“What do you mean, ‘Rated M for Mature?!” the mercenary asked. Tee shook their head. No, that was not how this conversation was going to go. They turned to the other passenger and crossed their arms.

“No, you don’t get to do that. I asked first. What do you mean, ‘Rated T for Teen’? That’s an ESRB rating and as far as I know, they do not have those here. You tell me where this ‘where you’re from’ actually is or you and I are going to have words,” they said, waving a threatening finger for good measure. They stared into the mercenary’s eyes, the only part of her face they could actually see. The green eyes looked more than a little spooked. Good. Being intimidating was hard work, and it needed to be acknowledged. 

“All right! Fine! Jeez, you are… fine.” The mercenary pulled the mask down, revealing a face that wasn’t particularly young or old, though mostly weathered. People who spent a lot of their time within floors got a pallid look, with big eyes, while those who lived on the surface or traveled a lot tended to get weathered, probably as a result of the constant exposure to the rains and fumes of the city. Tee wondered where people got their vitamin D from. Just another mystery about this world to file away. Something was generating something like UV light, because people here seemed to not be suffering major vitamin deficiencies. Well, those who lived in the Queen’s territory, at least. They assumed there were slums with serious issues if you went up or down far enough. The woman in front of them looked at them, but Tee knew their face was impossible to read, courtesy of its ceramic-like exterior. “I’m from Earth. Going by your response, you are too.”

“Okay, I’m glad we established that,” Tee said, trusting the mercenary more by roughly half of a percent. “What’s your name? Is Earth a planet, or a dimension here? Where on earth are you from? How did you get here?” They fired off their questions and with every one, Tore only blinked.

“Okay, hold up, buttercup,” she said. “One thing at a time, and in order of importance.” She chewed her tongue for a moment. “My name is Tore. You knew that one already.”

“Tore is not a real name,” Tee said, glaring. “We both know that. Your real name.”

Tore rolled her eyes. “It is a real name. I think it’s Scandinavian maybe? You’re just being culturally insensitive. But okay, fine, yes, it’s not a name where I’m from.” She sighed and rubbed the bridge of her nose. “My name is Cassandra. As far as I know, nobody here knows a thing about earth or where I’m from, and I don’t know if space travel is even a thing here. I’ve never even been to the surface.” She paused and looked up. “There’s rumours, though. Anyway, there was a transdimensional anomaly, myself and a few others were pulled through, but we lost each other in the breach.” Cassandra/Tore’s jaw clenched for a moment. Tee knew how she felt. They clearly weren’t the only person to have been separated, then. How often did this happen? 

“And now?” Tee relaxed a little and ignored the soft muttering coming from the back seat. Cassandra had told them to ignore whoever was back there so they did. 

“I got work as a bounty hunter and mercenary. I owed someone a debt, and after a while, she and I got close. She retired last year, so I’m carrying on her name.” Tee nodded.

“The original Tore? Flock mentioned you being a legend, but you don’t seem old enough to have built up that kind of reputation.” 

“Flock?” Cassandra raised an eyebrow, but Tee shook their head. That wasn’t too important right now. “Anyway, yeah. Tore took me in. I went by Loki for a while, as her, well, sidekick, I guess. But it’s just me, now. She’s taking it easy. Well deserved rest, and I got pretty good at the job. It’s not a bad life.”

“Speak for yourself,” came the voice from the back seat. “My life is agony.” Cassandra shot an unimpressed look at the back seat, but the corner of her mouth curled up a little bit. 

“I fed you like an hour ago. We’ll stop somewhere along the way, okay?” she shook her head when she looked at Tee. “I swear, every time.”

“You often bring your kid along on missions?” Tee asked. It was really hard to keep the feeling of disapproval out of their voice. Maybe Cass had been pregnant when she’d fallen through the portal? Even then, putting a child in danger was wildly irresponsible. Cassandra laughed, loud and boisterous, and Tee couldn’t help but smile too. They didn’t know at what yet, but Cassandra had an infectious energy to her. 

“Mort, come up front, the robot thinks you’re a human child.” There was a loud scoffing from the back seat, and then a small, furry head popped up between the seats. It was a cat, only a bit larger, the size of a serval. It was black, with a white mask around the eyes and a white patch on the chin. It looked Tee in the eyes.

“Hello,” the cat said. “I’m Mordecat. Cass says I need to tell you that my pronouns are he and him.” Mort climbed up onto the front seat and sat on Tee’s lap, looking them straight in the eyes. “I like you,” he said, and slammed his forehead into Tee’s nose.

“Hello Mordecat,” Tee said, resisting the urge to pet the large animal on their lap. “You’re… uh…” They looked at Cassandra, who was smiling softly and looking at them both.

“He’s my sidekick.”

“Oi.”

“You are. Anyway, he’s good at getting into small spaces, staying out of trouble, that kind of thing. He’s also very fussy, likes to have his chin scratched, and can open doors, so lock your door at night if you don’t want a faceful of fur. Hold on,” Cass said as she entered something in the vehicle’s front console. “We have to make a small detour. Not getting past sixty-one without a pass, and this vehicle isn’t authorized.” Tee looked at her enter a bunch of coordinates. They had no idea what the tall woman was doing, but she looked like she was comfortable enough, at least. Cassandra saw them looking, and shot them a gorgeous smile. “It’s not strictly speaking legal, but I get the feeling that that won’t be too much of a problem.” She winked, and Tee resisted squirming in their seat.

“You’re warm,” Mordecat said. “Warm robot. That’s new.” He fell over on their lap and started purring. Cass looked at him and nodded.

“Yeah, he’s always like that,” she said as the small vehicle flew directly towards what seemed to be a skyscraper connecting floors sixty-two and sixty-three, and only at the last second did Tee notice the gap, barely large enough for a cab like this, to fly into. Everything went dark except for the dashboard display. Tee found themself absent-mindedly petting Mordecat to calm themself, but they nearly jumped out of their seat when they felt something touch their shoulder. It was Cass, who had ever so gently reached out. “Don’t worry, I know what I’m doing,” Cass said. She looked up out of the window. “Cozy, right? This is a service tunnel that connects to the elevators at the center of this connection block. We can park on top of an elevator and ride it up to sixty-one. After that, we’ve got a couple of floors of free flying, but it’s all on foot from there on.” She shot Tee another smile, and Mort protested with a soft meow when they dug their fingers into his fur so as to keep from making any awkward motions or noises. The big woman was pretty. 

The vehicle suddenly shot out into a fairly large open space, like a vertical tunnel, and Tee assumed that this was the elevator section. Before long, a large block of metal passed them by on the way down. Cassandra maneuvered the vehicle down a bit, and then started to accelerate up. “These things go fast, so you wanna match speed. Otherwise you get… well… y’know. Mosquito on a car window.” Her grin was in direct contrast to the horrifying image she’d just conjured, but she didn’t seem worried or bothered at all. After a second, there was a loud ‘Thunk’, a hard jolt, and then they started moving upwards a lot faster. “And there we go. Now we just wait.” 

They didn’t have to wait very long. After about half an hour, which Cassandra spent with a smile on her face and her eyes closed, the elevator stopped. Tee had spent that time petting Mort, who had fallen asleep, and stealing glances of Cassandra. This woman was a conundrum. She felt distinctly comfortable, familiar and unfamiliar, of this world and also very not. Tee didn’t understand, but they knew they didn’t hate how she looked and sounded. 

After they stopped, the vehicle flew up into another service tunnel, and after just a few minutes, they were out into the air again. The flight continued in silence while Cassandra navigated the cab. 

“This feels like it’s very involved,” Tee said. They had assumed that the cabs navigated by a networked AI to keep mid-air collisions from happening all the time. 

“It usually is,” Cassandra said. “It’s all automated, but if you want to get past checkpoints, you need to know how to fly and where. It’s taken me a while to get to know most of the major patrol routes, but I can do these floors pretty much blind now. But you still gotta do it on manual. Don’t wanna fly into anyone. It’s a long drop down the skylines.” She shuddered. “They say you can keep falling for hours.” Tee grimaced -- internally.

Finally, the vehicle began to slow down. They’d been flying for several hours now, and if this had been their old body, Tee would’ve been looking forward to stretching their limbs. Sitting still for this long, the human body couldn’t help but get sore. However, this body was still as comfortable as it had been when they’d first entered the cab. Still, they wanted to get out just to not be inside a small flying metal box anymore. “This is our stop?” Cassandra nodded. 

“We’re going to be spending the night at a local watering hole. It’s nothing fancy, but they don’t care who or what you are, and they don’t ask too many questions. Besides, the owner owes me a favour.” Tee looked over and saw Cassandra scowling.

“What for?” Tee asked. They weren’t sure they wanted to know, but curiosity was a cruel mistress. The cab aligned itself with a mooring point, and the doors of the car opened. Mordecat jumped out, and Tee followed suit. Immediately, the cat curled around their feet. After a second, Cass stepped out too, holding a large duffel bag, and stretched. Tee was deeply, powerfully grateful they couldn’t blush. The woman was all muscle, and stretching did nothing to de-emphasize that fact. Cass yawned as the cab took off and flew away to its next fare. 

“An ex. Don’t ask. Anyway, in there, Cassandra doesn’t exist.” Cass nodded at the door to a bar that was decorated with all kinds of cloth, bells, decorations, and a lot of neon. It looked like someone had lost a beautiful tented building in an eighties hardware store. “I’ve got a reputation to maintain, and I don’t want people thinking the wrong thing.” Tee nodded and followed her into the bar. Like Cassandra had promised, the clientele was… diverse. There was a large man with red skin and horns sitting at the bar, talking to something that seemed to be a mathematical, orthogonal cloud. There was a small dragon curled up by a fireplace, with a dog curled up against it. There were four-armed creatures getting uproariously drunk in a corner. Someone Tee could only describe as an orc, green skin, tusks and all, seemed to be having a really bad time flirting with a girl that appeared to be part-wolf. At one table, a young man was entertaining several kids by conjuring up little balls of light that slowly changed colour. 

“And don’t stare,” Cassandra whispered to Tee. “None of this is abnormal.” She paused. “Okay, Lyra usually has more game than that,” she nodded to the orc woman, “but other than that, all of this is normal.” She walked through the bar and gave the barman a two-fingered salute. “You got a room, Sal?” The figure behind the bar was tall, handsome and looked very tired. He had a goatee, goat horns and goat legs, and was covered in little trinkets. Some of them were gold. Some of them glowed neon. He had a neon tooth. Tee did their best not to stare. It was hard not to imagine the large satyr man being Cassandra’s ex. 

Sal nodded. “The usual?” He gave Tee a meaningful glance, and they noticed that Cassandra was blushing slightly as she quickly stammered a denial. Tee heard Mordecat snickering softly to himself. 

“Uh, no, thank you. Two beds, thanks,” Cassandra said.  

Sal shrugged. “Suit yerself. Fifteen is free. Breakfast?” Cass nodded. He tossed her a key and she plucked it out of the air. As she guided Tee to a door near the back, someone at a nearby booth called out to her.

“Another conquest, Loki?” the figure called out. Mort just hissed at him.

“Eat my ass, Haze,” Cass responded without looking at him. Tee shot Cass a questioning glance, but knew that she probably wasn’t going to answer that while they were in here. Down a hallway and up a flight of stairs -- neither of which, to Tee’s surprise, smelled rank or disgusting -- they ended up in a fairly large room. It had two beds with a wooden divider, a desk that looked out over a small square where people were bartering for all kinds of goods. Cass tossed the bag next to one of the beds and yawned. 

“What was that about?”

“Old name. Old ‘friend’. A wannabe hero who would betray his own mom to make it in the world. Don’t worry about him.” Cassandra sat down. “We’ll go out and grab some food in a second, but I figured it was a good idea to, yknow, take a breath. Flying for that long can be exhausting.” 

Tee nodded. “It’s… yeah. Thanks.” 

She fished what appeared to be a candy bar out of the duffel bag and offered one to Tee, only to smile sheepishly as she realized that offering a robot food was probably silly. “So... what’s your name?” Cassandra finally asked, chewing thoughtfully. “I doubt it’s just a letter-number designation, right?” She had a lopsided smile that Tee was starting to find very endearing very quickly. Tee was trying to be mistrusting, but finally meeting someone from Earth was a hell of a stroke of good luck, and Cassandra just seemed so… genuine. Someone they could really trust. Mordecat explored the room, sniffing everywhere, before walking up to Cass, who rolled her eyes and gave him the rest of the candy bar.

“Uh,” they said. “It really is Tee, actually.”

“Huh. Weird. I used to know someone with that name.” They sat in silence for a moment, until two coins seemed to drop at the same time. Cassandra and Tee looked at each other with a look of disbelief. 

“Hold on.”

“Wait.”

“Tee?”

“Yeah!”

“Like, Tee-and-Ellis, Tee?”

“Yeah!” Tee looked at Cassandra for a moment, trying to rack their brain for someone they’d known with a name like Cassandra, but was coming up blank. They’d never known anyone who -- There was no way. They stood up and walked over to Cassandra and took her face in their hands, staring deeply into the green eyes, where the spark of recognition burned brightly. “Mal?!”

Elamimax

Baking for someone is such a fun expression of affection <3

If you like this story and want to know how it ends, All 34 chapters are up on my patreon! Subscribers will get access to every single chapter right now. Other than that, I will be posting a chapter (maybe even two) every other day (I don't think we'll get many more four-a-day like this :p). If you're in the mood to catch up on my other stories, feel free to check them out. Additionally, Horns in the Library 1 is now available as an ebook! 

I also want to point people at the discord server of the ever-prolific QuietValerie (right here) where you can find her wonderful stories, like Ryn of Avonside, Falling Over and The Trouble With Horns, as well as other authors' works, and talk about them with fellow fans, and even the authors themselves! I heartily recommend joining it and reading their works! (Also check out Walls of Anamoor. It's rad as heck.) 

Thanks again for reading, and I'll see you all in the next one. 

<3