Something warm pressed against my back and was lightly vibrating with every breath. My heart was beating wildly, my blood rucking through my veins.

That was the very first thing that I was aware of when I woke up.

The second thing I was aware of was my horrible headache. Or, hangover, as the rest of the world probably guessed by what happened yesterday.

Honestly, I didn't remember much besides something about marzipan and beer.

I didn't even know what marzipan was.

Still don't really. I think it might be a food?

Something sharped pricked into my back and I let out a muffled whimper as my headache swarmed up and began to eat at my ears.

Without turning around I knew who was in the bed with me. The room was dark and I couldn't actually see anything. The griffon was warm and her loud purring muffled out my breathing.

Catastrophe. My face burned a little as I tried to figure out what happened. Had we been together last night?

Something bit into my ear.

"Ow." I grunted then blinked, suddenly realize exactly why she was so loud.

A few crimson drops of my own blood trickled down my head and between my eyes. I whimpered lightly. A horrible horrible place to be when I couldn't remember what happened yesterday. Why did I just whimper?

My eyes had still not adjusted to whatever light is in the room.

And then I realized it; There was a wing across my face. One with feathers and wings and...

I felt myself blush darker as my thoughts settled on an explanation that made me want to laugh. There were very few logical explanations for this. Well...

The griffin stirred after a few minutes of me enjoying the embrace and being in slight pain from my now split ear. Ow. "You were great last night." She rumbled, the purring stopping.

I blinked and stopped dead cold. "Oh."

She pulled the wing out of my eyes and let the harsh sunlight directly into my unadjusted eyes. This morning seemed to be about causing me pain.

The bed was soft at least. I'd give the hotel that. I turned to look at Cata, turning away from the sun.

She stretched out and then bent her spine low, cracking it several times and then did about the same with her wings, almost swaying them teasingly at me. I had to shut my eyes. Damn my hormones to hell and back.

She crooned lightly at something and I opened my eyes to see her beak, still drenched slightly in my blood, smiling slightly at me.

"Uh." I vocalized my confusion in the most concise manner I could at the time.

"Relax, I'm sure the bar was ok with how you kept them all awake." She smirked again.

Damn it. I lost my virginity and I couldn't remember anything. This sucked.

I smiled awkwardly at her. "How drunk was I?"

"Not too badly, Neon Pegasus." I flinched. That was one of the things I remembered.

She turned to leave and shot me a smirk. "Relax. We didn't actually do anything together." Her tongue shot out and licked the blood off of her beak and she sauntered off in a sultry manner.

"Damn you sexy bitch." I mumbled, me eyes following her as she left and my embarrassment almost quantifiable as a taste in the air. I stood up awkwardly from the bed and jumped off, dreams of feathers and of other things ghosting through my head as against my will I plotted out exactly what she had tried to make me think we did.

Oh yeah, and my head was still pounding. Did I forget to mention that?

I decided to ignore most of the world and stepped into the bathroom to look over what I looked like. My left ear was split. A little furrow at the tip of it, but still, it was split. I felt marked by her.

Oh yeah, and there was a little blood on my face and head. A short little shower took care of that, not that I had any soap. Or really cared for my appearance.

The ear was just a manner of pride damn it.

----

I walked down stairs after toweling myself dry, naturally leaving the soggy mess of a towel in the room for whatever passed for a maid to pick up. I had sealed my ear up with a puff of fire magic, though since I was trying it without a focus I had just barely managed to not blow off my ear. Instead, my ears were still ringing and my head was still pounding.

"Ivan!" There was a cheer for me as I entered the main room of the bar that made me stop cold and check to make sure that I hadn't actually blown off my ears.

I focused my gaze on Canary who looked at me oddly. "You really can't hold your alcohol, can you." He muttered, shaking his head. There was a faint glow from his pouch and then my thoughts were apples for a few amazing seconds, sweet, tangy fruits of love.

And then it stopped and so did my headache.

I smiled brightly at him. "You are the best friend ever!" I felt like shouting it until my mind caught up with me and said that telling the world that I had a hangover cure while I was in a bar was not the best idea in the world.

I calmly walked over to him, my hooves letting out semi soft clopping noises on the wood floor and gave him a brief hug before turning to face Boss. Her prosthetic twitched. "Hey. While we are in town, we might as well try to get that looked at."

She looked at me pointedly. "We spent the last of our bits getting the ship fixed up."

In hindsight we bought a better balloon that could withstand steam instead of getting the entire ship fixed up. But, even selling most of the crap weapons we got off of the slavers had just barely been enough.

Catastrophe smirked at me and I rolled my eyes at my own blush that sprouted up. The griffon turned to Boss. "Hey... did you finish paying the doctor?"

Boss shook her head.

Catastrophe rolled her eyes. "Are you fucking kidding me?" She said lightly, though her voice was coarse. She held up a taloned limb and counted off the joints.

I blinked at her and waited for a second. "What are yo-?" I got cut off by someone walking the bar through the door.

"Boss? You and your party better come with us." Once again, another strike at me not being the leader of the group. I let my gaze wander around the bar and found that there were indeed bits of shoggoth related memorabilia, and a glass case that apparently had a few shards of the magic knife that the great and mighty hero Ivan used to defeat the demon blob.

Kinda flattering that someone would fake that. On the level of instinct, the sort of instinct that let you know when fate was about to dump a load of hell on you, I knew that only a single shard of the metal in the display case used to hold part of my soul.

I followed after Boss, Catastrophe behind me thankfully so I didn't have to worry about keeping my mind off of her, and Canary beside me.

You know, it occurred to me that I never really thought about Canary. I mean, I knew he was there and all, but I never really went out of my way to talk to him. Considering how there were four people in my group and I never talked to one of them I realized that group dynamics we-

Ow. Why yes I walked into a pole. "Ow." I said, stepping around it and trying not to thank why there was a random pole in the street.

Boss looked at me oddly. "You are the least observant person ever." I got a nice look at her sharp canines and felt a flash of jealousy for a second before I stomped it out. The blackened street met my gaze as I looked back down at it like an old friend, marveling at it for a long second.

Catastrophe cleared her throat and I decided to try walking without thinking. A bit of wind stung at my ear, still slightly pained from where I had burnt it. I closed my eyes for a second and took in the scenery of Oblivion.

Stalls after stall held all sorts of things. Drugs. Anti fertility pills. Fertility charms. Cigars. Something called rock candy. Of course, most of these were tucked into alley ways and the like in case they offended some of the more powerful beings in the port.

"So... what do we do when we tell the doctors we don't have the money?" I wondered out loud.

Catastrophe growled. "We do their dirty work and kiss enough ass that they don't dissect us and use us in their twisted fucking psycho experiments." For once, I thought she meant fucking.

I suddenly didn't want to see the doctor.

Sadly, the rest of the trip was rather quick and lasted only a few minutes before we were escorted into a lavishly furnished building that wouldn't have looked out of place in a fancy mansion. Books lined the walls with exotic titles like Physiology and How to use it to Manipulate the body, and others such as Pain, how to Cause it.

Not a friendly place, though the light wood on the shelves off set a little of the creepy mansion feel. So it was like a regular waiting room filled with outdated material and with no real comfy seats to sit in.

"Wait here for the doctor to see you." And just like that, we chose our seats in the waiting room and did waiting room things. There wasn't a coloring book handy, and I hadn't thought to bring my code book, so I just went to the old stand by of thinking a lot. Well, I would've if I wasn't busy trying to think of reasons why I didn't mind Catastrophe biting of parts of my ear and eating it.

Couldn't really think of a reason that didn't paint my mind state in a bad light.

I shrugged it off and smiled. If having a griffon maim me in my sleep was what made me happy, who was I to judge?

Wait a second. What did I just think?

Whatever.

The door opened again and a pony beckoned us through. Naturally I stood up first to try and distract myself from myself.

Wow. This narrative style is really not painting me in the best light, is it.

I shook my head of the thoughts and looked at the rest of my companions. Catastrophe stood up and on reflex I looked away from her, knowing my mind would betray me if I kept my gaze on her form. I looked at Canary instead who had actually been reading a book from the shelves with quite a bit of interest. Boss had been filing her claws with a piece of pavement stone, leaving bits of dusted rock and dusted claw on the chair she had been sitting in. Which was red fabric. I mentioned that, right? It was like every other waiting room, filled with seats covered in red fabric.

I walked in through the hallways and didn't look at the odd painting on the wall that wouldn't have looked out of place in front of the room that a boss lurked in a video game.

"Where is the payment." A griffon said, looking decidedly bored. He sat next to a table that was covered in gore and had a few rusty tools in some sort of bath, probably cleansing. The room also looked like a doctor's office besides a few suspicious looking filing cabinets. White walls. A single lamp.

Boss stood at the front of the party. "We don't have it."

He turned and looked at us like a lion looks at a mouse. Far below him and hardly worth his time. "Very well. I assume you know the consequences."

"My name is Doctor Legs." He stated lightly, looking at me directly. "I have heard tale that a certain zebra stopped the destruction of my home. Therefore, I will be lenient. Deliver a few packages for me and all will be well."

It seemed like a simple enough job. "To where?" The words slipped from my mouth.

"So you accept?" He smiled lightly and I looked away from him and his creepy medical tools.

I nodded. "What are we delivering?"

"I need you to dispense my... medicine. To a few people. Don't be shy about it, they won't mob you. I just need you to get this medicine to them." His smirk, which I caught from the corner of eyes, was unnerving.

Drug dealing. Normally, now that I thought about it, I would have trouble with that. But considering all the other bad things I had done, like killing in cold blood to advance myself, or killing Skinner, or accidentally mind violating Catastrophe...

Drug dealing wasn't that bad. "So... We just show up and give them the goods?" I asked again.

Catastrophe seemed to look approvingly at me and I felt a corona of heat gather in my brain around where I was thinking. I ignored it. "And then you give me the bits they give you and I don't have a reason to kill you anymore." Dr. Legs said, not moving.

I nodded. "Great doing business with out."

The doctor nodded in kind. "The packages are on the way out."

I turned to leave and so did the rest of my group.

----

Catastrophe stopped, waiting for the group to go out of sight. It was amazing just how loose headed Ivan was. She sighed and shook her head, feeling sorry for him. She walked back to the doctor and nodded. "I'm calling in that favor, doc."

He blinked at her and turned away from cleaning his tools. "What favor?" He asked innocently.

It didn't fool her for a second. She cleared her throat. "The one where I tested the prosthetic for you?"

He nodded vigorously. "Right. That one. What do you want?" He looked around nervously.

"I swore to help him out after he saved my life. It's time I held up my promises." She nodded, knowing her eyes grew into two brassy orbs when conveying her seriousness. She whipped her tail slightly.

"I didn't realize you were inter-"

She shook her head. "I'm not interested in him like that. I need something to help him. His mind is revolting against itself." She spoke smoothly and slightly out of character to how she spoke with the group.

He nodded, his eyes wide. "Right, so you want some medicine?" He walked away from her for only a few moments before finding a vanilla folder and opening it. He sighed before snagging a piece of paper from it and rummaging through a filing cabinet.

He pulled out a small pill bottle and rattled it to make sure there was something in it. He tossed it to her without looking. "Put it in his food. Once a day. Don't let him stop taking it until the bottle runs out. I recall there being bad consequences."

She caught it easily and looked at it. "You are a prosthetics doc. Why do you carry around anti psychotics?" She nodded. They seemed like the right kind...

"They are what I use. Trust me, when you work with people who have their limbs torn off, it gets to you after awhile." He smiled lightly at the wall. "Catastrophe, I would be glad if I never saw you after this."

It really was her fault that he felt like that. Last time she had been here a bomb had gone off and ruined an operation of one of the rulers of the city. Turns out bombs weren't as stable as she had thought they were.

She smiled lightly. "If these are the wrong pills you are going to need one of your own arms." It was a light threat and one that she could afford to make. After all, she had been responsible for ripping off quite a few of the things that he replaced.

She slipped the bottle into her wing pouch and walked out of the building.

----

Boss pawed the hilt of her sword idly, looking at the list that came with the packages. "There are 8 locations listed." She noted aloud, trying to ignore how spacy Ivan was. "Ivan, you did good."

He blinked at her slowly before smiling slightly, though not in a goofy way. She shook her head and felt sorry for him. He was intelligent, but he was missing something. He felt... purposeless was a good way to describe him. Like he was floating free in a sea of thought, only latching on to the few things that caught his fancy.

She sighed lightly and watched the griffon walk out with a new rattle to her step. To be honest, she didn't really like the griffon that much. She understood why she was doing what she was doing to Ivan, but still it unnerved her.

In the wastes, sometimes you just did what you had to. Other times you accepted that someone else could do it better.

Boss drew her magic sword and inspected it for a sign of what it did. No clues.

They needed a goal, one that was better defined than Rej. She had felt herself be shifted to the leader role and accepted it.

----

To be honest, all of the drug sales went far better than she thought they would've. Maybe thinking that something would go wrong was just from being around Ivan for too long, though even then that was unlikely.

They were done within a day, easily making it back in time for her to slip a pill into Ivan's apple that she brought with her.

In fact, sleeping in the same room as him as she was, she knew that she could easily keep him medicated. She wasn't going to let her hero go insane.

It would've been even better if a bomb hadn't gone off the next day.