John’s hurried steps carried him to his apartment within the Palace. Everyone else was right behind him, keeping up with his pace. Together they created a constant drumming on the carpet, right until they arrived at the door. Pushing down the handle, the Gamer stepped inside.

Simply sitting on the couch, looking over the back when they entered, Eliza seemed as normal as ever. Except for the five lines in her left eye, looking so odd among all the dots. “Fucking finally, thought I would have to sit on my ass the entire day,” she grumbled in her usual tone, wiping the remainders of tears from her eyes.

After ending the panel, John had immediately called her, so he was already aware that those weren’t her tears. Apparently, Thana had begun crying after giving in. At the time, he was only concerned as to why Eliza was sobbing on the phone, now he could ask the proper question. “Can you tell me what happened?”

“Not much my dumbass mouth can tell you, to be completely fucking honest with you,” Eliza shrugged, pulling her legs to her chest and resting her chin on them. John soon sat down next to her, with the rest of the girls scattering throughout the room, listening quietly. “Just had that delicious looking fuck nugget sitting on the table. Then she came crawling out like the world’s saddest legless beaver and I just let her do the fucking thing. She unwrapped it, threw it in our mouth, chewed it twice, then swallowed it like some common piece of shit candy, started to bawl and now she is fucking gone.”

“Gone gone?” John had to get very specific there.

“No, not gone gone,” Eliza conceded. “More like… even less present than before. I can’t even reach that stupid cunt. It’s like… I don’t even fucking know. Like she is putting herself into that cold-water tank you found me in, but forcefully and mentally. I tried to contact her once, but all I get is a fucking translucent barrier or some shit. Mental landscapes are bullshit.”

That was, admittedly, not what John had intended with the further melding. The hope had been for Thana to come around and turning (relatively) normal in her behaviour. Instead it seemed accepting her growing humanity in the slightest way had caused her depression to skyrocket. Scratching his head, John tried to understand the ramifications this could have.

‘They do say it gets worse before it gets better…’ he thought, feeling progressively worse for the goddess of genocide the more she understood the woes of being a more complex being than ‘murder everything’.

Rave picked something up while her boyfriend was still pondering. “Wait, ya said like your tank-thingy… so she locked herself in?”

“Abso-fucking-lutely,” Eliza confirmed.

“Ya telling me that she can’t suddenly try to bite any of us?”

“That’s what it feels like. She would have to kick a shitload of dust up before trying to get back into control of our body.” With that little clarification had, Rave propelled herself at the blood mage and started hugging her like a long lost plushie.

“Finally, I can touch ya crazy little thing again!” the Lightbearer exclaimed enthusiastically.

“What the total cock-sucking shit-fuck do you think you’re doing, you absolute slut!” Eliza screamed out loud as she was assaulted by more cuddles and kisses. “Get off me, I don’t deserve any of your attention, you overly nice whore!”

“Ya gonna get my attention and ya gonna like it!” Rave declared, pinning the much stronger Eliza under herself. If she had really wanted, the blood mage could have forced herself out of this at any time. What her mouth cussed and her actions said didn’t line up, especially once she started laughing in a crazy, fulfilled way.

The best thing about all of this was that there wasn’t a single sign of things suddenly turning. Had Eliza been wrong in her assessment, there were more than a few opening that Rave gave that would allow for her to be disembowelled or end up with half of her throat missing. Nothing like that happened. John’s girlfriend had made the bet, trusted Eliza, and won. Granted, given that John had gotten away with kissing her quite extensively this morning, the odds were quite good.

Which made John doubly sad that he had to put a slight downer on the situation. “Eliza,” he stated, his serious tone causing the two girls to stop with their fooling around. “Could you tell me again whose body you have?”

“Yours, master,” she stated and then laughed maniacally. “To use however, hahahaha, you wa… pffft, nt.” John kept his eyes steady, waiting for the proper answer. Her mood suddenly swung from playful to deprecating. “Sorry, I don’t fucking know how to read the mood…” she mumbled. “It’s our… our body, mine and Thana’s…” Her voice became quieter and she furrowed her eyebrows.

Rave backed off, the two of them sitting back upright soon. “You never before,” John said, “stated it was ‘our’ body. It was always the two of you saying it was ‘mine’.” Eliza growled at nothing in particular, angry at the fact that she hadn’t even noticed that change in her mindset until then. “Now, this doesn’t have to be cause for concern,” John persuaded her. “We always knew this was a melding process. Something like this was bound to happen sometime down the line. Do you feel different in any other way?”

“Not really, but what is my shitty opinion worth if I can’t even keep track of what comes out of my fucking mouth?” she hissed and then made a very confused. “Umu?!” sound that was downright hilarious. Reason being that John reached over to her, gently pinched her cheeks and began to roll the soft flesh between his fingers. “Tha fuhk you doihng?” she asked, her pronunciation predictably affected.

“Touching my adorable and needlessly self-deprecating dear broken angel,” he told her, let go off her cheeks, then pulled her into his lap for his own hug. When she sat secure with her back to his chest, he enclosed her deeply between his arms, kissed her scalp a few times and then nibbled on her ear. “Look, you need to keep a close eye on the parts of yourself I can’t see, okay, Eliza? Chances are that the last few steps of the melding have the fewest directly noticeable changes. The spikes of aggression you had before were from the urge to murder that she has now basically lost, after all.”

She heated up in his embrace. John could feel her superhuman heartbeat like a steady drum, even through two layers of clothing and her back. It was doubtful that it was just lust in play. Actually, John was pretty sure lust was the underlying emotion the pretty little psycho felt right there. “I am scared, John,” she admitted, in such a tiny voice that he couldn’t help but hold her even closer.

“We are almost through with this fusion thing between the two of you. Don’t worry, one day we’ll look back at this and be happy that we got through all of it. Nothing bad will happen.”

“How can you know that, you optimistic dumbass?!” she asked; now she was quivering as well.

“I don’t know,” he told her truthfully. “I do feel it, however. This will all pass. Because you are meant to be happy.” She let out a mocking giggle and he let her go for just as long as it took to turn her around. The tears of uncertainty were rolling over her face one by one.

“You are such a dick.” Her tone was unstable, going from shrill for one syllable, to deep and raspy for another. “You know exactly where I come from, how can you say some shit like ‘meant to be happy’?! That’s cunt-speak. You’re just an absolutely useless piece of shit… which still makes you better than me!”

“That was then, this is now,” he softly retorted, again pulling her against his chest. He just had to guide her; she fell the rest of the way on her own volition. Quickly, she hid her tears in the depression of his right shoulder. With his left, he patted the back of her head.

“What’s different?”

“I am here,” he stated, his voice a firm promise. “And I am not going anywhere. Not until you are waking up next to me smiling every day. Once we have achieved that…” he gently pulled her off to show her his genuine smile. “…Then I’ll still be there for you – forever. Because the only reward I want for helping you is that you stay with me.”

She sniffed and blinked, a few last tears rolling down. “How about you stop making me cry if that’s your goal, you absolute jackass?” she said and then let out a choked series of giggles. “Fucking fuck, do you have any idea how awfully happy I am hearing you say all of that? It’s sickening!”

“Good, that means I got you hooked on me,” he joked and leaned in for the finishing touch. Her lips tasted of salt, no wonder with fresh tears, but behind that was the same sweet, metal-noted taste he had always known. “You’re still my Eliza,” he whispered to her. “Never forget that. Now, do you promise you’ll keep a lookout for the other non-immediately apparent changes, big and small?”

“Yes,” she whispered back.

“Good…” He held her for a while longer. The atmosphere was content as everyone took a collective sigh of relief, audibly or mentally. Even Scarlett could be heard grumbling something in the direction of ‘Thank fuck.’ Eliza’s situation had been a point of general strain in the harem at large, like having a friend that was waiting for potentially horrible medical news. Now that things looked like they had improved tremendously, only time would tell whether this current stage of peace was as reliable as it first appeared to be; there was at least an opportunity for some relaxation.

As it was, John hoped that his birthday luck continued and this was as good as it looked at first glance. The timing of this couldn’t have been much better. After all, he could now say something he had wanted to for a while.

“So, Eliza.” Her last tears had dried and it was time for the light-hearted things to settle in again. “You know what it means that Thana ate, right?” The blood mage’s eyes lit up, the myriad of facets in her shattered purple eyes reflecting her anticipation for his next words. “You were a good girl and good girl’s don’t need to be punished anymore. You can now eat whatever you want again, you can sleep in my bed and, if you want to, you can orgasm again however much you want.”

“Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck yessssssssssssssssssss,” she exclaimed, her body heating up again – this time it was definitely majority lust. “I need you to fucking slam into me, you absolutely monster stud slut-maker you!”

“No fucking!” Rave warned. “Only blowjobs!”

“I WILL FUCKING TAKE IT!” Eliza screamed and grabbed John’s shirt with quivering hands. “JUST TAKE ME ALREADY, OH MY FUCK! ITS – BEEN – WEEEEEEEKS!”

“Well, I, for my part, could need a shower,” he winked, staying relaxed even as the cock-crazy girl in front of him seemed like she was about to implode from a lack of semen inside her body. “You are more than welcome to join me, I think you could freshen up a little bit as well.”

“Whatever you want, wherever you want, just fucking do me!” She went from screaming to shouting, shaking John with a considerable amount of her strength. “I can feel your fucking erection pressing against my cunt right now! YOU HAVE UNFAIRLY THIN PANTS!”

“Well, you go ahead and wait for me in the shower and I’ll be there in a minute,” he promised her. “Bonus points if you wait for me in a way that makes me want to take you extra hard.” There were no further words needed, Eliza jumped off him and stormed towards the door that led into the oversized bathing room. “Aclysia, would you be so kind as to prepare something she really likes in the meantime?” he asked of his maid.

“Of course, Master, it is time for dinner anyway,” the weaponized maid responded.

“Alright, I’ll see you all again in like… thirty minutes, I think,” John grinned. “I’ll try to keep things brief.” They just nodded. The wonderful thing about having a harem that was highly functional was that none of them tried to butt in and claim that bit of his time. They, without any jealousy or envy, accepted that this was Eliza’s turn and waited in the living room, chattering among themselves.

“Remember though!” Rave warned him a second time. “Only blowjobs!”

“I know,” John answered, his smile unwavering.

“I know ya know, but does horny John know?” she jokingly reprimanded, then winked and made a motion as if to shush him away. “Go, feed our resident baby-crazy girl. I think she’ll be very happy to find out about your upgrades.”