Disclaimer:
This work is fiction. The work has no relationship with any person existing at any time anywhere whether real or imaginary or copywritten. Everything in this work is mea culpa.
This work is the property of Kerrik Wolf (saethwyr@ (SPAM) hotmail.com). Please remove (SPAM) to contact me.
You should not read this work if you are under the age of legal consent wherever you reside. This work may or may not contain any and/or all of the following: death, dismemberment, violent acts, implied sex, explicit sex, violent sex, rape, cannibalism, blasphemy (depending on your religion), BDSM, torture, mimes, and just about anything unwholesome that you could consider.
The pokegirl universe was first documented by Metroanime and to him all of us who reside or visit there owe a debt of thanks.
Feedback is encouraged. I enjoy hearing from people. Positive feedback will be appreciated, cherished and flaunted in front of people. Negative feedback will be appreciated, cherished and listened to, that I might continue to grow. Flames will give me a good laugh. Feedback may be delivered to: saethwyr@(SPAM) hotmail.com. Please remove (SPAM) to contact me.
Seventeen
(08/30/06 1700 Bishop Farm, Tropic League)
You have an incoming com message in realtime. It’s Kerrik Wolf again.
Caradoc pulled his pokedex from his belt with one hand as he waved to Naomi. “It’s him!” He activated the com function and smiled at the face that formed in the display. “We’re home now.”
“I can see that. We’re inbound and should be arriving in just a few minutes. See you then.” The display went black.
The elfqueen handed him the blight’s pokeball. “How will they be arriving?”
“I’m not sure.” Bishop shrugged. “All that matters is that he arrives. Um, tell your elves not to shoot him, please. He might take it the wrong way.”
Naomi winked. “It's already taken care of.”
A form appeared in the distance. It flew at just above the treetop height and moved quickly towards them, slowing as it approached until it hovered over the trees on the edge of their property. Then it darted forward and dropped its passenger. The flyer was the same petite pokegirl with the purple hair that Caradoc remembered from Haven.
Her passenger hit the ground and crouched as his legs absorbed the energy in the drop. He straightened and looked around as Bishop moved to greet him. “Hello, Wolf.”
“Bishop.” They bowed to each other. “Nice place you’ve built.” The pokegirl dropped down to land next to him and Kerrik motioned to her. “This is Raven, an archmage and my maharani.”
Naomi frowned as Caradoc nodded. “This is Naomi, an elfqueen and my alpha. May I presume that maharani is the equivalent to alpha?”
Raven smiled slightly. “It means great queen. I prefer it to alpha because neither I nor my harem sisters are animals.”
Naomi got a speculative look. “Really?” Her lips twitched as she silently tried the word out. “I like it. Maharani.”
Bishop just smiled and shook his head. He held out the pokeball. “Business first. Here’s the blight.”
Kerrik pulled a leather pouch out of his pocket. “Here’s 150 crowns, as agreed. It’s a little over one and a half pounds of gold, so keep it safe.” He handed the pouch over and shrugged out of an old weather stained backpack that he was wearing. From it he pulled a small bag. “Here are a baker’s dozen pokekit balls and four twees. I wasn’t sure if you wanted twees for the rest of the elves and whatnot, so I didn’t bring them. I’d prefer not to give you extras since the Tropic League can commandeer anything they want and I don’t see any reason to provide free twee technology to outlanders.” He handed the bag to Raven and produced a small cube about a foot on a side. “While this looks kind of like a PPHU, you’ll notice that it’s not; although the operational process is identical. You put a discharged pokeball into it and it’ll recharge the containment field.” His ears flicked as he smiled. “You only get one free one. It’s got the same battery that’s in the PPHU but the energy requirements to recharge a ball are low enough that you can get ten recharges out of a full battery. However, for some reason, recharging a pokeball capture field takes three times as long as healing a pokegirl, so it takes six minutes per ball.”
Shima came up with Winona. “If it takes ten pokeballs to catch anything, we’re not doing it right.”
“This is Shima, my nightmare. Veronica, my valkyrie, is taking care of some stuff and won’t be back for a little while.”
Raven chuckled. “We’ve met on Haven, if only briefly. Oh, Shima, your baby is so pretty. I didn’t get a good look at her last time.”
The nightmare’s expression suggested she was caught between wanting to show off her baby and wanting to hide her. She settled for just keeping the sleeping child where she was. “Thank you. Her name is Winona.”
“Kerrik, would you like a tour?”
“I would.” Kerrik shook his head. “I’m afraid we don’t have time right now, but can I come back later for one?”
“I’d like that. I don’t really have anyone I can show off to and I’m proud of what we’ve done.”
Kerrik looked around pointedly. “It looks like you have every reason to be. You and your harem have built something nice here. I will be back when I can for that tour, but I probably need to warn you that next time you see me, I may look different.”
“Oh?”
His ears flicked as he glanced at Raven. “It’s been pointed out that I can’t understand the whole tamer experience unless I become younger. Apparently there’s some fundamental point of being a tamer that I’m missing out on by being old and I need to go through this life changing event so I’ll understand where all the young people with shit for brains get their ideas on pokegirls.”
Raven put her hands on her hips and glared up at him. “I was just repeating what Helen and Candace told me. Take any complaints up with them.”
Shima snickered. “Oh, you’d be in trouble here. Pokegirls are supposed to be respectful and polite.”
The archmage snorted. “Yeah, I’ve heard all about that. We avoid the cities for the time being just for stupid laws like that one. Later,” she shrugged, “for his sake I can pretend to care about that rule.”
Kerrik slid his hand into her hair and rested it against the back of her neck. She smiled faintly and leaned back into his touch. “What this means is that I’m considering regressing myself back to the equivalent of my teenage years so I can get the,” he rolled his eyes, “entire experience. If that happens, I won’t look like I do now. Probably the easiest way to identify me will be the fact that Raven will still be arguing with me.”
“I don’t argue with you.”
Wolf nodded. “Yeah, just like that.” Raven’s eyes narrowed before she suddenly looked surprised. “So if I do decide to go that route, just be forewarned.”
“I’ll keep that in mind, although I suspect you were just as distinctive at that time as you are now.”
“You never know. In any case, thank you for the blight. Your twees are in pellet form, so just get your ladies to wash them down with a bit of water or milk in the case of Winona. It’s a new model, and will activate in about two weeks.” He slipped his arm around Raven’s waist. “Now that we’ve been here, we can teleport back and forth and I don’t have to eat any more bugs during the flight.”
Fangs flashed as she grinned. “I offered to come back and get you.”
“And I said no.” He turned to Bishop. “It’s been a pleasure meeting you, Caradoc. I wish you well and we should drop by in a month or so. I’ll be sure and warn you before we arrive. Be well, Caradoc.”
“Thank you, Kerrik. Be well.” Bishop turned to Naomi as the two visitors vanished. “Take everything to the house. I’ve got the kit balls and we can go ahead and pokeball them now and heal them up before I tame their mothers. Their mothers should be civilized once they’ve been awakened, but it’s pretty likely the kits are not and I don’t need them panicking all over the place because they’re alone.”
Shima cocked her head and wrapped an arm around their daughter. “What about Winona? Is she going to get pokeballed?”
“Do you want her in a ball?”
“I don’t know yet. I’m not sure.”
“Then we’ll wait. I’m not sure about pokeballing her, either, and it’s a lot easier to pokeball her the first time than it is to try to get her to forget what it felt to be pokeballed if we decide it’s really not for our daughter yet.”
(08/30/06 1900 Bishop Farm, Tropic League)
“What’s it say?” Shima tried to look over his shoulder as he read his pokedex. She turned her head slightly and licked his ear before sucking the lobe into her mouth and nibbling on it gently.
Bishop was suddenly focused on the odd fact that there appeared to be a nerve that ran from his earlobe straight to his cock. Apparently it worked just fine. “Um, what?”
She laughed softly, her breath warm on his ear. “The kits.”
He shivered and tried to focus. “Ah, yes, the kits.” That nerve fired again as she set her teeth in his earlobe and bit down slightly harder than the first time. “I’m finding it hard to, ah, think while you’re doing, ooh, that.”
“Good.” Her voice was a warm whisper, but she drew back and rested her chin on his shoulder. “Tonight was supposed to be my night, not the cows.”
He twisted his head to glance at her and nodded. “I know. I’d let them wait, but I don’t want to leave the kits in their pokeballs any longer than I absolutely have to.”
“I’m not upset.” Crimson eyes flicked up to look into his and her lips quirked up into a smile. “I’m not. Now what does the scan say about the kits?”
He refocused on the pokedex. “Ok, they’re around 10 years old and it looks like they’re all from the same litter. They’ve all got adult teeth and appear to be in decent general health. The preliminary scan shows about what you’d expect. They’ve got some intestinal parasites, ticks and fleas, but the healing cycle should clean that right up. One looks like she took a nasty spill at some point. She’s got several healed rib fractures and her collarbone was broken at approximately the same time.” He shrugged. “Overall, it’s about what I’d expect from feralborne pokegirls. The PPHU will fix all of the damage and it should be interesting to see how they respond to being without the discomfort and pain that they’ve gotten so used to that they don’t notice anymore.” He looked around the room as he unlocked the PPHU. “I do like our turning the Henry house into a home for the elves, but I’m also glad we converted this room into a clinic.” He fed the pokekit balls into the PPHU one at a time, putting them in storage in the pokepack afterwards. “And that’s the last one.”
“You’re done?”
He nodded. “I’m done.”
“Good. Come with me.” Shima led him into the room next to the clinic. A bed had been placed in the room along with a box filled with sex toys. Obviously it was where the elves worked on taming each other when indoors. The nightmare pushed him onto the bed and with a single motion stripped off her dress. She began undoing his clothes. “I am not going to let those cows come before me. Only one person comes before me in your life and that’s only because you made me agree to it. Nobody except Naomi will rank higher than I will, not even Veronica. When you go to those milktits tonight you will carry my scent and they will know that I come before them.” Her eyes met his and he was surprised to see pleading in them. “You will not bathe before you go to them.”
He nodded. “I won’t.”
“Good.” She straddled him and guided him into her wetness, hissing as he slid inside her. Then she cradled his head and pulled him to her breast. “Drink. I have fed Winona and what is left is yours. I will feed you before they do.”
She had never allowed this before, insisting that all of her milk was for their daughter, but he didn’t hesitate and suckled. Warm, slightly sweet liquid filled his mouth and he swallowed before sucking again. Shima moaned low in the back of her throat and ground herself against him as he drank. When her breast was empty she pulled him to the other one. “Drink.” Her voice was heavy with need and she began to ride him slowly as he drank deeply. She moaned and shuddered as she tightened around him. When this breast ran dry he pulled his head away and rolled, putting Shima beneath him. Her eyes came open when he slid off of her. “Wha?”
Caradoc pulled on her hip. “Over.”
She laughed and rolled onto her hands and knees. “Like this?” She looked over her shoulder at him and made the same inquisitive noise she’d made when feral as she wriggled her ass enticingly. Caradoc drove himself into her hard enough to rock her forward with a moan that echoed through the room. He gripped her hips and pounded into her with enough force to drive her face down into the mattress as the springs squeaked beneath them. Her body jerked and she yowled into the mattress as she came, her fingers tearing holes in the sheets as she ripped at them. Bishop sped up as he felt his orgasm build until Shima yelped with each thrust. He gripped her hips hard enough to leave bruises and buried himself as deeply as he could as he filled her with his seed. Shima went almost flat beneath him, her body heaving as she panted.
Slowly she pushed herself up and reached around to grab his arm. She turned and pulled him down on top of her, wrapping her legs around his waist and rubbing her sweaty body against his to cover him with her scent. Shima gave him a contented look from beneath half closed eyelids and chuckled throatily. “If you don’t mention this to Naomi, I should get a new night tomorrow and we can do this again.” She sighed and kissed him slowly before pushing gently at his chest. “This is nice, but if we stay like this she’ll come looking for us and if she sees this, I won’t get that extra turn.” The nightmare stretched luxuriously. “You know, right now Naomi and Veronica are supposed to be prepping the first milktit for you. If they drink her milk, they’ll lactate and can help feed Winona.” She gave him a sultry smile as he reached for his clothes. “If that happens, I can feed you more often.”
“I think that would be nice.”
She laughed again. “Good. I liked it too. Now you need to get up to the house for our cows. Now that you smell like me, you shouldn’t keep them waiting.”
Bishop was headed outside and almost ran into the elf that was headed in. She looked up at him. “Sir, my queen has sent me to let you know that you should come to your bedroom for the first milktit.”
“Thanks, I’ll go there immediately.”
(08/31/06 0830 Bishop Farm, Tropic League)
Naomi gave him a puzzled look as the milktit waited patiently nearby. The minotaura was off with Veronica, learning the property. “All three of them claim that the kits are theirs? If all of them are from the same litter, that’s rather unlikely.”
Caradoc shrugged. “It gets even stranger when you consider that according to the DNA analysis, neither of the milktit is the dam for the kits.”
“What about the minotaura?”
“She evolved, so her DNA isn’t that of a milktit. We’ll never know if she had them or if there was another milktit who either died or left. Nobody remembers another milktit in their herd, but then their memories of the time they were feral are pretty inconsistent. I don’t think ferals understand time all that well and a lot of the research done by real scientists suggests the same thing.” He grinned for an instant. “Ann insists that we had a fire type throwing fire blasts at them when we captured them. I figure she’s mixing another attack on them with their capture.” Ann was the shortest of the two milktit and apparently the group leader. Even the minotaura deferred to her authority. The other milktit was named Bess and the minotaura was Cindy. Bishop had tamed all three of them during the night and had named all of them before they left the bedroom. He’d tamed both milktit first and they had helped to convince the minotaura to go into the restraints for him.
“So the kits might belong to the minotaura and they might not belong to anyone here. What does that mean for us?”
“As far as I can tell, the kits accept the herd as their home. Since we’re not going to break them up, it means nothing will change for them as far as that is concerned.”
Bess was fidgeting, her tail lashing slowly. Finally she leaned over and whispered to Ann. The smaller milktit pushed her away before squaring her shoulders and taking a deep breath that lifted her already impressive chest. “Sir? Please forgive my rudeness and Beth’s misbehavior, but may we have our children now?”
Caradoc nodded and pulled four pokeballs from his pocket. “Sorry about that. I got caught up in the conversation with Naomi.” He released the kits, who yelped as soon as they saw him and ran to the two milktits where they huddled around them.
Beth’s voice was higher than Ann’s. “Sir, do they have names too? I know they won’t understand what that means, but as soon as they have names we can start teaching them to respond to their names.” She bobbed her head shyly. “Sir, they have a lot to learn and we want them to learn quickly so you don’t get unhappy with them.” She glanced at Ann and seemed to take strength from her dominant herd sister. “I know what can happen if you do, Master Caradoc.”
Caradoc had been surprised to find out that Beth had been with a tamer before going feral. She’d been accidentally abandoned in Jamaica after a raid by combat pokegirls and the confused pokegirl had been half feral when she was captured and tamed by a man somewhere on the Jamaican island. It had been before the rise of the Tropic League and she did remember him dying in an accident when a mudslide swept both of them into a river. She was pretty hazy on where and when it had taken place. Beth had born two kits during her previous ownership. One day they’d gotten out of the barn where she lived and had been beaten to death by townspeople for being pokegirls and therefore monsters. It was interesting to note that from her words when they’d talked about it, she felt part of the blame for their death belonged to her former owner.
He considered trying to reassure her that the kits were safe here, but knew she wouldn’t accept his word. Her first tamer had already promised to protect her kits before they’d been killed. She’d just have to learn as time progressed that this place was going to be very different from what she’d known before. As he pointed at the first kit, he wondered if the milktits could tell the kits apart, and then decided it wasn’t his problem right now. His finger moved from kit to kit as he went down the row and named them. “Debby, Elise, Fran and Gina.”
Naomi gave him a curious glance as Ann and Beth smiled at them. She kept her voice low. “Alphabetical names?”
“I was caught off guard when they demanded names. Besides, it’s not a bad pattern to use, unless you can do better.”
The elfqueen’s shoulders lifted fractionally and dropped again. “It doesn’t matter now. You named them and I can’t change that. Only you can and changing their names often will just cause trouble.”
Ann cocked her head. “What would you have us do, sir?”
“You and Beth are going to start out helping the elves in the sugarcane fields. They’ll milk you every morning and every evening before and after work. The sugarcane is a good place for you to start settling in, since the kits can eat their fill without hurting my other crops. You will get meals with everyone else, which will help to keep your diet from getting too unbalanced, but feel free to eat all the sugarcane you want.”
“What about Cindy, sir? She may be a minotaura, but she’s actually the gentlest one of us.”
“She’ll be helping in the fields too, right alongside you. If there’s trouble, she’ll protect you and the kits while we deal with whatever’s going on.”
“Thank you, sir. It’s good to hear that you won’t be breaking up the herd. I understand that Naomi is your,” she paused for a second and slowly sounded out the word, “maharani, and that we will be taming with the elves most of the time.”
Bishop raised an eyebrow. “Changed your title, did you?”
The elfqueen nodded firmly. “Raven is right. I am not an animal and I don’t want a title that’s applied to animals. I’ll still be the alpha in town and around strangers.” She gave him a slightly concerned look. “You don’t mind, do you?”
“No, I don’t.” He turned back to the milktits. “Cindy is off with Veronica and learning where the property boundaries are so you don’t accidentally stray.”
A slightly unhappy look crossed Ann’s face. “Yes, sir. I’ll have Cindy show me around our new home sometime later.”
At her tone, Naomi’s face went stony and her eyes narrowed slightly.
You may have two alphas now or whatever they call themselves. Be careful or Naomi might cut your herd in half if she decides that Ann is a threat to her authority. Caradoc decided that his twee might have a good point and resolved to have a firm talk with his maharani later about killing his pokegirls and another one with Ann about Naomi and her place in the farm authority as well as his life.
(09/01/06 0930 Montego Bay, Tropic League)
“You’re not going to count it?”
Caradoc shrugged and handed the bag to Naomi. “Commander, I either trust you to pay what you should or I don’t. In either case, counting the money in front of you is kind of rude. Besides, we have a professional relationship and insulting you without a reason is stupid.” He smiled shortly. “If I didn’t trust you, I’d have come by for payment on my way to Haven.”
“What do you do if someone cheats you?”
“I would stop doing business with them until they make my loss whole and satisfy me that it was a momentary aberration. That last part is rather difficult to do, by the way. Trust, once lost, is almost impossible to regain.”
Meredith brought a small tray of tea into the office and put it on her tamer’s desk before taking up position next to him. “Thank you.” He smiled at her before returning to his conversation with Bishop. “You’d stop doing business with the Tropic League if I cheated you?”
Caradoc shook his head. “No, sir, I’d stop doing business with you. It would be difficult, since you represent the Tropic League here in Montego, but I could do business with the league representative in Kingston while avoiding dealing with you. Now, if I get the idea that the league has an organized policy to defraud me of my due, at that point I’d have to make some decisions.”
“So you’d find fault with the cheater and not the organization that he might represent until you get evidence to the contrary. That’s an enlightened attitude.”
“Not really, sir. Individuals make decisions, not groups. Any policy that the Tropic League puts out was approved by individuals, even if they all sat in the same room when each of them decided to approve it. It’s more likely that one person decided to cheat me so he could line his pockets than for there be some kind of organized effort to do so.”
Jordan sipped at his tea. “What news is there about Hamilton?”
Caradoc was not going to relay the warning he’d gotten from Van Der Haegen. The commander of Kingston hadn’t said he could tell anyone else and Bishop wasn’t going to violate that confidence. “He left Kingston two days ago. Other than that, I haven’t heard anything about him. If he makes decent time, I wouldn’t expect him in Bog Walk until tomorrow or the day after, since he’s traveling with a large group and they travel at the speed of the slowest member. I’ve already got the supplies ready and with the milktits I captured, we’ll have milk for them too. I haven’t any idea how to make cheese or butter, so after our meeting I’m going down to the marketplace to see if someone has some books on the subject for sale.”
Jordan nodded. “Are the supplies what I asked for?”
“They are. Most of the protein is dried fish, but some is chicken eggs that we hardboiled and pickled.”
The commander nodded. “Meredith, let Nina know to pay Bishop on his way out.”
“Yes, sir,” she said quietly and left the office.
Jordan watched her leave. “It’s interesting that before you arrived in Montego, there were exactly four people that she wouldn’t argue about leaving me alone with. Now there seems to be at least six.”
“She seems to be a good judge of character, sir.” Naomi smiled sweetly. “And she knows I wouldn’t act without my tamer’s orders.”
Jordan returned the smile. “She knows that you’re not an automaton. She trusts you as much as she trusts him.” He glanced past them. “Spying again?”
The brass returned to her post. “You were talking about me, sir, so I considered it only fair. For the record, I trust Naomi not to do anything to jeopardize her tamer’s position. I would not trust Shima or Veronica enough to leave you alone with either of them. In time, that may change, but I doubt it. Nightmares are impulsive by their nature and Veronica doesn’t strike me as someone who considers her actions until afterwards. Then it’s too late.”
Caradoc gave her a questioning look. “Is that a common problem with valkyrie?”
“She’s the first one I’ve met since the war, sir, so I’m not sure. I do know that you will have to be careful or you’ll acquire pokegirls at a rapid clip. Valkyrie are known to come up with captures from places where nobody else seems to be able to find a single pokegirl.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.”
(09/02/06 0800 Bishop Farm, Tropic League)
“I’ve got some good news for you, Bishop. The colony expedition from Kingston rolled in yesterday afternoon. There’s a bunch of them, too. Without the berries from your old place, we’d have trouble feeding them, over.”
Caradoc keyed the mike. “I’m already set up to feed them for a month until they get up to speed. Do they look healthy or like they’ll need anything else when they arrive, over.”
“They’re not like we were, I’ll admit that. There’re almost a hundred of them if you count pokegirls along with everyone else. They’ve got a wagon with food so they don’t have to forage along the way, and everyone has a pack with their personal supplies. They’ll still need tools and stuff, over.”
“I’m sure they’ll be fine. After all, they’ve got a whole city to pick through.” Caradoc checked his notes. “That’s all the news from Montego for Kingston. Do you have anything else for me, over.”
“I’ve got nothing else other than the fact that this group will be leaving at sunup tomorrow, over.”
“Then this is Falmouth, over and out.” Caradoc powered down the radio and checked the battery charge as he hung the headphones on their nail. He stepped outside and stretched slowly. A loud snort of alarm pulled his head around in time to see a milktit kit go running off towards the sugarcane fields and the rest of the herd. A flash of red around the kit’s neck confirmed his suspicion that it was Gina.
While the milktits and Cindy could apparently distinguish between the four kits by sight, they understood that everyone else on the farm probably wouldn’t be able to. So they’d tied strips of colored ribbon around the neck of each kit so that each kit could be identified individually. Gina’s was red.
Gina was also the only kit who ever strayed from the herd. After only two days of living on the farm, she’d been found in the house, inside the Henry house, up one of the fruit trees eating oranges, poking around the drying racks and down by the river. Apparently bitten with some kind of wanderlust, she’d make contact with the herd every couple of hours before heading off again. If discovered, she fled straight for the herd.
It had come as no surprise when Caradoc had double checked the records to discover that Gina had been the kit with the broken bones.
He hadn’t seen her around the radio shack before, but this was a disturbing sign and so, for the first time ever, he pulled the door of the shack to and padlocked it shut. He didn’t like having the damned thing around, but until he could convince someone to take it off his hands, he was still responsible for it.
Naomi came around the corner and looked curiously at the locked door. “I take it the tail I saw belonged to our intrepid adventuress?”
“Who else could it be? Winona’s tail is black.” He hung the key to the lock on a nail high enough that he had to stretch to reach it. “Nobody has seen her making ladders, right?”
The elfqueen chuckled. “Not yet. Want me to station a guard here?”
“We don’t have those kinds of resources, but let the patrol know to check here during their rounds.” He eyed the key and sighed before pulling it off the wall and putting it in his pocket. “You know, I think I’ll leave it at the house. Anyone with any business in there can always pull the hasp off in an emergency and Gina has already proven she can climb. I don’t need to find out she can problem solve better than we think by having her build a platform to get this key and trash the radio.” He slipped his arm around her and she leaned against him. “So what brings you around this morning? Usually you’re still supervising the elves with the coffee.”
“I’ve got some very interesting news.” He gave her a slightly cross look and she winked. “I’ve been doing some research and it turns out that both Kerrik and Haven are making bottles and they can supply us with bottles for beer and they can get us a bottling station. The price isn’t high, either.”
“That is good to hear.” Although the distillation column was still just a drawing on some butcher paper, they’d gone ahead and started making beer in a handful of fifty gallon kegs. The biggest problem had been finding something to do with it once it had been brewed. A quick check had determined that there were no pubs in Montego Bay, since there wasn’t a regular supply of any sort of grain or sugar into the city that could be used to make beer. There were some small farms around Montego and every time they harvested their crops, people in Montego made beer, so he knew there was a demand. The only problem was distribution. Without pubs, there wouldn’t be a market for beer in fifty gallon lots, so he needed to bottle it. Besides, with bottling, he could prime the beer so it would be carbonated, which would make it more closely resemble what the Tropics had been used to drinking before the war.
With bottled beer, they could sell the beer at their stand in the Montego marketplace. As the news got around that they were actually selling beer on a regular basis, Bishop expected that one or more enterprising residents would then aspire to opening a pub, which he would then be more than willing to supply. It would also help to prime the market for rum, should he ever get that distillation column built. If not, someone else would build one and he could sell them sugarcane juice so they could make it. He was actually kind of hoping someone would do that since it would reduce the number of major projects on Naomi’s wall chart. He really had more projects than he could handle right now and he didn’t want to add more pokegirls to the farm if he could avoid it. To be completely honest, he wasn’t sure he wanted to ever add more pokegirls to the farm.
After all, right now he had twenty four pokegirls on his farm, and that was without counting his harem. Cloud and Sky were his avariel. Between the ones that Naomi had called and the five he’d been given, he had fifteen elves. Two of them were heavily pregnant, but they worked just as hard as anyone else and Naomi cut them no slack, especially after Caradoc had discovered that none of the pokeballs they had possessed the ability to provide contraception or abort a pregnancy. The latest additions, Cindy, Bess, Ann and the four milktit kits, only added not only to the number of workers that he had available, but also to the lure that might call bandits like the Black Rivers or an overeager new administrator hungry for more tamers and therefore more power. Right now it was the latter that concerned both Caradoc and Naomi. If the Black Rivers showed up, they’d be in for a fight the likes of which they might not have experienced so far, but if Hamilton got greedy, only Bishop’s tradesman status would protect the pokegirls he’d assumed a responsibility for. Neither he nor Naomi wanted to test how much protection that would actually be.
His arm tightened around the elfqueen. “I have news from the south. The colonists made it to Bog Walk and they’ll be leaving on the next leg of their journey tomorrow morning.”
“That’s good, right?” When he shrugged, she nodded sagely. “Yeah, I feel the same way. Are you worried about the farm as much as I am?”
“More than and you know it. After all, I also have to worry about you, Shima, Veronica and Winona.”
Her voice was soft. “I worry about them too. Things will work out, one way or another. That’s not much consolation, but it’s the truth. And he can’t take your harem from you.”
“What about the farm girls?”
“I’ve made sure they were all listed as your harem. Outsiders don’t need to know that there are two levels of harem membership, just that everyone is part of it. During our last visit, I gave Nina the updates so all of your pokegirls are documented as being yours. They’re as protected as we can make them. I’ve also issued instructions for everyone to make themselves scarce if strangers appear. Having them hide seemed better than telling them to shoot on sight.”
“That’s a pretty big harem.”
“You’re allocated a hundred pokegirls. That infinity symbol you tried to get away with was shot down, but Nina helped us out a lot and set the farm limit at a hundred. Don’t worry, I’ve already rewarded her.”
He frowned. “She accepted money? That doesn’t seem like her.”
Naomi snorted. “It doesn’t because it’s not. She wouldn’t take money and we’d make an enemy of her if we offered it. So, no, I didn’t bribe her.”
Bishop gave her a suspicious look. “Stop hedging around the question and tell me what you did.”
She smiled serenely. “I couldn’t bribe her with anything, so instead I had to give her something I already knew she wanted, but that she couldn’t know I’d given her. I made her fertile.”
Caradoc Bishop - Tirsuli human
Naomi - elfqueen
Shima - nightmare
Veronica - valkyrie
Winona - nightmare pokekit