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Chapter 14: Multi-tasking Love

Beta-Reader: Ant0nius

Training with Pulsar proved to be tougher than expected.

Maybe I could have built up some ‘hope’ in the chances of him being easier to convince to do tasks if it was all about training to become ‘awesome’ and strong. I was unfortunately proven wrong when he began distracting himself rather easily in the middle of training, creating some awkward developments in each session.

Smart as he might be, his attention span was incredibly short and easy to be redirected at the silliest elements in the room. Sometimes it was the training achievements made by the girls, others were just weird moments between spars. Tripping on himself, sliding off on the ground by overusing his Ice powers too much, or even dumbly rushing into hits. I figured that it would be a real challenge to get him to think only about the action during fights, but I was quite sure he was making some progress after some intense training to get his attention aimed on where he needed to.

At the same time, Pulsar was a new voice I was willing to listen to in some circumstances that I had ignored until now. Before his ‘arrival’, I was limited when it came to have a male friend in the crew. I had few issues with the girls, nor I was trying to exclude Archie from that small group of people that I was encompassing as ‘male friends’… but there were reasons to be needy of a blunt opinion on a couple of personal questions I had been keeping to myself for a while.

And those questions weren’t meant to be asked to the girls due to the topics they stemmed from, and I figured that the Nanozell Spirit wasn’t exactly geared to handle a serious conversation about social situations. Which is why I felt that Pulsar was the best man to give me a truthful answer to some of these queries I had been keeping away from the others.

So, as we hit the showers together while the girls were already done and going to wait for lunch, I took this opportunity to speak with him about these matters. It didn’t take much for him to listen and… listen as I gave out a summarized version of the situation as I knew it. It also didn’t take long for him to come with a simple but well-condensed opinion on the matter.

“If I was you, I would call myself lucky.”

“...Why?”

“Three girls trying to get your heart? I mean, I can say the Queen has made the most progress, but the others are definitely not giving up on that front,” He further added, increasing the confusion I had growing within me. “But seriously, you don’t see how the two others look at you? It’s clear they are trying to be more than merely friends with you.”

“Even though I’m already in a relationship with their Queen?”

“It wouldn’t be unheard off for Primes to seek intimate comfort beyond standard relationships,” Pulsar admitted. “I remember my grandfather saying how the journals of our ancestors were quite clear about this custom of our society. Love and understanding were the pinnacle to avoid conflict, even if the bonds born from those agreements were odd and sometimes clashing with what we were keen to define holy connections to a being to another.”

“So… you are saying that it would be fine for someone to be together with others if the partner is aware of this? That they would be… open to this?”

“That’s as far as I know about Prism’s culture. I don’t know myself if they are exactly aware of this- maybe Adela is, but still… you should give it a thought.”

…

“I just… can’t think of it as a viable option. Not when it’s about romance,” I replied quietly. “I mean, I understand what you are saying if it was just all about… sex. But it isn’t. Not when they have strong feelings towards me.”

“Why?”

I blinked, frowning at him. “Why? Well… a romantic relationship isn’t just being lovey-dovey and the rest of ‘happy things’ that comes with it. There is… more to it. There is a serious commitment that can easily bring the best and the worst out of people,” I explained with a serious tone. “It’s all about being respectful, kind, but… also trusting. Sometimes you don’t even have a choice to know what your lover wants or thinks, and that is… always a big risk. Now imagine all that, and then multiply it by 3.”

The Hamster Prime flinched at hearing that. “Fair enough, that sounds incredibly complicated. Never been much of a romantic partner, always kept myself to short relationships.”

“Nothing wrong with that,” I commented with a shrug. “Still, thank you for being honest about it.”

“No problem, brother. It’s only natural for guys like us to try and avoid getting outnumbered by the chicks,” The Ice Crest replied mirthfully. “And I owe you for helping me with the training. So I guess this even things up.”

I could only nod at that logic, and soon we were done with the shower. After that conversation, I was feeling a little more confident in handling the entire situation I was in. Even as I prepared lunch, I could see the girls stealing glances in my general direction. While Grace’s were the tamest, and Addie was particularly moderate with hers, Carmesi was definitely the one that was the most active of the trio.

The Fox Prime just seemed to take it upon herself to be blunt with her emotions. Intense long stares, filled with raw interest and attention. I couldn’t bring myself to look at her for long while trying to keep up with my clueless act. I was surprised I hadn’t noticed that those weren’t just silent demands from her to suddenly spar. Or maybe those were and I was now labeling everything I saw of that degree of attention worthy of being considered love-related glances.

Eventually my tension ended up growing the more I tried to think up how I was actually supposed to handle this entire ordeal. While I managed to keep fairly adamant about my opinion over what I said to Pulsar, I couldn’t help but allow my curiosity to raise a couple of ‘what ifs’ that were slowly but certainly gaining a foothold inside my head.

What if we actually worked out common points and somehow managed to get a stable relationship?

What if I was being too cautious and actually taking a route that was going to hurt us all in the process?

And finally, what if I was thinking too much to dissuade myself about my current stance on the matter?

The last one struck me the hardest since it was clear I was letting the intensity of the situation get to my head and making me take a silly contemplation I actually didn’t need to go through with. The subject was clear, the solution should be blatantly easy to grasp at, and yet I was foolish enough to not imagine that I would nonetheless be reluctant about this choice.

Because all in all, no matter the road taken, I was going these two. It was all about how long and how much pain I ended up delivering with my decision. Not a fun situation for me to handle, especially when I sucked this hard on relationships of this caliber.

But while I was keen to waste time thinking about it, I was given evidence that someone else had decided to take a completely different approach from mine. I was sitting on the couch reading some journals about Prism when I saw a quiet Carmie stealthily plop down on the seat beside me. I paused reading as soon as I realized that she was looking at me and… waiting for me to give her some attention.

“Yes?”

“Spar?”

I sighed. “You could have asked earlier this morning.”

“I wanted it to be away from others while they were training. A serious spar. With a bet,” She added with a serious voice, and I frowned even more at her determination with that request.

“I thought we agreed that Adela would have to-”

“Oversee any of that,” The queen hummed from the nearby table, finishing scribbling some papers. “Yes, I told her that and we both agreed that it could be done once in a while. And this is the moment.”

I felt confused by this very comment, not expecting the young woman to be open to entertain this awkward situation. I could see the two sharing a look and… I felt like I was walking up to a trap from the looks of it. Still, I offered a slow nod.

“I guess we can spar but… on what conditions?”

“I win, I get to decide what to do with you,” The Fire Crest elaborated. “Likewise, I lose and you get to do this to me.”

“Sounds rather generic… and fairly open to interpretation,” I accused flatly, turning my attention to Adela. “What are you two planning right now?”

“Nothing bad,” The queen swiftly replied, sparing me no odd reaction at the sudden question. “In fact, I can say you will like it.”

…

I doubted things would be that easy, but I still went through with that. I could just tell that it wasn’t as bad as I imagined it being. Addie might be a woman that loves to tease, but she was still someone that knew to not put too much pressure onto me about something she wasn’t sure about myself. I decided to trust them both on this matter and I slowly began regretting being this accepting of their idea.

The moment I entered the small training ground dedicated to spars I knew that, within Carmesi’s stance, she was up to actually put everything to win this one out. I was… concerned and confused by this take on the challenge. Normally the spars with bets we had in the last few weeks weren’t as serious as this one, always going for the goofy side of the bets and… with me winning all the time.

Right now, I felt like I had a serious possibility in losing that fight and coming to regret what was going to come out of this if I didn’t take a serious approach to it. A regret that was perhaps going to stretch to both Adela and Carmie. With the young Queen swiftly beginning the fight, I didn’t hesitate in taking a stance that was best suited to handle aggressive brawlers like Carmesi.

I was quite sure the Fox Prime’s reason to be this quick in taking an offensive stance when possible was tied to her choice of weapon. Short swords, those things required to have their user close and personal with the enemy as rapidly as the user could. Which is why the best way to handle this kind of encounter was to take a posture that hovered about counterattacks.

The moment she threw the first hit and then got answered with a jab slamming into her chin, I could see in her surprised eyes that the realization that this wasn’t going to be as easy as stealing candy from a kid as she had hoped for. It took her four more efforts to land some meaningful damage and being repelled each time with calm but unforgiving counters to come to terms that she had to play smart if she wanted to win against me.

Activating her Fire magic was the simplest route for her to take, which is why I relied on the fact that she couldn’t make full use of her growing powers within the enclosed space we were in. She had to be controlled if she didn’t want some of her own attacks to harm her in the long-term, which meant that I would have to just dodge, use my own basic understanding of Fire magic to deflect some of the flames away and eventually hit when possible.

It was all going well for me through these first twenty minutes. Then I was reminded that Carmie was no brute in a battle, especially when she was aware of the kind of tactical mind I had at my disposal. Just as I grew confident with my current stance, she revealed something I hadn’t really seen her use until that point. Maybe it was because I had focused a lot more in training both Gracie and Pulsar in recent time, and I didn’t exactly take any time seeing what kind of experiments she was doing to expand her fighting style even more than she was capable of before starting to train.

And here I was, being given a full glimpse of what she had been working on for a long time from the looks of it. I didn’t even manage to realize what happened as I failed to bring my arms up to guard at the sudden jab hitting my left cheek. In that moment, my brain rapidly tried to recover from that unexpected pain and I forced myself into a more defensive approach.

Something about her moves had changed without notice. I tried to push her to try to hit me again, which happened, and then, as I moved to counter her by her open posture, I was struck with another hit on the face. I backed away, this time feeling some more pain at the second hit she managed to get through my defense. A big grin was plastered on her face as she finally found her comeback.

And it was very awkward to defend against. I didn’t try to pierce onto her defense since I saw how poorly it fared, but that decision backfired as she took this as an incentive to put extra heat in her attacks. Faster and more unforgiving, I finally took notice of what had really changed within her attacks.

It wasn’t a difference of stance, it wasn’t even the addition of flexible novelties to her own style. She… just stopped packing excessive strength behind each hit. That was it. What really meant was that, by lessening the power and the weight of her punches and kicks, she made herself faster and more reactive than before.

My previous advantage had now turned into a disadvantage. I was nowhere as fast as Carmesi was with her take on a more balanced approach during the battle. Her speed was just a step beyond what I had predicted through the last time we trained, and right now I was paying for that cockiness I had been feeling until that very moment.

I was no longer in control of the fight as she retaliated for the damage she suffered earlier during the brawl and… eventually this faded away the moment I picked up her speed and reaction time, learning when to defend and react to her feints and when not to.

Two hours. I was barely standing up at the sheer strain I had put my body in and Carmie looked to be in a shape similar to mine. Her entire body was shaking, a mix of tiredness and excitement burning within her as she felt that we were approaching the end of this seemingly endless battle. It was now or never.

The Fire Crest rushed, her entire right arm bathed in flames as she tried to secure her win by overwhelming me with that impressive display of Fire magic. I gritted my teeth as I knew that I couldn’t just block that attack like the others, and I was starting to feel the strain after using my own reserves to dispel some of the flames aimed at me before this last ditch effort. I had a small opportunity to succeed, and… it all came to a very difficult maneuver that was as risky as silly.

Yet I didn’t have energy and mind to come up with a brighter idea. I was too spent to get anything fun running in such a limited amount of time and… I prepared to dodge. I saw the fire punch rushing towards my face, ready to burn me up… only to fail as Carmie willingly allowed the fist to move towards my shoulder and give me the chance to make my last attempt of winning this one out.

Her body tensed up as I wrapped my arms around her waist, pulling her close and holding her tight in that sudden hug. Her attack completely missed me, and the moment she crashed onto me, her magic faltered together with her concentration. She didn’t push away, almost accepting the embrace on the spot and, much to my surprise, slumping onto me as soon as her brain realized what was going on.

I was quickly forced to withstand her full weight, which was no easy feat for me to get through considering I wasn’t in top shape at that very moment. I glanced at Adela, the Coyote Prime already huffing and approaching us both.

“I got you,” The young queen muttered, almost replying to the silent question I was giving her with my eyes. “I guess I was hoping for too much.”

That last bit had me frowning. “You… what?”

“Nothing. But I guess you will want to ask more once I bring you both to the hospital bay.”

…

I sighed. “I want to know what got you to help Carmie about this? What are you two planning?”

“As I’ve said, nothing bad. But it’s fairly important.”

I held back a groan as I allowed Addie to handle most of the Fox Prime’s weight herself. I helped with just enough so I could manage walking together with her to our next destination. I was tired, and… I wasn’t in the mood to ignore the questions that had been there since the fight had begun.

_ What kind of agreement is going on with these two? _

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Lying on the bed beside the one occupied by a sleeping Carmesi, I glanced at a nervous-looking Adela.

I had my arms crossed and pressing by my chest, carefully enough to not press too much onto my ribs since, well, my entire body was in a particularly annoying state of pain. It was more about soreness than else, and yet it was enough to be irritating and distracting. It still wasn’t enough to be unable to think straight, but I was being rather fixed on a single topic at the moment. And that was the words the young Queen had just uttered and that I just couldn’t stop silently thinking about.

“We could try for an open relationship,” She said with a convinced tone. “I know Carmesi, and I know we have a particularly tight bond after so much has passed since we first come together.”

I just couldn’t think up a good way to rebuke that argument. Not because I didn’t know how to reply properly to it, but rather I was trying to find a way to deliver something that wasn’t going to hurt anyone in the process. A tough scenario I wasn’t prepared to handle. I had dabbled into paperwork behind this entire endeavor against the empire, and despite that, I was unprepared for the kind of madness I had to delve into to avoid a full collapse of everything.

“What kind of ‘openness’ are you suggesting?” I finally inquired, feeling like I had a route to take to perhaps dissuade the young woman from going through with this.

“Romantically,” She curtly answered. “I understand that it’s what you truly might find… difficult to stand with. You look fairly reluctant about approaching this option.”

“Because humanity had minor experiences with polygamy and none of those are considered positive,” I remarked calmly. “Do you want to know why?”

…

“Yes.”

I sighed. “An intimate relationship that entails more than two individuals together generally works better in non-romantic circumstances. Many rulers had concubines, women that were considered mistresses and thus beneath a main wife,” I started to explain. “Inequality. Something that Love just can’t allow to exist without people hurting because of it.”

“Carmesi isn’t beneath me. I might be queen-”

“But you are too good of a person to actually think of that. No matter the traditions, no matter the privileges that would demand you to set a difference. I know that,” I interrupted politely. “That isn’t what I’m trying to mean with my words. Quite the contrary actually. If polygamy works through inequality because there has to be a specific scenario that doesn’t allow competition, do you know what happens when most of the lovers are of the same sex and are put on the same pedestal by the element that ties them all together?”

…

“They compete. Not out of greed for the other, but rather because in their minds they deserve to appear unique to the eyes of the one judge they want to be praised by,” I replied to my own question. “You would never want to be above others in a relationship like this, yet you would want to be considered as Adela rather than just ‘First Lover’. You want to be unique, not out of greed but out of a right that everyone is blessed with since birth and should be blessed as something second only to the right of life itself. The right to be happy.”

Addie’s lips twitched at the point I just raised. It wasn’t difficult to find an undeniable agreement out of my words. While it was true that Primes might have enjoyed polygamous relationships in the past, that I doubted extended to romantic ones. There were just too many disadvantages behind that element, and I knew that it just couldn’t be explored as a viable way.

…

“What if you are wrong?”

I blinked. “Um?”

That felt coming out of nowhere. Sure, I did expect some unwillingness from her part to accept my perspective, but surely she just couldn’t think that it was actually possible. I knew Addie well enough to doubt that was actually the case.

“What if you took the entire polygamy element from the wrong perspective?” She elaborated. “You mentioned what sounds to be a harem.”

“That’s because what most polygamous relationship comes from. A single guy, or a single girl, handling a group of lovers of the opposite sex.”

“But that’s not what I was bringing up with the whole ‘open relationship’,” Adela corrected with a frown. “What I meant is that we could try and create a relationship where we all love each other.”

…

“Ah?”

“Let me put this in perspective. I love you, you love me, you love Carmie, Carmie loves you, I love Carmie, Carmie loves me.”

…

“Oh. I think… I understand. You mean you want to try and-”

“Try having an open relationship with you and Carmie. You both are family, I think Gracie will possibly join that too,” The young queen added. “Which is why I want to know what you think about this before going completely for it.”

This wasn’t an easy decision. She was making a fair argument that I hadn’t taken under consideration until she brought it up. I thought a relationship in this complex would have been mostly doable only as a harem. And it was with that realization that I finally noticed why I hadn’t thought of it in the way Adela was proposing it.

Humans would never agree to something based on absolute trust. Not beyond fiction. It was impossible to find the kind of people that would be keen to accept this kind of relationship and I knew, within myself, that the uniqueness of the entire scenario I was in actually allowed for this bond to exist and… maybe even grow into a stable relationship between us all.

I was stunned by this development, but perplexed nonetheless. Would that actually work? I was rather sure it would- but… what if I wasn’t looking at the real issue behind the feasibility of such circumstance? Did Carmesi love Adela in a romantic way? Did Adela actually see Carmie as a potential Lover? Or was the queen just trying to lie her way out of my reluctance?

I glanced at her, trying to see if she was lying to me here and now. Only to pause and realize that there was a degree of seriousness that erased any doubt I had about her genuineness on the subject. So… when did this new detail start to be part of the entire equation? When did Addie start to love Carmie and when did Carmie start to love Addie?

I fished within my memory, finding very small elements that, if left alone, made zero sense. And yet now that I assembled within that bizarre puzzle I was building out of that insane situation actually had a logic connecting them all. Compliments, praises, shared teasing and… much more to it. Maybe I really hadn’t taken notice of this situation and that would also broaden the fact that it wasn’t exactly that big of a decision for me to make. It wasn’t even a decision that should matter beyond the two other girls since we were equally stuck in that very predicament. Before I could actually formulate an answer to this very compelling offer, our attention was stolen as I saw someone approaching from the entrance.

Gracie was smiling eye-to-eye while holding a small box, following shortly behind a giddy pulsar that was munching at a tiny white-bread sandwich filled with apple jam from the substance color. The Love Crest had gone out of her way to prepare some snacks while we spent some time here in the hospital bay. The two ‘intruders’ decided to settle nearby and entertain some light conversation, clearly unaware of the serious discussion I was having with Adela.

A single stare shared between the two of us confirmed that this situation was far from over, and with this distraction I could now have the time to ponder about this big issue with all the calm and the peace I could get out of this brief visit in the infirmary. Nothing was broken and I was mostly sore, so I knew that a few hours spent there and I would have been able to get dinner ready.

In fact, Carmesi managed to stand up properly after just three more hours of sleep. Of course, she was quick to ‘forget’ about the bet we had about the sparring session, and I decided to not remind her of it just yet as I knew bringing that up would also be a good way for her to start a conversation about the things I was trying to agree with Adela.

It was tough as it could be to handle this with just the queen, trying to bring someone like Carmie on the fold over this entire debacle was just going to cause some serious issues out of little details. So I could only take precautions to prevent any of that to be brought up during dinner. The problem? Addie decided to pay a visit to my room and she decided to spend the night there. And she was very keen to remind me how much ‘she trusted me and believed in my judgment’.

_ That was just a prick’s move considering how much pressure I already had on myself. Still… What am I supposed to do? _

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AN

Not Harem but… something different? Truly some maddening time before the next Crest comes by.