Collide Gamer

The harem was gathered on the Newman Private Island,

They had put up a campfire, for no other reason than they could. It was anything but necessary. Rave still had control over the thermostat, though the presence of the nearby lake made the temperature a little more bearable. They were just together there, letting the minutes pass by. Soon, 2019 would come to an end.

“Do we want to reminisce about the year?” Lee asked. “It won’t have a happy ending.”

“It’ll hurt,” John agreed, “but that’s just another reason to do it, isn’t it?”

“If ya big brains want to remind me how the year started, ya can go ahead,” Rave said.

“You should remember how it started!” Moira declared.

“Actually,” Metra weighed in. “Something happened before we dealt with the Order. John and I went to Scandinavia to get some pieces of Fenrir to replace the parts of Tiamat we had removed from me.”

“God, that was early this year.” John knew it to be the case, but turning his mind back to it still made it clear how much could happen in 12 months. “Technically, the Tier 5 Guild Hall upgrade was before that even… We should stop hopping around in the order.”

Momo put a hand on her chest. “Alright, then I’ll take charge of this recounting – because I am great at remembering stuff.”

“One of the few fucking things you are doubtlessly great at, duster wings,” Eliana joked.

“Shaddup!” Momo slurred, then cleared her throat. “So, Guild Hall Tier 5 into going into Scandinavia, which is where you met this lovely lady for the first time.”

Once pointed at, Nightingale rose from her seat on one of the logs around the campfire and bowed her head. “A fateful day,” she trilled, then sat back down, knowing lengthy interruptions would bloat it all too much.

“After that you and Max had your date,” Momo continued.

“Oh yeah, that happened!” Rave laughed loudly. “You two totally had your gay outing in that lovey-dovey theme park.”

“That’s funny, I remember us having a double date and then you and Irielz ditched us.” The Gamer crossed his arms. “But what are the chances that my memory is better than yours, right?”

“Totally unrealistic. Pulling pranks? Couldn’t be me.” Rave grinned.

“And then! We headed to Springfield,” Momo pointed at Moira, “to deal with the Order of the Golden Rose and have the North American situation sorted out. After a couple of wargames, Jane and Moira ended up crossing proverbial blades.”

A wide grin spread on Rave’s pink lips. “Nah, we scissored later.”

“You are impossible!” the redhead shouted.

“I’m very possible, ‘specially now that ya got stuck in my harem.”

Moira gestured wildly in John’s direction. “It’s his harem, I love him, you are just an annoying attachment!”

“HAH! You said you love John, that’s so cute.”

“….Lady give me strength that I may not smite her, that I may know your infinite patience and your presence as an eternal warmth…”

“Yeah, so all of that happened… and we just made it through January,” Momo groaned.

“Luckily, nothing of note happened in February.” A light twitch in his eyelid accompanied the memory of annoyance. “I spent that entire month just trucking around, doing censuses.”

“And then you added the first haremette of the year. The award goes to Lorelei!” The archfae’s words became echoey, as if spoken in a stadium. Confetti blasted up around the blonde, who did not move an inch from her seat, only bowed her head in respect. “Who, if I recount this correctly, came as an Ambassador and immediately wanted the sex slave treatment.”

“The Lady’s will was clear and I had resisted the charm of the Gold and Purple Man for long enough,” the seer said. “It was my honour to become his beloved, though, yes, my repressed desires did lead me to… make our early relationship quite sexual.”

“And now you wear a chastity belt and that totally doesn’t lead you to make any crazy decisions, such as declaring this harem to be sacred.”

“It is sacred,” Lorelei said matter-of-factly.

“Mooooooving on,” Momo said. “To the Iron Domain. On request by Nightingale, John went to look for a cure for Delicia, who he had previously, shortly met. To that end, he decided it was perfectly reasonable to go to war with the tyrant of another Kingdom.”

“To be fair, I didn’t know it would be war before I got there,” John said.

“And to be fair, he deserved the ass kicking he got, the walking fucking trashcan,” Eliana added.

“He deserved so much worse,” Claire hissed.

“Indeed, we kicked his ass early in the war, then he pulled a bitch move and grabbed Claire’s core, and then we led a coalition against him.”

“And I missed it,” Lee lamented. “Because I couldn’t even pretend to fight at the time. I missed all of the sweet, epic fights in Not Icecrown Citadel against Not Mordekaiser.”

“Not everything we fight is related to World of Warcraft or League of Legends,” John groaned.

“Nah, dude, my World of League theory is unbeaten. You can map every bad guy out there onto some character out of either franchise. Always.”

“Who is Remus?”

“Singed.”

“You’re reaching.”

“Nuh-uh.”

“Yuh-uh.”

“Sssssstop talking," Momo interrupted their juvenile exchange. “We got Claire out of there and Claire was already ready to join the harem before we saved her, making her the second addition of the year… which, wow, 2 haremettes in 3 months, that was some low-yield for you, wasn’t it?”

“It was proof of concept that I could slow down.” A hand on his cheek and the elbow on his leg, John tilted forwards and stared into the flames. “Which hasn’t worked that well since… but can you blame me when you are all being this sexy around me all the time?”

“Yeah, yeah, nothing is your fault,” Momo sassed him. “It’s always the stupid women wiggling their wide hips…”

“Yeah!” John declared. “Men never do anything wrong.”

That led to collective snorting and giggling by the female crowd. Momo cleared her throat. “Anyhow, we move into April, which starts with Delicia getting turned from four spheres into one sphere.”

“I’ve got all of the curves,” the shortstack boasted.

“While she was busy being a core instead of a failing flesh puppet, John hooked up with Nightingale. He had slept with her before, but she officially joined the harem here. I remember him pulling favours to re-arrange the night sky and everything.”

“It was the most romantic night of my life,” the harpy cooed.

“And that makes you the third addition of the year,” Momo kept her tally. “Rest of April didn’t have much. One year of Fusion was celebrated, which was also where John realized he was heading for burnout.”

“A very interesting sensation, looking back at it, and not one I want to repeat,” he said.

“Yep, so we took our vacation in May, during which we picked up Hailey, courtesy of John wanting a country gal and Lorelei finding him one at that exact moment with a convenient prophecy.”

“The Lady works in mysterious ways,” the seer spoke.

“Lady could’ve worked a bit faster on that one. If John had gott’n there two minutes earlier, I could’ve kept my first gun. I liked that gun.” Hailey’s drawl was as sexy to him now as it had been when he first feasted his ears on it. Her body had only gotten sexier since then, both because of her better living conditions and because her tits had gone up a cup size. Also, and this was John’s personal opinion, womb tattoos made every woman hotter, specifically if it was his womb tattoo.

“Delicia also got her body back and was haremized during that vacation and technically that happened before Hailey made her decision and practically they consummated it first, so that makes Delicia number four and Hailey number five. Picking up the pace, ey?”

“Yeah…” John had no defence to that one. “This was also when we decided to keep sex inside the harem.”

“Which cost us my mother-daughter threesome!” Sylph threw her hands in the air. “That would have been so hot! Urgh, and instead we got all of this kissing and trust and you actually proving you are not that huge of a perv by sticking to it and I will be your strongest soldier and say the whole Esmeralda thing is overblown but now I am getting glares so I’ll remember to be a good Sylph and shut up.” The air spirit closed her mouth with an audible clack.

Aclysia muttered under her breath, “Having watched Sylph learn not to talk all the time remains one of the most fascinating things to ever have happened.”

“Affirmative,” Beatrice agreed.

“June had three important events. One, Lee quit school.”

“Despite what my dad wanted,” the Fateweaver said, a sad smile on her face at the sombre memory. “Worked out for me.”

Nia put an arm around the brunette and quietly cuddled her.

Lingering on the joke would have diminished Lee’s efforts to move on and so Momo kept the conversations flowing. “This was also when we officially got the invitation to join the Divided Gates, though Romulus had floated it during the Fusion anniversary already. Third but most importantly though…”

“We got engaged!” Rave held up the hand with the ring on it. The prismatic band continued to glow in moving colours, RGB most of all. “That was such a sweet thing and it totally hit me by surprise! Gaia, just remembering it makes me all…” She sniffed, her voice breaking. “Yeah…”

John kissed her cheek, while the fairy maid kept talking, “Then we headed to that Divided Gates meeting mid-July. Good things happened there, we got the seat after beating the arcane elementals in a tournament, we murdered Mengele out at sea-”

“Fucking scum, he deserved it,” Eliana growled.

“And Lulu joined the harem! That’s number six this year.”

The exclamation didn’t have the same weight without her around. Grumbling, the Gamer said, “I would write her a love letter right now, if she had the Harem Comms, but she refuses to be marked, that sexy empress.”

“Still on provision,” Rave purred, jestfully.

“After we went home, John woke up Ehtra. Our sour maid then hung around for a couple of weeks, playing ‘will she, won’t she’.”

The grey angel’s wings puffed up in annoyance. “Very funny, eldritch creature. Don’t you have someone’s name to steal?”

“I’m taking the Newman name soon enough. Probably. Maybe. Won’t dream about taking his firstborn though.”

“You would not fucking survive,” Eliana threatened.

“Yeah… ehem… so then Ehtra joined and became number seven this year. Then Max married, which was cool and everything but not too much happened there breakdown wise… well, except for John meeting that Kage woman.”

“We will see what is up with her and Hikari next year, I reckon.” John’s gaze wandered from Metra to Ehtra. “Though them being the Twilight Twins is virtually guaranteed at this point. Everything lines up, including their names.”

“Oy, no speculating during the reminiscing,” Momo interrupted. “So, that’s August… then September we went to Mexico to investigate what I had deciphered from Mengele’s notes and stuff.”

“Just three months ago.” Nahoa faced the sky, yet faced something else entirely. “When you found me, I was the demigoddess of a proud empire. At the end, I was the broken ruler of a betrayed nation… but!” She forced herself to sound silly and joked, “At least I got to experience libido, that’s nice.”

“So, after we dealt with all of that, Nahoa joined us as number eight of the year.” The fairy maid crossed her arms. “Then we spent most of October cleaning that up. Towards the end, there was that Small Lake Tournament and Romulus showed up for it because of course he did. There was that whole embarrassment with Justinian.”

“A layered embarrassment…” Moira muttered.

“Then in November we went to the Nympholympics, which was disrupted by that Hypercrush moron…” Momo shuddered, remembering the vomiting alcoholic she had to fight. “Then we had to clean that up for 2 weeks and then… December.”

“The Lorylim war,” John said three words and none more were necessary. The events, from the plane crash to the end of it, were still fresh in everyone’s mind. “A toast to the fallen.” He grabbed the camping cup that he had placed in the grass between his feet.

Everyone followed his example. Everyone had something to drink, though it was seldom alcoholic. John himself enjoyed a singular cup of spiced wine. It wasn’t appropriate for the temperature around him, but a part of him had insisted on it anyhow for the season. He had obliged that part of him, the memory of his mother preparing a cup for him every New Year’s, after he had hit puberty.

“Then we went grinding,” he wrapped up the summary in a husky voice. “Lyndell, Fianna and Moira joined us, nine, ten and eleven… which means I just barely expanded my harem by less than one per month.” He shook his head. “Also means I expanded the most this year despite Lydia telling me to consider stopping around the time Lulu joined us.”

“Ya sprint before ya win the marathon, tiger,” Rave spoke assuringly.

John just grunted. He wasn’t sure what to make of all of that. His thoughts on the year as a whole were easier gathered. “It was a year of ups and downs. We entered the Divided Gates and I became king. We united the continent but lost hundreds of thousands of people in a catastrophic war. We grew so much stronger yet couldn’t protect our families. Life… is difficult.” He smiled at each and every one of them in turn. “I hope to keep facing the hard mode with all of you.”

“Very Gamer of you,” Lee complimented.

And in the distance the fireworks began to rise.