“So, can I get a menu or something?” John asked the goddess of alcohol; “To see the prices and everything.”

“Ya stingy dweeb,” sitting on the bench with him, Rave announced her intent to get him really drunk tonight, “don’t worry about money, ya have enough of it as is. Just get a bit wasted!”

“I have never gotten drunk before, so I am cautious,” he told her. “Also ‘a bit wasted’ sounds like an oxymoron.”

“Uhm, so to answer your question,” Lady Liquor chimed in when she saw a miniscule opening, “all drinks are free, and if it has alcohol in it, I can make it. Just tell me and I will create it for you.”

“You have alcoholic metals?” Metra asked. Repressing his urge to ask how that would even work, John waited for the answer.

“Of course,” Lady Liquor answered.

“Yay, everyone is getting drunk, hurray, yay, I have no idea what getting drunk feels like, but it sure is going to be fun! Bring me something sweet and gummy-beary!” Sylph announced her and the other elementals’ arrival with the usual chitter chatter.

“It has been a while since I drank anything intoxicating,” Siena sighed lustfully; “Ah! Except the pain of my victims of course.”

“…Uhm, can-can you not?” Gnome requested; “This is supposed to be a happy evening. So, i-if you could keep the disturbing cruelties to a minimum…” the stone elemental shrunk a bit under Siena’s gaze and became really quiet during these last words, “…that’d be… much… appreciated.”

“Listen to Gnome,” Undine added in the sing-song of her voice, causing the earth spirit to make big, thankful eyes. “Also give me what you think is best for slimes, please.”

“Okay, Vodka coming up!” Lady Liquor announced, pulling a glass out of her private dimensional pocket, and now everyone picked their drinks, everyone except the artificial spirits who got candy-bar shaped pieces of metal.

“How do these work?” Momo wanted to know; “Because what I eat becomes part of my body and I do no want to be drunk permanently.”

“Don’t sweat it, sweet cheeks,” Metra answered, “It dissolves and messes with your mana flow for a few hours, then it’s gone.”

“Messes with my mana flow?” Momo asked. “That sounds like poison!”

“It’s alcohol, it’s the best poison!” Rave announced and raised her pint. “To Momo’s independence, Lydia’s throne claiming thing and to an overall nice end to a pretty rough couple of weeks!”

John picked up his own glass of beer, it was the same as Rave’s, who had ordered for him, and they all took a swing. Beer was bitter, unpleasantly so, but it also didn’t really taste bad as it, ice cold, ran down his throat. “Not quite sure if I like this,” he told his girlfriend.

“Give it a few more swings and you will love it,” that didn’t sound rape-y at all, “give it too many and you will hate yourself in the morning though. Hey, Lady, can I get two shots of mint-schnapps?”

“Coming right up,” Lady Liquor happily dispensed some more alcohol out of herself. John took another glance at his beer. Right now, he was breaking multiple standards of decency. For a start, he was an American who drank before being 21 years old, although that was more law than decency. There was the disturbing thing that he was literally drinking body-fluids. Sure, these body fluids were sterile and completely indistinguishable from real alcohol, but even with that knowledge, it felt a bit depraved.

Nathalia guzzling down another bucket like it was the most normal thing in the world did make it a lot less weird. As a matter of fact, the whole fact about her, a skyscraper sized dragon made from volcanic ash and magma, being here in human shape made alcohol out of a beer slime who also happened to be the Spirit of Spirits way less abnormal. Okay, it was still abnormal, but nothing beyond what John was used to at this point.

“What the fuck is this headache inducing shit brew, why the fuck would anyone ever make this cocksuck of a poison, I will kick the balls into the ovaries of the hermaphrodite who thought with her fucking egg-dispensers, holy fucking shit, who thought of this?!” Eliza rolled down a number of courses in a few moments, “FUCK!”

“What is wrong?” John wanted to know, taking another sip of his beer. This second one was tastier, less bitter and more prickling. Hard to describe, it just felt nice.

“The fuck do you mean is wrong, drinking this stuff gives me an immediate hangover, what is this shit?!” Eliza ruffled her hair in needless aspiration, “Can’t I have a single shit that is normal in this world?! Okay, powering down metabolism. Lady! Pure Alcohol! Now!”

“Sounds like a bad idea…” John tried to calm her, but Lady Liquor had already handed her a shot with a bubbly smile.

“Urgh, tastes like the death of bacteria,” the blood mage complained after throwing it down. “Okay, but I feel it spreading through my body like a fucking wildfire. This should work.”

“Another!” Nathalia demanded, slamming her bucket on the table.

While watching everyone react to alcohol in different manners, John finished his pint.

There were many who weren’t affected at all, most of all the dragoness who must have drunk enough to fill her entire human body’s volume up one and half times by now but didn’t seem drunk in the least. Lydia also annihilated one glass without seemingly caring. Getting tipsy rather quickly but not really behaving differently than usual, Rave chatted it up with Sylph, who was slurring her already quick speech to a nearly intangible mess but behaved normally. Undine kind of just existed in her little corner and listened to everyone else talk. Gnome did the same, but, while Undine was the uncaring ‘would read a book while two others were making out next to her on the couch at a party’-type, the stone elemental looked around and tried her best to clink into some conversations from time to time.

Then there were the people who changed a bit under the influence of the mind-fogging brews. Momo was gnawing the ears off Lydia with lots and lots of science talk and asking where she should go. Also, she was getting pretty touchy, her hands somehow always resting on someone’s thighs.

Aclysia displayed a slight bit how all those chores she had been doing affected her brain, as she spend minutes upon minutes on ordering the things on the table in a perfect way. Of course that created a situation where everyone was making fun of her, which she answered with yapping about them needing to fix their clothes.

John actually didn’t know Metra good enough yet to judge whether or not her climbing on the table and starting to dance while stripping out of her already few clothes was normal behaviour, but he sure as hell didn’t want her to stop. Neither did Siena who, after her third green cocktail of unknown name, joined her up there, and the two had a very intimate, very loud and very naked discussion about whether table dance should be belly (Metra’s position) or hip (Siena’s position) focused.

“Shuddit,” Metra finally shoved Siena off the table. The shadow spirit elegantly landed on her high-heeled feet, somehow, and hissed. “There is only enough room on this table for one sexy lady, and that is me! Yo, Lady, give me music!” the living weapon demanded, ignoring the annoyed sulphuric glare.

“Sorry, haven’t gotten around to installing music boxes yet,” Lady Liquour apologized; “I do have instruments though.”

“Mhm, how about a violin, can you give me that?” Siena focused her outrage elsewhere. She had, and the nightmare elemental was thus given the instrument.

“Whu-huuu, live concert!” a very enthusiastic Salamander declared. The fire elemental couldn’t exactly drink alcohol, it would just combust inside her, so Lady Liquor utilized a special ability she had and just affected her with the feeling of drunkenness. That and all the elementals were getting drunk by proxy, thanks to being hooked up to John.

Salamander and Nia must have been the most affected by alcohol, although in very different ways. Being basically not even in the room, Nia continued to sway in her seat and be barely responsive to anything that happened around her. They had replaced her drink with water.

‘Thank god I thought of that,’ John told himself, having learned his lesson while in Warsaw and now always having something to eat with him. He barely even noticed that he was on his third beer by now, and the world was getting a bit warmer. When had he taken off his jacket? Ah, whatever.

Ah, whatever, times two. “Yeah, concert! Don’t disappoint me, Siena, play a good song and you can finally get rid of that stupid rule I needed to enforce on your wonderful ass. Such a nice ass, somebody give me something to grope!” his mouth worked quicker than his brain, that hadn’t happened in a while.

His request was heeded in spades. Rave raised from her seat and sat down in his lap, Eliza and Aclysia then quickly threw themselves at his open sides. The former was grinning in her usually insane way and showered his neck in kisses.

Wrapping an arm around her small frame and putting the hand on Rave’s right breast while his left was groping Aclysia’s butt, John was now very much happy. There was a slight problem though, in that he had no hand free to drink his beer anymore.

Ever diligent, Aclysia fixed that problem for him. Nibbling on her alcoholised piece of copper, she grabbed his pint and said, “Say, ahhh, my cute master.” Her warm smile took all condescension one may have interpreted into these words away. Thanks to their mental connection, she almost knew exactly when to take it away. Almost, because the intoxication made everything a bit fuzzy.

Siena had finished tuning the instrument in the background and was now playing a little bit. “If you want to dance wrongly that badly, I am going to give you the tune!” she told Metra.

“Bring it, I never back down from a challenge!” the berserker babe announced, re-absorbing the iron ring that held her hair together into her body and thus letting her wild dirty blonde hair fly freely.

The music started as a nice and slow classical song, but Siena slowly increased the tempo over the next few minutes. Lady Liquor clapped in a rhythm while laughing at the show that her guests put on. Nathalia ordered another bucket.

John wasn’t quite sure when the shot of some liquorish tasting liquor had entered his mouth, but there it was now. The whole world seemed to move slightly out of sync, like every single one of his movements had input lag. Metra was off the table now and instead sucking his dick; he was vaguely aware that that was a thing that had happened, but not quite sure when. Sometime between him and Rave swapping back and forth a cocktail while making out and licking salt off Aclysia’s butt. Also, he vaguely remembered challenging every girl to allow him to drink champagne out of their belly button, which was probably why everyone was naked from at least the waist upwards.

Everyone except Nathalia who was still hammering down one bucket after another but still was the soberest person around. Undine and Siena were drunkenly producing something akin to music together by now.

“So whater your plans, Newman?” Lydia, her B-Cups exposed to the air, asked sluringly. At this point, functioning sentences were the exception. She ended a whole pint in one gulp while waiting.

“Aren’t you half polish?” John asked an unrelated question in return. “With your father’s name having been Goch and all.”

“Eighth, actually,” the drunken queen said with a raised finger, “but answer my question!”

“Well, I’m goingta cum down Metra’s stupidly tight mouth in a few seconds,” John answered while groping every butt in range, which happened to belong to Undine and another Undine, as the slime was all over the room. “Then I gonna am be the finished beer and somebody carry me home.”

“No, you idiot, yar plans für die Zukunft,” Lydia said. “What are you going to do in the future? Still gonna conquer Murica?”

“Yesh!” John exclaimed, both as his answers and because his balls were pumping a new load out into Metra’s mouth. “Cause that is my clay now! I am gonna create a country that will be number one! I will be better than everyone else, because I want to! And then I am going to cuck Romulus out of Luna, Sol can get bent over a trashcan!”

John blinked, he didn’t feel quite good right now. It was cold, the ground in front of him seemed to want to slip to the side. It was a wonder, even his drunken mind realized, that his face wasn’t currently on the floor. There had been some say of ‘that they better go’ after Momo threw up onto the stairs that led to the toilets or something. Thinking was hard, he basically worked on very dulled instincts right now.

“I feel terrible,” the culprit herself said.

“You should, you made the ground dirty!” Aclysia let her know. Both of them sounded surprisingly sober.

Nathalia was helping him walk. That must have been the reason why he was still upright. He touched her butt but cut himself on the very much protecting scales. She growled at him, and he made a dumb smile.

“Shut the fuck up, you stained the street just a few metres ago!” Eliza shouted at them. “Everyone is drunk, I am sober again, and now I got to carry your fucking asses home!” She was literally princess carrying Rave who was asleep in her arms.

“Ihr all need a German liver!” Lydia criticised, still very much drunk but able to walk on her own.

John was vaguely aware of his elementals sleeping inside their chamber in his consciousness. How nice for them to have an instant way home while the rest of them had to walk through the winter night.

Apparently, both Momo and Aclysia’s forceful removal of alcoholic metals from their bodies had put them in a state where they were relatively sober. Aclysia still almost walked right into a street-sign, causing John to giggle for a way too long time, so they weren’t absolutely restored to normal. Like Lydia, however, they could walk on their own. It was really just Rave and John who needed to be carried. Nia was...where was Nia?

“Make this stop!” John pleaded as he was moved by the mana street under his feet. His brain refused to work with the information of standing still and moving at a high speed at the same time and hit him with indescribable nausea. His stomach churned.

“We are almost home,” Nathalia promised, “just stare at my breasts until we get there, that should help.”

“…It does…” John leered at the two bags of fun, with which he had a lot of fun in the past. Then they were suddenly in his bedroom. It wasn’t as much that he forgot what happened between events, just that it was like swimming upstream to think about them.

Nathalia gently placed him in his bed, where Rave was already lying, still completely asleep. The dragoness seemed distraught about something, just standing there doing nothing for a moment. “This is the last time we will see each other for a long time,” she suddenly announced.

John felt a very sudden rush of adrenaline fighting the fog in his mind at the sound of those words. The hell did she mean by that? “What?” his mouth didn’t manage to figure out something clearer than that.

“I have decided to stay away from you until you prove yourself worthy to me,” the nymphomaniac goddess announced. “Do you have any idea how horny your acts tonight made me? Or when the last time I went six days without any sex was? Cause I don’t remember that last thing. Yet I promise to not have sex with anyone but you for as long as I think you could be worthy of me.”

“We can change that right now if you want to!” John said and reached out for her. She took a step back and out of his reach but then darted right back forward when he threatened to fall out of bed because of her. “Don’t just leave, Nathalia,” he begged; “I know you are fickle and that you want to go wherever you want to go. I am fine with that, but don’t just run away and disappear for months again!” At this point he was almost begging, his hands closed around her sharply-scaled wrists. “Please, I love you.”

“It is precisely because I love you as well, John Newman, that I am doing this,” Nathalia said, “As long as I am around you will never truly be in danger. You can never be worthy in my eyes if you are under the shadow of my wings. I will lock myself away from everything, will not touch another being. I will be chaste for you and wait for you to prove yourself a man that can be my mate.”

She forced his hands off her wrists and pushed him into the bed, pressing one last kiss on his lips. Her full, dark red lips were burning with the volcanic fires of passion, lust and love. That list barely contained the first two. “Please do that as quick as you can, I am unspeakably horny already. I would take you for one last ride, but your drunken hip-shaking isn’t the last sex I want to remember to have with you.”

“Don’t just leave, Nathy,” John pleaded once again, but Nathalia had already kissed him goodbye, and his adrenaline rush was wearing off quickly and leaving him tired beyond his capacity to fight against.

“I believe in you, John,” she said as his consciousness faded into sleep. “We will see each other again, and when we do, you better fuck my brains out.”

He saw her turn around with a wide smile on her lips while his eyes fell closed.