T.O.A.L and You

  Kai Freeman found himself a comfortable looking chair and took a seat. It was a nice wooden rocking chair, rather than one of the chair-desk combinations normally found in classrooms. He didn’t like them back home, and he wouldn’t bother trying to find out how good they were here.

   “So…” began Kai. “Carnicula?”

   The other people in the room glared at him harder than they did to Artyom.

  “How about if we save the horror stories for when nobody else is around to relive them?” asked Hannah rhetorically. “Besides, you won’t understand much unless we fill you in on the basics, so let’s start with that. Welcome to TOAL and You: Navigating the Premier Advocates of Earth in the Multiverse!”

  “Why do you sound like you’re part of a PSA?” asked Kai.

  “Bite me, kid. I just finished filming one a few days ago for new recruits. If it weren’t still being edited, I’d put that on instead.”

   Kai chuckled in response.

   “Don’t get any funny ideas, it’s just a figure of speech,” replied Hannah. “I’m still your teacher right now and way older than you.”

  “No, it’s not that. It’s just funny how you got so pissed off after I just asked a stupid question.” Kind of like back home.

  Hannah closed her eyes and took a deep breath. When she opened her eyes, she looked much older. “Sorry, I’ve been overworked with the latest batch of newcomers. They’re all a little younger than you, but incredibly arrogant. They all ended up in some Fairytale World where they were spoiled rotten as the Great Heroes, and they expected similar treatment here. They think it’ll be just as easy, but they’ll change their minds soon enough.”

  “Don’t worry about it, I can imagine what it’s like dealing with a bunch of spoiled brats,” said Kai, comforting Hannah and accepting her apology. He remembered his time as a tutor for several rich kids. They thought their expensive phones and houses meant they were better than the poverty-stricken Kai, but it was only a few of his students who acted that way. Besides, it was their parents who were rich, not them. And if they were so liberal with spending money on status items for their brats, why didn’t they hire a professional tutor? None of them mattered now, anyway.

  “So, this is probably the third time I’ve heard the phrase Fairytale World, and I still don’t know what it means. Can you tell me Ms. Neal?” asked Kai in his most artificially respectful tone, that wasn’t entirely belying the truth.

  “Oh yeah, let’s get started,” said Hannah, snapping out of her funk with a smile on her face. “So I’m sure you’ve heard of multiverse theory, that the universe is just one of many. Well, it’s true, both for Fantasy Worlds and Earth. Of all of the worlds that Earthers are brought into, we like to split them into 5 categories based on the general attitudes of their societies and moralities.” Hannah pointed to a poster on the wall with 5 colored boxes stacked on top of each other, and an emoticon next to each one going from a green happy face to a red frowny face. It read Fairytale, Heroic, Noblebright, Gilded, and Grimdark.

  “The first is Fairytale World. These worlds are pretty much out of a fairytale. Well, the watered-down ones that you’d find in childrens’ movies, at least. Not the original Brothers Grimm tales. Everyone is generally happy and kind hearted, not afraid to help a stranger in need. There’ll usually be some kind of Great Evil that threatens their cozy way of life for which they’ll usually end up summoning someone from Earth to vanquish it.”

  Kai nodded. “Does that always work out?” he asked.

  “For the Earther, pretty much always. Whatever big bad they have to face is usually no worse than a rabid dog with semi-competent bureaucrats. As for the rest of the World, usually yes. All of the rituals we’ve encountered so far seem to have some kind of filter built into them that makes them generally choose the morally upstanding sort.”

  “So that’s why you all accepted me so quickly?” asked Kai. “I mean besides you guys needing more members.”

  “Pretty much!” said Hannah. “But don’t think that just because you’ve been let in so easily that our security is lacking.” She nodded her head towards the others in the room. Now that Kai looked at them more closely, he could see that they had pocketed weapons, and one was sitting next to a big, red button on the wall.

  “Of course, there was the one time a Fairytale World had the misfortune of summoning someone horrible.” Hannah went silent for a second. The others in the room did as well. The air was heavy, but Hannah continued the story. “We don’t speak their name in these halls, it’s best if their identity isn’t remembered, only their actions.”

  Hannah took a drink from the water bottle on the table she was sitting at and continued. “They were a monster, and treated the World as if it were a game and they were a Murderhobo. That’s a Tabletop RPG term, it means a player who just runs around, committing murder and worse on a whim. Surprisingly, they ended up defeating the great evil they were brought to defeat.”

   “In that case, story over. How did you guys get involved?” asked Kai.

  “They took the villain’s place. They even managed to run the evil empire more efficiently, spreading greater calamities across that World. In response to this, the summoning ritual was invoked again, and this time a much better hero was brought over.”

   “Let me guess, it gets worse?” asked Kai.

  “Oh yeah,” nodded Hannah. “This new hero didn’t even make it past the starting town. Apparently, they-who-must-not-be-named heard about the new hero and had him assassinated.”

   “And this is where you all get involved?” asked Kai. “Or am I being too hopeful?”

  “You sure are. Seeing their failure, they summoned another hero, this time in secret. Too bad they had eyes and ears everywhere and had this new hero assassinated as well. In one last desperate attempt, the ritual was invoked multiple times in quick succession, and each of the new summons was scattered to the winds in hopes that one of them would be able to gain power in secret and take down the new villain. The large number of summonings from a Fairytale world in such a short time frame is what got our attention. By the time we found out what was going on, most of the new summons were captured. That piece of shit was angry that it wasn’t easy this time and took it out on the poor kids summoned. One of them was a girl about as old as you are. When they found her in its tower, chained up and…” Hannah paused. She couldn’t continue.

  “Our agents killed that bastard on the spot,” concluded one of the other people in the room. He had black hair in a buzzcut and a grating voice. “I’ve been told they were even in the middle of throwing a tantrum.”

  The air was heavy with a pregnant silence. The clock on the wall ticked. It wasn’t audible until now.

  “But that was the one worst mission out of the hundreds we’ve been on, nothing we’ve encountered has ever been as bad as that,” said Hannah, finding her voice. “The girl was rescued and brought to another Fairytale world to live out a safe life. We even have one of our therapists go out to visit her every week.” Hannah paused again. “Obviously whatever life you’ve lived is hopefully leagues better than her’s, but it’s nice to know that we take care of each other here, even in the most extreme cases.”

  “Also, there are currently new regulations being debated over in the executive council that would prevent something like this from happening before it even got a chance to start!” Hannah exclaimed. “All about making sure that any World that summons Earthers are actually saved, and that the summoned heroes are kept accountable by us. They argue that it’ll take a lot of resources to extend our multiversal monitoring to that as well, but almost everyone thinks it’s worth the cost.”

  “Too bad it keeps getting vetoed by him,” interrupted the grizzled man who talked earlier. “Something as big as that isn’t going to pass unless all of the executive council approves it.”

  “Who’s that?” asked Kai.

  “You’ve already met him,” the grizzled man replied. “It’s Artyom.”