Blessed by Night

It didn't take long for Cami to figure out exactly why her father had asked her about a potential rat phobia.

When the splashing noise reached it's apex, a wall of fur and muscles suddenly bounded into Camille and Mal's vision.

As a child, Camille had a hard time hiding her disgust.

"Yuck!"

Her words, while harsh, were not unfounded.

The creatures bounding towards her were at the very peak of 'yuck'.

They were giant, mutated rats with straining muscles and elongated joints. The foulness of the sewer had gotten trapped within their fur.

Everything from human waste to deteriorated tissues and even tampons.

On all fours, the creatures were at least five feet tall. Malachi was sure that if they stood up, they would be well over six, nearly seven.

The flesh underneath their fur appeared to be massively infected. Large sores oozing with green and red pus could be seen all over their bodies.

"YUCK!"

"Cami, sweetie, you already said that." Malachi reminded gently.

"I can't help it! They're all nasty looking!"

Camille might have been okay with wading through sewage to hunt for crocodiles, but she drew the line at giant pimples oozing with pus.

And honestly, Malachi was just glad there was a line to be drawn at all.

"They have herpes!"

If Malachi had a mouth in his current form, he would have spit.

"Munch... How the hell do you know what herpes is?!"

"Mommy's medical books!"

"What have we told you about reading stuff without permission??"

"It doesn't count if it's learning!"

"I'm your parent, how're you going to tell me what counts and what doesn't?!"

Cami shrugged.

One would think that a child with two siblings, an intelligent pet, seven mothers, and one father wouldn't have much time to be on their own and get into things.

And ordinarily, they would be right. So long as the child couldn't teleport apparently...

As the giant rats raced closer, the shadows around the tunnel stirred to life.

Barbs of darkness pierced through the bodies of the rodents and stopped them cold in their tracks.

Malachi heard the sound of gagging come from behind him and glanced over his shoulder.

Camille was throwing up the remains of the pizza lunchable she had consumed during her lunch break. Her axolotl looked quite disgusted as well.

In hindsight, Malachi thought that maybe he should have told his daughter to close her eyes before he cut their enemies into hamburger helper.

He was sure of one thing at least. Her appetite tonight was going to be quite lacking...

As was his own, if he were honest.

Malachi wiped his daughter's mouth and attempted to clean her up before taking a sample from the rats.

"Regretting coming down yet?" He smiled.

Camille nodded as she held her stomach. "I feel yucky..."

"Want me to send you home?"

Camille shook her head so hard Malachi thought she was going to make herself throw up again.

"Keep going. Wanna find crocodile friends."

Malachi paused in the midst of dabbing his daughter's lips and stared at her like a light had gone off in his brain.

He placed his hand on his daughter's shoulder and smiled at her helplessly.

"Cami… did you only come with me because you were hoping to make another lowbreed?"

Camille might have been Luna's biological child, but she had Bianca's mannerisms when she was feeling cornered.

She played with her fingers awkwardly and tried to look anywhere that didn't have Malachi in it.

He brought a hand to her cheek and gave it a small pinch.

"You know we said no more pets, kiddo."

Cami sulked.

"Don't worry. You won't need to make lowbreeds out of humanoid reptiles because you're going to make actual friends. I guarantee it."

A young child's trust in their parents is nigh absolute. But even Camille found her father's words to be a bit dubious, to say the least.

All that he could do was smile at her.

"Don't worry. Your pops is famously never wrong."

Camille didn't know if she believed that. In fact, she might've had even less confidence now than she did before.

Malachi went to the bodies of the deceased rodents and kneeled beside them.

From his pocket, he took out another sample kit taken from the ship and opened it.

Malachi took samples of blood, teeth, bone marrow, and even pus from the sores.

He was surprised at just how well he was doing with all of these nauseating tasks. Perhaps it helped that he didn't currently have a stomach to upset.

Cami on the other hand was vehemently disgusted.

"Ugh… herpes rats."

Malachi almost fell on his face from incredulity.

"Cami… please don't use that word anymore."

"Rats?"

"N-No."

"Ugh?"

"No, dude. Herpes. You shouldn't know that word at your age."

Cami nodded. Malachi was seriously questioning the need to better monitor his daughter's alone time.

He always thought that Shiro was the kid he had to worry about since Luna used to let her watch 'Snowfall' frequently.

"Daddy, I hear something."

Malachi stopped what he was doing and listened in at Camille's direction.

In the distance, the duo could hear more splashing that sounded like it belonged to an individual rather than another giant group.

Soon, a figure came into view at the end of the tunnels. Malachi was slightly relieved to see that it was a mortal man and not another infected rodent.

When the stranger laid eyes on the mountain of dead rat meat clogging up the sewer, he let out a shrill scream that nearly deafened Cami.

"MY BABIESSSS!!! MY POOR MASTER SPLINTERSSS!!"

-

"Mommy, you got a big forehead."

Nadine thought it was odd just how normalized spontaneous insults had become in her life.

Her daughters, despite their unnatural mentality, were still young enough that they hadn't learned to apply a filter between their mouths and their brains.

They weren't mean-spirited, but Nadine would be lying if she said she didn't forget that from time to time.

"Ah… d-don't you maybe have some schoolwork to get to?" Nadine forced herself to smile as tears threatened to spill from her eyes.

"Today was just the first day." Shiro kept placing her hand on Nadine's forehead. She seemed to marvel at just how little surface area it covered.

A couple of feet away, Bianca and Joanne were watching cartoons together.

Bianca carefully explained the timeline of events in the 'X-Men' universe.

To her credit, Joanne was listening about as well as she could, but much of her focus still lay with Sei.

She kept replaying the last conversation they had in her mind over and over.

She wondered if she could have told her about her hypothesis more gently. Or even if she should have just waited until Sei had at least come down from the high of seeing her parents again.

Her regrets were eating her alive, which was filling her with even more of an urge to drink- making her feel even more guilty about her near-slip-up earlier.

This day just kept running over her without letting up.

"- Logan and Jean hook up too, but I didn't really ship them together all that much. Logan will kind of fuck anything."

Bianca contributed her explanation while completely unaware of everything that was going on in Joanne's mind.

However, her thoughts were cut short when Joanne's phone vibrated and everyone's eyes darted towards it.

Flashing across the screen was a name everyone had been dreading to hear from.

Awena.