Texan In Another World

Opening his eyes, all mike could see were the slightly translucent portions of Vella"s Wings covering the pile on the bed below his chest. The girls had left him in another position that was hard to get up without immediately being turned on. He wasn"t mad, just completely baffled at his fate.

One different thing after another kept changing the way he lived his life, regularly he felt like he would wake up from some coma and be back to his old life. But as more time pa.s.sed, Mike was seemingly less interested in returning the world he once knew.

"Girls, I gotta get to work." Mike tried to reason with them.

None of them wanted to get out of bed. Rissa and Jodi were the first, they had not gotten what they wanted last night despite having a very fun time. Mike couldn"t protest, protesting such things would lead to his backyard catching fire, or worse. He really had no room to complain, aside from not having any time to get work done in the early morning Mike still had lots of energy and he was now relaxed.

"Okay, Okay. I"m hungry! who"s hungry." Mike said the magic word, and everyone was dressed.

Mona had found some potatoes in the market and decided to change things up in the morning by frying the potatoes on a hot plate. She gently put some of the extract into the potatoes, they couldn"t have a repeat of the Cookie incident.

Mike cleared the table and after a few lively conversations Mike saw a flare up of compet.i.tion and he wondered what sort of shenanigans they would get themselves into today. The potatoes that they had cooked were nice when paired with the meats the girls kept h.o.a.rded in the s.p.a.cial ring. Sometimes, Mike would find them sneaking meat and chock it up to a primal need.

"what should I do with this place, I know i said general high quality goods.. but what?" It had been more than a week since they arrived, Mike figured he would have something to push his creativity.

"We could open a bar. Nah, too many drunks and fights."

"a furniture store, eh.. kinda boring"

"A Coffee Shop" Mike thought this was a good idea, but he hadn"t seen anything like coffee yet.

"I guess I should at least have a plant growing." Mike pushed the idea crafting aside and found a nice place that sold pottery. He had taken a stroll out to the city, one of his usual daily routines. Sometimes he would recognize a person pa.s.sing by and take notice of what they were doing, but mostly he just saw people rushing about. A lot of them had business, mostly trade or trading that would go elsewhere.

Some of the merchandise floating around was from clear across the planet, but it had been taken by pirates, rescued by someone else, stolen again and only reappeared. Other"s merchandise was so fresh, the markings on the outside of some of them were still wet. Gogor was a city of industry and charm, If people didn"t take the time to make it beautiful it certainly wouldn"t be.

Mike stopped into a shop and found many books, he had been wanting to clear out the shop with his funds, but after looking at the prices he had to reevaluate the objective. Some of the books were sold at a King"s Ransom.

In the end, Mike only found a light spell that he could manipulate into shapes and colors. It was a rather benign spell that used little for its effect.

"70 gold pieces" Mike looked at the note on the inside.

"Here." Pa.s.sing the 70 pieces to the shopkeeper, mike felt a little robbed but couldn"t help it. If you wanted to make money, you certainly had to do something for it.

Mike put the book into storage in front of the Shopkeeper and watched his eyes glitter, "How much for the ring?"

"Its not for sale." Mike instantly knew that the shopkeeper saw the value in the ring and left. He might have to avoid this place if he insisted.

A few more shops found Mike visiting them before the end of the day and Mike was close to broke.

Pa.s.sing the bar, Mike noticed a brawl that spilled into the streets. Two Bear men were fighting it out, and people were gathering around it cheering. Mike had an idea... he would open a better one. No one really want to fight at a bar. If they wanted to fight, they could do it in a ring.

Mike thought about opening a bar, with a fighting ring. But first, he would have to steal all the customers from his neighbor. For a place with so many fights, it wasn"t a great idea to keep it open in the first place. If it had a fighting arena, they would at least have an outlet for those types of fights. Mike put it into the back of his head, he"d rather have something a little less high maintenance.

Thinking about it, Mike started to hum an old tune and it caught the ears of everyone around him. Mike started to wonder if music was having this sort of reaction to people, maybe it was time he did something else besides a bar.

Mike ran up to the house and got the girl together.

"Go out and buy some nice tea cups, we need about 100." Mike was on a roll.

"What are you talking about." Mike was running around and it was making the girls happy to see him excited, but they were still curious none-the-less.

"We"re going to open up a lounge." Mike had confidence in his voice again, it made all six of the girls jump for joy and get ready.

"I need to know something." Cara stopped the group.

"What"s a Lounge?" Cara giggled.

Mike wanted to kiss her and explain, but he felt like he was wasting time explaining.

"Just go and come back, get as many as you can. And some spoons!" Mike sent Cara for cups, Jodi for cutlery, March for as many teas as she could find and Rissa was sent out rally people to something big that was going to happen.

"This is going to be epic or a nightmare." Mike patted himself on the back and rushed off to the bookstore.

When he arrived, the shop owner was a little more than annoyed but Mike had something to trade. Mike pulled out the magazine that was rolled up and put it on the counter.

"I want to trade this for a book on Conjuring Teas." Mike had seed the cover somewhere, something like "how to make tea under the threat of battle" or "tea for the ages when battle is a threat".

"Ahh here it is", The shopkeeper came back after a quick browse through the magazine. He was impressed by its construction and paper. The artwork was exquisite

"I"ve given you more than you"ve given me, perhaps you can make it a little nicer?" Mike pushed his luck and it was a good thing, the shopkeeper just outright asked him what he wanted.

"I"ll take a magic book that has a cleaning spell, or.. one that makes a barrier." It wasn"t like they would be an impossibility in this world, but Mike had to know if barriers existed without an artifact. If he got a cleaning spell there was no loss whatsoever, so it really was a Win-Win for Mike.

"...." The shopkeeper felt a little odd and nearly canceled the deal but Mike invited him to come see what was going on at his shop tomorrow.

The books were stored the moment the shopkeeper agreed, Mike wanted to go all out.

When he arrived back home, the girls were all standing around waiting for him with confused looks.

"Okay, what"s a lounge!" Vella had spent the least amount of time in the group and yet her mouth was the first to open.

"You"re going to sing and dance, and the people are going to drink." Mike left it open to become a bar if the people were just insisting on having one, but he really didn"t like people drinking alcohol. He"d rather see it used for cooking, for making extracts from herbs or for a disinfectant. A good stiff drink wasn"t a taboo with him, just that he had seen too many people who lose their self-interest and self-awareness when they drink regularly to know its not just bad for the body.

"..." The girls were at a loss and just played along with mike.

Walking to one end of the dining area he pulled the drapes from the k.n.o.bs and closed the windows a bit.

"This will do." Mike had all the girls take a seat.

"First, we"re doing this to music and no one can compete with that." Mike pulled the radio out and set it on the floor.

"What we need is entertainment." Mike could see the house packed until late nights, but he had to make a choice on what to do with their lives. He was lucky enough to get the adjacent building to mike had some other ideas that would likely lead to trouble if he talked about them too much.

The Girls watched as Mike cast the centrifugal force spell on the alternator and qued the "Chick music" playlist he had on his Mp3 player. He flipped through a few songs and finally came to "Viva Las Vegas" The noise was enough to get all their foots tapping. Mike watched them looking at each other and start to laugh at the lines in the song but they saw the determination it showed and realized that the songs were stories.

When the song ended, Mike searched for another song until he found Alicia Keys" Girl on Fire. When the girls heard the song they almost all wanted to cry and then they were in a happy mood. Mike tried playing Thriftshop and Party Rock Anthem but the girls really liked the Girl on Fire Song. It made them feel ultra special and a few of them were already mumbling the lyrics without knowing it.

"I knew it, you girls are going to be fine. Lets give this a shot." Mike kept pushing the next b.u.t.ton and by the end of it the girls were entranced entirely, unable to pull themselves away from the beats that kept coming from the small box.

When the alternator lost the spell, Mike had played about an hour of music and the girls had listened to music before, but it had been a man singing. After he found something they wanted to listen to it was only a matter of time.

"I"m going to want to build a stage after tonight, so most of our earnings tonight might go to building the stage." Mike started to look around the room.

March asked what stage was and mike quickly explained that it was easy. Mike walked around the room with his hands open and said, "this is where you"ll be doing the routine, or singing, whatever you really wanna do. Its a lounge, mostly anything goes. Just when things were coming to an end for the last song Lesley Gore"s - You Don"t Own Me came on. It was enough to reignite the fires in the hearts of the girls. Mike warmed their hearts at every turn, they couldn"t know what to expect next.

Mike pulled out the Conjure Tea book and had everyone review it. Once he got the chance he poured himself a cup of what he brewed. It wasn"t bad, but it needed more kick. Mike tried it with more power and saw that he had a deep and vivid dark tea, When Vella tried it the cup exploded. Mike helped clean it up and tasted the Teas from the others, they had each made different teas. Mike opened the book and started reading it out to them word for word as he was seeing it. Their tea Ideas kept coming out and soon a wide variety filled the table.

Mike pulled the lighting book out and started to manipulate it a bit, he got it to change from green to purple on occasion and then go back to a blue or yellow before rolling into purple and green again. It reminded him a lot of the effects stage lights would do in the description so he cast it on the overhead beam before testing it out, soon the multi colored lights shown threw the windows.

"I"m going to charge 2g per cup and they can enjoy the music and dancing and fun while they stay." Mike felt like he was going to be rich if it took off, this world didn"t look like it had a Las Vegas from any of the books.

"We"re going to open as soon as we have a place to sit everyone that will pour in. If it turns to standing room only, we"ll have some issues but I think we can just expect that that will happen sometime in the immediate future. Mike put a bunch of benches inside like a cathedral with an isle. At least he could make it sort of orderly. Tomorrow they could do some fine tuning, tonight it was going to be mind blowing.

Mike went outside and Put a sign on the outside of the building that said OPEN and cast the light magic on it. With the sun setting, it lit the street like a bright neon sign in the 1950s. Mike walked back inside and put on the Blues playlist he had been burning to play for a while, something about horns always made him happy to hear a song. It didn"t feel right to have all the excitement so quickly, he needed some attention grabbers and Luthor Allison was just right draw in a crowd.

The Radio cranked and mike made sure to power the alternator again to make sure it would play without interruption. They decided to leave the door open, but had Vella stand by the door. Her intimidation would keep out the trouble makers who didn"t want to pay entry. Mike handed her a sack and told her to take five gold coins from anyone who wants to enter.

Mike was readying himself for anything when he looked over at the girls who were all nervous. He got them all to take a seat and offered them a dab. They all decided it was time they tried it his way. Pa.s.sing the nectar collector between themselves, Mike heated it with his fingers and showed them how to take a hit.

Watching them mellow out was great, but mike also wondered if that would kill the mood and take them too far down. He was sure that they only tapped the tip of the pipe to the dabs once and it was a quick hit, so they likely only got a little bit.

It was really funny to watch them, but the cleanup had to happen. Mike grabbed all the cups laying around and had March go up and dance in the middle of the room to the music. Her improv dances were completely berserk at times, Mike had never seen anything like it.

"What"s going on in here." A voice came from outside.

Vella spoke up. "Five Gold to get in, 2g for drinks" Vella stood there in front of the large Lizard man but he was very curious about what was going on inside.

"Gladly, now get out of my way." Pa.s.sing 10g over to Vella, the man and his mate walked inside. When they saw the layout of the room they were questioning their reason for entry, but soon saw the light show and March dancing to a strange noise. Captivated, they sat down.

"Looks like we have our first Customers." Mike greeted them.

"Welcome to the Grand Opening, of...." Mike couldn"t help himself.

"The Lone Star Lounge... and Casino"