New Year’s 1 – The girl that just wanted to game


    “Yes, Mom, I’m sure... yeah, I know... Stefanie is across the ocean anyway... I’m turning 19, it’s not a big deal... Love you too. See you later.” Lee hung up the phone and let out a lengthy sigh. “Is it normal that mothers keep pestering you about tea over every little occasion?”


    “Kind of, yeah,” John confirmed.


    “Can’t say,” Gnome, standing in for all of the present humanoids without proper parents, gave her opinion.


    “If she cares enough to call ya,” Rave gave a half-joking response.


    “If she even knows you exist,” Nia added and made the room go silent.


    “If she doesn’t watch your dad beat you,” Eliana growled into the quiet. In response, Siena giggled, which seemed, and was, incredibly tactless. What would have been unacceptable behaviour towards a stranger was just how she and the pretty little psycho bonded. “What the fucking fuck is so funny, you edgy cuntwaffle?!”


    “Congratulations, you just won the depression games.”


    “I always win those. It’s the only thing I have, now that I can’t even eradicate this worthless fucking species.” As she said that, Eliana sounded gradually more like Thana. It happened sometimes and was fundamentally not alarming. With how much of Eliza’s traits usually dominated, the failed goddess had to have her moments as well.


    Undine put her arms around the smaller girl and pulled her into a hug, “You have us.”


    “Don’t you fucking pity me! This isn’t about me, it’s her cock-slobbering birthday!” Eliana gestured wildly towards Lee.


    “It’s a day.” The gamer girl shrugged and threw her phone on the nightstand. “I’ll spend it like every year: playing whatever I want.” Quickly, she climbed onto the Couch. She was next to John, lying her curvy frame out on the Couch that extended to make it comfortable for her. Round butt attractively raised; she inched a little bit closer until her head was almost over his crotch. “Won’t be solely video games this year though,” she said and poked John’s quickly growing erection.


    “Enjoy it while we still have time.” John groaned when her lips wrapped around the head of his cock and she took him as deep as the angle allowed. While her pretty pink mouth travelled back up, he reached his full hardness. “It’s going to be a busy day,” he sighed.


    A pop announced Lee’s departure from his cock. It was a very temporary one, her face nuzzling against his cock. “Do you know how many doujins I read, wondering if I’d ever get to do this?” she asked, huffing his scent. “I feel like a member of a harem story, except I don’t just get sex but also everything else I could ask for.” She licked her way up to the tip, where she stopped for a moment. “Hey, Mat, Sylph, want to join me over here?”


    “Fuck, if you’re offering,” the First of Wrath said, while Sylph was over in a storm of words that was too fast to really comprehend. It also ended immediately when she landed in front of John. Kissing his balls, fondling them carefully, she sent pleasurable electricity through his cock. Metra mirrored Lee’s position, laying down on her stomach to John’s left.


    “Thish ish what I like,” Lee slurred, half licking her side of his cock and half making out with Metra.


    “Do we need that screen to broadcast my speech and the final countdown?”


    “We’re playing the song?”


    “No, we’re not playing the song.” John remained calm, for now. “Stop distracting.”


    “I assure you; we will get this done, Mister President.”


    “But will it get done quicker if I haul this to its destination?” John tapped on a giant bundle of replacement cables, some as thick as his arm.


    “Yes...” the organizer surrendered.


    “Then tell me where to take it,” he demanded and was finally pointed in the right direction. Throwing the two hundred kilo of metal and rubber on his shoulders as if it was a simple piece of luggage, John carried the load to where it was meant to replace some faulty cables. ‘God bless his health, but if I ever have to deal with someone so reluctant to let me do manual labour again, I will fire them.’


    This was far from the only incident that John had to deal with. Even as he unrolled the cables and climbed up the scaffolding to which the screen was attached to to get them to the right socket, his double was somewhere else in the city. A big event meant a great many things that could go wrong and, worse, it meant that there was a big number of organizers who wouldn’t dare ask for support until it was abundantly clear that it was either the request for help or failing in their task.


    In a way, John found that behaviour laudable. Wanting to fix issues by oneself was an attitude he could respect, the problem was when there were people that, either due to pride or paranoia, didn’t know when they had to give up. The end result of that was that the final few hours of any large project was riddled with small and large emergencies that had to be fixed in a hurry. Many of them, John had accounted for. There was a reason why they had replacement cables immediately available. Should something come about that they weren’t prepared for or if their resources ran out, there was always winging it.


    John was far from a construction worker. By now, however, he had spent enough time among craftsmen, builders, and resource gatherers that he had learned two lessons. One, humour in the field was often rough and, more importantly, two, an absolutely incredible amount of things were held together by makeshift solutions. Whether it was in programming, building, medicine, factory work or smithing. Wherever things were done manually, something would go wrong and be solved by either ingenuity or whatever the equivalent of duct tape was in the profession.


    And there was absolutely no need to condemn most of it, because most of it worked. Whenever John wondered how humanity made it this far, he remembered the one time he visited a construction site for project management purposes. It had been an unannounced visit and so he had gotten to witness a bunch of construction workers taping together a number of beer bottles they had recently emptied. ‘What possible reason could there have been for that?’ had been the obvious question.


    The answer was that the concrete floor had been meant to have a circular pattern on it, but the construction company had failed to provide precast plates with the pattern on it. The construction workers did have excess concrete powder though, so they just decided to get the job done by pouring the slabs themselves and imprinting the patterns via the bottom of the bottles.


    It was absolutely genius. Not only did it work but they also had an excuse for drinking at the job. That was the kind of motivated work John loved to see. It was effective and it was hilarious. He had given all of them a raise and, as a joke, a card with the number of an anti-alcoholic therapist.


    Those were the kinds of thoughts he distracted himself with, as he travelled all around the Hudson Barrier. As quick as he worked, there was no way he could have checked every event location and other issue by himself. Luckily, he had his harem to rely on. Everyone helped somewhere. Some, like Scarlett, were extremely useful in their specific field. Others, like Sylph, could only help as moral support or by being effective physical labourers.


    Regardless, they got all the important things in order.