Becoming Monsters 1: Ch. 31

The Indian woman found the creature vile, forcing her to turn her eyes away and listen for her cues. The tensest moment came when Honoka took back the Perception allocated to her wife. Without warning, Padmava found herself blind and deaf. She yelped, but no one noticed when Honoka screamed at the same time. Over the next few minutes, she felt Honoka give her the right cues on what she should do, bits and pieces of the other wives allocating into her body. Her teeth gained a metallic taste and sharpened into fangs from Eve. Over twenty strength and even the Bullish multiplier of Banda exploded her body into muscle and power - the stretching of her skin hidden by the booming laughter of the giant below. A few other Attributes came her way, but it was when Honoka was picked up that Padmava felt the stirrings of herself being changed back into a naga and she prepared herself.

"...aren't you scared...uh...I'd just stick my sword in the base of your skull, directly into your brainstem?"

There was her target, Padmava lowering herself down to the perfect height, unfolding her jaws and aiming at the top of the neck, her hanging position allowing her to plunge fangs upward and behind the skull, injecting every last bit of her increased capacity for venom she possessed. One of her fangs snapped as the giant twisted his head, crushed between the skull and vertebrae, but Padmava let go of the ceiling and used her dexterous arms and allocated stats to slide past the falling body and reach the floor.

"Aah!" Honoka cried, holding one of her legs on the ground where Padmava joined her. Honoka was lucky. When the giant died, she was able to slip out of his grasp before he fell back in his throne and spasmed to death, but she was still over thirty feet (9.1 m) in the air. All her beautiful points were in play, she didn't possess the little extras she had grown accustomed to and landed severely, feeling a snap in her shin. Padmava picked her up in one set of arms and held her close, her tongue raining sloppy kisses onto her wife.

"I was so scared for you!" Padmava said with joy as she hugged her wife and never wanted to let go.

"Not over yet, less than 10% MP before we turn back into pumpkins." Honoka ran dry of adrenaline long ago, the only thing keeping her awake at this point was a blinding headache and her broken leg.

"Boss!" The near-absolute darkness played against Cortez and his guards. They knew something happened but they couldn't see and didn't have any lights. "Find the girl and kill her!"

A few shots rang out, but Padmava was already booking it down the long hall, leaving the slow humans far behind. Once they emerged and took a moment to orient themselves, the castle violently shook as if the structure were the world's most enormous etch-a-sketch being reset by a toddler.

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Banda didn't think of herself as brave or clever. Her friend and wife Eve was always the clever one; no matter what Attributes said, points weren't everything. Growing up, Banda considered herself slow because she didn't understand what happened around her. When the Change happened and her Wisdom of three showed itself, she thought she would just level up and use points to make herself smart. She now sported a much higher Wisdom, but she still spent her whole life living with the personal expectation that she was inadequate. Being cursed as a holstaur unable to give milk was just the cherry on top.

"Good. Not sure what's about to happen, but I love you all."

"Love ya back." Quinn was the one talking into the radio and stopped when it was forcefully taken out of her hand. Banda's spirit ached, not knowing if those would be the last words she would hear from Honoka. Yes, there was a plan, but the holstaur didn't believe it would work. Too many things might go amiss, too many parts where it all ended wrong.

"...Banda, I couldn't hear...is Honoka alright...?"

Cradled in her arms, Miaka looked like a doll rescued from a fire. She healed at a rapid pace, her wounds at least now sealed over with scaly scar tissue, but recovery was a distant future at this point. Her face pleaded while she weakly croaked out the words.

"I don't know, but I hope so." Banda really did hope. She also gave a silent prayer, asking the God Honoka believed in so strongly to watch over and protect her family.

"Now get out of here before we decide the world needs fewer creatures in it," the leader of the guards said, pointing his weapon and motioning for them to move.

The girls had reached the flat rock of the Floor, the heat once again blasting into them. They came out on the other side of the Bridge, only a dozen yards away from the stalwart undead standing there. This particular tunnel was more substantial and much more heavily guarded, probably the main entry and exit for the guild. Banda and the girls walked as fast as they could, not knowing when the rest of the plan would happen and hoping to put some distance away from the tunnel before the guards figured out it was a trap.

They didn't go more than a hundred feet (30.5 m) when Banda suddenly lost her strength and quickly set Miaka on the ground, trying not to lose her balance as her breasts suddenly felt like lead weights the size of large dogs, landing heavily on her butt. Dolly then cried out in surprise - a normal reaction, really, for a newbie to allocation - when her body transformed into her human self under a clanking pile of armor, though she retained enough fast thinking to set Aruna down before she lost the ability to hold him.

The guards shouted and ran towards the women, but this was part of the plan as well. Propping her shield over Miaka to keep her safe, Banda swung the heavy M60 off her back and flipped the tripod up, fitting the chain belt into place and chambering a round. Quinn was quicker on the draw, pulling her rifle around and smoothly bringing the scope to her eye as she sited the ground in front of the guards. The southern farm girl fired a shot that boomed with so much smoke and thunder, Banda was sure they heard that gun in Boston.

The bullet exploding the stone in front of the leader like a landmine stopped them in their tracks. They lost no time returning fire, launching spells and artillery towards the girls. Banda was ready for it and decided full auto suppression fire was in order. Firing into the group, the holstaur felled a few before they determined the tunnel entrance was a safer enclosure and made a tactical retreat.

"Guess the party started!" Quinn yelled, levering another bullet and hitting an ice mage in the shoulder, likely killing her. She seemed like she was going to make some more comments when Dolly quickly ran up to the ottertaur and began talking, but Banda couldn't hear over the sound of warfare.

Quinn's face turned into a demon's conniption, quickly pulling up her rifle again and taking her time to aim. With another loud bang, the leader's head - Sanders, Banda now remembered - exploded like a ripe melon. Nodding her larger ottertaur head in satisfaction, Quinn levered another shot but hesitated when the ground shook underneath her feet.

Shake might not be the right expression, it didn't fully explain the experience. This was a dungeon Floor, physics were only suggestions in places like this. It wasn't like an earthquake, it felt like the world's most enormous paint shaker was hooked up to the earth and got turned on. Banda was already on the ground, propped up by her boobs, only receiving a violent tremble. Miaka was knocked unconscious from the pain and Aruna was already out of it. Dolly tried to hang onto Quinn but the beastkin woman was not used to her legs entirely and both of them fell over.

The guards had a harder time, the tremors emanating from Bone Castle. The tunnel was no longer safe so they ran out again in a stumbling panic. Banda kept them in line with another long burst. Many of the guards at this point threw down their weapons and ran off in another direction, which Banda was okay with while her gaze drew towards the Castle.

Already she saw bits of bone tumbling off. Then one of the towering spirals collapsed in on itself, then some more of the roof. This happened unnaturally fast and the holstaur woman witnessed the entire structure sink into the lake.

"Honoka!" Quinn cried, finally propping herself into a kneeling position.

Banda mourned with her, but the holstaur needed to keep the living alive. She meant to do just that, no matter her own inner sorrow. At one point, a group of Master Blaster guildies tried to run through the front gate, but the undead army on the Bridge turned around and attacked them with no quarter before the entire structure collapsed. Hundreds of undead tumbled into the magma with the rest of the Blasters, the end to both. With such a vivid display, the last of the guards from the tunnel threw down their weapons and fled, bringing a sigh of relief because Banda only had six bullets left.

Forty minutes later, the castle was gone, the shaking stopped, the entire Floor silent as the dead. Quinn and Banda, safe for the moment, moved over to each other and cried for their lost wives. The agitation of the shaking released a lot of gasses from the magma and the whole Floor was thick with a white haze.

"Hey, Quinn, people are coming," Dolly told Quinn with an understanding and subdued tone, shaking the ottertaur's shoulder lightly.

Banda turned around, sniffling and positioning the gun in the direction Dolly pointed. Quinn brought her sight up and checked, blinked, and checked again before shouting, "Its Pad and Honoka! They're alive!"

Out of the steam appeared the naked naga form of Padmava, Honoka gently held in her arms. Behind them, stumbling in the mist, followed nearly a hundred former captives, ninety percent of them women and almost all of them a menagerie of different Races. Naked, starved, abused past reason or sanity, these former captives were free. Assisting those too weak to move, they proceeded slowly to keep themselves from falling onto the sharp rocks. Unable to give up when the nightmare was so close to ending, they were more determined than beaten at this point. Hope, the sweetest of balms, kept them pressing forward, following their saviors silently as they marched.

When Honoka caught sight of her wives she slumped with relief. Suddenly, all the allocations reverted back to their original owners when Honoka couldn't stay awake any more and drifted off to sleep.