“Pal, can I have a word with you please.” Said Christian before he pulled Sam back. The demoness and Ian were still walking around at night since they could survive without sleep, and Anna had already gone to their room. The two of them were the last ones to not depart from the now quiet tavern.

“What is it?” Sam only pretended to not know what this was about. Christian was clearly better at talking than everyone else, and Ian would likely stick Christian on Sam in a desperate attempt to repair the bridge Ian burnt.

“I know you and Ian had a little…” Christian trailed off, not wanting to directly say ‘disagreement’ as to not give away his view towards the ordeal. There was no way of saying ‘disagreement’ or any other synonym of it without coming off as biassed one way or the other, or without making Christian look uninformed about the situation. Christian was probably overthinking it, but overthinking always paid off for him in the past since he was a quick thinker.

“Yea, I fucked up.” Said Sam to the surprise of Christian. Christian already had a profile for everyone in the group, and the main thing he knew about Sam was that he was stupidly loyal to the Revifier, and that he had a moderately large ego. Never in a hundred years would Christian assume that Sam would say that he messed up in an argument. “Look, I know Ian means well and that he leads our group the best he can, but he needs to stop being so damn patronising.”

“We all talk our own ways, and perceive how we and others talk differently to every other person that exists. It may feel to you that he sounds patronising, but to him, it may sound as if he’s giving you the benefit of the doubt, or that he’s going above and beyond to be polite.” Said Christian much to Sam’s dissatisfaction. Christian threw off two examples to give himself insurance. At least one of them would be true since the two were the most likely causes of someone sounding patronising when they don’t intend to.

“You don’t get it. He thinks I’ll just start buddying up to a literal demon if he gives me a good enough speech. Life doesn’t work that way.” Christian sighed before looking up at the clear night sky. No light pollution meant that every star was visible, which made every night something people would dream about in the old world.

“And why not? Can’t all of us be as optimistic as he is? Here, I’ll give you one of my trade secrets. I make tabs on everyone. It’s how I can talk to all of you so well. You wanna know what his main trait is?” Christian waited for a response from Sam, but continued after Sam stayed silent. “Determination. He keeps going until either he or the problem breaks. That’s why he’s direct. He wants to solve the problem by talking to you because that’s the most direct way of doing it. Anything else would take too long and be subtle for him.” Sam had to resist the urge to say a sarcastic remark about Christian’s ‘graciousness’ with all his will.

“So what? Am I supposed to change my entire viewpoint and sing kumbaya?” Sam’s many opinions were completely entrenched. He hadn’t been intellectually challenged in a full century, so he’d understandably be hesitant, if not downright hostile, to facing the fact that his opinions were just plain wrong.

“Again, why not? What you did yesterday does not have to define who you are today. Who cares who you were or are? If you make the world better by changing, then change.” If Sam had to pick his least favourite thing to face, it was his own irrelevance. His seemingly selfish stubbornness was a close second.

“Well… I… It’s harder than you think to face that problem.”

“Then barrel through it until either you or the problem is broken.”

I woke up in a hammock far into the sky with the demoness right next to me. The nano-chatte had finally woken up last night. It was apparently clearing its memory and reorganising all the notes it had gathered. It refused to admit it was sleeping, but everything it did sounded a lot like what sleep done. If your body didn’t make you tired so you sleep, you’d still need to do it because your brain needed time to clear and reorganise itself.

“Come on princess, rise and shine.” I shook the demoness, and she immediately got up before falling off the hammock. The nano-chatte encompassed itself around me and helped me slide down while holding the wall to slow myself down. “You gotta be more careful. You can only fall in so many alleyways before you fall on some poor homeless person who didn’t see us up above him.” The demoness rose and dusted off her shoulders before responding.

“Robot, I know how much you like humans, but they aren’t worth even a second of my thought.” I had woken up full of energy, and now began to feel tired again as she reminded me of her unremorseful racism. I had a full day of negotiating ahead of me, and Christian would be the only person I’d get to strategize with until the task was done. Everyone else could just enjoy their free time off. After this mission, we should’ve paid off our debt ten fold considering that we brought two entire countries into the fold.

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“But you still consider everyone in our party to be a friend.” I said before moving out of the alleyway and into the main street. It was eerily quiet. Bakeries and small shops were getting set up and ready for the influx of customers. The sun was barely up, shining with the barest amount of sunlight. I could already hear the constant buzzing of the ever increasing mass of mosquitos near the tavern as me and the demoness walked past the benches and walked up the many stairs before knocking on the door of our room.

“Already?” We could hear shuffling inside after one of the three said that. Several minutes of waiting later, the three emerged.

“What made you think this was a good hour to wake us up at?” Said Anna. I could see her deep bags under her eyes, and her red hair returning at the very edges of each strand of her shining hair. We all had incredibly greasy hair by now thanks to the fact that no place actually offered showers, and the tavern rooms only provided mattresses.

“Me and Christian have to do a lot of work today. Consider yourself lucky I didn’t wake you up earlier.” Christian looked just as tired and confused as everybody else after I said that. “What? Did you forget we’re negotiating today?” Christian rubbed his forehead and eyes before sighing with more exasperation than I’ve ever felt in my entire life.

“Fuck. I forgot about that. Why’s it so early?” Said Christian.

“Because we’re not just gonna go in and negotiate. We gotta get to someone in charge first, then negotiate for ten hours, and then teleport back just in time for you to have a beer before going to sleep. The rest of you can–” I tried continuing, but was interrupted by the demoness.

“You wanna know how you can get to someone in charge really quickly?” The demoness had already suggested that we strongarm Ukraine just like we did Korea, but Anna had stopped her by herself. The two titans of stubbornness just clashed over and over until I agreed with Anna to stop the both of them.

“I’m not letting you destroy an entire government.” The demoness deflated as all the hope she was storing left her body.

“Come on. Please?” The demoness tried making puppy dog eyes. Anna, who was half asleep, still recognised the gesture and woke herself up in a fraction of a second just in case I fell for it.

“His answer is still no. Accept that. You’re staying here.” Christian pulled me aside before the argument between the two could continue, and I made the nano-chatte summon a portal to teleport us to Kyiv.

“Wanna grab something to eat before we do anything? I stole ten coins from Sam before leaving.” We hadn’t eaten anything since yesterday morning, so a meal would certainly be welcomed. The nano-chatte could shut off my hunger in the blink of an eye, but it couldn’t stop my craving to actually taste something.

“Sure, but no alcohol. You need to be in tip top shape if we wanna have an actual shot at negotiating our way out of this.” I actually started taking the situation seriously after finding out Anna was half Ukrainian. My main goal was to keep the team together, and I couldn’t do that if she held resentment towards all of us for destroying her home nation. I mean, Korea was bad too, but that wasn’t personal.

“So… You’re who now?” I groaned as we had to repeat ourselves again.

“The SCARLET EMPORIUM representatives. We are here to TALK to SOMEONE IN CHARGE. Do you UNDERSTAND?” I emphasised certain words to make sure the nano-chatte’s translator got it right.

“Oh! Alright. Show your guild card please.” I quickly gave the secretary our guild cards. Finding the building the president was in was incredibly easy. It was a mix of old neo-brutalist architecture mixed neoclassical architecture and new fangled solar punk architectural aesthetics. It was brutally obvious how hard they tried to mix the existing aesthetics so that they didn’t need to demolish the entire building just so that their capital wasn’t living in the shadow of the newly developed cities.

“Mhm… Oh… Oh… That’s… Oh god…” I looked at the secretary blankly as she read our guild cards over and over. “You’re… them?”

“Yep. The very ones. We’re here in peace though, hence why there’s only two of us.” I could see her sweating bullets before pulling the thin plate of glass in between me and her. She grabbed an old fashioned telephone and spoke into it. Several minutes later, a group of adventurers and one man that looked like an archetypal image of a ‘man in black’ arrived.

“Come with us. We already know everything. The president is this way.”