has an ancient ritual that we use to separate entities that take root in a person’s body. As long as the two have not become too closely melded, we should be able to banish the goddess of genocide from her bind on Eliza’s body… as for the why, because we think it would make the world better.”

After a moment’s hesitation, John responded, “That is a… sorry, but that’s a terribly unbelievable reason. It’s too easy and straightforward.” He couldn’t help but be skeptical. Who, aside from himself, ever had done something nice just because they felt it was the correct thing to do? For almost a year now, all he had encountered were layers of intrigue. Something this clear was too good to be true.

If the Hidden Tradition wanted to set up a trap for John, he wasn’t sure if they utterly sucked at it or if they were the greatest tricksters he had ever met. Aside from the Horned Rat, maybe.

“What would happen with Thana once outside Eliza anyway?”

“Well, all old instances point to her dissipating into Faith energy, so she would probably need to reform into a new host or something. Since she apparently needs a human host… that will put the next appearance of a god of her variety off for hopefully hundreds if not thousands of years.”

“And what if she doesn’t just vanish?” John didn’t really want to take a gamble on the level 1000 incarnation of human slaughter manifesting. As uncomfortable for Eliza as the current situation was, for the world at large Thana’s bound state was definitely the best thing.

“Then the ritual just won’t work, so we really lose nothing,” Elu calmed that fear. Well, if John trusted her word. Which, for the exercise of this discussion (but not at large) he did.

Although he had more thoughts on the matter, he knew all that was needed to give at least a basic response. The risk involved would be minimal, the Hidden Tradition were maybe the nicest people John had ever met in the Abyss or this whole thing was a giant hoax. Ultimately, this wasn’t his decision though.

He placed a kiss on Eliza’s hair before asking in a calm tone, “What do you think?”

“I think this whole fucking thing sounds way too fucking convenient to be true,” Eliza answered. “But if I can get this scumfuck of a mind-eating shitstain out of my perverted grey matter, then I want to at least take a look at the man-mayonnaise gargling ritual they came up with.”

“Alright,” John nodded. “So, we cautiously agree, but I want more details before going along with the actual ritual.”

“Sure thing,” Elu nodded with the motherly smile on her face. “Let’s clean up the situation with the Lake Alliance first and then I can send you all the details.”