Chapter 8

"I… I swear, this has to be a new culinary milestone," I said in utter astonishment at the mess before me, my face drained of all life, "How in the world did you manage to set off my next door neighbor's smoke alarm?"

The girls and I were sitting on my porch, save for Rachnera who decided to stay in the attic, watching in bewilderment as several firetrucks and fire marshals closed off my street. They walked around the house next to mine, searching for any damage. A peculiar firefighter, a demihuman with more piscine features that I thought I recognized as an eel mermaid, stepped up to us and gave us a quick interview on what had happened to set off the alarm, and thanks to my quick thinking, I managed to divert the question and give her an honest answer about "seeing smoke" while simultaneously convincing her I didn't know where it came from. After she left, I gave Miia the dirtiest look.

"I don't know what happened! I swear! I was just trying to cook the risotto!" the lamia complained. Cerea clopped up to her, her arms crossed.

"And here I didn't think you could be any more of a clutz," she noted, "Did you put oil in the pan?"

"First of all, Horse-Face, it's called a skillet!" Miia defended, but Cerea and I raised our eyebrows at her, making her shoulders drop defeatedly, "No. No I didn't."

"That answers that question, but how did you manage to set off a smoke alarm a hundred feet away?" I asked, making sure none of the government officials were nearby to overhear this conversation.

"I opened up a window and put a fan next to it so the smoke would filter out!" Miia said proudly, her pointed, scaly ears fluttering happily.

"I was hoping there was actually a fire," Papi complained, sitting on the ground next to us, struggling to eat a plate of chicken nuggets I managed to whip up in the microwave, "Hot air like that is the best feeling under my wings, and makes gliding so easy!"

"Papi, you shouldn't wish that somebody's house gets set on fire!" Cerea admonished the girl, then began chasing her around the yard to apologize for being so rude when the girl started crying. Miia hustled around, trying to calm them down, yelling her head off. Normally, this would be the point where I would have stepped in and calmed everyone down long enough to focus on the task at hand, but I gotten distracted by something.

I thought I saw movement in the corner of my eye. It was small and subtle, but it was clear enough that I ended up giving myself no choice but to follow my hunch. Discreetly stealing away, I knelt down by my basement window and fondled the grass.

"That's… odd," I noticed.

"Something amiss, Honey?" I thought I had become accustomed to Rachnera sneaking up on me, but every time I hear her voice, I swear I jump a few feet in the air. At least I stopped screaming when she does that.

"Would you please stop doing that, Rachnee?!" I yelped, looking directly upwards to see her hanging upside down above me, one of my hoodies wrapped around her and drooping loosely at her abdomen. Smirking, she gave me a quick pep on my lips then dropped silently next to me.

"Never," she said affectionately, "Especially not when something tripped one of my traps." I blinked at her in slight fear.

"You have traps in my house?" I asked trepidly.

"More like tripwires," she said, waving her claws dismissively, "Point is, something tripped it, and I'd like to find out what it was. What did you find?"

I wanted to argue, or at least dif her for a bit more information on what her traps were and where I could possibly find them, but I figured that probably wasn't the best idea. I decided to ignore it for now.

"The ground is wet here," I said running my hands over the grass a bit more, "The problem is that I didn't see the fire fighters start up their hoses, and I don't think they have a pipe that burst."

"Oh, sorry, that's probably me," said a voice from behind us. Rachnera and I both jumped when we heard this voice, the arachne instinctively pulling me onto her back to protect me, but when we turned, we saw it was only the eel from earlier with a defeated looking Cerea, Papi, and Miia standing behind her. She probably yelled at them.

Taking off her glasses, the eel eyed us suspiciously. She was wearing a business suit much like Agent Smith wore everyday, but it had the same material as a raincoat to accommodate with her slimier skin. Her oily, frizzy black hair was tied back into a slowly untangling bun, and her teeth were that of a sharks with several rows of serrated enamel. If I hadn't lived with a lamia and an arachne for several months, I might have been intimidated by her, but as things currently stood, she was by far one of the least scary liminals I had seen in a while.

"So, you passed by here a second ago?" I asked, rubbing Rachnera's shoulders lightly to ease her combative tension.

"Yes," she explained, "I work with emergency services on behalf of the ICEP, and I walked through here a few times to make sure that there wasn't a fire, or what kind of damage this would do to this family's insurance. Frankly, I'm just glad they weren't home."

"That doesn't explain why one of my tripwires was broken," Rachnera interjected, ignoring the last part of the agent's explanation.

"I don't really know what to tell you about that," the eel said casually, shrugging and unafraid of the woman before her, "Chances are, I might have knocked something over, or a rat might have escaped from the house next to yours and broke into your basement." The woman's face suddenly grew a bit darker. "I won't lie. When I walked by here the first time, I thought I felt something run over my tail."

"So, now I have to set traps?" I groaned.

"It would be worth a try. I wish you all the best of luck." The eel waved over her shoulder, slithering away like a lamia despite her oceanic origins, and returned to her governmental duties. With a sigh, I led everyone back inside.

(...)

Life pretty much returned to normal for the next couple of days after the results of Miia's cooking livened up the neighborhood. To be fair, "normal" in terms of a monster girl homestay tended to have a varying definition by the day, but whatever you considered average for my family, that's what we had been comforted by in the days following the call to emergency services.

On one such day, Cerea and I had returned home after our morning run and had just stepped into the door, drenched in sweat.

"Have fun you two?" Rachnera teased, not bothering to look up from the TV Drama that she had become addicted to.

"Yes, we did!" Cerea said before I could answer, "He's really learning to use his hips well. He's gotten much better since we first started." I knew that she was talking about my swordplay, but she wasn't able to pick up on the innuendo that Rachnera was attempting to imply, the spider turning to her sister with a befuddled smirk. She just made it too easy.

"Using his hips, eh?" Rachnera repeated. Cerea nodded and continued.

"Of course! Swordplay requires a lot of hipwork, especially when sparring with a female opponent who is more flexible than a male opponent!" Cerea spoke so proudly of me that I didn't want to ruin her mood, but Rachnera couldn't stop laughing, so I had no choice.

"Cerea, please," I cut in, "Just… stop talking. She's making fun of you."

"What did I say?" she asked disappointedly.

"More like what didn't you say!" Rachnera cackled, "Everything you said! Just… everything!"

Chopping the spider girl on her head, I growled at her, effectively silencing her, and then asked Cerea to grab us both some gatorade from the basement. While she trotted down the stairs, I started up the stove. Not that I didn't have a quick breakfast before we left, but sparring with one of the greatest warriors I had ever known built up a serious appetite. Also, judging from Papi lying face down on the floor, I assumed no one else had eaten yet.

"You OK, there, ya daft chicken wing?" I asked the girl.

"So… hungry… Chicken sounds good…" she grumbled, "Where did Cerea go?"

"To the basement," I answered. Papi shot straight up when she heard that.

"But she can't! There are monsters down there!" the girl whined. She wasn't serious, was she?

"Your inability to distinguish between reality and fantasy aside, you don't get to say that," I said flatly, "Before the Exchange Bill that passed a few years ago, monsters didn't exist to humans, and now, I share a house with five different girls, each a different monster species."

"But these monsters are dangerous!" Papi pleaded, pulling on my arm and making me drop an egg, "They're all mean and slimy and have a hundred tentacles." I looked at her with just a bit of frustration at making me drop some perfectly good food, but then I got a sick idea.

"Probably," I said with a malicious grin. Papi screamed and flew over to Rachnera, tackling the poor spider girl.

"Rachnee! Make him stop!"

"Honeeey!" Rachnera whined, puffing a bit of air to get a strand of hair out of her face from when Papi hit her. The whine wasn't about how I was treating my baby sister, though, but instead that I had disturbed her "me time."

"Master? Did you drink all of the gatorade?" I heard Cerea's voice come from the basement door.

"Hm? No, why?" I asked, just starting the whip the eggs, cheese, and meat all together.

"Because there isn't any down there. Just a few empty bottles." The centaur gave me a curious look as she used a towel to dry the sweat off of her breasts, her sports bra not doing much to help keep her boobs supported. Regardless of the unintentionally sexy motion, I couldn't stop the scowl from drawing on my brow.

"That's weird. I must have had a spare hundred down there…"

"Oh, hey! You guys are back!" came a greeting from Miia as she slithered down the stairs, wearing nothing but a pink bathrobe that matched her scales and a white towel tying up her hair, "I just got out of the bath if either of you want to use it."

"Thank you, Miia!" I called over to her, "I just started making breakfast, so I guess Cerea gets the next use out of it."

"Thank you, Master!" my sparring partner said happily, her tail swishing so hard that it knocked a lamp off of the table by the door.

"Don't worry about that," I said with a grin, knowing that the ICEP would cover the damage, "You go have fun, K? I'm going to start washing the potatoes."

Cerea nodded mournfully and began walking up the stairs. As I grabbed a number of red potatoes from the bag I bought just the other day, I heard Miia slither over to try to help me, but I quickly pushed her back. She wasn't coming anywhere near my kitchen again. As it just so happened, however, that might have been a bad idea because unbeknownst to me, my life was in danger. When I turned on the faucet, a prehensile, slimy tentacle appeared from the spout and wrapped itself around my head. In half a second, my whole head was underwater, drowning.

"Mbbiaiiaiaaiaa!" I tried to call for my first girlfriend in the household, only to get a throat full of some of the weirdest tasting water I had ever devoured, the yell coming out bubbly and strangled.

"Darling! Hold on!" I thought I heard her. My ears were drowning just as much as I was, so her voice seemed distant and echoed widely, but trying to decipher what she said wasn't as bad as getting hit over the head with… What was that? A flogging paddle? It terrified me and horrifically turned me on thinking about why should would have had that.

"What is that thing?!" Rachnera shouted, scuttling up to the ceiling.

"It's the monster!" Papi cried, fluttering her wings like a panicked rooster.

"What is going on down here?!" Cerea galloped down the stairs, then screamed and ran back up when she realized she was topless.

We realized what this thing was at this point. This viscous ball of ooze crawled along the walls and settled behind the TV, drenching the plaster in a sticky glue. Papi jumped away from her and onto Rachnera's belly. As the weight hit the girl's chitin stomach, she grunted in pain and dropped from the ceiling onto the ground, cracking the wood and effectively knocking out the most dangerous girl that lived in our household. Papi didn't even care. She just used the larger liminal's body as a meat shield while peeking over at the ooze that was peeking over the table itself.

"Is that a slime?!" Miia shrieked into my ear behind me, her tail coiling around me and clamping my legs together.

"I think it's a girl…" I muttered.

Primordial, gender irrelevant slime or no, this malleable ooze definitely had something akin to humanoid features. Rather cute features, actually.

I demanded my "mini Kayo" to stay down as I gave this girl another once over. I couldn't see much as she knelt behind the TV and the stand it rested on, but the way she curiously placed her chin in her hands, tilting her head in confusion as she watched us, I could manage to get a good idea as to what her general form would be. Judging by the length of her arms and overall size of her head, she seemed to be roughly six feet tall. The green slime fall behind her and down her shoulders, a few shades of yellow burning it, acted as hair and was long enough to disappear beneath the screen, so I assumed it was about chest level. As for the general shape of her face, neck, and arms, she was clearly in good shape. Her eyes, on the other hand, were nothing more than two orbs of bright blue light. They were captivating, but mostly creepy.

The most peculiar part was that, despite our blind panic with her appearance, particularly after trying to drown me in her body, she didn't seem at all uncomfortable or threatened by us. All she did was watch us.

"I guess this explains where all my gatorade went," I whispered to Miia.

"What are we going to do?" she replied, "Slimes are really dangerous creatures, and actually fit the name 'monster' better than any of us."

"Do you think she'd attack?" I asked, suddenly worried, and pinching Miia in the right spot on her tail I knew she'd release me with.

"It's a possibility…" she muttered. Suddenly, I had a bad thought, and I had to verbalize it.

"Miia… what makes slimes so dangerous?"

The slime tilted her head a bit further and folded the ooze above her lights to simulate blinking. Papi yelped at the sudden movement. As she ducked behind Rachnera's unmoving form a bit further, the slime's eyes leveled on Miia and myself, and with a high pitched voice that most humanoids weren't capable of reaching, she spoke.

"Dangerous?" she ululated with some effort. Her english wasn't that great. Rather, it seemed that verbal speech wasn't that easy for her judging by the way her face contorted in relative discomfort.

"Kill it!" Miia shouted and sprung over the half wall towards the slime before I could even attempt to stop her.

All hell seemed to break loose at that point. Papi, due to her experience with the "monster," jumped away from Rachnera whose legs had begun to twitch with their chitin scraping together loudly, the harpy squawking. She flapped her wings as hard as possible, trying to appear intimidating. Miia roared with the most guttural, animalistic noise I had ever heard from her, and slapped her tail so hard towards the TV stand that the whole thing crashed through the wall. The slime had already moved away, and was running up the stairs. It reminded me of something. These girls were not human, and they never were. No matter how many features or personality traits they shared with me and those of my species, they were monsters first and foremost, and were more dangerous than any of my kind could hope to be.

This is what Host Families are supposed to prevent, right? It was my job to step in between them and protect the girls staying with me. I loved them. Of course, I didn't want anything bad to happen to them, so why couldn't I move? Why were my feet planted to the ground and my legs shaking?

"Good job, Cerea!" Miia cheered, her tail flailing through the air happily.

"No problem," the centaur said, wiping her brow tiredly while carrying a clear trash bag filled with water that I realized was the slime when I saw her lights, "How did a slime get in here?"

"Good… um… good job… Cerea…" I stammered, struggling to bring myself to walk over to her and pull down the sports bra she had hastily put on that had popped over her boobs, "I'll take… I'll take it from here."

"Darling?" Miia asked worriedly, but I know I scared her when she put her hand on my shoulder and I jumped away from her with a wild look in my eyes. It had just now sunk in that this was the first time I had ever seen them be truly protective over me, or attempt to fight to protect me, every other event before now being nothing more than anger.

I took a second and closed my eyes. Taking a deep breath, I did something I hadn't done in years and "cleared the mechanism," emptying my mind of anything other than instinct, my training, and the task at hand.

"So," I said in my darker mindset, taking the bag from Cerea, "What are we going to do with you? What even are you?" I thought I heard it whine when it saw my cold stare, so I set it down in the corner and pulled the girl's over, checking on Rachnera as she began to wake up. "We can't keep her in that thing forever. People drink soda and lemonade out of bags all the time because those things leak pretty easily, so we need to make a decision yesterday. Cerea, since I don't trust Miia with this question, tell me what I need to know about slimes."

"Darling…" Miia whimpered with no small amount of pain in my voice, and seeing me refuse to meet her eyes with my arms crossed and my jaw set in a deep line probably didn't help. Her eyes began to tear up.

"Miia, I love you, but as far as I'm concerned, we're all still in danger and I need to make sure nothing happens, so excuse me, but I'm asking Cerea about this," I said quickly, then nodded to my sensei. She shook her head to focus then answered.

"Slimes don't communicate with other species, and are solitary creatures," she explained, "They absorb the nutrients from everything they touch, and have been known to attack anyone that gets near them."

I was thinking I was getting a pretty decent picture of events. Digging through the fridge, I pulled out a few bottles of water and tossed them to everyone, making sure they were all hydrated while only taking a sip of my own, glancing between each of my friends while keeping an eye on the slime.

"She surprised me," Rachnera grumbled, "And I reacted poorly. I'm sorry." She gasped when I lightly trailed my fingers down her cheek and onto her chin.

"It's alright," I said, my face still demure as ever, "Everything is fine, now. Do you have anything you can tell me about this situation, though? If anyone can pick up on something the rest of us can't, it'd be you." I ended that line with a smirk, and Rachnera's six eyes looked up at me widely. Looking at her as an outside observer at the moment, I could tell that however I was coming off to her at the moment was something she found devilishly sexy.

"She um… Slimes aren't kind monsters, but they're not dangerous," Rachnera explained as her breathing quickened.

"Are you nuts?" Miia asked, "Papi said this one attacked her!"

"Did she?" I asked Papi with a raised eyebrow, my tone making the question seem almost rhetorical.

"Well… No," Papi said, "When I went down to the basement to look for toys to play with, I just saw her eyes, and then this small girl said hi to me from behind the meat freezer. She didn't do anything else. I'm sorry, Big Bro, I didn't mean to scare everyone."

"Master?" Cerea asked. I think she was the first one who caught my look of realization, but I paid her no mind as I picked Papi up in a tight hug.

"It's perfectly OK, Baby Sis," I soothed her, "I think I've figured this thing out because of you."

Everyone watched me silently as I grabbed a boot knife from under the kitchen table, ignoring my neighbors from across the street who were watching me from the hole in the wall Miia had created. With one look from me, they all turned their heads, pretending to do something else. Subtly, I gave Centorea a look, and she hesitated, but since she had come to trust that I knew what I was doing and that Rachnera could easily protect me if something happened, my sensei trotted out of the house and directed the onlookers away.

It was so simple. I regretted not picking up on it earlier, but the signs were so obvious that finding the truth as easy as I did was inevitable. The eel from the ICEP was covered in mucus, and had told my household that she felt something was off about the alley between mine and my neighbor's house, while a few days later, my stores of gatorade had been completely emptied. After that, the slime came out of the sink, and attacked me when I was covered in sweat. Not only that, but assuming Papi's assessment about the slime's size being that of a small child before, and now as a beautiful woman, the conclusion was right in front of my face. This slime, and possibly all slimes, weren't dangerous. At least, not as long as they stayed hydrated.

With one swift movement, I sliced the flat of the blade across the plastic trash bag while making sure the point didn't pierce it. The girls jumped in shock. Rachnera shot her webs at me, latching onto my back, and yanked me towards her as the slime girl took a few moments to regain its previous shape. I was right about her being a beautiful woman. The only way someone could have that thin of a waist, legs that long, and boobs that big was if they were a shapeshifter or a Skyrim Mod.

"Honey, please explain to me why you did that?" Rachnera said, holding me tightly against her, and for a second, I thought I felt her shaking.

"Darling!" Miia groaned, but this time, her tone didn't have a single ounce of defection, but was filled entirely with anger at my decision. I knew she was pissed at me, but despite her furious ire, she didn't hesitate to block me from the sight of slime, acting as a meat shield in order to protect me. The slime, on the other hand, tilted its head again curiously, still unsure of what was going on.

"Would you guys just calm down and trust me already?!" I shouted. Everyone surrounding me jumped in surprise, the angry tone my voice took being a serious rarity for me, and Cerea even cantered back into the building to check on me. I shrugged Rachnera off and stood up. Walking over to the slime, she didn't even flinch when I reached her and knelt down to chat with her face to face. I smiled at her. She smiled back.

"You're not really dangerous are you?" I asked.

"Dangerous?" she repeated again, then looked over my shoulder at the girls behind me for a second, followed briefly by her wrapping her arms around me, fists tightening around my tee shirt, and looking at the girls hesitantly, "Dangerous." Gently, I patted her head.

"Don't worry, they're not going to hurt you," I said lightly, ignoring the stickiness on my fingers, "You surprised them is all, and then they just reacted poorly." I glanced over my shoulder at them. "VERY poorly."

"Hurt you?" the slime asked me, splitting away from me without letting go and looking up at me with a concerned look. It took me a second to understand what she meant.

"Oh! No, I'm fine," I said, shaking my head with a grin, "No one here is going to hurt me."

"Hurt me?" the slime asked again.

"They'll die trying!" The joyful way I said that made even me uncomfortable.

"Aww, you just wanted a friend, didn't you?" Papi suddenly asked, making me jump when I realized she was right next to me.

"Perhaps, I overreacted," Cerea noted, then turned away with a hot blush when I mouthed my thanks to her.

"If she's not going to hurt my Honey, I don't really have a problem with her," Rachnera mentioned, scuttling over and running her hand through my hair which made me purr, "This whole morning was too dramatic for my tastes, but I think perhaps that was on us."

"Miia?" I asked after laughing at everyone becoming so amicable to the slime who was now laughing in glee. When I turned to look at her, though, she had a pointedly ticked off look, but was trying to hide it behind her bangs, her eyes trained on the ground, and her fists clamped at her sides.

"I don't have any issue with HER," she grumbled. The way she said those last few words made me furrow my brow in anticipation. I screwed up.

"Master, I don't think this slime has a home," Cerea mentioned, "She probably came here through some… less than legal means."

"True," I muttered, trying to put Miia's anger aside for now to focus on what was probably a bigger issue, trying to stand up, but the slime sticking to me affectionately since I had apparently rescued her.

"Big Bro? What's going to happen to Suu?" Papi asked, tugging on my shirt.

"Suu?" I repeated.

"That's what I named her! Because Suu and Slime both begin with S!" Papi said that so triumphantly, that I couldn't deny her.

"You're the salt of the Earth, Baby Sis," I deadpanned, "But the name works."

"That doesn't solve the issue at hand, though," Rachnera claimed.

She was right. If Suu was an illegal immigrant like we all thought she was, or at the very least, a criminal despite her lack of intelligence or ill intent, my family would be in danger. Agent Smith would need to be made aware of her presence. I loved each and everyone of these girls, Suu included, and I didn't want to see her get in trouble. However, if things remained as they were, then she would be a danger to myself and the rest of my family, and as combative as I was, I wasn't willing to take on the government if I didn't have to, or have an army backing me up.

Regardless, I looked Suu in the eyes one more time. There was one last question I wanted to ask her before we could decide on a course of action, and I figured it was best for everyone. I just hoped nobody would kill me for it.

"Hey, Suu?" I asked, "As long as everyone else is OK with it, how would you like to stay here until we find a place for you to stay permanently?"

The group was in an uproar at that. Papi cheered happily while Rachnera didn't really care one way or the other how this worked out, true to her nature. Cerea was the first to speak up and express concerns about this, but after describing Suu as a child in need of help, I think I nearly gave the centaur an aneurysm, hearing her sputter something behind a red face and a nosebleed about marrying her master and having kids. I hope I don't need to explain how uncomfortable the idea of having kids with Cerea was- not out of a lack of love for her, but because of the question of how we would successfully reproduce. Not to mention that I wasn't ready to truly be a father.

Glancing back to the witch looking to sacrifice me to the lamia dark lord, I saw a similar sight to Cerea's fantasy in Miia, her hands up to her cheeks and her eyes closed as the thought of having kids made her swoon. She swayed her hips side to side as my explanation to Cerea sunk into her own psyche. Thinking about it myself, I wondered only briefly what our kids would look like, and then quickly pushed the horrifying thought out of my head, choosing instead to give Miia a cheeky grin.

"Don't give me that look!" she snapped, "I'm still mad at you!" I cringed.

"I'm boned, aren't I?" I asked rhetorically.

"For awhile, yes, and not in the good way," she hissed. Smirking again, I decided to push my luck and waltz up to her, bumping her hips with mine as she turned away from me, her arms crossed tightly.

"You looooove me~" I teased. Naturally, Miia's very reasonable and not at all an overreaction was to grab me by the throat with her tail and strangle me for a few minutes, a satisfied twitch to her lips making her smile.

"I do," she admitted, "But don't push it. I'm not quite ready to forgive you for what you said, or for bringing another girl into the household when I'm supposed to be your number one." She let me go when I began tapping her side, gasping for air.

"Pretty sure you're the only one he's had actual sex with, Miia," Rachnera mentioned.

"Not- hurk! -helping, Rachnee!" I coughed.

"Hurt?" Suu asked after sliding over to me. I shot her a pained grin.

"A little," I admitted, "It happens a lot, but I'm OK with it. It's actually pretty fun for me." After that truth that I was sure no one really believed, I stood up and placed my hands on my hips, prepared to give Suu the induction I had given every other member of my household. "Suu the Slime! As of this moment, you are a now a member of our family, and I would personally like to welcome you to the Ghirahim Household."