Aelita called a house meeting

“Thank you Arrietty,” Aelita smiled at the tiny Borrower as she was handed a pen that she had dropped under the table. Arrietty had been among the miniature Characters that had been gifted to James at the wedding and had quickly started working on helping to establish Borrower den style places throughout the mansion, making it safer for the miniature Characters to wander through the house without fear of getting squashed underfoot.

“No problem Miss Lita!” Arrietty called out as she quickly navigated back down to the floor and scampered off to a waiting RC barbie car packed with a couple of elves and Mirta. All of them had various kitchen knives and improved armor. “We’re off to raid the neighbor’s rat nests for skulls!”

“I feel like we should be worried about that,” Katara said as she slipped into the seat next to Aelita meanwhile the RC car sped off, leaving tiny skid marks on the floor to Katara’s slight annoyance. “Not even a full 24 hours.”

At the same time, Starfire and Gaige took the seats on her other side while everyone else of the full sized members of the harem (and Tatsumaki) trickled in and sat down along the room. Everyone was still wearing their personalized maid outfits except for Aelita though she was wearing the maid headpiece in solidarity. Every few feet in the center of the long dining table were plates of snack foods like individually packaged chip bags, sodas, and a few fruit bowls. While the kitchen wasn’t fully stocked (part of the reason James was on his supply run), it had enough to for this little get together.

“So, what is this all about?” Sabine asked, looking grumpy and uncomfortable in the maid outfit she wore. It still had a beskar chestplate and pauldrons but Mandalorian armor it was not.

Aelita smiled at everyone around the dining table as she tapped a small stack of papers she had in front of her. “First thing first, I would like to thank everyone for getting everything put away so quickly even with the delays due to discussion with the mini Characters on furniture and decoration locations.”

“I had to save a few from my instruments,” Kyoka Jirou commented with crossed arms.

“Well, I hope they thanked you for that,” Aelita said. Kyoka raised a hand with visible bite marks to which Aelita cringed a little. Quite a few of the miniature Characters were a bit more ‘feral’ than the others.

“Hey! How would you like it if someone randomly picked you up!?” A tiny voice shouted from one of the trays of snacks. Some of the girls had to stand up to look at what the others were staring at. At the tray was a tiny Nidalee from League of Legends with a chocolate chip cookie on her back. She was wearing a leopard print bikini and carrying a spear made from a bundle of needles and half a chopstick.

“Sorry but you were clawing up the inside of my guitar,” Kyoka crossed her arms. The Nidalee just growled and ran off with her cookie to the side of the table where she used a surprised Gwen Tennyson to climb to the floor.

“You could have asked!” Gwen commented as Nidalee hurried off with her prize.

Several others started to complain about some of the encounters they had with the Minis such as some of them taking shirts or being in the cereal boxes. There was apparently even one that tried to make off with Spider-Gwen’s panties.

“I’ll have a talk with them, I’m sure they’ll be reasonable,” Katara assured everyone. “But first I think Aelita wanted to talk about something other than the tiny housemates.”

“Thank you Katara,” Aelita acknowledged. “Now, as everyone might be aware, the harem has recently undergone a massive growth. Just barely two months ago, we were just four and now we have over forty ladies not including the Minis.”

“Wha! Really!” Tatsumaki exclaimed as she stood up in surprise, her cat themed maid outfit fluttering.

“Yeah, it used to just be me, Aelita, Ahsoka, and Katara hanging about the old house,” Gaige explained as she snagged a snickerdoodle from the nearby pile of snacks. “Then James got the fever for even more pussy.”

“Crude but true,” Aelita chuckled. “And such a massive boost has meant that the budget is not exactly as balanced as I would like even with James’ parents and the wedding gifts covering the new mansion, ship repairs, and fixing/replacing our things.” At this point, Aelita activated a hologram presentation showing some charts and graphs much to the groans of several of the people around the table.

“As you can see, while James brings in a healthy amount of money just from his job, it's nowhere close to maintaining all of us. Thankfully, my investment work has been pretty fruitful which allowed the purchase of a Cat’s Meow Cafe and a Gardenia Flower store. Those are too new to really calculate the projected profit yet.” And off Aelita went showing off the conventional revenue sources that James' job or his money facilitated.

“And what does this have to do with us?” Rayla asked, sitting stiffly and a little twitchy. Her time at the Gardner Family’s obedience training was a bit intense.

“Well, just like I have been supporting the harem through the investments, I would like everyone to think about any jobs or anything they can think of to contribute,” Aelita explained.

“I ain’t never had a real job before,” Toph grumbled in her seat. As a still relatively new member of the harem (being bought shortly before the honeymoon) she didn’t have much experience being anything other than her previous owner’s bedmate or a space waster at the same kennel Starfire had been stuck at.

“Wouldn’t people just buy their own slaves?” Callie asked in disbelief. Other unhappy grumblings and comments started to grow. Aelita decided to quickly answer Callie’s concern to try to get everyone back on track.

“Well Callie, normally but not everyone wants to get a whole new Character for a specific job,” Aelita shrugged at the not unreasonable question. She then gestured to the harem members with the longest time around.

“My game streams with Shampoo have been rockin’ the numbers,” Gaige boasted, manipulating the hologram to show that her stream was the third highest source of income. “And we just started a new set of merch. And with Ranko joining the Gaige Clan (re-brand in the works), the sky’s the limit.”

“And I teach waterbending at the community center every two weeks when it's my turn to take Aelita to her mommy class. And I used to do some minor sewing repairs around the neighborhood for a few dollars,” Katara stated as she pointed to herself being among the bottom revenue sources of the list. She was primarily Aelita’s midwife after all so she did not do much work outside of that.

“And if you recall from the garage of the old house, Ahsoka would work on various Star Wars vehicles and resell them along with the occasional healthy commission to take care of some Sith artifacts that proved too dangerous,” Aelita explained, showing off the fifth highest line item. Ahsoka recalled how while most of the artifacts would get sent to Walt Stark aka ‘Uncle Hoss’, the rest were quickly destroyed in a semi-secret location on the Gardner Castle property. But that was neither here nor there, Aelita needed to focus on the meeting, “And of course, we cannot forget the contributions of Shampoo with her help on Gaige’s stream and Marinette’s clothing sales on the…” Aelita checked her notes, “Dupain-Cheng Fashion Network. And we cannot forget the surprising success of the Shower Stream being the fourth highest revenue source.” The room’s noise died down with the few people who were lightly talking quieting when the others stopped suddenly and focused on Aelita who just looked around worried.

“...What ‘Shower Stream’?” Jean Grey asked pointedly.