EXTRA: A Dinner with the muscle mommy, 2

And so, Mordecai and the muscle mommy walked together to a different part of Oakhaven: the Business District.

Basically, the old part of Oakhaven was renovated and turned into a fantasy NYC. What a beautiful thing, isn't it?

Now, the city barely resembled the place Mordecai remembered when he made his first step here.

Revenants in crisp uniforms directed traffic at intersections, skeletal hands raised to stop carts and magic 'cars' before politely waving pedestrians across. They were, somehow, the most reliable traffic wardens Oakhaven had ever employed. That was their only job.

At a fruit stall, a zombie worked beside a living human vendor, carefully polishing apples on its apron before handing them to customers.

"Thank you, Mr. Leon! I hope you'll come again to our fruit shop!" the human said, waving his hand at the walking customer. The zombie copied the gesture almost perfectly and then gave a thumbs up to the vendor.

Then, down the street, Mordecai heard someone screaming "UN FORASTEROOOOO!"

'Oh no...' He pinched the bridge of his nose, moving his gaze somewhere else.

In a grassy square nearby, waist-high minotaur calves ran around with a pack of shrieking human children. One enormous baby minotaur had somehow become public transportation and was patiently giving piggyback rides. The funniest part was that he was actually having fun.

"Go, Tauros!! This is so fun!" One kid said, slapping the minotaur like a cowboy. "Faster!!"

"Moooooo! I'm going! Hahaha!" He laughed, sprinting.

Another one, a particularly brave child, grabbed Tauros by the horns and shouted, "ONWARD, NOBLE STEED!"

Tauros mooed with joy and accelerated, sending the children into another fit of laughter.

Mordecai watched them. Then he looked at Egel.

"This is what happens when you stop killing monsters and start giving them jobs." He smiled.

Egel laughed. "It's... strange."

"Yes. But it works."

Egel smiled warmly. "You know, it's the first time I've seen something like that... I remember that Oakhaven used to be a different place before you..."

"How much different, Egel?" Mordecai asked, curious. "I mean, how was this place before I was here?"

"Well... let's just say that all the human people here would've never accepted a demi-human or a monster as part of this city. Everyone hated monsters, especially when Nick was constantly sent to slay them... bad times." She sighed, clinging more to him. "If you'd ask me to slay a monster right now, I don't think that I'd be able to do it as I did before."

"Interesting," Mordecai said, feeling the softness of Egel's boobs against him. He was probably loving it, who knows.

Underneath the corporate villainy, the dungeon contracts and the increasingly alarming amount of administrative paperwork, this was what Mordecai had actually built.

A place where the living, the dead and the monstrous had stopped trying to kill each other long enough to discover commerce, traffic regulations and childcare.

He liked that in some ways.

Egel stayed wrapped around his arm as they walked, staring around with wide, shining eyes.

"Hey, Egel," Mordecai called.

"Yes, Kaitoyama?" She said, her voice soft.

Mordecai was about to speak, but no word came from his mouth.

"Nothing, let's keep walking. I'll tell you later." He said, smiling.

"...Okay," Egel said.

For a few minutes, their walk was almost peaceful. Yes, there were some strange scenes. Kashime appeared out of nowhere, running forward and screaming something like "NO! THE BLONDE ED MAGE HAS ESCAPED! I MUST STOP HIM OR PYROAS WILL ERASE ME FROM EXISTENCE!" Kashime shot past them like a white-haired rocket, his trench coat flapping behind him. He didn't even stop to say hello. "COME HERE YOU DISGUSTING SCUM—!"

"Kaitoyama... was that—"

"Don't mind about it, Egel. Just keep walking. I stopped asking questions a long time ago." He replied.

Suddenly, Mordecai saw Larry and immediately stopped.

The [SSS Ordinary Skeleton Janitor] stood in the middle of the street, perfectly motionless, one bony hand raised to where his chin would have been.

He was staring at a tall, narrow building across the road with the intense concentration of a detective examining the site of a triple homicide or a philosopher observing nature to write something that would troll people two thousand years later.

For some strange reason, Larry wasn't sweeping or cleaning. He was doing nothing, literally.

Just staring.

'When did he even get here?' Mordecai thought.

Larry had been at Fort Blackstone that morning, building sandcastles.

There was no reasonable explanation for how a janitor skeleton had crossed the distance to Oakhaven and was now standing in the middle of a street doing philosophy at a building.

Mordecai chose the same solution he used for most Larry-related problems: don't question it.

Just when he was about to walk away, Larry suddenly turned.

Apparently whatever supernatural sense governed skeleton janitors had informed him that his master was nearby.

The moment he spotted Mordecai, he brightened, gave him a cheerful thumbs up👍 and ambled over.

Then, as a greeting, Larry reached somewhere behind his back and presented him with a single spotless spoon that literally gleamed in the sunlight.

Mordecai accepted it with the gravity the gesture deserved.

"...Thank you, Larry."

"Hi, Larry!!!" Egel chirped, waving with the hand that wasn't currently welded to Mordecai's arm.

Larry looked at her, gave her a thumbs-up 👍, and then stepped closer for a friendly pat-pat on her head.

She giggled. "Larry! Did you see Regel today?"

The Skeleton did another thumbs up.

"Really? How is she?" Egel asked.

"👍"

"Thank you for always looking for her, Larry," Egel said.

"👍"

Then, Mordecai looked past him toward the building.

"What is it, Larry? What were you looking at?"

Larry turned and pointed one long finger directly at it.

"...Uh?"

The skeleton lowered his hand. Then, slowly and deliberately, he turned his thumb downward. Thumbs down👎. Not good.

Mordecai narrowed his eyes.

Over the past few months, he had become disturbingly fluent in a language composed entirely of thumb positions, pointing, and occasional skull scratches.

Thumbs down at a building meant something was wrong.

More specifically, it meant:

'This requires investigation.'

Larry's instincts about such matters had an unsettling tendency to be correct.

Mordecai then opened a Discord call to Ugo, and the line connected on the first ring.

"You have reached the Archives," came the dry, ancient voice of the skeletal head archivist. "How may I be of service, my Leader?"

"Ugo. Larry's found something in Oakhaven. It's A building. He's flagged it, and you know how his flags go. The last time he had discovered a hidden treasure chest in Fort Blackstone." Mordecai kept his eyes on the structure. "I need you to investigate it with him. I'm out doing recon rounds incognito, so I can't handle it personally right now."

"At once, my Leader. I shall join Larry directly. I only ask for five minutes, because I have to resolve some *ahem* personal issues." Ugo said, clearing his throat.

"What kind of issues does a skeletal archivist have, Ugo?" Mordecai said, mentally pinching the bridge of his nose.

"I have to discuss... past events with Brenda. I'll tell you later." He said.

"Okay, see you later then. Do your things and come here." Mordecai said.

"Yes, my Leader. Thank you for your kindness."

And then, the call ended.

Mordecai turned back to Larry, who stood waiting with perfect attentiveness.

"Larry. Go inside that building and check everything. Top to bottom. And clean it if it needs cleaning." He paused. "Ugo's on his way to help you."

Larry reacted as though Mordecai had just announced Christmas. Both thumbs shot into the air.👍👍 More work means "Master will be happier", and when he 'heard' the news, he even started tap-dancing. Literally.

Then, he reached into a rip in empty space, pulled his [SSS Ordinary Mop] from the void with a flourish, and dashed across the street with the explosive enthusiasm of a skeleton who had just been given his two favorite things in the world: An assignment and a mop.

He vanished through the building's front door, and a few seconds later, an aggressively fresh scent of pine and lemon drifted down the entire block.

Egel watched the doorway, delighted.

"He's really cute. I'd love to have a child like him one day." She clung even tighter to Mordecai.

Our beloved fake necromancer completely ignored the last part of that sentence and looked at the spotless spoon still sitting in his hand.

"...Yeah. I'll give him that. He is."

And then, they kept walking.

They passed a bakery run by a family of ghouls, its front window packed with steaming loaves of bread, then a small park where an off-duty werewolf was teaching human teenagers how to whittle, and then a fountain. An actual fountain. Working. Clean. Full of normal water.

Not Saintess Lucy's Blessed Bath Water. No more.

'Progress.'

Egel stayed on his arm the entire way. Gradually, her grip softened from a hostage situation to something resembling a normal person enjoying a walk with their loved one.

Eventually, they reached the end of a quiet, tree-lined street.

Mordecai stopped and looked at the building in front of them. Then at the sign, and then back at the building.

He needed a moment to realize what was in front of him.

It was an Italian restaurant. Not something vaguely inspired by Italy. A literal Italian restaurant with an Italian name.

Red-and-white checkered tablecloths were visible through the windows. A hand-painted sign showed a smiling mustachioed chef. A chalkboard outside advertised the day's pasta, and the warm smell of garlic, basil, and tomato sauce drifted through the open door.

Mordecai stared. They were in a fantasy world.

A fantasy world containing zombies, minotaurs, skeleton archivists, revenant traffic wardens, cultivation gods and a corporate demon lord running dungeons through legally binding Terms of Service agreements.

And apparently there was an Italian restaurant. Of course. The author has a lot of imagination, hasn't he?

Mordecai had stopped demanding logic from this world a long time ago. He accepted everything like the harem, the corporate goblins, a God who called him Buddha and craved his headpats, and even agreed to feed a spectral ice-cream to a Banshee.

But every now and then, the universe where he was stuck produced something so stupid that a small remaining piece of his brain simply clocked out.

"Of course," he muttered.

Egel looked up at him.

"Of course there's an Italian restaurant."

She followed his gaze toward the warm windows, then smiled, despite the fact that she had no idea what "Italian Restaurant" meant.

"It looks... nice." She said. "And the smell is amazing."

Egel then took a better look at the restaurant, then moved her gaze back at him. "What's an... 'Italian'?"

Mordecai looked at her. "I don't know," he admitted. "Let's find out."

The entire Higher Realms had spent the last several minutes turning this outing into a live event with audience engagement metrics and a performance bonus.

Egel, meanwhile, was just happy to be there. With him.

Mordecai sighed.

It came out gentler than he meant it to.

"Yeah," he said. "Let's go in..."