"Nexy, can't you use your voice on yourself?” I hissed at the serval through chattering teeth as the gun and dragon began their plan to undermine the local command structure. “Order yourself to be less high?"

  Nexxali's eyes widened. "That's... Oh!" She cleared her throat, eyes lighting up. Her voice took on a deep, bell-like resonance. "Nexxali Everrim, restore cognitive function to baseline parameters. Focus!"

  Her pupils contracted slightly, her posture straightened, and the foggy confusion in her eyes sharpened to mere tipsiness rather than wild inebriation. She was still under the catnip effects, but less so.

  "Better," she said, then her expression turned predatory. "Keiy, I am no longer impaired. Master command override Nexxali-Alpha-Seven-Seven-Seven. Acknowledge."

  The gun's red eyes flashed. "Override acknowledged, Marshal Commandant."

  "What?!" Galateya gasped.

  "Disconnect from your current user. You report to me now. Full compliance mode."

  “KEIY!” Galateya shrieked.

  "Compliance confirmed," Keiy stated, turning to face Galateya. "I apologize, but Marshal authority supersedes Beta-Knight authority."

  Nexxali grinned through the ice collar. "Did you really think I'd let some servant-less Knight take command? I might be high, but I'm not stupid. Keiy, melt this ice and release us. Carefully."

  The spider gun climbed up the wall and flashed superheated rays at both of our ice collars. Just as the ice started to crack, Galateya's hand shot out, grabbing Keiy.

  "Oh no you don't!" The dragon yanked the spider-gun away from the wall. "I'm calling the Legate right now to report this entire damned coverup!"

  "Like hell you are!" Nexxali snarled through the ice collar. "Keiy! Stop her!"

  Galateya yelped, as the gun flashed with an electrical discharge. The gun skittered away, then rushed up the dragon’s leg and torso, wrapping around Galateya's arm like a mechanical octopus. "Apologies, but I must comply with the Marshal's authority."

  "KEIY! You're MY partner!" Galateya shrieked, trying to shake off the gun.

  “Alas," Keiy stated. "The Marshal's override key supersedes our lovely bond."

  “Master command override Nexxali-Alpha-Seven-Seven-Seven! Disable the armor battery of Beta-Knight Galateya!” Nexxali barked.

  “You!” Galateya choked as her armor shields turned off with a flicker of colorful hexagons.

  “He he he,” Nexxali giggled. “Not so tough now, are you beerch?”

  "Voicecast—" Galateya yelled.

  The spider-gun fired a brilliant ray of light across the dragon girl’s V-ring, making its innards spark and blacken.

  Galateya opened and closed her mouth and then her hair turned into flames.

  "You absolute—" She lunged at Nexxali, prying her from the wall. The ice holding us to the wall shattered and I fell down onto my butt with a yelp.

  Nexxali grabbed a chunk of ice and stuffed it into Galateya’s mouth. The ice shard connecting with superheated Galateya caused a dramatic detonation of steam. The dragon cried out, pawing at her face.

  “Ha ha! Defeated by your own magics!” The Serval laughed, defensively hopping around cat-style.

  "YOU FUCKING... Ahhh! That fuckin hurt!" Galateya snarled, rolling across my living room floor, scales now shaped like dead bark.

  "TAKE THAT, YOU SERVANT-LESS LOSER!" Nexxali yowled back, kicking with her legs.

  They knocked over my coffee table, sending old DVDs flying. Keiy skittered around them, occasionally zapping her former owner.

  "That's cheating!" Galateya protested as electricity coursed through her wooden scales, setting them alight.

  "Nu-huh! It's called tactical advantage!" Nexxali grabbed a couch cushion and smacked the dragon in the face with it. "Something you'd know if you'd ever won a real fight instead of simulating them with your imaginary rock friend!"

  "At least I don't get high on LAWN CLIPPINGS!" Galateya grabbed the cushion. The pair engaged in a brief tug-of-war before the pillow tore, exploding in a cloud of stuffing.

  I pulled my shirt back on and pressed myself against the wall, not sure how to deal with an alien catfight in my living room.

  "You executed your own squad members!" Galateya accused, scales turning rubbery as she tried to pin Nexxali's arms.

  "You don't even HAVE squad members to execute because nobody wants to work with you!" Nexxali bit Galateya's hand. “Or maybe you’re such a knob that you don’t want to work with anyone!”

  "OW! Did you just BITE me?!"

  "Mrrrrowl!" Nexxali yowled, fully committed to the feline combat style. She raked her claws down Galateya's armor in a swipe.

  "Stop acting like an animal!"

  "Stop acting like you're smarter than everyone when you're literally the worst Omnid commander in the fleet!"

  They rolled into the kitchen.

  "Even your great-grandmother thinks you're a disappointment!" Nexxali grabbed a spatula and wielded it like a tiny sword.

  "Your entire career is built on covering up other people's crimes!" Galateya grabbed a ladle, and they briefly fenced with kitchen utensils.

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  "At least I HAVE a career!"

  "EXECUTING YOUR OWN PEOPLE ISN'T A CAREER!"

  Galateya tackled Nexxali again, and they rolled back into the living room, destroying what remained of my coffee table. Keiy perched on my shoulder to get a better view.

  "This is highly entertaining," the gun observed. "Twenty credits on the Marshal.”

  "I don't have alien money to bet."

  "Pity. She's winning."

  “Shouldn’t you be helping more?” I wondered.

  “I’m not allowed to hurt my own partner, unless it’s educational.”

  “This is… educational?” I stared at the catfight.

  “I think that it is,” Keiy said. “She could use some friends.”

  “How does demolishing my living room help her make friends?”

  “Friendship through violence is a good strategy when it comes to prads. This is clearly a bonding ritual."

  Nexxali managed to get on top, sitting on Galateya's chest and holding her wrists down. "Surrender, dragon!"

  "Never! You're compromised!” Galateya panted. “You're conspiring with primitives! You're—"

  "Smart enough to make friends instead of enemies?" Nexxali grinned, panting. "Yeah, guilty. Maybe if you tried being nice to people instead of lecturing them, you'd have friends too!"

  "I don't need friends! I have principles!"

  "You have a talking rock and daddy issues!"

  "I DO NOT HAVE—" Galateya bucked, throwing Nexxali off. They both scrambled to their feet, circling each other and hissing.

  "Admit it!" Nexxali pointed accusingly. "You're jealous that I found something actually valuable on this planet while you're still playing with whack theories!"

  "Getting high and forcing a human to feed you eggs with your voice isn't finding something valuable!"

  "It is when he's Charmchain resistant! That's more than anyone else has found!"

  "He's clearly not that resistant if he's obeying you!"

  They both turned to look at me.

  "Uh..." I said intelligently.

  "Human!" Nexxali commanded. "Tell her you're resistant!"

  "Human!" Galateya countered. "Tell her you're NOT resistant!"

  "I'm resistant to dragons but susceptible to cats?" I offered weakly after a moment of inner contemplation.

  They stared at me, then at each other, then lunged simultaneously. The fight resumed with renewed vigor, now incorporating thrown cushions, DVDs used as throwing stars, and then, Galateya trying to stuff Nexxali into the coat closet who fought back with coat hangers.

  "This is all your fault!" Galateya panted, half in and half out of the closet.

  "MY fault? You're the one who broke into the house where I was chilling peacefully!"

  "I had to check if you were okay! You weren’t! You were hiding in his PANTRY!"

  "It's called tactical… relaxing after a stressful mission!" Nexxali smacked Galateya with the metal hanger, bending it way out of shape.

  "It's called being a drunk idiot!"

  Keiy zapped them both this time by firing cables at their feet. They yelped and separated, panting heavily.

  "Perhaps," the gun suggested, "you could start to resolve this like civilized officers instead of feral beasts?"

  "She started it!" they said in unison, pointing at each other.

  I raised my hand tentatively. "Maybe we could all just... sit down and talk about this? I could make tea?"

  "Tea?" Galateya panted, scales gradually shifting to green moss.

  "Boiled plant beverage," Nexxali explained, pulling random debris from her mane. "Humans drink it when they're being civilized. It's actually pretty good."

  "I know what tea is, I've read about it in books," the dragon girl declared defensively.

  “Nerd,” Nexxali teased.

  "Don't start again!" I said quickly. "Tea. Sitting. Talking. No more destroying my house!”

  The steam from the teapot curled upward as I rolled a Victorian tea tray trolley from the kitchen into the living room.

  Galateya sat stiffly on one end of the couch, scales currently resembling tree bark. Her crystalline mane had transformed to forest ferns covered in morning dew, making her look like a dryad gator.

  "Have you gotten all the violence out of your system?" Keiy asked from her perch on the armrest.

  Galateya took a deep breath, then nodded slowly. "I... apologize for the loss of control. The Celesteel resonance from the ships... frustrates me greatly, and then dealing with..." she gestured at Nexxali, "this utterly absurd situation pushed me over the edge."

  "Uh-huh," I agreed, pouring the tea carefully into four mugs I quickly unpacked for the occasion, "you're both stuck on Earth, dealing with a… situation that's clearly not going according to anyone's plan. Maybe instead of trying to kill each other, you could try being... friends? Or at least cordial colleagues who don't destroy people's coffee tables?"

  Nexxali, who had been licking her paw and attempting to smooth down her disheveled ginger mane, paused and looked up. After a moment, she nodded.

  Galateya turned to Nexxali, fern-green hair fluttering. "Marshal, would you be so kind as to simply explain what actually happened to Knight Zyra Blish and Scrutimancer Nadera Korin? And why you felt the need to put the Corpse Seeker and their weapons into diagnostic mode?"

  "No," Nexxali said flatly, returning to grooming her fur.

  "No?" Galateya's scales flickered with orange. "That's your entire response?"

  "Yep." Nexxali picked a piece of cushion stuffing from between her claws. "Classification above your grade, remember? I'm still the ranking officer here, even if I'm slightly impaired by delicious plants."

  "You can't just—"

  "I can and I will," Nexxali interrupted. "Some things are better left buried, dragon. Trust me on this one."

  Galateya's jaw clenched. The 'Smaug sitting atop his hoard' mug creaked ominously in her grip.

  "So, Galateya," I said, seeing that the dragon girl was heading for another explosion. "Why are you really here?"

  She turned to me. "Keiy and I already told you. Legate Ixthia—"

  "No, I mean why are YOU here?" I pressed. "On Earth. As part of this invasion. Not what your great-grandmother wants or what the fleet demands. What do you actually want from all this?"

  Galateya stared at me. "That's... not relevant to the mission."

  "Humor the primitive human," I said. "I'm curious. It sounds like you hate being on those ships as Celesteel makes you sick. Your own gun just told us you don't have any Pradavarian servants because you refuse to use blood contracts. You were trained on human fiction instead of military doctrine. Why are you participating in conquering a planet full of the species whose stories you grew up reading?"

  "I..." Galateya let out, “I didn’t grow up reading your stories. My GLM was made in Omnithornia by humans of Omnid-inhabited Earth under the management of my Thunderbird Instructor. Their fiction is… slightly different from yours. I read… Larry Plotter books for example.”

  “I see,” I said. “Not… Garry Cotter?”

  “It’s similar to your fiction, just… slightly different. The overall plot of the orphan boy attending magic school is pretty much the same though, which is weird.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know yet,” Galateya said. “My GLM thinks it’s because there’s a connection between humanity on worlds which the Mothman Omnids can access via dimensional gates. She called it the ‘Finite boundary curve theory’.”

  “So you like books,” I said, “that's a start. Do you want to read more local books?”

  “Yes,” Galateya let out.

  “I can take you to a book shop café in town then,” I offered.

  “What are you doing?” she demanded, suspiciously squinting at me.

  “Being nice,” I said. “Defusing the situation with tea, polite conversation and an outing offer. Novel concepts for invading aliens, I know.”

  “Sounds like he is asking you out on a date,” Keiy pointed out, picking up the black mug I slid towards her.

  Galateya stared at her gun. “What.”