Becoming Monsters: In the Mirror 49

This is still a story of the Becoming Monsters universe by Ai Loves, setting used with permission. All canonical and mechanical errors are my own. The yarrb is the exceedingly cute creation of FelisRandomis, used with permission.

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Chapter 49: Working Together

The bus ride home was quiet. Pensive, in a way. There was a lot to chew on, both from what we had just escaped and what we were headed towards. Both Emily and Gloria leaned into me, the three of us taking comfort together. Under my right arm, Emily gave herself a bit of a shake. "We were busy this morning and distracted at church, but Mom and I finally got a time and place decided."

"Good to hear, Emily. Where are we going?"

She smiled a bit. "Zoo trip on Tuesday morning. I got permission from Central Cascadia to go for research, given a couple of cases we are facing and my own recent Status concerns. Both you and Lucy have permission to come as well. Same with Sarah."

"For research, of course."

"Of course." Emily smiled a bit more. Good. I liked seeing her smile. "Mom's a Human, so you know. Looks a lot like me, just a bit shorter and has a lot of gray hair. About half of them are my fault, if I'm being honest."

Raising my own stone-hued hand, "I can't say as I mind gray. If she raised someone like you, I definitely look forward to the meeting."

Emily suddenly got shy and tried to bury herself under my arm. Gloria got a grin of her own. "Suave. Tell me, do you come up with those on the spot or do you save them up?"

"Unfortunately the latter, mostly. Some puns come in the moment, but I feel like my Dad Joke license will help that along once... our daughter is born."

Gloria quirked her head. "I heard that pause. What didn't you say?"

I shook my own head back at her. "Something I really shouldn't until I talk about it with Lucy." The bus, for once, decided to get to our stop at a convenient time. "Come on. Sarah's waiting."

There was some light-natured grumbling until we got to the elevator. Very shortly after the doors closed, Emily reached over and hit the Stop button. "Jeremiah, you did it again. No ejaculations this morning, which puts you past twelve hours. Gloria, mind helping? I'd prefer to handle this myself, but you'll be faster."

Gloria nodded, and grinned much more widely. "Of course, Emily." Without any more foreplay than that, she knelt down, pulled down my pants, and swallowed the entirety of my rapidly-rising hardness. Balls and all, her lips encased me as the incredible suction she was capable of pulled me in. As had become my unfortunate habit in the last few days, I could immediately feel the swollen load of my balls, protesting the cruel lengths I had been ignoring them (all fourteen hours). Then, Gloria did something. Something I recognized, since the only other person who had ever managed to do it to me was my wife, whose Race allowed her to take my entirety as well while retaining tongue control.

Gloria's own tongue explored every inch of my member while keeping the relentless pressure up, but then snaked in to press against a couple of particular spots that sent me directly into overdrive. I began to cum, a longer and more drawn-out kind of thing than had recently been my norm, and didn't stop. I could feel each amazing contraction pushing my load out into Gloria's waiting mouth as she made sure to drain me absolutely dry. On and on, like she was enjoying the thickest and creamiest milkshake in town.

Like before, she practically shuddered in pleasure as I Fed upon her, but this time it seemed... different. More intense, deeper. Like it meant something, though what it might be I had no clue. It was with a sigh that she let me go, that she helped me put it away and get my pants secured. Like Emily had predicted, the whole thing had taken barely a minute and small change. I hadn't exactly been holding back, and I'd really needed that. I felt the elevator start moving again as she released it.

The scene in our home was an odd one. The fist-sized Hunger Battery sat upon Sarah's table, which itself was uncharacteristically lacking other clutter besides one small glass bottle in a stand. Within was a crimson liquid I could not readily identify. Perhaps an Enchanting component, though if so not one I recognized from my days of collecting them.

Seated in front of the desk was Sarah, but not in any way I recognized. For one, she was wearing safety equipment. Hardened goggles covered her eyes, and she had on my mail armor. In her right hand was an eye dropper containing some of that red liquid. In her left, a magnifying glass with designs carved into it, faintly glowing. One of her desk tools, for observing energy flows. She was observing the battery closely, as she held the dropper over it.

Lucy was three steps behind her, hands shimmering with a trigger finger on her favorite Shield spell. Wise of her.

A single drop fell from the dropper, and in the air I suddenly saw it for what it was. As the liquid fell, the air around it shimmered to my sight. Hunger, lots of it, in a physically distilled form. It struck the crystal lens of the battery, and I saw it light up oddly. Where my charge had brightly filled it from one end to the other, this time the power flowed slowly and evenly through it... but very dimly.

Sarah's manic grin let me know that she had seen whatever it was she was there to look for. Frantically, she scribbled a full page of diagrams and notes. A moment later she looked up, finally noticing the three of us had walked in. "Good timing you three. I have one more experiment to run since this one was successful."

I raised an eyebrow at her. Bit of a new feeling being the one to deliver it to someone else. "What did you just experiment with? I don't recognize that."

"I'd be surprised if you had. Remember Diane? That Alchemist I told you I called?" I nodded. "This potion is one she invented, and she hasn't shared the recipe with anyone. Hunger Potion, basically a Feeding in a bottle. She mailed me a bottle with her best wishes after we spoke. It got here a couple of days ago but I didn't think we'd need it. Looks like I was wrong."

"You still didn't explain what you did."

"Oh, uh... well, in Agnes's library I found a passage on utilizing the Law of Contamination in reverse. Any Demonic can drink this potion, it's a blank kind of energy. Just used it to prime the battery. In theory, as long as inputs stay even a little bit balanced between Hunger types, that base priming should theoretically osmose into it and clean it."

"Meaning...?"

"It won't cause Resonance Shock."

I could feel myself getting excited. "Wait, let me see if I understand this. You need us all, other than Lucy, to dump Hunger into it, and it will turn it all into a form she can use?"

"Exactly. Any one of us can be up to half of the total. That means you, Jay, you can hold way more than any of us. If my napkin math holds? You can put about three percent of your max capacity into this, and let the rest of us balance it. Give it an hour to blend right, and this time it should work."

We were assembled once more. Whitney reached out to deposit some of her turbulent and violent energies into the battery. Sarah followed her, her sleepy focus blending with it. The deceptive and elusive power of Emily joined them, and the hungry drive of Gloria. Amber's own were of service then, and Paige's held high. Finally, I reached out my own hand, my focus and will filling it to the brim. I could see, in a way nobody else could, how the forces within the device strained and tumbled.

In my physical sight, I could see the lights and colors on the battery itself shift and flow in subtle patterns, rapidly at first but slowing down ever so gradually. Looking around the room, I realized we were, one and all, holding our breaths. "I don't know if it's doing exactly what Sarah said, but I can see it calming down. Slowly. Sarah, no offense, but all things considered I think I'd prefer to give this two or three hours instead of one."

She pulled out the magnifying tool I saw earlier and gave another look. "It's proceeding, alright. Looking at the delta flow of the thaumic powers, as compared to..."

"English, please."

"It should be ready in thirty minutes, but I agree that we need to wait. Just to make sure."

My phone buzzed at me. Incipient portal alarm, and close. "No time to talk, Gate alert! Lucy, Amber, Whitney, with me. Portal close. Sarah, you stay here and make sure nothing goes wrong with the project. Emily, Gloria, Paige, keep Nibbles with you and hang back. Call it a hunch, but we might need you to launch against another threat, or call you for backup. By the time we're back, we should be good to test the Greater Masterwork." Acknowledgements all around as we got into our gear. Whitney picked up Amber. I scooped up my wife, and with a flap of my wings set out on a glide path, the mighty Succubus in a bridal carry.

We both rather enjoyed it, despite what we were headed towards.

As the wind rushed past on our glide path, I heard Amber yell from behind me. "Where exactly is the Gate? I didn't get the alert."

"Visible from the intersection of 51st and Fife, supposed to be in a parking lot."

Amber's tone was desperate "Fly faster! That's right next to Nate's school!"

Lucy yelled back over the increasing thunder of wings, "it's Sunday! There shouldn't be anyone there!"

"There's a track meet going on, his girlfriend is competing!"

... okay, there's a lot to unpack there. Time for that later. "Whitney! Flap harder, come on!" As we rounded the corner, I was relieved to see the narrow vertical line of the red Gate still forming. It hadn't opened yet, though it could any second. That was the end of the good news, as three more things became evident. First was a second alert, this one a single loose monster on Rainier Road, which Paige was immediately headed towards. The second was that the Track Meet was actively going on, though granted the people were scrambling to get away from the sudden danger.

Third? That gate was forming directly in the middle of the parking lot, which meant both that there was likely to be a lot of property damage with the cars and buses there, and that the means of rapid escape for the roiling crowd was cut off. It snapped open, the yawning red portal now a ten-foot disk.

No help for it. I'd rather every car there be flattened than a single life be lost. With any luck, what came out of the Gate would be relatively few and mid-sized threats. Too big to hide under vehicles, not big enough to...

The foot that emerged from the portal was larger than my entire body, slamming down onto a nearby SUV with enough force to crush its engine block to the ground. Roughly human in appearance other than its size and gray-green color, out emerged a leg just as huge. Ducking through the portal was a fifteen-foot figure, hugely muscled even relative to its size, with one enormous eye in its face. With a roar, it pulled an equally-enormous stone club out of the Gate... which remained open. More might be coming.

No time to waste. "Lucy! This one's your kind of target! Amber, you and I are on pistols and shields. Whitney, try to disable that club!" As I swapped to my heavy pistol and Lucy began launching fists of flaming force at the Cyclops, I heard a familiar high buzzing sound. Two aerial drones were suddenly in the area, recording the goings-on. Bingo. "Chaske! Misun! Get your other drones out here and keep the civilians away! I also have a responder going to a monster elsewhere, if you got the alert!" A tinny acknowledgement came as I got into a safer position between the monster and my wife, then started taking shots at the thing's center of mass.

Here's the thing about gunfire in the city. No matter how permissible it is while fighting monsters, a couple of extra considerations had to be kept in mind. One always had to be aware of what was beyond the target, and always aim for easy hits rather than higher potential damage unless the situation was desperate. Amber and I were doing damage, but not as quickly as we might. Enough to draw the thing's attention, though. Enough to let Whitney get up close.

Pro tip: if you are a monster and you are somehow reading this, "Whitney up close" is something you need to avoid.

Most people, when they hear "disable the club", would naturally gravitate towards attacking the club itself. It was certainly large enough to be a fair target. Not Whitney. She had apparently been a bit of a Star Wars fan since approximately the time she came out of her mother's womb. Her glowing sword swept upwards as she jumped up at her target, assisted by a mighty beat of her wings, and sliced entirely through the monster's right wrist. The club, predictably, fell out of the severed hand and onto a pickup truck, which in turn lost basically all of its pickup as it got crushed by a half-ton of falling rock.

The Cyclops's roar of pain was interrupted by a much larger force bolt across the jaw from my wife, toppling it over. Reflexively, I pulled up Cursebreaker to check the target, but no. This time, the monster was just a monster. Whitney's next strike decapitated it cleanly. The sudden silence was shocking, as the Gate suddenly snapped shut. "Everyone good?" A chorus of assent. As fights went, this one had been quick and clean. More or less ideal by Surface Hunter standards, despite the property damage. "Alright. Get to cleanup and loot. Twins, you know the drill with reporting."

A voice came from one of the drones. "Boss?" It sounded like Misun, our people person... er, squid. "Boss, something's wrong. That Gate shut after only one monster, and the body is still there. It hasn't dropped loot yet."

An instant chill ran down my spine. The Gates had very, very few things in common with one another. Their size changed, the duration they stayed open changed, their locations changed. Thing is? There were a few things that were ALWAYS true. Among these was the fact that they always let out at least two monsters. With a sense of dread, I turned to face the gigantic corpse, laying atop two heaps of crushed metal that used to be cars. The power of Scan came to me, and I looked over the readout rapidly.

Race: Myconid.

Oh.

Oh, no.

As the body began to shift once more, the skin beginning to bulge, I desperately yelled out "get clear! Fungus beasts!" Whitney almost managed it, as the giant body exploded. The blast wave sent her flying uncontrolled several dozen feet, though she managed to right herself before landing on a sedan that folded under the force. From the smoky spore cloud emerged a dozen man-sized horrors. Vaguely humanoid, but composed of writhing, wormlike tendrils of fibrous vines. They were moving fast, too, the first ones among them practically on top of me before I could holster my gun. My Shield Gauntlet stopped the first, but I had no hope of getting my Saber out of its scabbard in time to intercept the other two coming at me.

Turns out, I didn't have to. A blur of silver interposed itself, rapidly fending off the incoming attacks. Blocking with a pair of batons moving as quickly as striking serpents, swatting others aside. The blur stilled, into a familiar form. Standing thin and gangly, skin shining in the mercury tone of a Metal Slime, no longer hiding under a hoodie but rather in a school tee shirt. Nathan Nichols. My student, and Amber's little brother. Also the reason I was not currently being swarmed under, as the three we'd blocked were joined by three more, now cautiously circling us. I pulled out my Guild Leader's Saber as they did so.

"Nathan, glad you're doing well. You realize, of course, that I'm supposed to tell you that you're underage and not yet a Delver, and need to get clear?"

"Of course, sir, will do as soon as we're no longer surrounded. Any tips on how to handle these things?" Nathan's insecurities of the recent past had been exchanged for quite a mouth, at least when he was in his element. Not sure how much I liked the change, but considering the situation I'd take it.

Whitney and Amber were posted up by Lucy, keeping the other pack of Myconids away from her. They could take some hits. She couldn't. Of course, Lucy did have a different trick up her sleeve. One of their assailants was rapidly reduced to ash by a white-hot Flame Ray.

"Yeah, keep them off of me while I douse them in fire." Many husbands do not like taking advice from their wives. I'm not one of those morons. Calling up my wife's favorite spell myself, I unleashed a Ray of orange flame at the nearest foe to light it on fire. This was followed by another favorite from the Guild, Gloria's own Firebomb. That one unfortunately missed its intended target, instead dousing an oversized and double-parked truck in mystic napalm. Its truck nuts melted rapidly.

Nathan jabbed one of the more adventurous ones who got too close with the tip of his baton. "Explain again what you're supposed to be setting ablaze?"

At that moment, Whitney caught one off guard and launched it into the conflagration. I looked over at Nate and simply said "that," then rammed one which found itself in the wrong position hard enough to land it in the same place. Four down, eight to go.

Seven, when Amber caught one off guard with a Molotov Cocktail she pulled out of her Extradimensional Space. Four, when three clustered together and got caught in a Fireball from my wife... along with an Edison car. Looked like it might have been stolen, but it wouldn't be going anywhere again.

Lucy and I finished the last few with Flame Rays, while the others cut off their escape. It was... okay, not quite a clean set of kills, but we came out uninjured. "Chaske, Misun, cut the feed. Lucy, Amber, Whitney, go ahead and get the loot and Coins. Nathan, I need you to go get your principal, or otherwise the senior school official who is out here. I need to call the fire department and Office of Public Protection."

The OPP assessors, when they arrived, nearly broke down in tears at the collateral damage. I'd not be getting much of a monetary reward for this particular interception, though thankfully our chosen tactics were protected by the kind of enemy we were taking on when it came to liability. Fire didn't have much to deal with, what we did was down to a smolder and didn't spread by the time they got there.

And then... there was the woman in a suit who was walking our way, led by Nathan, trailed by what seemed like a third of the people who had been at the field itself. I stepped forward to them, away from where the officials were doing their work. Standing next to Nate was a fairly attractive Human teenager in athletic clothes. The mystery girlfriend? Perhaps. "Ma'am, I assume you are the principal of the school?"

"Vice Principal Stewart." She held out her hand.

I took and shook it. "And I am Jeremiah Kithkin, Guild Leader of Shield Against Shadows. My team just stopped a moderately nasty incursion here, my apologies for the fire damage to your lot and a few of the vehicles in it."

"Quite alright. This lot has needed a repave for a bit anyway, and this way we can get the city to do it."

"Well, I'm glad for that. I do need to ask you something, though." I noticed that several of the students had phones out and were recording me. The Twins would be mad, but I needed to do this now. And... maybe give a bit of a gift to a certain Metal Slime.

"What might that be?"

I took a deep breath, planning my words. When I spoke, I made sure to do so clearly and a bit more loudly than normal, letting my pride leak into my Aura. "Many of you know who and what I am, and what I have done. This student, Nathan Nichols, is a rare talent in my field. Underage to be a Delver, but he has proven himself repeatedly. Saved my life at least twice, if you include today. Tomorrow morning, if possible, I need him excused from classes in order to present him at the Guild Hall, there to be entered on the Protectorate rolls of my Guild in recognition of these and more."

"This is a high honor, Guild Leader Kithkin. He is a good student, as well, and his studies won't suffer for it. Only question is if he and his father agree."

Nathan was already dialing his dad. "I absolutely do, ma'am! Mr. Kithkin taught me a lot and helped me when he didn't have to. When I turn eighteen, I want to join his Guild."

The phone connected. Nathan spoke rapidly. After a moment, he put the phone on speaker. A gruff, tired voice came from it. "Jeremiah. You again."

"Yes, sir. All promises that we exchanged when last we spoke have been fulfilled. Let no man say that I am not a man of my word. I ask you now for permission to enter Nathan Nichols, your son, into the rolls of Shield Against Shadows, there to be instructed and nurtured in his abilities by me and mine, until such time as he attains majority and can decide to join us as a Delver or go his own way. What say you, sir?"

"I set those tasks before you expecting neither to see completion. We need to speak again, but for now: I, Ian Nichols, give my permission for my son, Nathan Nichols, to be your apprentice."

The crowd erupted in raucous cheers, the girl hugging Nathan tightly, the Vice Principal grinning. It took some time for this to calm, even aided by a projection from me. Eventually, people noticed that I was not done. "Nathan. We will do the official documentation tomorrow morning, but stand tall. Repeat after me." The words were not ones I had used in a long time. Years. The ladies of my Guild did not join me that way. "I, state your name and class."

"I, Nathan Nichols, Specter Rogue."

"Do, of my own free will."

"Do, of my own free will."

"Choose to join the Guild, Shield Against Shadows, with all that entails." My heart was pounding, tears of pride in my eyes.

"Choose to join the Guild, Shield Against Shadows, with all that entails."

"My life their life. My blood their blood."

"My life their life. My blood their blood." I saw him look past my shoulder, at his sister, who I could feel looking right back.

"Until the time the shadows no longer threaten."

"Until the time the shadows no longer threaten."

The last words almost stuck in my throat. I had lived and bled for these words for a long time. For highs and lows. Hundreds lived today for the sole reason that those words were spoken. "May the Shield stand."

"May the Shield stand!" Nathan could not cry. His body would not permit it. Regardless, I could feel the emotion in his soul. Pride above all. Determination. Some apprehension. All understandable. I felt much the same way when I was first writing the oath he had just sworn.

"Stand with pride, Nathan Nichols. Let all present know that, as you have joined my Guild, so too does my Guild set itself to aid you. I, Jeremiah Kithkin, do swear to defend your life and your honor alike. To nurture your skills and abilities, to support your endeavors, and should you choose in the end to join or to leave the profession of the Dungeons to assist in making you the best version of yourself you can possibly be." I breathed out. "You have chosen one of the most difficult apprenticeships the world has to offer, Nathan, I hope you realize that by now. This life will never be an easy one, but you have shown yourself able to be one of the best there is or ever will be, and it will be my honor to see you come through to find that potential."

The crowd cheered once more. My words complete, I merely stood there with a smile. He'd earned it.