Bryce

I shambled to the end of the oversized bed and fell forward, landing face first into the sheets. Thea laughed before doing the same. I pulled her into an awkward hug and let out a quiet groan.

“You okay, princess? You seem more tired than usual.”

“Thea, I haven’t slept in an actual bed since we were in Hades. That was nearly a week ago, and it’s been a long week. Hells, it’s somehow been an even longer day. I just want to lie in bed and sleep for at least the next year.”

“That sounds like fun, but if we’re going to be in bed for a whole year, then we should at least get changed first. And maybe take a shower while we’re at it. It’s been a while.” I laid there in silence for a second before Thea started poking at me. “Babe, you still there? You didn’t die, did you?”

“Not yet, but I was considering it,” I answered without moving, but then let out a sigh as I pushed myself off the bed. “Alright, fine, let’s get ready to sleep, but while we’re at it, I’m going to take another look at your meridians. You’ve been at forty-five percent for nearly five hours now, and I want to make sure it’s not hurting you.”

“Can we do that in the shower?” Thea asked with a hopeful grin, and I chuckled as I shook my head.

“Why not? Could be fun, but you have to promise to actually hold still long enough for me to make sure you’re not dying.”

“Deal!” She shot up from the bed and raced to the bathroom. I followed after her with a big stupid grin on my face.

~~~~~

I checked the local time on my implants without even opening my eyes. It was nearly eleven in the morning. Normally, I would’ve been up hours ago, but I excused myself this one time. Besides, even if I had been awake, there was no way I would have been able to untangle myself from a certain devil girlfriend who was holding my arm hostage.

I tried to pull it away, but one of the many consequences of giving Thea nearly half my mana was that it was all but impossible to escape her grasp in the mornings. Theoretically, I could drain the mana I was giving her for just long enough to pull away, but we had agreed that adjusting mana without consent was for emergencies only.

In fact, taking Thea’s mana away to wake her up was one of a few examples that she had made sure to explicitly include. Which meant that I was now stuck holding the woman I loved until she woke up on her own. Admittedly, there were worse fates.

At least waiting for her gave me a chance to organize my thoughts as well as review what happened yesterday. Which was something that was long overdue.

The hostel Suriel picked was actually fairly decent. It had a number of reasonably sized private rooms in addition to a few large shared spaces. We ended up with four of the private rooms divided amongst us, including the one that Aurora paid for herself to share with Sanya.

I wasn’t entirely sure what the satyr’s plan was moving forward, but she’d been attached at the hip to Aurora ever since we met back up last night. Whatever was going on wasn’t any of my business, but I had to admit the pair were kind of cute.

We had agreed not to meet up until around midday, which, due to the thirty-hour cycles on Paradise, was actually about four hours from now. When we had made that plan, I had been expecting to meet with Zen in the morning before discussing our plans for the day, but that apparently wasn’t going to happen.

It was probably for the best, though. Sanya had warned me that while Zen’s bar might be open by noon, it was far from a sure thing. Apparently, most of Paradise didn’t really wake up until 19:00 or four in the afternoon, and things didn’t really start opening until a few hours later. Thirty-hour days took some getting used to, but I wasn’t planning on sticking around for long, so I could deal with it for now.

Thea started to stir before pulling me tighter against herself and asking in a sleepy voice. “What time is it?”

“Check your implants.” I gently kissed the top of her head after reminding her.

“Nevermind, not that interested anyway. Mostly just asking to be polite…” she trailed off, and I rolled my eyes as I settled in to wait.

~~~~~

“Hey Suriel, where’s everyone else?” Thea asked as we sat down across from the ex-celestial in the crowded common area. He was sipping on coffee with some sort of mass produced fried pastry sitting on top of a clear plastic wrapper in front of him.

“Good morning, you two. Aurora and Samira went back to working on the ship, while Sanya took Leila and Sora to set up an appointment with the wetware tech. We were going to wait for you, but after an hour Sora decided that it would be better to just let you sleep in. I hope you don’t mind.”

“That’s alright. We had some issues getting out of bed this morning. Thanks for waiting as long as you did,” I explained, which caused Thea to scoff.

“What Bryce actually meant when she said ‘we had trouble getting out of bed’ was that she overslept. I had nothing to do with it.”

Suriel raised an eyebrow at me and I shrugged sheepishly. “My alarm woke me up early this morning and I went back to sleep without setting a new one. It’s probably going to take me a few days to get used to thirty-hour cycles.”

“Is it that abnormal to have different cycle lengths on the mortal plane?”

“Not necessarily, but I’ve spent the last three decades living on a human colony, and they tend to prefer twenty-four-hour cycles. We’ve been sticking to that on our ship ever since we left New Eden.”

“Plus, it’s not like we cared about what time it actually was while we were in the hells. Kinda just stuck to the normal ship clock the entire time,” Thea added before twisting in her chair to look around the common area. “Where’d you get the coffee, anyway?”

“There’s a vending machine in the hall near the common rooms, but something about it tastes off. I wouldn’t recommend drinking it.”

“Damn. Alrighty then, what’s the plan now that all of our friends have left us and there’s no coffee?” Thea asked.

“Well, you and I still need to go to Zen’s bar and have him contact Maymi. After that, it’s mostly just a waiting game.” I shook my head with a sigh. “We’ll need to pass ourselves off as pirates until we can recover Ithnaa, then figure out a way to deal with Mother once and for all.”

“Okay, this might be a little out there, but what if we just, like, killed her?”

I chuckled. “Well, it’s not a bad plan, but it does have a few flaws. Primarily, she’s no doubt extremely powerful on her own, plus she probably has an army defending her, and even if we manage to kill her, then we’ll have to deal with the entire syndicate coming after us. Which would just make everything that much worse for Sora and Samira.”

“Fine, we’ll do it the boring diplomatic way.” Thea rolled her eyes at me before smiling at her brother. “Do you have any plans today? Wanna come threaten a dude at his own bar with us?”

Suriel stared back at her, and I couldn’t help but laugh. “For what it’s worth, this is the guy who helped sell off our friend. He’s due for a bit of threatening.”

“Well, now I feel like I have to go just to keep you two out of trouble.”

Thea got up from the table with a huge grin. “Good idea. You keeping me out of trouble has always worked so well in the past.”

“In that case, let’s at least try to keep to threats, okay?” Suriel gave me a pleading look as we both got up, and I turned to leave before answering over my shoulder.

“We’ll see, but I’m not making any promises. He really rubbed me the wrong way the last time we met.”

~~~~~

Due to the magic of public transit, we made it to Aoyama’s sector in a little over two hours. Which was faster than when we were coming from Penn’s territory, despite it being further away. I wasn’t sure how long we were going to be on Paradise, but I made it a personal goal of mine to understand the logic behind the transit system before we left.

In the meantime, though, we had a job to do, and I was worried that it could get violent, so I stopped our little group near an alcove not far from the Electric Zen.

“Give me a second. I’d like to cast a few spells and move mana around before we go in,” I announced before immediately starting to cast. The shield spell was an obvious first, followed by my sword, and finally, I pre-cast two banishment spells. Pre-casting like this required a lot of concentration to maintain, but most things related to arcane casting did, which meant I’d become pretty good at it over the years.

Once I was happy with the spells, I reviewed the mana that was distributed amongst Thea and her siblings. As it was, each of them was receiving ten percent of my maximum mana, with Thea having the bulk at forty-five. This left me with around twenty-five percent, and while that was still a lot of mana, it was significantly less than I was used to having.

After a short internal debate, I decided to move five percent of my personal mana to Suriel, taking him to fifteen. Again, this left me with a lot less than I was used to, but I didn’t feel comfortable moving mana away from Leila or Aurora while they were effectively protecting Sora and Samira. That only left my personal reserves, and if it came to a skirmish, then Suriel having the mana was probably going to be better than me trying to use it myself.

I sent the request, and Suriel’s face paled as he accepted and I couldn’t help but cringe. “Sorry, the passive benefits you get from my mana as a devil generally scale better than most spells I can cast on the fly. If it’s too much, then I can decrease the amount.”

“No, it’s alright. You had me at even more yesterday, so I knew what I was accepting. Just, let’s not make a habit of this, alright?”

“Fair enough. I’ll take you back down once we get to the hostel later tonight. Are we ready?” I asked, and got a nod from Suriel along with a thumbs up from Thea, so we headed inside.

It was late enough in the afternoon, a little after 18:00, that Paradise had mostly come alive, but the bar was still far from busy. There were around a half-dozen patrons scattered about, with two sitting at the bar proper. I sat down and waved at Les, the human bartender from last night.

She noticed us and rushed over with a smile. Which admittedly, was a bit surprising considering the state we left the bar in the night before. I wasn’t even sure if we had paid for the bottles we bought. Although, knowing Thea, she probably had.

“Hey, what can I get you?” She sounded cheerful, which again felt kind of off.

“Is there any chance you still have the bottles we bought last night?” Thea grinned sheepishly before adding. “We left in a bit of a rush and didn’t really have a chance to finish them.”

Les laughed. “Yeah, if you were here last night, then that makes sense. I heard there was an attack on the captain. Thank the gods I wasn’t on shift, otherwise I would’ve had to deal with the fallout. We set the expensive bottles aside, though, so yours should be around here somewhere. What was it that you ordered?”

“A bottle of whiskey, I think it was called wooden stone, and then some elf wine for my girlfriend.”

“Wooden stone doesn’t sound familiar, but I do remember seeing a bottle of Araedhel. It’s not every day we open something that's nearly three times my age, even if it's elven.” She gave me a knowing look, but I was frowning. “I’ll go grab the wine and look for the whiskey at the same time.”

Les left for the hidden back room and I turned to my two companions. “Was she lying when she said she wasn’t on shift last night?”

Suriel shook his head, and Thea agreed, but Les returned carrying the bottles before I could follow up.

“Found them! It was oaken, not wooden stone, but I can understand how you got the two confused.” She set the bottles on the table and pulled out a pair of glasses. “What about the gentleman? Did you want wine, or whiskey, or perhaps something else?”

“You really don’t remember anything from last night?” Thea asked, and the bartender seemed taken aback.

“I don’t think I’m forgetting anything… does it seem like I am?”

I wasn’t exactly sure how to broach the subject, so I just decided to confront her directly. “You helped us order last night and gave us some helpful information besides. But you just told us that you weren’t on shift, and it seems like you’re telling the truth. Which makes me worried that your memory could have been altered.”

“No, yesterday was my night off, I was--” She suddenly realized something and continued quickly. “Oh, duh! Sorry, we don’t get that many new people around here. The captain hasn’t done much to expand her crew recently and lancers don’t really stick around for too long. You probably met Leslie last night. I’m Morgan. We’re genetic clones, so it’s easy for newbies to get us confused.”

Thea immediately started laughing, which caused Morgan to let out a tired sigh. Meanwhile, I was somewhat surprised. “I thought genetic cloning of a full sapient species was outlawed by the Federation.”

“It is, which is why our ‘donor’ is now rotting away in a Federation prison like she deserves while we live out our lives as fugitives on Paradise.”

“Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to bring up something painful.”

Morgan shrugged. “It’s alright. That’s not the painful part.”

I was about to ask what was, when Thea calmed down enough to ask her question. “Let me guess, people come in asking if you’re Mor or Les the bartender?”

She gave a defeated nod with a half-smile. “I did mention our ‘donor’ got what she deserved, right? She had a terrible sense of humor, and neither of us realized just how bad it was until we came to Paradise. Now nobody lets us forget it.”

“You could always just change your name,” Suriel suggested, but Morgan just dismissed the idea.

“Leslie thinks it’s cute, and besides, she’s the one who usually works nights. Which means she gets the brunt of the teasing. I just have to explain to hungover or still drunk pirates that, no, I am, in fact, not the flirty bartender that was serving them last night, and that whatever she promised them would have to be taken up with her. It’s a bit of a pain, but changing my name wouldn’t help with that particular issue.”

“Well, fair enough.” Thea uncorked her whiskey bottle and started pouring before continuing. “For what it’s worth, Les didn’t promise us anything. She just helped us pick our drinks, and she was super good at it.”

“Yeah, that sounds like her.” Morgan chuckled, but then she grimaced as she looked past us. “Is there anything else I can do for you before I get pulled away? A regular is on her way in and she looks pissed.”

I was about to ask for Zen when someone stomped up to us and slammed a heavily customized, and very expensive, pistol down on the bartop next to Thea. “Morgan, tell your asshole boss to get down here. We need to have an armed conversation about selling out your friends and how it usually gets you shot.”

I turned to see a familiar blonde half-elf covered in light body armor with way too many belts hanging off her waist.