Luckily, that day was when the road raptors were finally delivered so I had some distraction and even later some company.
The raptors that were sent to me were all juveniles who were roughly three feet tall from to to shoulder. For some reason their necks and heads were not counted in their heights but instead in their lengths, but they were all over four feet long. Two-and-a-half feet of body length and two feet of thick reptilian tail.
The four that were ordered for the ladies of my work team were all 'normal' raptors with vivid greenish-brown skin not unlike a goblin's but under thick clear scales. Their forearms were draped with tufts of partial feathering and ended in small three-clawed hands that were not even big enough to grip a proper knife yet. They attacked with their legs, teeth, and tail more than their arms, though.
The breeding pair that the team had splurged on to buy for me, though, were a dark brown that almost appeared black with vivid blue and white speckling under the scales. They were rather large for raptors at about four-and-a-half feet at the shoulders and over six feet in length. Sadly, even though they were a bigger variation they were already adults.
Regardless of this fact I still fed all of the D grade raptors two E grade cores apiece to help settle them in the corral. For this first generation pair and the raptors who would support my comrades, Si-Pon would oversee their training. The future generations would be the ones I had to teach using the training given to their parents.
I gave everybody else a slime core to eat before simply giving Poniard what remained of the box. The way they had suddenly shrieked, "THANK YOU," with a higher than usual voice made me feel like I had just given a normal person free slime cores. However, a normal person would not simply sit on the ground and start stuffing their face with these things.
I went ahead and placed an even larger order for D grade slime cores while watching my hobgoblin cheerfully empty the metal box.
Ms. Gwyn and the rest of the women on the team showed up later in the afternoon no long after I sent my driver away to pick up a shipment of portal plants. The raptors who had already been 'broken' by Si-Pon's psychic abilities almost immediately recognized us and came over with curious interest. Then and there I pretended to translate Si-Pon's mumbling on my shoulder to describe their individual traits and personalities so they could choose their raptors.
Up until now I had ordered Poniard to do some reorganizing in the equipment sheds to keep her out of sight. Now, though, I caught her walking over out of the corner of my eye. Of course my suddenly turning my head to look over caused the others to look over.
"Who is that?" Karen asks with unabashed interest. Then, with open suspicion, "Is that a girl? I did not know you liked the darker me- oh my God. Are they… green and purple?"
"We get it, that's Poniard," Eliza says at the end of Karen's short outburst of questions and revelations. "He's been talking about hi-… her evolution all over the internet. He's been kind of quiet about it the last few days."
I could not tell them about having fed human hearts to my familiar so I could only shamelessly walk forward and pull her hood down to point out all of her canine-like features and then tell them about my 'search and recover' mission in a D grade territory where I found the kobolds. She ate A LOT of kobold and reptile hearts on that mission.
The others seemed to buy it easily enough. Until Poniard suddenly said, "Hearts are good when do good job, but I like slime hearts more anyone heart."
"Anyone heart?" Ms. Gwyn asked while looked at Emilia with raised eyebrows.
"Well, she's a portal creature and all the subhumans are primitives so they all are people… to Si-Pon," I say as casually as possible before can dig my grave any deeper. "Si-Pon is where all the translation and English education comes from, so it's probably all his personal inflection." That made sense, right? Totally.
The others just kept playing with Poniard's hair or ears or arms for a moment in silence before Eliza suddenly says, "He's hiding something."
"Even the kid can tell?" Emilia asks with a laugh while lightly flapping Poniard's ears up and down. "Alright, Malcolm, what are you hiding? Ms. Gwyn and I have even seen you naked before, you've got nothing to worry about with us."
For a brief moment I actually considered coming clean about the human hearts and my real connections to Director Carlyle. Then I simply shrugged and said, "Even if I wanted to tell you, it's classified beyond belief. Let's be real, Poniard has boobs. There ARE people out there who would be attracted to her. I can't tell anyone anything and I can't use her as advertisement anymore. Making monsters look human makes me world's most wanted."
"You can't be serious," Ms. Gwyn suddenly cries out, looking at me in absolute horror.
I did not even say anything, I just pointed at Karen who was currently holding one of Poniard's breasts and examining it. Poniard did not seem to even notice what was happening but just kept tilting her head with her ears that Emilia was now playfully pulling on. "They feel-" Karen starts to say, ready to make a report of her findings like any scientific person would.
However, when she saw the mortified and confused expressions everyone was giving her she quickly stopped talking and stepped away from the hobgoblin.
"She has a butt, too, were you gonna play with that, too?" I ask wryly, rubbing the bridge of my nose between my thumb and forefinger. "Karen, I know you didn't mean it like that so don't get awkward. I mean, Poniard doesn't even care so I barely care, but… you have to give us some warning next time."
"Does that mean I can touch her butt?" Karen asks, not even caring about how her butt had been brought up in the first place.
"Not in front of me!" I snap irritably when she actually starts to reach for Poniard's rear.
Frowning at me as if I had been baiting her into a trap, Karen decides to be petty and says something that was probably just meant to upset me but was just weird. "Yeah, well, they felt real!"
I did not need to know that. Up until now, they were probably just some lumpy lard sacs like I kept telling myself they were. Now, apparently, they felt real and upon hear that I could not stop myself from wondering if that was true. I quickly clapped my hands over my ears and yelled, "Take her the fuck inside!"
Even though I actually meant Karen when I said that, Eliza and Ms. Gwyn escorted both Karen and Poniard to the goblin dormitory. I suddenly felt bad for my goblin but I simply did not have the patience to fight with my teammates over inspecting my familiar's new body. They might say even worse things that what Karen had, or even say things about me.
They were only gone for a minute or two but when they came back they were all quietly talking and laughing. I could already imagine all of the crude jokes they were making at my expense because they were the things I was afraid of being told right now, but instead they quieted down when they came close and simply gave my goblin back to me. Then they went back to the corral to work on bonding with their raptors.
"Are you okay?" I ask while hesitantly reaching out to rub Poniard's head like I used to. Now, the skin was smooth despite her coarse and shaggy hair.
"They want see naked," Poniard replies with an unbothered shrug. "I say want see naked. So, we all naked then come back."
Before I could raise my defenses there was a split second where the image of all five of them were naked in the dorm building appeared in my mind. I was rendered both speechless and awkwardly somewhat aroused to the point where I stopped petting Poniard. Unaware of the shock I had just experienced, Poniard simply rubbed their head on my hand and said, "Pet so feel better."
"I'm sorry you had to go through that, but once people find out about you there may be another time or two where people who are way more professional than them have to examine you," I sadly warn her, almost wishing we were in private so I could hug her. This goblin had no idea of the world it was in but now had an awakened sentience and would experience things similar to a normal person, whatever might happen in the future would not be as simple as this event.
"You there, I okay," she reassures me, all but purring while being petted. Now that she was quite a bit taller it was actually more comfortable to relax my arm while rubbing Poniard's head.
Thinking about having an exam done by a professional like the biology or whatever director that Si-Pon was friends with, I simply watch the ladies hang out by the tree in quiet discussion and say, "I'll be right there making sure you're okay. We'll get it done in just a couple of days, too, so we can get everything out of the way."
"I go train," Poniard suddenly decides, walking out from under my hand and toward the goblins. The swordsmen were doing familiar training drills so my familiar spent a few moments just watching the soldier goblin. After identifying where the strikes and movements were from, Poniard quickly set to work assisting both styles in improving their attack speeds.
After simply enjoying getting to see my familiar back at work training other monsters, I harden my face and silently walk up to the group of ladies. Standing just behind and between Karen and Ms. Gwyn, I reach forward to drape an arm over their much shorter shoulders and pretty much pull the entire group back a step to include me. Not looking at either of them while still holding them in the awkward, silence, I simply stare ahead with a frown on my face and count the seconds.
Waiting until Karen was about to break the silence, I suddenly and loudly say, "Poniard told me what happened in the dorm. I won't say anything about it. You won't say anything about it. Poniard won't say anything about it. EVER. Is that clear? Don't speak, ladies, just nod your pretty little heads," I add when Karen once again opens her mouth to answer.
All four of them wordlessly nodded in unison before I finally walked away to continue training. "The water around the tree has been soaking up MP so even though it is warm it's still pretty good! Eliza, maybe those kobolds over there could use a few pointers and demonstrations," I call over my shoulder, hoping they did not intend to simply leave, now.
The other kobolds were doing well enough under Glaive's tutelage, switching between watching their videos on a large shared tablet and actually training. However, it now had the time and opportunity to take over for the videos. Everybody else just brought through raptors to awkwardly hang out at the warped pine tree while Eliza taught archery.
When training was finally over early in the evening, I had the ladies help me put away and feed the critters as well as help the hobs clean and rake the training areas. What was originally lawn less than two months ago was now barren and beaten ground from all of the trills performed in the same areas off to the side of the exercise area. When that was done, Poniard and I really got even with them.
I told them that we had to feed Malco once a week a special and dangerous mana concoction which was conveniently stored in the empty slime core box. They, as a group, had to go down and open the box while fanning the air at the undead lizard. Simple, right?
However, the revenge was that I signaled Si-Pon to pop the top on the empty core box so that Poniard could make Malco jump up and roar while running up to the 'lunchbox'. Four shrilly screaming voices reverberated louder than the previous roar about the bunker as four terrified ladies ran outside like hell was at their heels. I recorded it all on my phone.
Karen, Eliza, Emilia, and Ms. Gwyn all hammered and kicked me about the upper body in legs when they saw me with my phone out and realized what had happened. However, I just held the phone up over my head for Si-Pon to fly off with. Then I stood there smiling widely at the sky with my bruising chest puffed out and my hands on my hips like a posing hero.
*