"Of course." Jennifer said, rocking Violet back and forth slightly.

"Victor's reaction to the surgery was quite extreme. Did you elect to do that procedure without painkillers, as well?"

"Yes." Jennifer answered. "Once again, we were unsure how anesthetics might interact with Victor or the girls, and wanted to take no chances."

"I see. And Victor's reaction, to when Doctor Amari was handling the newborns while they were still connected to him. It almost seemed like he could feel her touching the girls, most especially when she shocked them into taking their first breaths." Opal said. "Is that normal? Pregnant women can't feel what their babies feel, can they?"

"Now, that is actually a very interesting question." Jennifer said, looking thoughtful. "Victor reported, both during his pregnancy and afterwards, that he could indeed still feel what was happening to his testicles, even after they ceased really being his reproductive organs and had become growing fetuses."

"We think that when the super chimera embryos were destroying their competition within Victor's testicles, they didn't target any of his own cells in the same manner. That means that, even as they began to differentiate and grow into true fetuses, they still had a network of living, active nerve cells within them, separate from their own developing nervous system, passively sending Victor sensory information. Most of the original structure of Victor's gonads was pushed aside by the expanding fetuses, but, for whatever reason, the nerve cells seemed to be excepted from this process. They remained and were incorporated."

"Victor said that he could even feel it, both through his own flesh and theirs, when the girls began moving of their own accord." Jennifer finished, grinning. "Near the end of their gestation, he said it sometimes felt like they were having a wrestling match in there."

"Fascinating." Opal said. "Is that why he reacted so strongly to having the umbilical cords cut?"

"Yes." Jennifer said. "What looked like umbilical cords were actually the blood vessels, as well as sperm and nerve cords, that had originally connected Victor's testicles to the rest of his body. The blood vessels had greatly expanded, to accommodate the increased demand for resources, and the sperm cords atrophied nearly entirely, but the nerve cords remained the same, still transmitting sensation to Victor, as if nothing had changed."

"So, when those cords were cut, it was exactly as if Victor's testicles had been cut from him. In fact, given how much larger his daughters had grown than his original testicles, and how thick the cords connecting them both to him had swelled in turn, it wouldn't surprise me if it was nearly an order of magnitude more painful for him than an ordinary, anesthetic-free castration would have been."

"The poor man." Opal said, sympathetically, nodding to Victor.

"He held up fairly well, given the circumstances." Jennifer allowed, glancing at him and tilting her head in acknowledgement.

"We know how well his daughters turned out, but how about Victor himself? How well has he recovered from the experience?" Opal asked.

"Given the extraordinary demands placed upon his body by the experiment, I think he has recovered very well indeed." Jennifer said. "Granted, there will be some long term repercussions to his pregnancy, such as a higher risk of osteoporosis due to bone demineralization, but both that and many of the other effects he's currently experiencing are almost exactly the same things that a woman who had gone through a twin pregnancy could expect to face."

"The largest consequence was, of course, the complete transformation, and subsequent surgical removal, of his testicles." Jennifer stated.

"There was nothing of them left after the pregnancy had been completed? Nothing that could have been salvaged?" Opal asked.

"No. All of the active reproductive cells in his gonads were chemically altered, fertilized, and transformed into embryonic cells. And as I said earlier, pretty much everything else was pushed aside and atrophied away into nothing as the new fetuses grew larger and larger." Jennifer answered.

"Even the sheaths of tough fiber, which had helped to protect each of Victor's original testicles, had been co-opted and re-purposed by the fetuses developing inside of them. They grew and expanded, becoming the second, inner layer of protection for the girls growing within his scrotum.

"The only things that remain of his testicles are here, and here." she finished, once again kissing the top of Violet's head and then reaching out to touch Lily's shoulder.

"So, did he retain any sexual function at all?" Opal asked, eyeing the man, who seemed to be shrinking down into his seat.

Victor was obviously uncomfortable with the topic being discussed, and apparently unwilling to meet any of the women's eyes as they discussed whatever was left of his sexuality.

"He might have eventually regained the ability to gain an erection, and perhaps to orgasm." Jennifer said. "But, given certain other facts, I advised Beverly, and she agreed with me, that complete surgical nullification was probably the best thing for him, at that point."

"Nullification? Do you mean to say that you removed his entire reproductive tract? Everything?" Opal asked, her eyebrows raised.

"Yes."

"My goodness, why?"

"There were several reasons." Jennifer answered. "The first of which was that Victor had not managed to achieve or sustain an erection for nearly three months before the pregnancy ended. We tried, once a week or so, to see if he could still become erect, and by the end of his second trimester it was evident that he no longer had the ability. We had Beverly manipulate him to orgasm once as a test, just before that occurred, to see what would happen."

"Interesting. What did happen?" Opal asked.

"Victor reported that the more aroused he became, the more painful it felt, for both him and the fetuses he was carrying. After a great deal of effort on the part of Beverly, Victor managed a weak orgasm, which he said was both something of a relief, as he had gone without for several months by that point, and also uncomfortable in the extreme. Even the fetuses, immature as there were then, seemed irritated and agitated by the experience. It was a dry orgasm; he produced no ejaculate at all. We didn't bother to try and repeat the experiment afterwards."

"Another reason," Jennifer continued. "was that the pregnancy was severely taxing for his body. The growing fetuses demanded a lot of him, and many of the resources that would have gone to other parts of his body were instead redirected to feed and support them. It seemed that the closer an organ was to the fetuses, the more strongly affected by this phenomenon they were."

"Victor's penis, as the organ in closest proximity, took the brunt of this. It actually shrank by nearly two inches, in its flaccid state, from its pre-pregnancy length. It was almost as if his member was simply being deconstructed by his body, and the resulting resources fed to the growing girls within him."

"So, even if Victor eventually had recovered the ability to become erect and orgasm, there wouldn't really have been much point, because of how atrophied and insignificant his penis had become. That fact, balanced against the scientific value that could be derived from dissecting and studying effects of his pregnancy on both it and its supporting structures, convinced Beverly to allow me to have Doctor Amari remove it surgically."

A new video started playing, showing Jennifer and Beverly standing before Victor's spread legs. It must have been taken just a short time after the birth, because Victor was still unconscious and strapped to the examination chair, with the towel that had been covering the remains of his genitals flipped aside.

Jennifer was talking to Beverly, gesticulating towards the man's enormous, emptied scrotal skin and his shrunken, flaccid penis. Beverly appeared to be considering Jennifer's words carefully, nodding along in understanding or agreement. Beverly then reached down and pinched the skin of Victor's penis between thumb and forefinger, lifting it up from its limp flaccidity as if by the scruff of its neck, examining the organ as Jennifer continued to speak. Finally, Beverly nodded once, sharply, and dropped Victor's member, flicking it aside in a casually dismissively motion that clearly communicated how little regard she held for it in its current condition. Jennifer looked satisfied, then turned and called to someone out of frame, making a scissoring, cutting motion with the fingers of one hand, while hooking her thumb over her shoulder at Victor with the other.

The video jumped forward, to Doctor Amari bent over Victor's crotch, mid operation. She made a few more small cuts with a scalpel, then set the surgical blade aside and reached down, with both hands, towards the large incision before her. A moment later, she lifted Victor's penis out of the wound. She had taken the entire thing from him, all the way down to the root. She set the piece of raw, bloody meat into a clean surgical tray, which was handed off by a ready nurse to Jennifer, who was standing in partial view at the edge of the frame.

"We learned quite a bit from Victor's penis, the remains of his scrotum, and the bits and scraps of now useless connective tissue and plumbing that we pulled out of him. There was enough material in them to make several thousand slides. We kept about half of them, and distributed the rest of them to any lab that expressed interest in our project." Jennifer stated, as the video ended with a shot of Victor's crotch, sewn back up, completely empty and, with the exception of a bit of minor swelling around the stitches, totally smooth.

"Victor is completely sexless now, though he takes hormone supplements to help make up for the loss of his testicles." she finished.

"Oh, you poor dear." Opal said, turning to the man.

"And you too, Beverly." she continued, turning again to face her guest. "With Victor no longer able to perform, you must be suffering as well."

"Oh, it's not as bad as it might seem." Beverly said, waving one hand dismissively. "Granted, Victor's not quite as much fun as he used to be. But, with a little imagination and the help of several.. ah.. marital aids, we make things work."

"Plus, he's always had quite talented.. um.. oral skills, shall we say. Not having a penis hasn't affected that in any way." she finished, with a little self-satisfied smile. "And I've had help from.. others, as well."

Beverly shot Jennifer a glance, one that was both a bit shy, a bit grateful, and a bit heated, and reached out to take the other woman's hand. Opal picked up on the interplay between them at once, raising her eyebrows in surprise.

"So, when you called Doctor Washington "Auntie Jennifer" earlier, you meant a bit more by it than might have been readily apparent." she stated.

"Jennifer's practically part of the family, now." Beverly agreed, nodding happily. "I think of her as my girls' other mother. And it's completely true, in a very real sense. They wouldn't exist now if it wasn't for Jennifer, the rest of her research team, and all the time and effort they've expended to make my girls possible."

"So, would you say that the trial has been successful, then, Jennifer?" Opal asked. "And Beverly, would you say that the sacrifices that both you and Victor had to make for the sake of the experiment were worth it?"

Both women looked at Opal, eyes raised in faint surprise at the questions. Then they turned to each other, smiled, and hugged. The girls they were holding joined in the hug, all four of them forming a happy, loving circle. Then Beverly and Jennifer looked directly to the camera as they answered, their voices filled with firm conviction.

"Absolutely."

"Without question, Opal."

"And you, Victor. Has it all been worth it?" asked Opal, turning to the man.

Victor looked from Opal to the women hugging on the couch. His eyes rested first on Beverly, the woman he had married. The woman who, when offered the choice, had asked him to sacrifice his perfectly healthy and functional testicles, with which he could have fathered children with any other woman, to make up for the fact of her own barren infertility.

He then looked to Jennifer, the woman who had, at the cost of so very much pain to Victor himself, actually made the sacrifice of not just his testicles, but his entire masculinity. She, who had taken so much from him, who the wife he was no longer able to satisfy had turned to and taken as a lover, had planted the seeds into him, created from his wife's own flesh, that had transformed and eventually devoured his reproductive organs entirely.

Finally, he looked to the girls. His strange, but wondrous and gorgeously beautiful daughters, each of whom was the flesh of his flesh in the most literal sense possible. Everything he had given up for them, his virility, his sexuality, his pride, and even the loving embrace and respect of his own wife, would have been worth it. Worth it all, if they had deigned to returned the love he wanted so very much to give to them; if they had even bothered to notice him at all.

"Er.." he started, pausing to clear his throat, speaking for the first time.

"Er, yes. Of.. of course." he finally said, trying to cover up the bleak, hopeless look that flashed across his features by swallowing and rubbing at his face.

"Of course.." he repeated, faintly, his words trailing off as his head bowed down, his eyes lowering to his empty crotch, his body seeming to shrink in on itself, as the applause from the audience rolled thunderously over him and everyone else on the stage.

"Amazing. Simply amazing." Opal said, after the applause had died away. "We're almost out of time, but I have one more question."

"Are Beverly and Victor's daughters, Lily and Violet, going to be unique? Or, will other couples, who might be experiencing fertility problems of their own, be able to someday go through this same procedure, and receive the same amazing results?"

"Oh, well, as to that." Jennifer said, her smile becoming one filled with confident pride. "The third round of human trials is already taking place. If everything goes smoothly, and we've no reason to think that it won't, we'll be starting the fourth round sometime next year."

"You're already on the third set of human trials?" Opal asked, surprised. "So, how successful have they been, then?"

"Our progress and success rate have been phenomenal, Opal." Jennifer answered. "Out of the nearly two dozen couples we selected to take part in the second round of testing, not a single mature embryo, fetus, or child was lost, or even suffered any serious problems or complications."

"Well, that doesn't sound too unusual, Jennifer." Opal said. "The mortality rate for newborns has been extremely low for decades and decades, now."

"For full term pregnancies, yes." Jennifer replied. "But, many pregnancies done the old fashioned way don't make it to full term. Some studies have found that as many as thirty percent, or even more, of natural pregnancies end up failing, for one reason or another."

"With our new procedure, however, every single testicle that received the treatment went on to become a healthy baby girl. Every. Single. One." she finished, underscoring her last words dramatically.

"You said every single testicle." Opal said, stressing the word single. "Don't you treat both testicles on each man?"

"We tried an experiment during the second round of testing." Jennifer answered. "On several of the men, we only treated one testicle, rather than both. It was an attempt to see if the man's sexual ability, or a part of it, at least, could be preserved and retained throughout and after his pregnancy."

"I see. Did it work?"

"No, not at all. Do you remember what happened to Victor's penis? The resource drain that affects the men during their pregnancies hits untreated testicles even harder." Jennifer said. "It's too bad, because it would have been an excellent variant of the procedure, for women who might not want to lose their husband's sexuality entirely."

"Still, even though it didn't work out like we had hoped, we still wound up with excellent material for more slides afterwards." she finished.

"I see." Opal said. "How large is the third trial currently taking place, and how large will the fourth be?"

"The third trial is about a hundred men in number, and the fourth is planned to be around a thousand, spread throughout several cities around the country." Jennifer answered.

"Men, not couples?" Opal asked.

"Most of the men taking part in the third trial are part of a 'normal' couple, the standard pair of a husband and a wife. Several of the men, however, are in less standard relationships." Jennifer said. "Two of the men are a gay couple. They wanted to take part at the same time, so each is carrying embryos fertilized by DNA from the other. They're only nineteen or so, and they make a very cute pair, let me tell you. Practically the entire research team adores them. It's rather sweet."

"Another of the men is taking part at the behest of a lesbian couple." she continued. "He agreed to undergo the procedure for them, after they told him about it and asked him to participate. One of his testicles was fertilized by DNA from one of the women, and the other testicle with DNA from her partner. Both women are apparently very happy with the entire arrangement."

"So, you're not limiting participation to those with fertility problems, then?" Opal asked.

"No, not at all. We think this procedure should be available to anyone who wants it, without exception." Jennifer said, emphatically. "Just think of all the potential girls out there, waiting for the chance to come into existence. Why limit it?"

"So, all of the children born via this procedure have been girls?"

"Well, that is something of a complicated question, actually." Jennifer said, thoughtfully. "Genetically, all of the children are a roughly even mix of both male and female cell lines. Physically, the great majority of the children also seem to be completely female, growing and developing exactly as one would expect a female fetus, infant, and toddler to do so."

"The majority, but not all?" Opal asked, perplexed.

"Yes, some of the children, about one in ten, are developing normal female bodies, but growing genitalia that often contain a mix of both female AND male physical traits." Jennifer answered.

"Oh, my goodness. Is that.. bad?" Opal asked, a bit hesitantly. "Something that might need to be fixed with corrective surgery?"

"Bad? No, not at all." Jennifer said, frowning at Opal's choice of words. "We don't think of anything to do with our children as bad. Is it unusual? Yes. Is it abnormal? By the standards of many people, yes, it very well might be. But what we think, however, is that, given a chance, it could become a part of a new, better normal, one that is far more inclusive, open, and accepting."

"We're certainly not going to put our beautiful girls under the knife, just so they fit into our own, or anyone else's, preconceptions of the world." she finished, sternly.

"Of course." Opal said, nodding her head in understanding. "I was simply surprised by the fact, that's all. I certainly meant no offense; I apologize."

Jennifer nodded, accepting Opal's apology.

"Oh, it's no problem." she said, smiling and laughing a little. "We're all just so proud of them, our beautiful girls. Just like any other parent, I suppose we don't take criticism of our children easily."

"One final question: do all of the girls share both Lily and Violet's lovely coloring?" Opal asked.

"More or less." Jennifer said. "Most of the participants in the second trial were predominantly European in origin, like Beverly and Victor. Those with more varied ancestry tended to have similar coloration, just shaded a bit darker. Two of the girls, born to a mixed race couple, have the most gorgeous, deeply dark purple eyes you'll probably ever see, which pairs wonderfully with their light brown skin tone."

"We have a more diverse selection of participants in our third trial group, and we're all very eager to see how the girls turn out." she continued.

"One thing we know for sure, though: whatever color their eyes, hair, and skin turn out to be, they're all going to be beautiful." Jennifer finished.

More applause greeted this, quickly growing to a roar, as women in the audience cheered along in enthusiastic agreement.

Opal stood up, her guests standing with her, and patted the noise down as best she could, trying to be heard.

"Beverly! Victor! And especially Lily and Violet! Thank you for being here today!" she exclaimed. "Jennifer, it has been absolutely fascinating talking with you! When can a woman expect to be able to have this new procedure available for her and her husband?"

"If the third and fourth rounds of human trials go well, then sometime in the next three to five years it will become available in most major cities!" Jennifer replied, smiling.

Then everyone on the stage, even a somewhat morose looking Victor, waved to the cameras as the show came to a close.

"Wonderful!" Opal said, over the enthusiasm of the audience. "That's our show for today! Thank you so much for tuning in, and we'll see you for tomorrow's episode! Goodbye!"

END

Author's Note:

This is one of my stranger ideas, I have to admit, but I'm pretty proud of it. I feel like I might be inventing new fetishes with this story, or at least expanding on some older ones. I'd be interested to know if anyone else has written, or drawn, anything similar to it before.

Male pregnancy isn't usually my thing, but a guy getting used for his balls and then discarded afterwords, definitely is, so I felt that I just HAD to write this one out once I thought of it. The fact that his penis just sort of gets ignored and lost in the shuffle, and then thrown away afterwards, as useless and unnecessary, is frosting on the castration cake, I think.

As always, I'm very interested to hear what people think, positive or negative. I love criticism.

On another note, collections of my stories may be found at several different locations, aside from this one, under the name of Htabdoolb; at the Eunuch Archive(castration and penectomy stuff only), at HentaiFoundry, at Eka's Portal, and at the Dolcett Girl's Forum(look for the index of story indices), as well as on Gurochan's literature board. If there is any other site that you think might be a good place for my stories, please, let me know, because I also love reaching a wider audience.