Collide Gamer

Chapter 186 – A fluffy Monday 6 – Cuddles and Pets

Unsurprisingly, the origin of the sound was Rave’s shenanigans. One could take a thousand different situations and in none of them would Aclysia treat the tools in her kitchen as playthings that could come to harm.

The cause of the rattling was a pan-shaped sieve that Rave let rotate on the kitchen counter. Like a coin falling and then slowly coming to a halt, the sieve’s looser parts rattled while the whole thing kept circling. Rave stared at the thing with rapt attention, while it slowly moved towards the edge of the counter.

Her left ear turned towards John when he entered. Her head soon followed. “Ther’ya’re!” Rave slurred and instantly forgot about the sieve to throw herself at John. This time, he was prepared, so he caught her with some grace.

“Carry me!” Rave demanded. John hesitated for a moment to look over at Aclysia, who was cutting some vegetables and arranging them on a plate. Nonchalantly, she extended one hand to the side, just as the sieve dropped. Once it was back on the counter, quiet approval hummed through the maid’s mental connection.

John therefore swung his girlfriend’s legs onto his arm and carried her away from the kitchen, princess style. ‘Hurray for raising Strength,’ he thought, remembering times when this would have been impossible or at least incredibly taxing for him. Now, he could not only carry her like she wanted but do so without shaky legs. He was curious, though, how effective exactly was this new ability?

Pretty good, 25% increase of her Physical Stats was nothing to sneeze at. Especially since this mode seemed quite stable, personality shift aside.

Copernicus watched him close in on the couch and jumped off once they came near. “Kitty!” she shouted and jumped from John’s arms to catch her contracted partner. The endeavour was barely successful, but she got her nimble hands on Copernicus’ fur and pulled him to her chest.

“Let me go, Jane!” the cat demanded while they sat on the ground, between table and sofa.

“No.” Rave began to pet the struggling cat in her arms. John kneeled down behind her and ruffled Rave at the base of her cat ears.

In response the techno-lover nuzzled against his hand and inched towards him until he got his arm wrapped around her again. Copernicus ceased his complaints and started purring instead, Rave humming in kind. John just kept at it, occasionally changing the ear he was scratching. It was keeping her appeased, so he kept doing it.

Then Copernicus, in a flash of winding and bouncing movements, escaped his summoner's petting hands. “I have had enough of this,” he announced before running off into the entrance hall.

Rave let out a miserable meow before turning to John. “The floor isn’t exactly comfortable; can we move on to the couch?”

John nodded and got up, wanting to pull Rave up with him. She refused. “No, you… yeah, ya get on the couch first…?” she spoke with a tone of indecisiveness only cats could produce. Scratching his head, John obeyed, sitting down on the couch. A moment later Rave stood up and jumped over the back and now stood on the cushions. Shifting her balance back and forth, she ‘kneaded’ the backrest.

‘Lydia won’t like this’ John thought. Then Rave squatted down on all fours and rubbed her cheek on John’s again.

“You’re soft, I like that,” she said and forced him to fall onto his back while she climbed over him. Suddenly, she was stroking his crotch. “Can I make ya hard?” The growing bulge in his pants was a clear yes, and Rave giggled before retracting her hand and pulling him back into an upright position. “Great, but I don’t feel like it right now.”

She dropped a little further, putting her head in his palm. Her ears flicked, as if to get rid of some small insect as she stared up at him. John concentrated on calming his erection down.

“So, how was your date?” Rave, in a tone that drifted towards normalcy, asked as she smiled up to him.

“It was pretty nice. Did you know that female dwarves have beards?” John told her.

“For real’zies?” Rave laughed. “That sounds weird.”

“It was pretty weird,” he smiled at her while softly running his hands through her hair, careful not to come near the entrances of the ears.

He didn’t want Rave to get angry at him again, and he could imagine it not being very comfortable. He was, however, very curious. She still had her normal ears and these new ones didn't seem to actually be connected to anything. Rather than a proper organ, he was looking at some kind of magically woven and transformed construct of hair.

“Can you hear with these?” he wondered as he wiggled his index finger at the base.

“Ja,” Rave answered as she purred. Her copper eyes were half-closed as she slowly blinked at him. “It takes some getting used to, but it checks out. I can hear the scratching of the pens in Lyly’s room, for example.”

“Did you really need to shorten her nickname further?” John giggled; “You will bring the poor princess to the brink of insanity.”

“Aaaaaand?” Rave asked. John brushed an unruly strand away as copper cat eyes looked up to him.

“And I love you for it,” said John.

Rave extended her hand up to his cheek, where it rested for a moment. “I love ya too, tiger,” she said and then lightly slapped him with a giggle. Pulling her hand back down she added, “We are getting better at this emotional stuff.”

“Well, I am getting A LOT of practice with the amount of relationships I have. I must be a good influence on you,” he teased.

“Oh please, without me ya wouldn’t have any of those,” Rave answered. “Besides, if dad knew I was your harem lead, he would be super mad.”

“Wait, he doesn’t know?” John asked. He wasn’t afraid of the wrath of Regan anymore (at least not of the physical danger... for the most part), he was way stronger than the, somewhat insane, Abyss Auctioneer at this point. It still felt wrong to leave him in the dark, though.

“What should I have said: Oh, hey dad, ya know that boy that you think is getting meow into all sorts of trouble? Yeah, he also shares me with other girls, but it’s fine because I have the power to blow that off whenever, ya see?” Rave giggled.

“I do doubt he would be particularly psyched,” John admitted. “What if he finds out though?”

“Then that’s a problem for future, non-catified me,” Rave purred, “I feel great right now, don’t wanna think about it.”

“How exactly are you feeling anyhow?” John wondered. Apparently, she was aware of her own flimsiness right now.

“Uhm, well, it’s like that feeling when ya are drunk enough to not care about stuff, but without the whole annoyance of having no idea where your feet are,” Rave told him.

John did not know that feeling. In his life, he had had exactly one beer of the root variety. Not exactly the kind of profile to build an understanding of drunkenness on. The point, however, he still vaguely understood.

Rave was quick to guess what he was thinking. “Riiiight, we never got drunk together; we should do that sometime!” she exclaimed. “How about right now, whaddaya think?”

“I think you getting drunk right now would be terrible, Jane,” John spoke his mind. At that moment Aclysia put a plate of cut vegetables, cheese and sausage on the table. All of the bits were impaled on toothpicks. “So, how about you just keep lying there, and I feed you as we watch TV, sounds nice?” he asked with a thankful nod towards Aclysia, who gave him the remote.

“Mhm, good enough for me,” said Rave, slight pouty, “I just think, getting drunk would be meowre fun.” Her ears slacked slightly, giving her a downtrodden look. That changed the instant John dangled a piece of paprika over her mouth, though.

Her ears stood at attention and her eyes followed every move of the vegetable. “You want this?” John asked and raised the vegetable just in time for Rave’s suddenly snapping jaw to only get a mouthful of air.

“I want that!” she almost shouted and kept looking after the paprika. He lowered the paprika just deep enough for Rave to be tempted to bite at it again, but again, he successfully pulled back. Rave’s feet drummed on the arm of the couch. “Ya’re being very meown right now!” she meowed and tried for a third time.

This time the Gamer wasn’t fast enough, all he pulled back from Rave's fangs was the wooden pick. He didn’t mind though. While Rave was chewing on the vegetable, he reached for a new piece of food to repeat this little game. His other hand kept on working the base of her ears.

Between the third and fourth repetition he put on something on TV. It was just a regular old weather report. He was barely listening as he kept playing the little game with Rave. Watching was a thing he didn’t do at all. His eyes were focused on getting the next piece from the plate or on watching his girlfriend smile at him from her position in his lap.

He was teasing her by slowly descending the next piece, a diced bit of cheese, when he quickly turned direction and put it in his own mouth. “Dick!” Rave laughed and pinched his side.

“A bit,” John admitted and now moved his hand to tickle her under the chin. “What are you going to do about it?”

That turned out to be a bit of a mistake. His hand was now in biting range, and Rave abused it by snapping at his hand with an audible “Nom!”

 It only stung a little. It was the sort of love bite cats often gave people that pat them too much. It wasn’t really hurtful and didn’t draw blood; it was just a playful nibble. Rave didn’t let go, though; she stuck to his hand even when he pulled it up. Now she was sitting in his lap, their eyes on one level. John tugged his hand a few more times, but Rave didn’t let go. So, he grabbed another piece from the plate. Even though her eyes darted over to the moving target, Rave didn’t let go. Only when he kissed her on the forehead and whispered, “I love you,” did she retreat. She opted to, very softly, bite his lower lip instead.

Then she grabbed the food from his hand in a swift motion and stuck it in her mouth. “Yay, sausage,” she said while chewing. She gave him a telling wink, and John felt his barely calmed erection twitch again.

There was something else that caught his attention, though, namely the knife-eared reporter on the TV screen. A gentle looking blonde elf with green eyes. John raised an eyebrow. “They have abyssal television shows?” he asked.

“Not in America, they don’t,” Rave explained, “but yeah, here they do.” She rested her head on his shoulder as they followed the program for a moment.

“And now back to the news,” the elf said, and the camera shifted over to a giant lizardman. At least three metres tall, he looked like a mixture of a very angry alligator and a dinosaur, his grey-brown scales looked like they could shrug off almost all projectiles without a care. Seeing such a massive creature in a suit was alien to say the least.

The lizardman also didn’t look very happy about the get-up. “Now that I finally got the word back from blonde turtle, to the news. That princess turtle will hold a speech later, so you can go listen to that. Otherwise the destruction turtle, Nathalia, has been sighted around Cologne. Officials only tell us that because, and I quote: ‘If she wanted to destroy something, she would have already. Therefore, there is no reason to panic.’ However, as Romulus' banishment is still in effect, there are two Rome turtles currently on the move. So, try to not get caught up in the fights... unless you are like me and can do stuff. This was Rak Wraithraiser. I will now go fishing.”

“No way, that guy is real?” Rave wondered, “I thought he was just a webtoon character.”

“That’s the news you are concentrating on?” John wondered, “Not the whole ‘Nathalia is around’ part?”

“Meh, she was going to appear again anyhow,” Rave said and clung to John with all four of her limbs, “but you are my man, and it’s going to stay that way.”

That was true, but John still wondered what the appearance of that particular goddess meant for his future.