I do not own Chaotic nor anything related to it. It belongs to TCDigital.

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The Aftermath

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Time 14:

I have a splitting headache. It feels like somebody drove a knife into my forehead and twisted it. It gets worse with bright light, loud sounds, whenever I move, and basically everything else in the universe. It isn't crippling, but Maliph and Malvadine are definitely noticing.

"You really should take the day off, Michael," Maliph insists when I flinch away from a window on the way to the soldiers' bathhouse. "You had way too much to drink last night. The dew farm is going to be torture."

I continue to struggle through my first ever hangover. "I can't take a day off," I say, wincing at the volume of my own voice. "I can't have the other foremen have to pick up the slack from two missing people." I pause. "Two days in a row, I mean."

Malvadine shakes his head. "You look like you're about to die."

"I'll live," I mutter.

We reach the bathhouse and enter the far left dressing room. I fumble around with with my belt buckle. My hands won't stop shaking.

Maliph and Malvadine get undressed far faster than I do. Maliph grimaces at me. "Need help getting your shendyt off?"

"Please," I sigh. I need to get bathed and dressed fast, so I can't afford to waste time.

Maliph and Malvadine end up having to help me through the entire process. Gah, I'm never drinking that much again.

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With Sett absent, all the foremen have to stay longer than normal. It's late afternoon by the time my replacement comes.

I don't immediately get out my seat. The other foreman does his job standing for a few minutes while I rest. "Had a nice forty-seventh?" he asks with a swish of his tail.

"It kind of ended on a sour note," I mutter while massaging my temples. I stand up. "You can have your chair now, I'm okay."

I don't feel like preparing myself a meal at home, so I head to a bar. The same bar as last night, in fact. I've been there with Sett so much over the past several weeks that it's kind of a habit now.

When I walk through the doorway and see the inside of the bar, I pause. Wow, there's a lot of Humans here today. Almost every chair at the far end of the bar has a Human in it, in fact, while the rest have Mipedians sitting in them. It's also rather loud.

I sit at the bar with the Mipedians and tap the table. The barmaid does her impression of a ninja appearing out of nowhere again. She looks worn out. "What can I get you," she asks in a dull sounding voice. Then her face brightens. "Oh! Hello there, Michael!"

"Hi there, um..." Gah, forgot her name again.

"It's Ashley," the barmaid says with a chuckle.

"Right, hi Ashley." I glance over my shoulder. "There's a lot of people here today."

Ashley gives me a frustrated glare. "There's no such thing as bad publicity," she drones.

Oh. "This would be about what happened yesterday, then."

Ashley grits her teeth and pushes a loose strand of hair behind her ear. "Everyone wants to see where the scene took place. Kind of like the people who drive by accident scenes slowly so they can rubberneck." She sighs and puts up a hand. "I'm sorry about my attitude, right now. I just delivered a drink to one of the Humans in the back, and my butt got pinched and grabbed four times on the way there and back."

"Perverts," I mutter. I don't know if she heard me over the ambient noise.

Ashley sighs again and presses her lips together. Then she puts on that bright face again. "Enough about me. What can I get you?"

"I'm actually ordering dinner this time," I say. "I'd like a steak, medium."

"What kind of steak?" Ashley asks.

I smirk. "Whichever kind tastes most like a cow. Oh, and a fresh kainekot brandy."

Ashley laughs and heads behind the counter to tell Shasta my order. I lean forward and rest my arms on the counter.

"Were you here yesterday?"

I almost jump out of my skin. "Gah!"

There's a Human man standing behind me. Is everyone taking ninja classes? The man steps back. "Whoa! Sorry, I didn't mean to startle you."

I take a few deep breaths to slow my heart down. "Yes... I was here."

The man turns and heads for the back of the bar. "Can you come with me?"

I follow the man to one of the corner tables and sit down. He's with about ten other men and women. One woman leans forward and asks, "Can you clarify a few things about yesterday for us?"

I bite my lower lip. "I don't think I-"

A man to my left doesn't let me finish my sentence. "Did that drunk Mipedian really f*** the barkeeper yesterday?"

That stuns me into silence for a few seconds. "Wha-? No!"

Another man interjects, "But there was a guy telling everyone that the red Mipedian here was taking it up the a** from another Mipedian!"

These people are completely nuts. I hiss through clenched teeth, "There was an altercation, and an inebriated Mipedian had to be taken into custody. That's all."

A woman at the table lifts her index finger. "That Mipedian was thrown into prison on rape charges."

The woman next to that woman shakes her head. "No, it was attempted rape."

A man stands and puts his hands on the table. He asks me, "All we're trying to find out was whether the one Mipedian had sex with the other, okay?"

I throw up my hands. "That's really all you guys wanted to know?" I almost yell. "Is that why the bar's so crowded?" I put my arms back down and shake my head. "You guys are sick. I'm not telling you anything about yesterday."

"Here you go, Michael," Ashley says as she places my drink on the table in front of me. I turn to thank her, but she's already walking quickly away from the Human populated side of the bar.

"Michael?" one of the men asks. "The one from the 'Maliph, Michael, Malvadine' phrase?

Oh dear god, what now? "Yes, that Michael," I groan.

The man leans away from me a bit. "Oh. So you're the Human who's letting the palace guards f*** him?"

What!? I can't even speak for a moment. I stare at the guy, jaw hanging open. Finally I almost shout, "What the heck gave you that idea!?"

"Every morning you go to the soldiers' bathhouse at the palace," he says. "You frequently hang out with the guards during their time off. It's easy to connect the dots."

Another man who's been staring at my face adds, "I thought I recognized you! I was at the soldiers' bathhouse this morning as well! Those two guards, the red one and the spiky one, were putting their hands all over you!"

"They were helping me!" I growl. "I was too hung over to bathe myself!"

A few people snort at that. I hear one mutter, "Yeah, right."

I stand up abruptly. I need to get away from here or I'm going to hurt someone. I storm out of the bar, fuming.

It's a minute or so later that I realize that I hadn't received my food, nor did I pay for the meal I ordered. I turn around and head back. How am I going to get in without those people noticing?

I stop worrying as I approach and see a small group of Humans getting thrown out of the bar, the same ones who had been talking to me. I wait in an alley for them to pass, the head for the bar.

Shasta is waiting at the doorway. "Ah, Michael, I thought you'd be back." He glances behind me. "I have never spoken to ruder people before."

"What happened?" I ask as I enter and sit by the counter again.

Shasta's hands tense up, and his normally soft eyes narrow into slits. "They asked me how many times Sett and I have had sex, in cruder language than that. It got worse very quickly."

I look behind me at where they had been sitting, and I notice the rest of the bar. Huh, the Humans and Mipedians seem to have mixed groups. "And the whole seating rearrangement?"

Shasta grins and leans forward. He whispers, "Well, your fellow Humans still in this bar have probably redeemed themselves in the eyes of my tribe. They were the ones to throw those troublemakers out."

The Mipedians do seem to be acting friendlier to the Humans this time around. I turn back to Shasta. "Hey," I mutter in a low voice, "are you okay?"

"I'm fine," Shasta mutters. "Sett isn't, though. He's horrified with himself. He's demanding to be locked up longer than his sentence. He's also furious that I'm not pressing charges."

Okay, that's a can of worms I'm not going to open.

Shasta glances over his shoulder to the kitchen doors. "Your food will be ready soon."

"Thank you." I twiddle my thumbs. "I... I hope things get better."

"As do I," Shasta says as he leaves.

I sigh and hang my head. Is this it? Are days like these all that's coming? Perim used to be this world of fantasy, of adventure. Now it's just a pain. I struggled through thirteen false starts to get here, and now all the life is sucked out of it.

No, Michael, snap out of it. It'll get better. Things always get better! This is Perim, nothing stays still and mundane for long here!

A Mipedian bursts into the bar. He's out of breath. "At the gate!" He gasps for breath. "It's the prince!" Another gasp. "Prince Iflar has returned!"

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Up next: The Eleventh Time

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Like I said before, Chaotic belongs to TCDigital.

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