Rhett was more than a little nervous. More than the fantastical world around him, he found himself concerned about actually going to a damned job.

  Worse, he didn’t have the fallback of grandparent dosh to rely on when (if) he screwed it up.

  Shaking his head, he dismissed the thoughts, pushing open the door to Cop’s Copper Cleaners, noting with some surprise that the door slid open much more smoothly than it did yesterday, the squeaking of hinges practically nonexistent.

  Glancing over, the obviously copper hinges gleamed a bit more greasily than they did yesterday.

  “...Huh.”

  With that oddity in mind, he entered, and took a fresh look at his place of employment, such that it was.

  There were changes since yesterday, the shelves had nails driven into them that formed little ladders, and the counter had what seemed to be a ramp leading up to the top of it now, the edge of which he could see poking out from behind the long table.

  It was honestly more than a little disturbing. Why would a complete stranger turn around their shop for him like that? He hadn’t even remembered to give her his name, and yet it looked like the store was already prepared for a whole host of rodent assistants.

  Was this the fabled “motivation” held by the mysterious species known only in legend as job-havers? The power that allowed them to change the world to their whims via means other than empty soda bottles?

  Once more, Cop emerged from the back, hefting a heavy copper crate covered in glowing symbols.

  “I’ll be with you in a moment!” she called out, dumping it on the counter and wiping it off one more time with a glowing dustrag.

  As soon as she noticed the lack of a tall-folk to accompany the bell, her gaze darted down. “Oh hey kid! Got some stuff for ya,” she exclaimed.

  As she walked off, Rhett climbed up onto the counter using the newly provided Rat-Compliance-Ramp, examining the copper crate.

  He couldn’t wrap his head around what he was seeing, if he was being honest. Even the portion he could see on one side of the crate was simplistic in some ways, and convoluted in others.

  Looking at the arrows, he squinted. Surely, if this was some fancy magical language, the arrows weren’t actually just straight up arrows to point the magic around, right?

  The only other things he could maybe guess at was the little purple glowing hourglasses, and the blue… water droplet?

  He gingerly raised a paw up to touch the symbols, the humming glow flowing through them drawing his curiosity.

  “...Cold?” he mused to himself.

  “You interested in runes, kid?” Cop asked, prompting a jerk and a blink from the rat.

  “Huh? Oh, yeah! That sounds badass,” he nodded frantically.

  “Huh. Didn’t take you for a scholarly sort. Guess you’d be good at it though, lots of extra room for writing paperwork,” she remarked.

  “Paperwork? Like uhh, seals and tags and stuff?” he blinked.

  “Uh, sort of? All I know is, Runecrafters spend a lot of time writing stuff down. Apparently, they have to do a lot of extra studying and documenting to get anything useful,” she idly explained. “Maybe double what other people do.”

  Rhett grimaced. That sounded so boring… But runes were so cool! But that sounded horrifically boring!

  “Well, anyway, I asked around and got you something,” she explained.

  Leaning over the counter, he backed away from the chest-avalanche she carelessly triggered, and instead drew his attention to the little scrap of cloth she was holding up for him.

  “You need a uniform if you’re gonna work here,“ she explained, giving him the teeny tiny garment.

  Looking it over, he was impressed, it was essentially a miniature version of her own outfit, albeit in different colors. A white apron and beige, trimmed with copper thread.

  He squinted. Something about the outfit was… Off.

  “Why are there sequins on it?” he asked. Sure enough, the apron, in addition to being made of shiny thread, was absolutely bedazzled in silvery sequins.

  “Yeah, I was thinking about your little problem. It’d be hard for you to do much until you apprentice for someone, or let me whip you around by your tail for a few minutes, so I had my sister whip up something for you. It’s dyed with chrome. Same with the sequins,” she nodded proudly, looking to see his reaction.

  His blank stare slowly cracked her facade, and she looked more than a little dismal at his lack of awe.

  “...May I ask why?” Rhett asked. ‘Does she want me to be a mascot or something? I mean, I’m not knocking it, but…’ he thought to himself.

  You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

  “You don’t know? You ever hear ‘clothes make the man’?” she began slowly, like she was explaining something to a child.

  “Uhh…” she struggles to explain something that to her, is apparently quite basic.

  “The eggheads like to call it an ‘Essencia Maxim’. Things you wear are ‘on your person’, and your Soul’s True Mana occupies that same space, so you get a little bit of the [Truth] of whatever it is you’re wearing.”

  “Even dragons wear clothes, kid… Usually. Just put it on, I’ll show you,” she cuts herself off.

  With a shrug, Rhett takes the bundle of clothes in hand and waddles behind the copper box, donning his new (and first) work uniform.

  “Okay, how’s this?” he asked, turning slowly for the Orc’s benefit.

  “Not bad. You clean up good kid. Literally. Watch.”

  With a gesture, the Orcess’s hand flicked, and a coppery bolt of magic pelted him, throwing up a huge cloud of dust!

  “Gaughk! Whad da heuh?!” he exclaimed, waving away the dusty smoke.

  As soon as he did, he blinked and it was over.

  “...Huh?”

  He looked around, and in a small circle around him, not a speck of dust could be found. It was small enough that he could see the borders bow in at the front and back, as if his feet could only spread so much “Cleanergy” through the floor, but even ignoring that, he was utterly without so much as a smudge.

  “My sister tooled around with it, found a good Passive that erases stains. As long as you’re wearing that apron on the outside, you’ll be able to clean like me,” she pointed a thumb at herself, smiling proudly.

  “What do the overalls do?” he asked, tilting his head as he examined the other part of his gift.

  “Didn’t get them appraised. They’re to keep your ruins out of my customer’s faces,” she said dryly.

  At his confused look, she groans, pointing at a specific part of him. “Your cracks and rubble, kid. It’s a bad look.”

  Rhett’s lifelong shamelessness was at its greatest risk yet, as his eyes widened with horror.

  “But… Rat? I figured, you know, animal, and uh,” he stammered mightily, suddenly aware that others might not have had the “obvious” thought (and laziness to not think of it) that he did.

  Cop frowned, her brow furrowing. “Kid, you’re a Ratperson, not a rat,” she explained gently. “I don’t know who filled your head fulla crap, but that ain’t it,” she shook her head.

  He decided silence was the better part of valor. He did not want this woman to know that Tom and Jerry was the source of the crap in his head.

  “...Right, uh, thank you.” he answered, hoping to get past this topic at the speed of fucking light.

  “So, uhh, what’s for work, B-boss?” he attempted.

  The lady silently laughed. “Right, well, kid, let’s see how well you do with the little stuff. I’ll strip anything green, you just get rid of the muck and dust, that shelf over there has the littlest stuff. You’d be saving me a lot of Chi if you could handle those. Too small for the scrubber,” she explained.

  He turned to go after them, snatching an oversized rag left on the counter, but before he did, he had one last thing that had been prodding him.

  “You never did ask my name,” he half-asked.

  She blinked. “What, you picked one already? That’s a big decision for someone your age,” she mused.

  “I’m nineteen,” he answered. “Also, picked one?” he continued a moment later.

  She looked sad again. “Sorry, I only really know orcs and elves, is nineteen old for animal-people? Nevermind,” she dismissed her question right after saying it.

  “If you’ve got something you want me to call you, go for it, kid,” she answered encouragingly. “It’s your name after all,” she smiled, trying to comfort him.

  He mostly just looked weirded out. “Okay…? Thank you? My name’s Rhett Fency,” he concluded after a moment, not really feeling like he needed to reinvent himself or something.

  People always said he felt like a “Rhett” anyway, though he wasn’t sure what they meant by that.

  Ignoring her aghast look, he waddled off once again, this time with the intent of seeing just what working an actual ‘Jobby Job’ was like.

  As he made his way to his first task, a large copper bell, caked with thin, dry mud, he found himself amazed at how much easier it was to clean stuff with a magic apron literally annihilating everything he managed to actually wipe off.

  He figured out quickly that the cleaning power he got from his apron wasn’t quite an aura of cleanliness, so much as it was an effect that slowly erased any stains on him and his clothes, which included, for some reason, the rag in his hands.

  As he leaned the handbell bell over with a grunt of exertion, he noted that for it to work, he still had to get the dirt off of whatever it was on, and onto himself, or, if he could manage it, he could balance on top of a stain, and the “floor” under him would also be cleaned in the process.

  This secondary cleaning turned out to be best, whenever he could manage it, since it was more automatic, and could actually reach out from himself in a small area.

  He concluded that the apron was probably cleaning everything on him, with some sort of obscure definition that included a bit of the floor underneath him, as dust could still float around him, and he recalled hacking and coughing from Cop’s demonstrative dustball.

  Despite all of this, he had never in his life had this easy of a time dusting, without a can of compressed air. Better, even, as unlike that, cleaning with a rag and the apron’s “Passive” didn’t leave a cloying scent of dirt in the air.

  He hated to admit it, hated to risk the mockery of the council of NEETs, who had surely revoked his membership after he became a wageslave, but this was actually… Kind of fun?

  He wondered how the Apron went from ordinary clothes to apparently interfacing with his “Soul’s True Mana”, whatever that was. Did it involve some kind of enchantment? Some kind of game-like system that he just hadn’t unlocked yet? She said the overalls hadn’t been ‘appraised’. Was that how they were ‘unlocked’?

  Cop seemed to expect him to have some kind of powers of his own by now, so it probably wasn’t something limited to a select few.

  He would think that the outfit probably didn’t cost much, considering his size, but considering how wacked out this world’s economy was, he did worry a bit, as to how much Cop had actually shelled out for the little chrome apron, and its ‘appraisal’, whatever that was.

  As he cleaned, he thought, and focused, and got back pain.

  Finally, he decided the best thing to do would just be to ask, once she told him he was done.

  “Oh man, I hope ‘appraisal’ is a spell, I know where that rabbithole leads,” he grinned, visions of infinite knowledge and blue boxes dancing in his imagination as he scrubbed the inside of a copper whistle.

  He grinned even wider at the idea of learning spells in general, and wasn’t this cleaning stuff already a kind of magic?

  “Hell yeah. Rat Magic. Ratgic.”