The True Endgame

And he also finds the one who came to check on him earlier.

Eva stops in her tracks and gives him half a wave before saying, "Hey, you"re finally awake."

"d.a.m.n it, Todd, you"ve done it again," Fenrir says while rolling out of his hammock.

"I got that reference!" Eva shouts, once more revealing that dorky side of hers that loves nerd references.

"Nothing like old memes. Well, I guess it makes sense for people to get references from that game. Even if it"s a few generations behind us, it"s still popular. You know that people are still making mods for it?"

"Yeah, it"s crazy. Have you heard the rumor?"

"About the remaster?"

"Yeah. They"re supposedly planning on remastering it again for the latest VR tech."

"I"m pretty sure it"s going to be remastered until humanity is extinct."

"Then they"ll start remastering it for robots."

"You think robots are still going to be around if we aren"t?"

"Yeah. They"ll take over."

"I see. How confident are you in this robot rebellion theory? You"re smart, so if you say it"s going to happen, it must happen."

"It"s definitely going to happen. What matters is if we survive or not. I give us… a thirty-two point three-three, repeating of course, percent chance of survival."

"Now that"s an ancient meme. I didn"t take you for a graverobber."

"Don"t make me give you a fifty DKP minus."

"I"m going to start thinking you"re old enough to be my great grandmother if you keep this up."

"Hey, you"re understanding all of these memes, too."

"That"s because I"ve spent too much time on the internet. I"ve done a lot of research into older MMOs, too, so I know more than I probably should about MMOs from the start of the century."

"Huh. My grandma was a huge gamer back in the day. She even has a shirt that says "The Original Gamer Gurl," with a U, on it."

"How old is she?"

"Eighty-four now."

"Well, s.h.i.t. She might actually be the original gamer girl then."

"Heh, I"ve thought the same. She was actually in one of the world-first clearing guilds even in her forties."

"She sounds awesome. Does she still game?"

"Oh, yeah. She plays this game, too."

"Seriously?"

"Yeah, but she stays over on the other continent. I"m not allowed to go into any more detail than that."

"You just made her sound really suspicious. Is she actually important?"

"No," Eva says, staring straight at Fenrir and trying way too hard to not look nor sound suspicious at all.

"Alright then. Keep your secrets."

"Yes! n.o.body else gets all these old references!"

"I haven"t watched that trilogy since I was a kid. My dad was obsessed with it and said it was the best movie trilogy in all of history that nothing will ever pa.s.s up."

"He wasn"t wrong. Even today, nothing compares to it."

"I might have to rewatch it sometime."

"We should totally watch it together. I love watching it. Oh, but we"ll have to watch the extended edition of the trilogy."

"There"s an extended edition?"

"We are definitely going to watch it together."

"I mean, I"m not opposed to it. Oh, back to the reference, I remember that line in particular because I used it all the time as a kid. Whenever my parents wouldn"t answer one of my questions for whatever reason, I"d tell them with a smile, "Alright then. Keep your secrets." Sometimes, it actually got them to answer me."

"Yeah, being cute is powerful against parents. I studied my parents when I was a kid to see what they thought the cutest behavior was, and then I copied that whenever I wanted something."

"You… studied your parents?"

"Yeah. Whenever my mom or dad made an "aww" sound or smiled when looking at kids, I took mental notes of what the kid was doing or saying at the time, and then wrote it down in my diary. I had a whole section dedicated to the a.n.a.lysis of what my parents found adorable in kids."

"You started researching pretty young."

"I was only five."

"Oh. Five is pretty old to start – you were five! What do you mean only five?! Kids normally don"t even know how to read or write yet and you were doing scientific research on your parents and writing down the results!"

"Is it that exciting?"

"You"re like Nell but with intelligence instead of money."

"Don"t compare me to other girls. Can"t you see that I"m just myself?" Eva asks, knocking Fenrir off balance as she leans forward with a subtle pout.

And then…

She smiles. "Just kidding. I did lots of research on boys when I was a teenager to figure out what they like."

"Was – was that one of the things that they liked?"

"No. That was how to guilt trip somebody."

"That"s a pretty scary power."

"Good, I haven"t lost my touch. I used to be in drama."

"I wouldn"t have expected that."

"And band. And chess."

"What are you? The queen of nerds?"

"Proudly."

"What was your favorite?"

"Band."

"So you were a band nerd."

"Not that bad, but yeah."

"What instrument?"

"Trumpet. Were you in any clubs?"

"Yeah. I was the leader of the go-home-as-fast-as-possible-to-play-games club."

"The others in band always made fun of those types."

"I don"t know how to feel about knowing that band club members made fun of us."

"To be fair, we made fun of everybody. Band is more vicious than most people realize. My friends in band were way more savage than my friends in drama."

"And your chess friends?"

"We… don"t talk about what happened in chess."

"I bet there were crazy orgies going on."

"There were, but I wasn"t in any of them."

"Wait, seriously? Or are you just joking?"

"No, there really were orgies. They did lots of drugs, too."

"You"re making it sound like all of the real bad kids were in the nerdiest clubs."

"I mean, yeah. That"s kind of how it works."

"Next you"re going to tell me that anime club was full of football players and snorting drugs off of hookers" stomachs."

"Nope. They were a bunch of dweebs who just sat around watching anime and arguing about philosophy or what the age of consent should be."

"You just made them sound even worse than I always thought they"d be."

"I miss high school. Those were fun days."

"I"m sure it was for somebody who probably had notebooks full of information on how to manipulate everybody."

"That makes me sound worse than I was. I never misbehaved outside of club time and only using my research on people who deserved it. Like, I had one friend who was confessed to as a joke. The guy who did it was a major a.s.shole. So, I made myself look good, flirted with him, and got him to send me d.i.c.k pics. I sent those to everybody I knew, and then they kept on forwarding them around."

"I"m pretty sure that breaks several laws."

"Well, he never reported me because I looked ugly most of the time, so he didn"t want anybody knowing he sent me those."

"You looked ugly?"

"Yeah. Braided hair, big gla.s.ses, acne, a bit overweight – I"ll admit I looked pretty meh as a teen. The power of makeup and push-up bras was enough to trick any boy, though."

"You really do have scary powers."

"I don"t even need to use those powers anymore. I left the bad looks in my teenage years and, thanks to the power of science, I don"t have to deal with acne anymore. Don"t even need to use a push-up bra anymore to get the same look."

Eva leans slightly over again, positioning herself so that her first romantic interest since she was a teenager gets a perfect view of her chest. She has even modified her equipment so that it is just a bit more revealing than before. Surely, this will work on a man who must love women as much as he does. Plus, with three of his four girlfriends all having relatively nice chests, especially Ca.s.siel and Azalabulia, he must like b.r.e.a.s.t.s.

"That"s great," Fenrir says. "I pretty much look the same as I always have, but older, I guess. I still get pimples every now and then, but they"re pretty rare. Nell and Ca.s.s Ca.s.s make sure to pop them whenever I do get one. Turns out that the jokes online about women loving to pop their boyfriends" pimples is extremely accurate."

Eva takes a step back and stands up straight. Was he really immune to her technique? She even practiced leaning over in front of a mirror to make herself look as attractive as possible without being too obvious! Everything from the arch of her back to the height of her head relative to her shoulders was calculated!

And then it hits her.

Why would he be affected by a girl subtly trying to show off her body when he has multiple girlfriends who probably show off their bodies to him whenever he wants? The chances are that all he has to do is ask to see them without their clothes on and then they"ll do it! Not to mention that he lives with three of them! Why get fl.u.s.tered over a virtual avatar"s chest when he has more than enough of the real deal in reality?

Eva realizes that she is going to have to come up with an even greater plan if she wants to make any progress. Fenrir has developed too much of a resistance against her techniques before she has even had an opportunity to use them against him!

What"s next?

Act like a shy schoolgirl who is useless without him?

No. His girlfriends are likely already needy enough and she doesn"t want to seem like she would cause even more trouble.

What about a cheeky and teasing junior type?

It could work, but with how she has already seen Serra tease him, any cheeky teasing that she attempts would likely be weak in comparison to what he is already used to.

Maybe act cold and disinterested to make him pursue her?

No, that brings her back to the original problem of him already having enough girlfriends that he wouldn"t feel the need to chase after any more in the first place. If she wants anything to happen, she needs to be the one to make it happen.

What about going after his girlfriends? After all, if she dates him, she would be dating them as well. Wouldn"t winning their approval in the first place be something important for her to do before going after him? Though, recalling her conversation with Ca.s.siel, she already has all of their permission to go after him. But that"s all she has. What if she tries to seduce him through seducing them?

Wait, if that worked, wouldn"t that make him one of those men into his women being with others? Eva does not mind sharing herself with multiple people in a relationship, but she doesn"t want to date somebody who she can only seduce through seducing his girlfriends.

She sighs and runs her hands through her hair.

"Something wrong?" Fenrir asks.

"No. I"m fine," Eva answers. "But thanks for asking."

"Well, if you"re ever upset by anything, you"re more than welcome to come and talk to me about it. Also—"

"Yeah?"

"When"s that movie date?"

"Movie ddate?"

"Yeah. You said that we"re going to watch that trilogy together – the extended edition of it. We can turn it into a movie date."

"I—"

"There"s an app we can use to stream anything in VR. It"ll be just like we"re sitting in an actual theater together."

"You—"

"Sound good?"

Eva, with her cheeks burning, looks down at the floor. The thick tail behind her is not the only part of her body wagging as both of her wings flap close to her body.

"Sorry, maybe I shouldn"t have called it a date. We could always—"

"No! It"s fine! A movie date works. Yeah, it works. We can do it whenever."

"Nice one, onii-wan," Saya chimes in to Fenrir.

"Thanks, Pupaya. I felt bad about not going along with her flirting."

"I"m proud of you for being able to tell she was trying to flirt with you. My dense harem protagonist is all grown up."

"Don"t make me flick you, and I"m not a harem protagonist. If I was a harem protagonist then this would be the fifth season and the most I"d have done with the others is hold their hands."

"You make a strong point. This means that you have evolved beyond a harem protagonist. What does that make you?"

"A hentai protagonist."

"I… I want to say that you"re being stupid and that that"s a bad comparison, but…"

"I don"t know how to feel about relating myself to a hentai protagonist either. I just don"t want to – well, I kind of feel selfish now. I want to skip all of the buildup and just jump straight into officially dating."

"I guess it makes sense. You already went through that four times before."

"But that"s not fair to Eva."

"What isn"t fair to her is ignoring her to talk to me."

"Sorry, I was distracted. What were you saying?" Fenrir asks Eva.

"Oh, it"s alright. Uh, I was saying… are you free tomorrow morning? The extended edition trilogy will take all day, so we"d have to start in the morning."

"We could always split it up. Watch one tomorrow, watch the others some other day."

"No. They have to be watched together with no more than a thirty-minute break between each one."

"I"ve never been on a date with such strict rules before."

"If it"s – if it"s too strict then – yeah, I guess a date shouldn"t be so strict. Never mind, we can only watch one if—"

"I never said I wasn"t interested. If you want to monopolize me for a date that lasts all day long, I"m fine with that, and I"m sure the others will be too as long as I let them do the same sometime."

"I – I don"t mean to monopolize you! What if the others join us? Do you think any of them would like the movies?"

"Are you sure you don"t want it to just be between us?"

Eva hesitates for a moment before nodding. "It would be better if we"re all there, right? Do… you think they"d be interested?"

"I"ll have to check with Azawaza. She might have work. The rest – I don"t know if Serra and Ca.s.s Ca.s.s will be interested in those movies, but Nell would probably like them."

"Alright. Let me know over Fiscord when you find out."

"I will. Anyways, what were you coming to check on me for?"

"Before that, you mentioned researching old MMOs. What was that for?"

"It"s embarra.s.sing to admit, but I used to want to design them. I used to be obsessed with old school MMOs when I was growing up. People like to hate on them because of tab targeting and how strict the holy trinity was back then, and having to have a bunch of keybinds, macros, etcetera, but all of that sounded awesome to me. I even downloaded the software to run a solo private server for one of the games once and I had a ton of fun playing it. Too bad there was n.o.body else to play it with. Anyways, modern MMOs are just so different. Even the ones that claim to give that old school feeling are maybe only old school as far as last decade goes at most."

"Is that still something you want to do?"

"Not really. I fell out of love with that idea when I realized it: one, wouldn"t be profitable enough to get a team together to help me with it; and two, when I realized just how much work it would be and how much I would have to learn to even consider doing that work."

"Do you ever think about it?"

"Sometimes. Random ideas will pop into my head every now and then about what I think would make a fun MMO done in a cla.s.sic style, but that"s about it. Oh, and there"s another reason why I gave up. With how good AIs are getting, and now us having a true AI, I doubt there"s going to be much room for us designing games of our own. AIs will be able to make the perfect games for the markets, and I don"t really think gamers would care about "human-made" games more than AI-made games."

"Yeah, they wouldn"t care as much as some people do about organic food instead of lab food, but there would still be a market. It"s like with indie games. People loved indie games and still love them. There"s just something about a game when you know it was made by a small team instead of a huge corporation, and that will probably happen when human-made games versus AI-made games. There are already people who don"t like this game being moderated by the overseer and virtual a.s.sistants instead of humans."

"Yeah, that"s a good point."

"What are some of the ideas you"ve had for your own MMO?"

"They"re all fishing ideas. Contrary to how I may spend my time in this game, I really am playing this for the fishing."

"You… you are?"

"Yeah. Shocking, right?"

"It kind of is. I thought you only fished to pa.s.s the time."

"Nope. We came up here to settle a city where we could live peacefully with NPCs and spend all our time fishing. Instead… yeah, we haven"t exactly been doing that."

"Can you teach me how to fish sometime?"

Fenrir lights up, his ears perk up, and his tail starts to wag.

Eva doesn"t know how to feel about the fact that he looks more excited from this than the idea of having a movie date with her.

And then it hits her.

This is perfect.

She wasn"t sure how to get through to him before, but now?

But now she is going to learn every single little thing that there is about fishing. If she masters fishing, she can make sure that she does as much wrong as possible so that he has to help her as much as possible. Then, once he helps her, she will be able to show him just how much she has "improved!" She will be able to catch the biggest and most impressive fish that there are to be caught, and she will be able to thank him for all of it! He will not only get to teach her how to fish, but he will get the pride and satisfaction of helping her become a master at it!

But…

If there is one other thing that she has managed to learn about Fenrir since meeting him, it is how much he values honesty.

Would he be upset with her if he found out that she was faking being bad at fishing? There is also the fact that he seemed genuinely concerned earlier when she brought up just how good at manipulating people she is.

Would just… being herself and not coming up with crazy plans actually be the best way?

But wouldn"t that be boring? Wouldn"t he get bored of her and her usual behavior if she doesn"t try to spice things up and make them interesting with research?

Nell and Azalabulia both have extreme personalities that keep things interesting, but Ca.s.siel and Serra are much more normal. Which does he like more? The extreme or the normal?

Should she even be thinking about it as hard as she is? Maybe she should just let things go with the flow instead of trying to make sure everything is special?

None of the research into romance that she has done so far is helping. Not one of the online magazines, blog posts, videos – none of it is helping her right now.

Why does this all have to be so complicated?

Eva always thought that the stereotype was that women were complicated, but n.o.body is more complicated than Fenrir!

"I just realized I haven"t had any raw cookie dough in a long time," Fenrir says.

"Wh-what? Where did that come from?" Eva asks, now even more frustrated from further proof of Fenrir being overly complicated. What led to raw cookie dough? Is that a hint? A sign? A subtle request?

"Raw cookie dough is better than cookies, and I just remembered the cookies Serra made last week. Now I want raw cookie dough," Fenrir explains.

Could it really be that simple? Is that all there is to his thought process or is there a calculated purpose behind him suddenly bringing it up when it had zero relevance to their conversation?

"What about a fishing game where your fishing rod looks like a cooking spoon and all the fish are based off of cookies? I don"t think that"d work for a MMO or anything, but it"d be fun for some free mobile game," Fenrir says.

While Fenrir imagines fishing up various cookie-themed fish, Eva stresses out over what that could possibly mean!

Fishing? Cookies? Fishing cookie-fish? What does it mean?

Fenrir… might be the most fascninating and difficult research subject that Eva has ever come across.

Clearly, she is going to have to bring out all of her best techniques to gather as much information as possible if she wants to decipher the meanings behind his words and actions.

"You alright?" Fenrir asks.

"Yeah, just thinking about something," Eva answers.

"Got it. So, what"d you come to me for? You wanted something, right?"

"Oh. Yeah. Uh… I think I made Tabitha mad at me."

"What"d you do?"

"We got into a discussion about giant robots versus exoskeleton suits for humans. I a.s.serted that exoskeleton suits are superior in every way to giant robots. She… got very pa.s.sionate in the defense of giant robots."

"Understandable. Giant robots are better."

"You being wrong aside, is there… how can I make it up to her?"

"You can make it up to her by not worrying about it. Tabs gets pa.s.sionate about these sorts of things, but I doubt she"s mad at you. She probably just got really into it and sounding p.i.s.sed off is just how she is most of the time."

"Are you sure?"

"I"m like ninenty-seven percent sure. Unless you"re leaving something out, I doubt she"s mad at you."

"I"m not."

"Then she"s not mad. Though, you might want to at least admit that giant robots look cooler."

"But they don"t. Exoskeleton suits can be made to look much cooler than giant robots."

"You being wrong aside, just go talk to her and act like you normally would. Chances are that she"ll pick up a conversation just like normal. I mean, she"s even friends with Rao and Rao gives her reasons to actually be mad."

"Could you maybe… come with me while I do it?"

"You want me to come with you while you do it? I guess we"re skipping the movie date and dinner."

"What?"

Fenrir waits a couple of seconds to see if she can figure it out on her own.

"Wwait! I – I didn"t mean that!" Eva explains with reddened cheeks now that she has figured it out.

And figuring it out has only made her even more frustrated! Why is it frustrating? Because she would not normally have a problem with jokes like these… but now she feels all fl.u.s.tered and is taking it seriously just because of who the one making the joke is!
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She is going to have to do research into herself, too, to figure out why that is.

Unfortunately for her, Fenrir has tasted the blood in the water. Seeing Eva"s reaction has triggered the same side of him that Ca.s.siel often brings out. "What? You want to do it all by yourself while not letting me come with you? I didn"t know you were so selfish, Eva."

"That isn"t – that"s not—"

Fenrir can"t remember the last time any of his girlfriends were this embarra.s.sed and nervous. It makes him want to try even harder to fl.u.s.ter Eva. "What?" he asks, stepping closer to her. "You"re the one who said you want me to come with you. Or would you rather me come—"

"Oi! I hear ya down there!" Tabitha shouts, poking her head down the stairs. "Captain dog! Giant robots are better than exoskeleton suits, right?!"

Fenrir, now blushing himself when he realizes what he was just about to say to a girl who isn"t even his girlfriend, stumbles backward and says, "Ye-yeah," in response.

Tabitha, so obsessed with the superiority of giant robots, doesn"t even care about whatever it was he was just doing or saying. All that matters to her is that he agrees with her.

"Told ya! The dog there might be pretty - well, like he is at times, but at least he knows superior tech," Tabitha says.

Eva, with a racing heart while trying to imagine what Fenrir was about to say, can"t even refuse Tabitha anymore. All she can do is say, "You – you win. Giant robots are better…"

"I knew you"d come around! You"re a bright girl, Eva. There was no way ya wouldn"t see the light. Anyways, I"ve got more work to do." And so, Tabitha disappears as quickly as she arrived.

Fenrir and Eva are left alone once more, now each with blush on their cheeks and hearts rapidly beating in their chests.

Perhaps the reason for Fenrir wanting to skip the buildup phase is because he knows that, no matter how many girlfriends he has, he is never going to get over how awkward and embarra.s.sing it can be.

As for Eva – well, she originally came to him for help with Tabitha and to test him for reactions to her techniques, but now she has countless hours of research that she must perform. And a date to mentally prepare herself for.

And while on the topic of dates, it will soon be time for Fenrir to have his date with Azalabulia.

He will make sure that it is a date every bit epic and grand as it is romantic… hopefully.