AN: Minor Editing Pass 6-14-24

After leaving Sabah and Dinah to watch the movie I turned to watch more closely what was happening in the fog at the end of the running part of the test. Just like what I vaguely remembered in the anime, several hunters got together and tried to kill Hisoka. I didn’t remember the fight and was surprised that Gon and his group had also gotten involved in a fight, but they handled it fairly easily and it was vaguely interesting to watch.

Out of the portal tied to Taylor I heard a voice. “Hey, Max, Amy and I have someone for you to grab.”

Looking over I saw Amy checking on a middle aged man. It was clear he had been stung and Amy had also done something to him.

Deciding to just step through I found myself in the fog of the wetlands. “I see you found someone. What did he do to make you target him?”

Taylor frowned and kicked the man in the ribs and I winced. “Was following us, muttering something about, sampling the goods, making us scream and some other crap.”

Amy rolled her eyes. “Bastard was looking to rape us. I confirmed the increased hormones consistent with arousal when I put the idiot down as he was preparing to jump us. He won’t ever awake again.”

I scoffed. “Well that is a good enough reason for me, targeting what he thought of as defenseless 17 and 19 year old girls and attempting to immediately force himself on them, hell, not even attempting to talk to them let alone gaining consent for anything... complete soul destruction might actually be too good for him.”

Pushing away my inner annoyance that he had targeted my girls as well, I sighed. “How are the two of you doing?”

Amy shrugged and Taylor waved her hand in a so-so gesture. “Not bad with Amy’s mods.”

Nodding I put my hand on the man and started pulling. The man couldn’t resist and without the shard in his head the extraction only took about 5 minutes or so. The man had a gem on his jacket so I had just pulled the soul into the gem and pocketed it before stepping back into the house entranceway. Turning I cocked my eyebrow. “Did you want me to portal you to behind Gon since I held you up?”

Amy shook her head before simply jogging away. Taylor waved and gave me a little salute. “We got this, boss.”

A little amusement at the address made me chuckle. I might make them call me that when we were messing around… or maybe in the bedroom.

Closing the portal made me sniff and wince at my dirty shoes. Taking them off I went into the kitchen and got some water to rinse them off before once again sitting down with the girls. They had apparently moved on to The Lion King. Surprisingly, Sabah was particularly interested in this one. I supposed the death of Mufasah made things a little more impactful. At some point I would need to find out more about her life.

Yet, this wasn't the time and I didn’t want to get in their way or distract them so I moved to make some food to share. The girls didn’t even look up as I passed them some sandwiches. The fresh meat and cheese from the market needed to be eaten soon or they would go bad until we could get around to figuring out how to keep food cold. Maybe I should work on that. If I connected the water generator that Taylor had managed to find to a second water tank I could get it running fairly easily.

I stared at the ceiling as I mulled over the problem. The water seemed to drain in about half an hour and the generator only produced about 200 watts or about 100 watt hours. I sighed and sat down. Apparently the chest freezer we had bought was 200 to 300 watts, but would only need to be on for maybe one tenth of the time. That made the math fairly easy. That would mean about 3 hours of running per day, or that I would have to portal the water 6 or more times per day for the chest freezer. The computer and TV were probably another 50 to 70 watts and if we used them for around 6 hours a day then that was another 3 or more times I would have to portal the water. I sighed. That wasn’t including the microwave and lights even if we didn’t need much as long as we stayed in the same room.

I shook my head. We really needed to get our home working better than that. Maybe we would find some better technology wherever we ended up next.

I looked back at Amy and Taylor and found them on the side listening to Menchi talk about being a gourmet hunter. They should be fine, but I would want to pay attention for when they would skydive for the eggs. The entire process was kind of ridiculous in the show. However, as I watched, Amy leaned over and told Gon and his friends what Sushi was. The rest of the hunters seemed to have heard them so there was a flurry of attempts to make something edible with the raw pork.

I winced. I doubted any of them would succeed besides Amy and Taylor. Amy would obviously cheat with her abilities, but I was curious where she was going with this.

As each team presented the food to Menchi and her partner I chuckled at her face of disgust. Putting raw pork on leaves was disgusting, but I guess Amy hadn’t clued the rest of the teams about the rice yet.

I noticed a gleam in Amy’s eye as Menchi picked up her Nigiri. Then as the girl went slack jawed at the taste I noticed that Amy seemed to be getting ready for something.

Menchi seemed to get up and bounce around before hugging Amy and Taylor, much to Taylor’s embarrassment. The sound wasn’t great because I didn’t want to be too close, but she seemed to be enjoying it, but before anything else could be said I watched slack jawed as Amy used her hand which had been kept in front of her to reach up and squeeze the hunter’s breasts. She had done it while being partially hidden behind Menchi and Taylor, but the slight squeak from Menchi had meant that the hunter had definitely felt it.

The smirk on Amy’s face showed that it wasn’t accidental and a few of the other examinees had been blushing, but most looked simply amused.

I simply shook my head. She seemed to have decided that if Menchi wasn’t going to be an option for the family then she was going to get a feel while she could.

I might need to get her to seduce Sabah once Sabah had committed. Well IF Sabah committed, as encouraging as it was to have been allowed to rub her feet, it could end up not working. Sabah might want a committed monogamous relationship and our harem, polyamorous setup was anything but that.

It was then that the chairman flew down and told Menchi that he needed to pass more than just two people for the test. I chuckled. Well at least the two would not need to do the skydiving portion then.

Sitting back I decided to sit back down and watch the end of the Lion King with the girls.

As the girls entered the blimp that would take them to the third phase of the test I advised them to sleep then practice their hand to hand fighting before reaching the tower. Apparently Amy had some basic training, but being a healer it was more theoretical for her than actual practical.

I ushered Dinah and Sabah back to their bedrooms. Neither one of them said anything about joining me in bed and I wasn’t going to ask. It was startling to realize how quickly I had come to enjoy their affection and attention… maybe I wasn’t dealing with all of the stress as well as I had thought. Sabah was also nowhere near to actually joining us.

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In the end I had trouble falling asleep as I laid there worrying about my girls alone on the blimp. However, even with Amy’s modifications, I was still human and I hadn’t slept more than a quick nap in the last two days and eventually I started to crash. All I could do for my girls right now was hope they got a good night’s sleep as well.

It was the next morning that I got to work and attached a second tank to both the generator system putting one in the attic and the one in the basement. The generator should run for an hour now and I was able to put two solar panels out. Hopefully that would fully charge the batteries so I could relax and keep an eye on the girls as they went down the tower.

I was surprised when the exam was changed to allow groups of six. Amy had pulled Taylor into grouping up with Gon’s team of four. I suppose that the test had been changed slightly because more people passed the previous tests. I wasn’t sure if Amy had healed anyone, or if their presence had simply caused less fights.

The trip down to the tower was almost exactly like cannon. In the story the examinees were forced to accept any challenge that the prisoners suggested while betting a number of hours as a wager. Since there was a time limit on how long they had to escape the tower, losing too many matches would see the hunter exam hopefuls fail.

So far everything played out more or less the same inside the tower except that Amy had gotten the first match with Bendot instead of the backstabber examinee in the story. The mercenary had punched Amy, but she had simply pushed herself back with the hit and let the man fall to the ground asleep.

Just like in the story Gon blows out the prisoner’s candle, Kurapika defeated this opponent but refused to kill him. There was a bet on if he was faking which loses them time. Leorio then loses even more time in another bet. Now nearly out of time Kilua kills his prisoner in a deathmatch and everything came down to Taylor.

The sixth prisoner that wasn’t shown in canon ended up being a young looking teen named Donner, probably a bit younger than Taylor. The kid had apparently been obsessed with explosives and had blown up two schools before he was caught. He had suggested that the two build something with the half of the cuffs he was wearing. Taylor simply nodded. I actually tilted my head at this. If she lost then they might not actually finish the test. I really shouldn’t have worried since Taylor had watched Gon’s technique of working around the rules and simply stung the man with one of the sleep wasps she kept in her backpack.

The teen collapsed and Taylor declared she had made a vase by putting a small flower she had picked up in the cuff. Since Donner hadn’t made anything she won.

The group continued down the tower faster than in cannon and ended up waiting there as two other final teams made it to the ground level.

I chuckled as they got to the fourth phase as Taylor used her bugs to instantly down two other hunters. One was her target so that was the three points she needed and she gave her tag and the free tag to Amy.

Meanwhile Amy modified a tree to hide in for the three days it would take to end the test. I thought about leaving them there, but there really wasn’t any need to wait so I simply opened a portal in the tree to the house.

Sabah and Dinah were once again watching TV. This time they were about to watch the Lord of the Rings trilogy. I was actually mildly concerned considering the Earth Bet version was more bloody than the one I remembered but they both lived in Earth Bet and helped take down the Slaughterhouse 9 so I didn’t say anything.

The four girls and I enjoyed the movie series that day as well as the first four Harry Potter movies the next day. Someone might have been surprised that while Taylor and Amy slept in my bed both nights, nothing actually happened. Instead I suspected that both girls had finally burnt out of the hormonal and adrenaline high that the escape from Earth Bet had been. I didn’t expect them to constantly want to sleep with me and I didn’t push.

I knew I did want affection so I might start asking if they didn’t say anything in a week or two, but I really did want this to be a family, not my own set of call girls and nothing more.

The third day of the survival test I got ready to portal the girls back into the tree. However I stopped before allowing them through. There were holes going all the way through the tree followed by a crack in the bark made by some sort of gun or ability. I wasn’t sure who had tried to find them, but I was glad I had gotten them out. Worst case scenario would have them killed in their sleep and not even realizing they were back in their gems.

I ended up portaling them into a crack in the ground that formed a small cave a few hundred feet from the entrance to the boat that would take them away.

As they left I counted up the remaining members. There seemed to be a similar number to those who had passed in Cannon, but I couldn’t remember who those people were very clearly. Sighing I shook my head. I would just have to wait for the final battle.

Just as I expected, the tournament started. This time they had to get their opponents to surrender. No killing. I was curious to see how they would handle this, but I shouldn’t have been worried.

There was quite a bit of whispering between my two girls and then Amy started touching all of Taylor’s bugs and then doing something with her nails.

In the meantime the competitors were chosen and Amy was first called up first against Gon. She seemed resigned and when the match started she once again simply stood there and defended herself the best she could, taking quite a few bad hits, before finally grabbing Gon long enough that the boy went glassy eyed.

There was a few moments before Amy said. “Say you give up Gon.”

Gon seemed to grimace and shook his head, but whatever she had done finally worked and he confirmed his surrender. After Amy let go Gon seemed to sway for a moment longer before shaking himself awake. He looked crushed that he had given up the first battle but the next bout with the ninja ended up the same way as in cannon as he simply refused to give up making the ninja give up instead so he had passed and ended up with Gon in the hospital wing the same way.

Taylor on the other hand ended up first facing Kurapika. Neither fighter was stupid so the wasps flying around were dealt with knives that Kurapika pulled out of his robes. Then charging into melee range and began to try to strike Taylor as quickly as he could. The battle went on for nearly five minutes before Taylor suddenly lunged forward and clamped her nails into Kurapika’s arm. I noticed as Kurapika’s strength slowly dimmed. I smiled as she had essentially pulled off the same trick that Amy had shown.

They had won, they were hunters!

Despite my pride at their achievement, I winced as Hisoka and Illumina both seemed to be eyeing the girls with real interest. We really needed them out of there before anything else happened. I didn’t want to find out what either one of those monsters would do. I was pretty sure they couldn’t directly attack the soul, but they were both psychopaths and it was best not to risk it.

Amy then met up with the ninja. Turns out his name was Hanzo. Hanzo agreed to ignite all of our Nen and give us a book on its use if we fixed his shoulders. Apparently all of the armor on his back wasn’t for show. It was both armor and supports for some torn muscles that hadn’t healed quite right.

The exam wrapped up and the two girls waved goodbye to Gon as he went on to try to track down Killua who had disappeared after his brother had emotionally torn him down. That was bad, but Gon was on the case so the girls followed Hanzo down and after a few minutes we portaled to in-front of his door. Awakening our Nen was equally uneventful, but none of us felt particularly different.

Sighing, we listened to some basic instructions and tested our elements. Apparently I was a manipulator and Amy was an enhancer. Dinah was a specialist, Sabah was a manipulator, and Taylor was another specialist.

I winced. Nen was tied to a person’s souls so I supposed it made sense that the abilities were tied to the powers from the shards I had shoved into each girl’s soul. Dinah asked a few more questions as we left and we determined there was probably much more we could have learned, but we already knew that. I just didn’t think we had the time. Really, I had no intention of waiting around when Hisoka had been interested in us. Who knew what that crazy clown would do and while it might be nothing, it wasn’t worth the risk.

All in all, it was a bit of a let-down, but Amy and Taylor had become official Hunters at least.

As the five of us grabbed some food, portaled home, grabbed the rapist and prepared to leave, I made a mental note to perhaps come back sometime and see what we could learn in the future… it just might be a distant very one.

Any and I put Dinah to sleep. Sabah also requested the same, so it was only Amy, Taylor, and I sitting on the living room sofa as we prepared for the jump.

However, I was surprised when the two of them looked at each other before they leaned in and kissed me. I then felt two sets of hands on my legs and I smiled. It was nice to be shown appreciation like this.

As the three of us relaxed after the distraction, I sighed. “That was wonderful, but I was wondering where the two of you wanted to go next?”

Taylor tilted her head. “I thought you couldn’t aim.”

I shook my head. “No, I can’t, not really. At least not yet, but I would like to know where you two might want to end up.”

Taylor actually giggled slightly at that, then huffed as she thought. “I would like somewhere where we could train to fight.”

Amy paused before she nodded. “Yeah, our abilities got us through the exam, but if anyone like Hanzo or Hisoka had really come at us before the end where they weren’t allowed to kill us, then we wouldn’t have stood a chance. Amy’s modifications seem to have made us maybe a few times stronger than the average adult man. In fact we were both faster and tougher, but Hanzo was on a whole other level. I don’t even want to think about Hisoka, that clown was a freak.”

I winced. “Yeah, if I wasn’t fairly sure that your souls would be fine, I wouldn’t have let you within a mile of that clown. His power is rubber gum where he can stick things together invisibly, but he also has many other tricks up his sleeves. I don’t have any idea what he did to that man’s arms at the beginning.”

Amy shook her head but said nothing.

Taking a deep breath, I thought about our next jump as I broke the soul in the gem. I just hope we could find a bunch of options for people who could teach us to fight.

Interlude Amy:

Amy had a moment to consider as she watched Max get ready for the next jump. Life had certainly changed since he had surprised her on that roof a week or so ago. Really, it felt like it had been a year, but she could admit that things had gotten better.

Yeah, she could admit that she had exchanged being slightly mastered by her sister for being lightly bound by Max. Still, as close as she had been paying attention to her biology, he wasn’t really changing her. So the slight crush on the boy was probably not a insidious brainwashing campaign. Hell, being surrounded by women who accepted her was just about the best possible end to what could have happened to her based on her previous story.

That wasn’t to say everything was perfect. There was still a huge part of her that missed Vicky. Yet a larger part of her felt free, as strange as that was. Seriously strange… hell, she was potentially eternally bound to a man and her sister wives, after all.

Still, even with that knowledge she still felt free.

No one expected her to work endless hours in a hospital.

No one was stopping her from experimenting with biology.

No one was telling her that she couldn’t pursue the relationships she wanted.

Looking to where Sabah had walked away for the moment, she hummed. Maybe she should work on that after all.