Becoming Monsters 2 Ch 53

Hey everyone, Otterly here with a quick note before we get back to it. These are the chapters of Becoming Monsters that AiLoves did not get a chance to publish before her death earlier this year. I, along with some other members of the Becoming Monsters community, have preserved them and will be publishing as much as were ever completed. I am not preserving the status boxes, we have no way to ensure their continued display and they cause difficulty on most sites. Book 2 was not completed, please do not think we are finishing her works. We are bringing what was done to the public, per her wishes. Many thanks to Laurel for making sure these could be posted to her account.

Becoming Monsters Chapter 53: The Bones And The Bees

Abra was not having a good day. Or week. Really, with dozens of large crates atop a flatbed trailer towed by her large bumblebee Beetle, the insectoid girl was like a Jewish refugee ten steps ahead of the Gestapo. What clothing she wore was either torn, bloodied in light pink Klingon blood or still faintly smoking. A dozen other pets of various sizes and shapes buzzed around her, all of them similarly hymenoptera themed in one form or another. The crates were hexagonal and appeared made of wax, though many of them were heavily damaged.

The woman herself slumped against a trailer tire, drinking milk out of a bottle Aruna provided. The dutiful boy eyed the exposed hole where the gate used to hang, expecting trouble. A month ago, Honoka would have thought him extremely paranoid. Today, Honoka walked up behind her step-son and patted his back, flicking her head towards the gate and asking with a finger moving in a circle to make a circuit around for their safety. Behind her, Ken took to the air as Honoka knelt on the ground across from Abra.

"I've been furious at you for days now," the wasp girl said, her odd harmony voice more growly than sweet at the moment as mandibles chittered her words. "Had a plan: was going to swarm your entire place and drink blood honey for days. Then I arrived and realized you got hit as well and I..." Grumbling, the wasp shot a proboscis out of her mouth into the bottle and slurped up the last milk drops. "I don't know. It doesn't matter anyway, I figured out how I'm going to die on the elevator ride."

"What happened?" Honoka asked, unable to stop herself eyeing the blue and black wasp - large as a soccer ball! - circling her head, radiating enough cold Honoka felt the chill five feet away.

"After lunch on Sunday, I returned home and found my place under attack. Whole...

freakin'

horde of monsters broke in, curb stomping my babies! I spent who knows how many hours fighting Fire Wolves and a Demon Turtle. Afterward, barely alive, I spent days sifting through wreckage to salvage whatever was left." Both sets of wings buzzed, pushing her off the wheel with a chitter of pain. She calmed herself down before letting Honoka ease her back against the wheel. "I picked a unique Class Feature that no other Tamer besides me was stupid enough to choose, probably because anyone picking the cursed Feature Darwin Awarded soon after.

Pooled Points

lets me share HP with all my pets in a single giant health bar."

Honoka let out a low whistle. That sounds like a serious Feature, Honoka thought. "Theoretically, you could possess nearly infinite HP if you picked up enough pets. You'd be like the T-800: unstoppable, uttering cheesy one liners while reloading your SPAS-12."

"I used to think that. Now, it may be the reason I sink slowly into the vat of molten metal." Mandibles twitched upward at the stupid joke, interrupted when the wasp woman convulsed and coughed onto cracked stone, blood and honeyed mucus splattering to the ground. "I'm at 2%. Been losing health steadily all week, which tells me I have a stray. My pets don't come with magical homing beacons, and I was breeding a Love Hornet hive for the last couple of months. A Love Hornet drone is the size of a pinky fingernail. I'm missing one. I think it was swallowed by one of the wolves that escaped. While it is probably stinging the monster slowly to death, that single insect is getting digested over and over again, which means a dead Abra."

"Hold on, I'll get some potions!" Honoka yelled, scrambling to her feet but stopped when Abra shook her head.

"No good, me and all the pets reached our alchemical tolerance days ago. Even your cleric would only give me another hour or two." Honoka wasn't sure because the face was so inhuman, but maybe something in how the chitin flexed upward made her think Abra smiled peacefully. "I don't like it, but I miss my parents and brother. I'll get to see them again. Too bad I won't try out that wicked futa-cock before I go, though I'm happy to not be angry with you."

Whatever Abra expected, it wasn't Honoka's face pinched in simmering frustration or the ugly groan through her teeth.

"Why do women keep noble sacrificing themselves around me?" Honoka asked, vicing temples with her palms as she tried to think through the problem, pacing circles along the same path as the wasp above her. "My brothers will testify in court I am not this lovable." Checking her pockets, Honoka grumbled when she realized her phone was on the table in the hosting room.

"KENNETH!!" Honoka shouted into the air, startling Abra and her hive, the courtyard filling with startled buzzing before dying down. Moments later, the teenage bat landed superhero style and stood - trying hard not to look like he was trying to look cool in front of the ladies - flicking his long bangs out of large soft brown eyes.

"I need you to find Banda and one or two more wives to have them fetch the milking pumps with all the hoses and attachments. Bring them down to Basement 4. Inform everyone else there's going to be some allocation, though I don't know what yet. Then ask Diane where her potion case is and have that brought down with the pumps." Honoka studied the monster insects and attempted to logistic them into the basement without getting stung. "Oh, and if Gwyneth said

yes,

ask her to join the Fellowship descending into Khazad-dûm."

Kenneth gave Honoka a confused look, causing Honoka to slump and sigh.

"Ask Gwyneth to come down to Basement 4 if she said yes and then tell your mom you need to read the

Lord Of The Rings

or else your aunt will beat you up."

Kenneth quirked an eyebrow, silently doubting any beatings coming from Honoka.

"One of your other aunts. Now scoot!"

"I'm touched you want to help, but it's too late," Abra insisted as Honoka strode over and helped the large insectoid woman to her feet. Over seven feet tall (214 cm) , the height difference had Honoka looping one lower arm over her shoulder and hobbled the two of them to the main building of the complex where the stairs to the basement floors resided. "The math is grim and certain. It wasn't as bad at first, but I'm losing a percent an hour for the last half a day. This is it. I

am

happy I won't die alone."

"Will you shut up?" Honoka griped, already huffing from lugging the wasp only a dozen yards. She didn't appear that heavy, yet chitin carapace must be as dense as steel. "I signed up for a dating app because I wanted to avoid making life and death decision like this with every girl I meet. Catch a movie, eat cheap food, laugh a bit and schedule a second date. Let the relationship grow organically, find another girl I can share my life with, make the next step when we're both ready. Instead, half my harem is populated with girls delirious with blood loss or dragooned without any choice when they joined up. Who would rationally say no to marriage if the other option was

death?!"

Honoka wiped sweat off her brow and kept going. "Sorry, ignore my frivolous ranting. You don't need to hear about my problems, so let me tell you what I am going to do. Even if I was vanilla human and had a Class that leveled up when I did macramé, I would still save your life or die trying. It is the human thing to do."

Abra snorted and Honoka rolled her eyes.

"

Anyway,

instead of a hopeless knitting club, you get a house full of abnormally capable women. Which includes a cleric over level twenty, a high level alchemist and my cheat powers. If that doesn't work, my uncle just so happens to also be visiting from Florida. He's a world recognized expert on Racial medical treatment and a high level Enchanter. If none of that works, the entire family has been stockpiling those magical points we talked about - that unlock fantastical powers, some literally listed as

deific

- for two weeks.

Why stockpile valuable points like that instead of spending them immediately

you ask? Because there are no takes-backs and your own

Pooled Points

is a perfect example of what happens if we make a mistake.

"Where was I?" Honoka shook her head, the exertion causing her to ramble. "Oh yeah: I will

break reality itself

if that's what it takes to save your life. Not just because I've fallen for you - you had me at

Chifusa's tits

- but because no one should ever live their life thinking they are alone."

Abra didn't reply, nodding as all five of her compound eyes became a little sticky, trying her best to assist Honoka helping her across the courtyard.

"Good. Now, call all of your pets to follow us down those stairs through that hallway. I have a plan. What I need from you is information." Honoka paused, catching her breath and wondering if she should allocate now to finish or save the MP for her crazy idea. Saving MP won out and they continued to bloodily stumble. "Racial Features, how your Class works, estimated sizes of individual HP for you and your pets, your favorite hentai, anything."

Abra's antenna waved back around behind her head, hairs also moving independent of any breeze and tickling along the back of Honoka's neck. From the buzzing behind the two women, the swarm was on its way. "Not a lot to say about my Race and Class. Tamers are a dime a dozen, but what I could figure out online is that all six of the apis queens are Tamers. It has to do with one of my Features, I think. I produce honey that's magically congruent with the thaumatic energy of any bee or wasp or hornet I have collected as pets. The potency and amount of honey I produce at any time is measured through how many pets are available and how high a level I've built them up as."

"What are your pet types?" Honoka asked, glancing behind and getting a little phobic from the swarm.

"My Class limits what kind of monsters I can tame, so the hive is all apis derivatives. Beetle is a giant bumblebee I found in the Juno dungeon. When I unlocked a Class Feature called

Grow Big And Strong,

I've been slowly leveling him into a mount. He's level nine, my only leveled pet at the moment and probably accounts for three fourths of all the health points in the swarm. My top selling food product comes from the Ice Wasp queen, four drones and thirty-three workers. Ice Wasps are local to this dungeon, known for their deadly stings and being extremely territorial. My Ghost Hornets have one queen, seven drones and five workers. Ghosts look like normal hornets, except they can turn invisible. I ordered them from a dungeon in Africa. My last two species are newer and I haven't tested them out much, both from a dungeon in China and costing premium dollar. The Love Hornets pupated one queen and two drones, but the four Spinner Spiderbees haven't metamorphosed yet."

"Important tangent: what are the traits of a Love Hornet?" Honoka asked, taking the stairs very carefully with the two of them.

Abra shrugged with her upper arms. "Their sting is an extremely powerful aphrodisiac and in certain high doses has been known to permanently increase a person's Charisma while driving them to insanity levels of lust and sexual need. I was thinking of marketing a love honey, maybe team up with an alchemist to manufacture a lube or something."

"Ok, giant red flag there: with magic, don't cross the streams. Magical Resonance Shock is when a magic of one type gets mixed with an identical type of magic and the two either cancel out or something goes catastrophically wrong. I once took the wrong type of potion and it almost killed me. I wouldn't want to get stung by any of your pets, but treat me, Diane and probably even yourself as deathly allergic to Love Hornets from now on because we all run on sexual energy."

"Good to know," Abra said, studying the open and mostly empty space she found herself in. "Oh, and my favorite hentai is anything with tentacles, especially

La Blue Girl."

All the basements underneath the compound were large rectangles four hundred feet long (122 m), two hundred feet wide (61 m) and fifty feet deep (15.3 m). Arun built them as all-purpose storage for the tenets he envisioned would stay here, but now they were whatever the wives needed them to be. Basement 1 become the family's gym and armory, but the other three were mostly empty. Basement 4, filled with the echo of insects buzzing as the hive hovered down, had one far corner stacking spare bedding, cushions and other sundry things the rooms up top would needed when people occupied those rooms. Otherwise, it was just uncomplicated smooth gray stone, harsh lights shining from the ceiling.

"Ok, not a lot of time. I'm going to look over my Status options while you tell me more about your Race. Physical characteristics, magical abilities, whatever." Honoka pulled up her blue screens, organizing two submenus for allocation. "And I need details: you can be adorably shy worrying about confessing to your

senpai

later."

Abra eased herself to the floor, sitting down an interesting procedure as she extended her wings so they didn't bend into the floor, her large abdomen shimmying out of the way as she otherwise sprawled. "I'm not sure what you're after. Apis are a common Race that fly and have stingers. The toxin I inject causes extreme pain and some acid burns but usually isn't life threatening. The stinger itself is the deadly weapon, a twenty inch spearhead that can punch through steel. Most Apis go into construction because their abdomens secrete a wax-like substance hardening into something with the dual properties of plastic and concrete. The tallest building in the world, kitty corner to the Burj Khalifa and standing over a thousand feet taller than the previous tallest building in the world, is made almost entirely out of apis wax.

"Queens get a few more extras," Abra explained dryly, putting her hands on her boobs and giving them a shake. "For one, my stinger is also an ovipositor. I've done a little reading: I no longer have a normal womb. According to another queen that got pregnant and posted her entire experience on Tube-U-R, I have sex normally through my hooha, but the sperm travels to my egg collection in my abdomen. Once the eggs are fertilized, my stinger - which, despite

looking

like hard chitin is actually more like a dick - will grow painfully hard until I deposit those eggs into some girl's belly. Every month, for my 'period', I lay a clutch of unfertilized eggs and the whole affair has me laid up for the entire day. Whether my stinger is ejecting toxins or eggs, it feels really,

really

good, much like how I imagine guys feel when they deposit their own stuff. It is both the most painful and most pleasurable thing I have ever experienced. There's a guy in town who buys the eggs and I have no idea what he does with them."

"Anything else? I won't know if it's important or not until I hear it." Honoka was ready to trigger the allocations, just needed everyone else to arrive.

"Only the reason Apis are

monstera non grata

in Africa and the Middle East. Queens have the ability to enslave other apis and make them pets. It is wildly illegal in the US, but one of the queens in Saudi Arabia has collected a private army of thousands and it looks like she's spending all her time either kidnapping more people or breeding an even larger army. The President tried sending ARCON there earlier this year. Even Golden Girl couldn't do more than thin their ranks a little before the whole team retreated. I follow the rules, but every couple of months a government mage stops by and checks to make sure I haven't enslaved anyone. Which I think is a gross example of government overreach and an invasion of my privacy, but they do it anyway and they do it with guns pointed at my head."

Abra was interrupted by loud clacking as four skeleton beasts with the milking pumps strapped to their backs descended from the top of the stairs. Behind them followed Banda and Gwyneth, the holstaur clutching the collection of metal cups and hoses in one hand and four large bags of oats in the other. The lich held a large leather case that clinked with each step. Gwyneth's two other lackies were the last to arrive and close the door behind them, their hoods thrown back to show mindless skeletal faces, each lugging two of the empty large fifty-gallon drums Banda used to store milk in.

"1%," Abra stated ominously, growing scared as her mandibles chittered.

"Alright!" Honoka shouted as she clapped hands together. "Skitter needs a blessing, stat!"

Gwyneth and Banda paused to look at each other.

"[I thought you said her name was Abra,]" the confused lich whispered to Banda. "[Who's Skitter?]"

"[Hono-chan makes obscure geek references all the time, we just nod most of the time as if we get it.]" Banda's whispered voice was exaggerated and sarcastic, though she did trot faster down the steps. "[Ask Diane or Eve later, they get most of them.]"

"Skitter is the star of

Worm,

and do I have to start a book club? Never mind that now." Honoka yanked off her breakaway pants and pulled off her tank, naked except for her new white bra and straining jockstrap. "First, I need you to combine

Selfless Healing

with

Sustaining

and drain your MP and HP by fifty percent into Abra. She might not look that bad, but she has a strange Class Feature and she's at 1%. Gwyneth, help me set up the pumps."

The next fifteen minutes flew by as Honoka and Gwyneth arranged the equipment and checked the TCs in each were charged and ready to go. Banda, removing her bed sheet because it was getting in the way, glowed with a brilliant light as she knelt over Abra and poured a blessing into her. Abra flushed and might have been panting as her stinger flicked in and out, Banda's position placing her leaking and sloshing naked breasts directly on top of the insectoid girl, like two beanbags. Gwyneth appeared uncomfortable and kept averting her eyes from the other girls in the room, eliciting a giggle out of Honoka when the chocolate futanari unhooked her bra and slipped her jockstrap down.

"I'm sorry, I'm not laughing at you," Honoka said to Gwyneth, sharing a smile with Banda as the holstaur cleric finished. "I'm kinda laughing at myself and how I used to be like you. Three months ago I would have rather died than be naked in the same

building

as another girl, now they line up and take a number." Softly running her hands slowly up and down her hard length, Honoka motioned for the lich to follow as they joined the two women rounding third base. Midway, Honoka stopped at the leather potion case and grabbed two sets of C&A vials. "If this is something you can't handle, still time to back out, no hard feelings."

The horny hornet unconsciously massaged those milky tits smothering her before yanking all four hands away, forcing a moan as the large pregnant woman gushed milk from the ministrations. While Abra stuttered something that might have been an apology, Banda gave the girl a wink and stood back up.

"I..." Gwyneth did look like she would bolt, then something changed her mind as she removed the long leather gloves she wore. "This isn't about sex for me. I mean, there's nothing for me to get hot and heavy with, I don't have flesh or urges anymore. Before the Change, I fantasized and made one mistake with someone I never met, but I can't have that anymore. For me, this is having people who aren't afraid of me and who want to spend their lives with me." Her hands exposed, white bony fingers clicked lightly as she worked on the layers of robes she wore before the multi-colored fabrics fell away and revealed the skeletal woman to the room. "If that means I have to spend time cleaning a little jizz off me, I'm fine with that."