Becoming Monsters 2: Ch. 61 (Patreon)

Becoming Monsters Chapter 61: Stressed Eating

Rage and death were all Honoka knew.

“Unless you want to be monkey poop, follow me!”

Vaguely, Honoka realized someone was talking. There was a haze over her mind, anger feeding upon itself and forcing thoughts out, the monsters before her becoming vessels to pour all the emotions of her undying despairer forth, each cut of her sword adding and adding instead of taking away the fire.

The latest victim managed to snag Honoka in the arm with a mandible, preparing to thrust its fangs down and inject its poisonous payload when Honoka flipped her sword around in her other hand and sliced clean through half of the monster’s face. With a flood of ichor, Honoka realized too late that the beast had lifted her ten feet into the air, causing her to land on her back and knock the wind out of her lungs.

“…!” Honoka tried to gasp, but the air wouldn’t come, lack of oxygen like a bucket of cold water as her instincts forced her to roll back along the tree branches and into the stair alcove, avoiding the stomping of the next monkey spider that tried to crush her flat. Health and Endurance high enough to matter, Honoka scrambled to her feet and put herself in a guard stance even as one of the skeletal minions of Gwyneth plowed into the monster and both tumbled over the edge into the abyss, giving Honoka a few seconds to recover.

“We have too many injured, gonna take us forever to climb these stairs.” Honoka was starting to piece together the low growl of the grizzly beastkin wearing torn army fatigues. He sounded old but there was no lack of strength from the bear as he led the way for the fifty or so people under his protection further up the stairways. “Realistically, these monsters are going to hound us all the way to the elevator and I don’t think we will survive a slow retreat like that.”

Shaking her head, trying to clear the angry out of her head, Honoka took stock of where they were. Apparently, caught up in some kind of berserker rage, Honoka had lost the last hour of time fighting a guarding retreat from the tree cave all the way back to the stairs. And while the other wives had been concerned with making sure people were safe and protected from dungeon denizens, Honoka just used it as an excuse to bathe in wanton slaughter. Looking down and seeing all the wounds and blood mixing in her battered armor, she stumbled down to one knee as an overpowering wave of exhaustion hit the Ymirian, her sword stabbing into the ground the only prop keeping her from falling the rest of the way to the ground.

“Oh, good, Miss Murder has decided to join the rest of the class.”

Honoka raised her eyes upward, seeing a bruised and battered Eve holding a limp purple arm, green blood dripping down her long fingers and onto the stone steps of the stairway. The hobgoblin woman generally gobbled up raucous jokes and breathed out sarcasm, so it was a double dose of shame to Honoka to see the excitable gob girl glaring at Honoka in frustration and disappointment.

“…I’m sorry…” Honoka rasped, still trying to get her breath. “…I completely lost it, I…” Honoka shut her eyes, trying to block out the rage still inside her. “Can you forgive me?”

A month ago, Honoka realized the wives she Collected gave her more than just Attributes and Racial Features to allocate. There was a sharing of emotions going on there as well. Not so much a sharing as a homogenization, like all there emotional quirks were being equalized among the women like a metaphysical osmosis. Honoka had become less anxious as all the women gained a touch of social insecurity. All the wives got something and in return, Honoka got something from all the wives. It was more like all the emotions of Honoka were being spread out among nine women while the emotions of nine women were being concentrated on Honoka.

It had been building over the last month, more and more Honoka finding herself unable to control herself even over simple things. When she got happy, she became deliriously happy. Sadness brought her down to inhuman depths of depression. And her temper…

Taking a good look at the bodies trailing behind her, mounds of them piled high enough the other monsters had to climb over their sisters, Honoka leaned over and vomited bile onto the stone, her mind warring with itself as she wanted to die right there on the ground even as she wanted to scream and keep fighting.

Eve, for all her ribald cackling and good-natured free spirit, sat down next to Honoka on the steps, putting her hand on Honoka’s shoulder. Maybe she wanted to ask something else, maybe her intuition picked up on something else, but with the barest of whispers she asked the most important question. “What did your grandfather say?”

“He said…” Honoka had to stop, gritting her teeth as the hate came back, her body trembling. No less than a dozen feet away, Banda suplexed one of the massive beasts while Abra and Gwyneth moved their pets around to plug in the gaps, Padmava staggering her barriers to keep the beasts from overwhelming them all. It was surreal, Honoka having a candid chat while so much fighting was fought nearby. “He called Baby Thomas…illegitimate.”

Eve’s fingers tightened painfully into Honoka’s shoulder, her claws drawing a little blood before she let go and got up. “Ok, I understand and this isn’t over with the old fart, but lets see if we can get out of here alive first. You up for pulling another Miracle Max and figuring out how we’re going to get out of this?”

Honoka got up, looking around at the pitched battle and giving it some thought. Glancing at the ceiling as the cave unnaturally transitioned from wood into stone, Honoka’s architectural brain fired up as she started thinking about such simplistic things as structural support. “Hmm? I mean, if only we had a wheelbarrow that would be something.”

“Eeh, that’s pushing it,” Eve said, reaching into her belt and tossing Honoka a blue MP potion.

“As you wish,” Honoka replied, tossing back the potion and almost throwing it back up, her tolerance reached from all the healing potions she took earlier, only her allocations letting her keep it down. “Get down there and see if you can have the girls pull out when I signal. I’m also about to allocate everything, so get ready to human, but only for a few seconds. It is about to get loud in here.”

Eve’s eyes widened, but she nodded and hustled down the steps to the base, shouting out orders to the other girls. Honoka pulled up her Status and took a moment to look things over, hoping this wasn’t about to kill her.

“自由万歳,” Honoka whispered a phrase she always admired from Japanese history for luck - liberty something worth celebrating - sliding all the dials up at once.

The next twenty seconds crystallized into Honoka’s expanded Intelligence, her body exploding in a rupturing mess of flesh and limbs. Painful wasn’t even an apt description, unbearable agony a closer experience while still falling woefully short. Honoka had often described allocation and most every of her Race and Class abilities as pleasurable, even orgasmic (also from actual orgasms). This was not it, a whole new journey into a realm of torment and visceral torment bombarded Honoka beyond capacity of human thought to comprehend.

Before, when Honoka only dialed up five wives and entered the realm of chimera, her body felt like it was at war with itself, every cell feeling like it was on the very edge of tearing itself apart. Even her very Status didn’t know what to do with her allocations, turning her into a hideous jigsaw of all the Races Honoka collected up to that point, transforming her into something grotesque. Now Honoka was accessing nine wives, many of whom had transitioned into Legendary Races and were filled with more than triple the amount of Attribute points. No longer was the Ymirian woman feeling as if her body was on the verge of tearing apart, she was actually being torn apart from the inside as her body couldn’t contain the thaumian changes and she exploded into a aberration of random limbs and Racial appendages, each part literally clawing through random parts of her body in a hideous mishmash of Races while fluid and viscera splattered outward in a biological explosion.

“OOIIWwwwUuuKKKttTTAAAAA!!” Honoka chorused incoherently from three mouths, the thirty-five feet tall (10.7 m) abomination she had become, with 24 assorted arms and legs and 6 withering tails a mind bending horror those present couldn’t help but stare at from all the Charisma emanating from her. While Honoka couldn’t express much of anything, the Wisdom score of ninety-four points reminded her to finish quickly and so it was with a heaving effort that the creature Honoka had become threw all her might into the weak point of ceiling Honoka noted earlier, powerful limbs detonating fire and acid as they hit the rocks with rock shattering force.

The stairway, linked between the levels in some form slow transitioning portal instead of physically leading down from one level to another, snapped apart like a rubberband stretched too taught. Rock and wood rained down in equal measure and it was only the quick work of Padmava’s Defend The Keep Class Feature creating a large cylinder that they all weren’t crushed to death. The space both upward and downstairs were completely caved in, blocking them off not only from the onslaught of monsters, but also their escape.

Trapped, and instantly realizing what that meant, Honoka succumbed to her own judgment of her bad choices and fell to the ground wailing, slipping into unconsciousness as she dialed all her allocations back to zero.

…

…

*dong*

…

…

It was with no little surprise - a surprise in and of itself, considering how emotion did not exist in the same way inside the White - that Honoka didn’t actually find herself in the blank void the former architect associated with these out-of-body experiences. She was in a dorm room, looking much the same as cheap dorm rooms looked on campuses the world over. Honoka had lived in one much like it for a semester before moving into the apartment she had left not so long ago. Less than a hundred square feet, cramped twin bed with unmade covers, a couple of bookshelves and a tiny desk with a small wardrobe for clothing. A backpack heavy with books was sitting in the cheap plastic chair and more books were stacked on the desk.

Curiouser and curiouser, Honoka thought, looking over the subjects on the side of the textbooks. Oddly, Honoka couldn’t read anything while she looked at them, but instead she received some kind of insight about them, like these were only the memory of books and she was remembering someone else’s memories. Calculus, Economics, City Planning, Civic Engineering, Game Theory. Honoka’s mind was forced to dwell the longest on the Civic Engineering text, as if that was the most significant of the texts. And when Honoka pulled away, it was to look at a small photograph on the desk.

Two women were there, obviously a mother and a daughter from how they hugged and their age difference. And while Honoka could see that the taller woman was a mother, she appeared otherwise indistinct to Honoka’s eyes. Most of the daughter looked blurry as well, but on her sweater Honoka could make out the crimson Harvard logo and while Honoka could make out that the daughter had pale skin and dirty blonde hair, the only thing with any detail was her eyes.

I’ve seen these eyes before… Honoka mused, trying to place where she had seen light brown eyes, almost tan, but looking at her with such intense fierceness Honoka was sure she would have remembered the gaze of someone like this. Because despite not recognizing this girl, Honoka felt a connection, a bond, almost the same as she felt…

…with her wives.

Before Honoka tried to explore this more, the rumbling of distant thunder drew her towards the small window. Looking outside, the familiar White was present and stretching in all directions, only two other things existing in this space. First, encompassed around like the Donald of all walls, a stone bulwark was built around this room Honoka was in, looking strong and powerful enough to keep the white walkers out of the North. However, beyond that swirled a black storm so large it looked the size of an entire world. Distant it might be but so great was its presence that Honoka’s spirit felt heavy with the weight it bore down on Honoka.

Not wanting to wait and see what that storm would do to her, Honoka forced her mind to focus on leaving this place, having gleaned the ability from previous sojourns to the the White. Bending her will to leave, Honoka felt herself slipping away to blackness even as the distant thunder tried to follow her back.

****************************************

The cold stone underneath Honoka’s back was the first thing she noticed when she made it back to the land of the living, announcing to Honoka that she was naked. Then the cold stone emphasized all the throbbing aches her body collected. Not painful so much as Honoka felt like she was a giant bruise. So long as she didn’t move, she felt like she could deal with it, but the second she started to move around those aches were going to bite into her like an army of snotlings.

Is that Racist? Honoka thought, the fog of her mind putting her into the problematic wonderings the distractable woman often dwelt upon. Are snotlings a Race? Are they related to goblins? Do they fight Ultramarines?

“She’s awake,” Eve said from nearby, the echo announcing they were still in dungeon somewhere.

“No I’m not,” Honoka whispered, her voice cracking before she convulsed in a coughing fit. The fit nearly put her back into unconsciousness, rolling to the side and jabbing her tender body with the edges of stone steps.

“Rest later, need to get out of here before we suffocate.”

Honoka caught enough of Eve’s message between the coughs to jog her mind out of cobwebs and into wakefullness. Sitting up, when she opened her eyes she wondering if she had opened them, the space was so dark. Lacking the typically magical ambient light Honoka had learned to associate with most parts of the dungeon, this space they were in was actually pitch black, only the faint light coming from someone’s phone illuminating the cramped space.

And it was very cramped. Although in size it was the same amount of room as a three car garage, between Padmava’s long and bulky snake body, Banda’s hulking taurine frame, Abra’s soccerball sized wasps and Gwyneth’s even larger necromatic skeletons, Honoka and Eve only had a little corner to themselves at the base of the steps before Padmava’s barrier held off the rocks between them and the monsters.

♫ Nobody knows the trouble I’ve seen ♫

♫ Nobody knows but Jesus ♫

♫ Nobody knows the trouble I’ve seen ♫

♫ Glory, Hallelujah ♫

Abra’s choral voice lent an odd cadence to the song, her tones actually managing to be in both a low and high register. And whether she was singing because she was a fan of Loois Armstrung or Daphni Zunega, Honoka wasn’t going to pass up a trademarked quip.

“She’s a bass,” Honoka choked out, chuckling as she coughed a little bit more and scrambled to her feet.

“Air is getting a little stale already,” Padmava announced, her own body slumped in utter exhaustion, two hands resting against her barrier to keep it up.

“Well, I actually think I can get us out of this, but none of you are going to like it.” Honoka’s eyesight was adjusting and she could make out her armor and sword on the steps. Designed with her growing abilities in mind, the armor probably only needed some of the straps repaired, otherwise it looked no worse than it did before she took her nap. The jockpanty, on the other hand, was split in three places and probably couldn’t be saved. “How many C&A potions do we have?”

“Hahaha!” Eve laughed out loud, startling the other girls with how grating it was. “Well, if we’re going to die, we’ll at least die happy!”

Honoka heard an undertone beneath the usually sarcastic hob, but there didn’t appear to be much time to dwell on it. “Yes, once again in another thrilling episode of Honoka’s Dick Saves The Day, I am going to screw our way out of here.” Honoka punctuated this by walking the rest of the way up their little cave and getting a look at the rocks at the top.

After some shuffling through their tactical belts, Padmava’s Fannypack Of Holding came through and there were enough for everyone to get their magical spermicide ingested. This gave Honoka some time to work the math in her head and she really hoped her initial assessment of the cave-in she caused wasn’t off by a decimal.

“I’m confused,” Gwyneth said, looking around the room to the other girls before turning back to Honoka. “Are you actually going to…grow your dick so large it drills through the rock?”

“Nope, and not just because there’s enough rock there to break even my boner like a twig.” Honoka passively got her flaccid cock warmed up as pulled up her Status and grabbed all the Endurance in the family because she was about to need it, energy rushing through her like plutonium through a flux capacitor. “If my calculations are correct, based on what I know about dungeon structure and how this stairway was supported, there is only about a hundred tons (90,719 kg) of rock between us and the rest of the stairs leading up. I’m thinking I can eat all that before it crushes us.”

Silence.

More silence.

“Um…” Abra broke the silence, but she also opened the floodgate. Eve had had enough.

“Are you INSANE?!” Eve demanded, scrambling up from the bottom and marching her way up the steps. “Did I hear you right? You are about to eat enough rock to kill us a thousand times hopefully fast enough that we don’t all die horrible deaths because you are guessing with math?!”

“It has worked before,” Honoka replied, clamping down on her own temper. “I’m honestly still surprised we got out of Bone Castle.”

“Eve,” Banda said, reaching out to grab Eve’s shoulder, but the angry Valley Girl shook it off and got in Honoka’s face.

“Don’t you dare compare this joyride to what we’ve done!” Eve wrapped her long fingers tightly over Honoka’s upper arms, shaking her from the trembling of her own ire as the glowing smoke leaking out of her fanged mouth billowed angrily. “Forget the fact that we had a mission then and this is just you blowing off some steam, forget you having a plan that at least made sense and got most of us away from danger, forget that we love you and trust you!!” Eve had to bite her tongue to calm herself, leaning her head down onto Honoka’s forehead and speaking in a quieter, desperate voice. “We have children now.” A tear fell down her purple, leathery face. “I want to see my girls again.”

Honoka couldn’t overcome her anger, but she was so angry at herself that she joined Eve in crying bitter tears. “I’ll get us home,” Honoka croaked, looking into Eve’s glowing green eyes. “Then I’ll…become better.”

It would have been a more touching moment, if Honoka’s hormone flooded body didn’t take the moment to force her into a full erection, slapping with a throbbing rhythm between Eve’s legs. With a perverted instinct, Honoka’s body probably expected makeup sex.

Eve smiled slyly, moving her mouth even more seductively close to Honoka’s lips. “You know, I never got a chance to try my own dick in you. What I hear from Banda, it sounds like it involves tentacles.”

*gulp*

“…after?” Honoka offered, pulling back and trying to keep her ping-ponging emotions in check, sweat glistening on her bare skin in the stale air. “I have…the plan is to get Gwyneth and Abra some more levels right now, but I’m sure the rest of you are about to get some harmony backsplash.”

“What exactly is the plan?” Gwyneth asked, hearing her name and bringing herself and Abra up to the top as Eve backed away Blue Beaning.

“This entire idea is extremely dangerous, but I think if I can be held in place my Race will take care of the rest.” Honoka sure sounded more sure than she felt, reaching up to Padmava’s barrier and pressing up as close as possible. “I need necro bone minions holding me fast on either side while I try to gobble up as much rock as possible. At the same time, lets not waste some perfectly good harmony levels while Gwyneth and Abra beat it like they wanna be bad. I will need to come over and over again to expend all the extra energy otherwise I’m not sure what will happen.”

Banda looked around at the relatively cramped space they were in, not needing a PhD in fluid dynamics to realize what was about to happen. “Are we about to drown in jizz?”

“Possibly,” Honoka admitted freely, looking over various menus in her Status and picking and choosing a few extras that might make this whole idea less fatal. “Probably have Pad open the barrier in the bottom of the stairs, creating a splooge tunnel so the dungeon can eat more and the rest can sieve through the rocks below. Its why I had you all take the potions just in case. Padmava, can you open the barrier at the top of the stairs before I lose my nerve?”

Padmava nodded and scrunched her face under her helmet and a small haze of steam rose off her scales (a naga’s form of perspiration), two bone behemoths that looked like the skeletal cross between dogs and bears gently gripped Honoka’s arms and then braced themselves. When the shimmering barrier above Honoka’s head flashed then disappeared, Abra and Gwyneth were in place and had their hands on the hard meat swinging free and were already starting their ministrations.

Ah crap, Honoka thought as the first boulder fell towards her head in slow motion, the poor woman stretching her mouth as wide as possible. I should have had Banda give me a stretchy-penis blessing. Better fix that, because I REALLY hope my dick doesn’t explode.

Silently, to herself, Honoka admitted this crazy idea shouldn’t work. Of all the stupid things, eating an avalanche isn’t something in the realm of any possibility, Status or no Status. Maybe Honoka subconsciously wanted to end it all, her anger transforming into a suicidal, depressing impulse. Maybe there was another, nebulous reason. Or perhaps Honoka knew she would be able to handle such a herculean task because her Race - a Ymirian Herald - defied conventional wisdom and the fear that Honoka was losing her humanity to the instincts and needs of this alien being she had become.

Regardless of the meaning, it was with no small amount of shock that Honoka’s mouth opened and stretched to the size of a double doorway, gobbling the rock into her gullet like an ant eating an entire twinky in one gulp.

“!!” Honoka screamed, or tried to, the next boulder already falling into her, the rocks an unending train of mass into her body. Her head didn’t look right, it was enlarged now to fill the whole space, yet while her stomach looked bloated, it was more like a vibrating and quacking ball that compressed and dissolved the mass she was taking in at an accelerated rate.

“It would appear we have reached critical mass,” Gwyneth said, announcing an orgasm in the lamest way possible. With everything else going on, Honoka’s ejaculation didn’t look like something exciting, yet it shot out with as much force as a water cannon, chipping stone stairs she was cumming so hard. Something was obviously wrong, as well, as blood was freely mixing with the semen splurting out.

“Should’ve realized this would happen,” Banda stated, slowly climbing up steps turning into a waterfall of jizz and getting the white gunk all over her fur. Rubbing her hands together, she started the blessing as her hands glowed with a bright light in the dark cave. “Give me some room, I’m going to need to touch that penis.”

Even as Banda reached out and finished the blessing, no one noticed amid the loud sound of falling rocks that Honoka wasn’t just orgasming, she was also growing her dick. Not right away, but it didn’t take long for the wives to collectively widen their eyes and try to scramble out of the way.

“Wait wait wait!” Abra yelled, the narrow corridor crowded with large wives and larger bone creatures was becoming quickly more crowded, Honoka’s cock doubling and then doubling again every few seconds. “There isn’t enough stairway for all of us!”

Either Honoka couldn’t hear or she was too far gone at this point. When she activated the dial to Forging Of Mjölnir, she hadn’t been paying attention to how high she had hit the dial, distracted as she was with eating a mountain. From her point of view, her explosion of cum started extremely painful, followed slowly by more and more pressure building inside of herself as she felt herself grow and grow. After a few minutes, the pressure eased a little bit but she could tell she must have been ejaculating a literal river of cum at this point, her penis head becoming submerged in hot cum as the torrent sloshed around her. Then she felt another pressure as it felt like her penis was stuck inside the largest vagina, and it was with some horror that Honoka realized he had gotten too big, feeling her wives down below slapping her colossal cock to try and get her attention.

“I neber thot I’b die drowbing ib cum,” Eve tried to say, her body and face smashed up against the barrier by the largest black cock in existence, turgid veins as thick as her arm beating against her skin like the bass of a Deftpunk concert, the rising tide of white baby batter already at her chest and quickly rising.

“What?” Padmava said from further down, her face the only thing above the slimy surface, completely immobilized by penis.

“I saiblblble…” Eve tried to say before the splooge covered her head.

“Faster, you worthless boots!” Clark David roared, passing the next boulder to the grizzled vet behind him. “I’m starting to see the rocks shifting, maybe they’re alive with some kind of Class Feature!”

When the tunnel collapsed behind them, the old Ranger knew exactly what had happened and how those girls had just saved all their lives. Knowing the miracles modern Class abilities had in healing people, he immediately sent part of his team topside with the farmers while the rest of the guild stayed behind and worked on digging through. It was hard and grueling work, but they had a few Classes making it easier as one old vet shrunk the rocks and another transformed them into sand. David just used his massive bear arms to move boulders out of the way and they had already moved downward ten feet (3 m).

When they finally hit pay dirt and the last of the rocks tumbled downward, making a small hole, the old bear was not expecting a pool of warm white slime that smelled strongly of honey.

“What in the…?” Clark said, slowly moving his way down to see what the stuff was.

*blb…blooplb*

Plopping like the bubbles of a tar pit, out of the white mess a hand slowly reached up. Forgetting his curiosity, the Ranger reached down and grasped the hand and pulled, getting a naked Honoka back into the air as she coughed and gasped.

“…everyone’s…cough!…close behind…” the dark hermaphrodite gasped out, vomiting a large glop of the white gunk onto the stairs. “…whatever you do…don’t let any of the…gunk…get in your body.” She wiped her face clear and Clark turned his eyes away after seeing how the girl was more well endowed than he was. “Its a Race Feature of mine, and unless you want to spend the rest of your life my slave, treat it like radioactive AIDS.”

Clark hesitated for a moment, but only for a moment, before he stripped off his shirt and plunged his arm deep in the hole, careful to keep his mouth closed. Courage isn’t only about overcoming fear. While he would try to keep himself safe - motioning towards his guild to keep well back - this wouldn’t be the first time Clark David had risked his life to save others.

Besides, side-lining his gaze towards the black woman scrambling back towards him to help, there were worse fates than being a boy toy to such a pretty young thing. His beloved Catherine passed away two years ago and he was lonely. An old army grunt, his kinks were depraved enough to think the girl was hot. Shaking his head, he turned his mind back on the job.

Getting the other girls out didn’t take long, all of them having gathered close to the hole. When the naga slithered her way past, something below gave way and the rest of the rocks fell further into the pool of white left behind.

“Does anyone know the closest shower?” Abra asked, wringing out her shirt while the others similarly dealt with their recent bath.

“There’s a lake and waterfall in the next level, shouldn’t have any monsters in it at the moment.” Clark was scraping his furry arm as clean as he could get with large claws, helping the dark naked woman whom he had learned was named Honoka up to her feet. “Plenty of water there to wash up.” Looking down at Honoka only slightly, Clark’s face scrunched up in confusion. “Hey, weren’t you shorter?”

Shaking hair out of her face, Honoka looked down and found a face full of boobs, preventing her from seeing the ground. She also felt a bit of vertigo as her mind tried to adjust to her new, much taller, height.

“Crap on a crust!” Honoka spat, stomping her foot with only a little squilch of splooge. As the girls started slowly making their way up the stairs, Eve’s cackling could be clearly heard in the dungeon.

****************************************

“It’s official,” Diane announced, finishing putting in the new numbers, “you have become an anime MC.”

“I would have said hentai,” Miaka said with a straight face as she looked Honoka up and down.

Honoka frowned as she looked over towards the bathroom mirror. The face that looked back was most definitely not the same face she knew growing up, or even the same one from a month ago. Long and lean, with a bone structure of an Asian model, her face no resembled human. That wasn’t entirely correct, all the parts were there and it wasn’t something noticeable at first glance, but her face gained larger eyes and a longer nose bridge while the nostrils shrunk and narrowed, her mouth smaller but with a larger jaw. If she had to compare herself to anyone, it would be Alita from the Cameron film that came out a few years ago, but stretched longer, more Asian and dark skinned.

“Pish posh,” Uzume said, standing on a stool to be tall enough to help arrange Honoka’s hair and adjust the blue blouse she had on. “You look beautiful, just like you always have. This is only a logistics problem - finding clothing that fits you for your date was not easy - and anyone who thinks differently can fight me.”

Honoka smiled, wiping away a tear as she realized she was on that list of people who could fight her mother. Almost two feet (61 cm) taller than she had been when she last sparred with the woman known as the Little Tsunami, Honoka wouldn’t place a bet of any odds that she could win.

“I got something, and I think you’ll look stunning in it.” From outside the bathroom, in Honoka’s room proper, a peppy and fashionably dressed black girl Kramered inside, triumphantly holding up a shimmering blue and stripped white skirt that was as tall as she was. “Borrowing it from one of those dairy girls. The colors will definitely match that blouse, but the waist is, like, twice as wide. Hmm, where are the safety pins?”

Chanise, Honoka’s cousin and someone Honoka had always been close to, was a force of nature when presented with a clothing situation. Five and a half feet tall (168 cm), hair always poofy and saloned, her dark skin and round face made her look like actress Zarihna Reed. Honoka’s natural inclination had always been to avoid crowds and going out, but Chanise - who was two years younger - would have none of that and used Honoka as her personal dress-up doll, dragging her to every club she could get them into. Tall, toned and stacked like every other Jefferson girl in Florida, Chanise worked in a high end boutique during the day and worked as an explicit streaming model at night. When Honoka grew a dick and changed Race, the extroverted girl saw it as a challenge and most of the clothing Honoka wore for most of her life had been picked out by Chanise personally.

“I don’t think my date is going to notice my skirt,” Honoka admitted, stepping into the proffered garment. It was a little difficult. Even with her salami flaccid and stuffed into her undersized jockpanties, her new size came with a double dose of penis meat, her measurements now two feet long (61 cm) and seventeen inches (43 cm) circumference when hard, the penis between her legs right now only a foot long (31 cm) and able to tuck into her underwear - barely - with only enough bulge that it looked like she was smuggling a small cantaloupe in her knickers.

“Hmm, looks like there’s enough fabric for a stylish knot,” Diane commented, lightly rubbing her yoga-panted legs together as she warmed to Honoka’s figure. “That way it can look like one of those Oceanic wraps.”

“Love it!” Chanise agreed, deftly getting the fabric bunched and knotted while smiling wickedly. “You are going to knock this other girl dead, no question.”

Honoka felt like a passenger in this episode, but that wasn’t new to her. As her mother finished and stepped off the stool, Honoka got a chance to look herself up and down in the large mirror and she had to admit, she looked stunning. Hair in an elegant braid down one shoulder (and for a terrible moment Honoka realized she was now wearing the dreaded Dead Anime Mom Hairstyle!), the blouse was a spaghetti in blues that matched her dazzling cobalt eyes. It fit, sort of, but her breasts were now so large they spilled out of the top and sides like she was hiding two large loaves of bread up there. Her bra was a little tight, but one of the slutty black lace numbers Georgia had bought for Honoka when they first met had been adjusted and repurposed into something that worked, black lace peeking up from the shirt.

With her new height, she also had to avoid standing too close to anyone because the blouse wasn’t large enough to do more than cover her new K boobs, the cloth leaving her abdomen completely open and if anyone stood underneath they would get a face full of underboob looking down at them. Said abdomen was long and curvy, her newly acquired four Strength giving her tummy a bit of tone before her hips and butt plumped out into absurd bubbleness. Her legs were also now proportionally longer than a human’s, so she didn’t just look tall, she had legs for days and the skirt only reached a little above her knees.

“We need to hurry,” Miaka reminded everyone, tapping her taloned foot while she idly slapped where her shirt had caught fire, putting it out with a puff of smoke. Wearing one of Banda’s old flannel shirts and jean shorts combo, the clothing only looked a little big on the phoenix girl, a dozen safety pins needed to make it into a respectable outfit. While her feathers still burned with red and blue fire, she was able to keep them under control for the most part. She also casually wore a Desert Eagle holstered at her hip.

“Knock her dead or knock her up,” Diane said sweetly, flapping her wings to drift her up to lip height and gave Honoka a quick kiss. “Just let us know if we’re getting number ten today.”

“I think I’ll try and save that for a second date,” Honoka said after she returned that kiss, walking out after giving her mom and cousin quick hugs (only a little scared at how low she had to bend to get those hugs). Stopping at the door, she made sure to pick up her pink messenger bag, filled with all sorts of potions in case this trip ended up in another fight with monsters.

“Honestly, I’m surprised you show that much restraint,” Miaka said as they got out of the rooms and into the hallway. “Getting collected did something to my horniness, and I’m not the only one who’s noticed. I’m just another one of the wives but I feel like I want to screw every phallic object within arm’s reach 24/7. I can only imagine what you feel like on a daily basis.”

There was something in Miaka’s voice that Honoka couldn’t place, like the edginess of someone hungry and the delivery boy was running late. With a sigh and a realization that whatever was happening to herself because of her Race, it was also happening to all the women around her. And it was getting worse.

“…you aren’t wrong.”

It was Monday morning, a little after eight in the morning. After Honoka and the wives had cleaned off and returned home last night, everyone had been so exhausted they all fell into their beds and stayed dead to the world until Miaka reminded everyone that morning workouts waited on no woman. Today was leg day and Honoka discovered she had put on a little more muscle after her stunt (including some Endurance, Luck, Health and a whopping eight more Charisma) but after she checked her Status she found she had also lost two Wisdom. In hindsight, obvious why she did, but it still stung that the System was telling Honoka she had done something stupid.

The two women were now on their way to meet Tabinda Smith, the woman who reached out to Honoka through DoubleD and had set up a breakfast date at some fancy restaurant deeper down into the dungeon. Going in mostly blind, Honoka just wanted to get this thing over with so she could find a quiet place to sit down and adjust to becoming a big-titted giantess. As Honoka tripped on nothing for the nth-teen time today, walking had become difficult, even if she were only walking barefoot right now.

“I’m beginning to think boobs aren’t everything they promised me they would be,” Honoka muttered, adjusting her tight bra and trying to settle her juggs into a reasonable position.

“I don’t know, I think you just need to put a few more points into Strength and then you get all the goods without the hassle,” Miaka replied, jiggling her own Fs with some rhythmic pectoral flexing.

“Haha!” Honoka laughed, relenting as she kissed a warm feathery cheek only an inch shorter than she was, having to reach out a hand to keep her balance up. “You win, boobs are awesome, just need to keep grow…”

Both women stopped when they opened the gate leading outside the compound, a curious sight awaiting them. In the middle of the road, sitting there as if it had always been, was a fancy wooden chest lined with delicate steel and brass. And while it otherwise looked like just some ordinary piece of furniture, Honoka had read enough webfiction to cautiously wonder if this was a gift or a monster named Boxxy.

“I’ve heard of this, though I’ve never seen it,” Miaka whispered, her voice low and her body tense, eyes scanning everywhere as her hand rested firmly on the gun at her hip. “Sometimes, in super rare instances, a dungeon rewards delvers who…feed them the most with one of these chests. Whatever’s inside is Holy Grail rare and powerful.”

As they stood there dumbfounded, the chest opened suddenly and a little platform raised up the prize inside, like one of those toolboxes that use clever hinges to move inner trays. Inside, glowing from an eldritch backlight with actual mist wafting out of the wooden container was…

“A chess set?” Honoka asked no one in particular. Heck, maybe she was asking the dungeon as the two girls stepped forward and got a better look at the board and pieces.

As far as chess sets went, this one was exquisite. The board was raised up with intricate feet of gold, each tile an alternating piece of polished white and black jade. Larger than a regulation board, it was about three feet wide, the pieces each sized appropriately.

“Is that me?” Miaka asked, leaning down towards the black side, each piece so minutely detailed the girls wondered if they were miniature people instead of painted figurines. Miaka was standing in the place of the King’s Knight, dressed in her usual delving outfit and posed as if to attack with her eskrima rods. “It’s like looking into a tiny mirror, the detail is microscopic.”

Honoka didn’t say anything, her eyes traveling over all the pieces. Honoka was Black King in her armor and holding her mithril sword (the tiny sword looking to be made of actual mithril), Diane in seductive lingerie and holding a bubbling potion that gave off a tiny trail of smoke was the Queen. Banda and Eve were Bishops, Banda looking like she was about to call down the wrath of God on someone in her Cleric robes and Eve just looking like she was about to eat someone in shorts and wraps. Dolly was Queens Knight with her compound bow drawn while Padmava in her armor and coiled tail was taller than the other pieces and Quinn just towering from her new height and having a little swarm of bugs flying around her were the Rooks. Kings Pawns were Abras riding Beetles and Queens Pawns were Gwyneths riding skeletal necrons. The base of each Black figure was black jade but lit with an inner, red glow that made all the pieces look a little crimson.

“Honoka, look at White,” Miaka said, her tone worried.

Dungeon monsters were the White. With a base of white jade, they also glowed but with a blue coloring. Most of these pieces didn’t look familiar, but once Honoka realized that the Pawn looked just like the horde of redcaps that attacked the family a week ago, her blood ran cold. Although Honoka couldn’t recognize the other monster types behind the Pawns aside from the Queen - which looked like the insectual dinosaur that nearly killed them all before being eaten by some other dungeon monster - it was clear that this chessboard was a message.

Most disturbing of all, the White King was missing.

“What does it mean?” Honoka asked, hoping she would get an actual answer. “Is the King missing because we’ve already taken out someone powerful enough to be a King, like Enoch, or is it some kind of convoluted message along the lines of you cannot win this game, give up while you still can?”

“Dungeons are weird: could be both, could be neither,” Miaka stated firmly, seeing how worked up Honoka was getting and deciding they could work through this later. Picking up the board, the two women paused as the chest dissolved into dust in a matter of seconds. “I’m going to stow this inside, maybe have the other girls work on the problem. We still have a date to get to.”

It only took a few minutes, Miaka leaving the magical chess set in Padmava’s care before taking flight to catch up with Honoka. When the two got to the elevators at the edge of town, they were not surprised to see that only a handful were still operating and the usual bustle was diminished to a trickle. They didn’t go far, taking the elevator down to Floor 30, a majestic realm of floating islands holding lakes of various colored liquids, each island waterfalling down into the ocean below, creating a peaceful place filled with light, color and the calm of nature. 

The real danger lay in the ocean part below where the dungeon kept all the monster for this floor, so a number of high end restaurants took advantage of the atmosphere and created dining experiences with breathtaking views on top of some of the islands. One in particular had a reputation as the place to be seen and mingle with the rich and famous.

“Never thought I’d be eating at Tantalize,” Miaka muttered, looking around at the tables and tugging at her clothing, looking uncomfortable all of a sudden and probably feeling a little under dressed. “Didn’t they film that new Bond film here for the opening scene? Even with a dungeon surge going on, this place is packed and all I see is evening wear and tuxedos.”

“It was either this or naked,” Honoka said, unabashedly adjusting her bra back into place after all this walking. Honoka knew she was under dressed, but beggars couldn’t choose what to wear if nothing fit. “Lets find our seat, have a nice date, then get out of this lady’s clothing and get into our tights.”

Miaka chuffed a laugh, both women marching towards the host standing behind a lectern in front of the open air restaurant, looking very Downton Abby with his stern, posh and strict gaze. He looked ready and prepared to turn them instantly away.

Honoka didn’t give him a chance. “Tabinda Smith is expecting us. Can you direct us to her table?”

The host’s face, old and lined with propriety and British Fortitude, went through an amusing few seconds of changing around between being outraged and being professional. Professionalism won out, eventually, as he silently looked down at his book then nodded, only his eyes remaining disapproving at having to wait on such indelicate upstarts. “This way, please.”

While Honoka had appeared confident seconds ago, as they drifted through the muttering and accusatory crowd, the futanari girl lost her nerve and began to sweat as she ducked her head. The adults mostly ignored them, but it was the occasional unabashed stare of a child that really got to the anxious woman. Already this was sounding like a bad idea and she almost turned to walk away.

Miaka reached out a talon and gently steadied the nervous woman. “Easy there,” Miaka whispered, a husky note filtering through. “One step at a time. Lets sit down and order some food before we bail. I’ll make sure you’re nice and relaxed.”

Honoka gulped, but before she could say anything they had arrived to their table.

“My my, grandmother, what big…cups you have.”

Tabinda Smith did not look like she fit in with the Tantalize crowd either. Shoulder length black hair cut in the same straight with bangs style Honoka preferred framed a stark white face that had no face. Now that Honoka was looking at her, she could see the shapes were all there in a vague way, like the simplicity of a mannequin, but there was nothing actually there. If Honoka would guess from the impressions left, this woman as a human would have round eyes, a larger-than-average nose jutting outward like half a pyramid and a mouth used to smiling like she had a secret she wasn’t going to share. Wrinkles lightly lined the face in places, giving a better idea that this was a cougar instead of a wildcat. Altogether it was alien to look at while also remaining strangely human.

The rest of her was dressed like she was trying to get thrown out of the posh place. Built in the same manner Honoka’s mother called Comfortably In Shape, she had the older body of someone who knew she had some curves and wasn’t afraid to use them. Her top was a purple strappy halter top split down the middle and held together with some black lace zig zagging between her alabaster cleavage, breasts around the E range to Honoka’s estimates. Down past the sloping waist of someone with great genetics, her skirt was a matching purple leather mini with black fringe lining the bottom and held up with a belt made of segments of turquoise stones, barely containing thighs that no amount of stair steppers would ever trim down. Her feet had on purple boots coming up to mid thigh and patterned in a reptile skin, like she had gotten them made after killing some exotic dungeon crocodile just to match her outfit. They had a bit of heel that put her height about five seven or five eight, putting her head just in line with Honoka’s bazzongas. Next to her seat at the table, a golden colored cowboy hat lay atop a long golden jacket with black fringe.

Mr. Host didn’t appear to approve of Tabinda’s outfit either, but he was far too professional to do anything other than bow and leave.

Honoka was caught off guard and offered no appropriate quip, but Miaka picked up the slack. “The better to drink you with, my dear.” Moving around and sticking out a talon, Miaka smiled pleasantly even as she kept a distracted eye around the room. “Miaka Watase.”

“Tabinda Smith,” the woman replied smoothly, using one hand to shake while holding up the other one. On her left hand, Honoka now saw that embedded into the palm was a mouth with some light violet lipstick, smiling in the casual way people did when meeting someone new. The hand mouth continued to speak as if this were the most normal of things. “I must admit to doing a little asking around about your family and I wasn’t expecting an entourage.”

“Sign of the times,” Honoka replied, giving the table an odd look while she continued to talk, distracted. “Can’t go anywhere in the dungeon alone anymore.” Honoka finally gave up and looked Tabinda in the…face area. “Where would you like us to sit?”

This was an important question, because the table was odd. The entire restaurant revolved around the concept of being able to enjoy the scenery, half of those tables specifically designed to emphasis it as the seating was mostly up against the edge of the island. This was one of those tables, built out onto a glass balcony and sitting right up against a wrought iron railing that was only table height, making it appear the half dome was sitting on empty air and looking straight into the horizon. It was a good thing that among all of Honoka’s various phobias, a fear of heights was not one of them because this would have been a nightmare otherwise. Even still, she had a death grip on Miaka’s shoulder as she stood only a few feet away from the edge of the abyss.

“You sit opposite me, right next to the fence, so you can alternate looking at me and looking at the waterfalls,” Tabinda replied, smoothly sliding into her chair and looking as calm as a summer breeze. “I’ve brought dates here before and, if I’m honest, I can usually get a good impression how well the date went on whether they are spending more time looking at me or more time looking over the edge.”

“Effective,” Honoka muttered, edging into her seat and hanging her bag off the back while Miaka silently took one of the other two chairs left and shuffled it closer to Honoka. The distraught woman stifled a gulp and settled for leaning forward deep onto the table, her new height making it awkward but giving her enough of a distraction to force her mind away from the precipice.

Tabinda’s hand smiled, but a waiter arrived and the three got started with some drinks and then a round of fattoush salad - a lemon and garlic garden salad with bits of warm pita bread and large chunks of feta cheese. Honoka was disappointed the milk was only cow, but she said nothing, rightfully realizing she had become spoiled. Miaka waved off from any food and settled for just a water. The next course was a large flat bread cut up like a pizza but topped with hummus, cinnamon spiced goat and roasted pine nuts. The main dish was brought in a massive skillet and laid in the center of the table, still sizzling.

“It's called shakushka,” Tabinda explained, purposefully keeping the conversation light and directed towards the meal while they ate. “The eggs are fried inside the tomato and vegetable sauce, seasoned with paprika, coriander and cumin, then served before the eggs are fully cooked so you eat when it is at its freshest.”

“Smells heavenly,” Honoka replied, having to physically restrain herself from picking up the whole skillet and tipping it into her insatiable maw. She settled for spooning a large portion onto her plate and steadily forking small portions for regular sized bites. “Hot!”

“Ah, yes,” Tabinda said after getting another bite daintily forked into her hand mouth, the entire affair watching her eat only a little weird. “Some of the vegetables are a bit spicy. Best way to wake up in the morning is with a little kick.”

Honoka had too much on her mind to notice what was happening under the table. Yesterday was still heavily on her thoughts, how she lost all control and nearly killed not only herself but most of her wives in the process. Her grandfather, the upcoming wedding, starting a new business before her family was kicked out of their home, whatever was going on with the dungeon and the monsters if that chess set was to be believed, her ambiguous sense of doom lingering from Enoch telling her she was a Herald. To say Honoka was distracted would be a gross misunderstanding.

Which is why she nearly jumped out of her seat and over the edge of the island when Miaka got a taloned foot up her skirt and wrapped two long and heated bird toes around her cock, slowly jelqing downward.

“Eep!” Honoka yelped, catching herself then glaring at Miaka as if she were the devil.

“Are you alright?” Tabinda asked, finishing her meal then using a napkin to clean her hands. She didn’t sound too concerned, her face adjusting into the shape of a half smile.

“Fine, just thought I saw a annoying bird fly by,” Honoka grumbled, trying to use her legs discreetly under the table to nudge Miaka away. “My mistake.”

Above the table, Miaka looked like she was comfortably keeping watch and was in no way up to mischief. Honoka tried to stay focused on Tabinda without letting on what was happening below, pushing her plate away and leaning forward on the table, her legs at war with Miaka.

“So, Tabinda, how is a country girl like you able to afford eating out in a place like this?” Honoka realized that might have come off as a tad rude, but she wasn’t able to focus very well at this point. Her pussy was leaking enough the fancy upholstery she was sitting on was probably ruined at this point, but she had other more immediate concerns to deal with.

“I work as a corporate fixer,” the alabaster woman replied, leaning back and stretching a bit, giving Honoka a spectacular view of breasts squishing together, forcing her penis from a semi into a full blow erection, Miaka’s toes continuing their efforts. “It sounds all cool, but I mostly work in an office tracking down paper trails to discover a company’s problems and then write a report to tell them how to solve their problem. Nothing exciting, but it pays well. I already know you do some delving, but I’m more interested to know more about you.” Tabinda now leaned forward, resting her hand lightly on Honoka’s with a bit of a thrilling trilling traveling up Honoka’s arm. “What makes a woman drop a promising architectural career to marry seven women and move into a dungeon?”

Honoka discretely swallowed a gasp, giving Miaka a side eye and minutely shaking her head. When Miaka only smiled wider and worked her toes faster, Honoka felt her temper rising. “I think, at the root of it all, I’m a Christian. Christians aren’t complicated once you realize their motives, though a lot of people find them inconsistent. We tend to love ourselves even while we hate ourselves. We want to be giving even while we are inherently selfish. The back and forth between virtue and vice makes us do things others would find maddening. I’m no different, and I could even say I’m a perfect example of the levels of self-hypocrisy a person could sink into.

“If I had to put it into a phrase, I’d say that Christians try their best but often fall short,” Honoka said, biting her lip as she shuffled to the edge of her chair and gripped the railing of the fence, her cock pulsing harder and harder to the point where her abdomen was contracting and her pelvic floor was pulsing. “What I want to do is often at odds with what I actually do. The war between these two opposites tends to give me extreme anxiety and makes me seem bi-polar, but I’m just trying to cum…come to terms with who I ammmm…!”

Choking down a scream, Honoka felt her penis give a final spasm before the spunk traveled up her length. Positioned as she was, Tabinda might have gotten a hosing at this point if Miaka didn’t thrust her leg forward sharply, pointing the Beast down and to the side, Honoka’s ejaculation shooting into the empty air of the dungeon floor.

It was actually rather clever. So long as her baby batter wasn’t splattering against something and Honoka’s screams were kept quiet, the physical noise of Honoka’s orgasms were nearly silent. With all the waterfalls in the floor and the open echo creating a white noise, there was no audible clue that Honoka was impregnating the ocean below. And as far as a new white waterfall appearing, the gaze of the people were directed outward and not along the edge of the island. Someone would have to lean out of their seat over the side of the railing to see what Honoka was doing. The patrons further in were blocked by Miaka from noticing anything untoward going on under the table, even Tabinda couldn’t see what was going on unless she poked her head underneath and got a look at the deed.

This could have been the perfect crime, Miaka’s fetish of public sex cranked up past ten and done in such a way that no one was the wiser. Perfect, if Honoka was in another state of mind.

“Miaka!” Honoka screamed, coming back from her orgasm when it finished faster than normal and forcibly pushing herself out of her chair. “You…that’s it!”

Miaka, pushing her chair back as well but more in fear, Honoka looking mad enough to throw the phoenix over the side of the island, realized too late that she might have gone too far.

So angry she didn’t know what to do, Honoka allocated Miaka’s spare Strength, swelling to the point of bursting through her blouse in a confetti of cotton, her arms blowing up with the rest of her body into a muscled and granite creature capable of beating an elephant to death with her bear hands. Strangely, the bra stayed intact, but Honoka’s breath caught from being unable to breathe. Screaming in primal rage, Honoka picked up the entire table and tossed it over the side, the hundreds of pounds of oak catching some wicked air before falling down to the depths below.

“Honoka, I…” Miaka was terrified now, her mass back down to less than she had been when she fought in the MMA circuits, her clothing hanging off of her feathers as she scrambled back along the floor.

The bird girl wasn’t fast enough, Honoka reaching down and grabbing a handful of loose shirt and pulling her up into Honoka’s enraged face. For about twenty seconds they stopped there, Honoka barely restraining herself but unable to back down.

“I see what you mean, about being a Christian.”

Blinking, Honoka paused to look over at Tabinda sitting calmly in her chair, then look around the island to see all the other silent patrons staring at her. Shame managing to overcome her temper, Honoka dropped Miaka the spied one of the waiters.

“I need to go, sorry about the date,” Honoka said curtly to Tabinda, grabbing her bag and rifling through it until she pulled out three high level healing potions.

“I actually enjoyed it, look forward to second base…I mean, date.” Tabinda got up, fixing her skirts and putting on her cowboy hat and coat, which she had fortunately grabbed off the table before Honoka had performed her discus routine. “Call me.”

Honoka nodded, stomping towards the waiter she spied, his face a mix of horror and arousal as Honoka loomed over him. “Here,” she said, handing over the three potions. “I don’t have any money, but these should cover the cost of the table and the meal.”

Whether the waiter was going to disagree or not, Honoka didn’t find out as she spun and walked out, her new and longer legs putting her pace at another woman’s light jog.

“Honoka!” Miaka yelled, managing to get her clothing gathered enough to follow after, catching up with Honoka half way back to the elevators. “Honoka, wait!”

Honoka didn’t wait, and only stopped when Miaka got in front of her and tried to bodily stop her wife. “Not now, Miaka, I’m too mad.”

“I’m sorry, ok?” Miaka said, taking a moment to catch her breath. “I just…it was only supposed to be a bit of fun.”

“No!” Honoka clenched her fists so hard she was afraid she might break her own fingers. “Don’t you understand? I may not have realized my own complicated biology sooner, but the implications are easy enough to follow. My cum is toxic, instant slavery to anyone who gets a single drop in them. We were surrounded by people. What if something went wrong, like there was something in the food and suddenly instead of a waterfall I’m a sprinkler system? Dozens of people - where the only thing they did wrong was be in the same room as me - could have become enslaved and I have no way to make their lives normal after that! Even if it was just Tabinda, she hasn’t consented to any of our complicated life. How is that any different than rape?!” Honoka leaned down and browbeat the horrified phoenix as her voice took on a harsh, raspy quality as she screamed, her bra still restricting her breathing. “How is what you did any different than forcing me to almost rape a dozen people?! There were KIDS IN THERE!!”

Miaka’s eyes welled up, but Honoka would have none of that, shoving an unresisting Miaka out of the way before making her way to the elevators.

“I’m sorry,” Miaka said quietly, sobbing as she was overcome with a deep feeling of loss and disappointment, unable to make herself get up off of the rocky path of the island. “I didn’t understand.”

Back at Tantalize, Tabinda spoke with the manager and pleasantly chatted with a few A list celebrities who wanted to know what had just happened. Tabinda, a skilled political manipulator in her own right and able to deal with this trifle mess easily, kept her answers vague even as she greased the right palms and made it seem like this was all a bunch of nothing. By the time she was walking out of the restaurant less than an hour later, she had left everyone behind her equally satisfied and uncurious as to what had happened. Pulling out her phone, she tapped her discreet ear piece and held the phone in such a way so her mouth was aimed at the receptor.

*ring* “Ms. Walters phone.”

“Put me on, slut: I have good news.”

It only took a few seconds before the old and rough voice of Mandy Walters came on the line. “I hope this is worth my time.”

“You know I always deliver,” Tabinda said with a hint of sultry, her voice promising devilish things. “Meet me at the usual place, I have what you wanted.”

Hanging up, the woman known in some circles as Ms. All Night Long put away her phone, reaching into her pocket and holding up a small glass vial. Inside, the material was thick and viscous and glisteningly white. When she scraped it off her boot earlier, it had smelled like oats and honey.

“Checkmate,” Tabinda said, her mouth grinning wide in her hand as she lazily made her way to the elevators.