Chapter 175

Opal’s Bunny body

Pops just left the office to go tell the Guards to spread the word about the announcement. Everyone is required to go if they aren’t in the Prison or Hospital, so it’s not going to be until the afternoon. That way there’s enough time for everyone to be informed. Having more Shifter kids to search the town would be nice, but it might be a few days before the ones in my belly are born. Today we’re hoping to catch at least some of the dop things here. One of Morgan’s bodies will be checking the crowd from the air with Citrine, while her other body is checking the Prison and Hospital.

Jessica thinks it’s likely that some just won’t come, but she’s figuring out ways to flush them out later with Pops. Citrine thinks that if we catch enough of them, then the others might just run away like what happened at Ruby’s Rest. Of course we’d have to worry about them coming back, but I plan on having a bunch of Shifter babies. Since my kids tend to want different things and naturally spread out to the different camps, we probably won’t have to try and convince them. I’ll of course let them know about the doppels and to inform someone in charge so they can deal with the monsters if they’re spotted.

We already discussed it with many of the camp leaders who happened to come to the old Liberation party. Well, Ruby and Jessica discussed it. They’re much better at getting everyone to understand what’s going on and how to proceed. My job in the whole thing is to basically make lots of babies and use my extra bodies to ensure the different places stay in touch if something happens. The second part was something I was already doing of course. There are still Land owners who will need to be told after being checked, so Citrine has decided to take up that job with Morgan.

It will have to wait until after the announcement at Barrier though, since both of Morgan’s bodies are needed for it. “Hey mom, I’m ready to fly sis over. Could you tell Cindy I can carry her around tomorrow?” I remember them talking about diplomacy or something last night, but I was distracted with thoughts of shape-shifting monsters. So I wasn’t paying a lot of attention. I answer “Sure sweetie. You two be safe on your trip over there.” Giving them both a hug, they quickly leave and I’m left alone with my five pregnant bodies. Well, not completely alone, Cindy and Snag are both in their rooms. They’re probably writing stuff.

Back in Barrier, I head to the Hospital with Morgan’s other body. Citrine will be staying with Jessica and Sam. Having two people with multiple bodies in one place means that my angel daughter and her elf sister will know for sure that they haven’t been replaced. It’s a pretty complicated communication ‘web’ that Jessica planned out for the announcement, but it basically means everyone in our group will be able to be checked by Morgan if anything suspicious happens.

The Hospital is a fancy looking building on the inside, and Jessica says it’s not a System structure, but made by the humans of Canton instead. I notice that even though it’s fancy, there isn’t a lot of light in the halls. As we check rooms we can see they’re really well lit by large windows, so I think it’s strange the halls would be so dark. I’ll have to ask one of the humans I know about it later. The only thing the Hospital is really needed for is babies, since a lot of people take at least one Healer class. Almost everything can be fixed by a Healer quickly if they are high enough tier. I asked Cindy, but she said Healers can’t fix deadness yet. Maybe it takes a higher tier.

We check all the rooms one by one anyway, only finding people in a small corner of the building where the pregnant and birthing mothers found the most comfortable. “Snow! Did you have your babies already, you don’t look pregnant?” I ask my hound daughter when I spot her. She pulls away from a group of ladies she was talking to and walks over, giving me a hug. Snow then says “Yeah mom. Here I’ll take you to the room where all the babies sleep.” She knows why we’re here and is really nice to help. Morgan didn’t signal for any of the mothers, now we just have to check the babies.

My daughter leads us to a nearby room with the curtains closed so the babies can sleep peacefully. Cindy once told me that human babies are often loud and never sleep when you want them to. There’s just one grown lady in the room watching them, since it’s in one of the safest parts of town during a zombie attack. Morganite signals for me to leave the room with her and I start to worry that she saw some monsters. “Mom, no Doppelgangers, but one of the babies has pink skin like me. I think he’s probably a Shifter, unless you saw a baby with pink skin.”

I go back in and double check before leaving the room again. “Nope, they all look like the other races and I even checked their titles. If the baby is like you then it will be fine to leave them for now. You’re sure there aren’t any dops?” It feels a little weird that there wouldn’t be a single one here, but it might be a coincidence. In my experience at least, this is the first other Shifter I’ve seen so they’re probably pretty rare. If there’s one here but no doppelgangers then we must be pretty lucky. “I’m sure, just the one pink baby. I’ll stop by in a few hours when he’s a bit older and let him know he’s not alone.”

She smiles after that, and we tell Snow that we’re done here. “Okay mom and little sis, good luck today. Tell Onyx she still owes me Credits for winning our bet.” I’m not sure what their bet was about, but we are heading to the Prison next, so I can just ask my succubus daughter. After we leave the Hospital and on the way to Barrier’s Prison, we see lots of Guards running around, knocking on doors and talking to people. It took us over an hour to check the whole Hospital, and Pops is pretty fast at getting them to do stuff.

The Prison is near the edge of town so it takes us a while to walk there. We get stopped and reminded to go to the announcement later today a few times, but we don’t mind since that’s what they’re supposed to be telling people. The main structure of the Prison is surrounded by it’s own wall and kind of looks like a mini camp. The person at the entrance asks us who we’re here to see and I tell him “I’m here to see my daughter Onyx.” He looks up at me then and stands straight saying “Oh Miss Opal is visiting again. I’ll let you in.” I recognize the man, he’s always so nice but doesn’t pay a lot of attention.

The metal door opens and the man says “The Warden should be doing rounds right now, so just take this hall until the first intersection and go right. Most of the troublemakers are in one spot, so she checks them the most.” We thank the man, and follow his instructions.

“Don’t make me tell you again. Off with the pants!” I hear a familiar voice yell from down the hall. Oh, she’s so fun when she’s like that. I pass a few cells with metal bars on my way to the voice. Most have Players that look bored in them. Normally I could just bend or break bars like this, but all the prisoners lose the use of skills, even the passive ones. I wonder what my Fertility would be as a prisoner? As we get to the cell with my daughter, I see a big man with a scared look on his face and his pants down. In front of him, shaking a pair of pants is my daughter Onyx.

I hear a splat sound and see something green land on the ground. She says “Broccoli, really Terence? You know you’re supposed to eat your vegetables too.” She leans over and picks it up. -Onyx, the Motherly Prison Warden- I check her status and see a new modifier. She must have finally gotten her Unique title, and it might actually be similar to mine. “No milk in your lunch tomorrow, and if I catch you skipping important parts of you meal again I’ll increase it to a week.” She finishes saying before handing the man back his pants.

I don’t interrupter her while she’s working, since it would be rude. She smiles a bit seeing me in the hallway, but maintains her demeanor as the person in charge. She motions for her sister and me to follow after locking Terence’s cell. As we walk someone in a cell we pass asks “Warden! When are you going to let me tap that ass?” She scoffs and continues walking as she answers “You know I’m married Bill, if you keep it up I’ll tell your wife what you do with Jerry at night.” The man goes ghostly white and stammers “I was jus’ jokin ma’am, please don’t tell Nan bout the knitting.” She nods and we finally get to her office a few minutes later.

Once the door is closed behind us, she gives me a big hug and says “The inmates have been so much fun to tease the past few days. You should visit me more mom. My husband worries too much and doesn’t understand.” I pat my wigging daughter’s head and tell her “I’ve been pretty busy with your sister, but I recently got another body and might be able to spare one to stay with you for a while. Would I get one of those cool uniforms of yours?” She nods vigorously and responds “If you send a body that’s enough like mine I can give you one. It’s exclusive to the Warden, but we’ve always had similar body shapes so you should fit.”

She seems pretty excited by the idea of me helping her at work, but soon turns to Morgan and gives her a hug too saying “You must be a new sister! Hmm… are you using some kind of illusion skill?” Pulling back from the hug she adds “By the way, what race are you? That pink skin looks super fun.” I look at Morgan and only see her elf disguise. Does that mean Onyx can see that stuff too? I nod to my pink daughter and she answers her sister “Yeah, I guess it’s kind of an illusion and my race is Shifter. How can you tell?”

Onyx looks her up and down laughing before telling her “It’s part of the Prison Warden title when I have it equipped. You look cute though, so I’m not sure why you’d hide yourself.” I nod agreeing, but I know why she’s doing it now. My shifter daughter starts blushing and I describe the current situation to my succubus daughter.

“That would explain why I had to paste some monster pretending to be my cook last night. The real cook showed up this morning for his actual shift, so I didn’t think much about it.” Onyx tells me, and I guess the monsters haven’t been able to get in here. Just to be sure I have her walk her sister around to check all the prisoners. Once they’re done, I stop eating the snacks she keeps in her office for me. Human cooks really do know how to make tasty stuff sometimes. Of course these snacks were poisoned as an attempt to kill my daughter as revenge or something, but the cook who did it is in a cell now, and I get the yummy cookies all to myself.

“It’s all clear like she said mom. Oh those look yummy, can I have one?” Morgan asks, but her sister laughs and I shake my head answering “Nope, these are poisoned sweetie.” I carefully put the bag back into the drawer, glad that more people can’t eat poison. I start to wonder why we haven’t found any doppels yet this morning and voice my concern to my daughters. They both seem to think a bit and Onyx finally says “It’s possible the one I killed could have told the others I could see them. It did let out a really loud shriek as I was killing it. Maybe that spooked them all and they left.”

Morgan speaks up then saying “I haven’t spotted any from the air yet either, but I think it might be a possibility. We won’t know until everyone is gathered for the announcement.” It’s nice that we won’t have to check the prison anymore as long as Onyx is here, but not finding any yet is a bit concerning. I relay the information to Jessica’s body in old Liberation, but she just says “We’ll have to wait and see Mom.” She’s right, it’s no use worrying since we can’t do anything about it if they did leave. The original plan for the party was for everyone to have left already, but other than my Lofty body escorting Mrs. Taylor, people stayed for updates on what’s going on in Barrier.

A few hours later

Time for the announcement finally rolls around, and I’m standing on a stage behind the podium where Jessica is about to give her speech. Everyone should be here, but I get the message from Morgan back at the prison “I don’t see a single one in the crowd or among the Guards mom.” I just shake my head as Jessica starts to speak.

“Everyone must be wondering why I’ve made you come here today.” She starts, scanning the crowd. I can tell a lot of them look confused or annoyed at the situation. There are probably… a lot of people in the town center in front of us right now. Sam said it would be thousands earlier, and numbers on my Status sure look different when it’s a bunch of people instead. Jessica continues “We discovered last night that there are monster camps and dens that don’t show up on the Quest Board. For those of you who don’t understand what that means, it’s quite likely that we could be attacked by high tier monsters while traveling or trading between towns and cities. Before, it was assumed that if we had Land close enough, and camps could be cleared before they became a problem. As it stands, until we can do a more thorough search of our surroundings, you won’t have access to a lot of resources.”

I didn’t even think about that part. I just thought she meant the monsters might attack our Land at some point, which would be bad enough. I guess it makes sense that a lot of the people who take food from Sue’s place to other camps would be affected. My brown haired daughter continues “We’re going to need anyone with a class that can track or find monsters or camps without help from the Board, and anyone who can fly would be a tremendous help as well. If you fall into either of these categories, you will be richly compensated for your assistance, and if you manage to find a dangerous camp you can make a request that we will try to fulfill.”

With that there’s a lot of conversation sparking within the crowd. All I can think about though is what not finding any doppelgangers means for us. Did they get spooked by Onyx finding one of them, or did they find out we had Morganite? I hope it doesn’t take too long to give birth to these Shifter babies.