John’s parents were an extremely unequal pair.

Benjamin Newman was an engineer and every bit the father one would have imagined when seeing John before he got his powers. He was lanky, with the only bit of muscles he had coming from lugging power tools from one workbench to another. His face was plain. His hair was brown, as were his eyes. He looked simply appropriate for his age, roughly 40.n/ô/vel/b//jn dot c//om

Brenda Newman was a lifelong housewife and an immensely attractive woman. From the feminine form of her formidable figure to the beautiful structure of her face, John’s mother was a stunning example of womanhood. The only reason that John’s Charisma-induced transformations were not quite so impossible was because of the genetics she could have theoretically passed down to him. In both age and height, she was lower than her husband, albeit not by much in the former case.

“Hello.” The single word felt a bit inadequate to greet his parents. It was the best that came to mind though and used in addition with two hugs, it was just good enough. “I hope finding the way wasn’t too difficult or anything?”

“Well,” Benjamin started and awkwardly looked back over the lawn they had just crossed. “The cab got us close enough, but I’d lie if I said we found our way around your neighbourhood immediately. It’s like a ghost town here.”

“Most people rich enough to live here move to Florida over the winter,” John posited and stepped out of the door to welcome his parents inside. Once they were out of their shoes, he continued. “I could have come down and gotten you myself.”

“Oh, but that wouldn’t be the true New York experience,” Brenda threw in, just as she threw her scarf over a coat hanger. Both of his parents were dressed pretty casually. His dad wore, much like John, a simple shirt and pants, while Brenda opted for a sweater and jeans.

“Did you get stuck in traffic for an hour?” John asked.

Benjamin checked his wristwatch. “Only about five minutes.”

“Then that’s hardly the true New York experience,” John chuckled and guided them inside. “Just to warn you, the introductions will take a bit, so if either of you need to go to the bathroom, now would be the time.”

“What a considerate boy we raised,” Brenda hummed. “I’m good.”

The Gamer’s father nodded. “Same here… your house is ghastly white though, I must admit.”

“Well, we moved in relatively recently and didn’t feel like repainting yet. Could have done it beforehand but we were more interested in getting in the same house as soon as possible. Alright,” John turned around the corner and into the living room, “everyone, say hello to my parents.”

“Hello!” Sylph attempted to jump out of the couch, but was held back by Lydia and Undine in that endeavour.

“Let’s keep this structured,” the queen stated and respectfully lowered her head towards the newcomers. “A pleasure to see you again.”

“Waddup, B’n’B?” Rave asked.

“Oh, you know, the usual,” Brenda waved off. “Enjoying our own, less pronounced lifestyle of debauchery and richness.”

“H-hey, we’re a totally wholesome group!” Lee tried to make a joke, but it came out a bit stilted due to her nervousness. “Totally… uhm, yeah. Hi, by the way, I’m Lee Magus.”

“Oh my, you look a lot cuter than you do in the pictures.” Brenda smiled and walked further into the room. There was a small couch on the wall side of the table where the two could sit.

Once they were comfortably seated, Benjamin looked over the entire crowd, obviously counting in his head. “That’s all of your… harem,” he said the word hesitantly, likely out of a lack of familiarity, “minus one, right?”

John glanced over to Nia, who stood by the window. “Yes,” he half-lied. “As I told you, she wasn’t able to make it. She did leave me a message for you though. Mind if we start with that?” Waiting until everyone else had introduced themselves was practically begging for a sidetrack to derail any chance he could get to insert the message organically.

His parents agreed and so John placed his phone on the table and played the message. It wasn’t exactly Nia’s voice, but it was a pretty close reconstruction, especially given the time allocated.

“She sounds like an absolutely lovely young lady,” Brenda remarked with a smile. “You’re such a lucky young man!”

John let out a little sigh of relief. There had always been a chance, albeit a slim one, that his parents would say something unflattering assuming Nia would never hear it. Instead, the pariah was happily tip-toeing around the room, finally stirring up Copernicus, who had been lying, half-hidden, in a corner of the room.

Now that the jaguar was in motion, his parents stared at the clearly alive and clearly large cat with open mouths. “Is that…?” Benjamin started to ask, pressing himself a bit closer into the couch when the camouflaged elemental walked across. That his son was having a harem was a social oddity the likes of which he could evidently live with, but the presence of one of the world’s most dangerous predators in the room was clearly a bit too much for the civilized man.

“It’s Cappy,” Rave said, only to get roared at by the absolutely normal jaguar. What would normally have been a berating was currently limited to animal noises. The deep growl of a large cat did not help with the evident fear of John’s parents. “Don’t ya be like that!” the pink-haired first of the harem chastised her light spirit. “Play nice!”

“Why do you have a jaguar in your house?!” Brenda asked, more than a bit shaken.

“Unlike the crocodile, he gets cold outside,” Scarlett remarked bluntly.

“CROCODILE?!” Benjamin shouted.

John let out a long sigh. “Come on, Copernicus,” he stated and got the attention of the cat. The two of them had a staring duel. ‘We agreed that you would be on your best behaviour,’ the Gamer’s eyes said. If he could, Copernicus would have let out a sigh of his own, instead he closed his intimidating mouth and tapped around the room. “He’s a very tame jaguar. Jane wanted him on a whim, but I made sure it wasn’t the worst idea of all times.”

To demonstrate, Copernicus let himself be patted by several of the girls he passed, while circling around the low table. When he arrived in front of the Newman parents, he let loose the closest thing to a purr that a jaguar was capable of. After a couple of seconds, they gathered their resolve and scratched the large cat behind the ears. They at least got comfortable enough that they no longer looked like they would run out of the room in fear at the first given opportunity. With that assured, Copernicus moved back to his sleeping spot in the room.

“…How big of a crocodile are we talking about?” Benjamin was stuck on that, for mundanely understandable reasons.

“About a metre fifty,” John responded. “He’s outside.”

“Well that’s… good…” Benjamin scratched the back of his head to clear his mind. “That out of the way… how about we keep going with the introductions? I’m Benjamin, this is Brenda. We already know a few of you.”

“It’s so good to see you all doing nicely,” Brenda remarked. “Oh, I hope I still remember all of your names… Jane, of course I remember you… Lydia, Aclysia, Beatrice, Metra, and Eliza.”

“Eliana,” the pretty little psycho corrected.

“Sorry, I could have sworn…”

“No, fucking… I’m sorry… I had a name change to… sort out some shit. Didn’t mean to make that stupid and confusing.”

“Oh… I hope it worked?”

“Wonders,” Eliana nodded fervently.

“That’s good then. Anyway, I don’t think I had the honour to meet any of you yet, although I have heard about all of you, I think. You must be Scarlett.”

The technomancer raised an eyebrow. “What gave it away? The hair, the androgyny, or the attitude?”

“Yes,” Benjamin answered before his wife could.

“Would ya listen to that,” Scarlett drily said and slowly directed her gaze to John. “The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, as they say.”

“My son has a better business sense than me, I would say.”

“He has me,” Scarlett pointed out.

“You and Nathalia, from what I hear,” Brenda looked over to the dragoness, who responded to the gaze with tranquillity. “You… I don’t mean to pry, but how old are you?” The question came from a place of genuine confusion, the tone made that much evident. By her looks alone, Nathalia would be commonly guessed to be around her thirties, but she carried herself in a way that seemed a bit older than that.

“Thirty-seven,” the ancient dragoness responded with a pre-agreed number.

“Oh my, you’re barely younger than I am. I hear you did a whole lot more with that time.”

“In many ways, I hear that the two of us are kindred spirits.” Nathalia casually rolled her wrists. “Before I met your son, I must admit that casually sleeping around was one of my highest priorities. Now, they have shifted. If I can, I will soon mimic your lifestyle as a mother.”

“Oh my,” Brenda overplayed the sensational aspect of her voice.

John groaned, massaging the bridge of his nose. “Can we delay the whole grandkids spiel until after we are done introducing everyone?”

“Just barely,” Brenda agreed to play along and looked over to the five elemental girls. “You’re every bit as colourful figures as I was told.”

“Yeah, we’re odd, aren’t we?” Sylph blabbered, only to have Siena put her hand on her mouth before further palavering could occur.

“Uhm… yeah,” Gnome took the lead of the situation, after Salamander softly elbowed her in the ribs. “We’re kinda… colourful, I-I guess? We very much do love John though and we’re… I don’t really know how to say this… We’re all one big family and we’re really happy to meet the parents of our beloved… yeah, that.”

“I’m Momo,” the sassy support quickly continued with the situation. “Not sure how much you heard about me, but I hope it was all good.”

“Honestly, we heard very little about you,” Benjamin said.

“There was a bit of an uncertainty as to whether or not she would become a part of my harem,” the Gamer explained.

“Oy, can I explain myself?” Momo snapped back, overly aggressive.

“I don’t know, can you?” John snapped back in the same tone.

“Not anymore, since you just cleared the whole thing up for me!”

“That’s a lot of words for a ‘Thank you’.”

“Because I wasn’t thanking you.”

“Don’t worry, they’re just acting out their routine,” Rave chimed in to calm down the somewhat confused looking parents.

“May I offer any refreshments?” Aclysia asked.

“A hot chocolate would be nice.”

“Coffee for me, please,” Benjamin added to his wife’s request.

“Affirmative.” The weaponized maid got up and went on her way to the kitchen.

“So, who else’s parents can we expect today?” the Gamer’s father asked. “With so many women here, I expect a full house.”

“Will just be mine, I’m afraid,” Rave spoke up.

“Really?” Brenda was taken aback and looked across the room.

“Mine only had time yesterday,” Lee threw in.

That still wasn’t enough for Brenda. “And nobody else wanted to come? Scarlett, what about your parents.”

“Dead,” Scarlett remarked. “Health complications. Happens to the best of them.”

“Our parents… well, they didn’t really like what we did in the big city and the harem thing put the relationships on ice,” Gnome said.

“It is how it is,” Undine added in her serene voice. Even under the circumstances, the Newman parents were awestruck by hearing the beauty of even the casual tone of the goth girl.

Brenda was about to continue her line of questioning, but her eyes wandered to Eliana and that was the end of that. Even if neither of John’s parents knew about the pretty little psycho’s exact circumstances, the emotional collapse she had during their first visit in Washington was enough to clue them in that it wasn’t a pleasant or fruitful topic.

“I guess it takes a certain kind of girl to live this lifestyle?” Brenda carefully posited.

“You could say that,” John agreed.

It wasn’t exactly flattering to insinuate that only a somewhat screwed mind could want to be part of a sixteen-member harem, but there was definitely a point to it. Had it been normal or even just less common, John wouldn’t have been one of a few dozen people in modernity that got to enjoy that lifestyle. Even weirder was that he was actually loved by all of his women and that they loved each other. It was certainly the case that a number of incredibly rich and incredibly influential men had access to a vast array of attractive women, but those were more commonly some kind of transactional relationship.

Even with the supernatural origin of most of his girls, it had to be said that the humans among them had a degree of oddity to them. The good kind of odd. Still odd, though.