“This is the non-sexy kind of being fucking humiliated,” Eliza grumbled while the door of the elevator opened. Folded together and bound even more than before, forced to remain in a foetal position, she sat inside a handcart. It had been either doing this or unbinding her legs. With how much of a pain it had been to get those confined in the first place, Eliza being punched in the face by her own body while she concentrated on keeping control of her feet, John wasn’t willing to do the latter.

This was the solution they had gone with instead: have Aclysia bundle the blood mage up, place her in the handcart and drag her into the elevator. All to safely move her from John’s apartment over to Scarlett’s headquarters. The Gamer took a moment to answer her complaints by slowly raising his smartphone and taking a picture.

“The fuck are you doing?” she demanded to know as he followed that up by very obviously writing someone something.

“I am showing this to Jane,” he giggled.

“Don’t you dare, you pixelated piece of shit!” Eliza cried out, wiggling her head aggressively, as if trying to get the handcart to roll towards him. Because Aclysia still had her hand on the handle, and because that wouldn’t work anyway, nothing happened. “That absolute cunt of a half-cat, half-anime girlfriend of yours will never let me hear the end of looking this fucking stupid.”

Well, she wasn’t wrong on that front.

Rave: Bwahahahaha.

Rave: Carrying very dangerous cargo there.

Rave: Might kill someone by looking that stupid.

John: I almost want to upload it to the internet, but that would be too mean.

“I have no fucking clue what you’re saying to her right now,” Eliza shouted, “but I hope both of you fall with your assholes first on the unlubricated shaft of a jackhammer!”

Rave: Tell Eliza I love her too.

Rave: Because I imagine she just screamed something about us getting ravaged by zombie beavers or some sort of construction tool.

John: I would say a jackhammer is more of a deconstruction tool.

Rave: And you would be an absolute nerd for being that pedantic.

John: Good thing I am an absolute nerd then.

Rave: At this point you might as well put me on voice chat.

John: Nothing going on where you are?

Rave: Well, my boyfriend is chatting with me, I guess that’s something.

Rave: Might snap him a few nudes if he entertains me enough.

Rave: Or I might put them on r/gonewild if he is a meany and doesn’t obey me like the princess I am :P

John: Alright, alright, My-HiME :P

Rave: That anime was atrocious and you shouldn’t reference it ever!

Rather than answer immediately, John went through the few motions it took to start a video call with her. He figured she would like to see what was going on when they were already talking. “Y’ello?” his girlfriend’s voice echoed melodically from the phone a few moments later. He could only see her face on the display; apparently, she was lying on a couch somewhere. In the background played techno-music, barely quiet enough to not obstruct their conversation.

“Hi there, bae,” John answered in an overly chad-tastic voice that made Rave giggle immediately. “Where are those nudes you promised, huh?!”

“Well, if you’re asking that nicely,” the picture became a blur for a moment as Rave turned on the couch. When the camera set its focus again, he could see her naked upper body in addition to her face. “There ya go, tiger, like what you see?”

“Never going to change,” the Gamer declared. “Anyway, if you upload nudes again, I demand to be in it! Relationship statuses need to be confirmed in all walks of life!”

“‘Kay, we can do that,” Rave answered with a non-joking smile.

Which left John a bit confused. The line between what his girlfriend found acceptable for the public to see and what not had always been... blurry to say the least. When she had been single, she had put her body (without the face) out to the internet a few times. She didn’t want to be seen fucking by anyone but those she was also having sex with. At the same time, she had absolutely no problem letting everyone know all the details about her sex life, or, as it was now revealed, even showing pictures of both of them naked to the world.

Wanting to know as much about her as he could, to a degree that was only acceptable between lovers, he carefully asked, “What about a picture of us fucking,” to finally get a better grasp on that line.

Rave bit her lower lip and made a sexy, thoughtful hum. “I think that would be kinda hot,” she confessed.

“And doing a series of pictures during sex?” he continued the line of question down the logical road of escalation. “I mean, we already did one back in Springfield… but I don’t want my skinny body from back then to get out there.” That aside, his dick had been like three centimetres shorter.

“As long as it stays kinda private.”

“Kinda?”

“Ya know, not absolutely public,” she vaguely stated and rolled off the couch, revealing that she was completely in the nude as he walked around whatever room she was in. “Harem, friends, maybe, the hot friends that could join us every now and again.” Granted, he also preferred to hang around without clothes when he was alone for lengthy times, but his girlfriend was not at home but in some sort of hotel.

“Are you in an Illusion Barrier?” John wondered.

“Nah,” she turned the camera towards the rather large window to reveal some people walking by just two stories down. “I pay for where I stay.”

“Continuing the line of questions, how about we do a proper porno? Livestream? Just fuck publicly?”

“Now ya pushing it,” Rave stated, turning the camera back towards her. In the motion, John couldn’t help but notice the untouched curtains. “Porno, maybe, same terms as the photoshoot. Could think about a livestream of a photoshoot, cause I am one sexy girl who could wear her birthday suit more often. Everything above that, nah, leave that to Metra,” she played with a strand of her pink hair as she stated that, twirling it in a fashion that John knew to fall under the, “I ain’t no exhibitionist.”

John couldn’t help but say, “Are you sure about that?”

“Yep,” she retorted with the immediacy of a routinized answer.

“No, seriously,” the Gamer tried to push the topic. There was a pattern here, from the way she had always been one to wear very revealing clothes, over her talking about sex without any shame whatsoever, to the pretty unprecise borders of what she was fine with the public seeing. All of which had only gotten worse over time, as she was exposed to John and his own escalating shenanigans. “Like, we both didn’t use to be sadists and you were never curious about anal before you met me, so maybe…”

“John, I am not an exhibitionist,” she interrupted him.

“Neither was I until the cruise, and…” he still tried to make his point. With the debauched lifestyle they had, any suppressed kink would be a travesty. Well, truly sickening shit like necrophilia or fucking open wounds aside.

“Johnny,” she interrupted him again, staring at him through the camera. This time he shut up for good. That was a nickname she only used when she was unhappy with what he was doing right now and he hadn’t heard it in a while. It alone would be ground enough to not pursue this any further, her blue eyes resting in a still face just made it doubly clear that he wouldn’t be happy with the discussion even if he should be correct in his assumption.

Therefore, he decided what every man that thought he was right but didn’t want the stress to anger their girlfriend did and ended the discussion as quickly as humanly possible. ‘Well, might be a general thing for significant others,’ John thought, ‘only have my own experience to judge by though.’ “Anyway, I won’t be able to look at your beautiful face for a little bit,” he told her. “I am going to put you right here.”

“Oh noooo, I am being stored with a handkerchief!” Rave played the part of the midget while her boyfriend put her in the breast pocket of his vest. Thankfully, she wasn’t someone to hold any grudges in their relationship for however short. That easy-going nature was part of the reason why they only ever had a single fight, which had also been almost a year ago at that point.

A much larger reason followed John with the handcart in tow. Aclysia did the dishes and all other chores. As far as John knew, about 90% of all fights between spouses came from slowly mounting small annoyances in the household. Not a problem if the household always was in perfect order. The other 10% were bad life choices and personal differences. While there had been a few of the former, their mutual tolerance for the latter had kept them together through thick and thin.

While John didn’t exactly have bumpy relationships with the rest of his harem, it wasn't all fantastically smooth; Rave definitely was the flawless diamond in his box of jewellery. “Alright, let’s get her on here…” John said, he and Aclysia lifting the handcart onto the Transport Station.

“Whaderya doing anyway?” Rave’s slurred words echoed from his chest while she followed the events through the shaky camera.

“Something absolutely RETARDED!” Eliza shouted back in both an answer and a protest.

“We’re… oh, hold on, I need to end the call for a second. Teleportation interference and all that,” John remembered that just in time to fish his phone out, end the call, teleport over to the tower and restart it after they had put the handcart back down on the other side. “Anyway, because I am leaving soon, after banging that catgirl, hopefully…”

“Those are news I need in all details in a minute!” Rave interrupted to make her interest in developments of that kind known. “But no more tangents, continue.”

“Yes, we need someone who looks after Eliza.”

“They fucking don’t, I am the cocksucking blood mage that doesn’t need to eat, drink or breathe.”

“But you do need someone to put on a new series every now and again,” John retorted. “Unless you want to risk encountering some technical error and just lying on the couch, alone with the silence and the genocidal maniac in your head.”

“…Point fucking taken.”

“So, you’re taking her to Scarlett?” Rave wondered. A couple of seconds later, she continued, “I can say that name where you are, right?”

“Yeah, but maybe you shouldn’t where you are,” John scolded her lightly. “Anyway, no, redhead won’t be the one watching over her.” Putting the physically weakest member of John’s harem in charge of watching over even a held-back Thana would be an absolute disaster if things went south. Arguably, even the physical closeness that would come about from John’s current plan was a risk they shouldn’t take. “We have another candidate for this.”

They arrived at a door without handle. After John swiped his master key card through the lock, it swung towards the inside on its own, allowing all of them to step inside.

It was a luxurious apartment, a spacious living room with a view over the city and an attached kitchen as well as a bathroom. The kitchen was in a state of absolute chaos, empty packages of food, primarily raw bacon, flying about. In the living room, cushions had been thrown about the place, the chairs had been removed from the table and ordered in some sort of fortress formation. In the middle of which sat their caretaker.

“Bloodmother!” Tamara exclaimed, jumping to her feet and crossing over. Due to the easy availability of food, the blood addict had regained some meat on her bones, but she still looked rather frail. With the enthusiasm of a child, she hopped over and inspected Eliza with a series of quick touches.

“Take your hands off me, you dirty human,” Thana growled before Eliza could make her discomfort known.

Tamara stumbled backwards immediately, evidently afraid. “You… you’re the bad Bloodmother. Give me back the nice Bloodmother!”

“See, Eliza,” John joked. “Someone thinks you’re nice.”

“That’s not a fucking compliment when the comparison is this life-ruining cunt,” the blood mage returned from her own mouth, and Tamara leapt in joy. “You know this idea is fucking terrible still, yeah?”

“Well, it’s either this, buying an Artificial Spirit from some company to serve you while we’re gone, which means we have to trust a third party, have redhead do everything via the cameras or leaving you on your own,” John listed. “Well, or leaving Aclysia here.”

“Which, I will point out,” the weaponized maid interjected, “I would be incredibly displeased by.”

“So, I say this is the best option we have,” he said. “Tamara here is loyal, in her current state, and will do absolutely everything you say. Even if we have to fear she might listen to Thana as well, she is nowhere near strong enough to burst through the walls. Or to remove your bindings.”

Since this was Abyssal, high-grade BDSM equipment, the wires were basically unharmable with steel tools and John had made sure to make all knots complicated enough that not even an enthused woman of Tamara’s current intellect could hope to open them.

“Bloodmother is going to stay with me?” the blood addict asked with big, puppy eyes.

“That fucking company is going to be atrocious,” Eliza drily stated.

“Well… there is a way around that,” John reminded her. “As far as we know, she will stabilize if she gets some more blood.” It was a choice they were still due to make. Personally, John found it cruel to leave a clearly grown woman in this state of mind and the only cure, aside from death anyway, was to give her more of the reason she was that way.

His girlfriend added, “She might be less receptive towards your commands if she becomes sane again though.”

“We’re going to have so much fun, Bloodmother!” Tamara enthusiastically went up to the handcart again, rubbing Eliza’s cheeks.

“Hands – off,” Thana growled again, breaking her silence, since her words actually achieved something in this setting. Predictable for everyone in the room but the blood addict, the words made Tamara jump back into her fortress of wooden chairs for the second time.

“Urgh, fuck this ball of crusted over bloody bullshit my life is,” Eliza cussed and made a decision.