The next day saw us moving bright and early. We were a real Divinity Rescue Corps now, with two Healers, a Wizard, and an army of Nakamamon all over the place. Regina naturally attracted them from her Meld ability, just like Snow White attracted birds and other creatures just by being a wholesome princess.

She gained a series of birds, both regular weird Nakamamon birds and elemental aspected ones, along with hoppity small creatures of all stripes, and plenty of fluffy ones to boot. Regular beasts and elemental floofity creatures listened to her musical laugh and instinctually knew that she had an ability they liked. There were other foxes too, not just Tweedle Dee the Vulpetunia. She had a water fox, an air fox that floated on a tiny cloud, and a fairy fox with pink fur, big wet adorable eyes, a naturally occurring bow with ribbons, and it didn’t suffer from gravity like the rest of us. It hopped around like it was on the moon, tail wagging and yipping in delight. There was a skunk looking thing, a bear looking thing, a number of deer and badgers and groundhogs. They came and went, sometimes bringing her presents, other times just wanting to be touched by Regina.

It took some time to peel Regina off me as we went. I laughed quite a lot as the kisses fell all over my face. The laughter redoubled as Vellenia and then April joined the fray, with Tweedle Dee and the Nakamamon petting zoo yipping and bounding around us. The fox girl eventually caught Regina’s attention, and she looked a question at me.

“We stopped?” April asked, blinking in confusion. “Why have we stopped the kissing?”

“I agree… we should… continue,” Vellenia said with a giggle, in between kissing my face.

“Who are you, dear heart?” Regina asked, and shot me another lightning fast glance. Now I knew the look meant ‘have you had sex with this adorable creature too?’

You have sex with one entire village and suddenly everyone thinks you’re always having sex with everyone you meet. I would never live down the Great Slinktrickle Orgy of several months ago.

“I wanna frack,” Regina breathed, “especially if I’m going to be heading out after Ivy and Isabelle.” Her lower lip jutted out in an adorable and pathetic frown.

“There’s no reason for you to be going on the rescue mission,” I told her.

“Huh?”

“Also, I’m not going to force you into anything you don’t wish to do.”

She seemed conflicted. Her natural inclination was to help out. She also liked Ivy and Isabelle as people. We’d all grown close on a flying lake, in Slinktrickle, and later in Glumpdumpkin. And that wasn’t even taking into account our road trip or the heist where we snuck my mom in.

“I’ll… think about it. Dagnabbit, Fletcher, using reverse psychology on me won’t work… unless it does.”

I grinned and shook my head. It would be missing me or feeling that she wasn’t doing her duty.

“Actually…” I said. “There might be a way for me to go on the mission.” On both missions. “You might not like it though.” Or she might.

***

Regina seemed confused for a moment: how had I learned that news? Then her gaze landed on the courier service, Fairy Poppins. The tiny fairy, little more than a ball of light, was bobbing up and down speaking to her bond mate, Cinzy.

Regina insisted on holding my hand until Vellenia got in there, pulled our hands apart, and then held both of our hands. Regina couldn’t help but laugh, especially when April took my other hand.

The cast was now enormous, and that was after losing four members. Not far off, a quartet of Nakamamon were having a serious discussion. One of them was a four foot purple girl with long, purple tentacles wriggling out of the top of her head. Another was an ice ghost with everything below the top of her thighs simply missing, hovering some three feet in the air. Another was an orange-skinned, enormously thick bodybuilder with so much hair. The last was a demure yellow sexpot with tall yellow rabbit ears and an oval amethyst in her hair, dressed like a belly dancer. She too hovered, but cross-legged and in a meditative position.

Even with my own mother, my super pregnant Ranger girlfriend Tara, my supermodel gorgeous girlfriend Cinzy, and my super freckly redhead girlfriend Regina, we were outnumbered by the inhuman members of this world. Tara had also reunited with her wind snake, Airaconda, presently acting like a pillow.

We were just getting moving, with my mother making Tara comfortable on Muppin’s back, Cinzy engaged with her bond mate, and the four guard Nakamamon discussing security over that way. The other bond mates were elsewhere, with the shadow ferret almost permanently invisible, and the basketball-sized gem Nakamamon somewhere under the earth.

I was pleased to have so many of us, but a little intimidated. They were all here for me. The poison Nakamamon felt like she owed me her life, as did the fox girl. The ice ghost and the martial arts powerhouse were still pledged to my cause: to heal the sick gods of their world.

“We’re moving out!” I called, and Muppin immediately rumbled to life. The huge echidna made of rock started north, and the others immediately began to follow after. Cinzy rushed to get aboard Muppin and find a comfortable seat. Our Bard didn’t like walking. Neither Larelle or Chrysta appeared pleased with us already marching, but I wasn’t about to let them interrogate the new girl into violence. Azalea loped along, using her hair tentacles to give her speed, until she’d caught up with the lumbering rochidna, and swung aboard next to my mother and Tara. Larelle and Chrysta took up defensive positions, and Regina was soon scouting ahead with her flower fox.

“It’s so lovely to see you again!” Vellenia bubbled.

I grinned. “You too. I heard you helped my mother quite a lot.”

My marsh goddess just blushed and fell silent. The wonderful part about having a Marshin was that she was pure white of skin and hair, except for the minty green and pink accents here and there, like her hair and eyes, and lines running around her body. And she blushed a bright, bubblegum pink. It was adorable.

We were heading north, where none of us save Chrysta had ever been before. We fell silent and watched the landscape slowly inch by. The rolling landscape transformed from lush grassy meadows into vast swaths of some golden grain or another. It rippled and danced in the winds. Overhead, entire flocks of some unknown bird Nakamamon wheeled and cavorted. Even further north, the mana coruscated through the sky, sticking to the clouds and making them ripple with rainbow hues. When I closed my eyes and really concentrated on opening the chakra in my forehead, I could start getting a sense of the flow of mana around me, picking up the tiny bug Nakamamon all around us, and the larger earth Nakamamon slumbering somewhere below us.

Shaped like an earthworm, but easily twenty feet long.

“Don’t wake up,” I told myself quietly. “Don’t wake up, don’t wake up.”

“Hmm?” Vellenia asked.

“Just trying some magical thinking.” Like telling the rain to stop please when I was a kid and wanted to go play. Or telling the darkness not to come get me when I was a little kid and scared of the basement.

We continued over hill and dale, accumulating Nakamamon in my Nakamadex using my Identify skill. It was slowly gaining levels as well, without spending points on raising the skill.

Achievement! Identify over 200 species of Nakamamon

Are they limitless? Or are you more than half way done? I guess you’ll know when you know.

Reward: +3 levels of Identify

That night we set up camp at the edge of a wood, mixed with what I called boogie trees and the ones Cinzy identified as frowny Christmas Trees. There seemed to be regular trees as well, but a good amount of them smiled vapidly or frowned angrily at the world.

Immediately everybody set about their tasks: collecting firewood, getting tents set up, unpacking equipment, and hoisting Tara down off Muppin’s back so she could walk around and hold her lower back with one hand, and her swollen belly in the other. By now, some week and a half after she’d arrived back with me, she appeared ready to give birth at any moment. It was both electrifying and terrifying.

I was going to be a father! There would be a tiny Fletcher or Fletcherette in the world. Someone to play with and teach to talk and walk and be a decent person. Someone to watch as they learned about the world from square one. Someone to imbue with all the lessons my mother and father had taught me: love of family, doing what’s right by the people you care about, standing up to injustice, helping the sick and needy.

I was going to be a father… I would have someone dependent on me for their very life. Someone extremely vulnerable in a world of magical wonders and delights. The Agency was already after me, and had already tried to use my family as leverage to get me to come out and face capture. There were no doctors here except me, no vaccinations, no baby formula, no school system…

There was a snort of laughter. Tara slowly ambled over to me. “What, oh my God, Fletcher, you look like your head’s about to explode.” Taking my hands in hers, she chuckled and took a deep breath. “Y’all don’t have to worry none, okay? This is fine. I’m fine. The baby’s fine. There ain’t nothing you need to do. I expected this… not so fast, and not here, but I expected this. We have all kinds of help. It’s going to be great.”

“I know it’s going to be great. It’s going to be amazing. Mind blowing.”

She grinned and leaned forward to kiss me. “There you go!”

“But—”

“No but,” she said. “No problems, no buts, no worries. All good. You hear me?”

“I hear you.”

“Now,” she said, in a real low whisper. “You put your hands on your baby and feel him kick, you got it?”

She guided my hands to her protruding belly, right beneath her large, swollen boobs. The warmth was interrupted by a sudden push, and my breath caught with the wonder of it. That was made by me. It was awesome in the purest sense of the word.

This one push of a tiny being against the thin layer of skin reaffirmed my motivation: go on this triple quest, make the world safe for the women I cared about and the children I was going to bring into the world, and be there as a good dad. Or if not, then a person who tried his best to be a good dad.

“I’m going to be a father.” The words tumbled stupidly out of my mouth, and Tara giggled at me.

“That’s right, so I should start calling you daddy right now.”

A shiver of lust and arousal went through me, both at the tone of her voice and the mental image of me raising holding Tara’s legs up in the air while I slid every inch deep into her and made her beg me for more.

***

“This is the situation as it stands,” I announced to the many, many women, Nakamamon, and Alan watching and listening. It was the first night, and we all sat around a comfortable cook fire. Their faces were bathed in the flickering orange warmth of the fire, and that gave them all a hopeful cast. Bright shining eyes watched me carefully.

“We will launch a three pronged assault. Everyone will be expected to pitch in.”

“A trident,” Regina said, giving me a thumbs up.

“I was going to say Project Pitchfork, because of the pitching in.”

“Ah,” she replied.

“Project Trident is way better,” I said.

“Instead of naming the three pronged assault,” my mother said, a smile playing over her lips, “we ought to go over what the three different prongs actually are.”

“We have need of anti-magic medicine,” I said. “As it stands, I can easily whip it up using potions, but they won’t last more than a day. Meaning in two to four weeks, you’ll be thick with magic and possibly transform into a Nakamamon. Now, I have nothing against being a Nakamamon, but I’m a human and I’d rather stay that way. But, you might be thinking, Fletcher, you might say, you can’t be in three places at once.”

My mom’s eye roll was legendary.

“I happen to have an ability that allows me to clone myself,” I told them. Under very specific circumstances, I did not add. “That means, at first, I will be able to travel with all parties.”

“This I’ve gotta see,” my mother said.

No, no she did not. I felt a jolt of guilt and anxiety shoot through me at the prospect of figuring out how to clone myself with my mom watching.

Until I stopped ‘having intimate relations’ as per the ability’s specifications. I had been able to stretch the meaning of ‘having intimate relations’ to include hand stuff, kissing, and even so far as sensual caresses. This was almost exclusively in the service of being able to understand Poppy, Cinzy’s tiny fairy bond mate. I’d been able to get news out of her while satisfying her, and then when I finished satisfying her, I could deliver any other news to my mother when Adaptability and Pheromones stopped being necessary.

Now though, I was sure I could accompany Regina. “Regina will travel with Fletcher Mark Two, Shakindria, Tweedle Dee, and Chrysta. Their main mission is to locate and recover Ivy and Isabelle. I expect Muppin will want to be along.”

“Fletcher Mark Three will accompany Cinzy, Fairy Poppins, and Vellenia along with Garnet and McCauley Skulkins back to where Trent and Drat are working on the new portal, and waiting for the HQ to finish traveling all the way there. Cinzy will be vital for negotiations with the Agency people, unless we decide to just skedaddle.”

“My mom travels with OG Fletcher, along with Larelle for security and Alan for research and logistics support. Plus Tara and Airaconda.”

“Sorry, OG?” my mom asked. “What does OG stand for?”

“Original gangster Fletcher.” The one who wouldn’t have to be fondling one of his companions en route. “The hope is that Ivy and Isabelle can be brought back for added security, Trent, Drat and Izzy can be reunited with their bond mates, and try to convince Drat to rejoin the Divinity Rescue Corps. As for anyone else, if your name wasn’t called, speak up.”

April and Azalea both came forward. Azalea actually lifted her entire body off the ground with her long, flexible hair tentacles, waving one shorter arm, while April clasped her hands under her big bosom and stepped forwards.

“Where do you want me?” Azalea asked.

I turned to Alan. “Where are our weak points that might need a hyper competent sniper able to poison anyone we come up against?”

“Y-y-y-y-you have Shakindria a-a-and Chrysta a-a-a-against a f-f-f-full A-A-A-Agency t-team.”

“Could you kindly go with Regina’s team, my dear?” I asked. “And my tenacious and dedicated flower fox companion?”

I could see Alan drooling every time he laid eyes on April. He stammered even more than usual, until it was clear he couldn’t focus or concentrate while looking at April. I couldn’t really blame him, honestly, given that she had on one of Cinzy’s scoop neck t-shirts and obviously no bra. She was bigger in the boob area than Cinzy, and she had the sorts of nipples you were going to see through a t-shirt all the time no matter what.

“I think she’ll come along with OG Fletcher,” I said.

And with that, we drew up the plans for what these three expeditions were for.

This is Christopher being all three prongs.