Mike had been working hard, keeping the Girls with him was what he wanted but now they had so much more to offer besides their bodies. All of the girls had found places for themselves in the community, becoming pillars themselves.
'Cough Cough' Mike tried to clear his throat in an attempt to garnish their attention while he was speaking.
"As I was saying. I'm glad so many of you turned out for this meeting." He had finished clearing his throat and continued. "I have a few things I want to say, so please keep your questions till after." Mike waved his hands to stop them all, questions were inbound so he had to make sure that he stayed on topic. "I'm leaving this area pretty soon. I will be taking the Dragoons with me and I will not be closing the Casino." Mike watched the shoulders of some of the new arrivals drop and tense up for a moment until he finished his sentence.
Their attitudes were all teetering on self-destruct modes.
"I want this place to stay open, its a good place for you girls to regain some power for yourselves. That being said, I will remain the owner of this Casino and the Port. Please hold on to my share, if you have to, use it to repair and fix up the City while I'm away. The rest of my share of the profits, can stay in the Casino's care." Mike saw the eyes of the girls light up, they were being given everything..
He wasn't going to use the Tunnel or Throne Room for the Casino Vault, it would lead others to learn of its existence and Mike couldn't have that. Earlier, Mike decided on building a new safe, from his own memories. "Vella, Cara, Rissa, Jodi, March, Mona, Georgia, Betty, the rest of the new comers..I brought these girls out of slavery and showed them a new life, A life you're currently enjoying too." He panned the room, "You can choose to stay in the Casino and keep it running while I'm gone or leave with me. But!"
"And I can't stress this enough." Mike was sure he was going to hear a mouthful after his next bit.
"I don't want you to come if you're not willing to fight. I am going to forcibly change this world, it won't be nice and it won't be kind either." Mike's face changed, he took on a serious face and looked at the girls with intent. He was not going to come back for some time, if ever. The act of making them put some funds or items away for him was more or less a fallback for the worst of times.
Mona spoke up. "You'll have to throw us away before we would ever choose to leave."
Rissa cut her off a little too late, "My Sister and I..This life is the only life I've ever known and I don't want to lose it now that we're no longer slaves."
"We all love you Mike, It seems like it is hard for you to accept all of us into your heart at the same time. All of us have already accepted you into ours! And to be completely clear, I don't want to hear about you leaving without us again." Jodi hugged Rissa.
Rissa's face got red and she kissed her sister. "Sit down, you're not going anywhere!" Rissa pointed to Mike.
"Yeah!" The girls shouted in unison.
"I'm leaving with Mike, and So are all of you." Jodi started to unbutton Rissa's shirt.
'Cough Cough' "Uhh.." Mike looked at Vella. She already had her hands up to take the dress off her body, and it looked like all the girls who were leaving with him, also wanted to get a part of Mike.
He hadn't even been introduced to all of them yet, he sighed.
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After their replacements were found, Mike led everyone around the Grow. He had decided to teach them the roles and where they would be working every day in the future, their first day of official classes were suppose to have already begun. He stood there trying to talk to the girls but their attention was still elsewhere, luckily, he was only giving them a tour at the time or he might have lost his patience.
In Mike's mind, the plan was working. The replacements would take the roles Mike and the Girls were filling at the moment, and expand on them. He would have to keep an eye on things for a few more weeks, perhaps months but once it was stable he and his harem could leave.
Mike, Vella, the Poocha Troop and others were all wondering what they were going to do and how many of them were going. "We're going to start training. Everyday. In Six Months or however long it takes, we're going to make our move and regain what was stolen from us and after that, I want revenge on the Ornians." Mike started to lay out his plan for the future, there wouldn't be any mercy. The Ornians had shown none and were ready for the kill him without ever seeking compromise or trade. It sounded like a huge problem but the more he spoke the more convinced the girls were about his cause.
Vella stood up and saluted like she was ready for whatever got thrown at them.
It was an awkward pose, She put her tail straight up into the air and her arms out like a zombie. It honestly didn't make a whole lot of sense, but the others were all laughing and followed suit.
Mike tried to laugh. It was definitely cute, Vella was doing it out of respect this time instead of being a problem starter, so Mike showed them a proper salute. In six months to a year, Mike was going to Poocha Castle, that meant he would really have to be ready for anything.
'Prince Troeg might even resist.' Mike though to himself while he went over the details with the group.
He could assassinate everyone and just move in, but that wouldn't be official enough. Mike would have to go above and beyond and it couldn't end at the Poocha Capital. Mike had chosen to stay, to fight for the people who were close to him and their futures. He had been taken from his home world but he never imagined he would find a new one so quickly.
'A Titan.' Mike was a Titan, a Texan too. 'Being from a place doesn't mean have to spend the remainder of your life there,' Mike knew that better than most but still had to reassure himself.
He knew the girls wouldn't pay attention until they got it out of their system, or so he told himself. Turning on the radio, he cranked its volume and led the parade of girls into his bedroom. "Ooo.. What's your name?" Mike asked who some of the newbies were but ultimately it didn't even matter to him. They were beautiful, willing and seductive themselves.
"Life is funny that way." Pilor flicked her tongue towards one of the feathered girls that had just joined in on the fun.
Mike gulped again, a pile of clothes was on the floor surrounding the bed and women of several species were pulling at each other [Omitted].
It was so strange to consider himself lucky when he first arrived but now that Mike thought about it and watched his surroundings, he was sure. "I've gotta be dead, no way is this real." Mike grinned while he watched his pants fly away and more than a dozen faces looked up at him like hungry wolves.
A few very fine and fresh giggles came from the sides of the bed as Vella walked up with a different skinned girl on each arm, each of them holding another girl and in turn yet again more women at the ends.
Surrounded, Mike wasn't sure how else he should react. Pilor let her tongue wrap around Mike's finger and pulled at his hands.
[Omitted]
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The morning was over, it was time for lunch and then lessons. Mike was in front of the girls with a helpless expression on his face, these girls would often turn anything that sounded remotely dirty, into a dirty joke, and while it was refreshing for him to vent, there were simply too many things he needed their attention to be focused on.
Since all of their energy had been spent, it was nice and important to eat. The food was well prepared, the Casino's daily specials were always tasty. Once they had finished lunch, Mike wiped his face and stood up again, walking to the front of the room.
"Ahem.." Mike coughed gently, "Okay. Lets talk seeds."
He brought out several of the remaining seed packs and grabbed a paintbrush, there were no chalkboards but Mike had access to ink, dipping the pen into the ink, he drew on the blank wall. "Sexing seeds is the same as sexing chickens."
His first sentence confused them all, to his knowledge, there were no chickens on Shiyan. "Okay, okay, bad example. Chickens are a type of bird from Earth, they lay eggs and those eggs hatch into more tiny birds, called chicks. Chicken sexers are people who take the baby chickens and separate the boys from the girls." Mike explained what chicken sexers were and then continued.
"From someone outside of the industry, this task not only seems impossible but undo-able, because chickens really look any different when they are just born, boys look just like the girls and so forth. However, after a while, the chicken sexers will be able to separate them to nearly 100% accuracy. This is the same sort of theory that I'm about to tell you all, so sit down and relax." The girls were bouncing around wondering if chickens tasted good.
Mike clapped and caught their attention back to the subject.
"Now. There are really three types of shapes to the outside shell of Cannabis seeds. Round, wedge and triangular. By picking one of the three, Round is the one we want. Wedge, while they can produce females, is much more rare by statistics. Triangular seeds are usually malformed and have an almost 70% chance at turning into a hermaphrodite."
"By choosing round, you'll have given yourself about 30-40% chance at finding a female seed. We only grow female seeds. We do not want to grow males unless we need to have seeds."
"Is that because males carry the seeds?" Rissa asked.
"No. Its because males carry pollen, the females make the seeds, like babies." Mike corrected her and she seemed to understand. "Okay, have any of you ever seen someone make a puppet out of their hand?"
No one answered, Mike assumed the answer was 'no' and kept on. "Okay, so this is a hand puppet." Mike drew two small eyes on his index finger knuckle and a bottom lip on his thumb, moving them up and down to make it look like a talking head. "This is a hand puppet." He took out a towel and cleaned up his hand, removing the ink.
"Now, do what I just did, but ignore the need to paint a face on it. Open your hand flat, then gently close your fingertips to your palm. Don't squeeze hard, that defeats the point. After you're done, put the tip of your thumb onto the second knuckle of your index finger."
Mike held up his fist showing them as they progressed. "Don't worry about it too hard, its not an easy movement for someone who has never done it before. But I want you to continue to try." He watched and did his best not to laugh.
When they had all managed to get their fingers into position he said "Okay, now, wave your thumb without lifting the finger from the knuckle."
Seeing them all laughing and making hand puppets, he sighed a heavy relief. One of the hardest parts to teaching them about sexing the seeds was to take this exercise seriously. "OK!"
Mike caught all of their attention. "Now that you can make puppets, its time to learn." Holding his hand up with the hand puppet's mouth closed, he said. "If the mouth is closed, its a guy. If its open, its a girl, if its got a squirrely shape or swirly shape, its probably a hermaphrodite. We skip those entirely, they aren't worth cultivating for our purpose."
"Can you say that again?" Vella was doing her best to digest the information, she was even taking notes which made Mike happy.
"The Raphe and Hilim of the seeds are the little dent and rim on the base of the seeds where they attach and detach from the plant." Mike pointed to the drawing of a seed anatomy on the wall. "Just think of them as the mouths on seeds, its easier." He sighed, it was so hard telling them how to do this and there was really only about an 87-95% success rate, "If the mouth is open, its a girl. If the mouth is closed its a boy, if its trying to eat its own tail, or wrapping itself into a knot or looks iffy, its probably a hermaphrodite."
"Hermaphrodites are plants that are both boys and girls, they produce seeds and pollen, and make inbred babies, in the wild, their seeds are worthless. There are some growers from Earth who've successfully used male-to-male reproduction but Tang Tang is a hard plant to get clones of." Mike felt like he went off topic and looked at all of them. The girls were attentively looking to learn what Mike was teaching and he felt like he was one step closer to his goal.
The plants in the garden and plot were getting to the point where it was almost time to choose whether or not to send them into flower. He had, at most another week to wait until they were the height and size he wanted. The Ethereal plant down in the thrown room had gotten significantly larger and brighter. Mike wondered if taking a clone would be more difficult, given that cloning gel was non-existent there.
"85-95%." Vella finished writing and looked up. "What else?"
"Okay, earlier, we talked about the three types of seed shell shapes there are. Who can tell me without looking at their notes?"
"Wedge, round and.. tri-angel." Mona answered and her tail was wagging.
"Triangle. And yes.. that is correct." Mike pointed to Mona and smiled. "Okay. Who can tell me which is better to choose from to make sure that you pick what is most likely to be a female seed?
"Round." Vella didn't want to be left out of the praise, she quickly answered.
"Correct!" Mike pat Vella on the head and circled the girls. "The best seeds, the ones that make the best choice for planting simply because of the lack of future problems, is... The roundest seeds you can find from the round seeds. The more cylindrical it is, the better."
"What's with these spots?" Jodi held up the best looking seed from the bunch that sat in front of her.
"The spots.. some of the cannabis seeds have spots on them. I call them freckles, its a bit derogatory but I've found that these plants tend to tint red/orange during flower." Mike felt a bead of sweat roll down his face, the last bit was merely conjecture.. but it had its merit.
"I don't get it." March shook her head, she liked the way the plants smelled but choosing seeds seemed overly complicated for her.
Mike laughed. "If we don't learn how to pick the rights seeds, we could waste months growing boys. Male plants don't make the medicines we want, though, there are some trace elements that are not present in females that are worth looking into." He tried to remain objective, it was getting increasingly harder to talk about how exactly sexing seeds worked or why. "I'm going to put a pile of seeds here. Each of you will pick out one seed, then plant it. I won't lose out either way, I plan to make one of the plants outside make seeds anyway. This will give you all the opportunity to learn how to grow, from the beginning." All the girls looked around and smiled at Mike's statement.
They were finally going to learn how to grow, instead of just talking about it. The new recruits that were not ideal for the Casino had also joined Mike's miniature classroom. "Okay, Who's confident that they can pick out a female seed."
Only about half the room raised their hand, it let Mike know that his work wasn't done. He wrote down notes on a sheet of paper and continued. "Those of you that raised your hands, please come up and choose a seed. Then, I want you to place it into a planter about an inch deep and cover the hole with soil." Mike knew he hadn't told them anything about planting or anything past the seeds but there had to be some level of faith in the matter. Cannabis could grow anywhere, even the shittiest soil from this area was extremely rich.
Twenty planters, each with one of the girls names on it, was sitting in the back end of the room. "After you've put the seed into the planter, take it outside and set it in full sun. There are 20 sonic formations outside in a row, pick one, set the planter inside, then activate the it." Mike had prepared, and prepared well. He couldn't afford any mishaps or lost confidence, 'baby steps' continually repeated itself in his head.
Each of them came up and gently chose a single seed, Mike had them all go to their assigned planters and sow the seed one inch down. The Soil had been enriched already, tilled and filtered of rock. With Mike's knowledge, hard work had been made simple. As they were led outside of the building's backroom, each of the girls held a planter. They all followed behind him and chose the spots that they each wanted.
Mike kicked the formations into activation one at a time. Each of the formations drew in energy and kept pests away. It was easier than patrolling for wild beasts and bugs, then, mike remembered a saying that he wanted to give to the girls. "Whatever is the laziest way to do something is usually quite efficient, therefore, Laziness is the Key to efficiency." Though the girls had no idea what he meant, he tried to get them to repeat it, unproductively.
The Suns set and the Casino was getting busy, Mike dismissed the girls and went to check the Mother plants. All five of them towering in the Throne room. Clones taken from mother plants carried whatever genes and traits their parents had in full, Mike wondered if growing more of the blue plant was the way to go but it seemed too special and he restrained himself in that moment.
"I have to wait.." Repeating to himself, he walked out of the Throne room.
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Many of the Merchant Mage Union had come to port over the past week, there was a strange rise in the amount of armed soldiers that were arriving, many of them seemed ready for battle.
Habrick and his men were waiting in the Casino when Mike arrived. "YO! Long time no see." Habrick put his hand up for a High five.
Mike slapped his hand and asked, "What's up with all the soldiers?"
"Pirates!" Habrick said it with fury and slammed his fist against the wall, shaking a picture. "Sorry, I don't mean to cause problems.. those stupid pirates, they've been getting us good."
"I don't understand." Mike tried listening but wasn't getting the point. "If Pirates are attacking, just kill them." It sounded like a reasonable response the Mike but Habrick shook his head.
"Its not like that, these Pirates, they don't travel on ships. They are the Ocean creatures themselves." Habrick didn't seem like he was having a good time.
Mike led him to the VIP room and they took a smoke break, "Tell me about it.. I will have to travel sooner or later, so these are matters I should know about."
Habrick nodded. "These Pirates, they are..." He was just about to explain when an explosion rocked the Harbor.
An Alarm rang in the background, a whirling horn sounded and guards rushed to the scene.