Phoebe left her room with the greatest reluctance that morning. Her foul mood wrapped around her like a coat, shooing away all optimism and sunlight. “You were right. This place is a prison”, she grumbled.

  “Aw, cheer up!”, came Lucina’s weak words. “This is why we drink coffee in the morning…”.

  “Coffee?”, I asked. Lucina waved away my question and went outside. We had little choice but to follow.

  We passed by numerous shrubs and trees that had been crushed underfoot by the giant robots last night. Workers were busy hauling away the broken remains and planting in replacements. As we watched, one took out a can and sprayed a sapling, causing it to grow to full height almost instantly.

  Unfortunately, a nearby shrub had also caught a bit of the spray, which had now grown far larger and was scuttling up the side of a building. “[Holy Beam]”, Lucina pointed at the evil plant, causing its leaves to fade to yellow and then shed away under her harsh sunlight. Now depleted of energy, the shrub fell down onto the ground, where it was quickly lassoed by the workers. One gave a nod of thanks.

  “…Is it like this every morning?”, Phoebe asked, still bleary. “Not always. Yesterday was an evergreen shrub”, she frowned.

  Before long we arrived at a small building with many benches outside, clearly a restaurant of some sort. “Take a seat outside. I’ll go grab the food”, she said.

  After a short wait, Lucina came back with a donut for herself, and a piece of toast for her sister, which was promptly slathered in honey. What was more interesting, and frightening, were the cups of darkness served alongside the food.

  Phoebe sniffed it and promptly wrinkled her nose. Gathering up her courage, she cautiously took a sip, before spitting it right back into the mug. “Ugh. This stuff smells like death, but it tastes even worse”.

  “It’ll make you feel better~”, Lucina smiled before downing a whole cup. She had brought back several more drinks than necessary, and switched to a new mug with no delay. “Coffee wakes you up. You get used to the taste, eventually”.

  Stolen story; please report.

  Phoebe looked at her sister with horror. Then her eyes shifted back to the coffee, as if it were a shameless magazine that needed careful reappraisal. She took another sip, scrunched up her face like a raisin, nodded, and then downed the rest of it.

  I frowned in thought. “Who makes this beverage? I’ve never heard of it. Is it forbidden outside Mechadream too?”.

  “Oh no, it’s not forbidden”, Lucina answered. “It’s just that no one else wants it. There are a bunch of cafes around here, but they all get it from Coffee Corp. The company is run by some guy named Doctor I, who has promised to work on the taste”.

  “Bingo, that’s our bad guy”, I said with the confidence of a grade school detective accusing someone of stealing their pencil. After all, we were in a dystopia! Anybody with a shred of power here was evil! Especially so for the first authority I happened to hear about.

  Lucina blinked. “What? Uh, no. What proof do you have?”. My clever deduction skills slammed into the nearly impassable roadblock of common sense.

  “Ok, well think about it”, I quickly explained. “This ‘coffee’ stuff. It tastes awful, and somehow makes you more awake? Clearly a magic potion of some kind. Yet it’s being served every day to loads of people. How has it not killed anyone? Or exploded in a ball of fire? It hasn’t even been the origin story for a few third-rate supervillains?”.

  I shook my head. “Having that kind of reliability doesn’t make sense. Wizards flit from one project to the next faster than you can say ‘catastrophe’. Even if one did invest this much time into this one drink, surely they’d work on taste before safety. Ergo, there are more sinister forces at play here”.

  “He does have a point”, Phoebe said. Her sister quickly supplied her with a fresh cup of coffee.

  Lucina laughed. “How could such a routinely consumed, easily spiked beverage depended upon by the populace possibly be…”, she frowned and tried again. “What I mean to say is, how could a drink known to taste like evil given liquid form be… Hmm…”.

  “There are those giant robots making everyone sleep-deprived”, Phoebe helpfully chimed in. “Maybe it’s all part of some super secret evil conspiracy!”.

  “Hold on a second. [Holy Beam]!”, Lucina blasted one of her cups. The darkness soon cleared, revealing plain old water.

  “I’m a genius, aren’t I?”, I humbly phrased it as a question. “Now let’s pay a visit to this Doctor I”.

  “Ok, right after we finish our coffee”, Lucina responded.