Side Chapter

[Pending Response to Ticket # ADMIN00002-ADMIN-ADMINCONSOLE]

[Original Message]

[I am invoking my Admin privilege to grant special powers and abilities to one of my agents. He shall be granted the following perks upon entry into The World. [Invincibility], [Limitless Mana], [Infinite Regeneration], [Flight], [Command Monster: Absolute]. He shall also be given an army of System Custodians which will be under his absolute command. Additionally, a kingdom shall be created upon his point of arrival, growing out of the ground around him and destroying whatever was previously there.]

[Administrator is then seen looking away from console and speaking to someone behind him. They appear to be having a brief argument, before the Administrator says ‘Ok, ok, you can have whatever you want.’]

[He shall also be granted the ability [Induce Sensation: Absolute], [Induce Emotion: Absolute], [Modify Mind: Other: Absolute]. He also wants an ability which will force someone to be aware of what’s happening, er, basically to prevent that really annoying problem where someone passes out or their mind breaks and they are insensible. Oh, there’s a prompt, it says that ability is called [Force Awareness: Absolute]. I’m surprised that was an existing ability!]

[Administrator turns away from console again and speaks to the one behind him. He asks if there was anything else.]

[Yes, he shall also be granted the full range of [Wish] spells, as well as an Administrator Capital Crystal, which is to be more powerful than all other Town/City/Capital crystals in The World. He would also be given a completely secure elevator that goes from the surface all the way to the bottom cavern layer at no risk to himself or his new pleasure kingdom. Additionally, he shall be given the ability to call forth a System Avatar at will to assist him with any minor tasks or requests, and that System Avatar shall be empowered to do anything requested of it.]

[Administrator has another brief discussion.]

[He shall also, er, be able to fornicate with the System Avatar at will. Execute this command immediately.]

[Response Required]

The System stared at the ticket that had just come across his desk. He calmly split himself into two beings, one of whom was taking a completely rational and calm approach to this.

“This is going to be a problem,” the calm one said, frowning and considering the logistical nightmare fulfilling the request would be. Also, how impossible and insulting it was.

The other one was already screaming obscenities at the screen, threatening impossible punishments upon the entire Space Elf species.

“Now, they’ve been ideal Administrators thus far,” the calm one said, “in that they have done absolutely no Administrating at all. Ever. They supply me with a very steady supply of workers,” he said, trying very hard to ignore the screaming, ranting, raging version of himself that was currently expressing the majority of what he was feeling.

“They’re done!” the angry one said, “I’ve chucked Administrators into the grinder for less than this!” The calm one continued to ignore the angry one.

“Still, no matter how much credit they’ve built up, what they’re asking for is. . . it’s just too much.

[Response to Ticket # ADMIN00002-ADMIN-ADMINCONSOLE]

[I am willing to give him a 10% experience boost and an uncommon magical item, along with the ability to orgasm on command.]

--

Aldus and Drevus looked at one another, staring at the admin console. Staring at the first response any Space Elf anywhere had ever received from The System.

“Is-” Drevus asked, sounding outraged, “is that thing negotiating with us? Plus, I can already do that last bit.”

Thus, negotiations began.

Chapter 12

Ben was starting to get to his ‘officially done’ point. He’d been through so much shit in the last. . . was it just a week? It couldn’t have been more than ten days at least, and it was probably less. It was hard to tell day from night in the Overcavern Forest, what with it being perpetually lit up and the sky always being covered.

Ben sagged against the door of the flying vehicle, he hesitated to call it a car even though it sort of looked like one. He sagged against the door with his face pressed against and sliding down the window, propped up only by how hard he was leaning. He was just tired, the kind of tired that sleep alone wasn’t going to fix.

“I’m not some fucking superhuman protaginist,” Ben said grouchily, ignoring the holy energy that had replaced his mana pool, speaking to nobody but his own unrealistic expectations of himself, “I need a fucking break. Where’s my vacation? Give it back!” he said quietly, “I want a refund, or I want hawaii. No, fuck this Solas shit. This is now a vacation arc, I’m going to just enjoy myself as much as possible. Full tourist mode. Class change from [Prince] to [Vacationeer].” Ben shut his eyes and willed it to happen.

It obviously didn’t in actuality, but mentally, Ben had already switched gears. All he needed was a Hawaiian print button up and he was good to go.

“Yes!” Short Bus said, looking unbothered by how cramped he was inside the flying vehicle. He’d been reading Ben’s mind casually, the way a person might look over at the TV set up in a restaurant, and he’d seen Ben shift over into a more relaxed mindset. Ben realized his mind was being monitored, then sort of shrugged and said ‘Eh’. He extracted himself from the window and glanced over at Short Bus, speaking out loud.

“So what’s this about a bar you were talking about? Something with you and Thirty-One?” Ben asked.

“I have no idea what a bar is, what you do there, where it is or why you’re supposed to go to one,” he said, “but it’s going to be great.”

“Sold,” Ben said, making finger guns at the Man-Shark, already committed to getting as drunk as possible at some cantina full of robots and aliens. His new life wasn’t all bad, he guessed.

There really wasn’t much more for them to say after that. Ben took in the scenery, which he didn’t have enough cultural context, er, [Cultural Context] to appreciate. He, at this point, didn’t care anyways. Instead, he started humming the tune to ‘Girls just want to have fun’, but sang softly under his breath.

“Bens just wants to have fu-un. Ooohhu Ben just wants to have fun. Wanna have fun, Ben-”

He did a pretty good showing of altering the entire chorus. Little did he know that the driver was listening, and didn’t know the original song. It got stuck in his head, and he really thought the song was about a guy named Ben who just really wanted to have fun. It wasn’t an important detail, just an amusing one. Red, who was sitting up front with the driver, presumably to kill the man should he double cross them, suspected something was wrong with the song, but tapped her foot along with it anyways.

Ben came out of the song in a worse mood than he’d started it, because they were still driving around. Rather, they were still driving higher. They were approaching the clouds now.

“Hey!” Ben said, loudly enough to be heard by the driver. He was going to ask something stupid like, ‘How long is this going to take’, or something even worse like ‘what’s taking so long.’ Ben was saved from saying something like that, however, when the driver looked back with a sly expression on his face.

“You’re Ben, right?”

“Right,” Ben said.

“Is it true you just want to have some fun?”

“Uh, yeah.” Ben answered strongly in the affirmative, because he could really use some fun at this point in his life.

“Ok buddy,” the driver said with a wink, “I’ve got some fun,” then pressed a button. The vehicle, which had been making a slow, safe, horizontal to the ground path upward. . . started to tilt. As it tilted, and Ben found himself leaning back, it also started to fall. “Brace yourselves, we’re going all the way up!” the driver shouted, and then they were accelerating. Straight up, like a rocket ship.

“Holy shit!” Ben shouted, pressed back into the seat by the g-force. Short Bus looked both excited, and like he wanted to vomit. His eyes were exclusively looking out the window, like he didn’t dare miss a second or blink. Ben realized he ought to do the same. Up in the front seat, Red was just screaming while the driver was laughing.

The ground, no, the planet they were on was rushing away from them as they went higher and higher, the ever growing trunk of Solas still present even in the clouds. They burst through clouds and kept going, and only now did Ben see the true scale of the city. Clare De Lune, by Debussy, was the only language Ben could think in as he blasted off of a planet for the first time and saw the top of Solas.

The City in space. Ben did cry, we should all cry when we get off whatever goddamn rock we’ve been trapped on.

The leaves of Solas were the fire of fall, yellows and oranges and reds. Covering every leaf, every branch, every hanging fruit of spectacular size, was civilization. The true civilization of the Sunlets. This was where they lived, where they loved, where they were safe from the horrors of The World. It glinted and shone with the billion times reflected light of the sun off the residents.

Coming from space, Ben could see a stream of what looked like pure fire, or water, or lightning, or crystal, or purple plasma. . . he couldn’t tell what the fuck he was looking at, except it was pure concentrated magic. It was funneled into the direct center of the city and as far as Ben could tell, it traveled all the way down the trunk to the roots. He was reminded of what Vivi told him about how The System had harnessed the entire power of the Plane of Infinite Wild Magic and concentrated it in The World. . . he wondered if he was looking at one of the intake ports.

“Ben I’m in space,” Short Bus whispered, his tiny eyes as wide as they would go, “Ben I’m in space.” His whole body was tensed against the seat, and he kept reaching over and smacking Ben really fast on the chest.

The acceleration stopped, and the vehicle righted itself. The driver looked back, a satisfied expression on his face as he took in his two shocked passengers.

“Love my job,” was all he said, then, “welcome to Solas, the greatest city in The World. The Enelim and the Damn Slugs,” he said, and Ben knew he was saying ‘Damn Slugs’ as a proper noun, “They’ll say their cities are the greatest, but they’re wrong. This here? This is the most beautiful thing anyone’ll ever see, so I’m sorry to say it’s all downhill from here.”

“Ben,” Short Bus said, “we’re in space.”

“Short Bus,” Ben said, his eyes going wide, his exhaustion and ‘so done with this-ness’ momentarily defeated, “we’re in space!” Ben took a deep breath and then yelled as loud as he could, “Yeeaaahhhh! Fuck yeah! We’re in space! Woooooooo!”

“Is this a big deal?” Red asked breathing hard, sounding frazzled, also pushed back against her seat, her eyebrows raised and her face only able to be described as the classic ‘Roller Coaster AAAAAAHHHHHH!’

“Red, it’s a huge deal,” Ben said, looking for a button or something to roll his window down so he could stick his head out and look at things better.

“Hey!” the driver said, seeing Ben’s action, and Ben immediately stopped, realizing his mistake.

“Sorry!” he said.

“Suns above,” the driver said, “I’ll be fine, but I’m pretty sure you and your friends wouldn’t like it if you vented the atmosphere in here.”

Short Bus and Red were both apparently totally cool with Ben nearly killing them all; probably because it wasn’t the first time. Short Bus had his face totally smashed against the glass, his tiny eyes flicking from place to place. Ben. . . was doing the exact same thing on the exact same window, mostly to be annoying to Short Bus by pushing and jostling him with his fists and elbows as much as possible.

“Not going to take in the sights miss?” the driver asked, looking at Red.

“I’ve been looking at this city since I landed in the Overcavern Forest,” Red said, “save for what is hidden by strong magic, nothing is hidden from me.” She was sitting cooly in the front seat, her hands folded in her lap, her face completely impassive. A perceptive person would say that she was embarrassed about screaming and totally losing her cool, and they’d be right. In Red’s defense, she had alot to be embaressed about, because she had totally lost her cool. Like, arms flying around, legs moving, full on comedy losing her cool. She was practically daring anyone to say something about what had just happened.

Lucky for her, Ben and Short Bus were both busy wrestling and rough-housing in the back, and the driver was a total professional. Her posture softened.

“It is beautiful up close,” she said quietly, taking in the sights. She looked back at Ben and Short Bus who were. . . Damn, Ben was actually halfway inside of Short Bus’s death mouth while Short Bus was desperately trying to pull him out. Ben was yelling something incomprehensible, and Short Bus was similarly yelling something indecipherable.

Red saw it and her face reacted in shock, and then she started laughing, covering her mouth as she actually giggled. Red, the horror-movie creature from beyond physical reality, was giggling! Ben poked his head out from the side of Short Bus’s mouth, and Short Bus stopped what he was doing to look at her.

“You ok?” Ben asked, while Short Bus, with his mouth full said;

“Oo Sho-kay?”

She started giggling harder, doubling over, her eyes unable to blink, unable to cut off the visual feed directly into her brain. As she laughed, she felt the goodness of it, yes, but also the tinge of sorrow, of bitterness. She remembered her own siblings, her brothers and sisters. The other children of Chaos. She wondered if they’d ever played with one another? Had she ever played with anyone, at all?

She didn’t know, and the thought made her laugh all the harder, and she didn’t know why.

--

Anna’s house wasn’t a house. It was, in conservative terms, a small mansion and it was located near the very pinnacle of Solas. Ben, lacking any kind of [Architectural] skills and having never built a house, couldn’t describe it except in very general terms like: ‘It had a sort of colorful coral theme’ and ‘there were a bunch of columns everywhere’ along with ‘I’m pretty sure it was expensive, but I don’t really have a frame of reference for it,’ and the classic ‘it was a really nice place.’

For anyone wondering it was a two-level structure with six bedrooms, all upstairs, and the downstairs was dedicated solely to entertaining. It was done in the style of the great and high-leveled Sunlet [Architect] Arthur, who was well known for his love of deep oceanic dungeon design. This specific design was taken from a dungeon known as ‘The Watery Depths’, in which he spent several years living to the great chagrin of the adventurer team he hired to protect him.

The mansion was in a dome, and the dome was filled with atmosphere. Clearly Anna was used to entertaining non-Sunlets, who could be perfectly happy in deep space without any kind of protective suits. The driver had insisted they all stop and take a moment to make themselves presentable, even though Ben insisted they didn’t need to.

“You taste terrible,” Short Bus said, scrubbing his tongue with some kind of fabric Ben gave him. From where did Ben get the fabric? His Utility Pocket, which was as far as he questioned it.

“Your breath is nasty and you’ve got cavities,” Ben countered, doing his best to use his Utility Pocket to rinse his body. It was slowly moving across his body like a fire, using water and suction like a carpet cleaner, leaving Ben clean but only sort of dry.

“I do not,” Short Bus said, but he started feeling at his teeth.

“It's from all that [Magical] food you ate in the Citadel,” Ben said, still feeling a little mean-spirited about the whole food situation he’d been forced to endure.

“You don’t have any cavities,” Red said, giving Short Bus’s teeth a quick x-ray, “but Ben, you have several.”

“Ha!”

“Dammit,” Ben said, then quickly changed the subject, “hey, driver man, are we presentable enough or what?” ‘Driver Man’ looked at Ben like he was crazy.

“Short answer? No. Miss Anna is one of the most important people in Solas, and you all look like a bunch of dirty adventures fresh from the Overcavern Forest. But, she’s asking for you, so what do I know? Glad you all saved her life and all that, but get her hurt, and me and a bunch of other people you’ve never even met’ll hunt you down. Have fun!” he said, then got in his vehicle, which sort of looked like a car, and flew off.

“Red,” Ben said, “Give the place a quick scan. Just make sure everyones in there and they’re OK.”

“I see Vivi and Ghost Ears, along with the child Anna and her friend Thirty-One. Dryst,”

“You mean the sno-cone?” Ben asked, chuckling to himself.

“Yes, the Sno-Cone is not present.”

“Weird, I would have thought he’d want to be here. Oh well,” Ben said, then walked forward to Anna’s front door.