"Tell me about this fleet data interest clause in your contract," I said, watching the magpie who prostrated herself at my feet. "Sounds like you've thought things ahead."

  Kawathra's black-blue eyes brightened slightly. I supposed that discussing contract loopholes was less terrifying than processing my supposed divinity. "Standard Frontenachii blood contracts are... crude instruments. They assume absolute obedience without considering edge cases. I went over every single Frontenachii Omnicorp legislation the Agent presented to me and added forty six modification clauses to my contract, including provisions for conflicting orders, capture by superior forces, and encounters with entities the Frontenachii classify as 'Divine Tier Threats.'"

  "Which you think I am."

  "The probability matrices are quite clear," she stated. "Your ability to completely resist Marshal-level Charmchain, your knowledge of our weaknesses, the way reality seems to bend around you to create advantageous situations..."

  I suppressed a chortle.

  Reality wasn't bending around me, I was just good at improvisation and everyone kept making dumb assumptions that worked in my favor.

  "Plus," she continued, digging deeper into her wild deductions, "the timing of the vampire nest discovery, precisely when Division 881 needed a victory right before Galateya was assigned to us? The location data from Sherlock Holmes. The Marshal's unusual behavior patterns when she's near you? The way Knight Galateya looks at you as an equal rather than a subordinate? These assuredly aren't coincidences! They're evidence of high-level reality manipulation."

  “Maybe I’m lucky,” I suggested.

  "Luck at this scale isn't luck," she said firmly. "It's divine power expressing itself through probability. It is possible that you are a System Wizard or one of their clients, operating within their dimension-altering, reality-warping narrative. I've read about such divine-tier, unstoppable entities within the Frontenachii corporate records!" she ranted on, "one of them appeared in Omnithornia in 2025 at Skyfall Academy when a teenage Mothman opened a gate to an infinite dead world at a delving performance show! The System Wizard could not be stopped with physical violence and the magic of an Elder Omnid had zero effect on the entity. It left only after making a verbal agreement with one of the students trading a lighter artifact for a story!"

  “Right then,” I said. “Kawthy, drive the corpse Seeker up to my house. We’ll make more plans there. Unit Epsy told you the address of the Clifford mansion, yes? It’s just up the mountain road.”

  “Urm, yes. Epsy looked into your local estate’s address. You assuredly have many eyes in many places, my Liege!” The magpie nodded rapidly. I leaned back on the crystalline couch, letting her stew in whatever diresome conclusions her hyperactive bird brain had manufactured about me.

  "Corpse Seeker Kappa, acknowledge pilot transfer to Datamancer Kawathra,” I said.

  "Pilot acknowledged," the Seeker responded.

  I watched as she relaxed and settled into position. "Take it slow, Kawthy. Human vehicles can't match the Seeker's speed." I added.

  "Understood." She created a holographic window with a gesture, showing the red Jeep following us. "Would you like audio-visual surveillance of the vehicle's interior? I can create a resonance scanner beam that will tap into the electromagnetic spectrum and—"

  "Sure, why not." I was curious what was unfolding in my car in my absence.

  A holographic window expanded, revealing the Cherokee's interior. Piotr sat rigidly in the driver's seat, his armored gloves gripping the steering wheel.

  "—rimitive vehicle can definitely handle more speed! " Nexxali was saying. "See how that mirror is missing? That's from when my human plowed me into that there cliffside. And over there, he ran me over about seven times!" She laughed, pointing at the road.

  I mentally facepalmed.

  “Um, right,” Piotr said. “Is that a thing you enjoy or something?”

  “Hrmm,” Nexxali mused. “Some of the Omnid commanders definitely might be too much into getting killed as foreplay since the Incarnator can bring them back without any lasting psychic damage. For me personally, getting run over was a definite big turn on. It’s not everyday when a guy can not just ignore my orders, but also run me over to prove a point.”

  “What point is that?” Piotr wondered.

  “The point that he likes me and isn’t a pushover,” Nexxali grinned, tapping her collar. “See, he gave me a heart collar. It’s sooo frrrrrigin' cute!”

  “What?” the dragon girl sputtered, head snapping to the Serval. “Are you saying that… Ash ran you over… using his vehicle?”

  “Yeah. What? Don’t judge me! It was... consensual!" Nexxali declared, staring at Galateya’s shocked face. "We were mutually trying to murder each other! Very romantic!"

  "That's not what romantic means, Marshal." Galateya ground out.

  "Says who? Boring ass, generic romance books?" Nexxali wiggled on the back seat. "Different species have different courtship rituals. Some spiders eat their mates! I just got lightly vehicularly compressed a few times. Practically vanilla by comparison."

  "Vehicular compression is not a courtship ritual!" Galateya protested.

  "It is, if I liked it! Don't hate on it till you've tried it on a date!"

  "I'm not asking someone to murder me for a thrill!"

  "Not murder, just a thrill of chasing a boy and being chased by him!”

  “That doesn't make it more romantic!”

  “Bah. Your loss." Nexxali shrugged. "Oh! Stormy! Let me introduce everyone properly since we're all going to be working together!" She sat up, adjusting her dead hexsuit with exaggerated dignity. "The colorful dragon in the passenger seat is Knight Galateya Frontenachii, future Baroness of Earth, destined ruler of this entire mudball, master of... uh... what are you master of?"

  "Nothing," Galateya muttered.

  "Master of Nothing!" Nexxali continued without missing a beat. "Very minimalist and uhhh... selfless! And I'm Marshal Commandant Nexxali Everrim, her new personal advisor on ‘How Not To Accidentally Destroy the Earth While Running It’. My qualifications include bossing almost everyone with my voice and… Uhh… Being conscious most of the time.” She laughed.

  Galateya rolled her eyes.

  "Teya, this is Storm-O-Lyx, the Warrior Prince of Warsaw, heir to the throne of Poland! Storm-O was the one who found a vampire nest for Division 881 when literally ten thousand Scruts couldn't!"

  "Poland doesn't have a throne," Piotr let out. "It's a republic not a monarchy."

  "Not with that attitude!" Nexxali giggled. “Just stick to the Baroness’ good side and she’ll totally make you King of Poland in no time at all. Right, future Baroness?"

  The author's content has been appropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

  Galateya made a bothered, non-committed dragon noise from where she sat. She clearly wasn't over the vehicular-murder-date revelations.

  “How exactly did you find the local vampire nest, Stormo?” The dragon girl wondered after a minute.

  “Uhh… I took Scrutimancer Linari on a… date to the vampire gravesite museum where Sherlock Holmes gave me a map with specific coordinates,” Piotr explained. “Got lucky, I guess?”

  "Got lucky," Galateya repeated flatly. "You just happened to stumble across the exact location of crystalloid vampires that our entire fleet couldn't find?"

  "Well, when you put it like that..." Piotr squeezed the wheel tighter. “It is a bit sus.”

  "And this Sherlock Holmes," Galateya pressed on, "what did he look like?"

  "Uh, tall? Deerstalker hat? British accent?” Piotr was clearly struggling. "Look, it sounds weird when I say it out loud—"

  "It sounds weird because Sherlock Holmes is a fictional character!" Galateya exploded. "From human literature! He doesn't exist!"

  "Maybe he does on this Earth?" Nexxali mused. "Like how the local vampire nest was real? Maybe all the fictional characters are real and hiding really well. Maybe there’s a Secret Baker street somewhere in Garry Cotter London next to Hexagonalley!"

  “Now you’re just smooshing two different books together,” Galateya sighed.

  "Kawthy," I turned to the Datamancer, looking away from the spy-window. "We need to establish some ground rules."

  Her feathers ruffled. "Yes, my Liege?"

  "First, stop calling me that. It's Ash. Just Ash."

  "But you're—"

  "A perfectly ordinary guy who inherited a perfectly ordinary mansion. Nothing suspicious," I said firmly. "That's the story, that's what you know, that's what you'll tell anyone who asks. Piotr, Galateya, Nexxali, the Legates. Anyone. Understood?”

  “Understood,” Kawathra nodded.

  “Can your mind be scanned by a Wendigo or a Scrut, revealing what you've learned today?”

  “They can try,” Kawathra said. “I can split my mind over thirty two ways in less than a microsecond. They won’t get anything out of me, m… Ash. Talented Datamancers are pretty much impossible to scan directly.”

  “And if someone like Nexxali orders you to tell what you know?”

  “Urm,” the Datamancer swallowed. “That would be a problem. However… She’d have to know exactly what to ask for. I can generally rant about random correlating data in such a case, bury the Charmchainer in complexity of answers to the point when they get bored and give up.”

  “Very strategic,” I said.

  “Yep, yep,” she bobbed in one spot. “I’m really good at strategizing!"

  “Good stuff.” I nodded.

  "Speaking of strategic matters," Kawthy said, pulling up a new spreadsheet titled 'Optimal Outcomes for Data Preservation,' "I have a proposal."

  "Yes?"

  "If I'm to serve as your personal intelligence asset, I require... compensation."

  "You want me to pay you or something? In what, exposure? I'm not exactly swimming in alien currency here. What is it you aliens use again?”

  “O-bux,” the Datamancer revealed. “The Omnid magitek currency. Backed by dragon hoards. I was clever enough to demand Omnid currency for my contract salary. Desperate prads like Linari got screwed pretty badly since they agreed to work for a salary of their local planetary currency that has horrid exchange rates to O-bux. Anyways, I’m not asking for money.”

  “So then what?”

  "I want... StormoLyx." She stated.

  I blinked. "You want… Piotr?"

  "As my consort, yes. I've already discussed it with him.”

  "Kawthy," I said, "you can't just claim humans like they're spreadsheet variables. If he likes you, then go out with him. If he doesn’t then that’s that. What do you want me to do about it? Surely you want genuine love, not feelings enforced by psychic powers? Like, would you want a consort who’s ordered to love you by Marshal Nexxali?"

  “I… I want genuine appreciation,” Kawathra said. “To start I… simply would like your approval as the Lord of Humanity! A blessing for our relationship to bloom. A pitch of probability bent in my direction.”

  “Fine,” I said. “I approve of you trying to date him. Happy?”

  The Datamancer let out a small squee.

  "Just one issue. Isn't Linari interested in him too?" I asked.

  "She's had a multitude of prior romantic partners," Kawathra said with a hint of bitterness. "I've had zero. Statistically, she doesn't need him as much as I do."

  "Need?"

  "For psychological grounding," she explained. "Datamancers who die repeatedly without consort anchors have an 87% higher rate of complete ego dissolution. I've already lost pieces of myself. I don't want to lose more."

  The Corpse Seeker turned onto the long driveway leading to my house, passing by the large moss-covered boulders. Through Kappa's view screens, I could see my damaged porch and the general disaster area that had become my front yard over the past few days.

  “Our planet is full of nice humans, why are you interested in Piotr specifically?” I wondered.

  “He likes charts and he gave me the most amazing suggestion to optimize-chart my charts!”

  Welp, I walked right into that one, since it was my suggestion as Piotr’s internal monologue.

  "Hrm. What if you shared him?" I suggested.

  Kawathra's beak opened and closed several times. "Shared?"

  "Pradavarian culture already normalizes non-exclusive relationships, right? You said that Linari's had dozens of partners and your fleet commanders collect entire kobold harems, yes?"

  "Yes, but..." she clicked her talons. "Sharing implies cooperation. Scrutimancers and Datamancers don't typically cooperate. We exist in different operational spheres. Linari is a simple ground-sniffer who murders physical things while I'm a complex processing unit who opposes liminal memetics."

  "Maybe it's time to try something different, Miss Anti-memetics Division girl," I shrugged. "This whole invasion has been anything but typical for you, yes?"

  She pulled up a new holographic spreadsheet and began calculating. "Joint custody arrangements would require scheduling protocols... resource allocation... clearly defined boundaries..."

  "Or," I prompted with a smile, "you could just talk to each other like normal people."

  "Devving the likelihood of outcome first. I predict that in a pack, neither of us would emerge as a clear Alpha since I'm an accomplished Arch-Datamancer and she's an Alpha-Scrut. Also, we're not people," she added. "We're tools, military assets of the Frontenachii Colonial—"

  “You’re on my world,” I said. “And you’re my hostage, yes? You must have realized it by now—I don’t use guns. I’ve allowed you to step outside your box. Keep going. Take more steps.”

  The Datamancer fell silent, looking contemplative. Then she summoned up more charts.

  Through the surveillance projection, Nexxali was boasting to Piotr about the time she'd fought a crystallized vampire thrall with nothing but a spatula and determination.

  "—and then the spatula broke, so I had to use a toaster!"

  "Marshal," Galateya interrupted with a bothered expression, "none of that explains clearly how you and Ash supposedly defeated forty vampire thralls."

  "Oh, that's easy," Nexxali stated. "He used their own weapons against them! Classic human strategy. Very… uhhhh… Stormy-o, quick, name me a wise Earth battle tactician!”

  “Sun Tzu.”

  “Yes that one. Very tactical and genius!"

  "Sun Tzu wrote about fighting vampire thralls when?" Galateya demanded.

  "Chapter seven, verse twelve," Nexxali said with feline confidence. "'When fighting the undead, become the undead!'”

  “Right,” Piotr laughed. “That kinda fits with the bit about knowing yourself and knowing your enemy."

  I was pretty sure Sun Tzu never wrote about the undead, but I appreciated Nexxali's commitment to bullshitting endless circles around the dragon.

  "Look," I told Kawthy, "if you want to pursue something with Piotr, that's between you two. And maybe Linari. Figure it out together. I'm not going to play matchmaker for interdimensional romance."

  "But you could strongly suggest to local reality that—"

  "No."

  "Mildly suggest?"

  "No."

  "Accidentally mention how great I am at spreadsheets while Stormy’s nearby?"

  "...Maybe." I conceded.

  Her eyes lit up. "I'll take it! Also, I promise on my 57’373’824’923 data archives that I will never reveal your identity as the Emperor without your explicit permission!"

  "That's very specific."

  "Specific promises are the best promises! They're quantifiable!" She pulled up another spreadsheet. "Would you like to see my loyalty probability matrices? I've color-coded them for your convenience!"

  "That's really not—"

  "The blue ones represent scenarios where I remain loyal! The red ones are betrayal scenarios, but see how small they are? Less than 0.003%! That's basically a rounding error!"