“Where did you leave my precious Nia?” the Horned Rat asked, returning just as John stepped out of the building; “I need her to spy on you.”

“I fucked her so hard that her knees gave in when she tried to stand up, now she has to rest for a minute,” John triumphantly crossed his arms; he would literally fuck the influence of the Horned Rat out of Nia.

Of course, that wasn’t the only thing he was planning to do to eventually get the cute blank into his harem in a ‘clean’ way, but it was the most basic one. If she liked him more than the Rat (which shouldn’t be too hard), then he already had a way to get what he wanted. Which was her butt in his bed whenever he wanted without needing to worry that she would whisper what she learned into the earless skull of the scheming god.

“Well, how nice of you,” Richard was unfazed by all of this; “Truth be told, you can have her.”

“Say what now?” John blinked in confusion. It didn’t quite fit his image of the Horned Rat for him to just forego what he had so easily.

“She is unreliable, easily side-tracked, gullible and can’t keep a single secret. She is also way too nice to use for assassinations. I can’t find any line of work for her, so you might as well take her. I mean, we are allies, aren’t we, John Newman?” the skull creaked as it was bent into a smiling shape.

“On paper, I guess so,” John cautiously agreed. He wasn’t going to break his promise to the Horned Rat without good reason. It was important that he was going to be seen as someone who kept his promises, otherwise that would create some major headaches if he wanted to deal with other powerful people later in his life.

“So, you would just give up a strong blank because she isn’t doing exactly what you want?”

“You have no idea what else I have at my disposal. Losing Nia is like losing a very nice house in the alps you visit once every 2 years,” the Horned Rat just shrugged. “Painful on paper, but do I really care? That aside it’s not like I will just give her to you. All I am telling you is that I am not going to make a fuss over it if she switches to your camp. It would be amusing and not really to my detriment.”

“…You know you are dick, right?” John wondered; “This way you toy with everyone around you? Not cool.”

“I told you earlier, once you get to this level, you will do the same,” Richard giggled. “If the amount of people that can actively oppose you is down to a few hundred, life gets a lot less fun.”

“Like you would know, you are an entity created with such vast power,” John pointed out.

“WRONG!” the voice of the Horned Rat made the whole barrier shake. “Don’t mistake godhood as a sign of being born into power. Nathalia should have told you, right? The way we achieve these forms, these powers.”

“Right… Legionnaire lifeform, consolidation to a singular being, tapping into godhood,” John said.

“That is the typical order yes, but sometimes it takes the rules and breaks them,” the Horned Rat said; “Not for me though, I was a ball of crows and rats and other animals you would attribute bad omens to. Then I started to construct myself out of their flesh, blood and bones.”

The Horned Rat rose from his seat, suit and the remaining human form expanding, skin and cloth tearing and revealing short black fur underneath that gleamed dully in the sunlight. The god was more than twice as tall as John in his true form, and he hunched over the Gamer imposingly.

“Want to experience sewing yourself together from your own corpses over dozens of years?” he asked, red flames flickering in his empty eye sockets. “The pain of a part of you dying? Feasting on your flesh to survive? Run from calamity to calamity to warn people and laugh at their inevitable failure to read the signs?” The Horned Rat’s giant hands hovered at each side of John, threatening to grab him and squash him in a single motion, “You think my powers to have come easily, John Newman, but I would break the world soul itself to get my claws on yours.”

John stared back unmoved by his little speech, “But you won’t get my powers no matter what you try.”

“Indeed I won’t,” the Horned Rat laughed and stretched like an old-man in the morning. “I am just making a point, John Newman: you assume me to be who I am by design, but I am the end-product of a chain of events. A person born by his circumstances, just like everyone else.”

“I know,” John grinned. “Which is why I taunted you into telling me your backstory.”

The Horned Rat froze in the motion and slowly lowered his hand. “Are you saying you tricked me?” he asked in a dangerous voice.

“I am saying I just learned something about you I didn’t previously know,” John shrugged. “Was it by design? Was it by accident? I will let you decide that.”

The Horned Rat’s massive body quaked with held back laughter, then he roared at the sky. “YES! That is the kind of behaviour I prophesied you would have!” he hissed in delight, and now it was John’s turn to hesitate. “See how fun it is to toy with people’s expectations?! Oh, the wonder of outsmarting this stupid world, to overpower those too slow to keep up. You will see it my way,” Richard continued.

“So now you are telling me that you schemed around me wanting to make you reveal something about you to give me an edge in the future so you could prove a point?” John asked.

“Welcome to the world of schemer’s, where everyone is constantly trying to one-up each other,” the Horned Rat raised a clawed hand at the sun and clenched his fist as if he could extinguish its light; “Time and opportunity will make one of us the winner eventually.”

“Sure,” John had enough of this intellectual dick measuring contest. For his part, he had achieved his goal. “Now, what is that information you have?” he therefore asked.

“Thana has met Alexej on her own, not too long ago,” the Horned Rat nonchalantly stated as he reached down to the box of dragon-kittens. A single claw of his giant hand scratched a kitten behind the ear, and the tiny thing started purring, “She is back at your mansion now.” John didn’t need to hear more to turn around and start running.

‘If that asshole did anything to Thana…’ John’s thoughts were already racing through a few dozen torture methods as his feet flew over the pavement and he was fidgeting with his phone. At the end of the day, just letting Siena loose on him would be the most efficient way to go about things.

All parts of himself were seething at the announcement, and he would have loved to punch the Horned Rat in the face for the delay in giving him that information. What did he stand to gain by putting more time in between then and now?

The answer to that question was shrouded in mystery, but that wasn’t the most important thing here. ‘I am going to cut him open if he harmed her in any way,’ Siena hissed, of all the elementals, her anger burned the brightest. ‘Those who exploit the weak should die.’

‘I am going to ignore the glaring hypocrisy of your shady ass and just agree with the cutting part,’ Salamander chimed in.

‘I, uhm… I will look the other way, okay?’ was all Gnome could add while Undine sent her personal siding with Siena.

‘Like anyone could harm Thana,’ Sylph chirped; ‘Girl is crazy fast, fast and crazy, super cray-cray speedy.’

‘Not physical harm, Sylph,’ John told her while getting a cab that would take him back to the shortcut to the mansion; ‘Mental harm, Thana is many things but not stable. The fact that she even runs around unsupervised is worrying. Aclysia, you are home, right?’

‘Yes, Master. I report that Thana seemed normal and that she is currently taking a shower,’ Aclysia said. ‘Will monitor for further development.’

John practically burst into the mostly empty mansion. Aclysia awaited him in the hallway. “Still showering?” he asked, stepping into the house with his dirt covered shoes. Aclysia didn’t complain about this stretch of the ground that was her charge getting dirty and just nodded.

He hasted through the hallway and to the bathroom. Then he stopped in front of the door and took a deep breath to control himself. He would need to handle this whole thing delicately or maybe it wasn’t as bad as the pretext made it out to be.

Maybe Thana had just went out and ran into Alexej? Unlikely, but the possibility was there. It was important that he kept his rage in check until he knew what exactly was going on. His Wisdom helped here immensely; the feeling was practically completely repressed as John kept his calm.

“Thana? You in there?” It was a rhetorical question, he just didn’t want to startle the blood mage. The only answer he got was the continuous sound of water hitting the floor of a shower. He reached for the handle and pushed down.

Thankfully, no one in this house was deeply concerned about their nakedness, otherwise John may have had to break open the door. Instead, the well-oiled door soundlessly swung inwards.

There she stood, fully clothed underneath the shower. It was already unusual to see her skip an opportunity to throw her clothes off, but the fact that she just stood there, staring at the showerhead and not reacting at all was concerning.

But maybe this was just another one of her weird sudden behaviour changes. Or she genuinely was too absent-minded to notice him. He knocked against the glass wall of the shower in an attempt to get her attention.

The middle joint of his index finger hit the dry glass twice. The nigh invisible wall between them separated them; John saw his own translucent reflection in the glass. It stared back with concern.

There still was no reaction, and concern became fear. There was no way this was normal. His heart beat in his chest as he ripped open the shower and reached out. His hand hit the endless stream of water, it was ice cold. “Thana!” he shouted and grabbed her by the shoulder.

Suddenly, as if that touch siphoned off all the energy in her body, the blood mage’s body lost all tension. She fell towards John like a simple sack of meat. He had not been expecting this; in a panicked move, he took a step forward to catch her, the water running over him. A moment later, he dragged her soaked body out of the cold water.

He sunk down to the floor with her. Her sickly pale skin now had a temperature that matched its looks. She was as cold as someone who had drowned in the open sea. He leaned against the wall and wrapped his arms around her to try and warm her up.

“The hell are you doing?!” John wanted to know as the cold seeped into his clothes from her drenched robe. He didn’t care for it, he could suffer a bit of discomfort as long as Thana just reacted to him, as long as she would be warm again.

He lost her once when he barely knew her, when her death had been a terrible tragedy. Now that he knew her, even if it had only been a few weeks so far, he could not bear to see her in this state. It was too much like the first time he saw her.

She finally spoke. Her words were sluggish, only slowly gaining clarity and speed as her body warmed up. “…I… I… wanted to… emulate the feeling of that tank…” her words caused them to share a moment of disbelieving terror; “What the FUCK was I doing?”

John could feel the body in his arms suddenly warm up as the blood mage used her powers. Her heart hammered against his chest as she pressed herself against him.

“Help me,” Thana pleaded, hands crumpling up the wet cloth of the black vest John was wearing. She looked up, the seven dots in her eyes still.

John looked back with surprise; Thana had never asked for help before. Not this blatantly, at least. There could only be one reason for why she would do so now. He no longer held back his wrath, a fire burning in his eyes as he asked, “What did he do?”

It had to be Alexej. The manipulative blond had to have his fingers in this whole catastrophe somehow. John would rip those fingers off if he got the chance; there was a limit for how much he would allow the guy to get away with.

Thana didn’t answer, instead her body temperature kept rising. Her eyes were unfocused and dulled by fear. John took her chin and kissed her. Her lips were uncomfortably hot; John’s body tried to warn him that he was intimately interacting with someone who was carrying a disease. These warnings were pushed aside, and John pulled back from the kiss to speak up.

“Listen to my voice, Thana,” he said; a remainder of the anger stayed in his voice as he tried to calm her panic. Her whole body quivered in his embrace, as if it was only now reacting to the cold it had fallen victim to earlier. “Listen to me,” John repeated. “Take a deep breath, you know me, I mean no harm.”

The blood mage took a rattling, shallow breath that left her body in a quick burst, leaving quicker than it entered. Nonetheless, this was a sign that she was at least listening.

“Good, again,” John encouraged despite her last breath being so ineffective. He could have just stabbed her, that had proven the quickest way to get Thana to calm down, but he didn’t want to reinforce a behaviour he already hated.

Hurting his girls was acceptable in combat training, not when he tried to save them from a panic attack. There had to be another thing she could try.

“Concentrate on my scent if that helps you, damn pervert,” John suggested, grasping at straws. Another breath, it was just as shallow. “Again, try relaxing your hands a bit,” John kept giving her orders and suggestions. The grip on his vest eased insignificantly, but it was still a change.

John kept talking, and over the process of many minutes, her breathing calmed, her body temperature sunk back down to normal levels and the panic ebbed away. Once she stopped quivering and took her first normal breath, John repeated his question, “What did he do?”

“What did who do?” Thana wondered.

“Alexej, or what else would you need help with?” John narrowed his brown eyes; “If he hurt you, I will murder that guy.”

“How do you know about that?” the blood mage asked.

“Horned Rat - don’t ask. Answer my question so I can decide whether or not I need to nuke someone,” John said with gritted teeth.

“That fucker tried to blackmail me,” Thana said after a moment’s pause; John’s knuckles went white in response. The Gamer was about ready to jump up and stomp off in search of the blond asshole. However, Thana kept him on the floor with her tight embrace.

“Calm your balls, you ragefest of a fuckwit, I took care of it,” she assured and started to give him a rundown of the events that had transpired; “He dug up everything he could about me and actually found some of Mengele’s notes, or at least some of the whore-hirer’s work’s copies. Had this whole situation set-up where he fed me a whole bunch of truths so I would believe him that the person laying in the bed was Eliza.”

“Slow down,” John said, halfway unable to believe what he was hearing; “He found out who Eliza was?”

“Yeah, that’s the name of my fucking sister,” Thana shrugged at what was a fairly big deal to John; “Also my name is Cecylia, but please don’t call me that.”

“Why not?” John’s rage was currently getting buried under mountains of confusion. “It feels wrong…” the blood mage struggled for an accurate description; “When I was about to fall for the lie, I remembered something: how Cecylia betrayed Eliza and sacrificed her to Mengele. She had her neck broken, and that was the end of her. That fucking bitch Cecylia, betraying her own sister in a heartbeat because she was different. I don’t give a flying fuck about whether or not I was such a snitch, I really don’t want to be her again. I don’t want that name, I don’t want my past if that’s what it is,” Thana looked at John- “I just want some sort of not sucking future with you and everyone else. I don’t need the same name, I don’t fucking want it.”

“I get that,” John said; “I have way smaller problems in my past than you do, but I get it…” he hesitated; for a moment, they were just two weirdos soaked in cold water on the bathroom floor. Then he asked, “And then?”

“Then I beat his stupid ass up and went here, went home,” Thana said, “but… I think I may have exchanged one mental disfunction for another, and it really fucking sucks.”

“Is that what you want help with?” John probed; that sounded way more acceptable, he was already used to having to deal with Thana’s various disorders. Whether it was one or the other wasn’t important, just as long as she was still there.

“Yes…” the blood mage took a deep breath before kissing him. “The faces are gone, but now I see memories bubble up. I don’t want that shit, but it’s a constant… pressure against my head. It’s just a small annoyance, but I don’t think it will stay that way. These memories will just keep tearing my thoughts up.” She made a self-deprecating smile. “The world just fucking hates seeing me happy, so now it wants to make me that miserable bitch Cecylia. So, I want you to try and help me with staying who I am,” Thana pleaded. “Don’t let me become a person all of you hate even more than you hate me already.”

“We don’t hate you,” John whispered, brushing back a strand of hair that clung to the side of her face; “Sure, you are an annoying oddball at times and your swearing can be overbearing, but nobody is perfect.”

“Yes, yes, I fucking know,” Thana giggled. “Don’t take me too seriously, go suck Aclysia’s clit, you overly earnest 2D girl addict.”

“…I am not big into anime…” John mumbled but then grinned. “Good, so we just move on from the Eliza question to making sure you aren’t overtaken by some past version of yourself, right?”

“Yes, promise me that you will help me stay myself,” Thana said; despite her reprimand just now, she was the one who was sounding completely serious.

“I will do whatever is in my power to make sure you will be whoever you want to be until the end of your days,” John swore; the fact that Thana had made that request without cursing meant that she must have been pretty shaken at the idea. John kissed her again, he hated the idea as well. “And now we should dry up, go downstairs and eat. Make some happy memories about the current time so that the ones from back then will just seem like an obscure dream of another life.”

“Sounds perfect, you gigolo-maniac sex-addict,” Thana grinned and rose from him.

John forcefully relaxed his clenched fist.

‘I will make you suffer next time I get the opportunity, Alexej,’ he thought.