The rest of the evening passed without anything noteworthy. John and Maximillian did their usual things, while keeping it to a moderate level of alcohol. When neither of them felt like they had anything more to say for the moment but both had the urge to get a bit more done, in the orgy sense, than what they really wanted to do in front of the other, they separated and went to their respective rooms. Whether they would meet up again while John was busy with the challenges was left open. As Maximillian had said, this vacation was mostly to the benefit of having fun with those ladies around him. If they met, they met, if not, then not.

John woke up the next morning with a light hangover, as did his girls. A good breakfast and some healing by Undine relieved the issue entirely. Notably, when his real body had a hangover or was drunk, the state afflicted his double as well. It was quite predictable, really, but John still liked to have confirmation about these things.

At least for that one, he had made the preparation to warn the girls what he was doing over in Florida. It had startled Scarlett quite a bit when Jack had not only reverted into the Mandala Sphere, but the sphere itself had, for several minutes, laid on the floor in shambles. Given the segmented nature of the thing, there were quite a lot of shambles to be had.

The reason for that had been the encounter with the Nevr’est. John had guessed that it would interrupt his connection with his Extension, not that the double would entirely drop its transformation and its own enchantments. It had been good fortune that Scarlett was with him in his office at the time. The Technomancer had only gotten worried enough to give him an earful once the connection was back, dropping about 250 text messages in the minutes in between.

Had it been Eliza that watched his double disappear like that, there could have been more of a mess to clean up. With how prone the blood mage was to overreactions, especially when it came to him, the best case would have been if she only got a panic attack that he then had to cuddle her out of. Worst case, she could have gone on a minor rampage in search for answers. He liked to believe that she was stable enough these days that it would be the former of those two scenarios, but there was no way to know for sure.

That extra bit of aftermath from yesterday’s challenge aside, the Gamer was more in balance after he had spent the day doing the three things he liked most: dating, bantering and fucking. At least in balance enough to resist the urge to strangle Vita when she appeared in front of their room.

“Hello.” His greeting was on the frostier side of things.

“Hi,” the dark-haired pariah answered with a happy little wave. “You seem to be a bit tense.”

“Whatever could the reason for that be?” John drily asked, glancing over his shoulder. Standing at the ready with her weapon, Aclysia kept a keen eye on the situation. Today, the Gamer did not feel like telling her to put it away. “We do not react that well to being put face to face with… things.” He avoided any flowery description. Even that little mention gave him a small headache and he was afraid that he would properly remember if he chased the topic further.

“You could have just surrendered,” Vita answered with her usual smile. “Did that even enter your mind?”

“I could do thousands of things,” John growled and swallowed further words. Any threat he would have made would have been empty. He wouldn’t attack her, not without knowing that he was above her in every single aspect. Even if he could beat her, which he believed he could, as long as she could take a single one of his girls with her, it was not worth the risk. “Just lead the way.”

“Sure thing, future boss,” Vita mused and turned around. John and the three usual suspects followed, the elementals hanging around in incorporeal form. When she continued to talk while they were on their way, the Gamer was mildly surprised. Usually, she seemed to only open her mouth when she could torment him in some fashion. “You’re a smart man,” the blank complimented. “Attractive as well, I can see why Nia is interested in you.”

“I have my vices and my virtues,” John responded swiftly, staring at the back of her head. She stayed firmly in the lead of the group, not showing her face. “Why do you bring that up now?”

“I’m fascinated by the flawed,” Vita responded with half an answer. “The other side is full of flaws. From the smallest Nul’ram to the largest of Vid’wyrs, it’s dominated by the half-finished thoughts scrambled in the hearts of the Great Empty One. The Nirvana is a void of flaws and potential. There is no true suffering, but you need to run as fast as you can just to remain where you stand. They can only think half.”

“You will have to excuse the fact that I only understand half of that,” John told her, and Vita giggled. For once, in a fashion he didn’t find creepy or challenging. It was surprisingly girly. “It’s hard to really get something about a world that hurts just to think about.” There was a moment of silence and then, wondering if he could get anything else pleasant or interesting out of this woman, he continued, “For a bunch of beings that can only think half of a thought, they sure figured out a lot. Nia once tried to explain what magic is, but us normal humans don’t really get to hear that.”

“If you rid yourself of the ‘but’ in every thought, you’d be fascinated by all the things you could discover,” Vita responded, swinging her hips more with every step. Naturally, it drew John’s gaze to her backside. The flat white of her dress, usually eating shade and light equally, had a depth to it all of a sudden. It was still a thoroughly unusual piece of clothing, sticking to her without securing strands or tension, with a skirt that flowed more than it fluttered, but it now only seemed magical, rather than reality defying.

“If I rid myself of the counterpoints in my thoughts and just continue to think away at things, I’ll end up with a thousand jumbled possibilities and no certain truth.”

“All of them,” Vita answered.

“All of them?”

“You will end up with all of the answers across all vectors of reality and dream.” The silver marks on Vita’s back explosively forked out, until there was less tanned skin than thin lines. It looked like a leaf dominated by veins, alien and enticing. “And in doing so, you will lose all contact to this one.”

“Seems like the short road to insanity. I rather like being grounded in this reality.”

“I’m fascinated by flaws,” Vita circled back around to her original statement. “You say it would make you insane, but to those things that understand more than one world, your binding to this one makes you the mad one. Bound by rules and the governance of reality.”

“That would mean that everyone is flawed,” John said, as they went down the staircase. “If those who understand one reality are flawed in their thinking and those that understand all realities in their thinking are both insane and the ways of thinking to comprehend one or the other are mutually exclusive, then there is no such thing as sanity.”

“Yes, yes, yes,” Vita answered and hopped down two steps at a time with each word. “There are those with more and less flaws, but all are strangers in unknown lands. They just haven’t found their way to the distant home yet. Some of the ‘everywheres’ aren’t quite as ‘everywhere’ as other ‘everywheres’ though. Some can do whatever they want.”

“How about you?” John asked, interested where this was going.

“Me?” Vita started laughing, and for a moment John got to see her face again, as she twirled around a corner platform of the staircase. Her face was covered as intensely with silver lines as her back. “No, no, I may be a pariah to this reality, but I’m part of it. Then again, I’m not really. Us blanks are born between two worlds. The pull of both gives us our blessings, the pull of both gives us our curses. We have powers that none others do and one day we fade. We are shackled to two worlds more intensely than anything else, we cannot think in either here or everywhere. We aren’t really here and although we understand the everywhere better than anyone else, we may never get there.”

“What does that make you then?” John asked, following Vita with normal paced steps, as the blank raced ahead. Her dark hair bounced as she bounced further down. She suddenly stopped when she was in the middle of the next flight of stairs and stared up at John, who stopped at the same position one level above her. Framed by silver, her blue-eyes fixated him.

“My own looking glass,” Vita responded. “I’m the original Maiden of Null. Although I may never be an ‘everywhere’, it is easier for me to surpass the ‘here’. I can think in both terms, because my nature is in itself a duality and so…” she suddenly was behind John, her arms wrapped around his neck and whispering in his ear, “…the governance of reality is mine to question. I have been elsewhere and returned. I have slain and shaken the Red Queen.”

John had to do his best to not try and throw her off him immediately. Whatever she had just done was far above regular teleportation. Beatrice’s Twist Position only teleported in a direction if there was no obstacle in the way. The martial arts’ technique Shift only got one somewhere that could be reached through walking, failing when it came to height. Even his own Shifting Momentum didn’t change the direction he was facing.

Not only had she emerged elsewhere, she had been in a completely different stance by the end of it. All without any sort of announcement by means of magic. “How did you…?”

“I decided to be elsewhere,” she said and played with his hair. “It’s surprisingly soft. Unlike your resolve. Everyone else I ever showed this ability tried to shake me off like a tarantula crawling over their face.”

That was a very fitting analogy for how John had felt in the first few moments, but the feeling was rapidly fading. Either Vita was reducing her powers or he was simply getting more used to her shenanigans. “So, what are you, some sort of Planeswalker before the Mending of Dominaria?”

“I have absolutely no idea what that means,” Vita laughed.

“I’m basically asking if you’re an immortal – and I mean seriously deathless – superbeing that can just bend reality however you see fit and travel dimensions.” John took a breath and then added, “Of course, I already got you can’t do that last part.”

“The answer is no.” Backing off and resuming her dancing down the stairs, Vita continued to lead them. John somewhat missed the feeling of her breasts against his back, but that was just his usual modus operandi. “All I can manipulate is limited to myself. My position in this world is something I can negotiate, because I own my empty soul. Where I place its container and what I bring with me from the Nirvana, within the limits of my power, those are my choices.” She let a hand glide over the railing. “The mineral composition of the staircase is not under my purview, nor is the rest of the world. This manipulation is not limited to teleporting – for the lack of a better term – but it is the easiest application.”

“I can’t help but feel that it barely strained you,” John put forward, seeing a suspicious lack of fading on part of the pariah. Every other kind of teleport was on the definitive costly side of things. Beatrice had it the easiest, but she also had the worst one. “I don’t exactly feel comfortable with the greatest anti-mages in the game being able to rapidly reappear wherever they want. If you also get a spell-reflection skill and the ability to burn my mana, I’ll complain to Icefrog.”

“League is still better,” Rave chimed in, having likely tuned out all the theoretical, philosophical fantasy babble.

“I miss the old Gangplank,” Vita sighed. “The new one is so serious.”

“You play League of Legends?” John asked with a raised eyebrow. “Well, you DID say you were fascinated with flaws… don’t think it gets a lot more flawed than that trash fire.”

“Quite.” They got out of the staircase area, walked through a glass door, and entered the usual corridor. John recognized the assortment of differently decorated doors by now. “I apologize, once more,” Vita suddenly continued.

“Oh?” John asked, the pariah now walking backwards to keep eye contact while she led them. “For all the stuff you put me through?”

“Yes, no, maybe.” For a moment there, John had hoped that she would be a bit more reasonable than before, but it appeared she was still herself. “What I wanted to test of you, I have now found. The flaws I saw are confirmed. You’re a prideful, smart, perverted, paranoid, curious, charismatic, attractive man. Where your steps go, I’ll be interested to see from a distance and up close. I’ll see.”

“See, if you were this nice from the start, we wouldn’t have had any issues,” John told her.

“I have always been nice,” Vita grinned her uncomfortably wide grin.

“…Sure.” The Gamer let all his scepticism flow into that word. “Anyway, Alice, are you the only blank that unlocked all of that potential or are there others?” She didn’t react to that question, only stared and smiled. John sighed. “Totally-not-Alice, are you the only blank capable of such reality defying acts?”

“Yes, no, maybe,” she responded. “I haven’t checked on Nia today.”