59: Innovation Is The Mother Of Solutions

Sunday services a few hours later were met with blurry eyes and many wives sleeping through the entire service in their pews. Those that could attend, anyway. Whether it was rambunctious orgy sex or constantly waking up when the babies cried through the night, sleep became more precious than gold for Honoka’s family.

And the less said about everyone’s outfits, the better. They weren’t quite wearing bedsheets converted into togas, but it was close. Cousins and mothers donated to the cause; however, unless the family was willing to spend thousands of dollars they didn’t have, they didn’t own much of anything that fit .They didn’t look awful or immodest, though local stores found their stock of safety pins disappearing overnight.

Because great aunts, grandmothers and other family were happy to babysit, it was with exhausted relief they all stumbled into their pews and listened to the dwarf preacher. Afterward, it was with some resigned dread that they shuffled back home to either start their day or try to get a few spare seconds of shut eye.

At least, that’s what Honoka thought.

“[Did you get Gwyneth’s done yet?]” Diane whispered to Padmava as they walked the streets of the Lair.

“[Almost, but I’ve only had one day to work on it,]” Padmava whispered back, head bent low to keep her hissing voice from carrying.

“[Well, if Miaka is done translating…]”

When Diane trailed off, Honoka realized her head was turned and it was obvious to everyone she was trying to eavesdrop the conversation. With a start and blush, Honoka quickened her pace and beat down her natural curiosity.

When they arrived the gate - which was in the process of being fixed! - Honoka’s father and two brothers were out there with beams of wood, concrete and other various construction tools as they worked on replacing the broken doors. Waving their way through the construction project, when the others passed through, Diane gave a pointed look at the other wives and they all nodded as if silently knowing something Honoka didn’t. It must have showed on Honoka’s face, because the succubus waved her hand and gave firm warning.

“We’re working on your birthday present, no peeking or allocating for the next two hours.”

“Awwww!” Honoka moaned, slumping into childish depression as she desperately wanted to find out what they had in store for her a week and a half from now. The next two hours were torture while she piddled from project to project, eventually ending up playing a quick couple of matches of FBB with her guildies. The games highlighted the previous almost-pro gamer had gotten rusty in the last month. Now frustrated on top of her overwhelming curiosity, Honoka decided on a quick snack before the meeting she scheduled to go over the budget with the girls and their new lawyer.

“Oh, ¡guau!” Julietta exclaimed while entering into the top of the nursery. Following Banda, Diane and Philip, the group trooped their way down the equivalent of three flights of stairs with the mummy trying to look at everything at once.

Honoka agreed, there was a lot to see. Douglass finished the gate yesterday, working on shoring up the walls of the temporary aquarium for Baby Uzume with Abra’s help, occasionally adding rods or rebar to make sure nothing cracked. Earlier, it got loud when Honoka’s father and brothers excavated half the room to prepare for this, tons of dungeon rock piled near the stairs and waiting for the right time and manpower to hike it outside. Two of Dolly’s sisters were using long ropes to wrangle Arun’s feathered and serpentine qezicoatle body from the ceiling and down to the waiting barrels of milk for his feeding. A trio of very well endowed minotaur bulls…ahem…assisted eight holstaur girls in the corner at their milking stations as Uncle Sammy joked with his niece and Georgia while moving the large barrels over to help the hobgoblin feed little demonic Zoe, who was crying, fussy, and shooting hot fire out of her tiny toosh, burning up yet another diaper.

The milking stations had some partitions up. This was done at the behest of the dozens of volunteering family who understood that sex = more milk, who were willing to even be in the same room while the cows got filled and drained, they just didn’t want to have to see is all in front of them all the time.

Well, there were plenty of those that tried to watch and even join in, but by now they had managed to mostly keep all the teenagers out after The Incident. Eve was still trying to get the video off all the streaming sites and the offenders were grounded until they finished college.

In the center of this circus, Honoka sat on the floor wearing her spandexy and neon pink workout/feeding outfit, balancing a laughing Buttercup on her massive chocolate muffin tummy while trying to get her to finish her bottle. Buttercup, oblivious, her wispy red hair in a constant state of crackling floof, just thought it was a game and kept laughing as she sent out bolts of electricity from her brown baby hands with enough juice to power half of Harvardtown. As was becoming standard for dealing with the little pikachu, Honoka had her Health cranked up above fifty, each shock feeling like someone rubbed their socked feet across carpet and then touched a doorknob: not pleasant, but not life threatening. Knowing the meeting was going to start soon, Honoka had also gotten a hefty dose of Endurance, her stomach losing inches every minute.

“Sorry to pull you away on a Sunday, but our schedules have just not been able to mesh until now.” Honoka wasn’t looking, her face triumphant as little Buttercup finally accepted the nipple and sucked away the milk at an inhuman rate from the gallon bottle.

“No pasa nada, chica.” Julietta either dyed her hair or was wearing a new wig, her locks now short and green over her mummy wrappings. She wore what Honoka classified as Casual Professional: pastel rose button up, top left untucked and sleeves rolled partway up her arms, black capri jeans and comfortable red flats. She carried a fancy leather document bag on one shoulder and quirked a curious smile as she looked around the room. “Would it be too forward to say it looks like you’ve been busy, if you know what I mean?”

“Not going to deny it.” Buttercup happily suckling, Honoka managed to glimpse the others with the mummy. Philip was still in his Sunday clothing, white shirt and blue tie with tan slacks (he must have dressed himself because the colors didn’t mesh). Diane had gotten out of her church clothing in the hallway outside her room the moment they got home and was in her uniform of vacuum tight flame print orange and black yoga pants and a black T saying in bloated white letters Sperm Bank Open, Please Leave Deposit At Entrance with arrows pointing up, down and even one in back pointing down into her ultimate booty (Honoka felt a trill of disgust before she squanched it down, how Diane got her meals was Diane’s business).

The oddly dressed one was Banda. Wearing a tight and ill fitting combination of flannel and jeans borrowed from some male donors working at the dairy, it was barely enough to keep her covered and supported past the ripped and zip-tied cloth. Honoka was sure that there were bathing suits with more square footage. That wasn’t the odd part, though. Traveling up her shoulders and head covered in her metallic, silvery fur, sitting on top of her golden horns, Banda now wore the largest cowgirl hat in existence. White with a gold band, it was tall enough Honoka wondered if the large taurine had become the new owner of the Dimmsdale Dimmadome.

“Don’t say it,” Banda growled, clomping her way past Honoka as she made her way to the holstaur’s in the corner, one of which Honoka realized was Banda’s sister DeeDee.

“Say what, partner?” Honoka replied, laying her Southern on thick with a Texan twang.

Banda’s eye twitched, and it must has been one joke too far for the obviously frustrated girl. “Ug! Its this stupid halo, it…you know what? This thing is too hard to describe, everyone’s about to get a show.”

When the milking holstaur girls and their male gigolos heard Banda say that, all of their eyes went wide and they tried to either get out of the milking stirrups or out of the girls in the stirrups. What became apparent is it was already too late as Banda tipped her hat off and lets it fall to the floor, the light in the large basement room doubling in brightness as Banda’s celestial taurine halo blazed out and lit up everything with its pure bright light. To most of the people in the room, all they could do was squint if they looked towards the corner of the room until their eyes adjusted.

The light had other effects on the taurines in the room.

“MOOOOOOO!!” With each woman and man crying out in bovine ecstasy over the sound of stretching rubber, the holstaurs and minotaurs began to grow. If Honoka had to describe it from her more explicit vantage point, it was like they were all becoming more taurine, as if Honoka were allocating all the bonuses of a holstaur onto another holstaur or a minotaur onto a minotaur. Horns grew longer and thicker, faces stretched longer as their eyes changed from the familiar colors of humans to the black of cattle. Fur sprouted along most of their body instead of just their neck, back shoulders and legs, hooves nearly doubling in size as a way to support all the other changes.

Because if there was ever a collection of defining traits for the taurine Races, it was muscle and boobs. And while the girls and boys didn’t grow more than a few extra feet taller, each of them easily quadrupled in mass as their muscles took on an obscene life of their own, bloating outward until it looked like their heads would just be swallowed up inside their traps and pecs before some effect compressed them down into more reasonable (still proportionally double what they where) sizes, not so much cut and chiseled, more as if each muscle were held inside by not enough skin and any moment each taut section of their bodies were about to explode.

The holstaur girls would need those muscles to move around because their tits all got a octoplet helping of whatever that light was passing around. Most of them had managed to get the suction cups for the pumps off (one girl didn’t, her enlarging teats breaking yet another set of cups as she joined the other girls in the expansion), so most of the plastic parts didn’t break when so much milk filled their collective breasts. Honoka was oddly reminded of a dream she had about drinking the wrong potion and flooding the room in white cream. Banda, who was nearly twice as large and had about seven times as much boob as any of these girls, suddenly found herself the largest in the room by only a narrow margin. And it wasn’t so much that the girls got larger breasts as they just filled up with that much milk. For a moment, that milk stayed inside the straining orbs, each breast looking about ready to pop, then within a few seconds there was enough gallons of milk hitting the ground from the line of Niagra Tits that lactate was already washing across the yards and splashing up against Honoka and the others.

“Get it…uuugh!…mooout!” DeeDee shouted to the minotaur behind her, the only guy that didn’t move fast enough to pull out before the changes hit. Based on what the other two minotaur had swinging between their legs, the reason was obvious. Those dicks weren’t large like these guys were well hung, they were each literally as big as Honoka. The testicles hanging low underneath were each the size of bowling balls and had veins on them large enough that the room could see pulsing throbs through the sack.

The minotaur with his dick stuck in DeeDee appeared to be David, Banda’s former fiancé and, in Honoka’s opinion, a perfect manly specimen from her memory of meeting him a month ago. Most girls would be turned off by having the reddish brown furred manly bull go from Mr. Universe into Mr. Multiverse, but Honoka found her woman snatch growing wet as he grunted and snorted, trying to pull out before his eyes went literally red and he just started pounding DeeDee for all she was worth. For her part, Banda’s sister mooed loudly enough to wake up a few of the sleeping children while her breast volume increased faster than the other holstaurs and milk was shooting out of her teats hard enough to splash Banda like a pair of fire hoses.

“AAAARRGGGG!!” David shouted, orgasming like he was a pirate taking his wench, his whole body straining with power as the cum factories between his legs contracted in time to push his load into the holstaur girl before slumping down on top of her furred backside.

Looking around at the damage, all of this happening in the space of only a few minutes, Banda picked her giant hat back up and put it on, the entire room growing dim enough that for a moment most people couldn’t see anything before their eyes adjusted. When sight was returned to the inhabitants of the room, the taurine group were almost all back to their normal sizes, though most of them looked worn out as they slumped onto either their pumping stations or the ground, a few of them already asleep.

“What do I need to do to get some of that?” Georgia asked, one of her hands down her jeans on the other side of the room.

“Only works on taurines, and I might have screwed up the milking schedule with this little stunt,” Banda replied, wincing as she took in the wasted milk. “Any taurine that gets hit with my halo is supercharged for as long as they get hit with it. Problem is, conservation of energy still exists and it burns through the person’s SP like a match at a harmless gasoline fight. Found this out the hard way when Aunt Cholena arrived yesterday and some of the guests from Japan got an unexpected strip show. They took videos. Which means so long as my tribe is around, I’m stuck wearing this stupid hat.”

“I can see how that would be a problem,” Philip said, his eyes locked on his wife and from the tent in his pants, he didn’t think of it as a problem at all.

“Are you kidding? Auntie is already lining up eligible girls from the dairy for Honoka - including herself! - so that she can finally corner the holstaur milk market. Until then, she’s offering to pay me a percentage of the dairy’s revenue to have me spend about ten hours a week topside and just stand there during milkings.

That was huge! Honoka had no idea the actual numbers, but with the hundreds of holstaur girls getting milked twice a day, the Boston Dairy Cholena ran probably brought in millions of dollars. To get some of that for the family would mean a great deal to ease whatever financial burdens they were currently having.

“Get that in writing and have me read over the contract before you do or agree to anything,” Julietta interjected, popping the bubble as she pulled out a folder of papers from her leather case. “The deals that go wrong the most are informal and between family.”

Properly sobered up, the group sat down for the family meeting concerning their various overhanging problems with the government. While Diane and Philip sat next to each other, Diane unlocking her handy datapad and getting her notes ready, Banda split off to help with the milkers in the corner while Eve made her way to sit next to Julietta, one breast out as she fed little Zoe, the fiendish appearance of the baby matched by the mother and making it look adorable, in a demonic way.

Honoka was in the center, her tummy now back to its flat state and Buttercup asleep in her arms, little bolts still shooting out as she twitched in her baby dreams. “Ok, as you can see with just handling our kids, we are a busy bunch of mothers. If you can break it down as simply as possible, Julietta, that would be best.”

“Long term, you are going to be fine,” Julietta said assuringly in her cadency Latin voice, her wrappings fluttering a little as she spread out sheets of paper onto the now dry ground (the dungeon made quick work of the spilt milk). “The IRS and other agencies have the right to invade your lives, but they don’t have the right to harass. So long as you are doing nothing illegal - and over the last week I’ve seen nothing in the documents you’ve sent over - you are completely in the clear. Even if they shut you down I can have an injunction brought up against the shut down and they would then have to get a court ruling before doing anything else and that would take years. They would also lose, and they know it, meaning they would likely try to settle out of court to get some kind of restriction placed on you. This might turn into a huge deal, but if it does I’ve got the backing of my entire firm to make sure you win this case.

“The only major roadblock you have right now is the FDA. They’re going to swarm you like a plague of locust and they won’t stop until they’ve made sure you are following your cGMPs to the letter.”

“The what now?” Honoka asked, her eyes already swimming from all the lawyerese laid out in front of her.

“Current Good Manufacturing Practices,” Diane replied, pulling up a document listing Diane Lonnegan board certified by the United Alchemist Association on her pad. “Solomon made sure I was compliant with all procedures because he wanted my potions to legit. I technically ran my own business independently before merging with Becoming Monsters. I have all the SOPs and batch records to meet ISO 9002 qualifications.”

“I say again, the what now?” Honoka said quietly, gently rocking the baby in her arms.

“Any product that is ingested requires mountains of paperwork proving everything came from somewhere and meets certain standards,” Eve said, looking over the papers as if she understood them. “The FDA is in charge of making sure companies that sell those ingestibles are doing it right and according to NSF guidelines. Diane is saying she knows how that works for potions and has been following those rules. I also know Banda’s milk is legal because I’ve been the one filling out her batch records and her certification is from Cholena as a sort of partnership between the dairy and our guild.”

“I understand a little bit about this,” Philip said in a reassuring tone, seeing that Honoka was getting overwhelmed. “Used to work at the Hershey plant before becoming a cop, so I’m joining your guild to handle all your certifications. Abra has the most problems, the only reason she hasn’t been shut down probably because no FDA agent was willing to travel down to her home before. Within the next month, not only will we be following FDA guidelines, we’ll be ISO 9002 certified, which is kind of like the FDA for every other country outside of the US, allowing us to sell our products internationally.”

“As I said, long term you are going to be fine.” Pulling out more papers, Julietta spread them out over top of the others. “Short term, I’m going to probably live in one of your offices just so I can be on hand and stop or manage anyone who steps into your private property. As of right now, you are under attack and I think I have an idea who is pulling the strings. I can keep most of them from shutting you down, but every time that happens it is going to cost money.”

“Which brings us to the main topic of this meeting,” Eve stated as she pulled out her own stack of papers and booted up her laptop that Georgia brought over from where Eve was at.

Honoka was trying to keep her breathing from turning into a full on panic attack, but she wasn’t succeeding. It wasn’t like Honoka was ignorant of these situations and problems. However, every time she wanted to do something she ran into an insurmountable wall built by her inexperience. Honoka designed massive buildings, so she understood federal regulations, but a building code is miles away from food and drug regulations. She had a natural inclination to be frugal and could save money, but sorting percentages of funds towards state and federal taxes while making sure an operations budget floated dozens of women and children and a multifaceted business for a projected amount of time was beyond even her mathematically oriented mind. Now the business was being attacked by multiple government organizations and Honoka was getting perilously close to just digging a hole in the ground and hiding in said hole until everything went away.

It was enough to trip Honoka into her recurring nightmare as her vision grew black and she felt that slimy breath on her skin again.

Enoch is dead, the family is safe, Enoch is dead, the family is safe. Closing her eyes and rocking her child in her arms for comfort, Honoka took a moment to settle herself with her little mantra. It wasn’t easy, and her anxiety only grew higher as she realized she wasn’t alone and all these people were looking at her. Clenching her teeth, Honoka forced it all down and pushed through, her high Health probably the deciding factor as she opened her eyes after minutes of silence.

“Sorry,” Honoka said, flushing in shame as she looked down at Buttercup, her peaceful face opening and closing her mouth as she dreamed baby dreams.

“We can do this another time, if you need…” Julietta assured, mild confusion painting her bandages but there was no judgment there.

“No, just a panic attack, I get them sometime,” Honoka replied with fake confidence. Diane and Eve clearly knew this was something else, but they didn’t say anything. “I need to know what our situation is.”

“It isn’t good.” Eve said it slowly, but there was no sugarcoating it. “As of right now, our revenue comes from four main sources. Diane’s potions, Banda’s milk, BM’s delving and - starting next week - Abra’s honey. On their own, each one of those streams could potentially provide for the family’s needs by themselves, but for the last while, there has been a sharp decline in our sales across the board.

“Three weeks ago Banda’s milk was selling so much we couldn’t keep it on the shelves. Now we are lucky to sell five gallons a day. Johnny showed up on Friday and said he’d lose his spot in his guild if he bought from us any more. Cholena offered to take it and sell it through her dairy, but earlier today she came up to me and confided she had five major distributes she sold her milk through suddenly quit on her. If that trend keeps up, the Boston Dairy is going to be completely out of business in a year.”

The group all looked over at Banda and the other taurines, those people helping feed children when they might not soon have a job anymore. Was it their imagination or did Banda look a little more worried than usual? Was her shoulders a little more slumped from defeat?

“The bad new keeps coming,” Diane said, scooting herself over to Honoka so she could lean over and look at her sleeping girl. “Chastity called me last night and said she had to cancel any future potion orders. I’ve never known the bit…the witch to be anything other than sadistic evil, but she actually sounded sorry. And angry. Looks like the Deep Guilds took a more direct approach with her, ambushing a dozen of her girls and beating them senseless. Devera - the kitsune from her office - got it so bad she’s in the ICU and might not wake up. Despite my history with Chastity, I can’t blame her for this. Other than that, I haven’t seen a single sale in four days.”

“Which leaves us with Abra and delving,” Eve said, leaning down to check her numbers on her computer screen. “Abra’s honey is a high quality luxury item that sells for a lot of money, but it typically doesn’t sell quickly or often, just when a fancy dungeon restaurant runs out of their stock and needs more. I have a feeling, though, that restaurants are suddenly going to not make any more orders if the trend continues.

“Which leaves us with Quinn and any girl delving into the dungeon for TCs and other magical swag. Delving wasn’t going to be a major source of income for us this year, only after we secured premium farms in difficult levels and created a supply chain would it really pick up. For right now, though, it is going to be how we survive for the foreseeable future. Between monster meat and Honoka’s ability to eat anything, we’ll be able to live off the land, as it were, until we can think of a better solution.”

“How bad is it, really?” Honoka asked, trying to picture it all in her head. “I mean, what’s the timeline if nothing changes?”

Eve clicked her track pad a few times then slowly closed her laptop. “Two months is when we run out of spending money with our current hunting/gathering budget. Sometime next year we’ll be kicked out of our home for not paying property taxes. And if the FDA shuts us down, we probably won’t be able to delve and then I don’t know.”

The group stopped talking, taking in the sounds of the nursery. Babies feeding, babies crying, all the other adults in the room knew something was happening and kept their own conversations respectfully subdued.

“Am I supposed to just give up?” Honoka asked, her eyes blurring from some tears that didn’t fall. “Do we, I don’t know, move? Get jobs at S-Mart? Ignore the feeling I get that the world is about to end and I might be responsible for saving it?”

No one said anything because no one had an answer. This wasn’t the time for empty words, they needed real solutions. Wiping her eyes, Honoka took a moment to look around the room. Dolly’s sisters had finally managed to get Arun on the ground and were using an interesting collection of homemade wood beam and pulley systems to hoist a fifty gallon drum with a giant nipple on it to feed the giant qezicoatle baby boy. In the opposite corner, Hope was mewling with her rabbit-shaped head and flapping her wings, waking from her nap just as her brother Samuel cried out in his steel reinforced cradle holding his massive bastion weight, his cries sounding like an avalanche of rocks. Abra and Honoka’s father were finishing up and playing a little with a few large tentacles reaching over the edge of the aquarium, Baby Uzume gurgling softly from the water on the other side. Georgia was multitasking like a pro, Rani and Sarah on blankets on the ground nearby sucking down their own gallon bottles of milk with their tiger and elephant mouths that she balanced in one hand while holding Thomas’ translucent body in her other and used her neck and shoulder to keep his bottle in place.

Honoka looked down again at Buttercup. Sort of awake and still sleepy, she was opening and closing her green eyes. And although they were green, Honoka could see how they had Honoka’s slanted Japanese tilt. It reminded Honoka of the last time she was in Japan, visiting family and seeing one of her cousin’s latest baby, such an adorable chubbers that Honoka just wanted to squish all…day…

Honoka stopped, a niggling thought coming into her head. Japanese babies, Japan, family. The hamster in her head then really started to spin the wheel and suddenly she couldn’t keep up with all the ideas hitting her like the largest answer train.

“I…I think I have something that will work,” Honoka said softly, wonder edging into her voice as she dared to smile. “Not just work for us, but it could solve everyone’s problems.”

Julietta and Philip looked confused, but they didn’t say anything. Eve looked a little skeptical but Diane just smiled as if she never doubted her Honoka.

“What do you want us to do?” the succubus asked, taking her girl (and thirty points of Health) so Honoka could stand up, knowing her wife liked to pace when she planned.

“I shouldn’t be surprised, but the answer is we grow bigger. Much bigger.” Honoka did indeed start pacing, trying to get her thoughts together. “And we do it with family. Start calling everyone staying at the house and get them into the courtyard in an hour, we are going to need everyone if this is going to work.”

Honoka’s excitement was infectious, the others also standing with smiles as they pulled out phones and were about to get to work. Which they all paused in doing when Julietta delicately coughed in her hollow Latin way, giving Honoka’s bulging crotch a discrete ogle.

“Is it just me, or is anyone else horny?” Julietta asked, fanning herself as she kept her juicy thighs tight together. “Which shouldn’t be possible: I’m undead, I haven’t been horny in five years.”

“Oops, sorry,” Eve said, embarrassed as she backed away from everyone quickly. “Still having trouble controlling this new Feature.”

“Let’s make it ninety minutes,” Diane said, her voice dripping with sultry. “Anyone else want to join in?”

Honoka gulped, feeling like she was about to get drunk dry by all the thirsty girls in the room.

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

Somehow, despite the two words not being compatible, Diane managed to turn an orgy into a quickie. There was even enough time for showers and a small fashion show so they could all look their best for the meeting. And while it was just Honoka with Diane, Eve, Banda and Abra at that quigy (orckie?), Georgia and Philip led a curious Julietta away to their rooms before too many of the wives’ clothing came off. From the pleasant disheveled glow surrounded those three, Honoka surmised it was an energetic hour for them as well.

Honoka was on top of a makeshift stage her father had slapped together with some spare lumber, rising her about three feet off the ground (Douglass had quickly left the basement before things got to steamy, glad to get to work on the stage). There was room for maybe six people up there, but Honoka didn’t want to risk it collapsing under her so only Diane was with her.

“If this works, first thing we buy with our piles of money is clothing.” Picking at her outfit, Honoka tried again to make the tight blue blouse fit her shoulders or not pinch her neck as much. The multihued gradients of blue skirt was also not long enough, only covering half of her thighs, but it was the best option at the moment and in front of this many people, Honoka didn’t want to risk pants.

“Stop fussing, you look fabulous,” Diane said, calmly helping smooth Honoka’s hair with a small comb. The succubus had actually found something that managed to look modest…well, modest for a succubus. Going for a Velma Couture, her orange sweater was both extremely fuzzy with lots of strands fluffing it up while also made of a thin enough material her black bra could be seen outlined underneath. Her red skirt was also short enough that the front of the stage had a large cluster of young men (and a few girls) aiming to get an eyeful of her thiccness eating her black panties from both the back and front.

Nervous to the point she was sweating double, anxiety trying to out pace the typical jungle swelter of the dungeon, Honoka was having second thoughts. This was such a stupid idea and why would anyone listen to an out-of-work architect?

However, just before this meeting as he was putting up the stage, Honoka had learned her father’s license was being revoked and they were going after his bond. Cholena’s dairy might be in trouble. And while Honoka might not like Chastity, working girls were getting beat up. Together, hundreds of peoples lives heading towards ruin because a group of people didn’t like Honoka.

Don’t you dare worry about me or your mother, Douglass Jefferson had told her earlier. Just because its easy to do what the plantation master says, doesn’t make it right.

Honoka agreed, stiffening her shoulders and looking out at the hundreds of people gathered. In fact, it was almost everyone that had come, all of them pausing in the various activities they had going in getting a large scaled wedding put together in only a week. The only ones missing were her Honda grandparents and a few others of the Honda clan. Looking towards her mother, Uzume shook her head, causing Honoka to tighten her lips.

Fine, I’ll do it without their help.

“Everyone, I hope you’ve been able to get properly settled while staying at our home,” Honoka started, raising her voice to a shout at first but closing towards a more reasonable volume as the crowd quieted. “We are honored and blessed that you could make it and I hope you all have an opportunity to find Mizuki or Isami Honda and show your appreciation for making this possible. The wedding you are all working on will be a wonderful and blessed day.

“And I truly wish all I had to worry about was a wedding. However, as some of you know, my family has been making waves here in the dungeon and powerful people have taken notice. They’ve decided to attack me through devious and indirect ways. Our guild has seen an unnatural reduction in sales and we are being blocked from being able to conduct business. Nobody is buying our potions even though stores are selling the same potency for double the price down the street. We have exclusive rights to holstaur milk in the dungeon and only sell a few gallons a day. Any haul of crystals and parts we bring back from our delves can’t be sold to vendors for any price. We are being driven out of business, and we think many of you are starting to feel it too.”

Honoka paused, gauging the crowd. Not only did she have all their attention, some were nodding with grim realization. Cholena in particular crushed her phone in her hand, apparently putting two and two together at that moment. All together, about a third of the people standing there looked like their lives had suddenly gotten more difficult in the last couple of weeks and could see that it was only the beginning.

Honoka’s palms were sweaty so she wiped them discreetly on her skirt as she wished she had some water for her dry mouth. “I’m sorry to say that many of you are going to be affected by these shadowy organizations simply because you are related to me. I wish it were otherwise and if I could have them only attack me, I would bow to whatever demands they made. You do not deserve to suffer as part of the consequences of my actions. Yet life isn’t fair and these organizations have so much power that they long ago probably forgot how to care about those they hurt.”

“So, who do we have to beat up to make them stop?” Sammy Armstrong asked, cracking his knuckles loudly, no one questioning the old dockworker would be happy to crack some skulls or hide some bodies if it came to it. From the excited murmuring around him, others felt the same way.

More than anything, the fact that many didn’t blame her and instead were willing to help gave Honoka the courage to plow forward. “I wish it were that simple. In the last month I’ve found my Class makes it very easy to solve my problems with a sword. You cannot cut what you can’t see, as my…as Isami Honda taught me once years ago in his dojo. They aren’t attacking us directly, they are making it so our businesses fail and we can no longer provide for our families. The solution is to start a business that they cannot attack, one which combines many of ours into one company.”

On cue, Philip stepped onto the platform, cleaned up after his exercise and looking every bit a confident and strong leader. “For those of you that don’t know, this is Philip Miner. Formerly a sergeant in the Boston PD, he lost his job because of me and he cannot find work because of me. As of right now, he will be joining the newly formed Becoming Monsters Inc. as the CEO. If any of you decide to join after I explain my crazy idea, many of you will be working with him directly.”

“And this idea is?” an older black woman from the crowd asked, someone Honoka didn’t recognize.

“Before I explain the what, everyone here needs to understand the how.” Honoka paused, taking a deep breath as she prepared for something she wasn’t sure was a good idea. In some ways, keeping her secrets have kept her safe and she still believed that. However, more than anything, looking around the people gathered there are seeing a group that may all have their lives upended if she remained secret, the final walls around her heart broke and she prepared herself.

Because nobody becomes stronger alone.

“My Race and Class are unique. Some of you know some of the details, but most of you probably only know me as the quiet girl who suddenly decided to quit her job and move into a dungeon. The truth is that I don’t know all the details, but I have the ability to make anyone I…love enough to become more than what they were. Your daughters and sisters, those that are married to me, you might have noticed that a few have changed since you last saw them. That is what I can do.”

At that moment, Quinn got back from her most recent delve, Miaka and Gwyneth following behind as they walked through the gate. Specifically, Quinn had to duck her head a little as her ten feet of blue fur tried to keep herself modest with a discount bikini they had picked up at the Big And Bigger clothing store yesterday. Miaka wasn’t much better, her typical underwear of wraps and a fundoshi not having enough fabric to cover her burgeoning breasts midst her swoll fiery feathered bod. Gwyneth looked downright small and normal next to the two giants, though now that she had put off the robes and wore a jeans and T combo, there was something unsettling about a skeleton with black fire for eyes holding a dufflebag and walking around. Behind her, five skeletal monsters discretely made their way around the back of the compound to where she kept her necromatic minions.

Quinn looked around at the gathering of people, unashamed of her body as she scratched a boob and looked towards Honoka on the stage. “We miss somethin’?”

Honoka shrugged, gesturing towards the three. “Case in point.”

The trio of wives looked at each other for a moment then set their bags down, joining the crowd and rightfully figuring this was important.

The family and friends gathered took another look around at all the wives and gave them all a critical eye. Some of the changes were subtle, such as Dolly, who just looked a little healthier and stronger, to Banda sitting down in the far back, her hat firmly in place on top of her various changes in her fur, horns and hooves, never mind her nearly doubling in size. Those who knew and grew up around these women almost couldn’t recognize them when they met yesterday and now this odd woman standing on a stage in front of them was saying it was all her doing.

Honoka gave them all a few minutes to silently come to terms with this new information. And while it sounded impossible, the proof was literally standing around them. Also, impossible had become more improbable in five years, the Change making it easier to accept fantastical claims and realities.

“In the last month, the women around me have gone up between five to fifteen levels. Banda has gone from being unable to provide milk to now producing enough milk to supply this entire dungeon by herself. Milk, I might add, that is twice as nutritious as other holstaur milk and provides magical healing. Diane’s potions have a mass market that is in constant need of resupply, including a potion that can change a person’s Race for hours without any side effects. Abra produces a unique honey that is not only delicious, but so thaumically potent that one of her customers is ARCON, the government’s premier defense force. Today, if we could get our products sold, our revenue could be in the millions of dollars. Give us another month, it could be ten times that. A hundred times.”

Honoka really wanted this to be over, but she was at the critical part. “I’m still working out the details, but our problem right now is we don’t have a way to sell our products. We need a collection of stores across a country that is willing to distribute our products, gaining exclusive rights to the Becoming Monsters brand. Fortunately, such a collection of stores exists in Japan. Osaka, specifically.”

Honoka’s mother and brothers had been quietly translating to key members of the crowd who couldn’t speak much English, so when Honoka finished, Akemi and Akira Watase both looked ready to faint. It didn’t take much stretch of imagination to understand what this could mean for the family of shop owners. Exclusive magical products, some far more effective or potent than anything else being sold: the only problem the Watase clan was about to have is not having enough time to count all the money they were about to make.

“Hold onto your teats, there’s more coming.”

Cholena, her massive thews folded under her impressive juggs, looked ready to chew lightning and spit thunder. “As of right now, the Boston Holstaur Dairy is partnering with Becoming Monsters. We’re the largest source of holstaur milk in the States and we account for one fifth of all Racial milk sales in North America. I can see that someone is trying to put me out of business and the solution is to find another venue. If my memory serves, Japan loves milk but they currently don’t have access to any herds. Japan is about to get more milk than they can drink.”

“If you can get it to LA, I’ll make sure nothing is held up in customs,” Sammy announced, smiling wide with white teeth.

“I got a rig, reckon if’n some young bucks wanna ride, can get a few more trucks to cart everin’thing ‘cross country.” This from Quinn’s father, overalls and all, and who Honoka couldn’t remember his name at the moment.

“Out of work right now and have my green card, truck driving sounds fun.” From his thick Indian accent and brown skin, probably one of Padmava’s relations.

“I haven’t talked to him in five years, but my older brother used to coordinate shipping between here and Europe for car companies.” The most surprising, Gwyneth said this quietly before ducking down again.

Others all around were working out what they could do, the whole thing turning into a mess of people as they all tried to figure out how they could get in on this. Honoka was relieved how well it was working out, but with a pleading look to Phillip, Honoka stepped down with Diane, leaning on the succubus as her anxiety got the better of her.

The details were going to be immense, enough to drown in. Honoka wanted to help as much as possible, but right now she just wanted to escape and decompress. And, based on the erection threatening to pop an Oh-No-ner under her skirt, see if a wife was free.