The mood in the Sneaky Cervo was mellow. Ben, now stark naked, fully human and well on his way to being piss drunk, was using the bar as a pillow for most of his upper body. The rest of his party was presumably somewhere in the vicinity, but Ben didn’t know that. Frankie was next to him, mimicking his posture; the effect was sort of ruined because Frankie’s lower body was hanging over the edge and his stumpy legs were wiggling a bit as he tried to keep his balance.

“Ha ha,” Ben said in a drunk monotone, his eyes squinted as he tried to see the world clearly. He failed. Ben wasn’t an angry or mean drunk, so he pushed Frankie up onto the bar. The elemental laid there for a few moments, then sagged so his lower half was dangling again. Ben frowned, then helped Frankie up again. This had already been going on for some time, and the Utility Pocket Elemental thought it was absolutely hysterical.

Ben was so drunk he couldn’t even appreciate the fact that he was drinking a technological wonder, originally brewed by the dwarves. Dwarven Beer, originally manufactured under the strictest and most exacting standards of no more than the original Sixty-Four Tier One Artificial Intelligences, the 64TOIA, before they rebuilt themselves into mortal form. Dwarven beer, simply put, could get anyone drunk. Period. Even if it didn’t make any goddamn sense for them to be able to drink, or get drunk.

It was scientifically proven! You could pour dwarven beer of a pair of boots, and the boots would get drunk! Every mug that had ever served dwarven beer, was drunk! Huzzah! Dilly Dilly! God bless the dwarves!

Thirty-One was next to Ben, explaining the religious significance of Dwarven Beer, taking a more moderate approach to drinking it than Ben. Ben, who was the kind of drunk only sleep was going to fix, nodded at Thirty-One, not hearing a single word.

“You know what,” Ben said, holding a finger and squinting at the cyborg.

“What?” Thirty-One said. Ben then nodded his head, and went back to trying to use the bar as a pillow. This was the happiest he’d been since he came to The World, especially since his parents-

“Ah fuck,” Ben said, then ordered another beer.

So, Ben was a sleepy drunk. What about the rest of his party? Well, Vivi was mean drunk, which was why he, in the only bit of good judgement anyone in the room had ever seen him display, was choosing to sip on a recreational brew called ‘Debuff’. It was a drink designed specifically for Aeon Slugs, created by Aeon Slugs, so they could socially interact with other species without acting like total assholes. No, seriously, they needed a potion for that. Debuff measured the mean-average intelligence of the room, and then dumbed down whoever drank it to be only comfortably smarter than everyone else.

“No,” Vivi said, talking to a couple of randos that he’d met, two sunlets who were obviously, in Earth Parlance, Feds, “Ben’s a tactical genius. He threw that whole parade specifically so everybody would know who we are. Now, if we go missing, people are going to ask major questions.”

“Hmm,” the first Fed Sunlet said.

“Now, I’m not trying to scare you, but I’m trying to scare you,” the second Fed Sunlet said, and Vivi laughed.

“After the week I’ve had, you boys are cute. Now, let me tell you about how Ben single-handedly stopped an invasion from The Beyond, conquered a fairy city, cleared a dungeon, leveled a port town and destroyed a nascent Citadel in under seventy-two hours. Oh, and [Evolved] three times. Our story begins. . .”

Vivi, though Debuffed, was still a complete fucking genius. Nobody ever gave him credit for that, except other Aeon Slugs, who were the only ones smart enough to appreciate just how smart Vivi really was. Smart enough to feed the undercover agents pumping him for information total bullshit, without telling a single lie. After all, they had truth spells. The Solas agents assigned to Vivi, continually checking those truth spells, started to get extremely worried about the kind of monster that had just come to their city.

The Solas agents assigned to Short Bus were completely piss drunk. Everybody around Short Bus was piss drunk, actually, partly because he was broadcasting it telepathically, but mostly because he was one of those people who burned drunkenness like jet-fuel. He was also telling the saga of Ben so far, and there wasn’t a truth spell in The World capable of parsing the fact from the fiction.

“Oh yeah, I saw him fall from the sky!” Short Bus said, “It was like watching a meteor- You know, once when I was back on Earth a meteor hit the ocean and I followed it down- anyways, Ben, that damn shark, he immediately figures out how to swim faster than a bullet- one time I was messing with this boat full of smugglers and I made them drop all their bricks of heroin into the ocean and they shot at me, hilarious! So back to Ben- Hey! Let’s get another round!” Short Bus shouted, both physically and telepathically, and he was served immediately. “Did you know Ben’s a shapeshifter? No, wait, let me tell you about the time he tried to fly!”

The Man-shark was sitting in a booth, one of the circular ones you see rich rappers and gangsters use in movies, surrounded by. . . well, people. Just regular people who had managed to get into the Sneaky Cervo and who wanted to know what the fuck had just happened in their city, and why there had been a parade. They hung off of Short Bus’s every word. The Man-Shark had two alien women on his lap, one on each gigantic leg, and two more alien women were wrapped up in his arms. He was sitting in an open, ‘come at me bro’ way, leaned back and completely relaxed. He always had an eye on Ben, and the other eye watching the rest of his group.

Ghost Ears had found a bunch of fairies, all human, and was currently in the middle of a [Extremely Tiny] dance party. Joining them were the various other [Extremely Tiny] races running around Solas. He was just plain having a good time. Fun fact, Ghost Ears was an excellent dancer, and an absolute gentleman.

Red. . . was minding all the Dark City girls. Like a military instructor. Scratch that, like a drunk military training instructor who barged into the Basic Military Training barracks at two in the morning, made everyone get into formation, and then started ranting at them while occasionally taking a pull from their flask, forcing his trainees to drink it, and then punishing the entire group for having ‘drunk assclowns in his training unit.’

“Oh, they’re gonna hate your guts,” Red said, prowling up and down the ramrod straight line of brightly dressed girls, who quickly learned not to fuck with Ben’s Demon. “When I left? Oh, when, I, left!” Red said, jabbing a finger in their general direction with every word, “They came after me like I was a Lord of The Beyond, and they nearly got me too! See, they don’t want anyone else to realize they can just walk away from being bad guys, ok?” Red made a little ‘Walk Away’ gesture by holding a hand flat and then using her other hand’s pointer and middle finger like legs. Then Red shuddered, growled a little bit, and muttered ‘Where the fuck is Charles. I think I need him for something, but I don’t know what yet.’ It wasn’t the first time Red had said something to that effect.

The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

“Um,” Lariah said, “is it sex?” Red glared at the pregnant Dark City girl, and then looked away.

“Probably,” she muttered, “No, shut up! All of you, you’re in deep, deep shit! Nobody’s ever going to trust you, not really, they’re all going to call you traitor, or demon-spawn!” Red would have continued projecting her own personal history onto the girls, but at that moment, Charles walked into the Sneaky Cervo. Everybody in the room felt it, sort of like the sheer ambient sexual energy in the building had just gone up an order of magnitude. Red growled again, sounding a bit like a cat in heat if we’re being objectively honest. There was a need in that sound that, again if we’re being objectively honest, was actually kind of frightening. She made a bee-line for Charles.

“Lord protect me,” was all he had time to say before Red grabbed hold of him and then the two of them were gone. Who knows where they went, or what they were getting up to. The Dark City girls looked at one another, still standing stock still and in formation.

“Do you think we’re allowed to move?” Lariah asked.

“No,” Lead Girl, who’d been renamed Lead Girl by Ben, said, “I don’t think so. This is a test.” They all nodded, they’d been subjected to constant tests like this back in Abomination.

“She’s really nice,” another Dark City girl said, and they all nodded again, but didn’t move. To them, Red was really, really ridiculously nice.

Anna was off doing her own thing, breathlessly indulging in the most trafficked drug of the twenty-first century, which is looking at the comments and responses to social media posts. She was pleased to find that she was the single most popular content producer on the System Internet, which made her the most popular girl in the world. Which was what she always wanted, anyways.

Plus, the amount of money she’d just made was Mommy and Daddy tier, which is to say, alot. She immediately began shopping around the App Store, and, in a move which only the richest of rich kids would pull, asked the app store to sort the list and put the most expensive items on the top.

Even she blanched at how much the top ten most expensive items on the System App Store were. Like, who would ever be able to afford any of that shit? There was, however, one thing she saw, that she, and only she, could afford. It would nearly wipe her out, both the money she’d just earned, and everything she had left in savings. However. However. . . she’d be the first one in the world to have purchased the ‘Telecommunications Mogul Startup’ application. In short, it would allow her to sell a lesser version of The Smartest Phone to others. They would pay her every week, and she would get a percentage of all gross revenue generated on her network.

The upfront cost was astronomical, and the monthly upkeep was nothing short of insane. . . Anna purchased it immediately. A gray, neutral System Portal appeared in front of her, along with a ‘Not Actually The Devil’ System Avatar. He smiled warmly at her.

“Anna,” The System said, “so good to meet you. Please follow me, and we’ll get you all set up.”

Anna, completely star-struck, followed, and then vanished through the portal.

The Royal Sage of Solas, who was sitting next to Ben in much the same level of tired inebriation, was none-the-less watching everything as it happened. It was just habit for him, habit and high-level, that kept him from ever really being in the dark about what was going on around him. He looked over at Ben, then punched him in the arm, hard.

“Ow!” Ben said, looking up and glaring at The Royal Sage of Solas, who had just punched him with his crystal fist, “fuck you, what was that for?”

“You’re trouble,” The Royal Sage said, already imagining the fallout of Ben’s actions and feeling a headache coming on, “big trouble.” Ben wanted to snap back with something smart, but he was too drunk for that.

“Yeah,” he said, rubbing his arm, “I know.” The pain and subsequent shot of adrenaline didn’t quite sober Ben up, but it did give him some more energy to look around and really see his environment. “So, what do you people do in a bar besides eat and drink?”

“I don’t understand the question,” The Royal Sage said, pulling out a Stamina Stick, which was basically a bright orange cigarette, and lighting it.

“Mind if I bum one off you?” Ben asked, and apparently sharing cigarettes or cigarette-equivalents was a universal behavior, because he got one. “Thank you,” Ben said, lighting it and inhaling. It tasted like the smell of orange peels, lemon oil, and was very, very clean. “Oh, I’m addicted,” Ben said, his eyebrows raising as he recognized that familiar, ‘I’ve got to buy a pack of these’ sensation he’d experienced a few times already in life.

“There’s worse things, it could be sugar,” The Royal Sage said.

“I’ve got questions about that,” Ben said, “But no, seriously, like what do you all do for entertainment when you’re drinking?”

“We. . . we drink, Ben. That’s the entertainment.”

“No games like pool, or cards or like. . . karaoke?” Ben asked, and The Royal Sage shook his head.

“Nothing like that. Usually we just drink and talk.”

“Huh.” Ben considered doing some karaoke, but he felt a little musicked out. He took another drag of the Stamina Stick, once again impressed by how refreshing it was. Ben was about to tell The Royal Sage of Solas all about how he thought Solas was actually a pretty great city, about how he might just settle down and make a life here. Ben was, if things had been allowed to continue, winding down to get a good job working for the City of Solas. Something with good pay, healthcare and a retirement package. He was about to shape up and start acting like an adult, like the adult he’d been roughly a week ago, back when he’d been working on getting another promotion.

That was when Solas PD, unrelated to all the Solas Special Services, the SSS, who were canvassing the bar and trying to figure out who the hell Ben was, and how much of a threat he was, calmly but forcefully entered the Sneaky Cervo. They honed in on Ben, who looked up, groaned, downed his drink and took a huge drag of the Stamina Stick.

“Not this shit again,” Ben groaned.

“Prince Ben, you are under arrest. Please cooperate, or we will use force.”

“Hey!” The Royal Sage said, looking pissed, “What’d he do? We’re drinking here!”

“His crime is conspiracy to defraud Solas, illegal corpse preparation, and distribution of an illegal narcotic. The reason he’s being arrested is failure to report a Green Core dungeon. Please come with us for questioning.”

“Namey was fucking right,” Ben said, feeling the shadow of something dark over his mind, “this city fucking sucks.”