Alot had just happened from everyone’s perspective. They’d all almost died; Ben had almost exploded; The Royal Sage and Anna and Thirty-One had all gotten a glimpse of Purebeast loot; Ben’s party had all gotten an upgrade to [Elite], and had all been reset to level 1; Ben had gotten an upgrade nobody even understood that well yet; A couple of angels showed up and terrified everyone;

Ben didn’t remember any of that stuff. All he knew was he nodded off for a nap, and when he woke up, he was an honest to God human being again. He could look people in the eye again. He was taller than Vivi’s eyestalks for the first time, and relished the opportunity to look down on the slug at every available opportunity. He wasn’t at eye-level with Red and Anna’s fucking boobies anymore.

His clothes had been incinerated by all the power he’d been giving off, but being totally nude was, at this point, really not a big deal. Anna was in the process of getting him some new clothes.

Waking up had been fun. One moment, everything was fine, the next, he was human again and Anna’s living room looked like a hurricane had torn it apart and everybody looked like they had PTSD.

Then, Ben had realized he was human again, and the party was on. The Royal Sage, who had apparently given up his name long ago, decided to stick around once it became clear that the group was actually going to go to a bar and go drinking. He looked like a man who really needed a drink. He was also, though he didn’t say it yet, sticking around because he had a City Quest from Solas to help Ben get his [Questor] class in order. 

“I really didn’t mean for this turn into a big thing,” Thirty-One said, sounding embarrassed, “It’s a nice bar mind you, but it’s in the Outer Ring. If I’d been expecting Anna and The Royal Sage of Solas,” the cyborg said, “I’d have suggested somewhere nicer.”

“I’m really set on that first bar,” Short Bus said, though he had no reason to be stuck on the point, at all, “I’ve just got a good feeling about it.”

“The only thing it’s got going for it is that it’s really big,” Thirty-One said with an exasperated sigh, “no unique drinks, the [Barkeeper] isn’t a particularly high level. Most nights it’s only a quarter full.”

“Question,” Ben said, folding his hands, “is it a dive bar, dare I say it, a cantina, full of robots and aliens of semi-ill repute?”

“It’s in the Outer Ring,” Anna said, her eyes bright, looking excited, “of course it’s full of cyborgs and aliens of semi-ill repute.” She looked exactly like what she was, which was a very, very rich semi-adult teenager about to go to a bar her parents would never allow her to go to.

“I’m with Short Bus,” Ben said, “I’m just really committed to this particular bar. Don’t change the plan just because a couple of extra people decided to tag along.”

“I don’t care where we go, as long as they’ll get me drunk enough to forget all about those. . .” The Royal Sage shuddered, which had a sound like a very brief windchime due to his crystal body. The sight of both the angels, and the angels dying, was really messing him up.

“Oh, they’ll do that just fine,” Thirty-One assured The Royal Sage.

Ben was taking a moment to just flex his hands and relish the feeling of flexing them. His fingers were, finally, the correct length. He’d always been good at eyeballing things and knowing how long or wide they were, and ever since his various transformations, that ability had been on the fritz. Now he finally had it back, and the world looked right again. 

He hopped from leg to leg, jabbing, punching into the air, pretending he was boxing, making all the boxing sounds humans like to make when they’re pretending to fight. 

“Psst, pst pst,” he said in time with his fists, right hook, jab jab. “Bam!” Upper Cut. 

It’s worth mentioning that Ben had no idea how to box, at all. He was just excited to have his body back, and in better condition than before.

“I don’t see why we can’t just stay here and drink,” Vivi complained, “this is a nice place.”

“Veto!” Ben said, still air-boxing, “We’re going out!”

“You’ve got two wishes sitting on your right hand, and you want to go out to a damn bar,” Vivi said, sounding grouchy, “We should be going straight to the Bank of the Sun and getting an army of [Lawyers], bound [Genies] and [Wish Assayers] and extracting every drop of magic out of them.”

“What does that entail, exactly?” Ben asked, the beginning of a sour taste in his mouth. Then, Vivi began a long and indepth explanation of how he and most other people in The World handled a wish.

First, it was precisely assayed for potency, giving an exact measurement of just how much power was in the wish. Apparently, it varied from wish to wish. Next, an army of [Lawyers] and bound [Genies] would begin a long and well understood process of constructing a wish designed to most efficiently extract, to squeeze as much as they could get out of it. After that, the wish was placed in a specially constructed ritual chamber, and the Lawyer and Genies would chant the wish over several hours. 

Everybody, from the assayer to the genie, got a cut, and at the end of it, what was left was a very large pile of useful and sensible wealth for the owner of the wish. Enough to live off of for the rest of their Semi-Immortal lives, with wise investment.

“Wait, you’re telling me everybody around here just wishes they could retire?” Ben said, once his mind had caught up to what Vivi had been saying.

“Well, it’s a little more complicated than that,” Vivi said, but was interrupted.

“No, don’t focus on the complicated parts, focus on the end result. At the end of it, the dude with the wish always retires?” Vivi thought about it for a few very long moments, his Aeon Slug face twitching as he thought about it in a new way.

Stolen novel; please report.

“Yes!” Vivi said happily, nodding his eye-stalks.

“That’s so fucked up,” Ben said, feeling nauseous. Ben, like many others young-at-heart people of his generation, had spent hours and hours fantasizing about what he would wish for, if he ever got a wish. Alot of his wishes involved time-loops, or scamming the wish for as much as he could possibly get out of it- But when presented with the end state system of exploiting a wish for maximum value, all Ben could feel was a sense of disgust. 

Ben looked down at the ring on his right hand, two lights of reality defying possibility at his command, and felt his heart and mind and soul come into alignment.

“It’s sensible. What else would someone want to wish for?” Vivi asked, laughing and slugging away to get ready for their outing. Short Bus came over.

“Retirement?” he asked, clearly not understanding the word, or at least the way Ben was using it.

“Listen, I worked for the city with a bunch of baby boomers,” Ben said, “let me tell you what retirement means; you stop working and die a couple of weeks later. That’s retirement.”

“People wish for that?” Short Bus asked, a look of disgust on his face, “Ugh, you can do better than that. Vivi!” Short Bus shouted, chasing after the Aeon Slug, “Why are you trying to kill Ben?” Ghost Ears flew over to Ben.

“Your Majesty,” he said, bowing, “you seem to look like yourself again.”

“Hmm,” Ben said, staring at his ring, trying to put into words what he was feeling.

“You’ve got that look on your face again,” Ghost Ears commented.

“What look?”

“The look that, if I were in charge, I’d do everything in my power to shut down. Good thing I’m not in charge,” he said with a roguish grin, “what are you thinking?” Ben looked at Ghost Ears, then gave him his own roguish look.

“You never asked about your class,” Ben said, “[Royal Vizier].”

“I’ll admit I’ve never heard of it. [Royal Advisor], certainly, but never a Vizier.”

“See,” Ben said, looking away from his ring, his wishes, and stretching his arms as high as they would go, his naked body on full and shameless display, “there was this movie, a long time ago. . .”

--

“You absolutely cannot do that!” Vivi shouted, a look of panic on his face. Anna was nodding furiously.

“What are you thinking!” she yelled, “those aren’t cheap, Trivial Wishes! They’re very, very valuable! You can’t just-”

“Veto!” Ben yelled. He’d just explained what he wanted to do, and as he’d expected, all the natives of The World were both shocked and offended. “Not a damn one of you knows what a wish is for, and not a damn one of you has a spark of imagination between you!” Ben took a deep breath, then continued, “Any asshole can put in the work and get treasure and magical items and levels and fucking retire! This is a Wish!” Ben said with feeling, “You can do anything with this, and the best you can come up with is ‘Retire Early?’ Disgusting!”

“You tell ‘em!” Short Bus yelled, even though he only had a vague idea of what this argument was even about.

“Preach!” Ghost Ears yelled, just because he was all about supporting stupid ideas these days.

“Prince Ben!” Red yelled, looking like she was ready to run onto a battlefield and spread Ben’s gospel via violence. 

“I will teach you!” Ben yelled, striking a pose, much to the horror of Anna, Vivi and Thirty-One, all of whom were educated in the proper handling of wishes. To them, this was like an upper class neighborhood hearing a beloved friend or family member with an actual future wasn’t going to go to college, but instead they were going to LA to become a movie star, or Seattle to become a Rock Star. Or, God forbid, go to Nashville and become a Country Music Star. 

“I will teach you!” Ben yelled again for good measure, much to the amusement of The Royal Sage, who honestly didn’t give a shit, who’d been alive long enough to see, and cast, enough sensible wishes to be actually curious as to what Ben was talking about. “It’s The System who processes wishes, right?” Ben said as an aside to The Royal Sage, who hesitated and then nodded.

“Basically,” he said. Ben nodded, then struck an even more dramatic pose, extending his ‘wishing arm’ out as far as it would go.

“System!” Ben shouted as loudly as he could, and anyone paying attention would have felt it, that The System was suddenly listening very closely. 

“Ben!” Vivi hissed, “At least use a clause of complete use!”

“No!” Ben yelled, “System, I wish you would grant my wish!”

Vivi literally screamed in horror, Anna moaned in fear, The Royal Sage and Ghost Ears both started laughing their assess off, Red and Short Bus cheered.

And Holy Energy surged from Ben, pouring into his wish and empowering it.

--

The System, who’d only been paying half attention to Ben after he’d whipped up a new level system for him, startled awake as a glowing, golden sheet of paper appeared on his desk.

“Hmm?” he said, looking for the rest of the wish. “That’s it? Where’s the rest of it?” 

The System spent a solid minute looking around his beige colored cubicle, thinking some other instance of The System might be playing a prank on him. He then went back to his desk and read the wish.

“That’s it?” he said, his red, slitted eyes going wide, “I can just do whatever I want? What did he even mean by this,” The System muttered, pulling up Ben’s entire mental-memory-complex like it was a file on a computer, which it wasn’t, and starting to read it for relevant information. “If this is some kind of stupid trick,” The System said, getting angry, looking for evidence that Ben was trying to pull something.

He found something else instead.

“Oh,” The System said, leaning back in his chair, his vast, vast intellect stunned for a moment by sublime simplicity, “it’s trust.” Then, The System started laughing, reading Ben’s mind complex more carefully, trying to understand what Ben’s intent was. 

It took a few moments, but when The System finally grasped it, he started laughing.

“I fucking love this guy,” he said, and got to work. A little known fact about The System, a fact that he would readily and openly tell anyone who bothered to ask, and nobody ever bothered to ask, was that he was with Ben.

He absolutely hated how the residents of The World made wishes, and in this moment, The System was totally in sync with Ben.

They would, for a single night, be as allies, and teach them what wishes were really for.

It was just really a fucking shame that both of them were way too excited to remember that the Dark City Circus and the Black Caravan from the Dark Cities down south were coming into Solas that very night. And, that both Ben and The System were pretty set on having a gigantic Prince Ali style parade.