Zack stared at the map hanging above the dining room table and silently took it in. “It’s the same.” He said at last.

Tessa looked up from where she was playing with Zara and the bears to it.

“Yeah, I noticed that earlier as well. There are a few differences, but for the most part, our worlds look the same.”

Zara nodded. “I’ve been wondering if that’s a coincidence, or if there was some kind of meaning behind it. Then I decided the chance of us ever learning was slim to none. Right now, I’m just glad that I can take a hot shower again.”

The bears had already undergone a magical cleaning courtesy of Charles. Spending a week and a half in the jungle fighting constantly had left them absolutely disgusting. They were much better now.

Each of them had enjoyed some serious time in the showers, scrubbing away the caked-on blood and grime. It had been refreshing, but it had further highlighted the terrible condition of their uniforms.

Zack and Zara were fine, since they were wearing the Shouvain-made suits that her magic had modified underneath. Tessa on the hand didn’t have anything of the sort.

There was a soft knock on the door, and despite the early hour, they were all awake after having gone to bed early the night before.

Tessa hopped up and opened the apartment. “Hello, Silvi, right?”

Standing before them was a girl slightly younger than Zara, with silver hair, a long fluffy tail, and wolf ears. “That’s me. Charles wanted me to come up and get you for breakfast.” She cast a critical eye at their clothes. “But maybe we should make a stop at the store for some clothes first.”

Zack held back a groan at the thought of shopping for clothes again with Tessa and Zara. It had been an interesting experience the last time, but not one he necessarily wanted to do before breakfast. He didn’t mind spending time with the girls. It wasn’t like they had anything else going on at the moment anyway.

He just didn’t want to spend that much time doing anything before they got the chance to eat.

“Don’t worry,” Silvi grinned. “The store doesn’t have much variety for clothes, so it won’t take a lot of time.”

He stared at her suspiciously for a moment, wondering if the young girl was able to read his mind.

“Shall we?”

George led the way, with Aisha and Zelda hot on his heels as the rest of their group left the small apartment behind. The three bears trundled down the steps, hopping down multiples at a time, competing to see who could jump the farthest.

Zelda kept overbalancing with her large blade. While George was being dragged by the metal gauntlets on his fists. Only Aisha was doing semi-alright with her bow and full quiver, though the quiver kept spilling arrows everywhere.

Silvi covered her mouth, hiding a grin.

The sharp bite of winter air tore through them as they walked out of the warm building. The early morning had barely been touched by the sun and was freezing.

They hurried to follow after the young girl, who led them to another building across the way.

“Hi Lars, I need to buy some warm clothes for these three,” Silvi announced as they followed her inside.

In the air, above the long counter where people received their items, was a reclining man reading a book.

“Hmm?” He looked down at them and sighed. “I can’t sell anything to them.”

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“We figured as much. I’ll buy everything.” Silvi turned to face them. “I don’t suppose you know what your sizes are, do you?”

“I’m more curious if the way we measure clothes is even the same,” Tessa muttered.

It was, though they used a different measuring scale that required the appearance of a tape measure.

The entire time, Lars read his book and pretended they didn’t exist.

The clothes they eventually ended up with were warm, tough, well made, and utterly normal looking. A pair of worn jeans, black boots, a long sleeve shirt that was a different color for each of them, and then a jacket. That was not including the pairs of underclothes that they also received to replace everything.

The clothes looked like any other pair they had seen people wearing around the town. However, they were warm, and better made than their old uniforms.

“Come on, we need to hurry. Charles probably already had breakfast waiting for us a while ago.” Silvi said, pushing them back towards the apartment building.

“Did Lars give you any issue?” The woman Zack thought was called Kira asked as she held the door to the apartment open for them.

“SILVI!” A short red-haired little girl screamed rushing past her and into the girl whose name she had yelled.

Zack saw Silvi catch the girl with a familiar smile and deposit her onto her back. It was a smile that he often used with Zara. He couldn’t say that these two were related, not for sure anyway. There was a distinct lack of wolf ears and tail on the smaller red-haired girl. Despite that, they were acting close enough to be sisters.

“No, he was polite for the most part. It’s mostly only Charles he’s rude with. Although he did ignore them, which was kind of odd. I’ve never seen him do that before.”

“Huh, that is odd, even for him.” She agreed.

Behind them, the three bears finally made their way up the stairs and tromped on inside. Zelda spotted the TV they had experienced for the first time last night behind everyone in the living room and made a beeline for it, plopping down in front of it.

Zack groaned as Charles turned it on with an indulgent smile. Even going so far as to make sure it was playing the same thing as before.

It was really nice of the man, but he was worried about what would happen when they returned to their own world. TVs didn’t exist there, or at least not anything that was nearly this advanced. There were no shows or entertainment on them.

They were used for other purposes.

Zack nudged his sister, who was looking at them all oddly. “What do you see?”

“People, glowing golden angelic figures, some kind of shadow being with great power… Not monsters though, I don’t know what they are, but they’re not like everyone else.” She looked so confused.

He spotted Silvi’s ears twitching at their muttered conversation.

He wasn’t sure what to do with that information. The only thing he was fairly confident in was they didn’t want to hurt them. There had been too many opportunities where they could have accomplished that already.

Then there was Charles, a man who could create portals between locations. It was like the ultra-advanced version of his ‘Blink’ spell. Well, likely something different. Either way, it was the first time he’d met another person with the same affinity as he and his sister.

“Is there anything we can do around here to help?” Zack inquired a few minutes later, after the food was all gone. “Since we don’t know how long we’ll be here, we need to do something to earn our keep. We can’t just sponge off you forever. We need to be able to provide for ourselves during our time here.”

It was a truth the group needed to accept. The path back to Aperra was not going to be an easy one. Not unless they stumbled across some unprecedented breaks of fortune.

Charles shared a look with Kira, who shrugged. “There are a few options available to you if that is what you want to do.”

All three nodded.

“Alright. The first thing you need to know is that we’ll be meeting with someone later today, hopefully. Who you’ll undoubtedly want to talk to as well. With any luck, he’ll have more information on how to get you home. As for work, you can talk to anyone in the town and see if they are willing to hire you or you can take your chances in the tower.

“However, there are two problems with either of those options. Our system is different from yours, and all our money runs through it. The second problem is to enter the tower or any of the buildings in town. You will need to be a town citizen. It’s easy enough to join. We’re just not sure if you can because of the first issue.”

What had begun to sound like good fortune coming their way vanished as real-life rapidly reasserted itself. He should have known better than to get his hopes up, even for a few seconds. It had been too tempting; he and Zara had been having a bout of good luck lately.

“That is a problem,” Tessa replied. She had loosened up considerably during their time trekking through the trees. If they had been having this conversation before, her manner of speaking would have already taken on an overly formal tone. “What about this man we are supposed to meet later? Will he have a solution for any of those as well?”

Charles hesitated. “I don’t know, he might… but I couldn’t say as to what effects it would have on you. It could put you back at level one when you went back to your world or do something else entirely. There are a lot of unknowns with your situation. Just make sure you remember that.”