The first thing Ben did on his way to Precinct 10, the very first thing, was pick up a pack of the outrageously expensive Stamina Cigarettes he’d been getting exposed to ever since coming to Solas. Chief Cragg had been generous enough to purchase them for Ben, and then taken one for himself. The Royal Sage had excused himself, so it was just Ben, Short Bus, Ghost Ears and Cragg all standing silently on the-

“Cragg,” Ben said suddenly, taking a drag from his Stamina Cig and exhaling the bright orange smoke, “what the hell is this thing called?” To make it more clear, Ben stomped lightly on the clear glass floor they were standing on.

“What, the skimmer? This is a NM-0001.”

“Skimmer, got it,” Ben said, and then the night was silent once more. Well, silent was the wrong word to describe Solas at night. It was a city full that never slept, but it did get quieter at night. Under the quiet were a billion tiny sounds, the hum of magic; hisses of steam; the sounds of fighting between [Thieves] and various kinds of Adventurers; other skimmers flying by.

They flew between the buildings, buildings so tall they put anything even imagined on Earth to shame. It was like something out of a Dredd comic, but scaled up past absurdity and into the territory of awe-inspiring. Some of the buildings were, yes, familiar. They looked like futuristic office and apartment buildings. Others were unfamiliar, alien, and magical. They rushed past what looked like an anthill that was at least a mile tall; a cloud of purple energy shaped roughly like a skyscraper, equally tall.

“Grew up there,” Cragg said, pointing at an enormous pile of rock. It was literally an enormous pile of rock, but stacked in such a way that defied the normal laws of how rock could be stacked. It was also roughly shaped like a skyscraper.

“That makes sense,” Ben said, looking at the truly gigantic pile of rocks and then at Cragg, who was a humanoid pile of rocks.

“I grew up in the ocean,” Short Bus added, contributing absolutely nothing to the conversation.

“Can’t stand water,” Cragg said, taking a drag of his Stamina Cig, “it’s wet and sticky and it gets everywhere; fire, now that’s the good stuff. Me and some of the Sunlet PD boys, we like to get together time to time in this big autoclave- fuck those crystal fuckers, I fucking cook in there! I almost fucking melted, got all red and soft-” Cragg laughed.

“Not my idea of a good time,” Ghost Ears said, shuddering.

“No, I imagine it wouldn’t be. You lot would get crispy, I saw it before, some young kid, biological, with the hots for some sunlet girl. He took a fire resistance potion and followed her into her shower. Cruel fucking girl, that kid was a pile of fucking ashes at the end of it. She never did any time for it either. Solas’s got different rules for Sunlets, never forget that. They don’t give a fuck what we do to eachother, but never fuck with the signers, got it?”

“Signers? Did you just make that up right now?” Ben asked.

“No- that’s what you got out of that?”

“Signers isn’t- ok, moving on,” Ben said, “I already figured that out. It was kind of obvious, we had that sort of thing all over the place on Earth. I’d have been surprised if we didn’t find it here.”

“Just be careful kid,” Cragg said, then chuckled, “well, just be careful after you demolish Precinct 6. Any ideas on that?”

“Oh, he’s got a few,” Short Bus said telepathically then winked at Ben, because Ben didn’t have any ideas on how to demolish Precinct 6 aside from ‘wing it and possibly use a wish’, which was pretty much par for the course as far as Ben ideas went. Ben, to avoid lying, said nothing.

--

Precinct 10 was clearly in a nicer part of the Outer Ring than Ben had been hanging around lately. It had that hard to define quality of being well maintained and well policed, like the people around here actually gave a shit- oh it was robots. Precinct 10 was a cyborg district, which explained its orderly, well maintained quality.

“See,” Cragg said, having bummed another Stamina Cig from Ben, “we’re lucky it was the ‘bots who got her. They’ll actually follow the law, as opposed to doing whatever the fuck they wanted, like I would, or some shady, exploitative shit like the fucking grays would. They’re a little uptight, but the ‘bots are good people.”

“Are you just making up slang as you go, or is this a thing?” Ben asked, relishing the sensation of looking down and not seeing his dick hanging out, and further enjoying the sensation of wearing normal jeans and a normal shirt again.

“You’ve got a thing about this,” Cragg said, then schooled his expression into something serious, “let me do the talking. You sure you need the beyonder?”

“We need her, and Vivi.”

“I’d leave the slug out of this,” Cragg said, “he’s already in deep shit.”

“Vivi eats deep shit for breakfast,” Ben said confidently.

“Ben we’re not supposed to talk about that,” Short Bus said.

“The point is,” Ben continued, “Vivi’s already in deep. He might as well push through all the way to the other side, cuz I don’t think there’s any going back for him.”

“Your call,” Cragg said, then pulled a silver sphere from his shirt, spoke into it quietly, and tossed it into the air. The sphere flew away on wings of anti-gravity, “One of my guys’ll bring him when we’re ready. You know, I think about things sometimes, and all the sudden, I feel like bringing you kids in here is going to end badly. Why don’t you wait out here and let old Craggy take care of this?”

“Sure, but tell Red you’re with us otherwise she might be uncooperative,” Ben said. Cragg nodded, and then entered Precinct 10.

The night air was warm and moving, a gentle breeze, and the sky overhead was dominated by the lights and colors of The Canopy. Ben stuck his hands in his pockets and sort of shuffled around, looking at things. Short Bus had a glazed over, bored expression on his face. Ghost Ears kept looking from Ben’s ADHD to Short Bus’s bad attitude and wondered how they were all still alive.

Moments later, Cragg emerged, well, he was actually speed walking, ok, no, he was actually sprinting from Precinct 10 with a limp Red over his shoulder.

“Ok time to move!” he said, smiling but still running, “no questions now, time to run! Hustle, hustle!” They all started running, right around the same time Precinct 10’s alarms started howling.

“Ben this is just like that time in the Citadel!” Short Bus yelled as they ran to the skimmer.

“What’s wrong with her!” Ben yelled at Cragg.

“They sedated her! She was acting crazy and shooting lasers and shit and saying a bunch of creepy weird- they got freaked out and injected her with something! Hey! What’d I say about questions? No questions!”

They got on the skimmer and sped away. Below, Ben could see Precinct 10 buzzing like a kicked over ant hill, cyborgs of every shape and size, all with a Solas PD uniform painted onto their metal bodies, were searching the area.

“Prince Ben,” Ghost Ears commented, “As your [Royal Vizier], I feel it is my duty to inform you that we are dangerously close to being at war with Solas. You know how I feel about you starting wars.”

“Buddy,” Ben said, “If I haven’t started a war by the end of the night, it’s because I’m fucking dead.”

Cragg was laughing his ass off, speeding the skimmer away and weaving in between buildings in what Ben assumed was a pattern designed to make them hard to follow.

“I fucking love being a [Cop]!” Cragg yelled.

“Come on, wake up,” Short Bus said, gently slapping Red’s cheek and telepathically probing her mind, trying to stir her to wakefulness. “She’d not waking up,” Short Bus said, sounding worried.

“We’ll need to find an alchemist and get her the antidote. It’s Precinct 10, so they’re using the standard stuff, it’s easy enough to fix.”

Down below, far down below, Ben heard barking. Short Bus didn’t hear barking, because he was practically deaf, but he did hear a psychic transmission of barking.

“Hey!” a cheerful, doggy voice called, “hey! I’ve got what you need! Hey! I’m Louis! Hey! I’ve got good stuff!”

“Cragg,” Short Bus said, “Land over by that guy down there, down by the dog.”

“You got it,” Cragg said, having already committed to just going with the crazy flow that emerged around Ben’s party. He’d hung out with Adventurers before, he knew what was up.

They landed in a mostly empty park somewhere in the Outer Ring, well empty except for the couple of dozen walking mushroom men, several wagons, and a very excited yellow dog.

“Oh my God it’s a dog,” Ben said, immediately running forward towards Louis.

“Oh my Dog it’s a person,” Louis said and sprinted towards Ben, then started jumping all over him, arfing and rooing while Ben played and scratched and petted. Ghost Ears and Cragg watched the scene completely mystified.

“Hey fairy,” Cragg said, watching as Ben, from his perspective, completely lost his mind and started acting like a total lunatic, “what’s going on?”

“I have no idea,” Ghost Ears responded, having literally no cultural keystone in common with this event.

“Oh, I got this,” Short Bus said, nodding his head, tapping his skull and acting superior and sure of himself, “See, I got a download of cultural knowledge when I took The Bright Spark, watch this,” he said, then eyed both Ghost Ears and Cragg to make sure they were ‘watching this’, “ready? Pets. Boom,” Short Bus said, then stopped explaining.

“I don’t know what that is,” Cragg said, watching as Ben rolled around on the ground and then started sprinting around and letting Louis chase him.

“I don’t know either,” Ghost Ears had said almost at the same time as Cragg.

Short Bus explained about pets, and did a decent job.

“So a pet is like a slave or a prisoner?” Cragg asked

“No!” Short Bus exclaimed, “It’s nothing like that.”

“It sounds like that,” Ghost Ears agreed.

“Well it’s not,” Short Bus said.

“How is it different?” Cragg asked, still watching Ben with almost fearful eyes. Like what he was seeing was so alien, so strange, that it scared him.

“Well, you love you pets, from what I understand, and they love you back.” Short Bus responded. Cragg thought about it for a long moment, then shook his head, the spell broken.

“It don’t make any fucking sense to me. Why’d we stop down here again?”

“Louis,” Short Bus said, “he’s a [Travelling Merchant] on caravan from Stump Town, on behalf of the local Myconians-”

“Myconanians!” Cragg said, brightening up immediately, “now that I understand! Worst mistake the big shots on council ever made was banning them from the city. Oh! He’s a merchant from the Myconians! Fucking boulders, I’ve got to stock up, those guys have got the goods!”

Cragg ran over and broke up the play session between Ben and Louis, who were both breathing hard and pretty much done with it anyways.

“Wait! Wait!” Louis yelled, barking vocally and speaking telepathically, “Leave the park! Leave the park!”

“Why, is there danger boy?” Ben asked, looking around for trouble.

“No! No! I’ve gotta set up! I’ve gotta set up! I’ve got a skill! [Showy Presentation!] Go, Go! It’ll only take a second! Come back in five minutes!”

Ben, who was pretty much ready to do anything Louis asked at this point, shooed his party away into a nearby alleyway. Once they were out of sight, they heard a lot of barking and the sounds of things banging around.

“Is this really necessary?” Ghost Ears asked, still disturbed by the ‘Pet’ concept.

“Yes,” Ben said with complete confidence. Roughly five minutes later, five minutes in which Red was still lolled out in drug induced unconsciousness, they heard barking from the park, and then some really corny carnival music started playing. Like the kind that might play from a dark purple tent with a ‘Fortune Teller’ sign hanging over it.

The entered the park for the ‘first time’ and saw Louis sitting on a platform, dressed up in a little dog costume that was a mix between [Travelling Merchant], [Wizard] and [Adorable]. There were about eight stalls, each of which was stacked high with exotic goods and sundries, and every stall was manned by a Myconid.

“Welcome! Welcome weary travellers!” Louis barked from his place up high, “Welcome to Lucky Louis’s Wonder Emporium! Home of the finest merchandise anywhere in The World! Please take some time to browse our selection provided by the Myconids of Stump Town! We are currently in the market to purchase several types of items in bulk, see our catalogue for more details!”

“Lucky Louis’s Wonder Emporium,” Ben whispered out loud, leaning back and looking at the sky, “fucking yes!”