Collide Gamer

John yawned.

Though the pill had saved him from the horrors of spending the day hungover, it had not retroactively transformed his sleep into a proper night’s rest. He had slept from somewhere around 6:30 AM to 1:30 PM. 7 hours of sleep wasn’t bad on paper, but the quality played an important role there.

He had spent most of the day avoiding attention. Meetings he needed to have, he attended with half an ear. For everything else, he found an excuse. He lounged around inside the Palace, watching the hours tick by, interacting with one haremette after another. Certainly, no one would fault a man for taking a lazy day with his women during his wedding week?

‘Actually, many prudes would fault me for that,’ John thought. ‘What’s that?’

He had noticed the on and off flicker in the doorframe of an empty room. It was well into the evening by now and the winter sun had disappeared. He was in some outer corridor of the Palace where that actually mattered. Only faint starlight and the illumination of distant festival tents shone in through the many crystal glass windows.

So that flicker caught his attention easily.

‘Do we have a ghost?’ he wondered and walked to that room. He was scanning his mental floor plan for who might have been housed there for the week and came up short. That wasn’t to say it was nobody’s room, just that he hadn’t looked at that particular bit of planning.

A girlish giggle reached John first. The voice was vaguely familiar, though with that kind of sound it was difficult to say who exactly it was. As he approached, another sense of his gave him a much better idea on who was in that room. Even when the light was off, the room was flooded in the element.

John turned the corner, giving the already ajar door a light push. He saw Lucifrena, her back towards him, flicking the switch. It was not a euphemism for anything, she was quite literally just turning the light on and off, giggling every time it happened.

“Lady Lucifrena?” he made himself known.

The golden angel jumped. It was a spinning motion of panic. At the zenith of her ascent, she had come to fully face him. Given the rapid perception people of their level had, she realized it was him in that same moment. Golden wings opened, keeping her from taking an immediate plunge.

She made for quite the view, halted in midair. She wore a black leather jacket over a white t-shirt. It regularly would have been enough to cover the soft definition of her stomach, but with her arms raised in panic, it had been pulled up enough to reveal her belly button and the edges of her V-lines. Blue denim stuck closely to her legs, shapely thighs and all.

John could have undressed her with his eyes. He had both seen her naked before, after she had fully manifested this body on the island he had crashed on at the start of the Lorylim War, and because Lyndell’s curves were exactly the same as hers. In this form, the only unusual part of Lucifrena’s appearance was that her white-blonde hair would have been unusual on a Scandinavian already. On a woman of a sub-Saharan complexion, it was certainly unorthodox – though gorgeous all the same. She wore it in a short, tomboyishly messy manner.

[Lucifrena Startled AI: https://cdn.imgchest.com/files/25c8b2a004f8.png ]

“J-john! W-w-what are you doing here?” she stuttered.

Now, he was far from inexperienced when it came to living superweapons having quirky characters, but he still was deeply amused whenever it occurred. There hung in the air a contestant for the strongest individual female fighter in all the world, and she was blushing so fiercely even her ebony skin couldn’t cover it.

“I got drunk until this morning, slept poorly, and now I’m trying not to fall asleep too soon, since that would put me off schedule for my wedding day. Decided to walk around to that end,” John explained himself efficiently. “What are you doing?” He glanced at the light switch. “Because it looked like you were giggling at the fact that electricity exists.”

“I, uhm, was.” Lucifrena hovered down, her feet extended to let her touch the ground. Once she stood again, the golden wings disappeared. “I enjoy what humanity has built since last I walked the earth.”

“A common reaction,” John assured her. “Plenty of the ladies that I am with that weren’t here for the rapid technological advancements of the last couple hundred years have expressed various degrees of marvel at what the mundane has achieved.”

“Only the ladies you are with?” Lucifrena asked. Though she was prone to a bit of stuttering, she wasn’t as bad as Gnome or Daiyu. “I would assume you know some men who have experienced a similar break? Or not?”

“Well, if I have, I don’t bother to remember their reactions. It’s not cute when they do it.”

“C-cute?” Lucifrena shook her head. “Are you flirting with me again? Lyn told me you’re trying not to do that.”

“Ah, so you and Lyndell did talk,” John commented, then shrugged. “I don’t know… I think it’s an improvement on my part that I can make a flirtatious comment, mean it, but do so without the thought of adding you to my harem.”

And that was his true feeling on the matter. Though he certainly wouldn’t have complained if fate conspired to put him and Lucifrena together, she was not currently anywhere near his radar. He was hosting the angel in his Palace and Rave had given her work to do, the charity variety. That was as much thought as he had given her in recent weeks. Though she was incredibly important as an individual, to his life she was an occasional visitor.

Lucifrena received his words with a mixture of relief and disappointment. She did not bother hiding her emotions or, rather, John doubted she even had the capacity to. There was not a sinful bone in her body. Pigs would learn to fly before she would tell a lie willingly.

‘Does she perhaps want me to chase her?’ John wondered. That question would have been too much for the current distance between them, which he was not willing to even attempt to bridge at this time. He had the Layla question unanswered, Esmeralda looming, and Daiyu was orbiting around him like the world’s most adorable moon. He was already resisting three feminine wiles of different flavours. He would not add another to the mix.

He had a different question on that matter.

“I do wonder… what do you think Jesus would have thought of me?”

Lucifrena’s dark lips spread into a slight smile. Clasping her hands around the broken crucifix beneath her shirt, she considered his question before answering. “I cannot talk for the embodiment of morality that is the Lord,” she responded humbly. “I can merely attempt to share with you what I, his lowly disciple, think I understand.”

“By all means,” John said and invited her to continue.

“Your polygyny is sinful, your conduct often selfish and you lie by omission readily when it suits you,” she chastised him in a soft tone that took the bite out of those words.

‘Thank God, some normal criticism,’ John thought. After the previous talk with Maximillian, he was feeling like the world had conspired to boost his ego. “All of that is-“ he started.

“That being said, the king of kings would approve of you, I believe,” Lucifrena continued. “None other than him were without sin and even he had to resist temptation. Even he cried on the cross, when the suffering of the world was placed upon him.” There was a sad glitter in her eyes. The scene that John only knew from religious texts was still fresh on her mind even after 2000 years. “We live in a fallen world and it is only natural that you are fallen too.”

“You had choice words for me regarding the treatment of the infected during the Lorylim War,” John tried to dredge some more criticisms from her.

“Indeed, I did… and I would again. I said it then – no ruler am I, just an angel that obeys Gaia’s requests and the commandments of the Lord. My condemnation of what you did is veiled in my limited view. I provide it in an attempt to complete yours, so that we, together, may try to achieve a fraction of the enlightenment the godhead has prepared for us.”

“So… you think I am… good?” John asked slowly.

“If one wishes to summarize it most simply… then yes.”

John was sure he should have felt elated at a literal disciple of the most important religious figure in his culture saying he was a good man. Instead, he just felt confused. ‘This is the kind of validation no one is supposed to get,’ he surmised to himself, then shook his head. “Well, that is… interesting.”

“You are i-intersting!” Lucifrena’s sudden sputter had John break out into laughter. One moment she was an angelic preacher, the next a shy woman trying to… what, flirt back?

“I suppose some would say so,” he agreed, after he reclaimed control over his vocal cords. “How has Fusion been treating you?”

The change in topic didn’t catch her unaware. She hummed, directed her gaze to the ceiling, then answered, “It is among the better realms I have spent my life in, it may even be the best. I cannot credit that entirely to your governance. The manifold conveniences of the modern world elevate life considerably.”

“Indeed, they do,” John agreed and gave the light switch a poke. The room went dark. Lucifrena’s hair cast a faint glow, just strong enough to illuminate her embarrassed pout. ‘Oh, that’s dangerous,’ he thought and switched the light back on again, before her adorable expression could melt the walls of will around his heart. “Sorry, I couldn’t resist.”

“You cannot… uhm, resist a lot of things…” She paused for a long moment. “I hope that wasn’t too mean?”

“I can take worse,” he assured. “I am still a bit flabbergasted that you were willing to play over my polygyny that easily. I thought that’d be a major point of contention.”

“The Son did certainly re-affirm the covenant that one man and one woman should become one flesh,” Lucifrena stated, “and I believe this may be the most commonly violated of his teachings, at least among powerful men. Though you violate it more than most, you also do so in a manner that the Lord could find agreeable. You have a more… Old Testament approach to such matters.”

John snorted, that was certainly a way to put it. “Another question, if I may?”

“I am always ready to counsel you.”

“No, I was just wondering… why are you here, this isn’t your room? Certainly you can flip the light switch in your own walls.”

“Uh, uhm… this is around the hour Lyn tries to talk to me, usually… and, uhm, I am acting like I am out so I can avoid fighting her.”

“Not looking forward to it?” John wondered.

“I am but also not… I… am not above enjoying my powers,” Lucifrena said carefully, “but I also am not a violent woman. I don’t know, I need to be in a specific mood to want to fight against friends.”

“Makes enough sense,” John agreed. His harem had an above average concentration of people, especially when it came to the fairer sex, that were willing to beat each other mercilessly in the name of improvement. Lucifrena seemed to treat combat more as a necessary evil. “You know you can just tell her, right? Lyn is a good girl, if you make something clear, she’d back off.”

“Y-yeah, but she’d pout and my heart would melt!” Lucifrena exclaimed. “Lord forgive me if I sound vain, but she is so cute!”

“I wonder how many other people end up in the situation where they compliment themselves by calling their grey doppelganger cute.”

“A-a few…” Lucifrena mumbled. “I remember some difficulties with shapeshifters…”

“That does remind me… have you ever heard of a Throthaxen?”

“Lorelei has already approached me with that question and my answer is… an unhelpful no. I know nothing of the various creatures you encountered nor does Gaia direct me to deal with this Realmbreaker. Whatever is happening, it is not considered out of the bounds of what humanity should be able to handle.”

John just groaned. Gaia’s non-involvement policy only stopped when she got an excuse and even then she had shown to prefer locking evils up until they could be dealt with by people rather than eliminate them herself.

“Well… can I count on your aid?” he asked.

“Krieg has approached me with the same question,” Lucifrena revealed. “I have the same answer as I did for him: my only fight is with unequivocal evil. Should it come to pass that your enemies are the enemies of good, you will know my aid. Otherwise…” she shook her head. “I am sorry to disappoint.”

“No disappointment, that is what I expected,” John assured. “Then I will leave you to your light switches.”

“P-please don’t tease me with that too much…”

Her pout was even more dangerous in clear light.