The weather in Miami was, against John’s expectations, not all that different to New York at the moment. That was to say, it was quite hot and humid, sitting at 29 degrees and about 80% respectively, despite it being past 18:00 already. At least the minimal amount of clouds that hung around gave sporadic relief from the lowering sun.

Scarlett had identified the area the photo had been taken in. To be fair, John had a hunch without her, so it wasn’t too difficult. By the way the things were layered and the particular aesthetic, it had to be Miami Beach. What Scarlett was exceedingly helpful with was identifying the particular segment.

As John possessed no cars in this particular area of the USA, he needed to rely on a taxi again. While they waited for the one called to arrive, they made a quick barrier. Beatrice was retrieved from the inventory and Aclysia teleported over. Once they had driven over to the target area, the elemental girls also got to put on their human disguises, the clothes getting transferred from John’s living room to Florida through the two ends of his inventory in himself and Jack. They would be an extra five pairs of eyes, aiding them in their search.

Not that they had any hope that they would actually find Nia there. It was just the best (read: only) lead they had. If she had been a normal person, asking around for her would have been rather easy. As all mundane people were unable to perceive her, with the notable exception of the sense of touch, they could only look around.

Despite their enthusiasm, their search that day was without any results. Miami Beach wasn’t exactly small and there wasn’t any guarantee that Nia had stayed in the area. Since the blank didn’t have to create barriers if she wanted to run at superhuman speeds, her mobility on foot was incredible. She could have been anywhere.

It was close to 22:00, when John sighed and said, “Yeah, this isn’t getting us anywhere,” to his girlfriend, while also sending out mental calls to the others so they could all meet up. “We need to change strategy.”

They were standing, for the fifth time, at the exact point where the photo had been taken. Because it was the only place they knew, for sure, Nia had been, they circled around there every so often. While the blank eluded them, they had at least located the cat. It was black, had blue eyes, was very friendly and preferred scratches under the chin. It was also a completely normal cat.

“Whaddaya have in mind?” Rave asked, not even attempting to convince him to do another round around the block. Every step around the white hotels and rich folk homes was just another roll with a dice with near infinite sides. There was no point to engage in gambling of that nature if there wasn’t a way to assure victory.

“We go to sleep,” John told her, and specified further before she felt the need to draw the information from him, “Beatrice will hold out here, just in case. We will rest and see if Scarlett has anything new for us in the morning.” The Technomancer had gone to sleep hours ago. Although she could have woken up any minute now, given her screwed up sleep schedule, John wanted to give her the opening for a proper night’s rest. That aside, he was getting tired himself.

Whatever new intel Scarlett dug up, if any at all, was very unlikely to allow them to find Nia immediately. On the off-chance it did, Aclysia had the duty to keep watch on his phone and move on anything they got.

“And if nothing comes up whatsoever?” Rave asked.

“Then,” John sighed, since this was another gamble, albeit one where he was guaranteed some outcome rather than continued uncertainty, “we ask for help from the locals.”

________________________________________________________________________

They spent their night in a hotel. Being Miami beach in early September, they were basically all booked out. The good thing was then that John wasn’t asking. A simple Illusion Barrier over one of the rentable houses and they had free access to the bed and a roof over their heads. No running water, electricity or local internet, though. Those were all commodities that a normal Illusion Barrier did not provide. Since they only wanted to stay for the night, it wasn’t really a problem.

They woke up pretty early, sleeping in unknown environments usually had the effect of light sleep and the two of them were no exceptions. At least the elementals had John’s soul to retreat to. They had some stored away breakfast from John’s inventory, checked in with Scarlett to see if she had any new intel (the answer was no) and then left the barrier entirely. It was time to see if they could establish contact with the locals.

Little did John know, the locals had already set up everything to establish contact with him.

John had literal cannons of the pre-industrial design shoot massive amounts of confetti into his face. Golden, silver, yellow, blue and red, the glittering strips of paper engulfed him and the trio. Because of the text of the system message, the Gamer just stood there and gave his girlfriend a calming gesture by putting an arm around her waist. That was enough to dissuade her from dropping into a battle pose.

While the storm of party decorations around him settled, John came to see a group of about twenty people stand before him. The only connecting attribute between all of them was that there was not even a bit of uniformity. Humans, elves, six-legged centaurs, eagle-winged men and presumed succubi stood together, wearing colourful, odd, plain or normal outfits. In the case of one of those succubi, she was only wearing her birthday suit, which was quite a bit pleasing to John’s eyes.

There were three figures, deliberately at the centre of the group, that his attention naturally stuck with. Dead in the middle was a redhead with braided twin tails, each decorated with blue ribbons. The dress she was wearing was white, with blue stripes running over it horizontally. Its shape was somewhat off, being close to a French maid uniform, with the short skirt, the visible corset in the middle and an apron dangling from the waist, but with a frilly neck and fluffed up shoulders that suddenly narrowed, only to end in yet more wavy designs.

Whether they were extensions of the dress or another article of clothing themselves, the rest of her arms were covered by sleeves that went down to her wrists. They differed in design, being still white at the base but striped red, with the lines aligning horizontally. Her stockings, the edge of which ended barely below her skirt, followed the same design pattern. Her shoes were black and looked practical.

Her body was well-balanced, breasts that bordered on big, hips that bordered on wide, but with thighs that definitely deserved the title of delightfully meaty, as the squish caused by her stockings proved.

“That’s Wendy,” Rave whispered.

“Yup, that is Wendy,” John confirmed. He sealed away the two most immediate questions he had. Being how it came that the god of fast-food was an attractive woman, rather than some supersized melon of a person and whether or not Wendy’s panties would follow the design of her dress, her stockings, or if she had gone for something outside of those two choices.

Instead, his eyes were naturally drawn to the person to her right. No, that wasn’t quite right, John only realized when he was already inspecting the second person. Rather than this person being particularly interesting, it was that, whoever was on the left, was pushing his attention away. He would investigate in a second, for now this one deserved his own analysis.

He wore glasses in a very Victorian fashion, a loose chain wrapped around his neck keeping them from falling to the floor, should they ever leave his nose. Under that smelling utensil sat a thick, brown mustache. His suit was similarly old-fashioned, the jacket being much longer than was standard nowadays and the shirt underneath joined by a vest. A bowtie decorated his neck. The truly odd thing about his outfit, however, was the top hat he wore. It had all the colours of the rainbow, spiralling up its cylindrical shape. It was about as unfitting as Regan’s usual manoeuvres.

‘At least that explains how we even got pulled into this place,’ John thought. There weren’t many entities that could still forcefully pull him into an Illusion Barrier. The only ones that came to mind were certain gods, strong Fateweaver enchantments or a skilled Fateweaver in person.

John tried to look left and, the second his gaze passed Wendy, was hit by a feeling of aversion. It felt like he was stepping closer and closer to the corpse of a diseased cow. The further his eyes went, the more details he could make out, maggots crawling in the eye sockets, the smell of rotting flesh, the unpleasant buzzing of hundreds of flies. Except that he actually felt none of these things, instead they were all rolled together into a simple, instinctual want to get away from this thing.

And that thing turned out to be a woman. She was on the taller side of things, almost as big as John was, with black hair that waved softly down to her hips. Her skin was as tanned as her clearly northern European descent allowed it to. With a face that crossed the nobility of an aristocrat with the adorableness of a farmgirl, she smiled in a calm fashion. As far as her body went, it was simply well balanced. B-cups, a normal waist, neither narrow nor showing any fat, and hips of normal proportion.

To make out more than the shape of her was difficult, however, as her dress covered the majority of her, with long sleeves, wrapping around her neck and flowing on as a long skirt that touched the ground. A dress that seemed to have no depth to it, only revealing minimal shadows. A dress that left her back free, as John realized when she turned a little bit. There were lines on her back. Fine and silvery, barely visible from a distance, like the veins on a leaf.

She was a blank. An immensely powerful one, going by the intense wish he naturally felt to get away from her. ‘I guess Nia wasn’t the real Maiden of Null around, then,’ John thought, hesitating to use Observe on this third person. Given that there had been no protests so far, he decided to risk it.

The mistake was immediate pain.

It felt like someone had hammered an ice-pick through his forehead, the tip of which was now expanding like a balloon, squishing his grey matter against the inside of his skull. The feeling swelled further and further, increasing the pain, until John found the pariah’s eyes. As blue as a pure sapphire, she looked back and gave him a mischievous wink. Suddenly the pain was gone, and with it went a fair share of the alien aura he had felt radiate from her.

Around him, Aclysia, Beatrice and Rave all took a relieved breath, the same pressure being lifted off them. There was little to no doubt in John’s mind that this woman was the reason why Nia had come to Florida. A teacher to go after.

“Hey, if you want to see something sexy, you have to look here,” Wendy said and snapped her fingers twice to get his attention. “Into tall flat ones, are we? I heard so much about your love for beef in all varieties, I thought you would have an eye for quality.”

“Maybe he has,” the pariah said, her teasing voice reverberating with some unknown accent.

“If he is looking at your old, bony ass, clearly not!”

All the blank did to respond to that was to laugh mockingly. Wendy turned her head back to John with such intensity her twin tails flew around. A moment of silence ensued, they seemed to expect him to say something.

John cleared his throat. “Sorry for just appearing on your territory overnight,” he started and was immediately interrupted by Wendy.

The goddess stemmed one hand into her hip and waved off. “No, no, no, skip all of that, I don’t need to hear it, we’re just happy you finally took the invitation.”

“Invitation…?” John asked, he didn’t remember any such thing.

“ What, is your attention span so low you couldn’t even finish it? Did the animation style not meet your standards? Don’t like the fine arts of fan creations, hmmmmm?” With every question, she had stepped closer and was now right up to his face, inspecting him. She had to get on her toes to that end.

“I found the video pretty entertaining, but I might not be genius enough to get the messages therein.” He tried to be self-deprecating for the sake of diplomacy, even if he couldn’t keep a bit of sarcasm from oozing out with that. “All I got from it was that there are more people in Florida publicly masturbating than in the rest of the USA combined.”

“Which means that we’re totally fine with a perv like you coming about!” Wendy declared. “Duh, don’t know how much clearer we could have made that. Video even says ‘come visit our state’!”

‘Like halfway through, which makes no sense if that was the intended message overall.’ John kept that opinion to himself, as he was distracted by Wendy suddenly kissing him on the lips. She tasted like a cheeseburger prepared with 100% fresh meat. Surprising, but not unpleasant, especially since he hadn’t had breakfast yet.

Greed, hunger and instinct paired up to answer her kiss in full force. Wendy was overcome by his assertiveness, as the kiss with the shorter woman left John in the dominant position. A position that he absolutely excelled at. His arm closed around her waist and he pulled her body closely against his, while he made his tongue work at leaving a lasting impression. If she tried to get sassy with him, the Gamer would let her know that he was up to the challenge.

A clearly audible moan escaped the fast-food goddess. Wendy pushed herself off his chest and stumbled backwards. “Not bad…!” she declared with some hesitation, her legs quivering. With the back of her hand, she wiped away a trail of drool, as if it was some blood she had spat out during an anime battle. “You’re pretty cute, despite being a bit vapid.”

“And you’re probably delicious to eat out,” John returned, slowly getting an idea of how things went around here (or her, at least). It wasn’t that much different from home.

“Hey!” Rave saw the opening and spoke up, walking in front of Wendy and wagging her finger at the goddess’ stubby nose. “If ya gonna kiss my guy, it’d be courteous to ask me first.”

“He seems like a strong, independent guy who needs no dedicated woman,” Wendy returned, then resumed her earlier stance of stemming one hand into her hip and waving off with the other. It seemed like she really liked that gesture. “But fine, I guess I can give you a coupon over two chicken parts or anything. I think your boyfriend’s kiss is easy to get with two tender thighs.”

“Nah, I’m taking something else,” Rave decided and grabbed Wendy’s face with a big smile. The First Lady of Fusion and the patron goddess of Florida engaged in a kiss. This time, Wendy put on a bit of resistance and the two women were wrestling a fair bit. Rave was incredibly aggressive, however, not just with her kiss but with her hands as well. John caught the redhead’s skirt rising and then a high-pitched moan.

As a classy gentleman, John could not just drop down to his knees to see what exactly was going on between those legs. As someone who could cast Possession with his feet, however, he also didn’t need to. A simple expenditure of some mana, and part of his consciousness was now looking at things from the perspective of a square stone tile.

Rave’s hand was completely inside Wendy’s panties and working with speed and skill at the only result that could come about being in there. To answer the question John had earlier, her panties had the red stripes, not the blue ones.

The kiss broke, but Wendy didn’t get away, only moaned louder and louder. Her back slowly bent backwards, Rave holding the goddess with an arm around her back. It looked like they were in a romantic dancing pose, just that the Gamer’s girlfriend was fingering Wendy. Even if she had been completely quiet, the wet sounds that echoed out would have left no doubt about that by sounds alone.

Soon, Wendy started to convulse and quiver, her moans cutting off, only to be replaced by hacked off gasps and desperate inhales. Rave continued for a little while, then withdrew her hands from Wendy’s panties. They immediately showed a damp spot. The techno lover let go of the fast-food goddess, who barely managed to remain standing.

“Now we’re even,” Rave smirked and winked at her post-orgasmic victim. “I thought if public masturbations are advertised here, ya wouldn’t mind a public fingerbanging.” She then turned around and went back to her boyfriend. If John wouldn’t have had a sizable erection by watching that show already, he would have gotten it when Rave cleaned off her drenched middle and ring finger with a couple of licks and sucks.

While Wendy recovered, the rainbow top hat fellow took over the meeting. “You’ll fit in right in!” he declared, opening his arms wide. He had a deep voice. “Anyway, we’ve decided to come greet you and invite you to our headquarters! There we can discuss this, that…”