The Peacemaker Squad ZX25 consisted of the humans wearing the black astronaut suits: Mack, Dan, and one more, who was in charge of their own ship. Their ship, which was called Peacemaker ZX25, was bigger than the Bagawians', and it latched onto the slave trader vessel to carry it home, cutting into its hull without letting any vacuum in, creating a connection between the two ships. This “breaching process” was an inbuilt feature of all the peacemaker spaceships, as Mack explained. To get on the humans' ship, they simply walked through an iron door into a small metal room, then through another iron door on the other side, and that was it.

Mack also told the young couple that their squad, and even the name of their ship was a temporary one, formed for a single mission. It was apparently standard procedure for these kinds of operations.

The Peacemaker ZX25 was much more well-lit and much more clean than the spaceship of the aliens. The walls and the floor were pure white, and the doors opened by sliding into the ceiling, it was very sci-fi. But the room Jay and Kate were lead in was quite normal. It had a couple of armchairs around a small table, a shelf with a handful of books, and even a coffee machine with a plant next to it. Dan came in with a couple of small, white tubes and syringes, and he took a blood sample from both of the teenagers, then the space-guys left them alone for a few minutes.

Jay sat in an armchair and relaxed his muscles, he looked like he is melting into his seat. Kate was walking back and forth in the room while she was thinking out loud.

“So other dimensions exist, life outside of Earth exist. We may be the first from our planet to witness such things. That's... crazy. I guess it's not just a bad thing, right? Sure, on one hand it's scary, who knows what's gonna happen to us, and it seems like these people have some strange customs too. But also, aren't we basically making one of the biggest discoveries ever? In a way, it's incredible. I guess we should try to look at it that way, and try to keep an open mind. We might be introduced to a human culture that is so drastically different from ours, isn't that exciting? What you think, Jay?”

“Huh?” In all honesty, the boy was thinking about the feeling of Kate's pussy against his fingers, and the cute panting of the girl as he rubbed her. Now that things calmed down a bit, he was painfully aware of how close they were.

“I'm saying we should try to stay positive. Look at this as a rare opportunity. That's all we can do now, right?”

“I guess.”

Katherine picked up a book from the shelf and she sat down too. A couple of minutes later Jay got up and stood next to his girlfriend, peeking into the book over her shoulder.

“What is it about?” he asked.

“Uhm... it's a bit... how do I put it... it seems to be about men doing things for women's sake?”

“Heh, what a concept.”

The door of the room slid up into the ceiling, and the three “peacemakers” walked in, but only after a second of hesitation – they still seemed uneasy with couple's casual closeness. The men were no longer wearing their astronaut outfits, instead they all wore simple black shorts and black sleeveless shirts. The attire was fine on the fit and handsome Mack, but it made the older Dan with his big grey mustache look like a janitor who dressed up as a basketball player. The third man, who the others introduced as Vince, was on the younger side. He was short and skinny, he was clean-shaved, and his black hair was in a bowl cut. He wore a grey jacket over his black shirt, he had a lean face and small green eyes, and he looked at the earthlings coldly.

“The test results are in,” said Mack. “Seems like we share more than 99.9% of our DNA. You two are very much human.”

“Of course!” said Kate.

“In that case you will surely understand... right?”

“Understand what?” Kate asked. “I mean... yes, we will try our best to understand.”

Awkward silence.

“Tell them, Mackie guy!” said Dan.

“Why don't you tell them?” the blonde argued.

Vince, the black haired man, sighed and stepped forward. “I'll tell them.”

“You?” Mack looked at his partner like he thinks that's a bad idea.

“Where we are from,” Vince said, “women and men fuck. Like this:” he made a circle with his left hand, and inserted the finger of his right into it.

“Yes, we do that too,” Jay smiled. Kate rolled her eyes.

“Where we are from,” Vince continued, “women and men live separately. We only really meet for sex sessions.”

“It only makes sense,” nodded Mack.

“Okay, that's just plain misogyny,” said Kate.

“No, it's... wait what?” Mack was confused.

“That's the word for when men hate women,” Vince explained.

“Is it? What does that have to do with any of this?”

“You guys are literally saying you use women as sex objects!” Kate snapped. “Are you serious?!”

“No, that's not what we are saying,” Dan shook his head.

“Yes, it is!” the girl doubled-down.

“You got it backwards, ma'am,” said the black haired man. “It's women who use men as sex objects.”

“Oh Vince, please!” Mack rolled his eyes. “Don't make this more complicated than it has to be. Nobody is 'using' anyone, it's just how things are. We love and respect women deeply! We take pride in loving women, and so we serve them, we dedicate out lives to them. That's all.”

“I'm sorry, but that's not how we live, and it's not something we will be able to adapt to,” Kate declared.

Dan and Mack exchanged a puzzled look, but Vince stared at the girl with a raised eyebrow.

“Jay, say something!” Katherine grabbed her boyfriend's sleeve.

“Uhm... she is right, guys! We are a couple, so we wanna spend time together.”

“Hah!” Vince seemed amused. The other two did not.

Mack cleared his throat and spoke hesitantly: “Look. I don't know how things are where you are from, but this just won't work. Once we get back to our home planet, you won't be able to... hang out together. There is just no way!”

“I don't care!” Kate yelled, making all three of the peacemakers shudder. “We don't want to integrate into your ass-backwards society, we just want to get home! And until then, you WILL have to respect us! It's just some basic human decency.”

“Sorry, ma'am!” said Mack. “We... we will leave you be.”

The three man left the room. Kate sighed, and threw herself into her boyfriend's arms. “I can't believe this! Can you?”

“Yea, they are pretty weird,” Jay admitted, stroking the girl's hair.

The door of the room opened again and Mack peeked in. “Excuse me, could we talk to Jay for a minute?”

“Just him?” Kate asked.

“Well... yes. If that's okay with you, ma'am.”

The young couple exchanged a look. “I think it's fine. I'll talk to them,” said the boy.

“But you guys will let him come back to me, right?” Kate asked suspiciously.

“Of course, ma'am! For the rest of our journey back home, you will have him all for yourself, that much I can promise.”

The girl sighed. “Fine then. Maybe they will listen to you more, so try to make them understand!”

“I will!” Jay swore as he left the room.

As the door slid down from the ceiling and the girl was out of sight, Mack immediately turned to the boy with a concerned look. “Are you okay?”

“I mean... we just got abducted from our home planet, but aside from that, sure.”

“Did she do something to you? It's okay, boy, you can talk to me!”

“What you mean, did something to me?”

“Anything! There is no shame in admitting you are not okay with a woman pushing things too far. Is she forcing you to stay with her for so long?”

“No! Seriously, we are fine.”

“All right, all right... come, let's join the others!”

The blonde guy led Jay to the front of the spaceship, to the command centre. It was a relatively big, semi-circle shaped room with a large table in the middle, and plenty of panels and machinery on the sides. It also had large windows, and surprisingly what was outside didn't seem like outer space. Rather, it was as if the spaceship is flying through a bright tube, which is constantly changing colors.

“Wow! Where are we?” Jay asked as he looked out the windows, walking around the room. “What is this place?”

“We are dimension-jumping,” Vince said as he turned around with his swivel chair at the front of the room.

“Have you never dimension-jumped before, boy?” Dan asked. He was drinking coffee, leaning against the large table.

“Nah. We are not as advanced as you guys seem to be, we didn't even know life outside our planet exists.”

“So it's a sheltered branch of humans. Makes sense.”

“This looks really cool though, like holy shit!” Jay was still mesmerised by what was going on outside. On a closer look, he could actually see glimpses of landscapes appearing in the colorful tube around them: red mountains, oceans, even cities and battlefields, but also space, majestic galaxies, planets from various distances. It really felt like they are travelling through some cosmic corridor between worlds. “So you guys are basically space-adventurers?”

“Yes, we are!” Mack said proudly. “Well, right now we are. Personally, I love peacemaker and explorer jobs, those really are my speciality. And I'm actually fairly well known too! Even women know about the deeds of Mack Thomson.”

“Yea cause they keep records of everything we do,” Dan noted.

“That's not what I meant, even outside of that...”

“You can suck yourself off later, Mack,” Vince interrupted the blonde man. “Let's talk to the boy now.”

“Hey! No need to be rude!”

“Tell me, who is ruling your world?” Vince turned to Jay, ignoring Mack. “Women or men?”

“Uhmm... Kate would say that men rule our world. Cause patriarchy, or whatever.”

“And what would you say?”

“I mean, our politicians and billionaires are mostly men, so yea, it's men. But for the average people, things are more or less equal these days.”

“That's so weird!” Mack said. “I really wonder what women will think of you two.”

“Oh boy!” Dan cringed.

“Why, how do you guys live?” Jay inquired. “Are you seriously only meeting women for sex?”

“Yes. Well, except for some special occasions when it's necessary, but for the most part, yes. And not just us. All alternate versions of humans that we know of live like us. It's very normal,” Mack declared.

“But how? How does that work?”

“Women come up with jobs that we men can take,” Dan explained. “We do those jobs to gain credit, and we use credit to book sessions with women. That's how we get rewarded. It's pretty simple, isn't it?”

“So... it's like prostitution?”

“You and your lady friend use some really obscure words,” Mack said.

“So when do people have sex on your planet, Jay?” Vince asked.

“Well... when we feel like it.”

“When you feel like it...” Dan looked at the boy dubiously.

“Usually, we pair up for a long time. At least that's the idea. Like... marriage? Do you guys know that word?”

“Isn't that kind of a mate-bonding ritual?” Mack asked.

“Yep.”

“Well, we know that certain species pair up for a long time. Some animals and some barbaric aliens do that. Like the Bagawians we just rescued you from, if I remember correctly, they are supposed to mate for life. Us humans don't do that, it's absurd.”

“That's insane,” said Jay.

“Exactly how I feel,” replied Mack.

Vince stretched his body in his chair, then he spun back around, facing the window and the panels on the front side of the room. “It just goes to show that things are not as set in stone as everyone thinks they are,” he said. “It's exactly what I've been talking about.”

“Don't listen to Vince, Jay!” Mack said. “He is perpetually stuck being an edgy teenager who thinks he knows better than everyone else.”

“Says the guy who believes he is the biggest hero of our planet,” Vince countered.

“I never said I'm the biggest, did I?”

The spaceship did a sudden turn, and it flew out of the colorful, shifting tube. They were suddenly in good old, proper outer space, facing a planet. They were close enough so that Jay could make out the continents. He looked out the windows in awe – it was actually a dream of his to become an astronaut when he was little, a dream he gave up on a long time ago.

“Home, sweet home! You will soon see that it's really not all that bad of a place, my friend,” Mack put his arm on Jay's shoulder. “I'm sure it will all make sense to you soon.”

“I wish Kate could see this view,” Jay said.

Dan finished his coffee, threw his paper cup into a bin, then turned to the boy. “About that... I'm not gonna beat around the bush, boy. We already told you what's gonna happen. Can you accept it?”

Jay slowly looked away from the windows, twiddling his thumbs. “The thing is, she is my girlfriend. And you know... this is all pretty new to us, we are all alone here. She needs me, okay? Can you people really not make an exception?”

“It's not up to us. It's up to women,” Mack stated. “You... well, the young lady can make her case with them, but I don't think there is much point to it. We are hospitable with other humans though, we really are! And women, they are amazing, they care a lot about injustice, and they are always pursuing peaceful solutions with outsiders when possible. I'm sure they will approve my job request of figuring out how to get you two back to your original world. I will personally request it, I promise! But as I said, it will take a while, and if you two just refuse to part ways while you enjoy our hospitality... I'm afraid women aren't gonna be happy about that.”

“It's their ways, their rules, boy,” Dan said. “Simple as that.”

“Shit...” Jay looked kind of defeated.

“You are a good guy, I can tell it! I'm sure you will be able to behave.” Mack continued. “I'm more worried about her... can you talk to her? Maybe she would listen to you more.”

“Shit...”

And so Jay returned to the room with the armchairs, and he armed himself with a cup of hot chocolate from the coffee machine. Then he took a deep breath and did his best to convince Kate to cooperate with their saviors. It was a long, heated argument, but eventually the girl admitted that she prefers not to be dropped off on a random asteroid, and she reluctantly agreed to comply.

Jay then asked the three peacemakers to let Kate in the command centre too. Mack, Dan and Vince agreed, but they themselves left the room, not feeling comfortable to be around the girl. Vince set the spaceship on autopilot before he left, and the two teenagers stared at the planet getting closer and closer to them, witnessing their landing from the front row while holding hands. They both knew that these are some of their last moments together before their looming separation for who knows how long, and that made the experience quite bittersweet and romantic.

They were getting close to a huge city. They saw all kinds of buildings of various sizes, and a futuristic monorail system built above ground, with fast moving trains. They didn't have too much time to look at the place though, as they were descending quite rapidly. To their surprise, they went below the entire city, which turned out to be built on top of some sort of enormous structure. Below it, around the gigantic construction, there were several layers of circular ledges, wide enough to support a couple rows of buildings – these were much less varied and colorful than the buildings above. They finally entered some sort of hangar, and the ship stopped moving.

Kate leaned in and kissed her boyfriend. As they separated, Jay saw that the girl is tearing up, which made his heart ache.

“Just wait for me, okay?” Kate muttered. “We will both get through this... I'm sure.”

“Of course, we will be all right! I love you, Kate.”

“I love you too.”