Chapter 17

After a fun littlefrot in the shower, Fox and I join Akile, Bellamy, Edovard, Santanos, Hassan, Gregory, Annette, and her wife, Bonnie. Everyone but the fathers are here. When I disappeared to Fae, Fox informed the family and they gathered here to make a plan to get me back. When the invite from Clan Caryn came, the fathers told everyone to stay put while they fetched me.

I wonder if Tag is going to agree to Gwendolyn's terms, but maybe I should tell the other Avatars what's happening to get their take on things.

My phone's at forty-seven percent charge (that's all it got while we were showering), but I brought my charger down with me. I find a plug for my umbilical behind the wet bar on the far side of the room, but I'll wait to plug my phone back in until things are dire.

"So you called a family meeting and then got yourself abducted by the fae," Santanos greets me, studying me for damage from where he's sitting on Edovard's lap in the shallow end of the pool.

Santanos and I didn't have the best start, but we have something very important in common now (Edovard), and I participated in the murder of his parents for that thing (person), so he's obligated to be concerned about my health and safety now. Edovard would be devastated if something happened to me. He would also be devastated if something happened to Santanos, so I'm just as obligated to be worried for the evil Avatar.

Speaking of the evil Avatar. Did anyone else notice that according to Gwendolyn, Santanos became the Avatar of Evil through murder?

I heard from a previous Avatar of Neutrality that you killed your predecessor and inherited the job that way.

The volley of pings and buzzes from my message to the group makes me giddy. Every person reading their phones or watches (except Edovard, who has his phone read it aloud), takes me from giddiness to joy. I love seeing my family make me important.

"Avatar of Neutrality?" Bonnie asks, and her question is echoed by everyone except the other two Avatars.

Annette and Santanos both freeze with looks of shocked horror on their faces. Annette unfreezes first, drains her plastic highball glass, stands up in her miniscule nude bikini that makes me do a double take because: Naked Sugar Daddy? Yes. But no, she's just wearing a skin-colored bikini. Then she strides back to the bar for a refill of whatever she's drinking. Looks like bourbon.

Santanos pushes his damp blond curls off his face and stands as well. He's not wearing a swimsuit. He's wearing a dick cylinder that's just wrapped around his dick. He doesn"t have testicles, so it's just a trouser snake tube covering. It's… a very Santanos thing to wear.

I wonder if the other men in their polycule are also as comfortable with exhibition.

I glance at Edovard. It would be wrong of me to beckon him for a hug just to see if he's covered, right? I mean, there's something, but the water is distorting the view.

The sound of Annette's litany of expletives draws my attention to less morally gray territory. Maybe it's more gray considering we're talking about neutrality.

"How did we forget that there's supposed to be a third Avatar?" Santanos questions, following Annette to the bar with his ass on full display.

It's a nice ass. The most perfect ass in all the world according to my son. I begrudgingly agree. Fox's ass is magnificent, but Santanos's was literally made to be perfect.

Fox's arms come around me, pulling me into the water with him. Honestly, everyone here is hot to look at, so I don't know what he expects from me. He knows he's the only one I'll be fucking, but not even a saint would be able to ignore the aesthetic beauty of the gathering here. If anything, Fox should be grateful, because this means I'll be ready to dick him down as soon as we're done here, and he loves getting dicked down.

Fox sits on the edge of the pool and pulls me in front of him, pressing his half chub into the crack of my ass. Well, now I'm almost as hard as he is. It's distracting to be this turned on while I'm trying to bring everyone up to speed.

I peer at Bellamy and frown in disappointment at him.

"He's disappointed that you haven't brought everyone up to speed already," Fox chides him.

Bellamy's gaze deliberately slides to my bestie, who's very involved in a fruity yellow frozen cocktail with a skewer of pineapple, orange slice, and maraschino cherry.

I want a fruity cocktail.

"The most qualified person to explain the situation to the other Avatars is the one who understands it the best," Bellamy protests slowly.

I have to admit, he makes a good point, but he should have at least nudged Akile in the right direction before Akile got his cocktail. At this point, I'm fairly certain Akile is in love, and I don't think that anything is going to distract him from his new affair.

The noise of the blender echoes through the room, and my head snaps toward the bar where Santanos is blending a fruity yellow cocktail and preparing skewers for plastic cocktail glasses. Behind him Annette is drinking straight from the bottle, staring into the void. She's processing.

I send a text to Santanos only. Are you going to share the deliciousness with me or are you going to make me cry on Edovard's shoulder?

Santanos stops cutting and skewering fruit to check the message. He lifts his head to peer at me through the bluest of blue eyes. "Romily, would you like a Sunshine cocktail?" he asks dryly.

I nod enthusiastically and send the next message to the whole group. Thank you for offering, I would love one!

Edovard perks up. "Oh good. I wasn't sure if you were making enough for Papa and Oppa."

Santanos's expression melts into deep affection as he turns a smile toward Edovard. "I'll make two batches, sweetie. Do you want anything or are you still sticking to water?"

Edovard reaches over and pulls Gregory into his lap, smiling sappily at Santanos. "I'll stick with water."

Gregory huffs, settles, stiffens and then smirks, and somehow manages to look grumpy through the whole thing. He wiggles on Edovard's lap and reaches into the water, and my Pupper tightens his grip on his boyfriend.

"Stop," Pupper complains.

Gregory snorts. "You're the one who decided to use me as a shield. I reserve the right to use you right back."

Hassan rolls his eyes, standing. He's wearing nothing at all and sporting a hard on. I've seen him naked before, so I can't say I'm surprised, but I thought they only did that when Santanos needed him in bodyguard mode, and I thought that Edovard's presence made Hassan and Gregory redundant because of the excess energy available from Edovard.

Why are you naked?

If they're going to be comfortable being nude in front of me, they have to be comfortable answering questions about why.

"Because he's beautiful, and I'm kind enough to share his beauty with everyone," Santanos answers for him, handing him a tray of cocktails.

Hassan takes the tray and starts back toward us.

"Now, explain what is happening and how we're going to fix this," Santanos says as he refills the blender with ingredients.

My phone pings with a text message from Akile. It's a long, full explanation of everything going on as far as he knows.

I skim it, taking a drink from Hassan, and then add what I know about Gwendolyn, what she wants, and how she can help if Tag negotiates successfully.

I won't force you to read our messages since they're basically a recap of the last sixteen chapters, so you're fully up to date.

Annette rejoins us in the pool, sitting next to her waifu, handing the pretty woman a Sunshine cocktail, and wrapping her arm around her. "The Mab thinks that she needs to be present with me and Santanos, and possibly Darcy because he really is the most likely candidate for becoming the next Avatar of Neutrality. We all need to go to Arktis to unleash the force of neutrality, and this is going to change the world back to what it should have been before the cherubs decided we didn't need the neutral universal force. And when are we planning to make this happen?"

As soon as Tag gets done negotiating with Gwendolyn.

There's no point in delaying. If we make a big production of it, something might come up to delay us or stop us. Something like the cherubs that locked the universal force away.

Actually, how likely are the cherubs to get in the way of progress here? The old gods faked their deaths to avoid detection, but that doesn't tell me how dangerous the cherubs who did this actually are.

Being the person with less knowledge of this world means I have to ask questions about what might be basic knowledge when I can't guess.

Akile whines and pouts adorably. "Our parents are fully capable of taking us out. Cherub kids are known for their mental prowess right? Well, as we get older we get stupider, but our mental capabilities change from knowledge acquisition to psychic powers. My dad is fully capable of mind controlling anyone within ten meters of him. My mom is telekinetic, but don't make the mistake of thinking she just turns lights on and off. She moved a whole mountain from Mali to Tanzania for fun when her powers first developed, and she's gotten more powerful since."

I exaggerate confusion, tilting my head to the side and peering at him curiously. My bestie should definitely know what I'm asking.

Akile releases a put upon sigh. "I'm still waiting for my mind to catch up. We have to be adults for a few centuries before our minds switch modes from knowledge acquisition to practical application."

Aww. Just like humans there's a time between body maturity and mind maturity.

"Are we expecting to have to fight the cherubs?" Annette asks Akile. "You made it seem like you've been keeping your parents in the dark about your activities."

Akile slugs some of his frozen drink before he answers. "I think that hiding anything from our parents has always been an exercise in futility. It might take them some time to figure us out, but they always catch on eventually. We might be able to unleash the universal force and create a new Avatar, but how are we going to keep them safe once we do? Our parents convinced the world to go along with their stupid plan to begin with; who's to say they won't do that again?"

"Did they convince the previous Avatars," Santanos adds, rejoining us in the pool with Hassan, "or did they replace the previous Avatars with supporters to accomplish their goal? Who was the Avatar of Good before Annette? The previous Avatar of Evil was a cherub that I killed."

I was going to ask about that, so I'm glad he brought it up himself.

"That was just after the imbalance happened, wasn't it?" Bellamy points out.

Santanos nods, seating himself on Hassan's lap now that all the cocktails have been passed around. "When the axis of power tilted in favor of evil, I elected myself to fix it. The previous Avatar created the imbalance and tried to convince the rest of us that it was for the best. The problem is that disrupting the balance on this planet caused a shift on every planet and in every realm under the influence of the universal forces that rule us. Eighty/twenty on this planet became ninety-nine/one on another planet and wiped out a whole species of intelligent creatures. It became fifty-eight/forty-two on another that was previously such a stabilized society that they were on the brink of world peace. My realm was thrust into seventeen/eighty three; which isn't good for a thriving society. The universal forces couldn't balance, and the cherub in charge of evil was satisfied with the imbalance, so I killed her and took her job."

You don't really think about the far reaching effects that an imbalance in the world creates, but why was it so extreme for some places?

"Why would the imbalance on Earth affect Hell?"Gregory reads my message to Edovard instead of making Edovard use the text to speech function on his phone.

Look at my son's lover giving me a voice. I know he's only doing it because he loves my pupper, but still. I appreciate it.

Santanos and Annette exchange a cringing look and Annette explains. "It has such a huge effect because we were trying to balance good and evil without neutrality. We were unknowingly assigning moral significance to things that shouldn't have ever had them. This pool isn't good or evil, but in a universe without the neutral force, it has to fall into one of those categories. So pools are good because they're places where the community can come together and socialize. They built cohesion for communities."

"Unless they're private pools and then they're pretentious and evil because they're a sign that the person who owns them has taken advantage of someone else to get ahead."

"Unless they're an above ground pool that middle income families can afford, and then they're only evil if someone has drowned in them," Annette finishes.

Santanos makes a frustrated noise. "It's hard to balance the universe when every neutral thing is swinging from good to evil, but we forgot that there was a better option. How did the cherubs come up with this plan? It is clearly the less practical and efficient mode of operating the balance."

Annette snorts. "Oh, I know what they were thinking. Trapping the neutral force here on Earth has had one practical effect that would appeal to the cherub's sense of organization." She leaves us hanging while she takes a gulp from a plastic bottle that she filled with her bourbon.

"Annette," Santanos reminds her.

She blinks at us. Huh. I think my daddy is drunk, which shouldn't be a surprise considering how much bourbon she's downed in the last half an hour. She doesn't sound drunk when she says, "It forced the Avatars to stay on one planet in one realm. Before, the Avatars would move between the realms and planets. One of my predecessors lived in a private realm and conducted all his business from there. His contemporary Avatar of Evil lived in Fae, and the Avatar of Neutrality was a sentient crystal on a diamond planet at the edge of this universe."

Santanos squints, pressing his pouty lips together. "That would have made organizing difficult."

Akile tips sideways, and Bellamy catches him before he ends up underwater. Akile doesn't react to the save, announcing, "That's the most reasonable explanation I've heard of our parents' motivation for this catastrophe. We shoulda talked to you months ago."

I agree with that, at least.

Can you imagine? Reorganizing the entire universe and all the realms because having the Avatars in one place is more convenient?

Honestly, that makes more sense than the some-kind-of-megalomania I was imagining.