Becoming Monsters

The pause that followed was…pregnant.

“How much time do we have?” Shilo asked, her usual playful mien replaced with the somber professionalism used to dealing with medical emergencies.

“Minutes.” Honoka had never seen her uncle this worried, his face in her memory always so sure and calm. Without preamble, he strode to Padmava as he pulled out one of those arm pumps doctors tested blood pressure with. “Padmava, I remember from your medical history you had preeclampsia from a previous pregnancy. I was planning on running more tests for everyone next week, but I have to test you now to see if…”

“I’m fine, Honoka already took care of it.” The rest of the women in the room looked like deer in headlights, Padmava was a sea of calm, taking long and deep breaths. “Girls, try and match my breathing rhythm. You’ll thank me later.”

“I thought we had more time,” Honoka muttered, returning to herself as she finished allocating Abra’s parts back. “You told us we would have years.”

Akisame stopped and turned, hearing the worry and anxiety so very common in his niece. “You’re about to become a mother, Hono-chan.” Akisame put his hands on Honoka’s shoulders, staring deep into cobalt blue eyes. “This is happening now and I can’t do it alone. Will you help me?”

“I...” Honoka threatened to hyperventilate, fighting to match the pace Padmava led the other wives in. However, she was tired of being afraid. Straightening her back, she womaned up and set her jaw. “What do we need to do?”

“Believe it or not, outside of the warehouse I converted into a Racial birthing theater, there isn’t a better place to have a baby than inside a dungeon. Dungeon’s eat everything, including bacteria and parasites. The number one risk from a home birth is gone down here. All we have to worry about now is unexpected complications, Racial complications and pain management. Childbirth is much less dangerous since Status came into the world.” Pointing to the large door leading into Padmava’s bedroom, the Japanese doctor ran in the opposite direction, his wife and nurse following him. “I’ll gather my equipment. You need to get them into the bath while they can still move under their own power. Remember, Legendary births are not normal, forget most of what you think is about to happen.”

Easier said than done, Honoka thought, sweeping the room with her eyes to assess options. Five pregnant women, five non-pregnant woman: the math should have been simple, yet it wasn’t. Seven of those women were adjusting to Harmony changes, four of those to new Races. Three of the preggos were large enough to require cranes to move them if they couldn’t move themselves, one now weighing over ten tons (9072 kg)!

Gwyneth put an ossified hand on Honoka’s shoulder, the coldness of her bones giving Honoka goosebumps. “You’re overthinking it.” Walking forward, the Lich took on an imperial note to her voice. “Ladies, you are all about to be in a lot of pain. Hot water is going to help with that and it will speed up the entire process. So unless you want to be out here in more pain for longer, pick yourselves up and march.”

It worked. Five women picked themselves slowly up and started their wobbling march - well, Banda crawled to keep herself from hitting the ceiling, two other girls helping Eve. Honoka flushed and fiddled with the temperature controls of the large bath to hide her face. She did tend to overthink. The former architect thought in terms of Rube Goldberg instead of William Occam, and Honoka’s hesitation gnawed at her. Better to focus on what she could do, which was heat the water. Without safety regulations and the various tolerances Status brought to the world, the water could be set anywhere between twenty to two hundred and fifty degrees. Unsure what to do, a quick DiFi search got her informed enough to set it at ninety-two degrees and then looked around for the next thing to do, pushing away her lingering embarrassment.

“I know I’m supposed ta be nervous an’ all, but is anyone else a tad relieved this is happenin’ right now?” Quinn lounged in the same position as the other wives took, leaning back against the edge of the tub, splayed out front, stomach rising and falling with deep diaphragmed breaths.

“Amen!” Eve shouted, the last to splash into place as Dolly and Gwyneth heaved her a scootch against the edge. The hobgob gave the massive Banda a quick fistbump, sitting next to her friend.

“Except for Diane, you have all been pregnant for three days,” Padmava admonished, half her snake body looping out of the tub to make room for everyone else. “You should deal with this for at least six months before you are allowed to complain.”

“Is anyone else feeling…hot?” Dolly asked, standing behind Eve and idly rubbing one of her nipples. “I mean, you’re all sexy and naked and I didn’t think pregnancy was a kink of mine but…I’ll shut up now.”

“No, there’s something going on here,” Diane stated, peering around the room with narrowed eyes. “You’re all more horny than normal, especially Dolly and Gwyneth. The only one with normal aura is Eve.”

“What?” the lich in question exclaimed, her voice surprised while absent hands ran up and down her ribcage like a xylophone concert. “How am I aroused? I can’t be aroused…? Can I?”

“Two plus two equals four,” Honoka said from the side of the pool, pulling up her Status and phone DiFi at the same time. “Hobgoblins are common, eldritch types are not. Not a lot on the boards for your new Racial Features, though Spellz Eatz! lets Eve literally devour spells, gaining magical bonuses from those spells. Seez Abyzz gives her unnatural magical vision to see through mundane or magical effects. No idea what Thaum Thaum or Gobz Needz are. I’m going to take a stab and say double thaum is about magic and what a goblin needs most is something sexual. You seeing anything on your end, Eve?”

“Notta,” Eve said, her eyes moving in that unfocused way when looking over their Status. This was particularly weird because Eve’s eyes now glowed a solid off-putting green, eye movements visible through little streams of green glowing smoke flickering around the edges. “I mean, a sexual aura sounds fun until you have to focus on something unsexy. How bad is it?”

“Like I’ve been on a tractor all day an’ daydreamin’ ‘bout a long shower with the wand attachment,” Quinn stated with a critical assessment, her hand reaching down to her clit and lazily flicking it. “So, a four?”

“Yeah, I’m feeling like I need to get milked and sexy Disney princesses keep popping in my head.” Banda played with her teats and squirting streams into the bathwater, though she stopped when everyone smiled wickedly at her. “What?”

“Nothing, just wondering if Jasmine takes you to a whole new world,” Miaka said with a sly smirk.

“Or do you prefer if Marian oo de lallies you in Sherwood forest?” Diane added.

“Go the distance with Meg?”

“Make a man out of Mulan?”

“Alright!” Banda made a little splash to the joshing pair. To the amusement of everyone, with Banda’s new life as a giantess, this meant both of them became completely drenched from the little tsunami. “Princess porn is tame compared to some of the stuff you gals are into.”

As the other wives laughed it off, Miaka turned into a cloud of steam when fire feathers boiled the water wave. Leaving Diane the lone sputtering wife, getting some of the water up her nose. Mid snort, the succubus suddenly stretched back and locked her legs and arms.

“OooOOOHH!!” Under the water, Diane pushed her pelvis out, whole body arced in pain with a scream. However, what set it apart from a normal everyday contraction was the bright light shooting out of her vagina. Suddenly, the women in the water were electrocuted like the Scoleri Brothers, which included everyone except Honoka.

“Pull her out of there!” Akisame shouted, arriving with Shilo at a run. Both were loaded down with duffels stuffed with medical equipment. “I’m sorry, I wasn’t thinking. Diane’s baby can’t be in water, the shocks will get worse in the coming hours.”

While the other wives recovered, Honoka and Shilo dragged a limp and gasping Diane out of the pool and lay her on a generous pile of towels. From one of the bags, Akisame retrieved a pair of goggles shimmering with a rainbow light. Strapping them on, he hovered over Diane, studying her womb intently.

“Fully dilated, umbilical is clear. You should feel contractions much faster now. The baby looks to be in a perfect position.” Taking a wand made of clear glass out of his pocket, he waved it over Diane’s head. “I know it isn’t much, but that’s all I can do for the pain. Racial births can’t have pain meds or potions at this point because we can’t be sure how it will affect the baby.”

“You did that on purpose!” Diane accused, one hand crushing into Honoka’s as she felt the buildup of the next contraction. “You never said anything about no drugs!”

“Surprise.” Akisame rolled up his pants and removed his shoes with a careless disregard for the glares of an entire harem. “Honoka, I need you to stay with Diane. Her child has the highest thaumian reading and if something goes wrong, we might find ourselves standing in ground zero. A quick allocation could save our lives.”

“I’m not a doctor!” Honoka panicked, though she moved between Diane’s legs before the rest of the message punched through. “Ground zero? How bad is this going to be?”

“You’ll be fine, just preparing for the worst.” Without preamble, Akisame jumped into the pool and waded to the next contestant. “Padmava, how are you feeling?”

“I’m used to a lot of wiggling at this point, a baby isn’t something that doesn’t move.” The naga was trying not to worry, but it wasn’t working. “I’m guessing I’m already dilated as well: I can feel one of the eggs against my cervix.”

Uncle Aki nodded, pulling his glasses up and waving his wand over her. “Egg birth it is, they aren’t hatching inside. And you are dilated by twelve centimeters. An egg birth needs at least twenty. That pressure you’re feeling is the eggs helping widen you further along than human normal.” Searching around the room, he appeared mentally calculated while surveying the available wives. “Abra, can you come here?”

“Me?” Abra asked, looking around as if there were another wasp in the room. “I’m not qualified for any of this, how can I possibly help?”

“Don’t be nervous, Padmava has been through this before…sort of. Egg labors are the most uncomplicated types of Racial births, you just catch them and set them outside the water. It will happen really fast, and then you monitor the babies as they hatch, which will come right after. The only foreseeable problem is the eggs are large. Even with Padmava’s size, she is going to have trouble pushing them out.”

Whether Abra was ready got pushed aside for the rest of the family. “Is this normal?!” Eve shouted, summoning Akisame to the writhing hobgob.

From her vagina a constant flame burned - immediately dowsed - yet hot enough the water around her simmered.

“No,” Akisame said, splashing over quickly and pulling his goggles down. “Your fire child is breach. Shilo is coming here and prepping for a cesarean while I check on the rest of the family.” Waving his wife over, Akisame studied the flames and felt his legs singe from indirect heat. “Miaka, your new Race is fireproof. I need you over here to help Shilo and me so we don’t broil.”

“Lucky I’m the one who can’t feel pain and heal up really fast,” Eve said with a smile, this whole experience feeling like yummy sex, smiling blissfully while Miaka cautiously testing her hand against Eve’s rocket crotch. “Otherwise this would suck.”

“Don’t make us force Honoka to allocate your precious Features off ya!” Quinn shouted through grit fangs, stomach looking like the twins inside her were having a boxing match inside her. “Ladies of lesser upbringin’ might take yer braggin’ the wrong way!”

“Well, this is a first,” Uncle Doctor said when he focused on the large otter, adjusting the glow of his goggles as he walked around her. “Quinn, your children are fighting each other to be first in line. It wouldn’t be much of a problem if they were human, but one is a stone golem and the other is a complete mystery to me, I think in the dragon family. Both are strong enough to damage you or themselves, and I see their umbilical cords twisting. If it gets much worse, we’ll c-sec you as well, but Eve has the priority at the moment.”

“Can I stay with her?” Dolly asked, kneeling beside Quinn in the water, her upper body still able to stay well above the water line. “I have experience birthing horses at my parent’s ranch.”

“Good enough for me,” Akisame said, peering at Banda’s largeness through his goggles, having trouble getting a solid view, sloshing back and forth in the bath while staring intently. “Hmm, I think you might have gotten too big, girl. Your baby is some form of air elemental and with your size, you might not have the ability to contract with enough force to push him out.”

“Him?” Banda asked, all kinds of excited at hearing that single word.

“Dang it, slip of the tongue,” Uncle Aki said as he patted her arm. “Congratulations, its a boy.” He went quiet for nearly a minute, thinking about the problem. “I don’t want to cut you open if I don’t have to. Air Races have a tendency to dissipate unless it is vaginal birth, something like a thirty percent chance. There’s a procedure a doctor came up with in Sweden that…”

He trailed off, smiling as he smacked himself in the head, a motion so identical to Honoka’s own occasional self-duh there was no questioning their familial relation. “I’m so stupid, the answer is obvious. Banda, you need to be smaller. Think you can handle this as a human?”

“I…I guess?” Looking around and seeing all the other wives engaged but able to reassure the taurine nonetheless, Banda’s soprano voice (which had surprisingly maintained its pitch despite her increased size) grew more confident. “Whatever’s best for the baby.”

“Hono-chan, allocate Banda’s taurine Race over to…” Looking around, he spied Gwyneth staying out of everyone’s way. “Gwyneth, can you help Banda here? Everyone else is going to be busy.”

Maybe it was a slip of the tongue, maybe Akisame meant to have Gwyneth get a crash course in allocation, maybe if Diane wasn’t contracting again Honoka would have understood there were two different sentences said by her uncle. Whatever the reason, Honoka didn’t put any thought into pulling up her Status and sliding all of Banda over to the unprepared Gwyneth.

“I’ll be glad…toooOOOI’m growing!” Gwyneth’s cries grabbed the attention of every woman not currently distracted by a contraction, skeletal structure translating the combination of a lich with a celestial taurine in a unique way. Honoka, bent over and allocating spare Health from Padmava to shake off the latest lightning jolt, was disappointed she missed the show.

Between shooting up from her tall and willowy 6’8” (203 cm) to a broad and imposing 16’0” (488 cm), other interesting changes took place well outside the norm, even for Honoka’s unique family. Not only did the ossein of Gwyneth’s body thicken beyond the bony girth of a holstaur or taurine skeleton, dozens of extra bones grew in place where bones shouldn’t or couldn’t exist on other creatures. Plates curved around her shoulders, thick bones wrapped around the humerus, ulna and radius. Her ribcage rippled and extended downward, creating what resembled ab bones while the breast formation on her chest split apart and reformed larger, then splintered again and reformed larger. In fact, the explosion of her chest as it simulated breast growth was highly unsettling and loud, causing many wives to look away as they focused on their own tasks.

“I think this would be more…something…if I weren’t undead,” Gwyneth commented, exploring how her bovine shaped skull and trying to come to terms with her newly acquired bones flexing. “Can I schedule a time for more when we aren’t in a tizzy?”

“Still hurts!” Banda shouted to Honoka, holding her shrinking tits as they fountained yellowish milk into the air and generously coated everyone in the room with lactation rain. The humaning Native American girl wanted to say more, but the shrinking of her massive womb to a normal one triggered her first contraction. Banda’s stomach bloated five times its size in less than a moment, compressing down suddenly before a burst of compressed air shot out of her vagina and detonated the water of the bath, effectively cleaning off the milk shower for the family.

“This is turning into a real circus,” Miaka commented to the room, talons under Eve’s thighs and holding her up like a wheelbarrow for Shilo to mark the incision lines with a marker and properly align the hobgoblin for surgery. This position, easy to hold for the fireproof phoenix, put the shooting flame out of Eve’s pussy in direct line of Miaka’s own love bud. Fireproof, yes, but not sensation proof. Miaka discovered her Race could experience a heatgasm and fought to stay standing while it built up again. “Hey, did we figure out how to shut off Eve’s sex aura?”

“Probably a good thing for all the laboring girls, orgasms are shots of morphine to the brain. Also loosens the vaginal canal and releases oxytocin.” Doctor Akisame - despite his words, sweat from more than just the boiling bathwater around Eve - kept his mind firmly on RBI statistics, laying out his scalpels on the edge of the bath. “It is only a problem for the rest of us.”

“You hear…aaaaaah!…that?” Diane asked Honoka, her upper body bending forward as she pushed with the contraction, a lightning bolt arcing so strongly across the floor it left another dark groove. “I think I’m giving my new Racial Feature a test drive.”

“Wait!” Honoka tried to interject, but it was too late.

The laboring succubus’ eyes rolled up and her body tensed as she twitched and spasmed. And it worked as advertised - much to the surprise of Honoka - multiple plasma bolts shot out preceding the crown of a head peaking between Diane’s legs. Some bolts hit Honoka directly, but her Health was cranked above forty points and felt no worse than sticking a nine volt battery on her tongue: shocking, but not incapacitating. Every pleasurable contraction was a contraction for the succubus, ligaments loosening unnaturally as either her Race or something from Honoka got involved. The baby didn’t just plop out, so Honoka reached down and cradled the head of her child in her hand. Every pulsing convolution Diane clenched was full bodied and brought the baby through another half an inch. Within another couple of minutes, Honoka held a baby in her arms.

Then it opened its mouth and cried.

“WAAAAHH!!”

This wasn’t just the sound of a baby, this was the cry of a nascent thunderstorm. Honoka felt her eardrums burst when the red hair on the baby’s head burst into crackling red lightning and the little baby shocked Honoka so hard she was afraid her heart would stop. It took all of her willpower to prevent her arms from spasming as she collapsed to the ground from a kneeling state, rolling to keep the baby safe. The baby girl, Honoka noted, because despite the pain, she cried openly in pure joy.

“Gah!” Akisame yelled, the blast of sound hitting his ears like an entire Oingo Boingo concert all at once, vision blurring. Which was bad, his scalpel cutting away fascia inside Eve. He paused, shaking his head violently to focus on the delicate surgery. “Shilo! I can finish up here. Go around and check the babies, get the umbilicals clamped.”

His wife not responding, Akisame reached over and nudged Shilo, startling the woman. Another couple of seconds pantomiming what he wanted, the polar bear woman nodded and stood, gathering the tools from a bag and exiting the pool.

Miaka had tried to distract herself from the immense amount of horny, staying in the moment as best as she was able, so she witnessed Diane’s wonderful moment and instinctively guessed something was about to happen. Without time or options, the phoenix used her hips and pelvis to keep Eve propped up as she covered her ears and ducked her head in the water. Still painfully loud, yet the bird retained her hearing and heard Akisame violently curse in Japanese.

Good thing Honoka is probably deaf, Miaka thought, though she changed her tune when the doctor pulled the first baby out of Eve.

“It is a kraken!” Akisame exclaimed, real panic in his voice and mannerisms as he desperately cut and clamped the umbilical. A white and slimy child, Miaka was reminded of illustrations of Azathoth, only with more tentacles. Then it swelled larger as it cried and thrashed in Akisame’s arms.

Spinning around desperately, the panicking doctor thrust a newborn child growing so much it weighed over thirty pounds into Miaka’s arms. “Get her outside, fast, before she grows large enough to collapse the building!”

To Miaka’s credit, she only hesitated for a moment before splashing out of the pool and sprinted through the halls. In that short amount of time the baby grew from the size of a dog to the size of grown adult. When Miaka stepped outside, she did all she could to keep from dropping a baby the size of a baby elephant as it continued to expand and cry, tentacles lashing at the ground and walls with enough force to crack stone. And Miaka witnessed as the baby continued to grow.

The doctor was right, Abra realized, suddenly using all four hands at once: Padmava’s eggs came out fast. With a mighty heave that knocked the naga unconscious, those eggs plopped out like an out of control monorail. One, two, three, four, the waspy wife was surprised they didn’t skip across the bath like river rocks there was so much force excreting from the scaly vagina of Padmava. Juggling her charges across from Padmava’s womanly aperture, Abra idly pondered the snaky vagina stretched and asked herself if Pad’s last name was really Parr.

Each egg was between a foot or three feet long and more oblong than egg shaped, but they were not light either. Hefting the four leathery containers, Abra noted their warmth and tried to keep the precious cargo safe. Not because Abra was clumsy, but because they were all violently shaking in her arms as she exited the pool and set them down on the towels she prepared earlier.

“You’re doin’ great, just keep breathin’,” Dolly told Quinn calmly, giving a thumbs up high enough the large and struggling mystic otter could see. “I’ve got hold of a hand…thing and I see the head…thing. Another good push and I’ll help pull…maybe.”

“Could ya be a bit more precise, Dolls?!” Quinn yelled, bracing her arms behind and mentally preparing for the next push. While the wail of Diane’s kid had been extra painful for Quinn, super beastkin hearing came with few perks and she could still hear. “Am I givin’ birth ta a baby or a toaster?!”

Dolly, on the other hand, was mostly deaf at this point and couldn’t hear the frustrations from her friend. When Dolly didn’t respond, the giant otter sat up and snagged the cheetaur’s attention, motioning for Dolly to keep explaining. Two longtime BFFs, Dolly understood the message and did her best. “I don’t know: what Race has a long neck, a rabbit’s mouth, insect antenna, with a body like the horrific cross between a chicken and a dragon?”

“Jabberwock,” Akisame said from inside Eve, tossing aside a healing potion vial. Geared in long fireproof gloves, he carefully clamped the hobgob’s second baby before lifting her out. Bright red skinned with leathery red wings and a face only mothers could love. This baby girl also radiated as much heat as a jet engine, prominent horns glowing and humming like hot pokers coming out of her head. “And this here is a Greater Demon. Where’s Miaka?”

“Aruna and Ken are back from their movie, I have them watching Attack Of The 50ft Baby outside.” Miaka had been thinking while she was outside and passed around healing potions to everyone not currently in labor. “What’s next, doc?”

“Two more kids need to be brought outside,” Akisame explained, holding the scorching demon at arms length, his face blistering from burns. “This girl has to be set away from the other babies outside because she could blow at any minute: demons store up heat energy and expel it periodically. If my estimates are correct, in ten minutes or so she will go off like a bomb. Set her down in the middle of the courtyard on some towels then get everyone away. She’ll be safe to care for after the explosion. Then rush back because Dolly will be done with Quinn’s Jabberwock. While she won’t grow as big or as quickly as Eve’s kraken, it will be close.”

“She?” Quinn asked in pure joy, before her sharp teeth bit through her lip when the next contraction hit.

“Push?” Gwyneth said without inflection or assurance, towering over Banda’s brown and toned Native American body between her legs. Gwyneth stared critically at Banda’s exposed pussy as if it were Thanksgiving, waiting for the pin to pop on the turkey in the oven. When the lich had been pregnant before the Change, she studied up on lots of relevant information to expect when expecting. However, she lacked practical knowledge. All her knowledge was more than five years old, scrambled further with numerous psychotic breaks.

Banda wasn’t sure how to do this. She felt plenty of movement inside her womb, but it was like someone stuck a pneumatic hose inside her twat and randomly shot air bursts. Nothing felt solid inside, so she wasn’t sure how to push her baby out. The random explosions of air were not pleasant, filling her beyond human capacity then forcing all her muscles to push the excess out, only the Status’ cartoon logic keeping her from turning into a popped balloon. Also, the farm girl never thought of herself as weak before the Change: she had abs and impressive biceps, yet as the Lenape woman panted and sweat and held onto breasts only as large as cantaloupes, Banda missed her sweet, sweet muscles.

Padmava moaned and tried to wake up from the pain as Abra gently emptied part of a vial of healing potion into the naga’s mouth. Both women became alert when they heard a loud noise.

*crack!*

*crackcrack!*

“Are we supposed to help the eggs or let them break free on their own?” Abra asked, watching as one tiny clawed and feathered hand pushed a tiny part of the hard membrane apart while another had spidery legs punching through. “I remember reading somewhere you shouldn’t help animals hatch.”

“Only an issue if it takes longer than three hours for them to break out. That’s when they run out of air,” Akisame said as he pulled the last baby girl out of Eve and held her in his arms. This little African skinned angel appeared human in every way, which seemed to relieve Akisame as he finished clamping and smiled down at the baby as she cried, holding out a finger for the tiny hand to latch onto.

Which is when the newborn grasped his finger and broke it.

“ちく…!” Akisame, clearly in pain, kept his arms steady as he extricated his finger and gave the baby to Eve’s hesitant arms. “Hono-chan! We have a titan girl over here! They’re born with a Strength score in the fifties and its going to get higher in the next month. Give Eve at least thirty points so she can hold the baby and keep the newborn from hurting herself.”

Honoka nodded, holding onto her own baby after Aunt Shilo helped with the umbilical only with a combination of Endurance and Health. The tiny girl wasn’t crying now, her mulatto brown skin occasionally flickering a thin arc of lightning along the tiny body, crackly red hair subdued as she slept in Honoka’s arms. Diane lay nearby, still dazed and drained of energy from the whole business. Honoka looked around the room to see who could donate to the cause.

“Pad and Gwyneth, you’re both losing some swoll!” Honoka announced, making the changes.

“This baby is growing fast!” Dolly yelled, holding onto a squirmy and wiggly jabberwock girl as best she could, already doubling in size since leaving Quinn. Shilo worked as quickly as possible to get the cord clamped and cut. Miaka returned at this moment and jumped into the pool with a hiss of steam, helping the struggling cheetaur to keep the baby still.

“Coming through, giant baby coming through!” Miaka yelled as she ran with the chimerian baby in her arms, large as a great dane and rapidly increasing mass.

“Oh! Oh! I feel it!” Banda was suddenly filled with the painful yet reassuring feeling of having something solid in her vaginal canal, stretching past capacity as she felt something tear from the suddenness of the moment. “Ah! Going to need healing soon!”

Gwyneth had been a little surprised as her bones lost density, though she kept focused. When a translucent head poked through between Banda’s legs, Gwyneth was ready and pulled a healthy baby boy out of the water, its cries no louder than many of the other screaming children. No louder, but they came with a forceful wind that would have knocked anyone else other than a skeleton off their feet, gusts whistling through her bones. He felt solid enough to the lich, possessing weight and mass. However, it was like holding a ghost in her arms, able to see through the dark brown skin to the other side.

Abra found herself with too many babies. She shouldn’t have worried, the hatching went very quickly and it wasn’t a few minutes more before four beautiful monsters were in four arms of the nervous apis girl. Padmava slumped against the side of the tub, drifting into an exhausted sleep again, leaving Abra holding a furry tiger girl, a much larger girl with light fur on her body but the head of an elephant, a cute brown girl with spider legs growing out of her back and a long and growing serpentine boy with white scales and rainbow feathers. In fact, the panicking woman had kind of frozen until Miaka returned and saw the distress on the face of the poor girl.

“I got this,” Miaka said, picking up the growing serpent boy and wrapping it around her as it expanded from boa constrictor to anaconda in size. Miaka’s newly acquired Strength was the only reason she marched out of the room under her own power before he got much larger.

“And push!” Dolly shouted, the crowning of a stone head breaking through, only Quinn’s new girth allowing the giant boulder shoved through the otter’s vagina happen naturally.

“Aaaah!” Quinn exclaimed as she hunched her body and gave it her all, hands cracking the tiles on the side of the bath as Quinn pushed! and Dolly pulled the last child out.

“Its a boy!” Dolly said, struggling to hold up the massive rocky baby as it cried like a collapsing coalmine. He weighed at least five hundred pounds and looked like Pyornkrachzark’s more adorable son with brown stone for skin.

Shilo was nearby and had the clamps on in seconds, then with Dolly’s help they were able to heave the screaming child out of the tub and onto towels laid next to Honoka. “Is that all of them?” Shilo asked, smiling down at the baby made of stone and making funny bear faces at him.

“All babies delivered, all looking healthy so far,” Akisame said as he used simple clamps to hold Eve’s allocated muscle stomach closed before he poured healing potion on top of the womb and moved onto the abdomen. “Get them into the nursery and I’ll do a more thorough check up there.”

“Nursery?” Honoka asked absently, gritting her teeth when the baby in her arms buzzed her harder than normal. It hadn’t been real before, but for the first time Honoka realized she was the mother of eleven more children. “Where’s the nursery?”

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

The less said about what the dungeon did to the various placenta expelled by the women, the better.

Labor may have finished, but the entire family worked overtime for hours afterward as everyone pitched in to care for the newborns. Abra in particular proved to be a godsend after clearing out Basement 2 and deciding that would have enough room for the care and sleeping arrangements of the children, including three mega-sized babies. Particularly, Abra’s ability to excrete concrete wax and section off a fourth of the basement into a giant aquarium (using all the spare water TCs in the house to fill it) for Eve’s kraken baby.

The logistics of moving such large newborns into a tiny hall and down stairs would have been impossible until Diane came to the rescue. Akisame confirmed it would be safe to the joy and relief of everyone: the Humaning Potion the alchemist invented a week before was the solution. With lots of happy tears, the new mothers were able to hold their massive children in their arms for the hour time frame of the potion before they expanded again into Rampage worthy monsters. Each mother even got to bond with their children, breast feeding them while they had this chance because each of those Humaning potions were too expensive to use on a daily basis.

Feeding the kids proved to be an endeavor. Many of these kids equipped with unique powers that made it dangerous to even hold them, and the large children needed exponentially more food in them for proper nutrition (even the smaller children chugged milk by the gallon). Banda blessed herself and went bibbity-bobbity BOOBS to take care of everyone’s babies, but that was a short term fix to a long term problem.

Exhausted and running low on MP, Honoka took some time to spend three points on each of the post-pregnant wives to clear up any stretching or torn ligaments or - in the case of Banda - torn vaginal canals, to get them all healthy and healed. Braced to return into the dream castle, Honoka was relieved the old menu was back. It only took a few minutes to situate everyone as the family collapsed onto cushions in the newly refurbished nursery.

“Can we sleep now?” Eve asked, a sleeping baby in her arms as Miaka rocked the hobgob’s second nearby and the third snored bubbles from her own private tank behind the exhausted mother. Eve wore what amounted to a blanket, the current clothing of choice for most of the family. The family wardrobe emergancy was pressing heavily in the back of everyone’s minds. “I mean, are we allowed to sleep?”

“With this many kids, I think you’ll have to sleep in shifts.” Aunt Shilo moved around the wives, holding a crystal wand she waved over one girl, check the colors that showed, then moving onto the next. “Right now is probably going to be the last time all the children are asleep at the same time for the next couple of years.”

“Weird question,” Gwyneth asked, standing and slowly rocking Diane’s lightning girl in her arms, a lich body immune to the shocks. “Why do you have so many towels? Good that you had them, but I’ve counted over a hundred of them used so far today.”

“Haha, never been asked that, but the answer is simple,” Padmava said, holding her spider girl and elephant lion in her arms while Jaya held the tiger and Aruna watched over the thirty feet (9.2 m) of white serpent. “Nagas have a lot of body to dry after a bath and I love to take baths. Rather than wash them all every day, I had my husband buy me so many towels I would never run out before laundry day.”

Honoka took a look around the room and felt a warmth inside that wouldn’t go away, holding Diane as the succubus napped in her arms. Trying to stay awake herself, Honoka pulled up her Status and her phone to take notes on all the new changes going around. If nothing else, the headache would keep her up.

Dolly helped Abra shore up the walls of the aquarium, making sure the water coming out of the Transmutation Crystals they rigged for the improvised tank would hold until a more permanent solution was constructed. It wasn’t as if Dolly changed much after Harmony Castle, having the least amount of points spent on her. A little Strength went a long way in her lower half, though, packing on the swollage to her feline body. However, what Honoka noticed the most was the cheetaur girl constantly smiling. Something so small, it made Honoka happy that she was a part of helping the traumatized woman heal.

The tank itself held Eve’s firstborn, Uzume Hannah Jefferson. A pale and hairless child with over thirty tentacles sprouting all over her body, the fifty foot long (15.2 m) kraken loved the water and immediately immersed herself when they filled it, only swimming up for air when Banda presented a teat for feeding.

Miaka become as muscled as Banda today - at least, as much as Banda had been yesterday. Between the Strength gained from points as well as the bonuses from turning into a phoenix, the bird woman was ripped and cut like a feathered Hulk, especially in her shoulders and arms. While she learned to keep her feathers from burning people around her, she still glowed like a fireplace, holding the red demon girl in her arms.

Zoe Rosa Jefferson, the crimson bundle of heat in Miaka’s arms, was probably never going to win any beauty contests. Even though there is a universal law that all babies are cute, some babies are cuter than others. Little Zoe was on the bottom of that scale as a greater demon to anyone outside this room. Her face was jagged and sharp, pointy edges all over it, black wings sprouting from her back and hoofed feet twitching in her sleep. Miaka softly sang a Japanese lullaby as if this little girl was all that mattered.

♫ ここへおいでよ　疲れた愛を ♫
♫ 心を　僕が抱いてあげるよ ♫
♫ すべての痛みを忘れられるまで ♫
♫ おやすみ　おやすみ　僕のこの胸で ♫

I know that song, Honoka thought, the lyrics talking about holding someone as they fell asleep, taking away the pain with love. It was lovely, and Miaka had a wonderful voice, but the tone was a touch sad. Honoka almost placed it, then it slipped away while finishing putting the numbers into her list and moving onto the next wife.

For no reason yet determined, when Honoka allocated Banda back to her new celestial taurine self, she was no longer twenty feet tall (6 m) and brimming with all kinds of extra points. Still large at fifteen feet (4.6 m), the massive woman carefully held her sleeping child in one arm while absently trying to do something with the shining halo hovering over her head. It was apparently only a light show, her hand passing through the ring of white light. Nothing dimmed or did much to block the brightness, causing the bovine to sigh in frustration. Banda rocked her baby against breasts that would need to apply for statehood if they got any bigger and tried to ignore her frustrations.

Thomas Honda Jefferson was a djinn. With his ability to become a floating cloud of air, Banda was already worrying how to keep track of this kid in the near future. Right now he looked like a bundle of adorableness, tiny translucent brown fingers in his mouth, chewing on his hands in his sleep.

Outwardly, not much changed about Padmava. Which wasn’t entirely true, Honoka smiling at the bright pink scales covering the doting mother. Jaya begged for the color change earlier and squealed in delight when Padmava finally gave in. Her thicker scaled skin made her look thicc-er, her tail appearing like it had swallowed another naga it was that much girthier. Otherwise, Padmava was content to be the same person.

In one set of arms the naga held Rani Chanise Jefferson, forty pounds of half elephant and half lion, the odd Race listed as a gajasimha. Her trunk rolled up as she slept, Honoka wanted to run over there and play with those big floppy ears as soon as she was done with the updates. Padmava’s other arms held a perfect angel of a girl with eight spider legs closed in around her from her back. Nidhi Myne Jefferson may look peaceful now, but Diane recognized her jorōgumo Race immediately and lamented the poor girl growing up, having met a few similar spider girls when she worked at Solomon’s. The succubus knew they jorōgumo had a Hunger meter requiring ten times as much sexual energy as a most other Demonics. When Padmava began worried, Diane assured her that it won’t happen immediately, the Hunger not setting in until puberty.

Jaya held a little tiger girl in her arms, a rakshasa. A shape changing Race, this tiger form would only be the first of a thousand once the child discovered how to flex those thaumatic muscles. Sarah Alice Jefferson appeared no different from a beastkin girl, but the reversed joints in her hands were the dead give away. Padmava had her phone out with a spare hand, boning up on her mythology for any clues into the currently minimally documented Race.

Aruna was doing what he could to care for his elongated half-brother, Arun Jefferson. Measuring over seventy-two feet (22 m), his mass wasn’t as much as Zoe’s kraken body, the white snake body currently curled into a spiral on the floor and sleeping on himself. A qezicoatle, the white scales were regularly spaced with bright and shimmering feathers of a variety of colors. The effect made it difficult to determine if the boy was a scaled bird or a feathered lizard. No wings, arms or legs, the family had their first fright when the baby levitated into the air earlier and cried as he wiggled along the ceiling.

In Honoka’s mind, it was so odd to see Quinn ten feet tall (3 m) and blue. It shouldn’t have been, odd was the normal around here, but there it was. Quinn was determined to hold her rocky boulder of a baby in her arms, even if her face pinched in pain and arms struggled to hold him up, she cradled the sleeping boy and glared at anyone who tried to tell her to take a break.

One oddity Honoka noticed after spending the points to clean up all the pregnant girls was a new entry in what Honoka dubbed the Deity Option for Quinn. All the girls had one, the weird and outrageously expensive Harmony pick that implied there was a pantheon of beings who controlled the Status. As if, with enough points, one of the girls could answer yes to Zuul. In Quinn’s case, her new option was simply Meet Bob, seven hundred and fifty points. Browsing through her other options, this Bob character showed up in a lot of Quinn’s Racial Features, some kind of trickster or luck god. Shrugging, it looked like there was more to mystic otters than Honoka realized and put a pin in that idea for later.

Kenneth looking bored like any teenager, his head nodding up and down as he tried to stay awake next to the slumbering form of Hope Sen Jefferson, Quinn’s jabberwock daughter. Only twenty feet long (6 m) - and Honoka chuckled a little at that only twenty feet - this baby packed more mass than Arun Jr. did. Rabbit head, long and flexible neck, body of a dragon meeting a chicken, the color scheme of her orange feathers meeting green scales clashed badly. Jarring to look at, even if she was cute in a way this family loved. Currently flopped on her stomach - perfectly fine and not dangerous for jabberwocks, so says Doctor Akisame - her large rabbit head chewed the air as she slept and occasionally nibbled on Kenneth’s pant legs.

Until they understood how Eve’s new arousal Feature worked, the gaunt and creepy hobgoblin sat at least twenty feet (6 m) away from the other girls, which she did with a pouting face. Pouting, at least, until glancing down and smiling a mouth full of fangs at her sleeping daughter. Eve’s new Race wore a body belonging on death metal albums. Yet with her thinner waist, larger lactating breasts and Charisma boosting plump hips, she pulled off an infernal temptress instead of spindly body horror. Still, Honoka was sure those daddy-long-legged fingers of hers were cameoing in Honoka’s nightmares tonight.

In contrast, the most human looking child in the litter, Trinity Jami-Lee Jefferson, was a precious black skinned girl with tiny tufts of crinkly black hair on her head. And when she slept, she would stay that way. Eve was still healing four other fracture bones at that moment. It had been an interesting juggling of allocated points to get Trinity fed as massive titan Strength made it possible for her to injure any unprepared mother.

Slumped in Honoka’s lap, Diane blissfully snored like a chainsaw. From a thaumian transference perspective, the birth of Legendary children wasn’t just a physical process, it was also magical. The babies needed a jump start on their own magical powers, and they got that from the mothers. This explained why the five wives were uncommonly exhausted, despite Status buffs. Diane in particular was hit the hardest, unable to stay awake for longer than a few minutes at a time. Which was a shame, because Honoka was horny and could really use those giant mammaries hanging off the succubus’ chest for a quick titjob. It wasn’t even normal horny, because watching all these girls give birth was the singular most intimate thing Honoka ever experienced. Bringing Honoka’s mind back to Diane’s tits. They were huge! Not <em>Banda</em> huge, but on Diane’s smaller frame, they looked larger in proportion. Diane had succeeded in become a walking pair of tits and her arms hugged them in her sleep like teddy bears.

Horny took a back seat, though. Emotions were running high, and not all of them were happy. Diane cried bitterly earlier, only able to hold her baby for a short time before Honoka’s MP ran low and Gwyneth took over. There was no helping it, Buttercup Haru Jefferson possessed too much electrical force running through her body. Until the child learned to control her raijin Racial Features, she could stop the heart of anyone taking care of her without proper allocation. Diane swore she would work on making a pile of potions so the wives could care for all their special needs children, determined to hold her child in her arms as much as she possibly could.

Glancing over the stats on her phone, Honoka pinched her face in a grouch when she noted she was currently the shortest wife in the group. Petty and vain as it was, Honoka’s grouch turned into a sly grin as she realized there might be a way to fix that particular problem in the near future with her new ability to eat anything from All Is Útangarðr. She would see about give herself an early birthday present sometime later.

“They all look beautiful, and I will fight anyone who says otherwise.”

Spinning around in surprise - jostling Diane awake in the process - Honoka gave a happy squeal as her mother bent down and hugged her daughter. A number of wives with sleeping children shushed Honoka before quietly waving weakly in their tired states.

“I thought you were coming tomorrow,” Honoka said, discovering more people coming down the stairs, her father and brothers waving as they made their way down.

“It is tomorrow, silly,” Uzume said, pinching Honoka’s cheek as she gave a brief hug and kiss to Diane’s head. “Aki and Shilo have kept me up to date and let me know why you wouldn’t be meeting us as the airport.”

“I’m sorry, I’m a terrible hostess,” Honoka said as she extricated herself from Diane and stood, the difference in height with her mother jarring for a moment before she adjusted her ill fitting shirt and skirt and gave a short bow. “Let me show you to your rooms and…”

“You will do no such thing.” The iron in the voice of the woman known by her students as the Little Tsunami brokered no argument, Uzume quickly taking charge. Dressed in the comfortable uniform of traveling, only wearing a woman’s green polo shirt over white shorts, the five foot one inch (155 cm) woman patted Honoka’s hand and gazed around the room. “You girls are all exhausted and need sleep. Your sisters-in-law and I will take over. Cholena and a few others from Banda’s family will be here in half an hour for feeding rotations. Your brothers and father will organize the others in rooms and get luggage moved. We can talk after you all get some sleep.”

It was a testament to the general state of exhaustion in the room that the women agreed, helping to settle babies on makeshift bundles of blankets and bedding before marching up to their rooms and falling into their beds.

As Honoka drifted into dreamland, spooning Padmava, Honoka found herself at peace for the first time in weeks. The assurance of having her mother here stole away so much of what weighed upon the troubled woman. With a content smile on her face, not even the flying monkeys in her dreams bothered the newly minted mother.