Entering Chicken and Waffles and Upgrades.

Warning: This location is exempt from the local safe room rules.

The place was a typical diner. Even though the whole town had this aesthetic from the 1980s film Blade Runner, the restaurant gave the 1950s, at least at first glance. There was an overabundance of neon within. The jukebox was playing that “Fame” song from the movie.

The workers weren’t gremlins but flightless imps, which were similar but a little smaller.

“Hi, folks,” an imp with a gaudy rockabilly wig said as we entered. Her name was Darla-Dean, and she was rapidly chewing gum. She started counting all of us. “I’ll get a big table together, but it’s gonna take a minute. I’ll get you some menus.” She looked at Donut and popped her gum. “How many kiddie menus do we need?”

“Kiddie menu?” Donut asked, incredulous. “Do I look like someone who eats off the kiddie menu?”

“Wait,” Louis said. “I want to see one.”

“And a drink menu,” Prepotente added.

“I want a kiddie menu, too,” Samantha announced.

“Samantha!” I said, looking at the doll head with surprise. She was suddenly just there on the floor. “Where did you come from?” She had not been with us just before when Eris appeared.

The imp started handing out menus.

Samantha ignored me and rolled up to Louis. She grunted a few times and jumped up to Louis’s shoulder. She spent a moment watching the reverse tooth fairy zip around Imani’s head like a fly. She turned her attention to the Porsuk and then stage-whispered in Louis’s ear, “I want you know that Finley attempted to seduce me, and I was enticed, but I resisted his lurid advances. Still, if you kill him in a jealous rage, I would think it was really hot.”

Louis looked up at the Porsuk, eyes wide.

“Don’t worry,” the badger said. “I already got her figured out.”

Olga muttered something about wanting to charge quadruple, not triple.

“Hey,” Samantha said, looking down at the menu clutched in Louis’s hands, “there aren’t any children on here at all.”

“They’re on the other side, honey,” Darla-Dean said.

Louis hesitantly flipped the menu over.

“Oohh, they have sous vide satyr capretto,” she said. She looked at Prepotente. “That’s what Louis and I are going to get.”

“We’re not looking for a table,” I said to the imp, pushing Louis’s menu out of Samantha’s line of vision. “We want to see the top-shelf upgrades.”

Darla-Dean nodded. She pointed to the jukebox. I could already see that there was a hidden door and hallway past it. “Just push the music machine. Don’t push too hard, though. We just opened, and we don’t need it scratched.”

“Hey, can you make me a milkshake?” Louis said, pointing to the front side of the menu. “I’ll get it on the way out. Wait, what’s the difference between a malt and a milkshake?”

“No,” Imani said. “Remember the warning. All food items convey buffs or debuffs.”

“I know,” Louis said. He held up the menu. “Look, it says the strawberry milkshakes give you 5% to reaction time. And the malts do the same.”

“And I will take ten of each of these flavored sodas listed in the top-right box here. All to-go,” Prepotente said. “Make sure I get straws for each one.”

“Ten of each?” Darla-Dean asked.

“Hmmm, you’re right,” Prepotente said. “Better make it twenty of each. Louis is quite right. This establishment labels all of their food items. I have already messaged Jurgen and told him he can only eat here from now on.”

Darla-Dean shrugged. “Coming right up.”

“Come on, guys,” I said. “Let’s get this over with.”

I pushed the jukebox, which was now playing “Sledgehammer” by Peter Gabriel. It moved in and slid over, revealing a short hallway with a blinking neon sign that read “Upgrades” with an arrow.

The whole group of us piled through the dark hallway. Samantha was now chatting with, or at, Jacobus the reverse tooth fairy who kept replying in Danish. He pointed at Prepotente, and Samantha giggled.

The door closed behind us, and the jukebox sound completely went away. We turned the corner to find a dusty counter lit with flickering yellow light. There were multiple posters on the walls depicting vehicles of all shapes and sizes. There was also a heavy binder on the counter filled with laminated pages.

And sitting on the counter next to the binder was a dead imp with his eyes burned out. The little thing smoldered like he’d just been killed.

Corpse of Hickster. Level 25. Upgrade Imp.

Killed by Akuma of the War Mage Rebellion.

Overalls.

Note for Carl.

I sighed and looted the note.

It was a message hastily scrawled on one of the kiddie menus in black crayon.

Carl, you were supposed to come alone, you moron. This isn’t a tea party. Ditch them and come back.

Behind one of the posters, this one depicting a hairy yak with body armor, was a secret door. And attached to the door itself was a hidden disintegration trap. I hopped the counter, ripped the poster off the wall, deactivated and looted the trap module, did another quick scan to make sure there weren’t more, and opened the hidden door.

“Just come out,” I called into the darkness. “Anything you say to me, you say to everyone. I’m just going to tell them anyway.”

Nobody answered for several moments.

Finally, the darkness shifted and then dissipated, revealing a lone war mage leaning against the wall of a small storeroom. The irritated elf-like mage was sipping on a purple milkshake.

Akuma. The last time I’d seen him was in that forest clearing during Faction Wars. He looked like an older elf, with mottled, sun-damaged skin. He and several other war mages had killed Prince Stalwart and formed a faction of their own. They’d stolen the Gate of the Feral Gods, disappeared, and taken the castle of Larracos. There, they’d supposedly found what they’d been looking for. The Scavenger’s Daughter. Then they fled, and Akuma sent me a note saying that I had to kill Agatha.

We still had no idea what the hell their motivation was.

The war mages themselves only came into existence under certain circumstances. They were the personification of magical energy, and they were not built and designed by either the showrunners or the AI. They just sort of came into existence after a flesher was resleeved a number of times.

And their heads exploded about ten minutes after death. I had multiple war mage heads in my inventory.

“By the shitting gods, how are you still alive?” Akuma asked, peeling himself off the wall. “You are a fucking idiot, Carl. I called you here because you need me. But if you can’t follow simple instructions, maybe . . . Urk!”

Donut cast Mute on Akuma, and at the same time Elle cast an ice bolt right at the war mage’s crotch.

Akuma cried out and fell over, his purple milkshake splattering all over the place.

The Mute part had been planned. Elle’s bolt had not.

“Uh, Elle?” I said. I turned and saw the look on Elle’s face, and I held up my hands. I took a step back.

“Just don’t kill him,” I said.

Elle pushed past me and moved up to the crying mage, who was trying to say something but couldn’t.

“Hey, remember me, you barely sapient magical fart?” Elle said, getting close to Akuma, whose sneering expression had turned to a look of extreme, gasping pain. “You and your little asshole friends tried to kill me. You stole the gate from me when I wasn’t done with it yet. When I was a kid, do you know what we used to do to people who stole? We would hit them with sticks, and we would throw their shoes into the sound. But that was only because we couldn’t get away with more.”

She punched down with her fist, and there was a glass-breaking noise.

“And also because I didn’t yet have the ability to freeze their balls and shatter them like dollar store Christmas ornaments.”

“Holy Christ,” Florin muttered next to me.

“That was just your left nut. If you want to keep your right one, you are going to answer everything Carl asks of you. If I even suspect you’re lying, cajone number dos gets converted to crushed ice.” She tapped her finger against his crotch. It clinked. “And then onto the main event. And then Imani over there is going to tell her little friend Jacobus to do some of his special dental surgery on you. Trust me. You don’t want that.”

“Ja, ja, ja,” said the reverse tooth fairy.

“Holy ouch,” Louis said from the other side. “Remind me to never piss Elle off.”

Akuma gasped in pain. He had tears rolling down the side of his face.

“I was wondering why Elle asked Samantha if war mages had genitals,” Donut said.

“Here’s what’s going to happen,” Elle continued. “Imani is going to cast an anti-magic shield around you, and Donut is going to remove the Mute spell. I know the magic shield is going to cause your health to start to slowly lower. We aren’t going to remove it until Carl has all his answers, so answer quickly. If you attempt any sort of countermeasure to the shield, you will be killed. But we’ll kill you special-like. You get me? Nod if you understand.”

Akuma started to slowly nod.

“Okay, good. Imani, cast your spell. But let’s leave Mute on him for a bit longer so he can think about what he’s done.”

“I’ve seen her mad before, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen this side of her,” Louis said, spewing water from his gills.

“The woman knows how to hold a grudge,” Florin replied.

“One time,” Imani said, “Ingrid Schmidt, who was the resident in the room next to hers, tried to cheat at bingo, and Elle found out. She wheeled up to Ingrid and whispered something, and Ingrid started crying and refused to come out of her room for a week. The woman never played bingo again. I still don’t know what Elle said to her. I asked the other day, and she just laughed.”

“Can I crush his other nut?” Samantha asked. She’d bounced up to the counter and was sitting atop the dead imp, spinning in a circle, causing blood to fleck everywhere.

The three mercenaries had all moved to the very back of the room and were all cowering.

“Quintuple,” Olga said. “We should’ve asked for quintuple.”