Once Drade finished returning the stolen merchandise, he walked back to his apartment, sidestepping the war-torn park. It had been left in tatters after the fight. Trees had fallen, asphalt had shattered, and the hurricane had flung some of the pond’s water halfway across the city. Drade figured he could ask his sister’s Friends to do some community service for it. It wouldn’t do if their secondary gathering place was in tatters.

Well, not that he needed an excuse to keep the environment clean.

He arrived home with no incident. That was standard, of course, but given how magic-packed his day had been in just one hour, it helped to expect the worst.

His family’s apartment was fairly standard, housing only him, his sister, and his mother, so they didn’t need much in the way of spectacle or space. Plus, when they moved from their previous house, they were forced to abandon their old belongings. Thankfully, people from across the globe owed Drade favors, from the rich to the beggars, so he easily funded their new apartment.

Hopefully, this time it wouldn’t blow up.

He entered his apartment. Inside, his mom was sleeping on their living room couch, a book atop her face. She didn’t have the same intrinsic stress levels in her job as Drade did in his daily life, but teaching middle-schoolers must have been stressful all on its own, even if they didn’t randomly turn into brain-devouring monsters.

He didn’t disturb her sleep and walked to his room.

When he walked in, something underneath a pink polka-dot blanket eagerly greeted him. Had one not known better, they may have mistaken the creature for a table or bed. It, as a matter of fact, simply preferred being a girl. Thus she was referred to as such.

And, despite her...questionable appearance, she sounded like a girl, through and through. “Brother! Did you get the game?” A black...uhh...tentacle came from beneath the blanket and raised itself up to Drade’s waist, then separated like goo into a hand of sorts.

Drade handed the game to his sister, then two more tentacles came from underneath the blanket and wrapped themselves around Drade, while the main body pulled itself closer to him and pressed against him in what I can only assume was a hug. Drade reacted by patting the top of the thing’s blanket affectionately.

“Thank you so much, Drade!”

Drade smiled. “No problem,” he said with his usual deadpan. “I was only threatened with death once this time.”

The thing seemed uneasy about that, unlike him. “Drade, why don’t you just let me protect you while you’re out and about?”

He patted her again. “I don’t think you should get involved. It’ll only bring...unwanted attention to us,” he said, an hour after giving a man-eating plant his address and phone number.

“I still don’t like it!” the creature pouted.

“Look, I’ve been under threat of death by over a thousand fantastical creatures. I doubt I’ll die now.” Drade let out a minuscule sigh.

The ‘girl’ recognized that sentence as the most obvious death flag ever and grumbled in a low tone, uncomfortable. Still, she reluctantly moved in front of her game console and began opening the new game with her appendages.

Her side of the room had a collection of small carpets laid on the ground, making for a colorful floor. She had a computer and gane console with a mess of wires and anime figures behind them. She also had a few blankets strewn about and stuffed in her closet. The other side of the room looked entirely different and exceptionally clean. There was a desk and chair, a bed, a closet, and a dresser, all the necessities for a human.

Drade shared a room with an incomprehensible being, is what I’m trying to say.

She managed to open the game and placed it into the console. “Drade, are you going to play with me?”

“Actually, no. I gotta run an errand for the lead Friend.”

“I thought you wanted to play Bite and Smite 2 with me...” his sister said, disappointed.

“It’s a really important errand.”

“Well, if it really is, but I’m not going to wait for you!”

“I’d kill to play that game with you right now, sis, but I got to go,” Drade said in such a manner that put into question whether it was a metaphor or not, waving to his sister.

“Ok, bye!” She waved at him.

“Bye.”

Just outside the complex, the ‘lead Friend’ was waiting. He was a man who looked to be in his mid-forties and entirely non-outstanding, besides his perpetually ‘knowing’ gaze.

As Drade walked up to him, the man crossed his arms and commented, “Quite the weather we are having. A tornado but no rain...”

“I had a little run-in with some strange people. I put their files in your office.”

“That figures. I’ll make sure to take a look when this is done with.” The man scratched his stubble, thinking.

“You said that Plan-B had a bit of a hiccup, Datai?”

“Yes, the issue is that the cameras at our disposal appear unable to record your sister. We have tried everything at our disposal, but nothing can get her on camera. She isn’t of our world, and cameras seem to recognize that. I think a magical camera could work, though.”

“What about Batman?” Drade asked with no sense of irony.

“He’s our only magitech specialist and can only replicate tech.”

And before anyone gets confused, they were not talking about Batman, but someone who took the alias for themselves.

“That’s a significant issue...” Drade leaned against the building, his eyes moving to the top-right of his vision. His usual apathy was gone, replaced by worry. “So, what do you need me to do about it? I might know lots about magics, but...magitech is a blank for me.”

Datai shook his head. “No, I understand, Drade. I only figured you would have some connections. This problem is getting dire, and if we can’t finish Plan-B by the deadline...”

Drade continued thinking for a minute, muttering to himself, “No...he died to the honey badger mk2...and she’s only available once a year...and the lab was destroyed during that spat between Kaijou and Terragon...” After a moment of silence, Drade said, “I know a certain magical restaurant.”

Datai nodded. “If you need to, just ask the Friends for help. In the meantime, I need to seal the deal with the producer of the program.” Datai’s phone rang from his pocket, and he quickly picked it up. “What is it?”

...

“Faio’s dead?! W-wait, just a moment, hold on, I’ll be right th-”

“Don’t bother.”

“What!? Drade, you, of all people, should know the danger involved if Faio is dead! Besides, she’s Uffiled’s best-”

Drade’s eyes rose to the top-right of his vision again, then went back. “Actually...scratch that, you can handle it if you want, though it won’t change much.”

“Drade...” Datai placed a hand on his face, annoyed. “You know I hate it when you’re vague with me. What aren’t you telling me?”

“The person who killed her was some girl whose actions don’t have consequences at the end of the day or something.”

Datai took what Drade said at face value with no suspicion. “So even if she’s dead...?”

“She will come back to life. You may as well go, though...and whatever you do, make sure Uffieldufkyalluphanimwartailophanathaz doesn’t learn she died. I don’t want her to see that.”

Datai nodded. “Understood...I’ll take my leave then.” Datai raised the phone up again. “I’ll be right there.” He hung up and began running straight through the war-torn park.

As he left, Drade’s head rolled back, facing the sky. “What a mess...off to find a restaurant, I guess,” he said with a small punctuating sigh.

The restaurant in question was a prestigious and quite magical one. A place of wonder and extradimensional space. Before Drade arrived, it was welcoming its first customer of the month.

Sirla finished preparing food for the regular and called out, “Wurn, it’s finished!” Sirla had dark blonde hair long enough to reach her ankles, with a purple headband atop, and was the restaurant’s primary cook, wearing an apron over a white shirt and shorts. She was nineteen, just like her cohort, Wurn.

“Gottcha!” Wurn responded before taking the plate to the customer he’d been chatting with. He wore an expensive waiter’s uniform and had a bland metal bracelet on his wrist. Although the fancy style didn’t fit his posture and habits, he put in his all to make himself presentable.

The restaurant had two floors. One was a balcony for the romantics and overlooked the bottom floor. The bottom floor was where most of the restaurant’s customers sat and where Sirla’s bar/kitchen was located. The wood and decorations were so-so, given how high-end the restaurant was, but as Wurn always said, ‘cleanliness before spectacle!’

And indeed, it was a clean restaurant.

Of course, neither their food nor decor was the primary draw of their restaurant. Instead, it was the shop’s magical qualities.

Wurn himself was an enchanter, somebody who could, well...enchant things.

“Here’s your dish.” Wurn handed a man in a casual tuxedo his plate, then sat opposite him.

The patron was a Chinese businessman and liked to practice his English in the restaurant. He not only spoke the language fluidly but did it without much of an accent, despite living in China full-time. “This looks delightful!” he said with a smile before taking a bite of the dish.

“Hows’ it taste?”

“Delightful as well!” the businessman said after swallowing. He continued their previous conversation, “I truly thought you were a master, though.”

Wurn scratched his head. “Nah, I left my enchantment training in the dust right after I’d graduated. This whole restaurant was nothin’ more than a passion project of ours, but Sirla and I ended up going straight for the throat, puttin’ in our all when we thought the other wasn’t looking.”

“Gahahaha!!” the businessman laughed like a hyena. “Though, how did you two come up with the idea? A magic restaurant with a magical scavenger hunt for the rich is a tad outlandish.”

Wurn shrugged. “I dunno, I guess we wanted to combine our talents and stuff. Sirla always tried to be a cook, so she’d already trained for a few years before we started, and I just wanted a ‘drifter’ kind of lifestyle. I move continents every few months just for the heck of it, but I still got this familiar restaurant to come back to every day. Good friends, good drinks, good pay, good work.”

A bell chimed as the door opened.

“Hello!” Sirla eagerly greeted the newcomer from behind the bar, waving a hand, as well as...her hair?

“Yo,” Drade revealed himself, casually walking up to the bar and sitting down. It had been about three hours since he’d spoken with Datai -finding the restaurant was quite the hassle.

It didn’t take longer than a few seconds for Sirla’s welcoming smile to turn upside down and her hair to fall with disappointment. “Urg, it’s you again.”

“What, something wrong with me?” Drade asked, his expression not changing.

“Just tell me what you want, freeloader.” There was a sound of sparks as Sirla’s hair, which condensed just below her shoulder, pointed at Drade menacingly as if it were a knife.

“My name is Drade, Sirla,” he pointed out.

Sirla eyed Drade suspiciously. She was obviously aggressive, though she seemed on-guard about him, like she expected Drade to attack her at any moment. It felt strange for Drade since most people didn’t see him as a threat in the slightest -and he most certainly wasn’t. If Sirla so chose to, he knew she could easily kill him.

She, however, was no killer. “I disagree, Freeloaderton, this is my house, and if you want to be in here, even your name is up to my discretion. Besides, I’ve literally never heard that name in my life.” She muttered to herself, “...Why haven’t I seen anyone called Drade...?”

Drade tilted his head a little. “Got it, Hair Cook. I need some information about Wurn’s magic.”

Sirla remained silent, frowning at Drade with intensity like he should have known he’d said something stupid.

“What?” he asked, apparently confused.

“Free. Loader. Ton. My...” She looked to Wurn, looking for a word to describe him. “colleague isn’t giving information out for free. He pours his heart and soul into every magic item he makes.” Sirla’s hair moved on its own, then casually moved a massive dumbbell left on the marble bar counter and placed it in front of Drade.

“What’s this?” Drade asked, showing no sign of interest past a glance at the item.

“Try to lift it.”

“Ok.” Drade placed his hands underneath it, then lifted it. Despite the dumbbell’s size, he managed to lift it a foot into the air, his seat creaking underneath its weight. Then, he lost his strength, and the dumbbell fell onto the relatively fragile marble counter...then bounced, over and over. “Oh, it bounces,” Drade said, not even glancing at the dumbbell-looking scene.

Drade’s eye contact seemed to make Sirla both angry and nervous. “See, You don’t even care. He puts his best into these magical items, and you don’t even bat an eye! What, is magic too lame for you?”

Drade tilted his head again and ignored her question. “Though I’m surprised you knew Wurn put his soul into the magic items he made.”

“W-what?” Sirla’s hair moved despite her surprise, pushing the bouncing dumbbell to the side, where it would bounce in place for a few more minutes.

“So, what was the point of that dumbbell thing?”

“Stop ignoring me, then changing the subject!”

“How was I changing the subject?” Drade asked genuinely...not that Sirla could tell through his near-monotone.

“By changing the subject!”

Drade remained silent while he casually motioned towards a basket on the counter a few feet away. A magical menu floated from it and into his hands. He began reading it, taking account of its contents. “Mmhm...that...uhuh...looks kinda gross...magical food? Noooo, thank you, I don’t feel like being poisoned...” As Drade listed off his scathing comments on Sirla’s creative foods, her scowl grew deeper and deeper.

Sirla snapped. “OK, THAT’S IT, GET OUT NOW, FREELOADER!” She pointed to the door, and her hair raised into five appendages, threatening Drade from all sides.

Drade ignored her, not even recognizing her as a potential threat. “Why would I want to eat grass of all things? Nah, way too much meat...”

Sirla breathed heavily out of anger, standing in awkward silence as the seemingly ordinary teen blew her off.

“Still can’t believe people eat squid...hmmm...” He stared at something from the menu for a moment, then closed it and haphazardly threw it to the side, only for the magic menu to float back to the basket. He placed his right hand on his cheek. “I’m not a big fan of this stuff.”

Sirla continued to yell, “Do you really want those to be your last w-”

“But you have really good variety.”

Her scowl turned less severe almost instantly. “Thanks, I guess. Now get o-”

Drade stared at Sirla dead-on, almost intimidating the girl. “I’d like the Iron Goddess Flight Curry, please.”

Sirla lost her scowl, the expression being smothered with incredulity. Her hair puffed out in surprise for a moment, turning her head into a pincushion. “W-what?”

Drade’s hand hadn’t moved from his face, and he set his elbow on the counter, his posture looking bored, but his eyes boring into Sirla with intensity. “Is there something wrong with my choice?”

“But it costs almost nine-thousand-”

Drade slapped a bundle of cash on the table with his left hand, then repeated, “Is there something wrong with my choice?” They were all hundred-dollar bills.

Sirla slowly counted the bills. “This is only forty-five hund-”

Drade slapped another bundle of cash on the counter.

“Who in Chaos are you?”

Drade spread out his arms. “Drade.”

Sirla slowly stashed the bills underneath the table. She then painfully, as if she were in torture just saying it, said his name. “H...how might I help you...D...r...a...de.”

“I want to talk to-”

Sirla’s instinct kicked in, and her hair suddenly pointed at Drade again, even more threateningly. “You have a gun, don’t you?”

Drade pulled back his coat, showing a gun locked into a pocket. “I guess so.”

Sirla’s hair snatched it, then placed it beneath the counter, alongside the cash. “Not allowed in here.” She took pride in her ability to sniff out that sort of insurrection.

Drade looked at Sirla, spacing out. “Oh, I really didn’t know.”

“Uh-huh...” Sirla motioned for Drade to continue, her hair falling limp again.

“I wanted to ask Wurn something.”

Sirla shook her head. “Whatever, free...” She cleared her throat with dignity. “Drade. If Wurn feels like it, you can talk to him...but...”

“Yes?”

“First, you need to tell us how you get in here.”

“I play rock-paper-scissors with a wall?”

“No, how did you find how to get into here in the first place? This restaurant is one of, if not the most secure places I know of. Only somebody with an invitation -someone Wurn has personally vetted- can find their way to our restaurant. Plus, that’s only after they do a scavenger hunt using the invitation’s riddles, which can often take days to complete, and learn the key to opening the entrance to our shop. Rock-paper-scissors was the key, but you still needed the invitation.”

Drade clicked his tongue. “I happened to find an invitation on the ground and followed it here out of curiosity.”

“But the gateways to our restaurant change every month. It should have been impossible for you to find our place without a second invitation.”

“I’ll admit, for a normal person, that would be impossible,” Drade said before presenting another letter between two fingers. “But I’m lucky.”

“Bullshit. Luck’s not a thing-”

“It’s a law,” Drade completed her sentence with another piercing stare. “Luck is a law. I don’t know how it works, but I’ve made my way here twice. Not just that, but I’ve picked up three invitations to your little interdimensional shop. Luckily for me, I picked one up two days ago.”

“Where do you live? What city?”

“Changeton.”

“Wurn! Who do we invite from Changeton!?”

Wurn and the Chinese businessman had been paying attention to the conversation from the beginning, and he was ready to yell back. “I think there’s a guy called Douglass Penny. He owns Changeton’s coin-making factory.”

“Well, stop inviting the dude. He throws the invitations away, then the not-freeloader picks them up!” She began muttering to herself, “Dumb as Chaos that his name and city match so perfect...ly. Luck.”

Drade nodded. “Luck’s a thing, as I said. Though, I wouldn’t wish for luck if I were you.”

Sirla’s hair waved Drade off. “Yeah, yeah. Whatever, you’ve answered my question, so I’ll let you do your thing. Wurn!”

“Gotcha.’” Wurn waved bye to his friend, then walked to Drade.

“Let’s move out of the mundane people’s listening range, first.”

Wurn sent him a strange look but shrugged, and they moved to a nearby table. “Sorry for Sirla, man. You’re just a little...how do I put this...suspicious.”

Drade grumbled a strangely monotonous note before speaking. “I get that a lot. I...see the world differently than other people.” He let out a tiny punctuating sigh.

“Yeah, I get it, man, I get it. So, what’d you want to talk t’ me about?”

Drade’s eyes wandered up and right as he thought. “I guess the first thing to mention is that my half-sister is a three-fourths eldritch entity. And please don’t call her a ‘horror.’ It’s a pretty derogatory term...”