Max walked into the first restaurant he had been able to find, and his mouth salivated at the delicious smells assaulting his senses. He read the menu; it wasn't a type of food he was super familiar with. In fact, he had never had it before and had only heard about it in a movie. But at the moment, he was so hungry he could eat anything.

However, after walking to the counter in a daze, he realized there was a very serious problem. Since he had come to Earth in all of the same equipment that he had had on in the quartet and had not switched out to his old body, he had no earth money on him. The realization made him stop moving and just stand still, staring at the sign with pictures of delicious sandwiches and plates with chicken and rice.

The man behind the counter seemed a little too old and too well-dressed to be working at a register, but Max shook his head and realized judging was dumb, especially in a newly changed Earth. The man eyed Max up and down.

"Excuse me, sir," he said in an accent. "Are you homeless?"

"No, I don't think so," said Max. He was amused that to people on Earth, his Quartet clothing was so strange he looked homeless. Then he smirked and shook his head. "Actually, you know what? I'm not really sure. I just got back to Earth."

The man behind the counter stared in surprise. "You’re a returner?" He looked Max up and down again. "I've never seen a returner that looks like you, though."

After thinking quickly, Max said, "Well, you asked if I was homeless, and I was homeless before I went.."

"Oh, that makes sense," said the man. Then he chuckled and nodded. "So you were at a quartet?"

"That's right," said Max. "I graduated." He lied.

"Really?" said the man, but then his expression grew shrewd. "Not that I want to doubt you, but can you prove it? That you are back from a Quartet?"

Max thought for a moment and realized with a sinking feeling that most of his abilities didn't really have any flashy ways to show off, at least not the way Max used them. They were highly suited to killing, not for demonstrations. At least this man didn’t know that most returners had a tablet, which Max would never wear again now that he was back on Earth. Finally, he just shrugged and thought, "Slick, can you come out, please?"

The little spirit responded with an excited affirmative, and as Max held his hand up flat at chest height, suddenly Slick was standing there, looking at the man behind the counter. Since Slick had manifested to the senses of everybody in the vicinity, the stranger was able to see the spirit nonchalantly standing on Max's hand. The man’s eyes looked like they were going to bug out of his head.

"Is that a monster?" he stammered.

"No, it's a spirit," said Max. Then, with a suggestion and a nudge to Slick, the spirit vanished.

Then he silently asked Lavinia to have her spirits manifest as an ectoplasmic golem, and it did exactly what Max had suggested before vanishing. Now the man truly looked like he had about hit his limit.

"Apologies for doubting you. I just wanted to make sure," he said.

"Don't worry about it," said Max. He waved his hand dismissively. "I've had a very long day."

The man peered deeply into Max’s tired eyes. "It seems like you have. Well, I was going to ask if you would maybe consider doing a promo for my store. Times are hard, you know, with everything, and I've somehow hung on to the place even though almost all my employees have left. I just have one cook left."

"So you're the owner?" said Max.

"Yes. I've had this place for eight years now, ever since getting my green card in America."

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

"Well, congratulations," said Max.

The man chuckled. "Thank you for saying that, but like I said, times are hard, and a lot of people have moved away, going to the larger cities. There aren't as many people left anymore either."

Max nodded. Although he didn't have any first-hand experience of the man's words, he could definitely imagine how such a thing would be the case.

"I'm Alfonso," said the man.

"Max." The two shook hands over the counter, and Max pretended not to notice when the man stealthily got a pump of hand sanitizer to clean his hands before touching anything again.

"Tell you what," said Alfonso. "If you give me a little bit of promotion, anything at all, I'll give you a free meal today."

Max chuckled. "How will you know whether I do it or not?"

"Honor system," said Alfonso.

Max smiled easily. “Alright. "Absolutely, I'll make sure to repay your kindness."

"Okay, what would you like?"

"Whatever you suggest. I'm so hungry I could eat anything right now."

Alfonso chuckled. "I will have the cook make you two of our house specials?"

"You're an angel," said Max.

Without further discussion, Alfonso set out a white styrofoam cup, and dutifully, Max moved to the drink machines. He poured himself a large cup of sweet tea and sipped with a blissful expression on his face. The food in the Quartet hadn't been bad, but there was nothing quite like American sweet tea. Granted, not every state did it justice, and not even every restaurant did it justice, but this was a good batch.

He ambled over to one of the booths and sat down, then quietly drummed his fingertips against the table, lost in thought. It was a pain in the ass that he hadn't come back to his original body, the one with a smartphone in his pocket. From what he understood, everything he had been holding that day was now completely lost for all time. He had resources currently with him but no way to access them until making another bone gate with Celerian's help. That was definitely going to have to wait until after he ate.

Eventually, Alfonso approached him with two plates. Even though Max had been in the store for a while now, he was still the only customer. Alfonso set the plates down, and Max almost drooled on himself.

"This here is our chicken shawarma, and on the other plate, we have our beef sandwich. And since you said you're hungry, I also added some veggies and rice on that plate too."

"Thank you so much," said Max, feeling touched. It felt like there hadn't been very many people in the Quartet who were truly kind, and Max was actively avoiding thinking about how he might have screwed them over with his actions and disappearance. It was nice to be back on Earth and encountering genuine decency in the first person he met.

"Indeed," Alfonso chuckled. "As a returner with real power, I'm sure you're going to be worth many times more than what I will ever be very soon. But you know what? It's you and your people that are going to help us actually keep living on this planet instead of going extinct. So if a little bit of beef and chicken is going to help fight? Well, here it is."

Then Alfonso smiled awkwardly, seeming to feel he had said too much or maybe not said enough, and he walked back to man the counter again.

Max tucked into his food like a dying wolf. He barely inhaled as he sucked the delicious sustenance into his mouth. After the first plate was done, he burped and looked up, finally satiated enough to be more curious about what shawarma actually was.

There were several wheels of meat behind the counter that all had heat lamps or some sort of heat on them, looking like they were cooking as they turned. He was confused because it looked like the meat was turning almost like a rotisserie chicken or something, but it wasn't a carcass; it was a cheese wheel made of meat. He decided that despite his confusion over what shawarma actually was or how it was made, he didn't care. From this point on, he was a true believer in shawarma. There would be no shawarma offered that he would turn down.

Then he began eating the sandwich. By the time he was done, he patted his belly and felt many times better than he had before. Unfortunately, now that the immediate concern of fuel was out of the way, he started to worry about his friends. There were definitely different time dilations for every world and every dimension. Maybe. He had a sense of urgency about summoning his friends that had wanted to be summoned, if he even could. At the moment, he believed he could do it, but there were still a few pieces of the puzzle that he was missing.

"Speaking of puzzles," he muttered.

Taking advantage of the fact nobody else was in the store, he wandered up to the counter again and began pumping the good-natured Alfonso for information. What he found out did not make him happy. In fact, it was so grim, at times he had to clench his teeth and put effort into relaxing so Alfonso couldn't see the effect the information was having on him. Luckily, either Max was a good actor or Alfonso wasn't paying attention because the man didn't seem fazed.

It was a long conversation, and Max noticed, with a bit of sadness, that no other customers had come in during the entire time he had been in the restaurant. It made him feel awkward, but he reminded himself that there were probably many Alfonzos in the world who had an even worse situation. This part of town looked like it hadn't actually suffered much destruction or seen much violence while Max had been gone. On top of that, although the store was slowly financially sinking, at least Alfonso had the place and obviously had food to eat. Max doubted everybody else in the world had it quite so good, especially after Alfonso had explained the overall situation.

He filled up his cup with iced tea again and excused himself, leaving the restaurant. The moment he was back outside, Max felt an incredible wave of weariness wash over him. He probably could have cycled his mana or used a mental technique to fight through it, but he really didn't want to. After the kind of day he just had, and after hearing about the state of the world from Alfonso, he just really wanted nothing else other than to sleep at this point. Maybe when he woke up, he'd have a better idea of what to do, or everything he learned wouldn't be so dismaying.

The Trifecta guild is almost in ruins, he thought, and shook his head sadly. "Jackals and thieves are truly in every world."

He sighed and decided that was something he could deal with tomorrow. In fact, because of how monster incursions, portals, and the like worked, he would have to travel to a different city tomorrow just to find his friends. He didn't have any money and highly doubted that sweet-talking somebody at the front desk of a hotel would work unless the hotel was completely bombed out or something, but he really didn't want to be hit with more grim realities after newly returning to his world.

For the first time in his life on Earth, Max found himself a quiet alley that was under an overhang, relatively clean and dry, and just curled up to go to sleep. He barely remembered to politely ask his spirits to watch over him while he was sleeping before he went out. The last thing he heard was Lavinia's voice audibly say, "Don't worry about it, Max. I'm sure everything will work out."

He mumbled, "I sure as hell hope so." Then he was out.