Chapter 1: Chapter 1: Getting Places

Hello and welcome to my first attempt to write a spin-off of someone else’s setting. This is a work of fan fiction and is not canon. With the permission of AiLoves, I’m putting a camera somewhere a little different within the setting of Becoming Monsters. Any errors in mechanics and continuity are my own, though I strive for these to be as few as possible. Expect themes of making married life work, discrimination, and the effects of society’s underbelly on some of the people who might not have wanted to be there. Oh, and a lot of sex, but you probably knew that already. 

For those of you who have not read the original series, you should go fix that (at https://www.scribblehub.com/series/640693/becoming-monsters/). Five years before the present, the world was rocked by the sudden appearance of magic, which came with everyone getting character classes and a third of humanity becoming fantasy races. Welcome to Becoming Monsters: In The Mirror.

—

Chapter 1: Getting Places

About five years ago

Our date had gone well, so much better than we had anticipated. Lucy’s long black hair was held back behind her ears by a glittery headband I had won from a carnival game stall, showing her pale skin and gray eyes as her lips quirked into a smile. We had gotten back home, full of fried faire foods and with the tingling feel of each other’s lips still on ours. Now, she peeled off her clothes as I fumbled with mine, showing taut abs and small but perky breasts. Her delicate hands ran along my chest, now bare as my own polo shirt hit the floor.

It was not our first time together, but this one was special. I had a surprise in my pants pocket, a ring with a small, glittering diamond on it, bought with what little I could scrape together over the months we had been getting more serious. That would wait for at least a moment, though, as now both of us had one thing on our minds. As soon as we were both suitably undressed (I didn’t even get a chance to get my socks off), Lucy practically pushed me onto her bed and climbed on top of me. I was already harder than a railroad spike, and though not the largest in the world I knew what she liked. Not that she was giving me a chance this time, rapidly putting a condom on me before straddling me and sinking down with a sigh of combined pleasure and relief. I felt it, too, like I belonged there.

“Jay, I’ve been so turned on the last few minutes!” Of course, saying this as she slowly brought me in and out of her changed the effect. That smile returned, her lips looking more plump in the light. “You’re excited, too, huh? You feel bigger than ever!”

I had been thinking she felt tighter, too. I came up to sitting, her motions never ceasing, feeling better and better every moment. I wrapped my arms around her, taking one of her nipples into my mouth as she moaned in ecstasy, and could have sworn her breasts felt like more was there. I brushed it off, coming up to kiss her deeply as I felt her first orgasm of the night take her, that sexy voice practically whimpering for more. The sounds getting more and more intense and alluring by the moment. I pulled back to look into her eyes. Eyes that were suddenly no longer gray, but amber.

She kept on moving, oblivious to my shock or taking it for something else, as the skin around her eyes turned red. Not like they were sunburnt or flushed, but true, cherry red. This rapidly spread across her face, rushing down her body. Her narrow hips suddenly widened, gaining a wicked curve as I felt her ass plump up in my lap. Her abs gained definition, her breasts ballooning from modesty to proportions that begged comparison to fruit or sports equipment. I’d later find out that they landed at an F cup. Her arms toned, and as she stuck out her tongue I saw that it was much longer than before. Within her, I could feel her change as her vagina provided new and unearthly sensations, unlike any human woman. It felt like each individual muscle she had there was fully dextrous and working in perfect harmony to produce maximum pleasure. Two horns sprouted from her head, swept back. A tail that had not been there before wrapped around my waist and pulled me into her over and over again as she orgasmed again and again. This time, my body could resist no more. I exploded into her, longer and harder than I could ever remember before. It felt like I was shooting my soul out through my dick, fiery and intense. I felt shaky and drained. I felt like I had just run ten miles instead of lasting a few minutes in bed. She stared me in the eyes with a look of combined lust and hunger, and said one word. “More!”

She pushed me back down and began riding me with even wilder abandon, her new breasts bouncing and jiggling in their vermillion glory. I felt something else change, then. I could feel much deeper inside of her. The condom, which had fit cleanly, suddenly felt like it was squeezing my penis painfully tight. I had not lost any hardness, quite the opposite, I felt larger and harder with every second that passed. I reached up to grab those breasts, and my hand had changed. It was no longer the pale white of a programmer, it was stone gray. As I watched, my skinny arms rapidly gained real muscle, and I could feel myself sliding along the bed in all directions as my body lengthened and broadened. The socks, which had been still on my feet, gave way and ripped in half as my calves expanded beyond their capacity. Deep within Lucy, I could suddenly feel her much more clearly than before, and I knew that the overstuffed condom had ripped. She felt lighter to me, like I could pick her up and use her like a toy. She looked down at me again, this time with shock, but we were both too close to the finish line to stop. With matching moans, we both came again, and this time the sensation of hunger which had been building up in me was quenched. She collapsed onto my chest, as I felt one last change happen. The bed sheets ripped as a pair of leathery wings freed themselves from my back, digging in and ripping through as they expanded to the two sides.

“Lucy…”

“Jeremiah? What happened to us?”

We both heard the chime, then, and our vision was occupied by blue status screens for the first time.

—

Five years and four days later

“Love? Where did you say the thing was?” We were walking carefully down a little-traveled side street. Lucy, still as sexy as ever, was a couple paces behind and to my right as we searched for our target.

“One of the girls saw it skittering this way from the shop window. Gena. Not sure beyond that, but giant scorpions are sure to cause a commotion.”

One of the girls. Polite way to talk about our coworkers, fellow women (and a couple of men) who had to feed on sex to sate their Hungers. The Red Light Rooms were set up to be easy to rent and use for this, and as much as we both disliked that we had to do so she couldn’t feed on me. A flash of bright yellow from the corner of my eye stood out from the grays of the city, disappearing down an alleyway, one headed well away from the relatively well-defended section we were in and going towards easier targets. With a thunder of my wings, I took off to pursue it. Lucy’s hands covered her eyes briefly as rocks and dust scattered, by the time they dropped I was closer to the quarry than to her.

I banked to the left to head that way, Lucy running to try to keep up as I pulled away. Any hesitation might have meant I lost sight of the quarry, a brief flicker of excitement filled me as it stayed within view. It looked like a standard banana scorpion, but was easily the size of a large dog. Far from the nastiest critter I’d seen, but fast enough to make it a hard stop and dangerous enough that I didn’t want it anywhere near a school. Thanks to an infestation of lightning sprites a year or two before, though, I had just the trick for it.

My right hand crackled, sending a network of sparkling points forward. As they reached their target, lines of semi-solid lightning sprang between them in a web, falling onto the surprised scorpion and catching it entirely off-guard. I landed a few dozen feet away, no longer able to keep myself aloft. Despite my best efforts, more than a few moments of flight at a time still eluded me. Firearms were not permitted to be used except in extremis within Seattle city proper, even if you (like me) were properly licensed, so this one would have to be the hard way. I drew my short sword as I walked slowly towards it, snapping a picture with my phone in my other hand now that I had time. 

That turned out to be a mistake. The net lasted plenty long enough, but the scorpion had the perfect combination of pain tolerance and high Agility that let it slip free a couple of seconds after I put the phone away. There was barely enough time to get one good sword swing as it suddenly dove toward me. I hit, delivering a serious wound, but got clawed as I did and suddenly felt a sharp pain in my left arm as its stinger also connected, the burning sensation of injected venom ripping through it. I yelled in pain, but before it could do more unfortunate things to me a blistering lance of fire pierced it, cooking it from the inside out. I looked over my shoulder, seeing my wife with smoke still curling from her outstretched hand.

*PING* 

The status message came up, just as it always did. 

***

Ability: Scorpion Venom

Do you wish to Acquire? Y/N

***

I looked at it. My Mirror Class was offering me more choices to make than just about any other two classes combined, but that was life. I did not have any natural weapons to easily deliver venom, though without testing it I didn’t know if that was necessary. My unbelievably short mana pool also demanded I actively seek out efficient abilities. I had an open slot after my last level up let me discard a force blast that turned out to be both inefficient and Wisdom based, and thus not particularly helpful. I could feel myself becoming slower and weaker as the residual venom in my system did its damage. That could possibly be useful. I accepted the new ability, and felt the burn in my system ease off rapidly. My Mirror Shield class feature was in overdrive, protecting me from those things that I had acquired and those like them. Some Mirrors didn’t care about using their actual abilities, instead acquiring them just for resistances.

“Thanks for the shot, and good aim, love!”

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“Save it, please. What have I told you about taking proof pictures before we put them down?”

“I know, I know, but ever since that slime just melted away I can’t risk it. Need to make sure that we get the evidence.” I looked at the charred corpse. Though much of it had dissolved away, its claws and stinger remained. On the ground were a few copper coins, showing an oblong crystal on one side and a mountain on the other. Dungeon currency. Not nearly enough alone, but between salvage and the local bounty program it would do. Ish. I snapped another picture of the remains before we collected what we could.

Rent for the Red Light Room was not cheap, neither was our apartment (and the day we were forced to take clients at home would be the one I lost it), food and clothing, and then there were other odd expenses. Potions, gear that was suitable for surface work. Makeup to give hints of stone to my gray skin, concealing my nature as best as I could in order to keep working around schools and churches. Other Incubi had given our Race a reputation for being predators, and my wife and I were suffering for it. Especially since the old guild had dissolved.

My mind had wandered, brought back to the present by my wife poking at my wounds. Which hurt. A lot. “Clean it. Last thing we need is for you to get infected on top of being poisoned.”

Early in my career, when everyone was trying their best to figure things out but nobody had done so yet, a Hypnotist member of my guild forced a monster to hit me with a spell that turned out to be a sterilization pulse. It turned out to be rather useful for both keeping wounds clean and keeping my sperm from doing anything I didn’t want them to. I used it. “Sorry, I was getting there. The routine is off now that we’re doing this alone.”

“Why do you even still hold on to that charter and pay maintenance dues? We’re the only members, it’s not like it’s doing anything for you.”

I sighed. In the first year of chaos, a bunch of us outcasts had grouped together under the Shield Against Shadows charter. We’d done a lot of good, made our living in the new world, even made a decent chunk of coin hunting threats that came up to the Surface. That changed quickly once people started leveling up and figuring out how to keep a lid on things. There suddenly wasn’t enough work to go around in the world of topside hunting. The others had, one by one, left the Guild to go pursue other careers while the getting was good. I was just the fool who refused to stop. “It keeps other Guilds off my back. Mirrors aren’t common, so being unregistered is worse than being a guild of two.”

Even as both my wife and I had to resort to that Red Light Room in order to make ends meet and feed our Hungers. There just wasn’t enough time in the day for one woman, no matter how sexy, to have four customers safely and still have sex with the hubby at the end of the day to feed him. I had the Scan class feature when I remembered to use it, and both birth control and disease control with Sterilize, but Lucy wasn’t as lucky on risk prevention and had to have care. Flip side, though, she could accept anyone. I could only feed on those with Demonic Races, and at that I couldn’t feed on other Incubi. Others would give me money, but nothing else. Neither of us was really happy with any piece of the situation, but it was what it was.

We were walking back to our home, the hunt having consumed the last couple of hours we had rented. The route thankfully brought us by the Office of Public Protection to pick up the reward for taking down a monster on the Surface. The line, despite the hour, was evil in a way typically reserved for dungeon or corporate bosses. The bored man at the desk took the proof without argument (especially since it was backed by both bodily wounds and the picture I took). The deposit receipt was disappointingly small, in dollars instead of coin, and taxed. Still, it would defray today’s expenses. Julian at the hot dog stand gave us our dinner at half-price on the way out. His way of thanking us after an incident a while back involving his oldest son and a Darkhound, which would have ended much worse than it did had we not come to the rescue.

It all helped, in little ways. So did the little glow of satisfaction I knew we were sharing. That monster no longer existing meant that people who didn’t have adventuring levels and enough Health to make those hits less than 10% of their total would have gotten gashed. Possibly killed. The streets of Seattle were known for their relative safety, and that was largely due to the heroic efforts of people like me. Surface Hunters. No two dungeons were alike, other than a small number of broad generalities, but ours was quirkier than most. It had an unbelievably large number of monster escapes due to exit portals randomly spawning for a few minutes at a time, necessitating the Office of Public Protection and some severe revisions to weapon control laws in the area. Eventually, people figured out how they worked. Hundreds of attacks became dozens. People got together when the odd real threat appeared, and there hadn’t been a monster death reported outside of the Dungeon itself in over six months.

We almost made it home before a much worse monster reared his ugly head. It started as we passed by a tall fellow with feathery wings and a glimmering halo. He looked at my wife with distaste, glancing at me and seeing the deliberate facade of a Gargoyle I presented. We had almost gotten fully past when he noticed the gap in my image. Blood. Gargoyles didn’t bleed.

“Hellspawn! Hiding your nature to prey upon the rest of us! The both of you, go back to the pit!”

I froze. So did my wife. Though it was late, we were not alone on the street. Two others were within line of sight, others starting to show up. I turned to face him, spending a few of my precious MP to call upon my Scan ability. I needed to know what we were dealing with. Aaron Christiansen. Aasimar. Probably a bit insecure about it. Paladin. Not sure what kind of Smite he had, if it was one that matched me it could be a problem. Level 12, not amazing but well above us. I couldn’t get hard numbers on his Ten, but WIS and STR were registering high. Nothing Extreme, thankfully. HP and MP reading 100%, he was fresh. If he decided he wanted to throw down, we might be able to pull it out, but it would take a lot and there were bystanders. And, of course, the obvious. Demonics, against an Angelic. The onlookers would be nearly 100% certain to say we started it, despite the fact that we had said and done nothing but exist.

There would be no help for it. If we fought, it was lose/lose. The bystanders were far enough away to be unaffected by what I was about to do. Slowly, deliberately, just a crack, I tapped into the deep reservoir of Hunger energy within me. It was mostly dry, unlike the massive oceans others of my kind could put together, but it would have to be enough. I forced it into my Aura, the emotional radiation I carried with me and which forced me to keep iron self control at all times. This time, though, I fed it. 

I fed it my Hunger, and I fed it more. I let it grab a hold of my frustration. Of my fatigue. Of my anger. Those things which I never dared show, which I kept in a little red bottle deep inside my soul. They burned in my blood like acid, a venom the likes of which no scorpion ever spawned could ever pray to carry. It was that which suddenly lashed at the Paladin before me, like a cannon aimed at high castle walls, and he felt it. The oppressive weight of it settled on his shoulders as he suddenly felt that the entity he was facing would happily rip his heart from his chest in the space between blinking, just to be done with him. That I was much, much more of a threat than I could hope to actually present.

He paled. I could see his mouth moving in what looked like a silent and desperate prayer as I glared, my will pressing against him like a physical thing. He turned, then, and strode off at an undignified trot. The onlookers, seeing that no entertainment would be coming this evening, dispersed. Perhaps they caught the barest fringes of what I had done and got a bit scared. There was no way for me to know. My wife, however, was well within the blast radius. She caught it almost as hard as my target, though she knew it for what it was and could stand fast knowing it was not directed at her. In the absence of anyone else, she and I walked the remaining couple of blocks home, the flames of emotion still searing the blood in my veins. The streets were clear of others. We took the stairs up to our second-floor apartment, got in the front door. I didn’t make it another step, falling to the ground, back against the door, tears in my eyes that had nothing to do with the wound in my arm. Lucy was saying something, I couldn’t make out what she was saying. I had pushed it too far, for too long.

There was a tug at my pants, I felt them being pulled off. There was a warmth and wetness around my dick, which was slowly going from its exhausted and limp state to the full foot of hardness it achieved that day a lifetime ago. I could feel my wife’s supernaturally talented tongue working it, the silken heaven of her throat, her hands on my shaft whenever it was exposed. I felt the orgasm take me, my soul connecting to hers and drawing from it. The power of two full feedings flowed into me. My vision sharpened again, my self-control reasserting itself. I was breathing hard, looking down at my wife as she swallowed, with a concerned look on her face.

“You didn’t get any customers today, did you?” It might have sounded like a question. It wasn’t one. She knew me often better than I knew myself, and just watched me nearly succumb to my Hunger.

“There were two this morning, but they weren't Demonics. Beastfolk in heat who needed someone who could Sterilize, and a pure Human monster chaser.”

Lucy’s face got thunderous. “And you just ran off the second a dungeon monster was in the area? You KNOW you are running on fumes! Neither of us likes just topping off, and you just pulled 50% out of my Hunger without trying. Going to have to do favors around here tomorrow instead of job applications so that I stay sane. You’re probably a day or two off of the same, and you just spent it all willy-nilly on flight and Aura?” She left unsaid that the main reason we went there was to feed, not to make money.

“Both were the right thing to do, love!” I protested. “Both times, there’s no way we could have done otherwise!”

“Ideals aren’t going to keep us fed, Jeremiah Kithkin. They aren’t going to let us start a family, or get out of this rat race. They aren’t going to let us be together.” The tears were back in my eyes. This was an unfortunately common argument around our apartment. The problem, of course, was that we were both right.

I could not have let that scorpion go, nor preemptively attacked the harasser, and still been able to look myself in the mirror. No more than we could survive the monogamy we both wanted for our marriage. Getting and keeping an above-board job as a Demonic Race, no matter what anti-discrimination laws might look like, was a lesson in continual frustrations. It didn’t help that my Aura drew others toward me the second we were both feeling horny, which was nearly constant. Some jobs might not mind, but trying to code with a coworker sucking you off under the table leads to some poor code, which gets you fired. Please don’t ask how I learned that one, I just did.

By the same token, people saw a Succubus and assumed any application was 10% for work and 90% to be the office bicycle. Lucy was an amazing person, credentialed with child care and education… but that reputation meant that Succubi were never going to be hired unless the boss had a remarkably open mind. Thus far, nearly zero luck, and the one time she got a job it lasted for six blissful months before a concerned parent protested the presence of a sexual predator around second-graders. That she was no such thing didn’t matter, it was the end.

Like this, we each fought for a living. We did our best to capitalize on our Hungers, to minimize our expenses. We both did remote work when we could, we both hid who we were when we could. Our savings dwindled, dollar by painful dollar, as expenses rose and income wasn’t reliable. Absent a sudden resurgence of monster activity that neither of us wanted, or a sudden epiphany of tolerance and understanding that neither of us expected to ever come, we were stuck.

And so, there we were. Hearts aching but still hanging together. We were like two cards standing in a house of them, leaning on each other but ready to fall if we were alone. Each other’s strength. We decided to turn in early, stashing away the dungeon-sourced coins and components, settling together in the same bed we bought when first married. During the chaos of the first year after the Change, when nobody knew if humanity would even keep working. No matter the arguments, trials and tribulations, that was all I could ask for. 

Or… so I thought. The future, as it does, would not take my wishes into account.

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