Aoibhe was regretting the lack of foresight that lead to her leaving the Astrum Vitae without first taking a fistful of painkillers. In hindsight, it should have been obvious that she was going to need some serious chemical assistance to survive doing her errands with Tessa in tow. A headache was already splitting her skull apart and it had been all of five minutes.

  “Oh, what’s tha- hurk!?” Tessa said as she started drifting towards a shop they were passing by, only to be drawn up short when Aoibhe grabbed her by the collar. The cut of her shirt made it impossible to choke her just by grabbing it from behind, even assuming Aoibhe had the strength to pull the more physically fit elf in the first place. That sound effect was entirely for, well, effect.

  “Nothing we need. Do I need to remind you we’re ordering new stuff for the lounge today?” Aoibhe asked tightly.

  “Nothing you need, sure. But how do you know I don’t need it?” Tessa inquired as she walked backwards, pretending to be dragged along by Aoibhe.

  “Because those are kitchen appliances, and if anything works just fine on the ship, it’s the stuff in the galley,” Aoibhe explained with exasperation.

  “Maybe they’re for myself. I’ve got my own needs, y’know. I could be furnishing an apartment. Or my own ship!” Tessa declared nonsensically.

  “An apartment you’d be spending a day or two in every few months at best? Sounds like a waste of money.” Any time she wasn’t speaking, Aoibhe found herself fighting to not grind her teeth in irritation.

  “I never said I had one now, but that’s what storage units are for! There’s no reason I can’t keep an apartment’s worth of furniture in storage until I need it,” Tessa claimed.

  “Aye, or you could do the smart thing and save your money until you actually have a home for your appliances. Why would you want to pay storage fees instead?” Aoibhe questioned in the hopes that the woman would just disappear in a puff of logic. Sadly, reality was not so kind.

  “You can’t tell me what to do with my money. You’re not my mom. Wait…you’re not, right?” Tessa looked over her shoulder at Aoibhe, eyes wide. Seeing that, Aoibhe rolled her own.

  “I wish. Then I could put a leash on you without it being weird,” Aoibhe shot back, fantasizing about how much easier Tessa would be to control. At least, before she remembered that she’d just be dragged around like a child with a malamute.

  “Huh, so that’s what you’re into. I had no idea. Look, there’s a pet store right over there- we could go buy one right now!” Tessa offered flirtatiously…not that Aoibhe thought the offer was genuine in the slightest. More likely it was bait for a joke at her expense, though odds were at least even Tessa would be the butt of her own joke instead.

  “I said without it being weird,” Aoibhe ground out. “I might go for a muzzle though. At least then I wouldn’t have to listen to you make insinuations.”

  “Kinky. That wouldn’t restrain my hands though. I could just text you instead. Unless you wanted to handcuff me too. Unfortunately for you, I know how to escape handcuffs! But just for you, I won’t. Because I don’t kink-shame,” Tessa rambled. Aoibhe’s brain short-circuited trying to figure out what kink-shaming had to do with breaking out of handcuffs. Probably for the best; she wasn’t sure she wanted to know.

  “The punishment for just killing you now cannot possibly be worse than this. How are you even more annoying than usual?” Aoibhe rubbed her throbbing head with one hand while continuing to keep hold of Tessa with the other.

  “Well, it wouldn’t be much of a punishment otherwise, would it?” Tessa said cheekily.

  “I knew it! You’re playing it up on purpose!” Aoibhe accused. People were beginning to stare, but acknowledging it would only encourage the little demon.

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about. Why, being with me is practically a reward. Maybe we should swap our quarters around so we’re roommates. Then you can be with me every hour of every day! Except when I’m in the missile bay. I should ask the captain to have a station for me installed on the bridge. There’s an empty one right next to you, right? We don’t even have a copilot anyway, so that seems like the perfect place for me!” Tessa babbled enthusiastically to Aoibhe’s horror.

  “She can’t possibly be that sadistic…” Aoibhe muttered, too low for Tessa to hear on a public corridor. Next time she saw Miliam, she was going to have to make sure to nip that idea in the bud- even if it was very likely Tessa was messing with her. Even the high odds that she would forget this conversation happened by the time they returned wasn’t much of a comfort.

  “Hey, isn’t that the place we were going to? We passed it so I guess you changed your mind. Where are we going instead?" Tessa asked, getting a groan out of Aoibhe as she realized she’d been so busy worrying that she’d lost track of where she was, passing the store entirely.

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  “That’s the place, aye. Thanks for the reminder,” Aoibhe growled, not sounding at all sincere in her gratitude. Mostly because she blamed Tessa for missing it in the first place, not that that was entirely fair.

  “Great! I’m going to test all the chairs to find out which one is the comfiest!” Tessa declared as if she were a child. Belatedly, Aoibhe realized the elf had somehow slipped free without her noticing and was already heading for the store, forcing her to hurry in order to catch up.

  “Do not. I have a membership card here and if you get us kicked out we’re finding out if you can breathe vacuum!” Aoibhe called after Tessa.

  “I don’t think that’s really something we need to find out. I’m pretty sure the answer is no. Most people can’t breathe vacuum. Or maybe you can, so you’re not sure? Well, I assure you that I can’t…actually, I’ve never tried, so it could be worth testing…” Tessa went off on an absurd tangent that Aoibhe immediately began to tune out, hoping she could get her business taken care of before Tessa’s mind finished wandering and she began causing trouble again.

  Entering the store, Aoibhe went straight for the first employee she saw. If she were just ordering furniture she would have just made the order online, but it was a lot easier to place the sort of custom order she needed in person. It wasn’t so much about the contents of the order as it was about the delivery window. She needed to arrange for it to be prepared immediately and delivered on request so that it would be sent to the Astrum Vitae the moment the ship left dry dock.

  Working on a ship of that size could be very unpredictable. They were small and fast in comparison to the average freighter, and that meant a lot of the jobs they took on were time-sensitive. There was a decent chance that when Miliam found their next job, there would be a short window in which she could accept the job before it became unavailable. On top of that, it was likely that the ship would have to leave immediately in order to complete the contract.

  But the ship didn’t currently have a lounge to deliver to and stowing all that furniture in the hold while it underwent repairs would just make things harder for the mechanics. So if Aoibhe wanted the lounge to be furnished when the Astrum Vitae took to space again, it would have to be done in quickly between the ship’s repairs being completed and it leaving West Gate Station. It was always possible none of that would end up being a concern, but it was better to be safe than sorry.

  “Welcome! Oh, I remember you,” greeted the huli jing clerk when Aoibhe approached the counter. “If I recall correctly, you were here just a month or so ago to have a ship furnished. Was something unsatisfactory, or have you moved onto another ship already?”

  “Nay, we just suffered an…unfortunate incident and everything in the lounge was lost,” Aoibhe recounted, avoiding getting into the whole ‘shot at by a mirazar ship’ part of the story. She didn’t want to get stuck telling the entire story. That aside, she was surprised by the clerk’s memory.

  “I see. So you’d like to order replacements? I can pull up your previous order for reference if you need it,” the clerk offered, tails swishing behind her in a display of body language Aoibhe wasn’t familiar enough with to guess at.

  “Aye. But I’ll need it held until I call for it,” Aoibhe replied as the huli jing woman entered search information into her computer. Notably, she didn’t ask Aoibhe for any of it, apparently remembering off of the top of her head.

  “Same instructions as last time?” the clerk asked, glancing over to Aoibhe momentarily.

  “If you have them saved, then aye. I’ll be needing everything delivered promptly at a moment’s notice,” Aoibhe answered. It suddenly occurred to her that she’d forgotten to watch Tessa, but the elven weapons specialist was still there- she’d simply tuned her out.

  “Of course. Just select which items you need replaced,” instructed the clerk at the same time as text appeared on the display on Aoibhe’s side of the counter. She tapped each of the lounge items that had been destroyed and confirmed the order. “Alright…and there’s you’re total.”

  Even as she waved her grimoire to pay, Aoibhe winced at the price tag. She could afford it- and the additional purchases she’d be making later- but barely. She was really depending on that upcoming payday to reimburse her for this. In her distress over her disciplinary action, Aoibhe had forgotten to arrange access to the ship’s account before departing and the thought of making the trip here with Tessa twice was more than enough to make her decide the pain to her own bank account was the lesser of two evils.

  Speaking of Tessa, she finally stopped yapping on about the possibilities of breathing in outer space when she noticed Aoibhe had led her back out of the shop. That hardly entailed a reprieve for Aoibhe’s sanity, however.

  “Oh, I forgot to try out the chairs. Can we go back?” she asked in a defeated tone.

  “No time. We’re stopping by a second-hand shop to replace the entertainment systems next,” Aoibhe denied with a lengthy sigh.

  “That sounds more fun anyway. Are you taking suggestions? I’ve got some ideas for games that would be great for the whole crew. If we can find a torran console we should pick one up too- we’ll need to jailbreak it so we can play on it with two hands instead of three, but they’ve got some great party games, lemme tell you,” Tessa suggested eagerly.

  “What? Nay. Where would we even find a torran-made console? Their territory is months away and there’s no market for physiologically incompatible devices.” Aoibhe gave Tessa a look she reserved for the clinically insane, which she greatly suspected Tessa was. At the very least Tessa wanted her to think she was, but there wasn’t much difference between being insane and acting it out.

  “You’ve just gotta know where to look. I can show you this great place in the dwarven section…no, wait, that’s a terrible idea. You’d be an Aoibhe pancake if you set foot in there. Okay, so, first, we need a camera to strap to my forehead. Then we set up a call on our grimoires and I’ll be your eyes in the field…” Tessa began, detailing an absurdly complicated plan for the sole purpose of locating a store that dealt in alien gaming machines. After waiting for her to finish, Aoibhe delivered a deadly blow to that plan:

  “Just find their website and make an online order!”