"So there I was," Adelle began, gesturing with a dinner roll at me like it was a weapon, "absolutely blitzed out of my mind after TurboFluff challenged me to a drinking contest to celebrate our defeat of the wild Skinwalker in the boonies, when I spotted this adorkable human!"

"Ye, Captain Adler, she was feeling real friendly, right?" Candace interjected, her silver tail wagging. "So she went up to him, and you know what she did?"

"I sauntered up to him—" Adelle stood up dramatically, attempting to recreate her drunken swagger, "—and I said, 'Good day there, finest specimen of humanity! I am the legendary Captain Adler Silvertail, commander of the deadliest delving team in seven territories, slayer of one hundred dungeon bosses, and appreciator of fine human males such as yourself!'"

She struck a pose, one hand on her hip, the other extending the dinner roll toward me like a scepter. "Then I launched into my most exuberant recruitment speech! I told him how joining the Skid Marks would transform his mundane human existence into an adventure of epic proportions! How he'd ride with legends, get his own bike, feast with champions, become part of pradavarian history and help us conquer the Infinite Superstore and punch the liminal gods in the face!"

She began strutting around the table, gesturing grandly. "I explained our dental plan, our retirement benefits, our team-building exercises! I offered him protection from the harsh realities of life, the warmth of pack bonding, and free oil changes for that rustbucket he calls a car! I even boasted of my collection of rare dungeon artifacts and promised him riches beyond his wildest dreams!"

"Wow," I laughed. "If that was your original sales pitch, then I'd already be riding at the front of your bike."

"That's what I totally wanted to say, cross my heart and hope to die!" Adelle huffed.

"What did she actually say?" Nessy asked.

"She slurred something along the lines of 'Hey tharr, pink tater,'" I said.

"The essence was there between the words!" Adelle defended herself. "So then this absolute legendary tater—" she pointed at me with the dinner roll, "—looked me straight in my eyes and said—"

"'Nice jacket,'" I supplied.

"He complimented the outfit I designed personally and challenged me to five-on-one combat with his unyielding gaze!" Adelle exclaimed, throwing her arms wide. "He faced me with nothing but his bare hands and the courage of a thousand million delvers! He spoke with such firm belief in his own superiority that I could take it no longer. I had to tag him there and then!"

"My lovely ex-Captain asked me to Identify Alec's skills. So impressed she was by the rarity of his Reconstitution that Addie slipped a hand into her g-string, went down on one knee and blessed Alec with her… flowery scent," Candace wiggled on her chair, snickering. "Right across the face! Tagged his shirt extra hard too, so that no other prad would dare approach Alec in Ferguson. Way too many single man-poacher' beerches there!"

"What?" Nessy sputtered, while Kristi just shook her head in disbelief.

"An act of pure devotion!" Adler declared. "The offer of my bared heart! Which he immediately rejected, taunting me further! As the fist-elected Captain of the Great Skid Marks, I couldn't take no for an answer, could not back down so easily!"

"Come to think of it," I said. "Why are there so many girl prads in Ferguson?"

Candace's eyes lit up as she jumped in to explain. "It's what I call the magical desire theory loop. See, pradavarian mothers have this unconscious magical influence over their offspring's development. Most prad femmes want daughters because prad females tend to be physically stronger, and generally more magically gifted than males."

"Right. Prad girls are generally taller than guys, which is the opposite of human sexual dimorphism," I nodded.

"Yep," Kristi nodded, setting down her glass. "The average female pradavarian has about 30-50% higher mana capacity than males."

"Exactly!" Candace nodded. "So it creates this feedback loop. Mothers want magically gifted daughters, which leads to more daughters being born, who grow up wanting daughters themselves."

"Is that the only reason?" I wondered.

"Oh, it's definitely not just that," Candace agreed. "The bigger issue is what happens to the boys who do get born here."

"Oh?"

"They vanish," Kristi said flatly.

"Vanish?" I asked. "Why?"

"Mhmm," Kristi nodded, her expression serious. "My graduating middle school class started with about forty male prads. By senior year, we had twelve. The talented ones especially—they just disappear. Doesn't matter if they're in a pack or not."

"Why?"

"Corporate headhunting," Candace explained. "Big corpo gals from outside Ferguson come in and offer insane recruitment package blood contracts to promising male delvers. Five to Six-figure starting salaries, company housing, personal trainers, the works."

"Because male prads are already rare," I realized.

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

"Bingo," Candace snapped her fingers. "Male delvers with rare skills become status symbols for female corporate execs. My cousin Ralphie got recruited right out of junior year by some magitek company CEO from New Chicago Citadel. He wears custom Pawmani suits and attends fancy parties as her arm candy, last time I heard."

"Trophy husbands," Nessy said with distaste.

"Pretty much," Adelle nodded. "My brother was courted by seven different companies before he even graduated. Some fancy femme CEO from uhhh… North Acadia Wendigo Frontenachii Omnicorp got him on a lifetime work blood contract. Haven't heard from him since. Not even a single phone call or gram message. Fucker's too fancypants for his little sis now, I guess."

"That's why most of the pack leaders at school were female prads before Fern threw a wrench into it," Kristi added. "The top-tier male delvers get whisked away before they can even establish themselves here."

"And that leaves Ferguson with what we've got now," Candace concluded. "A town full of ambitious femmes competing for increasingly limited resources. Outside town, it's even harder to find guys, as the wild noms them faster than girls since they're easier prey. Is why Addie got focused on you like a very drunk laser beam."

"Let's get back to the Alec-claiming," Nessy commented, looking at me, tail wagging.

"Right. Anyways, our brave, drunk Captain wouldn't take no for an answer. I was blocking his car door to see what he would do next, whether he was a weakling or a potential delving partner. It was then that he pulled out THE pepper!" Candace declared jovially, grabbing a pepper container from the table and shaking it over Addie's steak. "Not just any pepper. Military-grade black ops assault pepper! 'She-shah! Pocket pepper!' He declared and cast it all over Captain Adler's face, permanently blinding her! She couldn't see and was crying for days after!"

"It was regular ground black and red pepper from the dollar store in a plastic tube," I clarified with a smile to Nessy. "Also, this was literally two days ago."

"He launched this pepper-based weapon directly into Captain Adler's face without remorse!" Candace continued, disregarding my corrections. "She was sneezing so hard that her green mohawk nearly took flight! Little pieces of colorful confetti were coming out of her nose!"

"I don't recall any confetti," I chortled.

"Having blinded me with deviously clever human tactics, the dastardly tater tactically retreated into the gas station's Mini-mart, challenging me to a battle for Alpha-dominion over my biker gang from within!" Adelle resumed. "Lieutenant Donutz attempted to grab at him, but he was too swift for the fox! Once inside—" Adelle leapt up, committed to her reenactment, "—he…"

"Procured a tactical combat snow brush!" Candace interjected, grabbing a butter knife for emphasis. "With a retractable ice scraper bayonet! The deadliest weapon found in the Mini-Mart!"

"A regular steel and plastic tip snow brush from the automotive section," I corrected again.

"Using it, he swiftly dealt great damage to our advancing forces!" Candace struck Adelle into her chest with the butter knife. Adelle, for her part, pretended to die dramatically, falling backwards onto her chair.

"—he started swinging the ice-scraper weapon around like a Slaya-damned French musketeer!" Adelle came up again, making exaggerated fighting motions. "He was all whoosh! Kapow! Pow! One minute he'd be there, the next he'd be gone!"

"Like a ghost ninja with a snow brush!" Candace laughed.

"Wow, you're making it sound like I was some kind of action hero," I said dryly. "I was mostly just trying to get back to my car with my limbs intact."

"Then!" Adelle declared, "This absolute madman unleashed a concealed chemical weapon of eternal agony! Banned by the United Nations Pradavarian Senate against use on civilians!"

"Regular wasp spray," I muttered, making Nessy giggle.

"Bark-n-Bite got a face full of liquid death and went down screaming!" Adelle mimicked falling dramatically, nearly tipping over her chair. "She was rolling around on the floor going 'My eyes! My beautiful wolf eyes! I'll never be able to judge anyone with my wolfy judgmental glare again!'"

"She didn't say that," I said.

"She was definitely thinking it," Adelle insisted. "Meanwhile, this human was flashing through the store, like a pro delver, deploying tactical smoke grenades—"

"A pocket fogger I got from a street vendor," I clarified.

"—purposefully teasing and confounding our pradavarian senses!" Adelle continued. "He was everywhere and nowhere! A ghost! A phantom! TurboFluff thought she was having a religious experience—kept saying she saw the Slayer himself walking through the smoke!"

"I was mostly hiding behind chip displays," I said.

"But then!" Candace added, eyes wide with theatrical glee, "He pulled out the most devious invention of all—an ultrasonic pradavarian mind melter!"

"A high-frequency sound emitter keychain," I corrected. "Also from a street vendor."

"Our brains were exploding!" Adelle clutched her head dramatically. "Our ears were bleeding! He was turning our own bodies against us! Tequila Sunrise was convinced she was a chicken and started pecking at the floor for seeds!"

"That definitely didn't happen," I said firmly. "You only got confused by it for a bit."

"We were blind, deaf and anosmic!" Candace fell into Addie's arms as both of them made silly faces. "Suffering from awfulest sensory deprivation caused by pepper, smoke, n' sound emitter combo!"

Nessy was now laughing so hard she was wheezing, while Kristi had her face in her hands.

"So naturally," Adelle continued, lowering her voice for dramatic effect, "Captain Adler had to unleash her ultimate power!"

"Shadowstep," I said.

"Dimension-ripping teleportation!" Adelle corrected with a grin. "Feeling desperate and nearly defeated, my sanity melting, I phased through reality itself to appear behind him!"

"Unfortunately, she was so drunk she actually teleported into a rack of news and adult magazines first and got stuck for like thirty seconds!" Candace included with a sly grin.

"That's news to me," I said, raising an eyebrow.

"I tried to taunt him with my dimensional-step powers but he remained unmoved!" Adler praised. "He didn't back down, didn't lower his gaze! Just kept glaring at me with those deep emerald eyes of his."

I couldn't help but laugh at her absurd retelling. "My eyes are hazel at best."

"In the heat of battle, they glowed like the ancient jade fires of the Endless Forest of Borria!" Adelle insisted, waving her hands in the air. "I was mesmerized, hypnotized even!"

"She was so stunned by Alec's magnificence," Candace added with a mischievous giggle, nuzzling into Addie, "that she completely forgot she was supposed to be capturing him and instead started reciting poetry!"

"What? I did no such thing! Get outta my face, Loops!" Adelle protested, shoving the fox away. "I was too submerged in his firm gaze to compose poetry!"

"You were drunk and wobbling," I said.

"Yes!" Adelle affirmed. "And then I cried for mercy when this devious ninja suddenly struck me with his electric 'Fist of a Thousand Suns'!"

"What kind of a skill is that?" Nessy laughed, sliding closer to me.

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