Piotr Grabowski swallowed nervously as he adjusted the gray lynx head one final time atop of his medieval laminar armor. Through the black mesh below the yellow eye-glass lenses, he could see Molly Malone's pub looking deceptively normal in the late evening light.

  Only the eerily empty street and a gargantuan centipede looming above the buildings like an unexpected Titanic blocking half of Krakowskie Przedmie?cie broke the illusion that everything was fine.

  "Alright, my brave warriors," Anka called from the driver's seat of her battered Honda, passing back bottles of ?ywiec. "Liquid courage for everyone. We're making history here!"

  "History of headlines," muttered Tomek, his blue-silver werewolf Wotchler costume only half-on. "'Local Furries Eaten by Actual Space Wolves.'"

  "Don't be dramatic," Anka said, downing her beer in quick gulps. "They haven't eaten anyone yet.”

  “They shot like three presidents in the head,” Piotr pointed out, accepting the ?ywiec bottle and opening his lynx maw wide to drink it.

  “And they’re promising to bring them back to life,” Anka stated, glancing at her phone screen. “Or so I heard.”

  Piotr sighed.

  “New rule. Use your fursona, Wotchler character name, or something else culturally significant. From now on, I'm the Wicked Witch." She stretched and pulled a green screen zentai-style mask over her face, adding a simple black witch hat with green fluffy ears above it. She was wearing her basic chainmail armor and a green cape from the Renaissance fair she managed this summer.

  "The Wicked Witch?" Piotr asked. “Why?”

  "Because safeties. I am now Elphaba from the Wizard of Oz. I'm weak to water, so I only drink ?ywiec or Tyskie!" she held up a bottle with a grin. “See?”

  “I don’t get it,” Piotr frowned. “Is this your idea?”

  “Yep, I just came up with it! It’s called a layer of social privacy,” Elphaba huffed, hiding her phone in a leather pouch. “Get with the program. We don’t want the aliens to know our real names. What if they’re all weird stalkers?”

  “Why would they be weird stalkers?” Tomek asked.

  “We don’t know what they are,” the Witch pointed out, waving a gloved hand. “We don’t know their intentions, we don’t know what their culture is like. We don’t know shit. Hell, we could cause an international incident by fucking up first contact and then everyone’s gonna blame us or worse. Also, if I die, report it to Napoleon.”

  “Who’s Napoleon?” Piotr wondered.

  “My General,” Elphaba explained absolutely nothing. “French. Little dude. Died on May 5, 1821 on the island of Saint Helena. Recently got better. You can find him at the top of my phone contact list.”

  Piotr choked on his beer.

  “I got better too. After that cursed little girl dumped a bucket of water on me,” Elphaba cackled. “Anyways, no real names. Again: generic historic, character, or famous names only. Or your fursona, as long as it’s not plastered everywhere online linked to your real name.”

  Piotr thought for a moment. "Aight. I’ll go with StormoLyx, my character from Wotchler."

  "You do you," Anka, aka The Wicked Witch, said. "Everyone gets name tags, so you don't fuck it up."

  The others decided on their chosen names, declaring them to their coordinator who wrote them out on simple laminated badge name tags with a thick permanent marker and clipped the names to their armor.

  "Aight! Let's go make some alien friends," the Wicked Witch declared, getting up and making her chainmail skirt jiggle.

  Piotr chugged his beer, the cold liquid doing little to calm his nerves. Then he snapped the lynx mouth closed. Part of him, the sensible programmer part working for the European office of CrawdTech screamed that approaching armed alien soldiers in his comicon outfit was insane. But the other part, the one that had spent months hand-sewing and assembling this costume and imagining his tragic OC lynx Wotchler backstory, was practically vibrating with excitement at meeting wolf-people from space.

  "I'm going first," he announced, surprising himself.

  “Aight, brave Stormo,” Elphaba waved him on. “We will drink to your sacrifice if you get shot.”

  “Gee thanks,” he let out, guessing that his laminar armor would absolutely not stop a shot from one of the alien guns.

  The pub’s door creaked as he entered. The main floor was eerily empty, chairs still askew from patrons who'd fled. The bartender, a weathered man in his sixties, stood behind the bar, polishing a glass with a lost look, staring at the ceiling-mounted TV where the news was showing giant centipedes and moon cube explosions in a slideshow of doom.

  "Excuse me," Piotr said through his costume head, his voice muffled. "Where are the aliens?"

  The bartender just stared with a thousand yard stare.

  Piotr opened his lynx maw wide, his brown hair already plastered with sweat. "The wolf ladies? With the guns?"

  The bartender's eyes widened further, taking in the hyper-realistic gray lynx head and shiny Wotchler armor set. Then, wordlessly, he pointed to a stairwell. Boisterous laughter and what sounded like singing drifted up from below.

  "Thanks." Piotr snapped the jaw closed, took a deep breath that smelled of sweat, foam rubber and his own anxiety, and descended.

  The basement pub area hit him with a wall of noise.

  Seven wolf-women, each easily seven feet tall, were scattered around several pushed-together tables. Empty bottles covered every surface. One was arm-wrestling another while the rest cheered. Their black hexagonal-textured armor gleamed slightly, massive weapons leaning carelessly against walls.

  They were absolutely, thoroughly drunk.

  Every lupine head swiveled toward him. Seven pairs of eyes featuring tones of gold, amber, silver locked onto his gray lynx form. The silence stretched.

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  Then the nearest brown wolf let out an ear-piercing squeal of delight.

  "OH MY SLAYER, LOOK!" She lunged forward with alarming speed, scooping Piotr up like he weighed nothing. "WHAT AN ADORABLE ARMORED FLOOF!"

  Before Piotr could process what was happening, he was deposited on her lap, her arms wrapped around him like he was a giant teddy bear. She nuzzled the top of his costume head with her snout.

  "So SOFT! And the little ears! Sisters, look at his little ears! Ehe he he he. Look at this primitive, barbaric armor!"

  The other wolves crowded around, cooing and reaching out to paw at the various parts of his costume, jiggling the laminar plates. Piotr's fear evaporated, replaced by bewilderment. He'd expected interrogation, suspicion, maybe violence. Not... this.

  "Hi. I'm… I'm StormoLyx," he managed, as the wolf woman squished him against her chest armor.

  "Storrrmy O Lynnx!" she repeated, rolling the 'r' with a growl that vibrated through his entire body. "Like the weather, yes? I'm Alpha-Scrut Linari! These are my pack beta-sisters!" She gestured wildly, nearly knocking over several bottles. "We're from the 881st Division! Best division! Fought seventeen planetary-suppression campaigns under Commander Silly and Datamancer Kaw!"

  "Kawthy is gonna throw a fit when she sees about how many shots you had tonight on her performance chart," one of the wolves chortled.

  "Like I give a flying fuck," Linari barked a drunken laugh. "Let her stew in magpie juices. She's hidin' up there counting many numbahs and we're down here... executing the will of our 'great' leaders with our noses n' fists!"

  The stairs creaked as more humans descended, some in full costumes, others in partial armor with basic masks, ears and tails. They were met with equal enthusiasm.

  "MORE!" another wolf cheered. "Ha ha! The adorable, armored, tiny predators multiply!"

  "Yass! A whole barbaric warrior band!" A third wolf clapped.

  Anka jumped off the stairwell step with theatrical confidence of fluttering emerald cape, noticing that Piotr was being embraced and not shot in the head. "Hi! I am the Wicked Witch! And these are my besties: Nikola Tesla, Garret of Rivion, Robin Hood, Gwenifer of Hindenberg, Galileo Galilei, Miyamoto Musashi," she gestured, “And I see you’ve already met StormoLyx.”

  Piotr found himself relaxing into Linari's embrace.

  "So," he ventured, "you're not from around here?"

  Linari laughed, the sound something between human mirth and a howl. "From here? Oh, little lynx, I'm from the Western Reaches, Gloomhaven Citadel, NUSA, Earth 92-42-56!”

  “You’re from another Earth? How many Earths are there?” Piotr wondered.

  “Oh, like fitty bazillions,” Linari slurred. “Maybe the Admiral knows for sure, but we sure don’t.”

  “So there’s billions of Earths?” The Wicked Witch tilted her hat. “Doesn’t that mean infinite resources? Infinite gold? Infinite potential manpower?”

  “Technically, maybe, but mostly no,” Linari shook her brown mane. “See, there’s only a… uhh… what did those Moths call it… A finite curve of Earths accessible by dimensional gates. Out of that finite number, most worlds are deff-fined as doomed, or corpse worlds where nothing is alive or something questionable is alive that instantly swallows up entire warships or vanishes pradavarians landing parties. It’s acshllly super rare to find a planet with a rating of ‘Safe’ like disss one.”

  "What’s your Earth like then?" Piotr's head spun from the revelations of the wolf alien.

  "Lots of hungry monsters. And walls. So many giant walls. Keeping out dungeon breaks, hiding from Celestorm manifestations, the usual shit." She shuddered dramatically. "Signing an eternal life-contract as a Scrut Knight with the Frontenachii Omnicorp was the best decision I ever made! Sure, military service forever, but better than being eaten by a ceramic wyvern like my mom was!"

  "Forever?" The Wicked Witch leapt up onto a barstool next to them.

  "Eternal contract, yeah. I mean, I get leave if I want it and vacation days pile up over the decades," Linari shrugged. "But go back to what? An empty house in the ruins of Gloomhaven? Nah. Last time I heard… things got so shit that time stopped working on my Earth. The regiment is my family now. Plus good pay and full resurrection coverage."

  "Resurrection coverage?" Tesla asked.

  "Oh yes! Very important. I've died five times. Once to a void kraken, once to particularly nasty food poisoning on Miarllax-9, then to some rebels in three different worlds. Woke up in the Incarnator good as new! Hurt like hell though. Death always does. The recovery took a while.”

  “How long of a while?” Garret asked.

  “A day to get better from my first death. The second death, four days. The sixth one will probably be worse, maybe two weeks. The Incarnators work best for the top Brass, the Frontenachii Highborns and their Omnid Knights and whatnot, we lowborn mutts suffer from psyche decay issues after each demise. It’s not all bad, thooo… We just get put on leave for a bit on a niiiice… safe planet like yours, see?”

  The costumed humans exchanged glances. These weren't just aliens, they were dimension-hopping, death-insured, monster-fighting mercenaries who for some inexplicable reason thought that humans in animal and Renaissance armor costumes were the cutest things ever.

  "Hey," one of the other wolves called out, gold eyes bright with alcohol and enthusiasm. "Do you hunt in packs? Are the bright colors to warn prey of your toxicity? I see that some of you are part-human, yea?"

  "I... yes?" Piotr said, deciding to roll with it.

  "Very toxic. Our blood’s super poisonous. Don’t bite us please," Elphaba commented.

  "KNEW IT!" The gold-eyed wolf slammed the table triumphantly. "Linari owes me fifty credits! The bright ones are venomous, pay up!"

  “Ugh, Alini,” Linari grumbled good-naturedly, tapping a crystal ring on her finger with another ring worn by Alini. "Fine, fine. Transfer fifty creds to Alini. But I was right about them being pack hunters!"

  “Shoulda made a bet then,” Alini grinned.

  "Are you also from Earth 92-42-56, Alini?" Elphaba wondered.

  "Naw," the silver-haired wolf replied. "I'm from . Left it in 1988 when the Denver dungeon swallowed up all of Colorado and was about to cut United States in half. Fucking lawyer infestation. I wasn't gonna stick around and watch everyone I know get turned into lawyers n' shit. Lots of us signed the offered Frontenachii contract right then and there to get outta dodge."

  "Dungeons turn people into lawyers?" Piyotr asked.

  "Some do," Alini sighed. "Most normal ones expand inward. It's the outward expanding ones that are hell-a-dangerous, they can swallow entire planets. Nobody noticed what Denver was doing until it was too late."

  "Dang," Piyotr let out, feeling concerned that one of the invaders would carry dungeon spores on their boots or something.

  "Don't worry, babe," Linari commented, seemingly catching onto his stray thought. "Dungeons can't bloom on your Earth. It's waaaaay too... Uhhhh... Linear for that. Aetheric density ain't right n' stuff."

  “So, how are you enjoying our local pub?” Elphaba asked.

  “Lots!” Linari burped, lifting a beer bottle. “Dis is good shit. A third of our day division already got sloshed to the gills and went to sleep in the Corpse Seeker. N' Commander Silly peaced out back up to her ship to hang out on the Pleasure deck in one of them… Voidblood baths. Weaklings!”

  “You sleep in the crystal centipede then?” Piotr asked.

  “Yep,” Linari nodded, petting his head. “He he he, soft. Safest place in the universe. Ain’t nothing can punch through our Fissie.”

  “You paid for this alcohol, right?” Elphaba wondered. “Or are you claiming it as victorious invaders?”

  “Paid.” Alini nodded. “Got this place reserved for ‘all we can drink’ tonight. Sillicia gave the human barman upstairs a cube of gold about the size of his fist. Said we can celebrate hard tonight since the Princess was found alive and well. Back to the grind tomorrow though.”

  “What kind of grind?” Elphaba continued her witchy interrogation.

  “The usual kind,” Alini yawned with a snap of sharp teeth. “Waving guns around, murdering any local nobles who might disrespectfully disagree with the Frontenachii Aegis n’ sniffing out all secrets. We’re still searching for… whasss his name…”

  “Emperor of Humanity,” Linari supplied. “We’re on a Quest to find his secret Citadel with a Golden Throne from which he rules with psychic powers or someshit. Ssss’ the dumbest thing ever, I swear.”