Chapter 19: Chapter 18
"I'm so sorry, goshujinsama," Julia said, lowering her head into an over the top kowtow. I just ignored it, despite the way that Cass's faint blush suggested Julia was thinking about sex. Noriko curled into me, holding herself against me, her cheek pressing into my chest as if she could get safer if she somehow fused with me.
I gave Noriko a gentle pat on the head, then turned my gaze down to Julia. "It's not your fault," I said. It had taken no time at all to discover who Goro was in this world. He wasn't just an adventurer - he was a Level 5. Thus, it hadn't taken long at all for Julia and Cass to identify the seven foot adventurer. He was also a member of the Hephaistos familia, and if Julia's metaknowledge was correct - and thus far, it had been - Hephaistos wasn't some kind of nasty villain who needed to be taken care of. And if my metaknowledge of Goro was correct, the only way he'd stay out of the way was a mix of violence, overwhelming social power, and luck - and we only really had the last one, and not too much.
"He's telling the truth, Prettiest Princess," Erza said. "Indeed, what you have discovered is invaluable, since it may let us protect Noriko. You did not make this Goro fiend become who he is."
"It is possible that he isn't such a bad guy here," I said, though I didn't really believe it. Julia's parents had been pretty much the same, other than her father still being alive. Still, Goro in the original setting hadn't been some exceptional figure. He'd been a muscular titan of a guy, sure, but he had some boring normal job I couldn't remember. I would assume he was a salaryman. Maybe things weren't as bad as they seemed? Or maybe that was just the logic - Goro was about as strong as a guy came, back in his original story, so he was about as strong as a person came here, where that was much, much stronger. Still, I didn't know he was a bad guy in this universe.
Using Auspicious Prospects, I couldn't actually test his marriage to Setsuko or his parentage of Noriko - those already existed, so the threads of fate weren't so easy to discern. But I could test a few other theoretical arrangements. "Goro and Haruhime, heads it's a happy marriage, tails it's a bad one." Tails. Not nice to the nice foxgirl, then, even though in personality she's rather similar to Setsuko. "Goro and Julia." Tails. Bad enough even the masosub doesn't like it.
"You cannot be earnestly thinking of abandoning The Prettiest Princess to some other man?" Erza asked me. "She is my co-wife!"
"I'm not thinking about that," I reassured Erza. "I'm just trying to get a feel for his character. Who's the easiest girl to satisfy in this universe?" I asked Julia.
She paused for a moment, frowning. "Probably an Amazon. I think Lena, since she gets kicked around a bit by Bete and just thinks she's getting pregnant."
"Goro and Lena," I said. It was, once again, tails. So, it seemed like he was just a shithead no matter who he married. I guess maybe he could have just been that loyal to Setsuko - but I really fucking doubted it. "Bete like the guy with the wolf ears who huffs about everything?"
"That's the one! He fights her and offhandedly defeats her, then she falls in love with him and cutely tries to mend his broken heart with cuddles and stripping and having fun sexy times while he's asleep. He keeps kicking her away."
"That sounds like attempted rape, Bitch."
"Ehhhh..." Julia replied. "I suppose, technically, goshujinsama. But in a nice, sweet way," she adds.
"There is no nice, sweet way to attempt to rape someone," Erza chided, making Julia duck her head, showing some small degree of shame. "No matter what you may have read in various smutty texts!" Erza began to pretty much monologue about how sex was something that should be shared with those you cared about, Julia politely listened even though she was a complete sex freak, you get the idea.
The whole discussion reminded me of something else, though. "Haruhime wasn't a virgin," I told Julia, making her blink. "I didn't think of it at the time, but she mentioned that the sex felt just like regular sex."
"I am afraid I do not understand the significance of this - also, when will I be meeting this Haruhime?" Erza asked.
"Oh, huh. You haven't, have you? I guess you can come by whenever." I doubted there would be any threesomes with the pair, though of all my wives I suspected Haruhime would have the easiest time in a threesome with Erza. "I go there in the evenings."
"Goshujinsama!" Julia's voice had a spark of insight into it, the word coming out almost like 'eureka!' "Put Cass and Goro! If it's just a personality problem, Cass could be nice to anybody!"
"Sure. Goro and Cass." Another tails. "Right. Let's assume that we have an angry, abusive, piece of shit Level Five who is Noriko's dad. What should we do?"
"We should protect Noriko from him," Erza declared. "We must be ready to defeat him on the field of battle and show him the error of his ways!" The fact that Erza was from a shonen world where beating people up was enough to convince them to stop being evil felt particularly salient at that point - but Goro, in his original work, was just a piece of shit who mistreated his wife and daughter because he thought he could get away with it. There wasn't some deep trauma there.
"He's a Level Five," I pointed out. "You're about as strong as Ryu, right?"
"Yes," Erza agreed immediately. "Ryu is an incredible fighter."
"Bitch?" I prompted Julia.
"Ah, the difference between levels is enormous, Erza," Julia explained. "Characters just one level ahead almost universally defeat characters below them, without some trump card-" my thoughts suddenly ran to Haruhime, if it did come down to a fight, "-and the rest of us are even weaker than you."
"Then we will have to get stronger!" Erza declared. "We'll venture into the Dungeon every day until we are strong enough to protect you, Noriko," she told Noriko, eyes flashing with energy.
It was good as the start of a plan; unfortunately, there wasn't much else we could do, to add onto that. I did wind up going to visit Haruhime with a variety of hopes for some potential benefit.
* * *
Haruhime always had this sort of melancholic vibe to her, and that wasn't any different today, as I sat across from her. She sipped at her tea, and I spent a while telling her about Konstantin Rokossovsky. I had found that she also enjoyed the more ambiguous heroic stories, like that one - the upright officer captured, falsely accused, brutally tortured. He had metal teeth, because many of his actual teeth had been knocked out by NKVD interrogators; and he underwent a false execution twice, before his release. He went on to serve as a Marshal of the Soviet Union and provide critical parts in the planning and execution of Operation Bagration, one of the most decisive Red Army successes of WW2.
"That's... quite the tragic story," Haruhime said, as I finished it. "Why do you think he served a country that had so mistreated him?" She asked.
"Well, the alternative was letting the Nazis murder all his countrymen," I pointed out, but I didn't really think that sufficed - he'd served after the war, too. Including killing a bunch of Polish protestors in 1956, though the story hadn't quite gotten to that point. "But I don't think that's why he did it. The Soviet Union was more than just a country, it was an idea, and an idea is still the same no matter what the people who are asked to fulfill or protect it do."
"Perhaps..." Haruhime said. "But shouldn't one question whether... people, are good enough for the idea, in a circumstance like that?"
"That's an interesting question," I told her. "My answer would be - maybe they should, but I don't think people do. Back where I come from, there's a construct called the Five Factor model of personality, and an individual's measurements on it are extremely resistant to change. If you're high in extraversion in one test, you're likely to remain such for the rest of your life. One of the factors measured is Agreeableness, and one of the sub-factors of that is Trust - how benevolent you believe most people's intentions to be. Are people generally honest, or generally selfish? People often portray that kind of trust as... experiential, or philosophical. You come to a conclusion based on evidence. But for the most part, you just have picked one of those two: people are basically good, or they are basically bad. Evidence doesn't matter."
"I see..." Haruhime said, though I got the impression she didn't.
"Outside this familia, outside your clients - heck, outside Orario," I said. "Do you think a normal person is trying to be good, or if they're selfish and devious? And would your answer have been the same before you came here?" I knew she hadn't been born here, both from her own words and from bits and pieces of her backstory that Julia had picked up. If I ever found the scumbag who sold her, he had better hope he was a high level adventurer that I couldn't do anything to, because otherwise...
"I think..." Haruhime paused, glancing out the window. "I think... people are mostly... trying to do good," she admitted. She let out a small laugh. "I suppose that is unbefitting one such as myself."
"I don't think it's unbefitting you at all," I told her. She blushed faintly at that, focusing on her tea as she sipped it - she was a sweet, shy girl, getting compliments always having that sort of effect on her. Her sincerity and innocence made me feel like I was taking advantage of her. If Noriko hadn't been on the line, I wouldn't have pushed at all, but she was. "I have a confession to make," I told her, and her eyes flicked up to mine, somewhat curious. "I have a sort of supernatural power, revolving around love." Being a Chosen of Serenity, and the entire waifu-summoning thing. She furrowed her brow in curiosity at that. "If... if you love me, it would be really helpful if you said as much."
Haruhime let out a small laugh at that, though it carried a trace of melancholy to it. "You are not the first man to wish to hear sweet nothings from my lips, goshujinsama. I love you." I didn't even have to check to know that it had done nothing, but I did anyway.
"Sorry," I said, feeling deeply awkward about the whole situation. "Forget it."
"Consider it forgotten, goshujinsama."
I looked at the door to her room; the door to the small adjoining room we actually used for sex proper. I had an idea, and it might build up the intimacy I so dearly needed, but... I would definitely have to shut it off if anybody interrupted us. "Do you want to try something new, sexually?"
"I must admit I have not had good experiences with men trying new techniques," she told me, with a melancholic smile. "But I also do not have good experiences with other men, so perhaps yours is special."
"It is. It's a technique to... make me appear incredibly beautiful," I explained. Her nose scrunched up just a bit in confusion at the whole idea, her ears shifting in a subtle way. "Not like a woman, or like a man, but- just, unbelievably supernaturally beautiful. Move you to tears beautiful. Make people unwilling to do anything to hurt you, beautiful."
"More beautiful than Ishtar?"
It was my turn to scrunch up my nose, this time in disgust. Haruhime let out a petite little laugh at the show of emotion from me. "I think so. At least as beautiful, when she uses Charm magic."
"I see. I would like to see it," she told me, with a smile. "I think if you had been..." she trailed off, as if she didn't want to complete the thought - I let it go, and took a moment to wrap myself in thread of fate that gives rise to lust and desire. Her eyes widened, her whole body stilling, her hand on her teacup becoming so stiff that I worried she'd drop it. I gingerly took it from her hands, placing it to one side. "What do you see?" I asked.
Her eyes blinked, a bit of tears leaking out the sides as she wetly swallowed what had gathered in her throat. "My lost virtue," she admitted, in a small voice.
"You haven't lost any such thing," I told her. I knew what she meant, knew those words wouldn't help, but I said them anyway. What Haruhime lost, I really couldn't give her back - and I suppose those were the things that people most desperately wanted, what they couldn't have. Noriko's own vision was similarly unattainable, though rather more anthropomorphic. In any case, I leaned forward, finding Haruhime's lips with mine. I gently hefted her up, superhuman strength making carrying her into the room she used for sex a trivial task. I closed the door behind us, and broke off the kiss.
It was actually my first time being on top with her - I normally let her take the leading role. "Do you mind if I'm on top?" I asked, and she hurriedly, desperately shook her head no. I pushed up her kimono, revealing her slender thighs, then her full butt. She was wearing a simple pair of panties, and I peeled those away, finding them a bit sticky. Normally, she wouldn't be this wet early in the sex. I leaned over her, finding her lips again, mashing my mouth against hers, my tongue invading her mouth. I reached down, releasing my cock, our breaths heavy and loud, the only thing either of us could hear as I rubbed my dick against her wet slit.
I broke off the kiss for just a moment. Her expression was one of genuine, transcendent joy, tears in the corners of her eyes, an awestruck smile on her lips. "Please," she breathed out, the words coming out like a warbling, soft thing, as if afraid that just asking the question would break the spell or result in her rejection.
I slid inside her at that point. She gasped at the feeling, and she was definitely not just wetter now - she was more sensitive too. I placed my hands on either side of her body, helping to balance me as I leaned down to kiss her anew, this time focusing on her neck, softly, lovingly leaving marks there. Her own hands fumbled with her clothes, undoing the belt, worming her way out from her kimono. Her luscious breasts were soon revealed to open air, and I kissed down her exposed flesh to them, just gently pecking the full, round things. As they pressed down against her body from gravity, they seemed subtly smaller than they had when she was on top, but it didn't matter. They were still beautiful.
As my lips found one of her nipples, just gingerly kissing the perky pink thing, she came. Her whole body spasmed in ecstasy, her mouth stretching wide as she came. Her sex squeezed down on my cock, gripping me as she moaned wildly into my mouth. Her hands came up to my back, sliding along my bare skin with a level of interest she didn't normally show. It wasn't some frenetic, clawing thing, either, just a sweet, touching thing, fingertips sliding across bare flesh, unwilling to do even the slightest harm to me.
I kissed my way up her neck, making her squirm in pleasure beneath me, and I could hear the thump-thump of her tail wagging back and forth as I let my lips meet hers. Occasionally, it would wind up brushing against my calves and knees for just a moment, as I took her, and each little brush of that soft, luxurious fur made me throb inside her, made my lips get all the more eager, tongue slithering all around in her mouth. She took it with joy in every moment, her whole being twitching, jerking in pleasure, as another orgasm hit her, her legs wrapping taut around my waist.
My pace began luxurious and slow, methodical thrusts that made her squirm beneath me in pleasure and desire. The feeling of her hands, groping, caressing, squeezing - was intense, and intensely desirable. Her breasts would push into my chest, as her back would arch with pleasure. She would come frequently, every orgasm filled with intense emotion. Her kisses were frenetic when my lips met hers, meek and desperate when they weren't, that ever-present fear of offending me always there.
"It's alright," I'd soothingly whisper to her. "It's really alright. Don't worry," I told her, and she let out soft noises that eventually seemed to acquiesce to my demands, her body losing that desperation to please and instead simply basking in the pleasure I was lavishing on her.
Every thrust, every pump of my hips - it was an exquisite thing, my whole length vanishing inside her as she took it with ecstasy. My pace increased slowly, methodically, but it did increase, until I was pumping away, her lovely breasts bouncing with each thrust. Her eyes never closed; she never let herself simply drift off in pleasure. Rather, her focus remained eternally on me, eyes drinking in my body - or whatever her senses were allowing her to perceive - with naked lust, desire, even love.
Eventually, I came inside her, groaning as I simply buried myself and found sweet release. She shuddered at the feeling, goosebumps running across pale skin, her cheeks a lovely shade of pink as she looked up at me with half-lidded eyes. Once I was spent, I started to withdraw - and her legs locked around my waist.
She was Level One, and I was Level Two. Beyond even that, she couldn't really bring herself to deny or harm me. I could easily have pulled out, but I chose not to, smiling warmly down at her before kissing her on the lips and beginning to fuck her again. Her hands clung to me desperately, lovingly, as I fucked her, and occasionally, when I was kissing her neck or her breasts, she'd offer some desperate, effusive praise - mostly just increasingly intense repetitions of the words "Thank you."
By the time she was completely exhausted, I'd come inside her seven times, and completely lost track of how many times she had orgasmed. I just gingerly laid a blanket over her sweaty, half-asleep body, and gathered my clothes back up before dismissing You and Yours Stance. I waited by her side, for her to recover enough to send me on my way - it felt wrong to just leave her like that.
"Thank you, goshujinsama," she told me. There was a moment's hesitation. "Thank you so much. And... if it will truly help you, then I love you." There was more emotion in it this time, but once again, it hadn't done anything.
"You don't," I told her, leaning down to kiss her forehead. "I understand. I haven't done anything for you, really." There was this look on her face like she wanted to argue, and I put a finger against her lips. "I will do more for you, in the future," I promised her, really meaning it, and she let the words go without argument.
I felt, even then, like a con man. I couldn't save Haruhime, but I was making all these promises - I'd just have to make good on them.
* * *
The main thing we wound up doing - that we weren't doing before, like training in the Dungeon - was keeping Noriko in the Manor. She didn't mind. She wasn't the kind of girl that minded being a bit of a homebody, and I made sure she had books to read. There were even some chess sets, so she got to try that out. When we went to the Dungeon, she wore a hooded cloak and face mask to keep her identity obscured, and headed in with the rest of us.
Despite the way that Noriko could roll with most anything and didn't seem overly put out by all these things, I did feel bad about putting her through it; I decided to make it up to her. I'd had my other wives leave our bedroom (and locked the door to keep out Loki - she'd become a bit of a sex pest ever since I'd first used You and Yours Stance on her), and it was just me and Noriko. I gave her lips a soft kiss, then I wrapped myself in the raw substance of desire. Her eyelashes fluttered at the sight of me like that.
I stripped her naked beneath me, revealing that lovely porcelain skin. I gave gentle pecks to every inch that I could she, and she let out soft pants as my lips slid along her slim arms. "I love you, Papa," she said, her voice soft and gentle.
"I love you too, sweetie," I told her, as I kissed at her neck - and she promptly came, her whole body jerking, her cherry-strawberry juices splashing onto the bed as she orgasmed. I guessed I should have predicted it, the same ability had put Haruhime on an easy course to orgasm, and Noriko was already basically guaranteed to experience multiple orgasms during sex, thanks to the hypersensitivity of Hentalians. I shifted my body above her, teasing my cock at her sex, and just slid inside. She let out a hot little pant at that, her cheeks already having started to turn into that very cute pink of hers. "Daddy will take care of you," I tried, and her pussy gripped and squeezed my cock, spasming with desire as it did its level best to lock me inside her.
Her hands reached up for me, wrapping around me, pulling herself up; her perky nipples scraped against my bare chest as her lips found my neck. She didn't kiss me, just nuzzled her cheek against me, making a soft noise of pleasure. My hands wrapped around her; it was easy to manhandle her into a different position, half-kneeling on the bed, her torso still pressed into mine as I held her in place, my cock throbbing as I began to gently thrust in and out of her in that position. "Thank you," she whispered to me. "I love you so much, Papa," she said, squeezing me tighter and with sudden intensity. "I'm so lucky to have a loving father such as yourself, Papa."
"You are," I told her, playing into her fantasy as I fucked into her. "I promise, sweetie, I'll do everything I can to protect you." She came at that point, softly mewling into my ear as she did so, her cherry-strawberry juices spraying out against my pelvis. I just kept going, softly pumping her petite body up and down my dick. She'd been easy to manhandle when I had been Level One; now that I was Level Two, it was even simpler, that sweet seductive sex of hers lovingly caressing every last inch of my cock.
"Thank you, Papa," she said, her voice seeming already out of breath, even though we'd barely been fucking for a minute and she had only come twice. "Do you want your beloved daughter to do anything?"
"Just to enjoy herself," I told her. "If you want to try a different position, I'll do it," I told her.
"I see. In that case, please lay my body out on the bed, but hold yourself perpendicular to the mattress," she told me, and I immediately did so. Her eyes roamed my body, though I knew she wasn't seeing me. She wasn't even literally seeing some alternate universe father; she was seeing the idea, the concept, the heartfelt dream and all the feelings associated with it. "Now," she said, raising her hands up, splaying her fingers expectantly. "Please hold my hands, Papa," she told me, and I reached forward and did exactly that, lacing my fingers together with hers. "I love you, Papa. Please, fuck me hard, as I orgasm more frequently that way."
I immediately followed that order, too, beginning to pound inside her, making her petite body bounce on the bed, the mattress squeaking frantically with every thrust. "I love you, Noriko, sweetie," I told her, resisting the urge to lean down and kiss her, instead just letting her enjoy looking up at my body. Her eyes roamed freely, and I could see tears start to form in the corners - it encouraged me to go harder, faster. "Since the moment you were born, I've loved you, I've wanted to you to be happy, and I'll do anything to accomplish that." Her pussy squeezed and gripped my dick, then she promptly came anew, writhing in ecstasy beneath me as her juices sprayed all across my bare flesh.
When she came down, she spoke again. "You will spoil me," she stated, like it was an order instead of a prediction, and I just nodded in agreement. "You will take very good care of me, and have sex with me whenever I want, since we have an incestuous father-daughter relationship." Again, I nodded my head readily, even intensifying my pace inside her, and her pussy started to tighten with a rapidly approaching orgasm. "You will, never, ever, hurt, me," she got out, before coming hard, her head casting back as a pink flush stretched down from her neck to her petite breasts.
"I won't, sweetie," I told her. "I love you. I'll never hurt you." She wiggled on my dick that bit more enthusiastically at those words, and I just kept going at it, ramming away at her tight sex as we exchanged those sorts of sweet nothings.
The longer the sex went on, the more demands she made of me, and the more absurd they got. It was as if she was looking for something I wouldn't agree to, like she was testing the boundaries of our relationship, but I went along with everything. Eating her out. Making her breakfast in bed. Giving her foot massages. Washing her clothes for her. Handfeeding her meals.
More saccharine than that failing attempt to make me reject her, though, was the demand that came when I finally started to come inside her for the first time. She had orgasmed, and that milking sensation drew me over the edge as her own orgasm finished, meaning I was gushing into her gently-spasming sex, no sympathetic orgasm quite overtaking her. Instead, she just panted, staring up at me lewdly. "Love my mother very much, and treat her kindly."
As my own orgasm finished, I caught my breath and nodded. "Of course, sweetie. I've loved your mother for as long as I've known her. I'd never do anything to hurt her." Her legs wrapped around my hips, and we went back to fucking without her needing to say another word.
By the end of things, she'd come over a hundred times, probably more like two hundred; I came inside her seven times total. When I laid down on the bed next to her, I gently stroked her back. "Do you want me to keep up the effect?" I asked her.
She responded by curling into my side, placing her cheek against my bare chest, and closing her eyes. "You may turn it off, as long as you do not move or force me to open my eyes for at least one hour of father-daughter cuddling," she said. "Also, please do not speak, as you sound different when you are like this."
I smiled and patted her head. "Okay, Noriko. I love you," I said, and ended the Charm. She kept her eyes closed for significantly longer than the planned hour, mostly because she fell asleep after a half hour.
* * *
It had barely been a week when it happened. The five of us were headed to the Dungeon, when we spotted Goro. Noriko ducked her head, still wearing her mask; Cass and Julia both shifted in ways that suggested they were ready for a fight; and Erza obliviously walked alongside us, not even seeming to realize anything was amiss.
I tapped her side with the back of my head, jerking my head in the man's direction. "Don't do anything, but that's Goro," I told her. Her expression darkened, but she nodded quietly.
I turned the group of us away from him, not accelerating too much to try to avoid attracting attention. Noriko's fingers tightened on my forearm; if I hadn't been higher Level than her, they might have drawn blood, with the way her nails bit into my skin. Cass and Julia's feet seemed to become dead silent, but while Erza's armored movement was quiet, each little clack of metal against metal, not much louder than a coke can rolling along the pavement, seemed to echo in my ears. I adjusted how I held my arms to try to quiet the noise I was making.
I felt it as a quiet pang from behind me, the sense that somebody was about to grab my shoulder - a heartbeat later, I was turning to get a view of them, seeing that, yes, it was Goro. His eyes were vicious as our gazes met for just a fraction of a second before he tried to snap out for my neck, his hand curved into a grip that was intended to wring my neck. Even that movement, too, was the briefest thing, only my preternatural awareness of causality letting me evade that effect, as well. I had to dip deeper and more thoroughly into my pool of Essence than I ever had before, and I could feel the sapphire glow that encapsulated me. I was definitely drawing way too much attention.
When you're in a dangerous situation like that, time slows down, but your priorities also shift. People think that panic makes people irrational - but I think that it normally makes people extremely rational, just hyperfocused on exactly one thing, survival. Your behavior warps and shifts because you so desperately need to live that any other concern you might have - being polite, concern for other people, property rights, whatever else - is instantly burst down and through in a way that nothing else really can manage.
Cass, Erza, Julia - they could take care of themselves fair enough. I wasn't sure on Cass, but I didn't have time to grab her, and I didn't want me and Noriko to die because I wasted time trying to do that. I just shifted my grip on Noriko and jumped into the air, my feet landing on a strand of fate that was at around head height, and which rapidly rose into the air as well as leading away from the site. My anima bloomed even brighter, and Noriko was dangling by my arm; I hefted her up to keep her out of Goro's reach. I turned my head over my shoulder as I started to run, hard, away from him, and he seemed only momentarily at a loss for what to do, before beginning to barrel after me; Erza body blocked him, and he slammed into her with great force, sending her tumbling off to one side, which was definitely extremely concerning to me, given that I had already burned quite a bit of energy getting where I was, and he was clearly still coming at me.
I just fucking ran, putting everything I had into getting away, having to trust Erza and Julia and Cass to take care of themselves. It may sound cowardly, but in my defense, I was also clearly Goro's target. He hadn't tried to wring Erza's neck even when she'd gotten in his way. In fairness, I was fucking his daughter in a polygamous marriage. But fairness didn't matter at that moment, only survival did.
Noriko clung tightly to my chest as I held her against me, going up and away, looking for any good sites to try to escape Goro's wrath. I knew I looked like a bright blue star in the day sky, so I had no fucking clue how to get far enough away to actually be safe, and I couldn't just dip down somewhere and hope to evade him. I remembered, vaguely, that it would take the better part of an hour for my anima to quiet - my thoughts quickly turned to safe locations, where even if he knew where I was, he couldn't do anything. The only place I could think of was the Twilight Manor, so I turned that way with Noriko still clasped to my chest. My sparing glances didn't reveal his location, with how high I was in the air. With how much of my reserves I'd burned - probably half, in just those few frantic seconds - if he came at me again, I would have to attempt to use You and Yours Stance in public to keep him from killing me. I did my best to keep away from him.
* * *
The girl without a name tried to take a shot at Goro, aiming for the space between his neck and his skull with her anti-material rifle, and the snap-shot struck true, but her worst fears were confirmed as it didn't seem to do much of anything to his Level Five body. He didn't even jerk or respond with pain. Drake was getting away, a brilliant blue silhouette against the blue sky, still quite visible, and Goro looked to be wanting to find something to throw at him, or else considering just a straight up leap at him.
"Goro!" She called out, loudly. When he didn't immediately respond, she resorted to one of her most refined skills: annoying people. "I eat Noriko's pussy every day! It tastes like strawb-"
His movements towards her at that moment were a powerful, animalistic lunge, his fingers wrapping around her neck before she could do much of anything else. His fingers were in a loose grip, enough to block her airways but not enough to simply crush her neck into nothingness. He glared up at her as he held her like that. "Where's he going?"
She didn't answer his question, making useless choking noises. In her hand, she kept a firm grip on the anti-material rifle, twisting it up towards Goro's head and angling it at his eyeballs. The shot went off, the loud ringing filling the air, but he just tilted his head to one side at the last second, and the bullet ricocheted off of his forehead, going directly into her stomach. She considered herself lucky - it was only a small investment of 'Essence' to let the wound do nothing permanent, even as it bounced around inside her stomach. Given that they were in a fairly crowded city street, somebody could die if she kept shooting Goro and any more shots glanced off him.
So, instead, she pointed her gun at the ground and shot over and over again. "Tell me where that fucker is going," Goro told her, his fingers tightening on her throat enough that, if she didn't burn yet more Essence, she would probably have been rendered unable to speak anyway due to her airways being crushed. So she did exactly that, and his grip just kept tightening on her throat, a sprinkle of blood escaping where her skin was pierced, wetting the skin of his hands. It was inappropriate, but she was getting wet from the treatment - Drake never choked her like this, and she felt a bit bad for enjoying something with another man that she hadn't first enjoyed with Drake, even if she knew Drake wouldn't blame her for it.
Her choking was interrupted as Erza seemed to flash into place behind Goro, bringing down two swords on his neck, but he twisted his whole body downward, hefting and turning the nameless girl around, so that her limp body was caught between Erza and him. The swords didn't actually cut into her flesh, but it did prevent Erza from attacking Goro easily. He did, at least, release her throat just a little. "I don't care about you or your friends, my daughter was kidnapped from my home and brainwashed into fucking that man. Tell me where he is or this bitch dies."
The nameless girl raised her free hand as she concentrated to refill her firearm, unloading another magazine into the ground, the resounding noise filling the air. With her free hand, she gave him a signal that, fortunately, was much the same in Orario as it was back in San Francisco: she flipped him off. His fingers tightened on her throat enough to completely crush her neck, a plume of blood spraying out across the ground, so he certainly had anger issues when he didn't get what he wanted. He let her ripped-open throat go, sending her tumbling to the ground; she pretended to be a puppet with the strings cut, mimicking the unblinking faces of the people she'd killed.
Her only real annoyance was that the position made it hard to keep shooting without getting back up. She couldn't fire into the air - bullets falling from being fired upwards still had quite a lot of momentum behind them, enough to injure or even kill - and firing into the ground was sort of difficult.
Fortunately, a moment later, there was a roar of movement, and Bete smashed his fist into Goro's side, forcing the titan to refocus his attention on him. Erza stood behind him, wary but ready.
* * *
Bete was fucking pissed at this jackass just killing his familia members in the middle of the street. "What the fuck do you think you're doing?" He asked the man. Goro had always been calm in the past. If the psycho bitch had provoked him somehow... he spared a glance over at the woman in question, whose throat appeared to be torn out. He let out a derisive snort as her dead eyes met his for a moment, as if to remind her cooling corpse that he didn't give a fuck about her. "Hnn. So the familia's been culled of another weakling," he said. She flipped him off, and he let out a "Tch." Apparently she wasn't quite as dead as she looked. He turned his attention back to Goro. He'd been hoping the man would try to attack him while he'd been 'distracted,' but it seemed he had no such luck. "Does the Hephaistos familia want to get in a fight with the Loki familia? Because attacking and killing our members in broad daylight is going to get you one even if you don't want it."
"My daughter, Noriko," he said. He recognized the name as one of Drake's wives, and he was just ticked that this was some bullshit daddy issues crap. In the eyes of the law it might even be justified, which meant he couldn't just kill this prick. "She," he said, with a gesture to the dumb bitch who'd gotten her throat ripped out, "claimed to have relations with her."
So she had been provoking him. "That doesn't really sound like it earns a summary execution," he said, feigning calm but keeping the pressure on. All Goro had to do was attack him and he'd be justified in beating this motherfucker down.
"It does, when she's been kidnapped, apparently by your familia, and forced to marry someone."
"Maybe you could try talking to people instead of killing them." He'd never known Goro to be like this. Maybe he could twist the knife, or at least convince the guy to fuck off now so he didn't have to look at him. "I don't think he kidnapped your daughter. He spoils the little brat. Maybe she just ran away with him."
"Even if she did, Noriko should be part of the Hephaistos familia, like me and her mother."
Goro was keeping to the legalistic arguments. Bete suppressed an annoyed sigh. He probably couldn't just fight this guy. Who know who'd win if they went head to head, but the Hephaistos familia was an important familia, and Finn wouldn't want him to start a fucking blood feud, so he had to swallow his anger. "Again, our goddesses could discuss this matter, if you didn't open up with murder. Now there will have to be some kind of blood money for the bitch, unless you want a war."
"She also defiled my daughter, so I hope she's burning in hell right now. Now bring me that boy."
"No," Bete said. Was Goro trying to piss him off? Obviously he wasn't going to do that.
That seemed to actually tick Goro off, so maybe the prick genuinely thought that shit might happen. For a moment, he shifted his body language, as if readying himself to attack, and Bete silently coiled his muscles in preparation, inwardly smiling at the opportunity - but after a couple seconds, Goro simply straightened up, appearing to decide that violence wasn't the answer. Too bad. "Fine. What level was she?"
"Two," Bete said. "She was a record holder, too. Black Agony. Expensive." Real fucking expensive. Normal price on a Level Two was, what? Four million valis? It had been a while, but with her status, he'd be paying even more than that.
"I'll bring an appropriate blood price for her." He barely even reacted, but he had to know he'd be paying more than ten million valis. Looked like hitting the pockets wasn't enough to tick him off. "Then, your familia will return my daughter to me."
"She's only been a part of our familia for about three months. Couldn't join Hephaistos if she wanted to. Doubt she does, either, given that she's twenty without a falna."
"She's sixteen," Goro corrected.
"Huh." That was strange. "She says twenty." Loki had to have known, you couldn't lie about your age to a goddess. "Anyway, that's really a decision for Finn to make, not me. So fuck off." He didn't want to look at this prick any longer. "Thanks to you, I've got a corpse to dispose of."
Goro paused, looked up at the sky for a moment, then shook his head and walked away. Bete wanted to just kick him in the back, but sometimes you had to swallow your anger.
* * *
Once Goro was well and truly out of sight, the nameless girl rose to her feet. "That was so amazing, Bete," she said. "If goshujinsama agrees, I'll reward you with lots of blowjobs for your tiny cock-" he promptly bonked her on the top of her head, sharply, one fist coming down hard enough to hurt but not enough to do permanent damage.
"The fuck're you doing up? Your throat was ripped out."
"Ahh, it only looked that way, Bete," she lied. He just gave her a glare. She ran her fingers across her blood-slick throat, stretching her neck this way and that. As she'd lied there, the cosmetic damage had healed itself, so now her throat was fine.
"Whatever. Not my problem. Go back to the fucking Manor, your husband's wet dick may have just caused a war with the Hephaistos familia."
"It would actually be because Goro is-"
"Go," he repeated.
"No, he isn't Go, he's Goro. As I was saying-"
"Get the fuck out of here you annoying bitch."
"I will! Let me finish my thought first!" This was fun. Bete had no ability to control his temper, which made him one of the funnest people to tweak.
"No! Go fucking home, that's an order as your superior!"
"The Prettiest Princess," Erza said, reminding her that they weren't alone. "Let us return to the manor. We will be safer there. I'm glad you weren't injured as grievously as it first appeared," she added.
The nameless girl let out a long sigh. "Ah... fine, Erza," she agreed. "Hopefully goshujinsama headed back there too, I'm wet from having my throat torn out."
"Yes, you are very slick with blood," Erza agreed.
The nameless girl decided not to correct her.
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