Chapter 1784 – The not-so-Small Tournament 6 – Knights and Purposes
John sighed the sigh of the person that thought they were in the right but was tired of arguing about it. Nathalia reacted to that sigh with the pinch of the person that thought they were right and did not appreciate the unspoken criticism. The Gamer surrendered his cheek to the tugging, it was his mistake for groaning in front of a passionate woman like her.
“I just think you keep denying that life-giving side of yours,” he confessed to her. It hardly qualified as such. They had this talk many times before.
“I do wish to give life,” Nathalia responded. “The issue is that you keep delaying.”
John cleared his throat and averted his gaze. “Planning a wedding is… difficult.”
“Any task that you take barely any time for is difficult.” Nathalia released his cheek, then sighed her own sigh. “I appreciate that you and Jane have your reservations about the consequences of your marriage. Truthfully, I’m not one to push you along.”
“You’re not?” John asked, sort of confused.
Nathalia rolled her neck. “Or maybe I am… my moods are fickle on this. You deserve to breed me and I deserve to be bred, that is simple. It is the part of actually having a hatchling of my own that has me oscillate between readiness and fear.” She peeked over her shoulder. “I know now how she felt, back then. So ready to be a mother yet knowing one’s own mind is not ready for the task… It frustrates me, but I think I may be short of my own expectations.” Turning back to the arena, she pointed down before John could answer. “Your tournament demands your attention.”
“Star is falling, get ready!” John spoke swiftly into the voice emphasizing enchantment. He double-checked that he had it put out before turning back to Nathalia. “I think you’re doing me mighty proud, lady.”
“...Mhm… I suppose that is sufficient, by and large.” The dragoness tilted her head and rested it on his shoulder. “That I would be blessed with emotional fulfilment when I only sought the physical,” she muttered.
“Life takes the strangest turns,” John whispered back – and tried not to get poked by her horns. Most of the time she managed to keep them out of the way, but sometimes that was very difficult.
The conversation halted for a moment when the fight below began. It was Xenity against the Splatterknight, which really was just unfortunate for the former.
“Let’s see what your power is!” the copy mage declared, after the star had fallen, and closed his left eye. Immediately, his muscles began to swell. “Uuuuugggghhh, such power… My suit!” He lamented, as the bulging of his frame continued in every direction, shredding the expensive black and white fabrics in the process. “Ah, whatever! It will be worth it!” he declared, his voice decreasing in pitch. Even his jawline turned square from the absolute swell of testosterone in his system.
“It is unfortunate for you that you are without a proper suit.” The Splatterknight beat his chest. “Then again… I suppose it would be best to face you honourably.”
The crowd cheered when, with the hiss of tight seals breaking, the Splatterknight removed his helmet. Underneath was the middle-aged face of a man with short, brown hair and a chin that could cut diamonds. The backpack and chest plate loosened next, falling to the ground in a clatter of thick metal. A bodysuit of black and grey fibres sat beneath, an exterior layer of muscle that he stripped off to reveal his body underneath.
The Splatterknight (and Xenity, as he grew further in muscle) was an example of ‘too muscular’. His skin seemed to struggle to fit over his absurdly defined muscles. His head was almost too small for his body. No, his head was definitely too small for his body. He was broad in a level only bodybuilders on all of the substances, genetic exceptions, or mages could achieve.
The last of his armour was left on the ground, leaving two incredibly buff men to face each other. “Mhm, I expected this to be a stomp, but now it might be interesting,” John spoke his thoughts, just as the two men charged at each other. Xenity copied Innate Abilities, but he could not copy higher than his own Level. At 275, that usually must have left him at an advantage, but his enemy was 285, effective parity. In such a situation, the two deciding factors were experience and equipment and the Splatterknight had plenty of both – now he only had plenty of one.
To Xenity’s credit, he did give it a good shot. The two opponents engaged in a lengthy wrestle match with plenty of back and forth. Evidently, the copy mage had previously used similar body boosting magic. Still, it was the Splatterknight that ultimately got the victory. It wasn’t in any incredible fashion, just a well placed smack to his opponent’s jaw, which then sent Xenity to the floor. The copy mage threw up his hand in surrender after.
For as simple as it was all around, the crowd loved it. After the absurdity of the previous match, a simple brawl between two equally matched opponents was refreshing. Once it was over, the Splatterknight put his armour back on and turned to John. “I dedicate this victory to Fusion!” he said and saluted.
“Well fought, I’ll be following your career with interest,” John shouted back and flicked a high value Token into the arena. “If you impress me enough, I might take you to my Hailey.” A nonsense promise – Hailey was going to approach the man anyway. Both he and Ehtra had taken a great interest in the ‘BLAM! BLAM!’ gun of the man and wanted to see if his design could improve on their own.
“Thank you, my glorious President! It is an honour! May you and yours know eternal prosperity!” The Splatterknight beat his chest and then marched off, clearing the area for the next fight.
In the interim, Nathalia let out a pleased hum. “Someone that acknowledges your importance,” she stated. “Should have acknowledged me as well, however. I am this nation’s goddess. I deserve that recognition.”
“You have a reputation for preferring not to be talked to,” John reminded her.
“That is because they always want something and never offer anything to make obliging them worth even the time it takes to listen to them.”
“Listening to the innocent is its own duty,” Moira stated as she stepped past the Gamer and leapt into the arena below.
John groaned and pinched the bridge of his nose. “That fucking idiot,” he muttered. He noticed Nathalia’s confused glare. “She jumped right out of our lodgings. Forget Justinian, the people at large will start talking.”
“I wish he could be forgotten,” Nathalia growled and stared at the blonde man that emerged from the opposite side of the arena.
Sword held low and offhand high, the self-righteous man marched with holy light around his blade and in his palm. His eyes glowed with the might that he had gathered over the months of his existence as a Latebloomer. The loose jacket he wore over his stainless shirt fluttered in the excess of his own power.
“God, he’s such a tryhard,” John sighed.
“I believe there are simple ways to lift your mood,” Nathalia remarked, her voice as dry as an autumn leaf. John’s hand was, by the interlocked fingers, guided up to the dragoness’ bosom. She was right. He did feel much better once he started kneading her massive mammaries.
“Lord of perverts, holder of sex slaves, you who brands women like cattle, I, Justinian, once more spit on your presence,” the blonde man followed words up by action, leaving a wet spot in the otherwise dry, compact soil of the arena. “You are filth in human clothing and I shall wrestle this brave land from your hands and commit it to justice!”
“I outlawed slavery, you absolute-“ John stopped himself before he could get actually angry and focused on the softness under his hands. Any response he gave the man would only serve to legitimize a conversation that was absolutely absurd to begin with.
“The wicked lies you tell shall not sway me!” Justinian raised his sword and pointed it at John. “I need no further proof than the holy Warden stepping out of your dark chambers! You are defiling her with your presence alone!”
“Enough!” Moira finally intervened. “The President is many things, but his perversion knows boundaries! He has not touched me.”
Justinian stopped for only a moment. It was not a moment of reflection, just of rationalization. “His dark magics must have compromised you as well, Warden,” he declared. “Worry not, I will free you from his curse! I will free your heart, so I may conquer it myself!”
Justinian had the decency to blush from a line that corny. John had to respect the guts of delivering it. The problem that he had wasn’t that it was a line that did not work, just that he spoke it in a situation he did not understand to a woman that could not have been less interested. Moira physically took two steps back, as if she had just stepped into something unspeakable.
“I--- Surrender!” she declared quickly that for which she had descended into the arena anyway.
The crowd was stunned. John pinched the bridge of his nose. Justinian laughed. “The purity of my intent has weakened the sway of the dark seal you carve into women’s wombs already! Know this, evil ‘President’, that soon your reign will end and….”
The ramblings of the ‘freedom fighter’ turned into an annoying background noise, while Moira landed back in the watching area. The fully armoured woman rubbed her upper arms as if she was shivering. “You know,” John called out to her before she could find safety in the back of the VIP area, “you’re making a lot of trouble for me right now.”
“I apologize…” Moira mumbled quietly and blushed deeply. “…In all my years, I have never been this… uncomfortable…”
John did not find that answer sufficient. For one of his own, he would have been more patient, but Moira was not. Without sparing Justinian another glance, he followed Moira to the back. “I mean it, your lack of clarity in talking to him and always immediately coming up here is going to create a thousand questions. I’m certain both of us will get an angry phone call by your dad before the day is over.”
Rave stopped playing with Eliana to become part of the conversation. “Moira, did ya not deliver the whole thing we rehearsed?” The feline Lightbearer cleared her throat and used her best British accent – which was actually pretty good, since she had lived there for a time. “Justinian, your intentions may be noble, but it is clear that you are inexperienced in matters of the Abyss, in its history both long and recent. John Newman has brought unity to a land shattered, this cannot be denied. I would implore you to take a step back, for I am not his and I have no intention to be yours either. Be objective in your judgement of the nation that you now find yourself in!’” Rave stopped one of her ears flicking when she saw Moira’s guilty expressions. “Seriously? None of that? What did she say, tiger?”
“She said I never touched her, then Justinian told her that Lover’s Will is a mind control spell that he would free her from so he could flirt with her, and then she got flustered and surrendered,” John summarized.
“It was a rather pathetic display,” Nathalia weighed in.
“Moi-moi!” Rave shouted. “That’s bad!”
“I know!” Moira answered and gestured wildly with her warhammer. “But he is just so creepy! He speaks all of these righteous phrases while being so utterly ignorant, it gives me the heebie-jeebies!”
Even in this situation, watching the Warden use that term was quite amusing. “Could have fucking stripped and shown him you don’t even have one of these things.” Eliana smacked her nacked midriff and the very prominent mark there.
“It can be hidden!” Moira stated.
“No one fucking knows that, we never hide this shit! Why would we?! Being owned is fucking hot!”
Nathalia snapped her fingers twice. She had a lot of practice in gestures that grabbed people’s attention. “You are losing yourselves in the weeds of the argument.” The dragoness put a hand on the wide swing of her hip. “The fact is that you-“
“Are inconveniencing Master!” Aclysia’s entrance into the room was accompanied by a wave of frost. Moira instinctively stood her ground, which only served to elevate the maid’s anger. Stomping across, she got right up in the redhead’s face. “Your inability to speak your mind clearly may be cute to some, but at this moment I find it reprehensible.”
The paladin had her head lowered in shame, incapable of mounting a proper counter argument. Seeing her genuine regret, John decided to lay it off for now. “Can you give her some space, Aclysia?” the Gamer requested.
Aclysia looked at him for a moment, then gave the redhead another disdainful glare, before backing off. Nathalia shoved Moira towards the couch. The armoured woman landed in the heavy cushions. “I can leave, if my presence is too upsetting,” she suggested.
“Shut the fuck up, retardin,” Eliana countered. “You’re our guest, we treat guests well!”
“You should work on controlling your ice more,” Nathalia chastised Aclysia, while melting and evaporating the water that had been frozen.
John scratched the back of his head. “What’s done is done. My only choice now is to accept Justinian will hate me forever. I don’t see how I could have a calm conversation with the guy, and since he now seems to be convinced that I can do mind control… Ah, yeah, okay, I guess he is justified in thinking that.”
“Remembered something?”
“When we had that peace meeting with the Lake Alliance after the Hudson Brawl, I hypnotized that one guy.” John gestured at his eyes and the lenses in them. “I suppose I can’t totally blame someone for extrapolating that into me having the power to manipulate minds if they weren’t there to know the limits of it all.”
Plus, he had Claire around, but few people knew how far her manipulative powers went.
“The point is that, if someone is determined to dislike me, it’s not like they have a lack of material to interpret the worst possible way. I did do a lot of shady stuff in my time.” He pointed at Moira. “To be clear, I do not forgive you, I simply see no reason to make this into something bigger than it is.”
Moira squirmed where she sat. “…Thanks…”
John hoped the next set of fights would take his mind off things.