Beside the neon-lit city boulevard, a mobile Fanla cart rolled along, pushed by a young server, blending into the bustling crowd.
No one knew that beneath the white cloth draped over it, a small brown mouse was throwing a party.
"Loo-la loo-la ley, loo-la loo-la ley?"
"March on bravely, there's a prize ahead?"
The cheerful little tune echoed among the drink barrels.
Caelus-Jerry's stubby little legs blurred like flaming wheels, turning him into a brown whirlwind weaving between the massive Fanla barrels.
He hugged a spoon that was enormous for his tiny frame and dragged it beneath the spout of the juice machine.
Then he leapt up and slammed his entire body weight down on the lever button.
Sky-blue Fanla cascaded down like a waterfall, filling the giant spoon.
This was only the beginning.
Strawberry red, mango yellow, lime green, grape purple... a rainbow of colors poured ceaselessly into a huge plate.
Dozens of different Fanla flavors gathered on the plate, each holding its own vivid, uncanny layer — a dazzling, unsettling liquid rainbow lake.
Standing at the edge of the plate, spoon in hand, Caelus-Jerry began to stir.
The dozens of colors started to blend.
They stopped separating, instead spinning and tangling together, until finally... they merged into something indescribable — a chaotic, viscous hue.
Something even stranger happened.
The once-calm, sticky liquid seemed to come alive, suddenly erupting upward into a violently bubbling fountain nearly forty centimeters tall.
Muffled 'pop! pop! pop!' explosions kept sounding from inside the liquid, flinging droplets of an indescribable, viscous color.
Staring at this pot of demon-brew that seemed to have crawled out of another dimension and come alive, the little mouse gulped hard, his tiny paws instinctively pressing against his chest.
He glanced over at the translucent System interface floating beside him, visible only to himself.
[Daily Quest: Drink Inventor.]
[Description: Surely you did something like this as a kid — mixing all kinds of different drinks together, imagining it would become some never-before-tasted delicacy. Now, let's continue the great scientific tradition: mix the Fanla flavors together and try the taste!]
[Reward: Varies depending on the number of Fanla flavors added, reward has a cap, 42 Crystals.]
Staring at the number 42, Caelus steeled his resolve — he was immortal anyway, so why not!
With heroic abandon, he tossed the giant spoon aside, gripped the edge of the plate with his little paws, and bravely dunked his head into the bubbling demon-brew for a huge gulp.
"Glug~ glug~ gulp!"
The third mouthful had barely gone down when an indescribable taste, as if every extreme flavor in existence had converged, shot straight into his soul.
Caelus felt like an entire crate of lit bottle rockets had been shoved inside him.
Like a fired brown cannonball, he bounced and flew wildly around the cramped space.
He slammed into barrel walls, bounced off the ceiling, crashed into the white cloth...
Every impact came with a small burst of explosion effects.
After a dizzying series of aerial acrobatics and pyrotechnics, one final dull thud sent Caelus-Jerry landing on his rear, right back at the spot where he'd started stirring.
His tiny eyes turned into mosquito-coil spirals, and a wisp of indescribably colored smoke curled up from the top of his head.
It took a full ten minutes for him to drift back from that out-of-body state.
"Amazing!"
he shouted inside his head.
With a strange, satisfied feeling like a survivor of some disaster.
This concoction of dozens of Fanla flavors was absolutely not meant for any living creature to drink!
Its terrifying potency was enough to make even the bravest taste-bud warrior retire on the spot!
"It's beaten Himeko's coffee."
Only that rating could capture this thing's true worth.
Seeing the quest interface flash complete, the Crystal count in the top right corner reaching 1104, Caelus-Jerry's mood instantly soared.
In the spirit of not wasting anything, he scooped up the plate and gulped down half of the soul-shattering unknown beverage.
"Burrrp—!"
This time, his soul truly drifted right out of the mouse's body, floating around outside for a full System-hour before dizzily crawling back in.
His phone was buzzing frantically, messages popping up one after another — Stelle wanted him to open the microphone and talk.
Caelus flat-out ignored it.
He genuinely couldn't drink the rest. Staring at the chaotic primordial brew that seemed to hold the ultimate secrets of the universe, Caelus-Jerry's little eyes spun with an idea.
He split the remainder into three portions, pouring each into different-flavored glass bottles.
He screwed the caps on tight, then solemnly set them down in a conspicuous corner of the Fanla cart.
A random lucky winner~!
As for the remaining two bottles, he stashed them away in his spatial ring — one reserved for Star-baby.
That's a father's love.
The other would go to a lucky winner from the Express crew as well.
"Smart, brave, and strong — I really envy myself?"
Sensing the Fanla cart come to a steady stop, Caelus-Jerry hummed a little tune, deftly parted a corner of the white curtain with his tiny paw, and peeked out sneakily.
Once he confirmed it was safe, he slipped out like a gust of wind, silent and swift.
Before parting, he didn't forget to turn back, doff the little black top hat from his head, and give the oblivious young server a proper gentlemanly bow, expressing his thanks for the free ride.
Bow completed, the little mouse straightened his spine and turned around with a mighty, heroic air.
He set off on his great treasure-hunting quest.
Just 500 more Crystals and he could do another ten-pull!
He'd managed to save up this fast mostly thanks to the huge overflow from that last 1600-plus pull.
He roamed all over Penacony, cracking open treasure chests.
From a mouse's point of view, the world looked strikingly different.
Everywhere Caelus looked, instead of the bustling street scenery, all he saw were countless pairs of moving, gorgeous feet.
Tilt his head up just slightly, and the view beneath all sorts of skirt hems lay completely exposed.
Honestly, for someone like Caelus who could stroll into a women's bathhouse without so much as blinking, this kind of view was utterly unremarkable.
But this particular vantage point gave him an entirely new kind of novelty.
As he wandered along, Caelus-Jerry stopped in front of a particularly eye-catching pair of feet.
They were wrapped in transparent high heels studded with tiny diamonds, the toenails carefully painted in pastel shades.
Getting close to one smooth, gleaming nail, Caelus smoothed down the fur on his head, adjusted his little black top hat, gave a jaunty salute to his own reflection in the nail, then looked up and let out a rakish wolf-whistle at the woman.
"Wheeeew—!"
"Ahh! A mouse!!"
A high-decibel, piercing scream swept through the entire street corner like a tidal wave.
Caelus-Jerry felt like his eardrums were about to burst. He clapped his tiny paws over his ears and looked up with an innocent expression.
The elegant lady had gone pale with fright, her face drained of color, practically ready to tap-dance in place from sheer panic.
Caelus wasn't having it. He put his paws on his hips and tilted his little head back.
What was all the screaming about?
Had she never seen such a handsome, dashing, adorable mouse before?
Honestly!
Of course, complaints aside, running away was still the priority.
People around had already grabbed mops, pool cues, French baguettes, and other stick-shaped objects, clearly intending to bring the hammer down.
Time to bolt!
Caelus-Jerry's stubby little legs blurred like flaming wheels, and he became a streak of brown afterimage, dashing toward the alley at the end of the street.
Behind him — was someone still chasing him?
"Bro, have you seen a mouse around?"
A fashionably dressed young man holding a pool cue asked a gray-haired, gold-eyed young man who stood with his hands casually in his pockets.
"Man, you've been dreaming too much. This is the Dreamscape — how could there possibly be a mouse here?"
the young man replied with a teasing smile.
"It's true, a bunch of people just saw it!"
Rather than argue further with the gray-haired young man, the fashionable young man kept chasing after it.
He wasn't out to exterminate the mouse — he was more curious to catch it and see what exactly it was.
"Tsk tsk tsk, kids these days."
Caelus pulled his hand out of his pocket, flicked out a yo-yo, and rode it like a hoverboard, gliding through the city like a young man cruising on a scooter.
Back to hunting for treasure chests~
He found a big treasure box worth 5 Crystals near the Oti Mall. Just as Caelus was happily pocketing the Crystals, a commotion and hurried footsteps suddenly erupted from the direction of the station.
"There he is! Get him!"
Behind him, a sharp shout rang out from Bloodhound Family members.
"Tch, these clingy pests."
Caelus muttered, reflexively about to switch into Jerry mode and bolt.
He had no idea what those treasure chests he'd been opening looked like to outsiders, but starting from the second chest, Bloodhound Family members had been chasing him, insisting he was vandalizing public dream facilities and wanted to invite him for a 'chat.'
Caelus just didn't get it.
Sprinkling pepper into cigarettes, swapping bath sponges for steel wool, replacing toilet paper with sandpaper...
How was any of that vandalizing public dream facilities?
Just as he was about to trigger his mouse-escape, he noticed the group of Bloodhounds' footsteps seemed to be veering around him?
"What's going on?"
Caelus paused in confusion.
"Grown a conscience, finally realized you wronged an innocent man?"
Curiosity, along with his instinct for watching a good show, made Caelus immediately change direction and quietly tail the group of fierce-looking Bloodhound Family members.
The moment he rounded a corner crowded with neon signs, a figure instantly seized his attention.
Like spotting the brightest firefly in a summer night field at first glance.
The girl had a face with a touch of baby fat yet exquisitely beautiful, her mercury-bright long hair flowing along her graceful curves down to her shoulders.
Her blue-to-pink gradient eyes seemed to hold swirling stardust, and her pale gray-green dress perfectly traced her lovely figure, a playful rabbit-shaped bow tied at her wrist adding a touch of cuteness.
Her long, slender legs were wrapped in dark green stockings, revealing just the right sliver of pure white, delicate 'absolute territory' — utterly enticing.
"Wife?"
Caelus blinked, staring at the firefly-like girl.
This time, he wasn't just calling out randomly.
Though he only had a vague grasp of the Honkai: Star Rail main storyline, the overwhelming flood of fan content had already burned this girl's image into his memory.
One of the Trailblazer's potential romantic partners, a walker on the Path of Propagation... Firefly.
Well, at least going by fan-created character settings, Firefly seemed more like a Propagation Path type.
Caelus couldn't get out of bed, Stelle got locked into oblivion — that kind of thing.
As the saying goes, childhood sweethearts never win against love-at-first-sight from the sky.
But the true apex predator of the food chain is the childhood sweetheart who falls from the sky!
"Don't even think about running! You illegal border-crosser!"
A burly male Bloodhound Family member, along with his accomplices, had already cornered the silver-haired girl against a shadowed wall.
The girl clasped her hands nervously over her chest, her thin shoulders trembling slightly, her eyes darting around warily like a startled fawn, radiating a pitiable, fragile aura.
In that panicked glance, her gaze sharply caught sight of the gray-haired young man standing in the corner's shadow.
Gray hair, gold eyes... this face... and that unique feeling!
It's him!
Firefly had heard Kafka and Silver Wolf mention Stelle's situation — whether it was a split into two or some other kind of accident, she wasn't sure, but now there was an extra male version of 'Stelle' in the world, named Caelus.
Though she'd never actually met him in person, Firefly had seen a photo of Caelus from Silver Wolf.
Even without the photo, faced with a gray-haired, gold-eyed young man, Firefly would have recognized him at a glance anyway.
Found you!
The silver-haired girl let a sweet smile flicker across her face before quickly hiding it again.
"Um, excuse me! Please help me..."
As if grasping a lifeline, Firefly deftly slipped through a gap in the encirclement and stumbled over to stand in front of Caelus, her voice soft and pleading.
As a seasoned old fool himself, Caelus could clearly read the many hidden emotions beneath her seemingly panicked eyes.
"Um, do you know me?"
Firefly suddenly noticed something odd in the way Caelus was looking at her.
"Hmm..."
Caelus deliberately paused for two seconds. "You give me a very familiar feeling, a lot like someone important to me."
"Really?"
Firefly's cherry-red lips parted slightly, barely able to contain the delight in her eyes.
Didn't Kafka say Stelle had lost her original memories?
He still remembered her?
"Is she your companion?"
"No, she's my wife."
Caelus stepped forward, naturally placing himself between Firefly and the group, blocking off the Bloodhounds' aggressive stares.
"...Eh!?"
Firefly's eyes widened slightly, a captivating flush spreading across her pretty face.
Wi-wife...
So Stelle was...! Oh!
But almost immediately, the bashful expression on Firefly's face froze in place.
Because...
"One Bloodhound, and another Bloodhound, will leave now, and no one gets hurt."
Caelus's voice suddenly turned ice-cold.
"Otherwise, all of you will die."
Caelus clenched his fist and struck a pose, his voice low and full of pressure:
"Remember — it was Galaxy Batwoman who sent you off on your last ride!"
Use Stelle's name, so if a fight breaks out, the blame lands on her.
"Uhh..."
Listening to Caelus's cringe-fueled speech, Firefly's cheeks turned bright red, like a ripe apple.
She unconsciously twisted the hem of her dress with slender fingers, unsure whether it was embarrassment or some other feeling.
"Guys, she's got an accomplice!"
"Get them both!"
"Wait! This guy... this guy looks like the criminal another team is chasing!"
Another Bloodhound member studied Caelus's highly recognizable face closely:
"That's the guy who's been vandalizing everything, wrecking the public facilities! We've got solid proof!"
"Wait! This guy looks like the vandalism suspect another team's after."
one of the Bloodhounds said, pointing at him as realization dawned.
"Huh?"
The flush slowly faded from Firefly's face, and she froze again in confusion.
Her pretty blue-pink eyes were full of big question marks.
As if silently asking Caelus.
You... you're a criminal too?!
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