Monroe

Chapter Four Hundred and Seven. Dancing.

Bob held Jessica close as he followed the steps they'd been shown, one of his hands holding hers while the other pressed against her lower back.

A lower back that was bare, thanks to the dress she'd chosen for the evening.

Her skin was almost impossibly smooth and beyond soft.

"Dip and hold!" The instructor's voice called out.

They ended their choreographed dance with Jessica leaning back, one arm held up, clasping his hand, while he supported her balance with the other on her back.

"Magnificent! If I didn't know better, I would say you've been practicing for years," the instructor, Maria, gushed. "Such a magnificent couple! When next you visit, you must give me more time, I will find a place, perhaps the amphitheater, where we will have the room to truly instruct you!"

Maria had bemoaned the size of her studio once she'd come to terms with just how tall the group was. She'd been forced to teach them a truncated version of the dance, although she'd explained how they would be able to perform it normally if space permitted.

Bob was willing to admit when he was wrong, and he'd been wrong about dancing. He'd enjoyed it a lot more than he thought he would. He suspected that having Jessica as his partner had quite a bit to do with it.

He'd been a little worried about the evening, worried that she might push for more than he'd be able to give. He was self-aware enough to know his limitations, and while they'd grown, he didn't think they'd grown that much.

She hadn't pushed at all, and the evening had been wonderful. She'd drawn him out of his thoughts a couple of times after they'd wandered, and spending time with just the four of them had felt incredibly comfortable.

"That wasn't so bad, was it?" Jessica asked.

Her eyes were brilliantly blue, which was something they'd all had to adjust to. Evolving to become Wayfarers had come with a few odd changes beyond the increase in their height. Everyone's eyes had gained a new property, shifting their irises to a shade of purple when they were actively using mana. This included hanging persistent effects, which meant that during their day-to-day lives on the Urlinad planet, they'd gotten used to everyone's eyes being purple all the time.

"No, it wasn't," He agreed.

"I told you that he'd love it," Amanda beamed.

"Right you were, my raven-haired temptress," Dave smiled, pulling Amanda closer and kissing her lightly on the forehead.

They bid Maria goodnight, with Dave promising that they would return and give her more notice the next time.

She looked a little startled when Bob opened a portal back to the hotel. Despite the System having arrived years ago, there were still a lot of people who hadn't run into some of the more overt displays of magic, or at least not enough to become accustomed to them.

Stepping through the portal, Bob waited to the side as the others walked through. Dave and Amanda walked to their suite, arm and arm, while Jessica remained behind.

"I know it wasn't a date," she whispered, "but I had a wonderful time, and I look forward to doing it again," she finished before standing on her toes and closing her eyes as she kissed him lightly on the lips.

It only lasted a second, but as she turned and walked to her suite, Bob raised his hand to his lips, certain that he could still feel that gentle pressure and smell the subtle scent of vanilla from her hair.

Jessica knocked at the door that separated her suite from Dave and Amanda's.

Amanda opened the door and pulled her inside. "Did you do it?" Amanda demanded.

Jessica threw herself onto the bed and kicked her legs. "I did!"

Dave shook his head, covering his eyes. "Okay, clearly this is girl time," he walked haltingly to the door and exited, closing the door behind him, while Jessica sat up and straightened her dress, blushing.

"I think I just flashed Dave," she admitted.

"It isn't anything he hasn't seen before," Amanda smiled. "Although I love him for being uncomfortable about it."

"He's a keeper," Jessica agreed as she fell back onto the bed with a sigh.

"So is Bob," Amanda said. "So, give me all the deets!"

"I kissed him for a second and then came in here," Jessica reported. "There isn't much to tell except that he has unfairly soft lips for a man."

"He didn't pull back or anything, though, right?" Amanda asked.

"Nope," Jessica replied with a brilliant smile.

"Progress!" Amanda shouted, throwing a fist up into the air.

"Definitely," Jessica agreed.

She'd been beyond pleased when Bob hadn't objected too strenuously about going dancing beyond stating that he didn't know how.

That had gone even better than she'd expected. In her experience, the adage that a man who could dance was more likely to be a skilled lover was true. She knew that she was still a long way from that with Bob, but he'd learned the steps of the dance quite quickly.

Bob woke up as he hit the floor.

Shaking his head, disoriented, he looked around. It took a moment for his head to clear, and he remembered that he was in a tier-eight suite at the Hilton Hotel in Los Angeles. He'd fallen asleep in the huge bed to his left. A huge bed from which there protruded a single massive paw.

Standing up, Bob looked down at the bed and sighed. He'd brought Monroe out last night and had spent a few hours, after going out to dinner and dancing with his friends, lavishing affection on his best friend. Monroe hadn't wanted to go back in his inventory, and the bed was huge, so Bob had decided to share.

Sadly, Monroe could sometimes be a pushy sleeper, and true to form, he'd managed to nudge Bob right out of the bed.

Sighing, Bob settled down on the one corner of the bed not occupied by his feline overlord. "Good morning, buddy," Bob said softly as he ran his hands through Monroe's long, silky coat.

Monroe responded, contracting into a slightly more condensed pool of liquid kitty, covering his eyes with his tail, a clear indication that he did not want to wake up just yet.

Bob nodded and stood back up, stretching. They'd had a late night. He'd needed someone to talk to about Jessica kissing him, and Monroe was a great listener.

"Breakfast it is," Bob murmured as he headed for the bathroom. "But first, I'm going to enjoy that tub again."

Yesterday had been the first time he'd ever been able to take a bath, and he'd found that he'd really enjoyed it. Today, he intended to give that tub a bit of a closer look.

He'd needed to strip his inventory bare in order to transport the Urlinad from Dungeon to Dungeon, and he hadn't yet had time to do anything more than clean it. It was just a big empty space.

Bob intended to recreate the apartment he'd had previously, but with a few upgrades, one of which was going to be a copy of that tub.

The other upgrade was going to be drastically increased storage.

He was capable of casting System-less spatial expansion and reinforcement rituals, although they wouldn't be nearly as large as they'd been when he'd had the spells fully leveled. Still, he could turn one cubic foot into six cubic feet, which meant he was going to spend quite a few mana crystals casting those rituals, as well as the stasis ritual, on a bunch of Tupperware containers.

It wasn't just for his inventory, he'd be doing the same thing for the Freedom. They'd all learned a valuable lesson about being caught out by the System, and while you could live on fresh vegetables and meat harvested from monsters, it did tend to sort of suck the joy out of meal times.

As he waited for the tub to fill, he planned out his day.

He needed to call Alex and let him know they were back. He might have seen the interview, but there was no guarantee of that, and Bob knew that he would want to get the data from the armbands as quickly as possible. Bob was also looking forward to seeing what the hyperactive engineer had come up with while they were gone.

Inventory shopping. One of the things Bob had learned was that he was not, nor was he ever likely to be, an interior designer. Nor was he a carpenter. His inventory had previously been furnished by Bob ritually summoning the furniture he needed. He wasn't going to make that mistake this time around. He was going to have someone who knew what they were doing design his space, and then he'd have furniture made to fit it.

Container shopping. Out of everything that had changed on Earth, Bob suspected that, like the humble cockroach, Walmart had survived. He'd be heading there to purchase a pile of Tupperware.

Finally, he wanted to talk to Dave and Bailli about the kiss. After a long conversation with Monroe, he'd decided to talk to some of his friends who had a better understanding of human romance. His own nonexistent experience had left him ill-prepared, and he wanted to talk to those two before he talked to Jessica.

He turned off the water and turned on the jets before settling into the tub with a smile. First and foremost, he was taking a bath.

"What. The. Fuck?!?" Mike stared at the billboard in disbelief.

There, in full technicolor glory, was a forty-foot-tall picture of Bob's face. Beside it was a caption.

"Be Better, Kinder, Stronger. Stand up and protect humanity! Become an Adventurer!"

In a much smaller font across the bottom of the billboard, a message read, "Paid for by the United Church of the System, in association with the Adventurers Guild of Thayland."

Mike rubbed his temples. He'd just gone out to get coffee.

The girls had bitched about running out of chocolate, but for Mike, it had been the loss of his precious morning brew that had hurt the most. He'd spent half a decade in the Corp and then two decades on the job, starting his morning, mid-morning, late morning, afternoon, mid-afternoon, and late afternoon with a strong cup of joe.

While reincarnation had put them all on the same playing field, age-wise, Mike still considered Bob, Dave, Amanda, and Jack kids. They were twenty-somethings to his closer to fifty-something.

While he wouldn't call Bob a health nut, given the poverty he'd lived in, the other three had definitely been, eschewing caffeine and tobacco, the two great stimulants and depressants that had kept his days and nights from running together.

Mike had stopped smoking the year before his wife divorced him, pulling that monkey off his back, but he'd never even tried to give up his coffee. Until about a year into the previous expedition.

He'd never been one to fill the silence with small talk, so he'd been able to avoid snapping at the kids, but he'd felt that withdrawal hard.

Swearing it wouldn't happen again, he was determined to stock up on five years worth of Maxwell House and had been on his way to exactly that when he'd come face to face, as it were, with Bob's likeness.

Raising his armband, he checked the screen carefully before taking a picture of the ridiculous billboard and sending it as a group message to everyone.

Mike shook his head. He liked Bob, but that picture had somehow conveyed a man of wisdom and authority. The Bob that Mike knew was a socially awkward goofball. Sure, he'd go down range, all the way, for his friends, but he wasn't the inspirational leader they were making him out to be.

Quickening his stride, Mike continued on his quest.

"Bob!" Alex answered the phone with a cheerful yell. "I saw your interview! How long have you been back?"

"We made it back yesterday afternoon," Bob replied.

"Great! I was starting to wonder if you'd gotten lost or maybe crashed onto a super low-tier planet, where you could only delve like, once a day, for like, the whole planet, because it would drain all the mana, and you were having to balance feeding yourselves and trying to repair the ship!"

"Nope, just found some new friends and spent some time helping them out," Bob said.

"Oh, what are they like? The Portuguese found a whole new species as well! They look a little bit like halflings, except they have gemstone-colored eyes! I got to meet them because they're very interested in our technology, and they were getting a tour of the public spaces, and I snuck into one of the rooms they were going through so I could surprise them! They were really friendly, and we were just starting to get into a great discussion when the director caught up to me and pulled me away."

"The Urlinad look a bit like what dinosaurs might have evolved into," Bob offered.

"So cool! Do you have any pictures? I have to see some pictures! Unless you brought some back with you? That would be even better!" Alex practically shouted.

"No, they have some things to take care of on their world before they start exploring the multiverse, although Eddi worked out a deal where he's going to bring some of his Endless people over to build some towers for them, so we'll probably end up seeing them sooner rather than later," Bob suggested.

"That'll be awesome! So how did the systems on the Freedom work out for you? I bet it was way better than they had before," Alex sounded smug. "I need to get the data from your armbands, can you come by the lab? They've sort of got me on lockdown after I tried to sneak out and catch up with the steampunk halflings," he admitted.

"I ran the program to pull and compress the data from the ship and everyone else's armbands, so you just need mine, right?" Bob asked.

"Yep! I bet it's pretty close to full, right? I built in some overhead, but you've been gone for a lot longer than I thought you would be."

"It's at eighty-nine percent," Bob agreed. "You were my first action item this morning, so I've got time to come by this morning if that's alright?"

"Perfect! I'm at the same lab I was when you left, although we've moved some things around, so if you're going to portal over, maybe do it in the airspace above? We went down, not up."

"I'll head your way in a few minutes," Bob said. "Maybe let someone know I'm coming?"

"Will do!" Alex replied happily.