The Unexpected Visitor

Abagail couldn’t help but snigger.

She had gone back into Trunsit with Kari, the two ending up in the back of a small bookstore. Her glasses had fogged up as she flipped through the yellow pages of an older book. “Oooh-ho-hooo!”

Her laughter caught Kari’s attention, who was carrying a small bag of things they’d been buying to make living amongst peasants more bearable. “What is it you’re looking at?”

Abagail handed her the book.

The captive lady pleaded with her captor. “Please! Let me worship you, body and soul!”

But the vampire spurred her advances. “This is not the time, woman! I must away!” And so he threw himself out the window, a flock of forty ravens flying into the distance where his body had been moments before.

“W-What is this?!” Kari stared at the small book, confused as she flipped through it. Then she realized and threw it at Abagail. “These are unseemly! Inappropriate!”

“Oh yes they are,” Abagail grinned. “Come on, live a little! If you’re going to marry the Prince or one of his flunkies, you’ve got to learn to have some hobbies. Unless you want to be like every other elf I know and say that gardening is your passion.”

Kari’s eyes narrowed. “I prefer cooking.”

“You can have two hobbies.” She tossed Kari a book. “This one’s a classic.”

“Y-You dare to give me l-l-lewd literature!”

“No.” Abagail smiled. “I’m making you pay for it.”

-----

“I’m right here.”

Kyle stepped out from the rest of the village, confronting the armored bandit with the giant hammer.

“You will come with us,” the bandit proclaimed. “And so will your steel horse.”

The metal armor was a mix of mismatched pieces of plate; this person must have taken pieces off half a dozen different knights. Between that and the oversized hammer, Kyle thought he’d no chance of beating them in a fair one-on-one.

He had no intention of being fair. Raising his ring, Kyle aimed and fired a bolt of electricity at the bandit’s chest plate.

The air smelt of ozone as the armored bandit buckled from the shock. Even a person of a large size should have been forced to their knees. And yet they remained standing.

Kyle shot another bolt of lightning at the bandit. The bandit’s hammer moved to intercept, absorbing the magical strike.

The bandit was now approaching, shrugging off Kyle’s now constant barrage of lightning. The stream of magic was draining him quickly and with little to show for it.

He could see the bandit flip around their hammer to bring the handle down onto his head, and he knew there was nothing he could do about it.

----

When he woke up, Kyle saw he was the center of an empty canvas tent. His wrists were bound together and to the pole, with those ropes tied to others that wrapped around his ankles.

He felt around his fingers, discovering that the bandits had removed his ring. He could also see that his amulet was gone. They’d disarmed him of his gifts from the goddess.

“Do we suck?” Real Kyle’s head whipped around to see Office Kyle, wearing an orange prison jumpsuit. His hands were shackled.

“We don’t suck,” said Real Kyle.

Office Kyle shook his head. “We’re getting our face beat in like we suck. This is supposed to be an isekai! We’re supposed to have overlevelled gear or superpowers.”

They did. “The ring and the amulet.”

“We’ve gotten into two fights,” Office Kyle pointed out, “and we’ve lost both of them!”

“Three, we shot that one guy with the blue arm into next week.”

Said guy with the blue arm chose that moment to walk into the tent. “Cute trick you pulled with that ring, you jerk.”

“You’ll live.”

Benny looked ready to smack him across the face but had other ideas in mind. “The boss wants a word with you. You’re lucky they wanted you alive. You know what I would’ve done?”

“Get thrown into a nearby forest again?”

-----

Kyle was quickly thrown into another tent, tripping over himself thanks to his bound ankles and landing face down.

“Alright,” he groaned. “Do either of you have any skills I don’t know about?”

Office Kyle was seated on the ground nearby. “Not unless being able to clear your browser history would help here.”

“I might.” Peasant Kyle, for once, offered advice. “We handle rope all the time. Bringing grain, securing things to the cart, snares.”

Slowly, Real Kyle tried to work the rope loose. Peasant Kyle would chime in, offering some advice on which rope to pull (or not pull). After ten minutes of work, Kyle had worked his wrists free – and it didn’t take much longer to undo the other knots.

“There you go!” Peasant Kyle grinned. “Gotta say, as hard as that was to do bound, their knot work is sloppy.”

With that accomplished, Kyle could get a better glance at where he’d found himself. The tent was huge, with a fur-adorned bed bigger than any he’d see in either of his past lives. There was a pile of stolen goods and valuables strewn about, as well as a small alcove for a porcelain bath and a wooden mannequin where one would hang up armor. A few pieces were hung up there now, mostly the arms and boots.

From a part of the tent beyond the bath emerged the bandit leader he’d lost to. They were still wearing their helmet and most of their armor, but the exposed armor and feet showed thick red arms with black nails on a pair of callused hands.

Peasant Kyle gulped. “That’s an oni.”

Office Kyle whipped around. “A what?!”

“An oni! There’s a bunch of stories about them I heard as a kid. There was a story about there being a few in our town. But then the Prince told a priest to throw roasted soybeans to cast them out.”

“Something that could’ve been brought to our attention earlier,” Office Kyle growled.

“I didn’t think it was important!”

Important or not, the armored oni was now within arms reach of Kyle. But it did not lift a finger against him.

“The jewelry. What noble did you kill to get it?”

“I didn’t.”

The oni chuckled. “I don’t judge humans who kill humans easily. Your kind are so fickle to what you don’t know. Again – who did you kill?”

Kyle repeated himself. “I didn’t kill anyone. I was blessed by a goddess on my eighteenth birthday after getting hit in the face with a crystal ball.” He expected the oni not to believe him, but something else caught its attention.

“Eighteenth birthday…” The oni trailed off. “You’re from the peasant’s village overlooked by the mountain.”

Kyle nodded.

“Your name.” The armored oni leaned in, intrigued. "Full name.”

“Kyle. Kyle Wheatsman.”

The figure froze in place, and then laughed. The red hands moved to remove their helmet, unclasping it and peeling it back to let the horn poking through slide out.

The oni’s white hair was an unruly mess, with steely green eyes looking down at Kyle below. When the chest piece slid off, Kyle could see the oni wearing a padded shirt pulled tightly over a set of defined muscles and a large chest.

She grinned. “I never thought I’d see the day.”