"Sisters is probably the most competitive relationship within the family, but once the sisters are grown, it becomes the strongest relationship."

Margaret Mead

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Perhaps Nero should have noticed something was off when Jorry sat up from his perch on Medea and looked around the area in confusion. Or he could have realized when the sage got a twinkle in her eye and a smirk on her face that promised trouble. There was also the subtle change in the taste of the air, though he could be forgiven for not catching the last one as he still did not have the same finesse with his new senses as a snake would.

Therefore what came next shouldn't have come as a surprise.

It did.

"Onii-chan banzai!!!!!" Was the warcry and two young women falling as if from nowhere onto him was the battle tactic. It proved to be super effective as he stared wide-eyed at the pair who fell onto him. He let out a groan of discomfort as the air was knocked out from his lungs from the impact. This was followed by another pained noize as the hammock in which he was resting gave out under the combined weight of the three of them. In less than two seconds Nero went from peacefully stargazing to being buried under two other people and in pain.

Jorry stared nonplussed at the pile of limbs, unsure if he should help his companion or not. The laughing of the beautiful lady, the one who gave him treats, sealed the deal, so he just decided to lay back down to watch just in case.

"Ah-ha!" There was a triumphant sound from the pile of bodies and an arm reached out, thumb raised in success. "Sneak attack success, I told you it would work."

"Ouch," answered another voice, this one muffled. "I knew it would work, I just didn't think it was a good idea. Now get off me."

"Hehe, you're just jealous. Did you see his face? It was priceless." Finally one of the two attackers stood up, allowing the other to do so as well.

"This better not kill him," Octavia said as she dusted herself off and gave her sister the stink eye. Claudia stuck her tongue out in response while grinning unrepentantly.

"He's tougher than that, right bro?" There was no response. Nero hadn't moved from where he had landed on the ground and had not made a sound since the fall. "Bro?" She asked once more, with a bit of worry in her voice. "You all right?"

"Of course he isn't all right!" Octavia snapped at her twin. "He was just tackled by two full grown women with over two hundred levels more than him. He could be stunned or paralyzed." She crouched next to her brother and waved her hand in front of his face, but his eyes just stared blankly past her, not reacting at all.

"Wah," Claudia cried out in distress and hurriedly crouched over the prone form as well. "Bro? Gus? Augustus? Answer me! Are you all right? How many fingers am I holding up?" She said this really fast and tried to shake him awake but got no response, which only worried her more. "Oh no! What if we hit him so hard he lost all his memories? He'll be helpless! We'll have to teach him everything, but he won't know who we are and won't recognize us as his sisters. He'll end up falling in love with us and then do naughty stuff to us, and then he'll remember and feel all guilty. But we'll be pregnant, and that will make it worse, he'll start drinking and going to bars. And then, and then..."

As Claudia continued to shake her brother, she devolved into a delusion that was a part worry, part fantasy, and part pure silliness. Eventually, she was stopped when she reached the part about 'explaining to the kids when they grow up,' by her sister.

"Your an idiot." Octavia deadpanned. "Just give him a small potion, he'll be fine." Claudia stopped shaking the unfortunate man and stared at her sister with wide eyes.

"Oops, haha." She laughed to herself and reached into a pouch at her side to get the potion.

Maybe because they were so worried about Nero, or they were distracted by Claudia's tangent, but they too failed to notice a few things. Things like Medea desperately trying desperately to stifle her laughter. Things like Nero's face twitching as he struggled to remain stationary.

Like their brother before them, the twins were surprised when suddenly the 'paralyzed' man shot up and wrapped his arms around the pair and dragged them to the ground once more. The pair fell with an 'oof,' but they did not have a moment to get their barrings before Nero was on them. He unleashed his counter-attack in a well-practiced way, born from years of experience, and the high leveled players were rendered powerless under his fingers as he mercilessly tickled them into submission.

Medea finally lost control, and the laughter burst from her lips in a torrent. She laughed so hard that she too fell from her hammock, taking Jorry with her to the ground. Not that she noticed, rolling around as she was in mirth.

"Hahahaha, stop it, haha, we give, we give up, haha." Claudia desperately tried to say between peels of laughter. Her sister, even more, vulnerable to the attack could not even string words together.

Nero finally stopped after a few more seconds, panting for breath from the unusual exertion. His sisters took a few more moments to calm down. He stared at them for a moment, and his face morphed into something much softer.

"It's good to see you two. I've missed you." Sophia might have been his best friend and first love, but his sisters had been by his side for much longer, and there hadn't been a day in over a decade and a half he hadn't spent at least an hour with the pair. The accident had changed that. They only got to see each other when the twins visited him in the hospital where he couldn't respond adequately. Sure he could talk to them online, but it wasn't a viable replacement for the intimacy of face to face communication.

"WE MISSED YOU TOO," The pair yelled in response as their eyes misted over. They dove at their brother, this time with less of a tackle and more of an embrace. He was all too happy to return the hug, and for a few moments, the three of them held each other tightly as if they were afraid the others would disappear.

Eventually, the group hug ended and all three rose to their feet and dusted themselves off. As Nero looked over to their observers, he was unsurprised to see Jorry giving the group a confused look from where he had landed on the ground. What was odd was the look on Medea's face, one he hadn't seen before. She was looking at him like she hadn't ever seen him before like he was a curious specimen for dissection, but it was interspersed with both hope and what seemed to be melancholy.

"What's wrong," Nero offered her his hand to help her up.

"Nothing," she quickly replied as he pulled her to her feet. She was not about to tell him that this was the most emotion she had seen him display in years, that he hadn't been this playful since before his father died. She also wasn't going to tell him that she was going to see to it that it would continue.

"Sophia? Is that you?" Octavia asked as she got a good look at the other person in the park.

The sage nodded but corrected them all the same, "Medea."

"Right." Claudia nodded in understanding. "You should already know, but I'm Nico, and I go by Octavia." She was smacked in the back of the head by her sister.

"Idiot! I'm Nico, and I go by Octavia. You're Maude, and you go by Moron."

"Wah, Bro! I'm being bullied, help me."

Nero did no such thing, he instead took this moment to get a good look at his sister's avatars.

They were fraternal twins, and thus weren't identical, but they did share a few commonalities. Nero was pretty tall, not the biggest but above average at seven foot even. Despite being women, his sisters almost matched him as they were both six foot eleven inches, nine more so than Medea. That wasn't the only point where they differed from his friend. Where Sophia was rather petite with enough curves to be noticeable but not too prominent, both Nico and Maude were, as one of their classmates had put it 'built like a brick shit house.' Augustus had been young when their parents had died, but he remembered their mother being the same way, with more than generous curves and long legs. The best way to describe them was Amazonian, women built for war that still held unsurpassed beauty.

Their faces also had a few commonalities, like their father's prominent cheekbones and their mother's button nose, but that was where the resemblances ended. Maude favored long hair, reaching all the way to her lower back that she sometimes wore in either a braid or a ponytail, unlike herself in real life, her character's hair wasn't black but rather a really pale blue that looked almost like white. Her skin also looked paler than he remembered, not unhealthy looking but less like snow and more like ivory. Her eyes hadn't changed, still the same ice blue as he recalled. She was dressed a bit oddly, wearing both hard leather armor and a cloaklike cover. Nero saw no sign of the spear or staff that Medea had told him about.

Nico, in contrast, wore armor. It resembled old European knight armor, though there were clear differences made to accommodate for her womanly figure and she wasn't wearing greaves but a layered metal skirt. Nico had kept her hair blond, like their mother's and it was shorter than her sister's. She had tied the back in a sort of bun with a strand of braided hair and had kept the front a bit more wild so that it fell past her shoulders to frame her face. Her eyes were also the same aqua green as usual, and her skin tone had not changed. Nero also couldn't see a weapon on her.

As he watched them argue, Nero felt a swelling of pride in his chest. These two were no damsels in distress, they were more fitting to be superheroes than anything else. They held themselves with a self-assurance that not many eighteen-year-olds could match. They were no longer the little girls who had climbed into his bed because of nightmares, they were now women who could take care of themselves. It made Nero feel a bit nostalgic, but at the same time, he was happy for them, glad he had helped them grow.

"What are you smiling about?" Medea asked from his side.

"Nothing," he repeated what she had said earlier. "I was just thinking, they've really grown up, haven't they? I guess I never noticed because we saw each other every day."

"They have," his friend nodded in agreement. "You should see them in school, they are a couple of heartbreakers. I think every boy and a few girls in their year, the ones below them and even the seniors have asked them out at some point or another. Their teachers tell me they are very mature, they never cause trouble and are always willing to help out. Their grades are as perfect as ever, in case you are wondering. They should have no problem graduating next year, although there have been some arguments about which one of them will valedictorian."

"Maude," Nero said without hesitation. "They both could do it well but Maude is more willing to be involved in things like that, and she is the more expressive of the two."

"That's what I thought as well, but there is still no guarantee it will be either. They don't really have any competition at the moment, but they still have a little over a year before then so anything could happen. You should be able to get out of the hospital by then, even if you won't be completely healed."

As the two of them watched, the argument seemed to have dissolved into 'do too' and 'do not.' Nero wasn't even sure what they were arguing about, and he doubted they did either, but the sky was starting to lighten, and he would have to be getting to work soon, so it was time to break it up.

Nero picked up Jorry from the ground and asked him "Do you want to meet my sisters?" The snake looked unsure for a moment, staring at the bickering pair before nodding his head. Nero walked to the twins and interrupted them.

"I'd like to introduce you guys to my little snake friend here." Nero was confused why Medea started howling with laughter once more, and the twins were suddenly very red in the face.

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