Into the Fire
Twenty Five
Iain absently flexed his hand as he came down the stairs. When he heard the sounds coming from the kitchen he paused for a second to identify them before he silently entered the room. Hathor was sitting dejectedly on the floor in front of the sink and quietly sobbing into her hands. Hanging from one of her horns was a torn cup towel that had been impaled on it and was now a third of the way from the tip. It quivered wetly every time she shifted her head. She looked up when he entered and her sobs became open crying. “I’m so sorry,” she moaned.
Iain knelt in front of her and she flinched until he gathered her into his arms, pulled her against him and pressed her head against his chest. Then she began bawling, the sounds muffled against his body. She cried for several minutes before slowing to quiet hiccupping sups.
He stood, drawing her with him and grabbed another towel from the sink. He used it to wipe her face dry and gave her a slightly confused look. “What are you sorry about?”
She stared at him in utter disbelief. “What am I sorry for? Sir, I stabbed you last night.”
Her eyes widened further when he chuckled. “No, you didn’t. I stabbed myself.” He put two fingers on her lips when she started to say something. “I have nightmares almost every night, Hathor, and often I wake up screaming. They sometimes take me back to a time when I was someone’s prisoner and I was tortured for information. When I woke up this morning, you were sleeping on your stomach beside me and your horn was across my chest. I freaked out because my brain believed I was still being imprisoned and when I was trying to get free I drove my hand onto your horn. You were half asleep and trying to figure out what was going on at that point and didn’t contribute to my stupidity at all.” He held up the hand. “It’s been healed already.”
She looked up into his eyes and her ears flicked. “You’re not mad, sir?”
“While there may be ample reason to question my sanity, I am not upset at you. It wasn’t your fault. I hurt my hand all by myself.”
“But if I hadn’t been there you wouldn’t have been able to hurt your hand, sir.”
“That is completely true. However, it’s also beside the point. You’re going to be in my bed and I have to get used to the oddities of your presence just like I had to get used to the oddities everyone else has. It’s all part of joining a family.”
“Oh.” Her voice was soft. “You’re not going to get rid of me then, sir?”
“No. Do you want to leave?”
“No, sir, I don’t.” Then she glanced to the side and suddenly looked worried. “Sir, but I ruined a towel.”
“Yeah, I saw. I was just going to ask about that. How did you get a wet towel on your horn?”
“I was trying to wash off the blood from your hand, sir. My arms are too short to be able to reach the end of my horns and I was trying to slap the towel against the end and, well, I missed and caught the towel on the tip. It only got worse while I was trying to get the towel off. That’s when I ripped it, sir. I’m very sorry.”
Iain stepped sideways and began working the wet towel up her horn. “It’s not a big deal. When we first bought the stuff for the house I was dirt poor and we went to a resale store for everything. April is an orderly woman, although fortunately she is not obsessive about it, and ever since she moved in she’s wanted to replace just about everything with stuff that matches. After she sees this towel, she’ll probably use that as an excuse to get started in here since my reasoning has been that we’ve got enough towels. I’ll have to remind her to thank you for the opportunity to redecorate.” When he got the towel off he carefully cleaned the spots of dried blood from the horn. “There, now it’s all nice and clean.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“Now that you know I’m not going to get rid of you just yet, why don’t you go wash up while I get started on breakfast.”
“Sir, I was told by Eve that I was supposed to be the domestic pokegirl. Shouldn’t I fix breakfast? I don’t want her to be upset at me.”
“I’m a light sleeper and so I’m pretty sure you didn’t sneak downstairs with April last night and get trained on cooking here. Did you?”
Her ears flicked. “No, sir, I didn’t.”
“Then you go clean up and I’ll make breakfast. Eve will make sure you get the training you need before turning you loose in the kitchen. I’ll talk to her about it, but I’m sure she’ll be fine with me cooking this morning. She’s usually pretty reasonable about things. If she’s not, we’ll have an argument about it.”
She nodded. “Sir, why do I need to clean up?”
“We try to bathe every day. I suspect you’ve been hiding in here since I woke up, so you haven’t yet.” His eyes flicked to the doorway. “Morning, Scheherazade. Could you show Hathor where she can clean up while I work on breakfast?”
The Dread Wolf’s glanced at the ruined towel in his hands and her tongue lolled in a toothy grin. “Were you trying to bathe her in here?”
“It’s a long story and no.”
She nodded. “Come on, Hathor. Let’s get you taken care of before the bathroom hog gets up.”
The Milktit’s brow furrowed and her tail flicked restlessly. “Bathroom hog? What is that?”
“Well, here its name is Vanessa. As for what it is, I’ll explain while we’re getting you clean. Come with me.” She looked at Iain. “We might want to consider a house of our own now. We really need another couple of bathrooms unless you want us to start peeing outside. Vanessa does hog the bathroom. Besides, you’re beating up people in Dingle and that never ends well.”
Iain turned to the cabinets. “Let Eve and April know and they can start planning what we will build. We’ll also need a location so I guess we’ll start looking today. Gee and I was so looking forward to getting abused by Dominique some more again.”
***
“What do you think?” Eve waved a hand in a circle. “The whole area is wide open and the sea is about a kilometer away from here so we can do some fishing and yet still be safe from wandering water ferals. They don’t come this far ashore unless they know there’s something interesting around.”
Iain looked around. “To be honest it’s a lot like the other ruins of villages scattered all over the Blue League. Just where are we?”
“This is the ruins of Castlegregory, a village about ten kilometers north of the road between Dingle and Tralee. I came here a couple of times right after the war.” She sighed. “There were still a few people living here and one of them was the kindest young man I’ve known until I met you. It was prettier then. Finally I returned to find the last humans had been slaughtered by some feral pokegirl. I thought we could clear the ruins and build our home there. The ground is already level, which will save us a lot of work. It’s also close enough to Tralee that you can get mail.”
Iain frowned as he thought. “That sounds workable. Now, does anyone know much about building a house?”
Eve gave him a broad smile. “Not in the harem, but Lucy has offered to build us a place to live. She’s got construction teams since the bases for the Order are moved every decade or so or as they expand due to population growth. Considering everything we have there’s always construction going on somewhere so the teams stay busy most of the time.”
Iain gave her a suspicious look. “And what does Lucy want for this gift?”
“I think she just wants to make sure we’re happy with her. She was clear that this was not a favor that she could call in later.”
His eyebrows rose. “You know we’ll still owe her something for this.”
“I do. I also know that if she really needed our help you’d give it whether we owed her or not, so it doesn’t matter.”
“True.” He looked around and shrugged. “How soon can you and April get her your dream plans and how soon can they start work?”
“We can get her our plans tomorrow. I’ll find out how soon they can start then.”
Iain nodded and released a pokedex from his pack. “We might as well make sure I’ve got mail capability out here first.” He activated it and watched it run through the startup cycle. “This is Kerrik’s pokedex. I figure I might as well see if Minister Harris is trying to get in touch with me again.”
It chimed an incoming message and Iain grinned. “Well, I can get messages out here. Now let’s see what the minister wants. Maybe we’ll get paid after all.” He spoke in a softer voice. “You have mail.” Then he read the header and his eyes widened. “It’s not from Harris.” He looked up and Eve could see the surprise in his eyes. “It’s from Micah Hakubi.”
“Well, you did send him a message. Most people usually consider it only polite to reply to mail they receive.” Eve smirked when he glared at her. “If you don’t know that maybe I should have chosen his harem to join instead of yours.”
“You just go ahead and do that next time, wench.” They laughed together for a minute. “Now that I’ve been insulted, maybe I shouldn’t let you view this message. After all, if you get to see his handsome face again you might race off to join him.”
She winked. “I just might at that. Let’s see if I will.”
They settled down on a piece of rubble and Iain activated the message. Micah was wearing comfortable looking clothes as he sat still in a heavy chair next to a small table with nothing on it. His horns gleamed in the light as his eyes danced devilishly and it looked like he was fighting not to smile. “Hello in return, Kerrik Wolf.” He suddenly grinned, his fangs shining in his face. “Greetings, felicitations, salutations and congratulations on surviving up until this point relatively intact.” His grin turned wry. “Given your introduction to this world was likely as delightful as mine, I’m not going to say something stupid like ‘I hope you’re doing well’, and merely hope that you haven’t been required to rack up a kill count in the triple digits. As for my appearance, well, the jury is still out how that particular trick was pulled off. Good to hear you’ve managed to flourish in this world, at least.”
The smile faded as his eyes turned serious. “I admit,” he said with a questioning lilt to his voice, “I’m half curious as to which preserve you learned about my most recent,” he paused, “oh, let’s call them extracurricular activities. Yes, as in more than one.” He held up a clawed finger. “I’ll give you that one for free; if you want specifics you’ll have to ask me in person. As for them learning about it, well, quite frankly I was planning on it, though I thank you for the warning.”
Hakubi dropped his hand on the table and drummed his claw tips against the wood in a staccato rhythm while he suddenly looked thoughtful. “And that brings us to the crux of the matter. Quite frankly, as things stand you can’t trust me and I can’t trust you for fear that we’ve been compromised by our mutual antagonists. And, more than likely, you have people yourself that you have a responsibility toward and feel a need to protect, just as I do.” He snorted. “Conversely, there’s the other matter that these communications are about as secure as a cheesecloth, so if you and I are going to have any sort of long term dialogue, we’ll likely have to include a third party somehow to arrange a face to face meeting. Barring that, a type of disposable neutral ground. To insure, if nothing else, that we don’t end up accidentally shooting at one another. Of course, given my luck, you’ll tell me that Macavity can arrange a meeting between the two of us. If this is the case, that screaming you’ll be hearing will be me.” He looked upwards as if expecting a thunderbolt from above. “Even if circumstances conspire to arrange that we never meet in person in this brave new world with such people in it, all I can say is good luck in whatever your endeavors are.”
He reached over towards something just outside the range of the pickup and paused. “Oh, and one other thing. One of these days I’m going to pick your brain so I can find out how the heck you took a pokegirl breed whose archetypes include the ranks of Belldandy Wishbringer and Skuld Ravenhair and somehow came up with the Celestial Alliance.” He flashed a sharp disbelieving look for an instant before grinning as he gave a jaunty salute. Then the recording ended.
Eve reached over and pressed the play button again. They watched the message a second time before Iain put his pokedex away. The Megami-sama sat silently for a brief time before turning to him. “Can we get the trivial part out of the way first?”
“If you’re talking about Micah’s whimsical question at the end, I doubt it’s trivial to you.”
She sighed. “He said you created the Celestial Alliance. Did you?”
“No, but I did hijack it for my own nefarious ends.” He grabbed her wrist when she tried to smack him lightly. “The Alliance was incorporated into the seminal work for pokegirls, a story called Wild Horses and Pokegirls. The story was about the otherdimensional Ranma Saotome, the one that a lot of people think was the Chosen One. In the story, the CA was a group of Megami and Megami-sama who were working to make sure that Ranma’s speech in Dogpatch came off without a hitch. It also hinted they were responsible for bringing him to the pokegirl universe just so he could give that speech.”
Still holding the hand he’d caught, Iain rubbed Eve’s fingers slowly. “The story started with a team of researchers looking for point to point matter transmission getting murdered by some from Team Fuckup who then destroyed one end of the portal equipment. This caused the portal to go across the dimensions and scoop Ranma onto the planet in a,” he made air quotation marks, “‘random’ place where he just happened to meet Professor Stroak and collect a harem of pokegirls after a raid on the Tendo Ranch which hurt a lot of people.” His voice was quiet. “People got killed in all of this and the Megami were claiming credit for causing it to advance their purpose. All of this suggested a level of callous ruthlessness that wasn’t really evident in the group of hapless celestials portrayed in Wild Horses but was there if you read between the lines.”
“I was only vaguely familiar with the manga that Belldandy and Skuld came from, so I did some research and found an interview with the writer who said that the Megami in his tale were loosely based off of the Norns, a group of Norse goddesses who ran people’s lives. I don’t know if the writer of Wild Horses was aware of this or if he just didn’t think about the potential ramifications of how Ranma was brought to this world, but I decided to use that concept when I started introducing celestial pokegirls in my writing, beginning with a story called To Boldly Go. It introduced a manipulative bitch Megami-sama named Svetlana who led a tamer and the rest of his harem to certain death in order to stop a rampaging Giantess. I’ve never been a fan of destiny or predetermination and I really don’t like people who lead others around by the nose so I went a bit overboard with my characterization. From the responses, Svetlana was pretty much universally reviled by the readers and that started the new version of the Alliance.”
He sighed. “Later I regretted what I’d done and I started trying to rehabilitate Svetlana and the Alliance, but while I was able to soften Svetlana’s personality and introduce Dorothea the Seraph, the Alliance resisted my efforts to spruce them up so I came up with the concept that there was a really quiet and behind the scenes group that did a lot of work the Alliance never knew about, stuff that nobody, not even the Alliance itself, was aware of. Even their existence was a secret.”
Eve blinked. “That sounds like the Sisterhood.”
“That’s exactly right. The Sisterhood of the Thorn was supposed to show how serious celestials operated behind the scenes and spurned any visibility or credit and let me turn the Alliance back into a useless bunch of do-gooders kind of similar to what was in Wild Horses. Since the idea was that they’d been working behind the scenes since the Revenge War, introducing them later on wouldn’t have upset the canon timeline in the slightest while still accomplishing my goal. Unfortunately, the story where I was going to solidly introduce the Sisterhood was still in the planning stages when I got sucked here, so it’ll never be written now.” He smiled slightly. “It was going to be a short story and was going to be my first pokegirl story that didn’t have a tamer in sight, something that, as far as I know, hadn’t really been done before since doing it badly would have broken the rule about pokegirls always needing tamers. I wouldn’t have broken that rule, but I would have had Lucifer and the others not being bonded and just visiting men at the bases when they needed tamed.” He laced his fingers in hers. “So that’s what Micah was talking about with the celestials and the Alliance.”
“Oh.” Eve leaned against him. “That explains a lot. It’s still scary, but it explains a lot.”
“You will never have a reason to be afraid of me, Eve. Ever.”
She kissed his ear. “I’m not afraid of you, Iain. It’s just the fact that you can either see or you actually created things that you shouldn’t be able to. Either way, it’s an incredible power. And what’s the really frightening thing? It’s that I know that the person who carries that incredible power loves me and I love him.”
“Shouldn’t that be exhilarating?”
“It’s wonderful, Iain. It’s the most precious thing in the universe but it’s also scary. I love someone who may be able to remake everything and I have to wonder if loving you will prevent me from doing what’s right if the situation comes up.”
“It hasn’t so far. I don’t think it will in the future, either. Besides, I’ve got a celestial rich harem and they seem happy to be with me. That kind of suggests I’m not going to become the monster that might have to make you choose between us and anything else.” He glanced at her. “Will you marry me?”
“Iain, I still have to be concerned that,” she broke off and stared at him. “What did you just say?”
“Well, if you weren’t paying attention and listening to me, I’m not sure I want to repeat myself.”
“Did,” she broke off. “Please repeat your question. I want to pay it the attention I think it should deserve.”
Iain started to tease her and stopped. He turned to look into her eyes. “Eve, I love you. I would be honored if you would become my wife. Will you marry me?”
Her mouth worked but nothing came out for several seconds. “What about the others?”
“Stop trying to think about others first for a change. Think about what you want, Eve. But to answer your question, I don’t see why I can’t eventually marry as many pokegirls as I can comfortably support and happen to love. I just want to marry you now.”
“Do you love April?”
“Is that important right now?”
She nodded firmly. “Yes, it is.”
“Besides you, I love April, Scheherazade and Dominique.”
“What about Irena and Montsho? You don’t get attached easily and Hathor hasn’t been here long enough yet.”
“I don’t love Irena or Montsho.”
“Yet.” Eve shrugged when his eyebrow rose questioningly. “I do share a delta bond with you and so I can touch your feelings for others sometimes.”
“Then why are you asking these questions?”
“Sometimes people don’t know what they feel, Iain. Have you told the others that you love them?”
He shook his head. “No.”
“After you tell them that you love them, I will be ecstatic to marry you, Iain.” She laughed softly when he just hung his head. “I want them to know that their turn will come someday.”
He didn’t look up. “Still thinking about others before you?”
“No, I just don’t want April to stick a knife in me when I’m not paying attention.” She smirked when his head came up. “She just might, you know. She’d like to stick one in Vanessa right now. A very long razor sharp knife.”
“What the hell for?”
“She feels that she is supposed to be the first girl of yours pregnant, that’s why, and she’s still not happy that she’s not. In fact, I think it’s only because Vanessa is pregnant by your magic that she hasn’t. She might be carrying human babies instead of pokekits and April’s not going to take the chance on possibly hurting your children.”
“I’m beginning to sense a problem.”
“What’s that, Iain?”
“Nobody here is sane. We’re all crazy.”
“I think we have to be or our enemies will get us. You will tell them soon, right?”
“I will as soon as we get home. I’m not letting my flower get away.”
“Your flower?”
He stroked her hair. “I’ve always loved bluebonnets. We had fields of them all over the place when I was a kid and I would spend hours out amongst them. I didn’t know they were poisonous for years and when I found out it didn’t matter. They’re still one of my favorite flowers. It’s nice to know that hopefully they still survive in the Sunshine League, but the Texas Bluebonnet will always have a special place in my heart.”
Eve blinked several times and cleared her throat. “You make me cry and I’ll pound you.”
“You do that and I’ll break. How about instead we go home and I’ll see if we can find something to do that’ll cheer you up.”
“I’ll hold you to that.” She wrapped him up in her arms and they teleported away.
***
It was early afternoon in Celeboner and the streets were crowded with humans and their pokegirls running various errands. In the middle of a sidewalk a silver pea appeared in the air, floating four feet from the ground. A Witch sensed its appearance and turned curiously, only to be jerked into motion by her tamer with a “don’t daydream and stay close”.
It wouldn’t have mattered anyway as the pea had appeared in front of a man and in the next second he walked through the space that it occupied, the pea scouring a hole through his chest and exiting out his back in a spray of blood as the man groaned and collapsed to writhe limply, leaving the pea still hovering undisturbed.
The man’s Kitsune knelt to see what had happened and as she turned her head passed through the spot occupied by the pea. She dropped without a sound, leaving a pea sized hole in her skull where the pea had entered and another where it exited, in the process of its passage carving a tunnel through her brain that killed her instantly.
The man’s other pokegirl, an Amazonchan, saw the pea and reacted automatically, smashing the object with a dynamic punch. She hit the pea squarely, burning a hole through her fist and a tunnel up the inside of her forearm. She shrieked and jerked, gouging another hole in her arm as the trajectory changed and the pea exited through her wrist.
In seconds the crowd had surged away from the pea, nobody willing to get close enough to render aid to its victims lest they also be injured or killed.
Within minutes the Celeboner police were on the scene and had cordoned off the street in both directions. Volunteers cautiously retrieved the dead and injured. A half hour later the people in charge of the scene were still discussing their options when the pea suddenly began to expand into a sphere that grew until the bottom of it touched the street and with a hissing sound destroyed the sidewalk and everything two inches beneath it before stabilizing and changing form into a hemisphere that grew in all directions, everything it touched vanishing with more hissing, be it the fruit in a stand to the material in the stand itself and the walls of the buildings around it. An Officerjenny was too slow to get away from it when it reached her position and she burned along the line of where it touched her until she was completely gone. The rest of the police ran away from the silver wall and were spared.
When the hemisphere was twenty yards in all directions it stopped growing and turned partially transparent, revealing the damage to the buildings it touched. The store closest to it had been nearly completely severed and timbers groaned as the upper portion twisted into the sphere until enough of the upper floor had been dissolved that the remaining supports could hold the much smaller mass steady.
A red dot appeared where the pea had originally been and energy pulsed in tiny crimson lightning bolts that quickly grew until they covered a sphere three yards across with crawling red tendrils of energy. There was a loud snapping noise and the lighting bolts collapsed into a vertical red disk.
The figure that stepped through the plane of the disk was five feet tall and so stocky as to appear stout. His bald head gleamed golden in the sunlight and a tightly woven beard fell to the middle of his broad chest. His thick lips drew back to reveal strong, even teeth as his eyes swung over the scene in front of him and his eyes were so dark as to appear black.
Behind him the disk lightened and eventually vanished.
An Officerjenny raised a bullhorn. “You there! You are under arrest for destruction of property and assault on a human. Lower your defenses!” The male listened for a second before snapping his fingers. The hemisphere vanished. He raised a hand and pointed a forefinger at the Officerjenny before making a beckoning motion.
The Officerjenny’s head exploded and her brain shot towards the male as her body crumpled. The brain landed neatly in the male’s hand. His eyes glowed bright red and so did the brain as it dissolved to puddle on the ground. The male wiped his hand on his pants just as the first Growlie recovered from her shock and opened fire without orders. Her head snapped backwards as the bullet stopped a yard from the man and rebounded in an almost straight line to take her in the eye. Reflexively, other police opened fire and in seconds dead and dying police were everywhere.
The male took a step and disappeared as the first flamethrower attack washed over where he’d been. He reappeared fifty miles away on a hilltop. He looked around and smiled before speaking English in a raspy voice that quickly strengthened. “So this is the Indigo League.” His brain whirred, cataloging the information it had absorbed from the Officerjenny’s dying mind just like it had learned the language. Suddenly he scowled. “There is nothing but stinking humans here? Is there nowhere free of their pestilence?” His scowl deepened. “That means the fledgling is undoubtedly a human too and not worth making mine. Still, if it is not to be claimed it must be destroyed lest it prove a threat someday.”
He dug a spatulate nail into his arm and blood poured from the wound to collect in a ball that hung in midair as the wound knitted. The ball quivered and spoke in the same voice as the male’s. “Master.”
The male licked his nail clean. “Seek the fledgling. If it is a dwarf, call me that I may claim it for myself. If it is weak, destroy it. If it is too strong for you to destroy, call me so I may have some sport before destroying it.”
“I do your will, master.” The ball changed shape, becoming a glittering scaled creature with wings a foot across and shot into the air as it began an unceasing hunt for its prey.
***
Iain turned off the recording and looked around the table. “Well, that’s Micah’s message to us. Does anyone have any questions?”
April nodded. “Is Hathor going to ever put on clothes?”
“Is that relevant?”
“It is to me. Every time her naked ass goes by you’re looking at it. That and I happen to be a bit concerned that if she starts leaking milk it’ll be a slip hazard.”
Iain shook his head. “Maybe you should wear fewer clothes from time to time. Anyone have any questions pertinent to Micah’s message to us?”
Dominique put her hand over April’s mouth. “It all boils down to what we’re going to tell him and how we’re going to get it to him. But how we’re going to get it to him will determine what we can put in the message.”
“I think I can solve the delivery issue.” Iain smiled when Dominique gave him a disbelieving look. “I’m going to ask Vanessa to deliver it to Sexebi, who knows where Micah is. Barring that, I’ll ask Vanessa to get his location from Sexebi and take the messages to him herself.”
“You’re going to ask a legendary to deliver a message to another legendary and have her ask the second legendary to deliver this message to Micah?”
Iain looked thoughtful for a second. “Yeah, I think that restates what I just said.”
“What makes you think Vanessa will do this?”
“I’ll ask nicely and if she balks I’ll inform her that it’s time she started contributing.”
Irena’s eyes were huge in her face as she stared at Iain. “Part of me wants to be in the room when you tell Vanessa she has to start pulling her weight and part of me wants to be in the Silver River League when you do.”
Several people laughed quietly. Finally Eve turned to Iain. “Presuming that Vanessa and Sexebi agree to this, what are you going to tell Micah?”
Iain leaned back in his chair. “With Vanessa delivering the messages we actually have pretty secure communications with Micah. This means we can tell him pretty much anything we want to.”
April frowned. “We haven’t determined if he’s Sanctuary’s agent or not.”
Scheherazade’s ears flicked. “He’s not a puppet.”
“And you know this how?” This was from Dominique.
“He has a Dire Wolf. We serve generals, not quislings. She would have left him or freed him if he were someone’s slave.” Her ears flattened against her skull. “Or, more likely, she would have died trying to free him. Her presence is how I know he is not a puppet.”
“She could be under Sanctuary’s control too,” Irena said softly.
“We now know that Goth control is predicated on conditioning for long term behavior modification. The actual auras are not in use all of the time. They can’t be since Goths have to sleep. Dire Wolves and celestials in general are not good subjects for that kind of brainwashing. The Dire Wolf in a pet’s harem would have escaped or died. I spent over a month on a Limbec vessel waiting for Iain and the whole time the pirates tried to condition me into being like them. It did not work and I would have found a way to escape or killed enough of them that they would have had to kill me if I didn’t know that my general was going to show up.” She shrugged. “Let me put it this way. If Micah is a puppet and she is his lapdog, I will kill her so she can be free. I do not expect to have to kill her.”
“Hey.” Heads turned at the firmness in Iain’s voice. “For the record, I agree with Scheherazade. The presence of a Dire Wolf means it is exceedingly unlikely that Micah is a puppet of anyone. Also for the record, that doesn’t automatically mean I’d want him dating my sister. It does not necessarily follow that just because he’s the enemy of my enemy that I’d like him to be my bosom buddy. After all, the only thing we really shared in our world is a love for pokegirls. Now, I will point out that any author puts a lot of himself into what he writes and you can learn a lot about that person by reading their fictional works. It’s a known psychological fact. Having said that, from Micah’s work I’ve always thought we could be friends if we ever met.” He rubbed his eyes. “But I am not immediately inviting him over for dinner since I could be completely wrong. There are too many qualifiers in what I’ve said for me to be comfortable giving him a set of keys to the house. After all, I have a family now and I have to think about you before I make any sort of decision like that. That’s why I’m not going to tell him about Iain or Austin, either.”
Eve smirked suddenly. “And just a little while ago weren’t you saying that I should think less about others before myself?”
“I did and you should. As for the message to Micah, I thought I’d tell him a bit about us and give a general overview of our plans. I’ll also let him know about Bevin’s communications not being as secure as she thought they were. I’ll even confirm to him that we’re in the Blue League, although I won’t be so specific as to tell him we’re in Ireland. I’m sure Micah can be fairly practical and I don’t want to find out the hard way that he’s moonlighting as a mercenary and selling information to the highest bidder as a way to make a living. Considering all of this, my letter shouldn’t be very long.”
Dominique blinked. “You’re going to write him? Iain, my dear, your penmanship leaves a lot to be desired. Usually it’s barely legible, for one. If you want him to remain your friend, don’t write him.”
Irena giggled. “She has a point. Your handwriting is horrible.”
“When did today become ‘pick on the man’ day?” He smiled gently. “You really think my handwriting is that bad?”
“Iain, sometimes you can’t read it.”
“That’s only when I’m jotting down quick notes, but I get your point. I’ll record a message to him on a portable player. I also won’t encrypt it so Sexebi can watch it before giving it to Micah.”
Eve looked startled. “Why would she do that?”
“She’s an extremely curious person, Eve, and it’s only fair that she knows the contents of the message she may be couriering to Micah.” He looked around the table. “Vanessa’s willingness or unwillingness to carry the message will largely determine what I can safely say, so I’ll talk to her before I make the recording. Up until that point, I’d like your help in making sure I don’t say or do anything that’ll accidentally reveal more than we want to.” He pushed his chair back from the table. “So unless anyone has anything to add, I’ll talk to Vanessa.” He waited a moment before getting up. “I’ll leave the Kerrik pokedex with Eve in case anyone wants to see the message again.”
“Do you want me to come with you?” Eve took the proffered pokedex and handed it to April. “For security, if nothing else.”
“If we have that much to fear from Vanessa then I should never have let her into the house in the first place, Eve. Watch from afar if you’re worried about it.”
“We will.” Scheherazade’s ears were folded halfway back. “We always watch as much as you’ll let us.” She blinked and her ears canted sideways. “That didn’t come out right.”
Iain laughed. “No, I think you said that perfectly.” When Scheherazade snarled softly he laughed louder before heading off to find Vanessa. She was weeding a garden she’d put in behind the house and looked up when he approached. “Do you have a minute?”
She smiled. “I do if you’ll help me weed.”
Iain dropped to his knees. “You do realize that a weed is just a plant that is where someone doesn’t want it to be, right?”
Vanessa glanced at him. “And the plants I don’t want here are stealing nutrients and water from the ones I do want here, so they’ve got to go.”
“I really hope you’re not going to think that about my ladies when the kits are born.”
Vanessa looked aghast. “I would never hurt your family, Iain.”
“What am I to you? What are we to you?”
A faintly troubled look appeared on her face. “I, I don’t understand the question.”
“You’ve moved in, Vanessa. You’re putting in gardens now. What you’re doing is making this a home for you. In my house. Where do I and my ladies fit in?”
She sat up and looked into his eyes. “Do you want me to leave,” she asked very softly.
“I’d like you to ask.”
Vanessa took a deep breath, still staring into his eyes. “Iain, I’ve been very remiss and assumed something you never offered and you were right to point that out to me. I’m scared and lonely and I’d like to stay here for a while. Can I, please?”
“Of course you can, Vanessa.” Iain patted her on the knee. “I’m not sure how I became friends with a legendary, but you’re my friend and you are welcome to live with us as long as you want.”
She relaxed. “Thanks. If you aren’t looking for a way to kick me out, why did we just go through that?”
“It was my subtle way of pointing out that you’ve been acting like my houseguest instead of a long term resident and that it needs to change. While the weeding and the gardens are nice, we’re going to be moving soon and I’m going to need your help with some things.” He flashed a smile. “Some of it only you can do, so I wanted you feeling indebted to me before I brought it up since if you say no I’m kind of screwed.”
“Where are we moving?”
“We’ll be moving to the ruins of Castlegregory. Lucifer is going to build us a house there after we level the ruins.”
“I’ll have room for real gardens?”
“You can putter to your heart’s content once the chores are done.”
“At where I used to live I’ve still got some feral Chickenlittles and there are some wild kattle. We can move them to the new house.”
Iain shrugged. “As long as I don’t have to fuck them I don’t care.”
“I know you don’t have time for new pokegirls what with your harem and me. Fortunately, Chickenlittles do perfectly well while feral. Thank you, Iain.”
“You are very welcome.”
She gave him a coy look. “Now that I’ve been properly buttered up, what do you want?”
“I sent a message to Micah Hakubi a little while ago and got a reply. Right now we’re corresponding through public channels, which means that anything we send the leagues can read. I’d like to set up a private channel that’s secure, but I don’t know where Micah is and he doesn’t know my location. However, Sexebi has to know where he is, so I was going to ask you to deliver a message for Micah to her and ask her to deliver it to him. I realize how much curiosity you and Sexebi have, so you two are free to read the messages I send before they get delivered.” When Vanessa kept staring at him, he frowned. “What?”
She blinked. “Sorry. This isn’t going to sound like a compliment, but it is. If you ever decide to stand against me, I’m going to kill you so fast you won’t be aware of what’s happening. You know way too much.”
“I don’t know your favorite color.”
Vanessa smiled suddenly. “That’s right, you don’t. I guess my important secrets are still safe.” The smile faded slightly. “I’ll convey your message, Iain, and I’ll speak to my friend about her taking it on to Micah. I think she’ll be delighted since she hasn’t had the chance to reveal herself to him and this way he won’t immediately know he’s been claimed by her.”
“You know, claimed is a really bad word to apply to Micah. I really think she should just try to be Micah’s friend. He and I aren’t that different in a lot of ways and he’s likely to be just as antagonistic to the idea of being someone’s possession as I am.”
Vanessa gave him a curious look. “How antagonistic are you about it?”
“Well, so far everyone who has tried to own me has ended up dead. What’s that say about my opinion of me as property?”
“It suggests it’s a good thing we’re friends instead of me trying to own you. What you did to Jenova scared the other legendaries more than you know. Even if she’s not a legendary herself she’s been around so long that people forget that.” She gave him a searching look. “I’m not sure if you couldn’t kill me if you put your mind to it and I know I don’t want to find out.”
“I can’t. Well, I really mean I won’t.”
“Why not?”
“You’re preggers, remember, and I was the catalyst so those are my kids. I will only try to kill you in self defense.”
She was silent for several seconds. “You are acknowledging what happened?”
“I was there, something happened that involved all of us and you became pregnant. There’s nothing to deny. I know that being a father is going to be new to me, but I think I’m looking forward to it and I’ve been told by lots of people before I came here that I’d be a great dad. Now I get to find out.”
Vanessa slowly flushed pink. “Thank you, Iain,” she said quietly. “That means a lot to me.”
“It means a lot to me, too.” Iain looked around and chuckled. “I’m sorry, but I don’t appear to be doing any weeding.”
“It’s ok. I’ve just found out that the weeding isn’t important since we’re moving soon. When will you have that message ready?”
“I’ll have it ready by tomorrow.”
“I’ll be ready to go.”
***
Iain settled back in the overstuffed chair and propped his boots up on the table as he looked around the room. It was the living room in the house they were renting in Dingle and it looked like a thousand other living rooms across the Blue League.
It was perfect for his needs.
He set up Kerrik’s pokedex and activated the camera, positioning it so he was centered in the screen. Then he touched the record key and took a deep breath. “Good day, Micah. As you can see by the mode of delivery, I did listen to your message even though Macavity was fortunately unavailable as a messenger. I wouldn’t trust her to pour water out of a bucket with printed instructions and a trial run. Besides, I’ve recently heard she decided to play some games with you and I hope you ripped a bloody strip off her, preferably somewhere inside her brain stem.”
“How I arranged this delivery is a long story and best saved for another time, although the messenger may have already told you most of it.”
He shifted in the chair and crossed his boots. “Since this should be secure, I don’t have to be circumspect, which is rather nice. I learned about your shenanigans after I was approached by Devon Harris with a recording of the conversation between you and Bevin. He’d tracked me down in the hopes that I was the kami Kerrik Wolf from New Beginnings and that I could find out what’s going on. When he found out I wasn’t he still showed me the message because he’s high enough in the Blue League food chain to know about the presence of the authors on this world.” He chuckled softly. “Hatsumi is just as impressive in real life as she seemed to me in my stories. It’s kind of scary to run across people that I imagined and see them as real and now have to wonder if I saw them or created them in my musings.” He shook his head. “But I digress.”
“I am not a puppet of Sanctuary and I believe that you aren’t one either. I have it on good authority from my Dire Wolf that the fact that you have a Dire Wolf confirms we’re both as free as we can get, within the confines of the responsibilities we’ve accepted onto ourselves.” He smiled. “No man is truly free, but if the burdens we bear are of our own choice we can sometimes bear them lightly.”
The smile vanished. “I trust Scheherazade’s opinion and so I’ve decided to take the first step and trust you. After all, the truth is that we’re just playing a game of Prisoner’s Dilemma and I’ve decided to go with cooperate. I’m not ready for a face to face though. I suppose there’s no rational reason for avoiding it if I’m willing to trust you except I’m overly paranoid because of the responsibility to my ladies. If it were just me, I’d offer to buy the first round and take my chances.”
“Right now I’m involved in setting up a convoluted plan to do enough damage to Sanctuary that they’ll rethink their fascination with people like me.” He rubbed his eyes for a moment. “Like you, things have changed for me on a personal level although most of the changes are internal as opposed to what has happened to you. Nice horns, by the bye. If you don’t mind I’ll skip the obvious series of stupid jokes about being horny. I do hope they came with some kind of magical power so you can defend yourself against the pokeboy hating crowd.”
“Like most people probably think, I am living somewhere in Blue. It’s a nice place and the girls are pretty. Oh, I met Linda McMahon after you ditched the Kite here. You really got her panties in a bunch over what you did in Capital. Good job. It’s funny that she’s a Sanctuary Goth and still thinks she can trust Sanctuary. I hope the wakeup doesn’t cost her too many loved ones.”
“My ladies are very talented in their specialties and I think I have a fairly comprehensive picture of what your harem looks like, at least from the time that you were last near a pokegirl center. What we could find out includes Anya the Starmystic, Ludmilla the Dire Wolf, Cornelia the Demon-Goddess, Nunnally the Armsmistress, and Euphemia the unknown breed. A BOLO posted by the McMahons after Sadie Pokens also showed a picture of either a Lucarda pokekit or chibi.” He shrugged. “You’ve never been into pedo, but you seem like the kind of person who wouldn’t toss a kid if she needed you, so I don’t know which it is.”
“Since I know something about your harem, I thought I’d reciprocate with information about my ladies. Eve is my Megami-sama, Dominique my Archmage, and Scheherazade is my Dire Wolf. There’s something special about Scheherazade, but I’ll explain that later. I also have a Duelist named April and a noncombatant Milktit named Hathor.” He frowned. “I thought about not telling you about the last two, but if I don’t then it would look like I had something to hide when you do find out about them. I have a Sanctuary Goth named Irena and a Tyrannodame named Montsho in my harem, although needless to say the Blue League is not aware of their presence. I picked up Montsho in Africa and evolved Irena here in Blue. My tamer record only shows Eve, Dominique and Scheherazade, so I’m giving you something for free this time.”
Iain laced his fingers together and rested his chin on the knuckles of his index fingers as he stared into the camera. “This little adventure has been fascinating, exciting, horrible, terrifying, agonizing and just about any other adjective you can imagine. I got really lucky with the ladies that decided to twine their lives with mine, but sometimes,” he broke off. “I’m babbling and I apologize for it, Micah. Even if we never meet, I hope you find a way that gives you and the people you love all the things you need and maybe some of the things you want. It’s scary, you know? We’re supposed to protect women and all we can do is hope they don’t die while protecting us. No matter how powerful I get, they will always throw themselves between me and danger and one day the odds will catch up with them.” His eyes hardened and for an instant glowed sapphire. “And for that reason alone I will kill everything that lives on the African continent if I have to in order to keep them safe.” He shrugged. “Eve doesn’t want me to take that on my karma, but this is my decision and I freely make it.”
He smiled wryly. “And back I go to the babbling. I’d rerecord this, but I don’t have a script and I haven’t said anything that I regret. Good luck, Micah, and if the opportunity does ever present itself, I will buy that first round for you and your ladies.” He stopped the recording and replayed it. When it was done he looked thoughtful for several minutes before shrugging. “Fuck it. It goes as is.”
***
Vanessa’s teleport ended in a copse of oak trees. She could have exited directly at her destination, but it was polite not to do so. And since she was visiting another legendary, it was also prudent.
She looked around slowly before stepping deeper into the woods. Watching carefully, she found the sentries before they could move to intercept her. She raised her hand. “I am Evangelion and you may not stop me.” The name sounded strange on her tongue after all the time of being Vanessa, but it was hers just as Iain’s was also Kerrik. The sentries nodded and faded back into the forest as Vanessa followed a faint path deeper into the trees.
A few minutes later a familiar form flew up and hovered in front of her. “Evangelion,” Sexebi said, her tone delighted, “it’s good to see you again.” She paused in mid flutter. “Why are you back?” She canted her head to the side as her antenna twitched. “Did your chosen one give up on you already?”
“No, Bee, he’s still alive and he’s still paying me attention. He’s,” she paused. “He’s different than most of the other humans I’ve known. He’s special.”
Sexebi blinked in surprise. “You found a special? That’s,” she paused, “very surprising actually. I didn’t think that would happen. Congratulations.”
Vanessa smiled. It was hard to be unhappy around Sexebi and she’d always suspected that the diminutive legendary had some magic that made it so. “Bee, I have a message from my Kerrik Wolf. It’s for Micah Hakubi.”
“You have a message for my Micah.” Her wings fluttered iridescent in the light. “Can I see it, or does your chosen not want me to?”
“No, Kerrik wants you to see it. He says he has no reason to keep it a secret from you. Can I play it for you?”
“He said that? You were right to say he’s special. Please let me see.” She watched the recording avidly until it was finished. “You want me to take this to him, don’t you?”
“I’d appreciate it. That way I don’t have to know where Micah is. He’s safer that way.”
Sexebi giggled. “Your Kerrik really doesn’t like Macavity. He’s smart. He knows about me. Does Micah know about you?”
Vanessa shook her head. “No, he doesn’t. However, I’ll let you tell him about me if you choose to reveal yourself to him. You can scare him, too.”
Sexebi’s eyes lit up. “How so?”
“I’m living with Kerrik.”
Sexebi blinked, momentarily forgetting to flutter in her surprise. It left her looking as if she’d been momentarily knocked askew in mid-flight. “Really? You’re actually living with him?” For a brief second she actually looked envious. “Can you tell me why?”
Vanessa shook her head, her copper hair gleaming as it swirled around her face. “Someday I will, but right now the time isn’t right.”
“Hmph. Time is always right for me.” Sexebi smiled. “Except when it isn’t. I hope you’ll get to tell me when the time is right.”
“Will you deliver this message to Micah Hakubi for me?”
“I will.”
“Will you reveal yourself to him now?”
Sexebi giggled. “Maybe I have already, but then again maybe I haven’t. I promise you, though, he will get this message.”
“You heard Kerrik, Bee. Micah has a celestial, a Dire Wolf named Ludmilla. If nothing else, she can be used as a conduit.”
“I will decide when I get there,” Sexebi repeated firmly. She fluttered forward and plucked the player from Evangelion’s hand. “Is there anything else you want to tell me?”
Vanessa resisted the magic again and laughed. “All in the fullness of time, Bee.”
“Be at peace, Van, and good luck.”
“You too, Bee.”
The two legendaries vanished almost simultaneously.
***
Magdalene was sipping a cup of tea outside a café in Montevideo when a shadow fell over her table. She looked up to see a Catgirl, one of the cat-eared, tailed otherwise human looking ones. This Catgirl had shoulder length reddish golden hair that matched the fur on her ears and eyes the color of sapphires. “I thought you’d gone home, Tanika. Would you care to join me?”
Tanika settled gently into the chair on the other side of the table and signaled for the waiter. “I decided to stay for a while yet and keep an eye on you, sister dear, and it’s a good thing I did. Did you feel the arrival?”
Magdalene chuckled. “How could I not? It fairly screamed ‘look at me’. Whoever it is has power and not a whole lot of finesse.”
Tanika’s ears flicked. “It’s a he and he came out inside a city. It was pretty awful. He’s definitely not one of the nice ones. I went by afterwards and looked around.”
The waiter came over and took the cat’s order. Magdalene waited until he was gone before speaking again. “I should point out that we aren’t really all that nice either, Tanika.”
“We’re not like that. He massacred a bunch of police and destroyed most of a city block before he moved away. He’s a loon.”
“They got off lucky then, but it does sound like trying to salvage him would be a waste of time.”
Tanika nodded. “I know. It’s a shame, really, that so many of us are like that. All that power could be put to much better use, or if nothing else not so much of a bad one. You know why he’s here. He’s come for your prospective brother in law. What name is he using now?”
“Iain Grey.”
“That’s a nice name, but I always had a soft spot for the Celts. What do you plan to do about the newcomer?”
Magdalene frowned. “I haven’t decided yet. If I stopped the newcomer then Iain would be safe from that. However, if I let them meet and he loses, my project here will end. But if I let them meet and he wins,” she smiled slowly. “He would prove his fitness beyond a shadow of a doubt. I think our sisters should get to squabble over a fit man, don’t you?”
“If the newcomer kills your Iain, all they’ll get is scraps. You’d better be very careful about this.” She grinned toothily. “I might tell.”
“Who? Kerrik? He’d agree with me.”
“I’d tell our mothers and let them know you found a truewizard who isn’t the slightest bit a relative and then let him get killed by some world ruling wannabe.” She smirked. “And they’ll tell father he lost a chance to get rid of some of his daughters.”
Magdalene blinked. “That’s not very nice,” she said slowly. “What did I do to you recently to deserve this?”
“Nothing. But they’re my sisters too and they keep dropping by and wasting my time with their visits. If they married the visits would at least slow down. Besides, I’ve investigated this Iain a bit. I like him. I’d protect him, but you made him your project and you remember the last time I interfered in one of your projects.”
“If he’s my project then aren’t you interfering by threatening me if I don’t protect him as you’d like me to?”
Tanika’s grin reappeared. “I suppose I am, but then you weren’t supposed to be so rude as to point that out.” The smile vanished. “He’ll be one of the good ones if he lives. We have a responsibility to help him.”
“If I step in and solve his problems he’ll never grow into anything decent and you know it, Tanika. I won’t keep them from meeting.”
The waiter returned with Tanika’s sandwich and left again. Tanika watched him go idly. “Will you let the newcomer kill Iain?”
“I don’t intend to, but I want to see what Iain will do about the attempt first. I’ve never heard of a fledgling truewizard coming into his power with the knowledge base this one has. Because of his unique situation he knows about things that neither Kerrik nor father have told us and this is a perfect chance to expand our knowledge about our own kind. We both know that combat is the best way to see what he can do.”
Tanika picked up her sandwich. “That’s true, Magdalene, but don’t forget that if you’re too busy collecting data you could lose your research subject. Depending on how good this newcomer is, he might not leave anything for you to save.”
“I know.” Magdalene reached across and plucked a pickle from Tanika’s plate. “Would you do me the favor of finding the newcomer and seeing what you can learn about him? If he’s determined to become part of my experiment, I need to know how he might influence the results so I can best counter his final thrust if it becomes necessary.”
Tanika chewed and swallowed. “I’d be glad to, sister. After all, someday the children that Iain has with his women might marry mine.”
***
The ruins of the village had been cleared by the simple expedient of pushing everything into a large pile of rubble and then setting it on fire with magic. Even after three days the pile still smoldered and smoke eddied with the wind as it rose into the air.
The area buzzed with activity as the construction crew Lucifer had sent worked on their new project. A team of Amachamps and other strong pokegirls were chipping out the basement by the simple expedient of using post drivers and six inch thick steel chisels to cut their way into the earth. Iain had used post drivers before, but these were adapted to the much greater strength of the user and each weighed roughly a ton. The earth shook each time the driver dropped and nothing, not stone and not ancient pipe slowed the chisels in the slightest. The drilling team had lots of spare chisels and a nearby group did nothing but sharpen the dulled ones as they were changed out.
An interesting problem had cropped up during the final planning session. The crew that had originally been slated to do the work had rushed off to an emergency job somewhere in Ruby amid rumors of a Mantis attack. The team that had replaced them specialized in heavy fortifications and wasn’t comfortable building a house. After a bit of consultation, the work had proceeded, but with a few small changes including three feet thick walls for the exterior and an equally massive roof to protect against attack. A determined pokegirl could still tear her way in, but ferals were unlikely to bother anything so solid.
Right now the primary team was collecting material for the house while the basement was being dug out. Another team was breaking ground under Vanessa and April’s direction for where the vegetable and flower gardens would go. Eve would have helped more with the garden layouts, but it turned out that she knew almost everyone on the construction crew and was spending a lot of her time renewing old friendships. Having never had a lot of friends during his life, Iain was both happy for and slightly jealous of her, but he stayed out of the way as much as possible.
The presence of males always complicated pokegirl relationships after all.
Scheherazade was his bodyguard and she stood nearby as he perched on a rock and watched the activity. He’d been firmly rebuffed every time he’d tried to help and so had finally given up and retired here to watch the work while reading his magical tome.
Montsho and Irena had returned to Africa to report the progress of their investigations to their superiors and were expected to be gone for the next few days.
“Hathor is coming.”
Iain looked over his shoulder at Scheherazade and then at the site. Sure enough, the Milktit was headed his way with a basket. She stopped in front of him. “Sir, I brought you some muffins and I wanted to thank you for thinking of me.” She dug a muffin, a knife and a bowl of butter from the basket. “Here you are, sir.”
“Thanks, Hathor. Why don’t you sit down and have one with me?”
She smiled happily. “Thank you, sir.” She tugged at her skirt and sat down at his knee so she could look up at him while they ate. Iain was hoping the casual familiarity in the rest of the harem would rub off on her. So far she’d shown no signs of dropping the formal sir.
At least she didn’t call him master as much.
“Now, what was I thinking of that you wanted to thank me for?”
The Milktit was tearing open a muffin in preparation for the butter and looked up in surprise. “Sir, you told Eve and Dominique to redesign the house so that every doorway was more than wide enough for my horns. I won’t have to turn my head anymore to go through the house. It was a lot of work, too. They were not happy.”
“It sucks to be them then. You’re one of us and we should accommodate your special needs whenever possible. Besides all they really have to do is put in double doorways everywhere. It’s a lot of architectural redesign, but it’s important that it happen.”
“And that’s why I’m so grateful, sir. Nobody thinks about me.”
Iain chuckled. “That’s not true here. In fact, April says I think about you too much.”
Hathor looked shocked. “What does that mean, sir?”
“It means she’s jealous of the fact that it seems like whenever she’s talking to me and you walk by the sway of your hips distracts me.”
Her eyes lit up. “It does?”
“I like girls with good curvy figures and you have a very nice one.”
She actually bounced in her seat. “Thank you!” Iain finished buttering his muffin and offered the bowl and knife to her. After taking it, she nibbled slowly on the snack. “Sir, did you think about me more when I wasn’t wearing clothes?”
A sudden suspicion struck him. “I think I’ll ask why you want to know that before I answer.”
A bit of worry flitted across her face. “I’m sorry, sir. I’m not trying to cause trouble. Please forget that I asked.”
“Hathor, are you wearing clothes because you want to or because someone ordered you to?”
The worry reappeared and grew. Still careful of her horn’s proximity to his legs, she looked from side to side as if for rescue before shrinking in on herself. “Sir, please don’t be mad at me.”
Iain kept his voice soothing. “I’m not upset at you. I just want to know. Sometimes Eve decides that people aren’t going to be allowed to make their own decisions because of something she doesn’t like. For example, she tried to forbid Irena from cursing like the rest of us do.”
The Milktit blinked. “Sir, I would never curse. I know it’s really bad.”
Scheherazade snickered softly. “I’ll mark the date so we can see how long that statement is true.” She stepped forward and gently ruffled Hathor’s black and white hair. “She did order you to wear clothes, didn’t she?” A tear glittered in Hathor’s eye as she nodded. The Dread Wolf made a sympathetic noise as she knelt and carefully hugged her. “It’s ok. She tried to make me wear clothes all the time too. I told her to go fuck herself. You should try it.”
Hathor’s eyes went so wide that the whites dominated them and her nostrils flared. “She’ll get rid of me if I did that,” she breathed in a frightened voice.
Iain’s lips clenched. “That’s enough of that. Scheherazade, could you ask my lady love to come here please.”
Her ears canted sideways as she carefully disengaged from Hathor and stood “And what do I get if I do?”
Hathor gasped.
“You get my undying love.”
“I thought I already had that.”
“You do. I never said you got anything new.”
Scheherazade’s tail smacked his leg lightly. “You’re a tease. I’ll be right back.” She flew off in a gray and black blur.
Hathor grabbed his leg and pressed her forehead against his knee. “Sir, I am very very sorry for causing any trouble.”
He sighed and slid off the rock to sit in front of her. “Want my muffin?” He held it up and she stared at him in incomprehension. “Would I offer you the muffin that a really cute Milktit gave me if I were upset at you?” He winked. “She’s never given me a muffin before and so this is a really special gift, but I think you need it more than I do.”
“It’s just a muffin.”
“No, it’s a symbol of the fact that you made muffins for us and thought to bring me one. I appreciate that.” He plopped the muffin in her lap. “There.”
She blinked and picked it up. “No, sir, this is yours.” She offered it to him.
“I gave it to you.”
A tiny smile appeared on her face and she put the muffin in his hands. “And I’m giving it to you, sir.”
Iain dropped it back into her lap and grinned at her. “Then I’m giving it back to you.”
She scooped it up and put it in his lap. “Then I’m giving it back to you, sir.”
By the time Eve and Scheherazade returned, the muffin had disintegrated and they were tossing crumbs at each other. Both were covered in bits of muffin and butter and Hathor was laughing as she threw bits at him.
“What is going on here?”
At the sound of Eve’s voice Hathor jumped and whirled around in her seat. Her horn clubbed Iain sideways and he pushed himself back up as she turned white and reached for him. “I’m so sorry.”
Iain started to tell her to shut up and caught himself just in time. He grasped her hands and turned his head. “Did you break the skin?”
“No, sir, but there’s a red mark,” she said softly.
“Kiss it.” She blinked at him and he smirked as he tilted his head forward. “Kiss it and make it better.”
The fear faded and she leaned up to press her lips against his temple, smiling when he gave an exaggerated sigh of relief. “Are you better, sir?”
He leaned forward and gave her a quick peck on the lips. “Much.” Then he looked over her shoulder at the Megami-sama. “Did you tell Hathor that she had to wear clothes?”
Eve suddenly looked wary. “She does have to. It’s Blue League law.”
“Don’t bullshit me, Eve. That’s only the law for when we’re inside cities and it’s loosely enforced. We all know that. You’re just trying what you did with Scheherazade and I want it to stop.”
Eve sighed. “Fine. Hathor doesn’t have to wear clothes except in town just like Scheherazade does.”
“You know, maybe we should have naked days once we get moved out here.”
The Megami-sama actually squawked. “What?”
“I don’t have any particular nudity taboos and you’re trying to give everyone else yours. I don’t like it and think maybe you need to relax. Some days of enforced nudity, after chores of course, should help with that.” He waggled his eyebrows at her. “I know it’ll help me.”
Eve put her hands on her hips and stuck out her tongue at him. “Pervert. I am not sticking around to hear this.” She vanished.
Hathor looked down at herself. “Even if I don’t want to wear them, can I keep the clothes?”
“Of course you can. They’ll need cleaned but we’ve got some soap that would make a Jigglyslut clean and pure.”
Scheherazade chuckled. “Would you actually order naked days?”
“That would be force, now wouldn’t it, so no I will not. But Hathor is kind of submissive and I want make sure that Eve’s will doesn’t overpower hers.”
“Oh, I know about that. I just wanted to see you try to force Vanessa to wander around nude all day.”
Iain gave her an amused look. “Most of the time you’re so helpful and then we get to moments like this.”
“Just doing what my general does.” She gave him a smug smile and grabbed his head to lick his face until he was sopping wet despite his protests. “Cause I love him sooo much.”
Hathor giggled.
***
Iain Grey - Tradesman
Eve - Megami-sama (maharani)
Dominique - Blessed Archmage
Scheherazade - Dread Wolf
Irena- Chibi Sanctuary Goth
April - Duelist
Montsho - Tyrannodame
Hathor - Milktit
Dragonesses
Eirian - Silver
Skye - Blue
Emerald - Green
Sable - Black
Aurum - Gold
Beryl - Red