What Was Any Of That?

Terry gathered the girls around him, still in the field where they had just met with the Demon Lord. Terry was still irritated by the Demon Lords departing words. ‘Little Hero’ rang in Terry’s head and he gritted his teeth to keep back some unsavory words.

“Um, Hero? Are you Okay?” Pear asked.

Terry looked at Pear, worry filled her blue eyes. Terry looked around to the other girls, they all wore mixed expressions. Blueberry stared at the ground with tears in her eyes, clearly still shaken up. Kiwi started at her nails, bored with all of them. While a newly conscious Avocado looked slightly embarrassed but exited none the less.

“That demon was a lot stronger than I thought but don’t worry.” She smiled, shooting Terry a finger gun, “We’ll get them next time.”

“About that.” Potato hopped down from Terry’s head to the ground before the girls. “We really need to talk about what happed there.”

Terry sighed, Potato was right, and he was glade he was the one opening the conversation. “We really should form a strategy before we face the Demon Lord again.” he said. “Hold on, no. That is not the first thing we are going to talk about.” Terry interjected.

He rubbed his face and his fingers through his messy brown hair. “First of all,” he started, “What even was that? Have any of you fought a demon before?”

The girls looked around at each other and shook their heads. Terry’s eyes went wide. He glared at kiwi. “You got together a team to fight the Demon Lord made entirely of people who have never even fought a demon!?” He yelled.

“Oh, like you have any experience.” She sneered.

“I’m not even from here! There are no demons where I’m from!”

Terry felt like he was losing his mind. He looked to Blueberry. “Aren’t you captain of the royal knights? Do you have any experience fighting at all?” He asked thinking back to Blueberry terrified expression before the demon. Blueberry looked up at him and then glanced over to Kiwi. “She’s the captain because she proved herself to be loyal to me. As the future Queen of Kalabash I decide who will serve me.”

“So, you pick someone with no experience? Are you really that stupid?”

Blueberry looked to be on the verge of tears. Kiwi looked like she was going to argue but Terry continued. “What about the rest of you, Pear?”

Pear looked sheepishly at the ground. “I’ve healed many injuries but I must confess, I’ve never seen a demon in person before. I’ve only healed people in the castle of Kalabash.”

Kiwi interrupted again, “It is important that we keep the kingdom’s most powerful healer closer to the castle in case any member of the royal family is sick or injured.”

“The only royal here is you.” Terry stated. “And what about your dad, the King?”

“Oh, he’ll be fine and besides Hero, what will you do if the future Queen of Kalabash is injured?”

“You invited yourself!” Terry Yelled. He then turned to Avocado who looked concerned now that it was her turn. “And you?” Terry asked. “This is my first real adventure.” She said, “Happy to be here though.” Avocado smiled, she was the only one in the group to do so.

Terry turned his attention to Potato. Potato chuckled nervously, “I’ve studied about demons from my books but I’ve never really fought one before now. You have to admit though, I did pretty well.”

“Yeah, you did.” Terry said, “Now how about you tell me what kind of spell that you did was because you never showed me that one at the training grounds.”

“Oh, those were a shield spell and a binding spell. More advanced magic spells, we showed you some basic level attack spells.” Potato smiled and Terry smiled back with no hint of kindness on his face.

“Let me get this straight, you sent me to fight demons with only basic level spells?”

Potato now caught on that he was also in trouble along side the group of girls and tried to argue. “You did fine so far.” Terry held out his hand to cut him off. He took a few breaths to calm himself before talking again.

“We are no where near ready to fight the Demon Lord.” He said, “We aren’t even ready to fight a demon.”

Terry looked over the group. He felt less like a mighty hero with his group of powerful adventures and more like a disappointed mother scolding her children. He then noticed how dark the area around them looked and he realized that the sun was starting to set.

It then hit him that it hadn’t even been a whole day since he had been summoned to this world to fight for people he had never even met before and world that wasn’t even his. Terry looked back at his group, except for Kiwi, each of them looked like a child waiting on their punishment for not doing their homework. Terry sighed again, he felt so tired.

“Listen, here’s what’s going to happen. We are going to the closest village or town or whatever is around here and rest for the night. In the morning, we are going to start thinking about what we all need to do to be ready to fight the Demon Lord.”

The group looked at him surprised. “You’re not going to send us back to the castle?” asked Blueberry. “Not yet.” Terry responded. Blueberry looked unsure of her self while Pear and Avocado smile at each other excitedly. Kiwi looked annoyed but at this point, Terry assumed that was how she always looked. Potato ran up Terry’s leg and climbed onto his shoulder.

“Alright Hero, lead the way to victory.” He said happily. Terry smiled back warily. He knew that none of them were really bad people but he continued to worry how their travels would go. Terry started walking in one direction and then realized, he had no idea where they were going at all. He mentally added a map for travel to the growing list of things he needed for their journey to defeat the Demon Lord.