Firm: Opal’s Story

The name Jeffery sounds really familiar, so I think about it while standing in the entrance of the building. I then have an idea and turn around, looking the naked woman up and down. “Mrs. Taylor?” I ask her. She does look like Jeff’s mom, but I had never seen her naked or covered in filth before. I also think she’s lost a lot of weight, despite being currently pregnant. She looks over at me and responds “That’s me. Do I know you darling? I don’t recall meeting a puppy person before.” So it is her, I thought she had died. Cindy said she went missing one day, and so Jeff’s dad moved away.

Since there are others guarding the entrance, I walk up to the woman and wiggle saying “It’s me Opal. I just got a new race with this body.” She seems to get a thinking look on her face, and then tells me “The only Opal I can recall is that lesbian woman that got married. I guess you do look kind of like her, and I’ve seen stranger things since these screens showed up.” I nod along and answer “Yup, that’s me. I’m glad you didn’t die. Citrine is going to be so happy to meet you.” With most of the orcs gone in the camp at this point, I tell Citrine to bring Morgan to the breeding building.

“I thought we were waiting until all of the orcs were cleared out to check the remaining women for doppelgangers?” She asks, so I tell her “It will be safe enough in the building for your sister, and there’s a big surprise for you sweetie.” My angel daughter gives me a probing look with her body in Jessica’s office, but I just smile, excited for her reaction. “Morgan, when you enter the building, check everyone immediately.” Jessica says, obviously nervous about the monsters that can look and act like anyone. I wiggle in place and continue to smile.

A few minutes later, Citrine and her sister land and enter into the structure. “Mom… how did you manage to get naked again? I can understand your shirt or shorts getting ripped, but your shoes too?” My winged daughter asks with a sigh, and I respond “That’s not important sweetie, look who we found.” I point to Mrs. Taylor with a big smile. Morgan says with her other body that there aren’t any more doppels in the building that she can see, and Citrine looks at her grandmother asking “Is she the surprise you mentioned? Oh, is it because she’s a human who survived?”

I finally can’t hold in my excitement anymore when the human woman gives us both a questioning glance, and tell my daughter “She’s Mrs. Taylor, Jeff’s mom!” Citrine recoils a bit when I say her dad’s name, but then runs up to the older woman, giving her a hug. The woman seems confused until her granddaughter says “Grandma! We thought you were dead like Papa.” She gets a hard look and responds “Are you saying my boy is gone?” I frown but nod and speak up “Jeff got bitten by a zombie. We tried to tell you about it, but you went missing and we thought they got you too.” I know Citrine would have a hard time saying it.

Mrs. Taylor sighs and says “So my oldest kid didn’t make it either. It’s sad that I’ve gotten so used to it now that I’m not even crying.” She probably had to watch some of her elf daughters here die. She’ll probably still cry about Jeff later when she has more time to think about it. Feelings are strange like that sometimes. She then hugs Citrine back and asks “So you must be Jeffery’s daughter. I’m sorry you have to see your grandma in such a mess. By the way, these pointy eared girls are your aunts and cousins, so you should say hi to them too darling.”

While Citrine starts to catch up with Mrs. Taylor, I let Morganite play with my fluffy tail. It’s nice that my daughter was able to find more family, and I guess it makes everyone here my family as well. It’s not exactly the same though, since I don’t know if they’ll be nice like my babies. Jeff seemed nice at first, but turned into a jerk. These women would be his sisters. I sigh and wag my tail for Morgan. I’m probably thinking too rudely about the poor kids. They’re just like us who came to rescue them, having dealt with orc assaults every day. They didn’t even have a lot of the things that made it easier for us and it sounds like many of them died. So I should be nicer to them in my thoughts.

I realize I don’t know what classes Morgan took or plans on taking, so I’ll have to remember to ask her later. Both of her bodies are around other people, and that kind of thing is pretty private most of the time. I don’t mind telling people mine, but my daughters warned me that enemies could use the information against me in a fight. So now I don’t tell anyone who asks, just keeping it between myself and my wives. I’ll still tell people like Ruby and Onyx even though we aren’t married anymore because I know I can trust them… and Amber said they were okay.

“Hey sweetie, can we talk about classes and stuff later. I might forget if I don’t bring it up now.” I ask my Shifter daughter, and she answers “Sure mom, sounds like fun. You must have a lot of cool things.” I nod, since I do have a lot of cool skills and bonuses.

Opal’s Bunny body

While we wait for the cleanup of the orcs to finish with my other body, the conversation about how to deal with the dop things continues in Jessica’s office. “We need to get all the vital people checked as soon as possible.” Pops says, but Sam shakes his head and responds “We can’t just call people here in the middle of the night. It’s out of the ordinary and might spook the monsters into hiding as someone else.” That makes sense, and is one of the reasons I didn’t tell them until after Morgan was here. If one of them had been a doppelganger, it could have caused big problems.

Yula asks “Is there anyone we can check tonight where it wouldn’t come off as strange?” to which Pops answers “I could get the Guards on duty together for a random inspection. I haven’t done one in the last few days.” Well that would cover a few people at least, but Jessica says “We can’t do people in small groups, there’s too much of a risk of the creatures switching who they’re pretending to be between. Tomorrow morning we’ll send out a notice for a town announcement. We can use the information about the unlisted monster camps, and our new connection with Woodville as a pretext.” Sam nods and responds “Those are both huge pieces of information that could effect everyone, so I think it’s believable. The monsters won’t know that we have a way to spot them yet, so we can have the young lady survey the crowd that gathers. I’m not sure we’ll be able to get everyone though, what about the new mothers and their children?”

Citrine is the one who speaks up, answering “Don’t the mothers in Barrier all have their kids at the Hospital? Morgan can use her other body to check them at the same time as we fly over the city checking everyone else. Pops, you can arrange it so all the Guards will be on the walls and not inside right?” My human friend scratches his beard before saying “I can have them all vigilant on the walls or watching the crowd we plan on gathering. The point is to have everyone visible at the same time right?” My angel daughter nods, and we seem to at least have a basic plan for Barrier. If it works we can try and use it for our other Land too.

By then my kids with Morgan should have grown up, and we’ll have a lot more eyes for it. I should also see if Citrine can help me convince our angel kids to help. After we check them of course. That makes me wonder if the doppel things can even fly if they pretend to be a race with wings. I would think some of them would have grown wings and flown away instead of doing the suicide thing if they could. Maybe. Monsters choose to do weird stuff sometimes that’s hard to understand compared to Players. Probably just because I’m a Player too. Is that why my frogmen kids expressions were so hard to read?

Well, there’s nothing I can do about it since I’m not a monster. My Player babies are usually more fun to talk to anyway. My monster sons can be fun with sex stuff, and my Player sons don’t usually want to, so maybe it evens out.

Opal’s Eidolon bodies

Amber and I finally finish off the last of the attacking zombies. It ended up being a huge horde, and she thinks it was probably headed towards the lake where we’re going. They attacked us while we were stopped for a water break. Amber didn’t really need it, since she doesn’t get sweaty at night since it’s cooler, but the frogmen take every opportunity they get to play in the water we come by. Luckily it was a pond this time, and they were able to hide in it while we took care of the horde. Only one of the frogmen got turned into a zombie. He was the first that the zombies stumbled upon, and we couldn’t help him before he got bit.

Unfortunately, he didn’t have Firm, so he fully turned into a zombie and we had to kill him too. His siblings didn’t seem too concerned at the time, but my frogman daughter was telling me earlier how the lake gets attacked a lot. So maybe they’re used to it. Amber cleans the guts off of us with one of her servant skills, and I snuggle my tiny body back into the spot between her breasts. “We just finished off the last of the orcs too wife, but we’re making sure none of them are left sleeping or hiding in any of the structures.” My orange haired wife says, so I nod. It seems like we’re almost done.

I whisper to Morgan “You and your sister need to get back up in the air. Amber says they’re going to be checking the structures for hidden orcs, and the doppel things might use it as an opportunity.” I also call Citrine over, unfortunately interrupting her conversation about her dad with Mrs. Taylor. When she gets to me, I whisper to her as well and they both leave the building shortly after. Her grandmother starts rounding up the filthy and bruised elves, healing the ones with obvious signs. She’s probably not high enough level to keep them all healed constantly. It’s another reason I’m glad to be such high tier and have so much mana.

I ask Amber “Can you have Sapphire come to the pillory building. The women here need a lot of cleaning and some healing.” My blue haired daughter will have lots of mana to get these elves back in shape. She shows up a few minutes later, and the reactions to finally being really clean make me wiggle with happiness. Most of the elves thank her right away and start crying, turning to their sisters and daughters for hugs. I think my daughter used a skill for the room too, since it smells much better now. That’s one of the bad things about my hound body. I could smell a lot of really gross stuff that I couldn’t explain while guarding the entrance. The room in the back that Noir used earlier was particularly bad.

“Okay mom, I think I got everyone. Being here really brings me back to when I was born.” Sapphire says, so I hug my eldest daughter and tell her “Thanks so much sweetie. Look how much happier they all are now. I’m sure everyone from the party is glad they had you with us for our time locked up. You got us all much cleaner than those orcs with the buckets.” She laughs at that and puffs out her chest with pride. She’s always been big on keeping stuff clean when she’s not having sex.

Maybe she inherited some of my vanity along with the skills.