My Bad Boy Werewolf Quadrillionaire Space Lord

Epilogue 3: 'Introducing The Chosen One'

Like every quest a hack author makes up —imaging it to be the most original thing since Tolkien — it began on a dark and tempestuous night, in a tavern.

In this particular case, it began in a fairly new, upscale bar attached to a microbrewery called 'neaTly WettisH liquor'. The patrons, far from the surly and grizzled ruffians that normally decorated the opening of a quest story, were almost universally clean and well-groomed. Good cheer and pleasant smells were all that permeated the atmosphere.

It helped that the barkeep, a tall thin man who looked a great deal like Alan Rickman playing Rambo, had more guns than bottles of booze set behind the counter. And not just guns, but the kind of high-velocity weapons that are generally considered very illegal in a place where a stray bullet could break a habitation dome and bleed air into the vacuum of space.

And as for a dark and stormy night, well, tonight was a solar eclipse. And this bar was in the Sea of Tranquility, currently on the dark side of the Moon.

In the middle of this no so dark and distinctly un-seedy tavern, a barkeep polished a glass with a rag. Not because the glass wasn't clean, but because the barkeep found he wasn't necessarily recognized as a man who served drinks unless he did something stereotypically barkeep-like.

It occurred to the barkeep, that it might have something to do with the small country's worth of small arms on display behind the bar.

But a sudden whirl of wind interrupted the barkeep's musings. A flash of darkness that drank the dim lights of the room, a gasp of surprise from several patrons, and then a...

A fart, just as the swirling darkness disappeared.

The barkeep turned his head slowly, considering replacing the rag and glass in his hand with the shotgun directly under the bar. "I told you before, you need to portal outside. The last time you jumped straight in here, it dumped one of my patrons into the middle of a socialite scrum on your yacht."

"He married a very wealthy heiress a few months later," a man said, standing in the middle of the room. The man was wearing a surprisingly neat looking black button-down shirt, though it looked like he had only bothered with a couple of the buttons. But the comfortable tan and easy grin were unmistakeable, and the man in the room had a face the barkeep would recognize anywhere.

Which made the barkeep somewhat unique. After all, most women, some men, and a surprising number of Republican Congressmen, wouldn't recognize the man who had just stepped out of the portal as long as he was wearing a shirt.

"That heiress has a crippling cocaine addiction and a string of unhappy marriages," the barkeep replied.

"Which means your patron will probably be back to medicate, and can afford the expensive stuff. So, you're welcome, Lanval." The man stepped across the room, and sat down in front of the barkeep. He then set a small black credit card on the table.

The card just said 'Luca Cardego'.

"Everyone here can drink on me for the rest of the night," Luca said, and he spun his barstool around, nearly flinging himself off it from the centrifugal force. "And that is a pittance compared to what I'm probably going to have to pay you to agree to this request of mine."

"The answer's no," Lanval said firmly, and did put the glass away this time.

"You're supposed to wait to hear what I'm going to ask."

"Well, it's you here and not Viviana, which means you're not asking me to do classic mercenary work," Lanval said. To help make his point, he set the shotgun onto the bar, and started cleaning it with the rag. "I'm willing to bet you a yacht — wait, your version of a yacht — that it has something to do with one of those cultural misfit refugee colonies you have on that planet of yours."