Hi. Today I'd like to focus on Barbara and continue blue balling Jean, Lisa and Amber. (Why you ask? Because it's fun.)

K: You sadistic bastard.

A: Oh, so you decided to wake up after all. What happened?

K: The 2.0 preview was pretty dope.

A: Dope? It was an entire brick of fentanyl. Not gonna lie I wouldn't mind being Baal's sword.

K: *Sighs* It seems I must rid you of the HORNI. Prepare to be bonked my friend.

A: Wait. Hold on I don't consent to thissss!

So, apparently dragon claws are sharp enough to pierce skin. Who knew?

So, Aether had quite a bit of explaining to do.

I mean Aether had scratches on his back and arms, like the ones you get when you are having sex with an extremely horny dragon. How do I know? You're asking too many questions.

Those scratches were pretty painful, so he had to go to Barbara to get them healed.

(K: Why not diona?

A: Well, he did have a mysterious power of drawing drunk catgirl lolis towards him.

K: Oh yeah that seems reasonable.)

"Ouch." Aether said.

"Jeez, Aether-kun, just because I'll always be here to heal you doesn't mean you can run around, always getting hurt." Barbara said, worried.

"Someone had to do it. I mean it's mondstadt we are talking about." He replied.

Aether was sitting on the floor in the basement of the church without his shirt on.

Barbara was healing his injuries, after taking a break from her deaconess and idol duties. Barbara, the recipient of the whole town's admiration only admired two people Aether and Jean. Her sister was brave enough to express his feelings for Aether. (Who being the dumbass he was, didn't quite get it.)

And Aether was, well, Aether. He was kind, handsome, helpful, the whole shebang. It would be a miracle if someone didn't fall for him.

(K: Author-kun, you sound like you have a crush on Aether.

A: I can neither confirm nor deny that claim, or rather I don't want to, so let's move on.)

Barbara was quite amazed at how he was always helping people out and defeating those nasty hilichurls, no matter how injured he got in the process.

After a quick trip to a Statue of the Seven or eating some food, he was back on his feet, helping people out. She was what Barbara dreamed to be even if on her own small scale.

"Aether, I wanna be your adventurer buddy."

"No."

"You didn't even think over it." Barbara wailed.

"Nononononono. There are too many faults in this plan. I teleport around a lot which will be difficult for you to do, I sleep in my house in the teapot, and I can't allow you to enter it because of um… reasons, and even with my best catalyst you are a better healer than a fighter." Aether justified.

"Let me come with you. I'll promise to help you out however I can. If a start becoming a burden, you can dump me in the ocean or something." Barabra was now crying at the top of her lungs.

This attracted the attention of one of the sisters, who Aether deemed worthy to be a judge, (mainly because she had red hair (*wink* *wink*)).

"Sister-san, can you please convince miss Barbara to not come with me, as it is quite dangerous, and I'm not sure I'll be able to protect her." Aether said, giving his side of the story.

"But I really want to adventure with him. Seeing him in action might give me a morale boost for my idol and deaconess duties." Brabara protested.

"Hm…" The nun said, deep in thought.

"The outer wilds are pretty dangerous, and whatever experience of wilderness you want you can get withing city walls…" she started.

"YES YES YES YES." Aether thought.

"Yeah sure, you can go with him."

"YOU BITCH!" Aether screamed.

So, Aether was now walking in the wilderness, hunting for boars, with a lump on his head, presumably from the nun's spear, and Barbara trailing behind him, trotting like a deer.

So, they hunted some boars, fought some slimes, and defeated a ruin guard for some fun and as the sun was about to set, they decided to have supper.

They sat down, and Aether cooked the boar. Barbara was reluctant to eat the boar because it had been sauteed in slime condensate. However, after just a single bite, she realized it was the best thing she had ever tasted. It had the strong spicy flavour she loved, but none of the awful and sweaty aftermath, as the slime soothed the throat pretty well.

"You said, it was gonna be bad, but it was a pretty good day today. We are even having a little picnic with the view of the sunset." she said.

Her face took on a red tint but it wasn't because of the sunset.

Aether noticed this and questioned it.

"I-It's like we are on a d-d-date, or s-something." She said, tripping over words.

…

Well, thanks a FUCKING lot for making the entire FUCKING situation awkward you DIPSHIT.

"Well... Anyway, this was a nice experience, I don't know why you were so worried." Barbara said.

Aether got a weird smile on his face. He was smiling but there was no joy behind it.

"Who said the experience was over. The night is yet to come."

At that very moment a gust of cold air blew.

"Oh.. no…." Barbara whispered.

(A: *Clears throat* Two hours later..

K: BWAHAHA… What the hell. That was such a shitty impression.

A: No one would have known if you didn't tell them you know.)

2 hours later, all three of them were laying in one tent so as to preserve body heat.

The temperature was about -20 degrees Celsius (that's -4-degree freedom), and it would be safe to say that no one was comfortable. Paimon, about the size of a rat dog (chihuahua), was damn near a giant popsicle. She kept trying to shuffle into Aether shirt which was annoying him, so he finally put the teapot down, and told Paimon to go in the beachside house.

"What about you?" Paimon asked, genuinely worried.

"Come with you and leave her alone to die? No thanks. I don't want murder of the idol of Mondstadt on my hands." He responded, through the chatter of his teeth.

"Why don't you bring her as well?" Paimon asked.

It was at that moment that Aether realized how incredibly fucking stupid paimon was.

"Bring her, so Dvalin can kill her? No thanks, it would still basically be murder. Don't worry about me. Thanks to some "special training" I have received from La Signora, I'm pretty used to this temperature." Aether said, trying to comfort Paimon.

"Paimon would have questioned this "special training", but Paimon's brain juices are frozen, so, this one can pass." Paimon said, passing into the pot.

With Paimon gone, only Aether and Barbara were left in the tent.

Barbara took this utilized this opportunity.

She snuggled up to Aether and laid her head against his chest. Aether was a bit surprised at first, but put it down to the temperature being so low, that a person will naturally gravitate towards heat.

"Say, Aether," Barbara said, bringing her face close to his, and looking him in the eye.

"Aether had his fair share of confessions almost every day, so he knew where this was going.

"Do you like my sister?"

"…Huh?" Aether say that going differently. He never thought of this as being a plausible scenario, so he was pretty dumbfounded and didn't know how to answer.

"Well, I mean, I respect her. She is strong and always goes around helping other people."

"Either you are trying to avoid the question, or you are incredibly dense. I'm sure you know that Jean likes you. She is quite physical with it as well."

"?"

Don't look at me like that. I saw her hugging you in the cathedral square (circle). A hug isn't something abnormal, but the way she did it was quite aggressive." Barbara said, sighing. "You know, there is someone I have a crush on too, I wish I was more aggressive so he would notice me."

"What are you talking about? You don't need to be aggressive. If you truly love him from the bottom of your heart, he will surely reciprocate. After all, most people would much rather have someone love them than lust after them."

Aether's words had a deep impact on her.

She slept the night in the arms of the man, whom she loved, and got dating advice from.

Next morning,

(K: Wait hold on, where secks?

A: What do you mean 'where secks' Can't you be wholesome for once?")

So, next day, they went back to the cathedral noticeably sicker than before.

When approached by the red nun on this matter, Aether simply said, "I told you so." Which earned him another whack from the pokey stick.

Barbara was down with a fever.

She was paying the price for not listening to the more experienced traveler. Twisting, and turning in bed, shivering, she could not get out her mind what the traveler had said. Maybe if she finally came clean about her feelings, they work towards it together. However, the very thought of confessing to her crush sent her heartrate through the roof. She obviously wasn't at that stage yet.

"Mind explaining why you smell like someone you shouldn't smell like?" Dvalin asked.

Well, we all saw this coming. You simply can't snuggle up to them and sleep next to them and not expect them to smell like you. Even more so with a Dragon's sharp nose.

"So, what is that smell on you?" Dvalin asked, showing off her sharp teeth in a smile.

Aether forgot about the part where he couldn't go home because of Barbara's smell on him.

He didn't plan on going there anyway. He was gonna chill and hang out in one of his houses, but paimon said that there was a medical emergency and he needed to go back.

Aether rushed back as quick as he could, only to find out that there was in fact no emergency, other than paimon being held hostage and Dvalin threatening to eat her if he didn't come back.

So, now Aether was fooled into coming back and he had a lot of explaining to do.

"Um… I found my sister and she gave me a hug. That's why there is a foreign scent on me." Aether lied, fooling no one.

"I don't think she hugged you for 8 hours to leave such a strong scent on you. Plus, if she was your sister, she would have had a much nicer smell than the stink that's on you right now.

Aether took down a mental note to gift Barbara some boar hunting scent. It may offend her, but it was probably better than being eaten alive.

"I swear Aether I can't keep doing this. Here I am, being the model wife, trying to fulfil you every need, looking after paimon, and all you do is go around and flirting with other women." Dvalin said, hiding her face in a shaky voice.

(A: Wait hold on, didn't she try to eat paimon, and what's with that model wife stuff. Isn't that kinda sexist?

K: …You are saying all this just so you don't get cancelled on twitter. Who are you kidding?

A: Yeah you are right I couldn't give less of a flying fuck.)

"ALRIGHT WE BOUT TO BUST THIS BITCH OPEN" Jean yelled, coming out of nowhere, with Lisa and amber in tow, life a Walmart version of the powerpuff girls.

"You think you can steal Aether and keep him from us? Oh no we won't allow that. You may be step ahead from us in that you lost your virginity to him, but we will soon follow. So, we will bust him out of here." Jean said, raising a finger.

"Oh, it's you lot. You are going to bust him out of his own house? And who told you about our little adventures anyway?" Dvalin said, not impressed.

"Let's just say it was a certain floating midget." Amber said, and running to grab Aether.

Dvalin did not like this and she turned back to her dragon form. She called upon the power of wind to smite Amber but was stopped by Lisa who sent a pulse of electricity through her body, forcing her muscles to twitch and falsely firing the shot.

Amber was on evasive, and Lisa on defensive, so Jean took on the offence.

She attacked her in the wings, and forcing her to pay attention to him. They kept fighting back and forth until Dvalin realized that Aether was no longer there.

She flew up the roof and saw that Aether and that red girl were no longer in the pot.

Amber was running all the way to the place where no teleport waypoint dared to venture, the conjunction between Liyue and Mondstadt.

(not to liyue because I can't add them to the harem just yet.)

They finally stopped running and Amber, while catching her breath saw that Aether wasn't exactly pleased with his "rescue".

"Why do you seem so disappointed." Amber asked.

To which Aether answered,

"I don't know. I just think that things are about to get much, much worse."

The Author-Kun and Kami-Chan Podcast Ep. I don't even know anymore.

K: We had quite a twister of a chapter today, what inspired you to write such a shit chapter?

A: Well, my favorite shonen character is Kamijou Touma from A Certain Magical Index, and I have been reading some fanfictions where his misfortune always fucks him over, so I figured I might as well do a plot curry.

K: So, did you do it?

A: Yes.

K: What did it cost?

A: A shit chapter with no character development and 650 word short of what I feel the minimum words a chapter should have.)