Chapter 188 – A fluffy Monday 8 – Dance of Mettle

John carefully put Rave into their shared bed. After about ten minutes of fighting, she had finally left her feline state and went back to normal. She also was super tired and fell asleep halfway back, so John carried her the rest of the way. Now, he put the blanket over her and kissed her on the forehead. He wasn’t tired yet, so laying down as well wasn’t on his mind.

Rave mumbled something and rolled around in the bed until John was looking at a blanket-shell burrito with pink haired girlfriend-filling. Smiling and shaking his head, he backed off. “Man, we got demolished,” Salamander complained, “aside from Sylph, none of us could keep up. The airhead didn’t do a lot of damage though.”

That was true. Rave had shown that her spontaneous nature made her a pretty good brawler. John’s initial strategy had been to delay her using Gnome, whose primary objective was to grapple the techno-lover. Not only had that proven to be an almost impossible endeavour, Rave was more than aware that she would have a hard time getting out of Gnome’s grasp; the one occasion Gnome had actually gotten her, Rave had used a Judo-throw and was free a moment later. That trick wouldn’t have worked twice, but Gnome also never got the chance to grapple Rave again.

Salamander had been taken out for most of the fight. Offensively, she was the most dangerous of John’s elementals. Rave, knowing that, had concentrated ranged light attacks on the fire spirit. Even if they missed their mark, they at least blinded her and without aim she was useless, John didn’t want her to throw fire everywhere at random.

Sylph was faster than Rave, by a huge margin actually, but, as Salamander had said, her offensive power was limited. Aside from the mana intensive electric attacks, Sylph’s default attacks were more of the ‘death by a thousand cuts’ kind of deal.

He himself had thrown the occasional Arcane Explosion. Otherwise, his plan had mostly focused on getting away from his girlfriend, the moment she got him in a melee he would have lost for good. Undine had been standing at the back, waiting for when she would be needed. Healers were best kept outside the line of fire.

All around, the fight had gone pretty poorly for them. However, John wasn’t worried about that fact. “Well, she had the advantage, so this went about as well as I expected.”

“Oh really now? Do tell.” Salamander sounded very interested in finding out how this loss hadn’t been her fault.

“First off, this was a non-lethal engagement. Rave’s powers might be pretty dangerous themselves, but if it's about actually winning a fight under the use of our full powers, mine are better. Not only do I have you and Sylph, who at full mana output can cause a lot of havoc, but Mana Ray and Mana Blade, which I didn’t use at all in this fight. Second, the location. I had nowhere to hide and no sides to dodge to, the narrow bridge meant that Rave only had to outmanoeuvre Gnome to get to me, so that struggle was the centre of the engagement, limiting my options. Also important about the location was the lack of earth. Gnome could have collapsed the bridge, but otherwise here, as well, my options were limited. There are some other smaller factors as well, but that’s the long and short of it,” John explained.

Undine nodded, as did Gnome. Salamander evidently had stopped listening at one point, looking at her fingernails. Sylph’s head was spinning. “So many words that say so much stuff, can’t you try, like, words that say nothing, like, obvious stuff, like: Sylph, you look the best today, or, Sylph, I really want to give you a gift, or, Sylph, you are my favourite concubine or, Salamander, you have such lovely big bouncy boobs. These of course all mean very much, but they are obvious, so they are saying nothing, you see?”

John ignored the blabbering air spirit. “Anyhow, I’ll be visiting Lydia now, so you four can hang around the house.”

‘Bathtub?’ Undine sent a simple request. The upper floor didn’t have one of these, there was only a shower.

“You can check on the base floor, I don’t think the princess will mind,” Gnome answered for John and the mending elemental puddled away.

“Sylph, I’ll be hanging out with Momo, why don’t you go and look if Aclysia can give you something to do,” the stone elemental suggested further.

“Yay, cookies!” the air spirit’s mind immediately jumped to something sweet before she breezed off.

“Uhm…t-that wasn’t,” Gnome shouted after the tempest elemental in an attempt to salvage the situation.

“Don’t worry, I’ll look after her, sis,” Salamander sighed. “stupid airhead, making me look after her all the time,” she grumbled before flying off as well.

“Thanks,” Gnome let out a relieved breath.

John watched the whole thing in awe. Something had changed between these four, and he was sure that he liked it. Not having to worry about them breaking something and seeing them get along like this was calming his nerves to an almost worrying degree.

Gnome gave him an unsure smile before walking over to where she, through John’s thoughts, knew Momo to be. He, in turn, went down to the lower floor and aimed at Lydia’s room. The house was a bit noisy: he heard the tapping of Gnome’s heavy feet above, there was talking in the kitchen as Sylph blabbered out her requests for sweets, and in the background, he heard the steady sound of a piano.

The music grew louder as he walked towards the source of it: Lydia’s room. He had heard the piano in the background of calls before. The melody had been surprisingly fitting to the princess’ mood swings back then. The sound now echoing from the door was a slow, almost melancholic piece. A steady stream of notes, like raindrops on a window. John knocked, but he doubted he could be heard inside. The music continued, and so he carefully opened the door and peeked inside.

Slow steps. The princess he currently served took slow steps in the middle of the room. Wearing not her usual uniform but a red dress with a long skirt, she moved in a circle, dancing to the slow melody of the piano. It played seemingly on its own. Eyes closed, her open hair followed the twirls of her calm steps, shook as her arms waved full of grace. A new melody weaved into the steady one, a build-up for something greater. The slow melody grew softer, melded into the background as the new addition grew in intensity.

Controlled steps. Lydia’s dance grew quicker, while losing none of its elegance. Her movements would have put an expert ballroom dancer to shame, but what the melody she was forming with her body was only similar to ballroom dancing in nature, not in execution. A third melody grew, echoing its way into the symphony, drawn out notes, longing for something long lost.

Energetic steps. As if to defy the longing of that new melody, the girl twirled and over exaggerated her movements. Her open hair now flew after her quick motions, the second melody forcing itself into the foreground, drowning out both melancholy and longing. This, the second melody, now hit John’s ears. It was too fast to be played by human hands, too complicated to be completely understood. A challenge he couldn’t dare to beat but had to try.

Hopeful steps. Endless twirls. John was enchanted by the view of this lonely girl, dancing to her own melody that seemed to spell out her emotions, none of which John could entirely comprehend. All melodies came together in a harmonious climax and, finally, with a last superfluous step, Lydia made a last twirl before coming to a halt, just as the last three notes played.

Her hair, losing its last bit of momentum, flew over her shoulder, most of it landing on the left side of her chest. Lydia clicked with her tongue as if this display, that had been only for her, had been justifiably critiqued by a mass of watchers. Her hands started to braid her hair before she opened her eyes.

And looked directly at John. Both of them froze completely.

“I-I knocked,” John started his defense preemptively. He was ready for every kind of retribution or lecture, having just spied on something that was incredibly private, he knew he deserved it. Instead Lydia started running deep red, not from anger, but from embarrassment.

Her face became redder by the second. Rapidly she walked forwards.

“I was ju- WOAH!” John found himself pulled inside by the princess grabbing him by the shoulder.

In a swirl of motions, John fell to the ground. The door slammed shut. The two halves of the lock violently snapped into each other and Lydia, her half-braided hair quickly unravelling, nailed him to the ground.

‘That’s like the third time this is happening to me today,’ John thought. Unlike with Rave though, John could put up a bit of a struggle with Lydia. He didn’t plan to though, especially as he suddenly found himself pointed at by hundreds of small metallic projectiles. Pens, Misshapen piano keys, the liquid metal her rapier was made from, buttons, paper clips, pretty much everything had been turned into a deadly weapon.

“Calm down, Lydia,” John pleaded, which, like any other time one asks somebody upset to just calm down, had no effect whatsoever.

“Du… hättest anklopfen sollen!“ the princess fell back into her mother tongue, her voice unsteady from embarrassment.

Thankfully, John had spent his time productively. “I already told you: I did knock!” he defended himself, but it fell on deaf ears.

Lydia’s eyes were wetting, John could feel the heat radiating from her face. Her lips trembled, but she took a deep breath, which calmed her enough to at the very least speak in sensible English again. For the most part. “You will never speak of this to anyone, verstanden?” John just nodded in a signal that he would comply. “Say it,” Lydia requested, in a whining tone. “Please, I need to hear that you will not betray me on this, John.”

“I swear on my life that I will never tell anybody about your wonderful music nor your enticing dance.”

The result of that promise, as Gaia spoiled, was all over the place. On one hand Lydia let out a relieved breath; on the other she managed to grow even redder.

“Th-thanks?” she blurted out and just continued to stare at him, as if to find the truth on how to unravel this situation in his eyes.

Then the metallic pieces rained on the floor and snapped her right out of it. The shock about the state of her room, and property in the form of her favourite instrument, made her forget all about the embarrassment.

“What a mess,” she stated and jumped to her feet, leaving John on the floor. He was consequently ignored for the moment, and he didn’t plan to interfere, as Lydia got her room back in a presentable state. Only the piano could not be repaired. For a long time, she looked at the gaps where the wood had splintered so the keys could fly. “What a mess…” she repeated, rubbing her face.

John dared to question, “Was it really that embarrassing?”