Up and Coming 2 – Big Rooms to Fill

Once they had disentangled, Avari began the tour properly.

“Alright, so we haven’t done a lot of restructuring in the general sense, so a lot of the places will be familiar and probably will be used to the same end as they were before our takeover.” The gremlin gestured at the room in front of them. “Like this room, right? It’s after the only entrance, it’s fairly big, so it’s going to be the reception area. The floorplan basically dictates what it’s about.”

“Do we even need a reception?” Eldred asked.

“Nyx, explain it to his blood deprived upper brain in a way he’ll understand.”

“You – important.” His banshee played along, poking his cheek with her index finger. “Eventually, you no longer go seek jobs, jobs seek you.”

Avari laughed loudly at the ghost lady’s mimicry of caveman speech. Eldred rolled his eyes, feigning offence he did not truly feel. “You deserve what is coming next,” he said and gave his banshee’s rear an echoing smack. She yelped, in pain and pleasure equally, as her bubble butt jiggled under her pencil skirt.

Secretary outfits really were the best.

He was half-tempted to pull the skirt up and finger the ghost lady, making her climax for his amusement, but he wanted to actually focus on this. One only got introduced to their new home once and this was the first time in his life that Eldred lived somewhere that was nice. Though his parents hadn’t been poor, they had not cared to get anything larger than an apartment with a room for each of them, a kitchen and a bathroom.

“I’ll trust you on us needing a reception, though that means we’ll also need a receptionist,” Eldred pointed out.

“I’m sure your dick will point you at someone for that job by the time we get there,” Avari dismissed. “I’d say by around 3 Cores you’ll be important enough to be sought out, definitely when you get to 5. That’s an important point in Cultivation.”

“Why is that?”

“I’ll tell you later. I’ve got a whole new presentation for you. Now, come along.” They managed to get through the door before Avari’s bouncy steps came to another halt. They were standing at an intersection of three, maybe four areas. Avari walked one step back, pressing a button on the panel next to the door they had just walked through. The opaque, metal-framed glass glided back into place with a satisfying, barely audible ‘swish’. “All our doorframes, except the main entrance, are the same,” Avari explained. “I decided sliding doors would be the nicest. They disappear into the walls, so no worries about getting one swung in your face. They can be set to automatic or manual opening and closing. To lock them, you need the house key.” Avari tapped a keyhole at the bottom of the panel. “You can lock all of them at once with a master panel in the basement.”

“You said all the door’frames’ were the same.” Nyx said, putting extra emphasis on the second part of the word. “I observe you made different decisions elsewhere in the house?”

Eldred saw what his banshee meant by just turning to the right. The door that led into the small kitchen, once used to store the snacks of the workers, was entirely transparent.

“Yeah, I picked the doors based on the individual needs,” Avari explained. “Thought for the reception area, we’d like a door that provides a bit of privacy, but for most of the internal doors, since this is supposed to be our den of debauchery, transparent is so much better. I mean, what kind of moron would want a sex-cretary corpo without glass doors? What’s the point if the other cocksleeves can’t watch you get railed?”

“Exceptionally acute thinking,” Eldred praised and put his hand against the transparent glass.

“Congratulations on putting the first smudge on there!” Avari praised him.

“Oh, I plan to dirty every surface in this building,” Eldred shot back immediately. “Are these sturdy enough to withstand a pounding?”

“It’s tempered glass. The frame seals magnetically against the frame. So yeah, for most women, you’d break their hips before the door shatters.”

“Good, goooooood,” Eldred gave the gremlin a lecherous stare. He was already imagining wall-fucking her against the glass, Ellie, Nyx or both watching the flattened tits on the other side. “Proceed with the tour.”

“You got it, boss,” Avari drawled.

‘Boss…’ Eldred repeated the word in his mind. He was testing how the different potential titles felt, while Avari showed him the kitchen.

It was a tremendous upgrade from before. Their haphazard assembly of needed appliances was now properly assorted in a fully renovated kitchen. They had a fairly large fridge, clean working surfaces and several working power outlets. Still, for a kitchen for a growing harem/company, it felt a bit small.

Adjacent to it was a ‘small’ bathroom. At 2x4 square metres, it really wasn’t small at all. It had a decently sized shower, a toilet, a sink, and enough room for a fairly large closet. Both the door and the window were opaque, the milky glass letting enough light through to get a sense of someone moving behind them but little more.

Avari led them back out and to a door with a pitch black panel. “And this–“ she began.

The door glided open. Ellie staggered out. “H-hi… S-sir,” the dishevelled goblin greeted him with her typical girlfailure stammer. She wore the company uniform according to her style. The white blouse was buttoned up, covering her petite chest, but had not been properly stuffed under the belt of her skirt. The resulting overlap gave her the disorganised look Eldred craved in her. Truly, despite consisting only of two parts, a secretary outfit was highly versatile. “G-glad you’re back!” she suddenly shouted, blushing as she did.

“I am glad to be back again as well.” Eldred squatted down to give the last of his current haremettes her own greeting kiss. Her green lips tasted of cheese puffs. “Snacking a lot?” he teased her.

“I-I’ll watch my weight!” she promised and hugged him. He hugged her back. Immediately after getting the news that he had almost died, she had been quite clingy. Things had relaxed a bit in the past two weeks. He understood her concern well enough. He had swept her out of her old world and placed her in a new one. If he died on her now, that would put her in quite the pickle. “Glad you’re back…” she repeated, quieter, more confident. He ran a hand through her messy, black hair, tracing one of the blue streaks.

“No braid?” he asked.

“I… j-just woke up…”

“Girl, it’s 4 in the afternoon!” Avari cried out. “Go take a shower, then get ready to join us in the meeting room.”

“Y-yes!” Ellie said, then darted away.

“I can proverbially hear your whip crack,” Nyx said to the gremlin.

Avari shrugged. “If I don’t tell her to shower, she’ll forget. Anyway, this here is our computer storage – and Ellie’s den.” The gremlin showed them all inside. It was a room with black windows, black floor tiles, and practical shelves. The small amounts of excess computer equipment they had acquired so far were put on those shelves, alongside a small selection of chocolates, crisps and other snacks. They were all in reach of the small pillow pile that Ellie had created on the floor of the narrow room. “I decided it was best to give our goblin her natural habitat.”

“Another perfect choice. It’s almost like I trusted you with this for a reason,” Eldred remarked.

“It’s because I have taste,” Avari winked at him. “Also because I don’t think there’s really a chance of us turning Ellie into a social butterfly. She’ll get better, but best for someone as adorably introverted as her to have her own cave.”

They stepped out of Ellie’s den and out into the largest open space in the building. It would have been the open office area of the old Shorn Company. Avari’s plans were no different.

“If we ever get enough members, I would put up a bunch of tables and computers here. For now, it’s just stupid open space.” With nothing more to say about it, she guided them through another clear door into a stone-tiled room. “I imagine this is the sparring area or something. Maybe a lobby to wait in for other stuff to happen? Really, not got much of a clue.” She turned south. There were two doors set in the wall there.

The western one needed no explanation. Through the glass door, Eldred could already see the long table and the big screen mounted on one wall for presentations, connected to a computer in the corner. Avari had made sure the meeting room was already operational.

The eastern one, Eldred did not understand. It also had stone tiles, like the training area. In terms of a fighting room, it was a bit small, 12 square metres. Empty shelves narrowed down the space. Mostly empty shelves. There was some rope on there.

“Am I not the best?” Avari asked, hands on her hips.

“…Maybe?” Eldred asked.

“…Are you for serious right now?”

“…Maybe?” he repeated.

The preening shortstack’s shoulders slowly slumped. She pointed at the ceiling. “What’s that up there?”

Eldred found a metal hook drilled into the ceiling. It was pretty sizeable. “Looks like it could carry something heavy. Want me to attach a sand sack or something?”

“By all the lead and love in the world, how are you this much of a moron?” Avari threw her hands up into the air. “Yeah, I want you to attach something heavy to that! ME! I want you to rope me up and dangle me from that hook!”

“When he is forward with his lust, you call him a pervert,” Nyx remarked in her dry, sorrowful tone. “When he is an innocent soul, you call him a moron. You are odd yourself.”

“I’m a brat and I yearn to be broken! By being tied up and dangled from the ceiling like a piece of meat!”

“Oooooooh,” Eldred finally got it. “This is a playroom.”

“I prefer BDSM chamber.” Avari crossed her arms. “But at least you got there.”

They took a quick journey down the restored stairs, though there was little to show off about the basement. It had been cleaned and the Pulsar given proper maintenance, but otherwise the concrete room was the same as before. No need to doll up a room that was going to be their dumping ground for all the stuff they didn’t know what to do with.

The upper floor was where the interesting developments were at.

Half of the long, broad corridor that connected all of the rooms up there had been tiled in the same way as the kitchen. That was because it had been turned into a kitchen. “I thought a bigger household would need a way bigger kitchen than the little thing we have down there,” Avari explained her rationale. “So here we go. Huge. Mega fridge. Lots of work space. Oven, stove, everything.”

It was and had all of these things. From one end to the other, the kitchen was ten paces across. It wasn’t very deep, but it really didn’t need to be. At that size, several people could prepare their food simultaneously without getting in each other’s way. A long table complimented the arrangement.

Nyx was hovering towards the opaque door that lead into the room that she had spent so many years in. “You made this into a bathroom?” she asked.

“What? Did you stick your head through the wall while I wasn’t looking?”

“I just recognised the door type.”

“Yeah… I decided that we should have a bigger bathroom too, with a tub and everything, and it was easiest to get the Pulsar converters put there. There was an old private bathroom on the other side of the wall.” She paused for a moment. “Hope you don’t mind? I honestly just realized you were in there for all this time…”

“It makes no difference to me,” she assured. “I do not know what bound me to that room in particular, what had me manifest in that space. Perhaps I will be angry once I recall those circumstances. At this juncture, I agree with your decision.”

“Neat,” Avari let out a relieved sigh. “Alright, let’s go through the rooms one after another.” Avari guided them to the door closest to the staircase. She pointed them inside, though there was nothing to really point at. “Honestly, we just have way too much space for our current operations, so I got nothing for this one.”

The next room had a very express purpose. It was filled with beds. One was almost comedically large, a monstrosity that took up half of the entire room. Three more single beds claimed what space remained. The burgundy sheets nicely matched the overall tone of the new design.

“The Bed – or beds – room,” Avari said. “Because sleeping in your office is for poor people living in ruins.”

“Why extra beds?” Eldred asked. “What’s the point in a harem if I don’t cuddle everyone every night?”

“Because some of us may be awake at different hours and it’s easier if there’s other beds to drop into than to try and find a free spot in a crowded bed.”

That was fair but Eldred still didn’t like it.

After that, they stepped into the most ornate room in the entire building. Pillars with extra ornamentations framed both of the doors connected to it. Similar, gilded pillars decorated the corners. A gorgeous desk carved from black marble stood at the centre of it, behind which was a huge chair with an elevated seat.

“…Avari…” Eldred said slowly.

“Have I not been the bestest girl in all of my decisions so far?” The gremlin batted her lashes, all feigned and endearing innocence. “Can’t you forgive me for giving myself a nice, big office?”

“…That depends somewhat on what I see next.”

The second door connected to Avari’s office led into that of the CEO. The room that they had been using for everything so far was now going to be entirely Eldred’s. That fact had been quietly understood.

Avari clearly had chosen her own room to be the most ornate one. Eldred’s room was the second largest in the building, only outclassed by the general area downstairs, but that was just the old walls retaining their importance.

Though Avari had skimmed on giving the office any extra ornamentations, she had done the work to give him what else he wanted. The old wooden desk was still there with a new, fancy chair behind it. A large leather couch made for good seating for visitors and good cushioning for office fun times. He had a private fridge, a weapon rack, and a large glass shelf that he could use for trophies. The former private bathroom of the office had been turned into a room for Nyx, which held her own workstation alongside a bed to rest and be rested on.

“This is pretty good,” Eldred said. “You are forgiven.”

“You haven’t even seen the best part yet,” Avari said and waved him over to the desk. “I made a choice modification. Sit down.”

Eldred did as she suggested. This time, he immediately got what she meant. The leg compartment of the table had been wrapped in firm leather, including the floor. “Whatever could that be for?” he feigned ignorance. “Avari, could you give me a demonstration?”

“Of course, Master,” she cooed and crawled into the leg compartment. The flooring was quite easy on her knees. As a shortstack, she fit in there really neatly, but even a larger woman would have had plenty of space there. “Should I further the demonstration?” Her hand was already reaching for his crotch.

“E-e-e-eeeeeldreeeeeeeeeeeeeeed!” Ellie burst into the room, stumbling over her own feet. She would have fallen had Nyx not reacted in time, extending a tendril of ectoplasm to stabilise her. Immediately, the goblin dashed towards him. “Eldred!” she squeaked and shoved something in his face.

Confused, Eldred took that something. It was a tube-like thing, flattened on one end, with a basic, grey display integrated into the other. It took his male brain two seconds to identify what he was holding, then another two to realize what the ‘Positive’ on the display stood for.

“I am going to be a father,” he voiced his realisation.