Cleanup was awful. The shattered glass and splintered wood scattered everywhere was going to take significant time to clear, but at least they didn’t have any customers yet, so they weren’t missing out on much. Sara held a plastic clipboard in her hand, physically checking off glass and wood, but stared at the massive, daunting list of things that still needed doing. Among the most pressing: they needed to secure a stable food supply and arrange safe places to sleep.
With Mark being unable to sneeze without his wrist breaking due to his four Strength stat, Sara needed to figure out exactly what he could actually contribute.
“Hey,” Sara approached Mark, who was sitting on an overturned display case, intensely studying a parchment map of the world. “I see you got the cum off.”
“Yeah,” he responded, not looking up. “Raven said there’s more than one Draggin, but the rest are just babies in the hills.”
She thought about tiny Draggins dragging their tiny monster dicks around the forest and violently shook her head to free herself of the image. “That was a big encounter, how do we level up?”
“It should auto-pop when you level up,” Mark shrugged.
Sara considered it for a moment, unsure of why Mark would set leveling up to auto. There were a lot of things she needed to address with him later, but for now, no one was stepping up. “How are we going to do this? We have a lot of stuff we need done, and it doesn’t look like we can realistically all stay together.”
Mark stared down at the map for another long beat before he finally looked up at her. “You know… I’ve realized something.”
“What’s that?” Sara asked, letting the clipboard fall to her side, her tail swishing slowly.
“You’re the leader,” he said quietly. “Not me. I just made the place. But now it's all fucky, and you’ve been the only one I trust to actually run the store for a long time. Way more than Josh.”
Sara flushed. “No. I’m not a leader. I just want to get shit done so we can all relax.”
“That’s what a leader does, Sara.” Mark looked up at her, water threatening to escape his tired eyes. “That’s what you’ve always done. I want you to take the store. Take the party.”
“What?” Sara shook her head. “No. If anyone should be the leader, it's Simone. You saw what she did to the dick monster.”
“That’s not leadership.” Mark shook his head. “That’s a lot of courage mixed with a little stupidity. We need logistics.”
Sara rocked back on her heels, the heavy implications of being the manager of a medieval vape shop empire settling onto her shoulders. “I’ll think about it.”
“That’s all I ask.” Mark returned to the map. “I just don’t think I have what it takes to lead in a real-life scenario.”
Sara nodded and walked back out to the sales floor, where Cody was busy boarding up the broken front door. “What’s our product level?”
“We are Friday-stocked,” Cody said, referencing their massive end-of-week shipments from Earth. “I don’t know who we are selling to or how to get the POS register to work, but the back room is loaded.”
“Good.” Sara checked that off the list. “The door good?”
“Yeah,” he said, hammering a final nail into the plywood. “We will need new glass eventually, but I can get it secure for now.”
“Awesome.” She checked the box. “Have you seen Simone?”
“She’s cutting dick,” Cody said, pointing a thumb out the broken window toward the massive Draggin carcass in the parking lot. “Dinner awaits.”
“And Raven?”
Cody jerked his head toward the wall. “She went next door to get mats and build beds with Chadwick. They have some pretty good ideas going over there.”
Sara exited the shop and made her way next door to Kid Cutters, the absurd children's hair salon they had decided to use as a makeshift dorm. As she pushed the glass door open, Raven was aggressively pounding on a wooden bed frame with a small hammer she had scavenged from the office.
“This hammer feels like a baby toy,” Raven said, not looking up as she hammered harder. “We need a real hammer when we go to Sunnydale.”
Sara catalogued the request on her clipboard and looked around the space. Three large beds were already framed out, all big enough to fit two people in. “These look great! Thank you for doing this.”
Raven hammered two more times, then put the tool down, standing up and wiping sweat from her brow. “And how are you holding up?”
Sara rocked on her heels and sighed, the weight of the day finally catching up to her. “Good, I guess.” She jerked her head toward the door. “All things considered.”
Raven stared at her for a long, quiet moment before sitting on the edge of the freshly built bed and patting the space next to her. “Sit with me. Please.”
Sara didn’t have to be asked twice. She sat, their shoulders brushing. “This is a lot,” she admitted, suddenly feeling incredibly inadequate. “Mark just asked me to lead.”
Raven’s sharp expression softened. She placed a pale hand gently over Sara’s, resting on the bed frame. “And what do you want to do?”
Sara sat, staring at the scuffed linoleum floor. What did she want? Why exactly did she come through that portal? Did she think this wasn’t going to happen? “I don’t know.” Tears suddenly welled in her eyes, hot and unbidden. “I think I… I think I want to go home.”
Raven gave her the space to breathe, not interrupting her with some hollow pep talk.
“It’s just that…” Sara struggled to find the words. “I don’t think I thought we could actually do it. This life is… scary. I’m scared. I’m shaking, look.” She held her free hand out, and it jittered violently in the air.
Raven reached out and took the jittery hand in hers, holding it firm. “I’m here,” she said simply. “Whatever you are going through, I’ll be here to go through it with you.”
Sara felt the sensation of Raven’s thumbs caressing her knuckles and completely lost it, breaking down in heavy tears. A flash of red-hot embarrassment swallowed her. “I feel like you just keep seeing me cry.” She snatched her hands back and buried her face in them, allowing the sobs to come. “It’s not fair to you. To have to see me so ugly.”
Raven moved closer, enveloping her in a warm, solid embrace. “You aren’t ugly. I would see you cry every day before I look at another face.”
Sara turned, burying herself deeper into Raven’s arms and finally letting go. She sobbed and bawled, mourning her home, her law school, her life, her mundane friends. Sure, the people here were her ride-or-dies, but she missed sitting at the café with Missy and Eleanor, or going hiking with Jeremy and Kyle.
After a few long moments, the tears slowed. The panic washed out of her system. She was alive, she was here, and that’s all that mattered now. She pulled herself out of Raven’s arms, wincing as she noticed the wet snot spot on the Drow's tunic where she had leaked.
“I think I have to do it,” Sara choked out, her voice finding its steel again. “I have to lead.”
“Then I will stand here with you.” Raven nodded, her pale eyes fierce. “Whatever you choose, I support.”
“Raven…” Sara drifted off, looking at the woman who had effortlessly anchored her twice in one day. “I—”
The door swung open. Chadwick lugged in a massive pile of wood salvaged from the children’s decorative car, train, and spaceship salon seats he had broken down. “Oh, hi Sara. I just got done with this. We should have enough wood to finish the frames now, but we need nails.”
Sara looked up, blinking away the last of the tears, and sighed. “Thanks, Chadwick.” She scribbled nails on her clipboard.
“Oh.” The Minotaur tossed the wood down in the corner, his large ears pinning back sheepishly. “I’m interrupting. I’ll come back another time, bro.”
Sara took a deep breath. She had made her choice. “Actually, Chadwick, can you get the others? We need to have a company meeting. Outside.”
“Yeah,” he said as he backed carefully out the door. “No problem.”
Sara turned back to Raven. She stared deep into the Drow's eyes, seeing the unwavering support reflecting back at her. Sara didn't hesitate this time. She leaned in, planting a firm, lingering kiss directly on Raven's lips. Raven stiffened as a reflex, but quickly melted into her.
She pulled back, offering a confident, Tiefling smile. “Let’s go be queens.”
Raven was entirely dumbstruck. As Sara rose to her feet and extended a hand, the Plunderdark native just stared, her gray face flushed a deep, violent purple. “Umm… okay.”
She took Sara's hand, and they stepped outside into the cool evening air to meet with the crew.
Mark sat on the edge of the sidewalk, staring blankly into the distance. Cody sat slightly down from him with one furry orange leg raised impossibly high over his head, aggressively licking his inner thigh. Sara never could tell what cats did that for, but she decided not to ask.
Simone walked up from the parking lot, holding a massive, bending metal tray full of bloody, suspiciously thick cuts of meat.
“I have some premium dicksteak for dinner,” Simone said, setting the heavy tray down on a parking block and smiling proudly.
“Great,” Sara said, swallowing hard to force the sickness back down. Dicksteak did not sound appealing. “Ok. Mark asked me to take the lead, and I’m in. Any objections?”
Cody looked up, his leg still weirdly outstretched by his ear. “Nah.”
Simone shook her head. “That sounds right. Mark is kind of nerfed here.”
“Until I find my glowing book,” Mark grumbled, not taking his eyes off the horizon. “Then, fuck Craig.”
“Ok, then we need to get to business.” Sara pulled a plastic chair from the Party Mart debris and sat on the stoop, her clipboard ready. “We need supplies from the capital, we need three more beds made, and we need to figure out how we are going to get business way the fuck out here.”
Cody finally put his leg down and stopped licking himself. “Yeah, go fucking figure Craig lands in a major town and we land in the middle of fucking nowhere.”
“It’s not the middle of nowhere,” Simone stifled a chuckle. “It’s the center of Dick Gorge.”
“The point is,” Sara took back over, her manager voice cutting through the jokes. “No one knows where Dick Gorge is.”
“Let’s change that, then,” Raven shrugged, crossing her arms. “We can build a road, make signs. We have to give people a reason to travel through the Forest of Nihilism.”
“How are we going to do that?” Mark sighed, his apathy flaring up. “The other side of the forest is just the Swamp of Failure.”
“And Beachwatch,” Chadwick chimed in, leaning against the brick wall. “That place is always packed, bro.”
“Beachwatch?” Mark looked up, suddenly interested. “Let me guess. Big, long beach with hot, horse-riding, bomb-defusing women with overly big tits?”
“Nah,” Chadwick responded, shaking his heavy head. “Just dudes with big units and bubble butts, bro.”
“It’s become a really popular vacation place,” Raven added. ”But right now, merchants have to go all the way around to Patrick Stewart’s Undeniable Seamanship to bypass the forest.”
“It’s a total bummer, bro,” Chadwick stated flatly. “Those coastal folk at PSUS are hostile to queers and vegans. You gotta fly through there quick.”
Simone scratched her chin, quickly putting her hand down to ignore an old, nervous impulse. “We can drive a highway straight through the forest. The trees are wide enough apart that you can fit two wagons abreast. We can be the pit stop. We have parking for days for wagons and horses in the lot. We build the infrastructure, tax the road, and we can retire in five years and just adventure.”
“You said abreast,” Raven chuckled under her breath.
Sara grinned, ignoring the immaturity, and moved on. “Good thought, Simone. But how are we going to actually turn this grid into a road?”
“I can use it as my running track,” Chadwick shrugged his massive shoulders. “I can clear out the grass and underbrush from one side of the forest to the other in a week, tops. High cardio, bro.”
“We just need to secure our second location,” Simone said, looking deep into the gray forest. “What’s the actual geography on the other side?”
“Mostly runoff from PSUS,” Raven said, leaning against the doorframe, exuding a quiet confidence that Sara found entirely intoxicating. “We will have to find the Perilous Gorge and attempt to use the Bridge of Guaranteed Death as our way over the bog.”
Silence fell over the parking lot. All eyes slowly leveled at Mark.
“I forgot about it!” Mark threw his hands up defensively. “That was from the Starlight Over Candlekeep storyline! What was that, like our third campaign?”
“Wait,” Raven said, her eyes narrowing. “You actually named a piece of infrastructure that?”
“Yeah,” Mark replied, shrinking under their stares. “It was just supposed to keep you guys in the bog and away from the forest! I didn’t have anything planned for the forest yet, that’s why it looks like this! Just placeholder trees on a grid!”
“So…” Chadwick scratched his horn. ”There’s no curse, bro? No spirits? Nothing?”
Mark grimaced as the weight of his lazy world-building pushed him further down. “No… it’s literally just a big rock bridge. I never thought about it again after you guys turned around.”
The air hung heavy for a moment until Sara decided it had hung long enough. There was shit to do.
“That’s our path then,” Sara commanded. “Chadwick can clear the trail, and we can set up the infrastructure. Craig owns the wagons? Fine. Let’s own the road.”
She felt Raven’s hand settle warmly on the small of her back as her friends all turned their attention directly to her.
“How do we load out, Captain?” Cody perked up. “We need gear. Badly. I think we have one shortsword, a buckler, medium leather, and that’s literally it.”
“I don’t need weapons,” Raven said. “They weigh me down. If I find something when I’m in a fight, great. If not, I have fists.”
Sara tried to hide her suddenly weak knees at the sheer badassery of the statement. “I so wish you understood class mechanics. That would make planning this so much easier.”
“I do,” Raven shrugged, stepping forward. “I’m a Brawler. Chadwick is a Frenzied Berserker.” She pointed her finger at each person in succession. “Wizard. Ranger. I’m guessing some sort of Rogue-Bard hybrid…” Her finger found Sara last. “Bard. Our classes are just what we do.” Her smile faltered slightly. “They aren't who we are.”
The moment sat heavy and profound before Sara brought them back to the logistics, yet again. “Ok, then gear run. How much money do we actually have? What do we need?”
“We have exactly 5,400 gold between us,” Cody said, pulling a heavy purse from his magical Bag and jingling it. “Very on the money.”
Sara thought fast. A party of six having so little capital was deeply concerning. There were nowhere near enough physical supplies at the stores to sustain them all for long. But there were massive overhead expenses they would need to incur before opening the shop. How was anyone going to find them without marketing? And she didn’t even want to think about looking into the logistics of medieval mercantile law yet.
“We need food, weapons, and income. Immediately.” Sara tapped her pen against her board. “And we need a rotating shift with cleanup and setup here at base.”
“I can get the weapons,” Mark suggested, eager to help. “I know a guy—”
“No.” Sara’s voice was firm, leaving no room for argument. “You have four Strength, Mark. You asked for help lifting a butter knife at lunch. Cody. You and Raven are on weapons and supplies. I will give you a list and a strict budget. Get everything you can from Sunnydale and come right back.”
“How will we find our way back through the grid?” Raven asked.
“By the time you’re coming back, you should be able to see Chadwick’s cleared trail,” Sara said confidently. “Also, just follow the dick trench.”
Raven nodded. “I trust your judgment.”
“Mark,” Sara called out, her nose pointing down at the clipboard. “You and Simone are on food.”
Mark stood up from the curb. “How are we supposed to do that with my four Strength?”
Sara looked up, a stern, managerial crinkle in her nose. “You are going to buy wagons and have Simone summon horses to bring the food back.”
Mark deflated. “Ok.”
“Everyone get rest,” Sara said, standing up from her plastic chair. “We set off in the morning.”
Simone ducked under Mark’s lowered gaze, looking up at him with a bright smile. “Hi. We have a mission. Come with me, please.” She grabbed his hand gently, pulling the frail wizard along daintily but powerfully toward the dorms.
“What are you going to do?” Raven stood beside Sara, still, unwavering, as the others dispersed to prepare for their community dinner. “I won’t get to see you for a while.”
Sara’s heart skipped a beat. Was this Plunderdark brawler actually penetrating her carefully constructed walls?
“I’m going to work on the income,” Sara said.
“How are you going to do that?” Raven pivoted, stepping slightly closer.
“I’m going to sell billboards,” Sara smiled.