Ndiogou recoiled with a cry as the NutriMaterializer scanned his brain. There were a few scattered chuckles from the other beings seated around the cafeteria tables, but most of the creatures never even looked up from their meals. After a moment, the beam shut off.

  “I’ve got some bad news, fellas,” the machine said, its tone just as chipper as ever. “You guys have completely different ideas about what this ‘corn’ thing is supposed to do.”

  The human rubbed ineffectually at his forehead as a look of confusion crossed over his features.

  “What do you mean by ‘different ideas’?” he demanded. “It’s corn! It’s got the same properties no matter who you ask.”

  “Far be it from me to disagree with a customer, but I’ve looked inside both of your brains, and you appear to have vastly different expectations of what this ‘corn’ is supposed to be. I gave your feathered friend there exactly what he expected, not sure why he got so mad at me.”

  “Bawk?” the rooster asked.

  “Easy there, big guy. You expect every meal to give you substantial gains to your strength. In fact, it appears that you have a Special Ability purely related to healing up and getting stronger when you eat nutritious food. Of course, if that’s not what you wanted, I can provide you with something that trades nutrition for taste…but your brain doesn’t lie.”

  “Wait, you gave him a meal that was exactly what he wanted, and it was going to make him stronger?” Ndiogou complained, shaking his head. “Isn’t that cheating somehow?”

  The NutriMaterializer hummed for a moment. During the lull in the conversation, someone from near the back of the line yelled about the long wait and stomped off.

  “Great news for you, chum!” the machine burbled with simulated cheer. “I can offer you the exact food I gave your friend. Do you want to order some?”

  “Yes!” Ndiogou shouted. As soon as the bucket materialized, he grabbed the container and slid into the nearest available chair. He looked around for a utensil before shrugging and shoving his hand into the bucket of something that was almost completely unlike corn. Grabbing as much of the dripping kernels as he could, he shoved them in his mouth. When his superhuman body rejected the foreign substance violently, the small yellow piece of synthetic vegetable flew from his mouth like shotgun pellets.

  The creature opposite Ndiogou was blasted clean off its chair, which was probably for the best as the distance saved it from being further defiled by the human’s previous meal, which immediately followed his current one.

  “It’s like there’s a war in my mouth and everyone caught dysentery at the same time!” he shouted.

  “Bawk,” the rooster answered before walking over and sniffing the pool of vomit that covered most of the table.

  “What…what are you doing? Don’t eat that!” the human cried.

  But it was too late. Charlemagne used his ability to manipulate mana to lift and funnel the few kernels of “corn” that had stuck to the desk.

  “Bawk!” he demanded of his party member.

  “You…want me to eat more?” Ndiogou moaned. “Even assuming I wanted to, which I very much do not, I can’t. You saw what happened.”

  The rooster drew himself up to his full height and glared at the human. Behind him, the cheerful vending machine had already moved on to serving the next customer, its saccharine voice cutting above the hubbub that seemed to fill the cafeteria. Ndiogou looked around, desperate to find a way to pass this particular cup.

  “You…you know,” he said, as he noticed something that suddenly seemed very important, “it seems like a lot of the diners here aren’t actually real.”

  “Bawk?” Charlemagne queried. “Bawk bawk bawk.”

  “No, no! I’m not just changing the subject,” Ndiogou promised, putting his hands up in a pleading gesture. “There’s a reason that I’m mentioning this now. Actually, it has been kind of bothering me for a while. For instance, the guy that just yelled at us from the back of the line…he must be a real person. All the others just waited for their turn without saying anything. Isn’t that interesting?”

  “Bawk,” the rooster said dismissively before gesturing to the almost-full bucket of not quite corn.

  “Y-Yes. I am getting to that, I promise. Listen, I can’t eat the corn. I’m pretty sure it’s poisonous to me and I would die if I tried to eat too much. You don’t want that, do you?”

  The rooster looked unconvinced for a moment before finally shrugging in a surprisingly human manner.

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  “Bawk,” he answered.

  “That is deeply hurtful,” the human complained. “But your point is well taken. At any rate, let’s try something here…”

  Ndiogou stared intently at the creature right across from him. After having been blasted from its seat, it had returned without comment and resumed eating in silence. It held a strange utensil in its upper right appendage, which seemed to be some sort of omnitool: that is, it could scoop, stab, and cut as needed. It was dipping the utensil into a type of thick soup or stew and then transferring the utensil deep into an oval orifice right between its small, beady eyes. The human waited until the utensil had just finished emerging from the bowl and was headed toward the “mouth”, and then made the ole switcheroo. The creature finished its bite without reaction and went for another.

  Both the rooster and the human watched intently, wondering what would happen next. The utensil went into the bucket and then emerged back out, the spoon-like portion filled with a number of kernels of the “corn”. They went straight into the being’s mouth. Then the utensil descended again.

  Three bites turned into five bites. Five became ten, and then ten became the rest of the bucket.

  “Bawk!” the rooster cried, turning his attention back to Ndiogou.

  “Well…it’s gotta…it’s gonna…how can. Arggh!” the human screamed, putting his hands on his cheeks and looking around the room nervously. Charlemagne stared harder, and a menacing aura whipped up around the angry avian. Ndiogou gulped.

  Just as the human was about to throw in the towel and beg the System to teleport him anywhere else, something wonderful happened. The creature, having finished its meal, stood up and began to saunter towards a nonexistent exit. It never made it. Instead, it suddenly erupted into a glorious fountain of yellow and green, spewing a fluid all over the room that shone so brightly to Charlemagne’s Special Ability that the rooster knocked over half of the diners in his quest to slurp down every last drop. He became a one-rooster feeding frenzy, jumping from table to table and even using a mana shield as a scraper to clean the ceiling.

  Back at his table, Ndiogou once again threw up.

  When the gruesome sight was finally finished, Charlemagne plopped down in the center of the cafeteria, his gut heavy with the best meal of his short life. And the Squiggles agreed.

  Charlemagne felt great. Not just good, but great. The meal had left him both satiated and jovial. The strange food-dispensing box had really redeemed itself, and Ndiogou had done a great job too. Everything was going to be all right. The rooster fluffed up his feathers and, despite the bright light suffusing the cafeteria, prepared to take a nap.

  It was then that he realized that he was still a captive, separated from his chicks, his hens, his endless supply of actual corn, and his servants. This was no time to rest: he needed to figure out how to escape and return to his farm.

  “Bawk,” he demanded, fighting back the wave of fatigue that threatened to overwhelm him. He jumped up and turned to face Ndiogou.

  “I don’t know, but maybe some of the others have found out more information,” the human suggested. “Maybe if you’d stop turning off the Party chat, we could all help each other out,” he added with a healthy dose of angst.

  “Bawk!” the rooster retorted.

  “Once again, that’s very mean,” Ndiogou complained. “But you’ve got a point. We need to find the others and see what they’ve learned about this place.

  Back in Grimfalk’s demiplane, the theropod deity turned his head to the right and took a big swig of his Skunkjooz, which was dispensed through a long flexible tube attached to a cap that sat atop his head. But this wasn’t just any drink-dispensing cap: it possessed a self-contained dimensional storage that allowed for huge quantities of different beverages to be stored for later consumption. It could even keep these drinks stored at different temperatures. Grimfalk preferred his Skunkjooz on the warm side, but most other deities drank it chilled.

  Longclaw padded into the room just as Grimfalk finished a huge swig.

  “I can’t believe how much you spent on that stupid hat. It makes you look lazy, ridiculous, and low-class all at once.”

  The other theropod burped.

  “And you’ve been sucking down Skunkjooz like it’s going extinct! Are you even keeping track of how much you’ve drank today?” Longclaw complained.

  “Well, I’ve drank a lot today. I’ll probably drink a lot tomorrow, too. What’s the problem? I’m still earning DKP and we’ve got a pretty nice bit stashed away. Why are you worried?”

  Longclaw flopped down into her chair and picked at a nail.

  “Well, I think I’m a bit worried about Charlemagne. He’s been gone for a while and we haven’t learned anything about what happened to him. Why don’t you give Canius a call and see if he knows anything?”

  “If Canius learns something, he’ll call me when he can,” the theropod deity rebutted. “Let’s not spend what goodwill we have on stuff like that. Besides, have you seen the new guy?”

  “You mean that new guy?” Longclaw answered as she pointed to a new, larger display that dominated the far end of the living room area. The screen showed a large rooster being eaten by a much larger bear; in high definition, of course.

  “Arrgh!” Grimfalk yelled, flailing his arms in anger at the death of the newest Champion. “I really thought that he was going to pan out in the long run.”

  “You never even bothered to learn his name,” Longclaw retorted. “Don’t try to tell me that you had faith in his long-term survival.”

  “Well, it’s just that I’ve got so many new Champions…I don’t have time to track all of them,” the theropod deity admitted. “It’s been a while since I’ve had to keep track of so many creatures at once.”

  “Yes, more than sixty million years…you’ve have plenty of time to get rusty. But you’ll get the hang of it. I know you will.”

  Grimfalk smiled at Longclaw, and then reached up and took off his drink-dispensing hat. He pushed himself to his feet with a grunt.

  “Come on; let’s go get some fresh air. I’ve been sitting on this couch so long, I think the fabric is starting to fuse into my scales.”