Becoming Monsters 2: Ch. 42

Funny story...I'm both wide awake and tired right now. End of story.

PREVIOUSLY ON BM: Diane visits the doctor, but Honoka has a side trip into a closet with a horny owl.

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Chapter 42: Comforting Those In Need

When Honoka and Miaka returned from Fantastica, the tired owl woman headed straight for one of the baths. Begging off a friendly invitation to join her, Honoka left Miaka and headed towards her own room to change out of clothing so drenched in cum it chafed. Thinking a shower was in order - along with a quickie with her old mechanical friend to get feminine lusts under control - Honoka was so lost in thought she crashed into the tall and robed form of the Baroness of Bone Castle, putting both women onto the floor.

"Oof," Honoka emitted, sitting up slowly as a lot of sore muscles from all the physical activity today clamored for attention. She also almost snarked an inappropriate comment, but stopped when she noticed the lich was clearly panicking and overreacting.

"Sorry, sorry, sorry," Baroness said, scrambling to get up amid some clacking and clinking, her gloved hands emerging out of robes to hold in front of herself as if she expected a beating for her transgression. Honoka couldn't see under the golden mask the Baroness wore, but she imagined the woman must be terrified.

"Its fine, no..." Honoka tried saying, but the other woman didn't appear to listen.

"Sorry, please forgive my impertinence, sorry." The woman babbled faster, but when Honoka made to get up the other woman flinched sharply away and clamored to her feet, practically running down the hall away from the confused Ymirian.

Taking a large breath, Honoka decided it was time to deal with the skeleton in the closet. Or whatever. Mixed metaphors were not Honoka's strong suit. Stopping in her room first to change, Honoka wove her way through the complex in baggy tan cargo pants and a tight red T with a skull and crossbones wearing a straw hat on the front. Mildly irritated, she slowed part way because she was without a bra that fit and her girls were jostling and rubbing from just walking. Frowning, Honoka nearly stomped her feet in a huff, finally having boobs yet realizing they came with all the inconvenience of having boobs.

"Get with the program, Tit One and Tit Two," Honoka mumbled, coping a quick feel and striding forward in a more gentle pace. "Can't be buying expensive bras if you're going to keep growing."

Rounding the last corner, Honoka stood at the Baroness' door and knocked. Waiting for a few seconds, Honoka knocked again, harder. It took a minute, but one of the Baroness' lackeys opened the door. Around seven feet tall and broad, the lackey wore a dirty cloak and a wooden mask over simple but covering clothing. Very renfaire, he looked like Random Encounter Thug for an adventuring party. Considering he clacked when he moved and the Baroness was an infamous necromancer, it didn't take much imagination to deduce the type of monster.

Honoka physically swallowed sarcasm, wanting to push past the brute and say something insensitive. So she stood there, playing the silent game and looking at the lackey before he finally moved out of the way and let her in.

All the personal rooms in Padmava's nālukettu - or large traditional home hailing from India - were grouped in threes around a kitchen and common area. These rooms spread throughout the north and south buildings of the complex. The west structure facing the street held the shop and other businesses while the east merged into the cavern wall at the edge of the dungeon Floor, holding Padmava's residence as well as many of the larger hosting and common areas. For now, Honoka and most of the wives lived in the north building, Honoka and Diane getting their own section and the rest of the wives living in groups of three.

The Baroness had the entire south building to herself at the moment. When Honoka walked into the common area of the Baroness', she found it rather bare. Honoka's emotional responses were at war with each other. On one hand, Honoka was irritated over tracking the problematic lich into one of the bedrooms instead of meeting in the common room. On the other, Honoka felt ashamed that a week had gone by and she hadn't bothered to remember to gather for the woman recently freed from magical slavery some chairs or cushions, the place stark compared to the comfortable and personalized areas the wives had turned into their living areas.

"Look, can you come out?" Honoka asked loudly, folding her arms and resisting the urge to tap her foot.

The central door opened a crack, then all the way as the tall woman appeared smaller in her hunched posture, shuffling into the room like a child about to feel the belt. It was the final straw to break apart any anger Honoka retained, smothering the Christian woman with guilt for not loving her neighbor.

"I'm sorry," Honoka said, as empathetic as she could. "My emotional control isn't what it used to be, but that is no excuse. I just want to talk."

The lich wore a large and very covering golden mask in the shape of a stylized woman's face, was draped completely in many layers of robes, had on long gloves and boots: she was impossible to read. So the small nod she gave could have been anything and Honoka couldn't discern one way or another what the other woman was thinking.

"First off, can you tell me your name?" Honoka tried asking with humor and half a smile. "Can't just keep calling you the Baroness..."

Unfortunately, humor failed and Honoka trailed off, wracking her brain for something else to say while the other woman kept deathly still.

"Anyway, I wanted to know if you needed anything. Sorry I didn't get to you sooner, it has been one thing after another around here. Also, I want you to know you aren't a prisoner or anything. I've seen what a Binding Contract can do first hand, no one blames you." Honoka winced when she said that, thinking there was at least one wife that had good reason to blame the necromancer for raising her dead husband and puppeting his corpse. The absentminded Honoka needed to have a heart-to-heart with Padmava soon. "Money's a little tight right now, but I'm sure..."

"Paints."

The word was so soft Honoka nearly missed it, a haunting echo of the Baroness' voice disturbing at the best of times. Honoka was happy to latch on to anything, though, hating the one-sided conversation. "What kind? Oil, watercolor, Games Workshop?"

"Oil paints, with some brushes and canvas." The mask lifted up and Honoka couldn't be sure, but she thought she spied light reflecting from inside the dark eye slits. "And I can work, do anything, I don't want to be a burden." Rushing back into the room, the lich quickly returned holding an old and clunky laptop that must have been at least twenty years old. "I'm not very good at it and this computer is not very fast, but I've already earned twelve dollars today from taking online surveys. I don't need to sleep anymore so I'm sure I can earn a lot more in a few months. Once I get the paints, I can sell some of them online. Before the Change, I..."

The Baroness trailed off, her excited energy dissipating as she slumped and slowly closed the laptop. Honoka didn't know what to do, the more she learned about the lich's plight the more Honoka thought of her as Oliver Twist. For her part, Honoka wanted to be a Brownlow, but right now she felt more like a Fagin. Unsure where to look, she peered at the laptop and spied a faded Eveline Ibori on one corner of the casing.

"Have you met Eve?" Honoka asked, trying to gain some more momentum in another subject.

"The marvelous goblin girl?" The words were like everything else the lich spoke, a flat monotone. It was odd, to have excitement expressed in context instead of tone. "Yes, she has been very kind, loaning me this laptop and a few other things." The manic energy was back, making Honoka think the woman was bipolar, though it was weird because of hollow and inflectionless speech. "Can you tell me what she likes? I want to repay her and the Indian woman. Especially the Indian woman, she saved my life."

"The Indian woman is Padmava. She is more commonly in the form of a large cobra naga and she owns the property. Both women are my wives." Honoka almost said more, but decided to chicken out until after the conversation with Pad. "Look, there is something else I need to talk to you about." When the lich stayed silent, Honoka barreled through. "In about a week, a lot of family and friends are going to visit us and this place is will become crowded. To make sure you are...comfortable, I think it would be best if you moved into a shared space with one of the other wives instead of having to share your area with a bunch of strangers. One of the rooms is open with Quinn and Dolly. It used to be Miaka and Dolly but they switched rooms a week ago. They both spend most of their time either delving or in the gym and I know Dolly sleeps most nights with Quinn so the common area is free a lot of the time..."

The silence returned, Honoka's rant losing steam at the end as she tried to think of a better way to say you can't stay in this room, go to some other. Before Honoka could try again, the lich sighed and stiffened her back.

"That is acceptable." The necromancer rose and went into the bedroom, returning immediately with her second lackey holding a black handbag following behind. "I am ready to move to my new domicile."

Honoka's face froze, realizing this was happening now, turning around and pulling out her phone to let Quinn and Dolly know they gained a new neighbor. As the chocolate futa walked out, though, she felt a hand on her shoulder which gently stopped her.

"My name is Gwyneth."

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Quinn didn't like the change, but Dolly saw Gwyneth as another prisoner of that castle and went so far as to trot down to the storage basement and haul up extra bedding, a few cushions and other little things that turned a room into a place to live. Honoka was happy someone would look out for the lich and headed to her office.

"Son of a...tiny dick!"

Grinning, Honoka walked into quite the sight. Diane, wearing only a black bra and gray sweats, lay on her back atop cushions arranged to let her tail and wings avoid squishage. The bra overflowed with freckled cream, clearly too small in every metric. A common problem in this family nowadays, the band recently tailored to allow more room, but the poor fabric was ready to give up the ghost. It was also soaked and stained with both ice cream and a yellowish lactation dripping down the sides of her chest. Atop her prodigious tummy lay a mixing bowl filled with over a quart of moosetrack ice cream smothered in ginger jelly and curry powder. Diane's face contorted in pain as one hand messily globbed ice cream mostly into her mouth, the other tightly gripping her pregnant abdomen. Scattered on the floor were the whiteboards used to keep track of daily status numbers and other harmony predictions.

It was in this state that Honoka found Diane, but it didn't take long for the pregnant succubus to spot her wife and turn hormonal wrath upon a deserving target. "You!" she said, pointing her spoon and nearly spilling ice cream across the room, "you did this to me! I'm calling up my friend Brad, he is going to sperm donor you until you are as big as me and then I'll be the one grinning."

"Maybe...another time?" Honoka wasn't sure how she felt about getting pregnant herself. A glow inside herself emerged and it surprised her. Maybe Honoka needed to put more thought into something she hadn't thought about since the Change. "I think I might...I don't know?"

Diane instantly cooled, emotionally flipflopping in the other direction with a smile and tears leaking out the side of her eyes. "Really? You want to have your own child?"

"I haven't thought about it," Honoka said, leaning down to give Diane a light hug and a kiss that tasted of chocolate. "Maybe after all the wives have a chance, perhaps you could brew some kind of penis growing potion.

"HmmzzZZrgh!!" For a moment Diane contemplated, then her whole body seized and shook. Collapsing after a few seconds of that, the succubus lay like a limp rag while bits of hair smoked and her limbs continued to lightly twitch.

"What the what...what was that?!" Honoka bent down again, unsure what to do or where to touch, already brimming with anxiety and worry for her preggo wife.

"...the baby is trying to kill me," Diane mumbled, her eyes fading in and out of focus as she managed the pain. "Joking, not literal. I looked it up on the Change Babies forum. This kid is some kind of Race with lightning or electrical Features. I should be fine so long as I avoid large metallic objects." Honoka appeared so devastated Diane laughed and ran her hand along trembling Asian cheekbones to calm Honoka down. "I'm fine. Think of it as a really strong baby kick. I also have potions nearby that I've already called a doctor to see if they are safe to use while pregnant."

Honoka swallowed the interruption she wanted to make, giving the succubus another kiss and standing. Studying the charts and lists haphazardly scattered around the room, Honoka attempted to be useful. "Need some help?"

"Actually, I'd love if you updated my Status on the board. I want to see if there's anything different other than me being the size of a celebrity's ego." She paused, muttering the last bit. "I'm too scared to look at it myself."

The loving futa wife nodded, smothering her smirk and grabbing a dry-erase. Honoka's ability at pulling up specific parts of a Status and closing it down again quickly had improved dramatically, no tightness aching behind the eyes before she was done this time.

"Don't tell me!" Diane shouted, covering her eyes while blindly continuing to gobble melty curry/ginger/chocolate ice cream. "Is there anything bad?"

"Plus two to Strength," Honoka said with a huge grin, the dry tone laying it on thick. "Been working out?"

"Screw you and the horse you also screwed!" Diane didn't throw any malice into the jibe, she was obviously jittery from the rollercoaster. It was as if the succubus mother was cramming all the hormones of nine months into a single day.

Honoka decided to give up joking with pregnant women (a wise course in any marriage). "Your Health took a hit for one point and your MP and Stamina are low, but other than a new Racial Feature, everything is normal. The Racial Feature says Mother Of Æsir. The Æsir were the Norse gods, ruling in Ásgarðr and spending their time either getting into fights or watching Loki tie his testicles to goats."

"MP is low because I've been making potions. Stamina is low because I get tired just laying here." She proved her point by lazily taking another scoop of her slurry and plopping it in her mouth.

Glancing pointedly at Diane's stomach, a horrifying thought popped into Honoka's head and wouldn't go away. "Diane, what if...? Um, I'm not sure how to even ask this."

"Do baby succubus have Hunger meters and how do you feed children sexual energy before they turn eighteen?"

Honoka blinked, then sighed. "Yeah. I mean, you were with the Miners when you were fourteen, and I only now put that together. How are we supposed to deal with that if our child needs to eat?"

Diane didn't appear perturbed at all over the revelation, tipping her bowl back and slurping the gloop before ripping a massive belch. "Not something people like to think about. And outside the United States, not something that is handled very well. However, short answer, I never had sex from the moment I got out of that basement until the time I joined Solomon's when I turned eighteen."

Scratching her head, Honoka got up to pace while she thought. "How does that work? I thought Hunger and other stuff like that didn't hit Races until puberty, but I guess I never put two and two together that puberty is still far too young. Honestly, I never asked." The anxiety rose sharply as Honoka expected the worst.

"Slow down, this is easier to fix than you think. Hundreds of thousands of people dealt with this very problem when the Change happened, and they found a solution. Admittedly, Hunger Boxes are not perfect, but they do the job."

"Hunger Boxes?"

Diane grimaced, like she suddenly tasted something sour. "Yeah. Hunger energy is notoriously difficult to transfer or convert. My potions are a recent discovery, and I already sell them for a few thousand dollars a pop when I put them out into the store. Difficulty is the time it takes to make them is astronomical, ten times as long as any other equivalent potion. The current solution the world uses is Hunger Boxes. They take energy from someone having sex - or equivalent energy, depending on the demonic Race - scrub it of spiritual connections, then come out the other end to feed whatever hungry succubus is needing a meal."

Honoka nodded, remembering the principle being similar to how her filters worked at her old apartment, the ones she had installed so her sexual magics didn't spread throughout the sewer system. "Sounds like something everyone would want to use."

"No thank you, ma'am." Diane held up her hand, covering her mouth and getting her roiling stomach under control. "The filtering process makes it taste like moldy, soggy bread. Also only gives out about twenty percent output from what is put in. It also isn't a battery, just a filter and conduit. I spent half my teenage years sitting in a room down the hall staring at a stupid box - with a cord running into their bedroom - while my adoptive parents had sex four or five times a day just to keep me fed. Good soundproofing in that house, but hard to mask the occasional scream. In a lot of ways, there was relief when I turned eighteen."

"What happened to the Box?"

"Those things are astronomically expensive, takes an Enchanter leading a team of half a dozen other magical classes weeks to make one. The government regulates and subsidizes their use so families that need them can have them. There are charities set up that pay those with the right Classes to make Boxes for outside the States. As I said, not perfect, but it could have been a lot worse."

Honoka rubbed her head, but she was smiling and she couldn't figure out why. Or, rather, she knew why. "Is it wrong of me to say I'm relieved there is a way to keep all this mess away from our child?"

"Amen, sister."

The two spent another few hours going over Status updates and trying to plan how to distribute Harmony Points. They concluded to put off harmonizing as much as possible not only because it tended to wreak havoc on wardrobes, but many of the truly interesting or powerful options cost dozens or even hundreds of points. Bigger boobs aside, no reason in nickel and diming a resource that could potentially give everyone phenomenal cosmic power.

"Are y'all done in here yet?"

When Diane reached a point where she savagely itched her boobs and needing to pee again, Quinn and Dolly walked into the room, both dressed up for the occasion. Quinn had on the same babydoll she wore the first time Honoka and the otter girl made love, pink and now at least four cups sizes too small. It didn't matter, the beastkin was such a knockout before her harmonization it would have worked then. Now, with a Charisma so high Honoka guessed it might be in the top ten high scores in the world, a woman's eye was physically pulled onto the shimmer of her luscious black fur and the perfect shape of her entire, magnificent otter body from enormous breasts, down her toned and exceptionally long abdomen, to shorter dexterous legs and thick tail.