One thing was clear to me now: I had been given Pleasure Seeker by the gods in order to spread out healing abilities to people who had never really needed them before. They literally wanted me to be fruitful and multiply… the amount of healing abilities in the world. Between the twelve Flunt-on-the-Rustle girls, I’d spread out the four core abilities exactly three times. They had the ability to resist infections taking over the small Healer corps, grow their own healing herbs, perform triage healing, and brew up cures while the first aid kept the afflicted from slipping away too fast. It smacked of intelligent design and I was leaning into it.

This is Christopher definitely not using these abilities as his own pretext to bed as many partners as possible.

“As for what happened to Ivy and Isabelle, I think it’s all down to that Agency team getting one of them as hostage and convincing the other to give up to avoid hurting her girlfriend. Now…” I leaned forward, fingers steepled together and elbows on knees. “I need to know what went down under the sea.”

“Should we not consider how best to find and retrieve your Guardian friends?” Shakindria asked. She wasn’t usually one to speak up in these situations, so all heads turned her way, even though the words were barely audible from this distance.

“That’s on the agenda,” I said.

“Aww!” Regina pouted. Her fists were balled and she wore a petulant expression I understood. We hadn’t even had sex twice since reuniting. She had been insistent on doing it the moment we met back up, dragging me out into the woods away from the others, and pushing me onto my back in the grass near a stream. We’d almost been forced to run away when a water snake Nakamamon erupted out of the stream, but she’d been able to charm it even while she had me stuffed inside her.

She’d been away from me for the whole Flunt-on-the-Rustle situation. Even though we’d had a few more days together than Cinzy, Tara or the happy couple, she was still wanting to be with me as we marched northward.

She also knew that tracking Ivy and Isabelle on their way toward Agency HQ would require a Ranger. Tara was out of commission until, and even after, she gave birth…

…to my son.

Good gravy. The weight of that sentence still shook me to my core. I didn’t know if I was ready to be a father. I was busy trying to save people. Tara had made it clear the baby was her responsibility, but she’d also planned on raising the baby with her absurdly large family. Her family, which was in a completely different world. In our way was the might of the Agency, whether they were called BOOF or SNORC, and behind them was the entirety of the US government apparatus. So right now, the baby was going to be born here, and until I resolved everything with the Agency, raised here.

I couldn’t just ignore my fatherhood with a tiny child crawling around just a few feet away. More importantly, Regina was our only functional Ranger while Tara switched her class up to Mother. For the time being or permanently, there was no way to say.

“Don’t worry,” I said. “We’ll consider the mission very carefully. First, let’s take a listen to what you guys went through and how, against all odds, you all survived without a scratch.”

I could see by the way Alan and Regina exchanged a look that it had been a fair bit more dangerous than I suggested. That didn’t fill me with joy, but I also couldn’t blame them too much. They had succeeded and lived. My mother hadn’t been replaced by a mimic Nakamamon or resurrected from the dead; she was still my mom.

“It started when they came out of the waves and abducted your mother!” Vellenia told me cheerfully.

Scratch that. I was perfectly justified in not liking what I was about to hear.

“Don’t give me that face,” my mom said. “They understood that I  breathe water and they made a big old water bubble around me.”

The ‘they’ in question were a race of frog Nakamamon. I was pretty sure Jocinda had a hand in naming them, because she seemed like she leaned pretty hard left politically. The basic Nakamamon were called Tadproles, followed by the Frogletariat. The ones in charge, the second stage transformation, were called Bourgefrogs, because of course they were. Proletariat and Bourgeoisie, workers and owners. 

There were only five Bourgefrogs in any given settlement, Alan explained, but they were much bigger than the other types. Tadproles did many of the simpler and lighter menial tasks: cooking, cleaning, and some crafting. They had water and plant magic as well, from their aspects, and could help out with stuff like delivering bubbles of oxygen down to the seabed where they assembled a laboratory for my mother, or building houses.

“Their houses are so interesting,” Mom said, leaning forward. “They took this enormous kelp and stretched it out some ten or twenty feet wide, then thickened it and got air into it, so they could live in these kelp bubble houses. It was so lovely!”

“So I guess they’re smaller than we are,” I said, imagining Tadproles to be around the size of a corgi, and then Frogletariat maybe the size of a Labrador retriever.

It turned out the Bourgefrogs could get colossal in size. Like full size van. Mouths big enough to swallow a human.

“And you just let them take my mom and put her to work,” I said wryly. I just had to keep repeating ‘she’s here and she’s fine, she’s here and she’s fine’ over and over to keep from getting pissed off. It was a good thing Chrysta and Larelle weren’t here, because they would’ve gotten heavy guilt trips. Maybe that was the reason they weren’t here. I gave a dark grin at their now-conspicuous absence.

“W-w-we had to n-n-negotiate,” Alan said.

To let Alan and Regina join them down in the frog settlement. Regina, of course, had an ability from me, a Meld ability from reaching Devotee status, that allowed her to amass a huge army of cute and cuddly wild Nakamamon. It didn’t work on the sentient ones though. Neither Chrysta nor Larelle had the sorts of abilities that worked here, since they were only trained to intimidate or resist social abilities from Bards. Guardians would be useless if every time they went to guard someone, someone could get them to lower their defenses with a wink and a grin. That left Alan, who had no social skills to speak of, but he had all sorts of utility magic. They explained that, together, they spoke with the elders, the Triarchs, and eventually were granted access to Mrs. Fletcher.

“It was actually Vellenia and Shakindria, wasn’t it?” I asked.

“Nonsense,” my mother said. “Our spectacular Wizard researched a social buff spell that gave Lenny here a super high Likability score. Which, if you ask me, she already had to begin with.”

Vellenia, Lenny she definitely wasn’t called, sat up straighter and grinned brighter. Alan also had a surge of confidence, like my mom was a high level Bard and she’d just turned on some morale boosting skill.

“Don’t butter them up!” I chided.

My mom gave me the barest twinge of a smile, and her eyes glittered with knowledge. She knew what she was doing. She had played this game before I was even born, and she was better at it in every single way.

“I am not some bread roll in need of buttering!” Vellenia protested, holding onto my arm.

“You’re amazing is what you are,” I said, and she grinned broadly before hugging my arm even more tightly, and rubbing her face against it.

I could just about hear my mother roll her eyes.

“Wait… I need to know what it was called,” I said.

“It was called Futtplucker, dear,” my mom said sweetly.

I sat back, trying not to frown or feel any amount of guilt for my wanting to know what stupid name they’d picked this time. How dare she take all the wind out of my perverted absurdity sails?

Futtplucker was maybe the best one so far, though it was a real close thing with Saxwhacket. I couldn’t say why, but Saxwhacket still had a place in my heart absurd and silly heart.

She quickly met with the Triarchs, the three Bourgefrogs presently in charge of everything this year. The other two had just filled out a term on the Triarchy, so their reward was to sit and do absolutely nothing for the entirety of the year. “They did such an amazing job of running Futtplucker,” my mom said, without a trace of irony, “that they just got to eat and sleep and mate and get massages. And let me tell you: they. Are. Fat. Big fat froggies.

“So what did you do for several days?” I asked my mom.

“Toured the place.”

She had convinced them she needed to walk around and get a lay of the land so she could help with whatever their divine issue was. She got to know the people of Futtplucker, which Regina called Futtpluckers: their names and jobs, their lifestyles.

“It was difficult to learn that most of the little ones went without because the big ones demanded more and more and more. But the little ones were quite good at finding or growing more food.” It was materials they had trouble with: gathering raw materials took time, and fashioning them into products the Bourgefrogs wanted took time, so a lot of them lived spartan lives. They went without a lot of amenities in their own homes, so they banded together into small communes where cooking, farming, education, and entertainment happened. They were forced to use what one member had.

I was wondering whether my mom and the team tried to change things, but my mom shrugged.

“They seemed happy with the way things were. They didn’t know otherwise. Plus, all the Frogletariat are counting on transforming one day into Bourgefrogs and taking over control of the village… or splintering off and founding their own village.” Could Chrysta, Larelle, Shakindria and Vellenia taken on five gigantic underwater behemoths? I wondered.

They were having a problem with utensils. Every time they picked up a dinglehopper, it would transform into a snarfblatt, or it would vanish when they went to put food into their mouths. One would think the Bourgefrogs just used their gigantic, sticky tongues to snatch up food and reel it in, and that is what they did when the situation with utensils got out of control, but it was considered uncivilized.

“Wait… dinglehopper… snarfblatt… why does that sound familiar?” I asked.

My mom gave me a smile that felt like a patronizing pat on the head. “It’s from a movie that’s before your time, dear.”

I could tell she was getting a lot of amusement out of this. I smiled back, unfazed. It was good to see her lively, animated, and have her sense of humor back. A month ago she’d seemed just a few steps from death’s door.

“They have little tridents they use like chopsticks for getting noodles,” Regina said.

“J-jocinda m-m-m-must have r-really spent t-time there,” Alan added.

I didn’t doubt it. If Jocinda was responsible for the tridents, which I fully believed, then the whole society of the Nakamamon village probably had a lot of esteem for her. Their views on etiquette, their choice of utensils, and who knew what else were on account of the Druid—the probable Druid—rolling through and casually upending their way of life.

“It took some time to set up a laboratory, and to get Alan down to the village. The Bourgefrogs didn’t trust us, not really.”

“It comes from the challenges to their authority,” Regina said.

My mother nodded. It seemed like whenever some of the Frogletariat transformed into new Bourgefrogs, there was a lot of tension, and not the kind I would have thought. Instead of fighting each other, there was a bunch of puffing up and croaking to establish which of the big fat frogs would go, and which would stay.

The perfect Triarchy had six members, and at least one female on either ruling or resting rotation. The ones on the year off spent their time mating, and the subordinates taking care of the babies until it was hatching time. So if a new Bourgefrog transformed from one of the lower reaches, they had to defend their village. Newly transformed would try to promise a better life outside of this awful slave domain, and convince the Tadproles and Frogletariat to leave and form a new village. The old Triarchy members would puff up their croak sacks, demand obedience, and prey on the fears of the unknown: there was only one Bourgefrog, they didn’t know a good location for a new village, and by the way the current village was perfect the way it was.

This utensil god situation had really upset a balance that had been set. Everyone was ready to leave the village, and a lot of Tadproles were spontaneously transforming into the next stage from the stress or the divinity.

“The big bosses were scared,” Regina said. “Scared people make bad decisions and mistakes…”

“Also they’re lazy as all heck,” Regina said, rolling her eyes. “They could hardly stand the idea of doing anything.”

My mother made a face, a ‘can you really blame them’ kind of face. If everyone gave you everything you wanted for years and years, you would get complacent too.

“As it transpired, the little ones kept a steady stream of air coming from the surface,” Shakindria explained. “The big bosses did not care for this arrangement, because it meant taking away some of their servants. They were concerned that your mom was behaving as a Bourgefrog and setting herself up as a rival leader.”

My mom snorted. “I’d have to gain about a thousand pounds and be able to lick my own eyeballs before I’d ever consider doing something like that.”

“They were relieved when Vellenia took over this task,” Shakindria went on, and Vellenia (not Lenny) squeezed my bicep. “Yet they never allowed Larelle or Chrysta to join us down in Futtplucker.”

“Buck Futter!” I blurted, and all the humans snorted or simply burst out laughing.

“Alan worked with your mother on the sort of cure necessary. We also canvassed the area looking for the sick god in question.”

“Luckily it wasn’t dead,” Regina said.

“Shakindria was aided by several of the Tadproles in moving the body using her telekinesis,” my mom said. “She was a real trooper.”

I am not fond of water I cannot climb my way out of, Shakindria sent me telepathically, nor do I particularly enjoy being surrounded on all sides by the substance.

I could understand that.

“And that was that?” I asked.

My mother burst out laughing, and slapped her hand on her knee. “Oh no! Noooooo no. No no no no no.”

“There was quite a bit of failing to do first,” Vellenia whispered in my ear.

“Ah yes, that,” I said.

“We almost died!” Vellenia said, laughing uproariously. “The stench and the fumes consumed nearly all the oxygen.”

After she calmed, she peered around in confusion. “Were we not all making light of everything? Do I apologize now?”

I hugged her tight. “I’m so glad you’re here.”

“This one is great!” Azalea called. “She is soft and kind and smiley smiley. Are you going to mate—”

“Anyway!” I called loudly, “How many tries did it take before you ended up getting the cure right?”

“Oh, seven,” Mom said, smiling. “Five of them required evacuations to the surface, wouldn’t you know.”

“Yikes.”

“However, did you know you gain more experience points as a Healer from failing?”

I did, and told her as much.

“In the end we did it!” Vellenia bubbled. “Mrs. Fletcher gained eight levels from the ordeal!”

“And nobody got killed,” Mom said.

This is Christopher with mixed feelings on the subject of the whole ordeal.