Remembrance of a time forgotten, aka yesterday

  “So, how much of yesterday do you remember?” asked Sheila, as she looked into Kai’s eyes with a curious expression. The two of them took a shot and silent walk to the cafeteria, during which time Sheila’s previously bouncy attitude had returned.

  “Uh, some of it, I guess,” he replied, absentmindedly stirring the bowl of hot oatmeal before him. It was filled with sliced almonds and strawberries, and the young man was getting them all covered in the goopy mix. “So why don’t you just tell me what the hell’s going on? I think it’d make things easier.”

  “We already did, silly!” exclaimed the rainbow-haired woman with a grin. “And you forgot. There’s a lot to cover, so just tell me what you do remember and I’ll fill in the gaps. Trust me, it really will be more straightforward for both of us this way.”

  The two of them sat at a metal table on a pair of wire mesh chairs. The cafeteria they were settled in was filled with others occupying similar easy to clean furniture, enjoying their own meals. Most were in casual clothes, others in a collection of strange vestments.

  Some were in a wide variety of armors, from the now visorless body armor of the guards who’d escorted him here, to full metal plate and chainmail straight out of a renaissance fair. Speaking of renaissance fairs, others were wearing strangely rustic linen getups or long and flowing silk robes akin to something out of a history textbook, or roleplaying game rulebook. And a few others who dotted the seats wore the modern equivalent, including camo print fatigues to white lab coats.

  Unlike the spartan nature of the furnishings, the food on everyones’ plates and bowls was much more luxurious. Flambéed French omelettes set ablaze in a green flame, sizzling multi-colored bacon where the fat was literally jumping between the individual strips in tall arcs, and in an entirely mundane case, a full English breakfast!

  “So are you going to eat that oatmeal?” asked Sheila, pointing towards Kai’s bowl. “It’s cooked in milk, ya know? Way better than the slop you’d find anywhere else that just uses plain water. Just take a bite, you’ll feel better, I promise!”

  “Because it’s drugged?” asked Kai.

  “Drugs?” asked Sheila confusedly. “Hold on, are you saying that just because of the way I color my hair?”

  “N-no!” Kai quickly backpedaled. “I mean, that was my original theory when I woke up today, and why I don’t remember anything.”

  “You thought you were drugged and dragged here by us?” Sheila ascertained with a single eyebrow cartoonishly cocked. “Who do you think we are, the Cheka or KGB?” She burst into a fit of giggles after making the comparison.

  “Well…”

  “Well if we were some kind of shadowy government organization, we wouldn’t be treating you this well!” She managed to get out the sentence amidst her continued laughter. “We’d just knock you out and stick a whole bunch of needles into you!”

  Kai regarded her cheerful demeanor amidst the horrifying hypothetical with a careful poker face of his own, but soon gave in. He took a small scoop of the oaty porridge and let a small bit of it drip onto his tongue. He hadn’t let go of his original theory completely just yet, but with so many people enjoying the high-class food around him, the stuff in his bowl probably wasn’t drugged.

  Well, maybe it was drugged, but in that case like Sheila had said, he must’ve already been under its influence. Ok, new theory; he was on Pleasure Island and they were going to turn him into a donkey! Wait, a donkey?! Maybe he already was drugged if he was going to think of something as ridiculous as that.

  As the oatmeal made contact with his tongue, Kai lit up. He took an even bigger spoonful of the rich and creamy delicacy and shoved it into his mouth. As he took a bite, the individual cooked grains gave way to his teeth, the crunch of the almond slivers providing the dish a much welcome addition to its texture. Perfectly ripe strawberries exploded into a mix of tangy sweetness that bestowed the perfect enhancement to the sweet and nutty flavor on top of that.

  All in all, it was the best oatmeal he’d ever eaten in his life, not that that was saying much. All previous fears now forgotten, he kept spooning the mixture into his maw and soon enough, the bowl was just about empty. That didn’t stop Kai, however, who continued to scrape off the individual grains stuck to the bowl’s side.

  “Feeling better, mate?” asked Sheila.

  Kai simply nodded. With the food now sitting in his stomach, the gears in his mind were starting to turn more effectively. And his first intelligent act of the day was to discard his previous wackjob theories and try to remember what was going on for himself. He’d either come here by his own volition or was brought here by somebody else, and he’d have to scour through his memories to find the answer.

  “See, all you had to do was accept my offer instead of running around the place!”

  “I guess so, but speaking of which, why did you let me run around like that? You’re not much of a hyper-competent secret government organization if you let your prisoners run around and cause trouble.”

  “Kai, I already said we’re not- oh, ha! Ya got me!” laughed Sheila. “But to answer your question, we didn’t think you’d cause any trouble, or at least not that much.”

  “And why’s that? I think I was about to cause plenty.”

  “Yeah,” she sighed as her smile faltered, recalling the broken drywall she passed by on her way to collect Kai. “But we had a chance to talk to you yesterday and get a good idea of the kind of person you are. And our psychologist said you weren’t going to go out of your way to hurt anyone unless properly provoked.”

  “Waking up in a place as weird as this and being confronted by a pair of armed guards was proper provocation, if you ask me.”

  “But not enough for you to actually hurt anyone. Beird, who you ran into earlier, told me you were staring so hard he felt you were petting him with just your gaze!”

  “Wait, petting? The dog…”

  “Yup, that’s him! And how can someone who loves dogs like that be such a bad person?”

  “You got me there,” replied Kai with a sigh. “Still, a talking dog. Are you sure I haven’t been drugged?”

  “I don’t think we’re going to get anywhere if I just try and explain things,” said Sheila with a snort. “So from the top, what do you remember about yesterday?”

  “Well, I remember going to school like normal, but then everything went wrong at lunch…”

  Kai was dead and all his dreams had come true. At least, that’s what he thought as soon as he came to within the large, obsidian circle laid into the marble floor. Surrounded by a large group of other young men and women… no, boys and girls, Kai felt a strange sense of relief amid the quietness of the hall and smell of incense wafting through the still air.

  A moment ago, he was in his school’s cafeteria tackling another classmate out of the way of what he believed to be some lit fireworks. He didn’t have much to look forward to in his life, so he figured it’d be a worthy trade-off, his own pitiful existence for the other kid’s hopeful future. What he heard next only solidified that sentiment.

  “Young heroes,” came a booming voice from in front of the crowd. Seated upon an ornate, golden throne situated above a marble dias, was a regal figure. Flowing red robes and jewel encrusted platinum crown did plenty to create an air of grandioseness amidst his apparent age and pot belly. “You have been summoned to aid in a battle against a foe most vile! From a land too far away from even our fastest [Horse Riders], you have been brought to bring peace and prosperity to My kingdom!”

  “No way,” came a young, masculine voice from the crowd, unmistakably excited.

  “Yo, we got frikkin isekaied!” shouted another girl. “Do you think we’re going to get a chosen boyfriend? Oh! Or maybe a chosen girlfriend? How about a bunch of both!”

  “Hold on, are we even the chosen ones? I mean, I think we are if we’re here…” said another.

  “I want to go home!” wailed a little kid. The entire group standing in the shining black circle turned to face him, the whole throne room growing silent. Kai was able to make him out from the crowd, and saw that he was nothing more than a 7 or 8 year old child. With a bowl cut made of brown hair and a single missing front tooth, the kid regarded the king with a heavy pout and tears forming in his eyes.

  “As the ancient prophecy has foretold, you will carry My light to those wretches who dare threaten My way of life! As people from another World, you will gain strength and levels at an incredible rate, becoming the ultimate soldiers!” The man seated on the throne continued his speech unabated.

  The rest of his court watched with held breath, their eyes shifting between the king and the young boy.

  At that moment, Kai was beginning to have second thoughts about all of this. He knew that the man sitting on the throne heard the kid and was purposefully ignoring him. With a creased brow and his eyes trying to find anything else at all to look at, that king was definitely trying to hold onto the facade of order and control.

  In other words, he was the kind of guy who was used to getting his way. And judging by the reaction of all of his subjects, he was also the kind of guy who was more than happy to show his rage when that didn’t happen. Just like Kai’s mother, back in the world he was taken from.

  “No! I want to go back to my parents!” shouted the young boy once more at the top of his lungs.

  This time, the king was forced to stop his speech mid-sentence due to the volume of the bellow cutting him off. The robed woman that stood next to him, whose presence Kai just noticed, cleared her throat and jerked her head between the crowd and her liege. She seemed like the closest person to the King there, and if she was getting scared, then there wasn’t much time left before…

  “Enough!” shouted the man sitting upon the throne. “You stand in the presence of King Reginald III, grand sovereign of the Valenloft Kingdom under the grace of the goddess Allivaine!” The members of the court all seemed to shrink several inches as their leader’s voice boomed across the room. “For the crime of speaking out against the king, I sentence you to torture and execution! Guards, take the boy to the dungeons, he will be dealt with later.”

  Kai’s eyes widened as everyone around him registered the terrible words. In an instant, all of his worst fears were confirmed, and he realized what was waiting for them all. Chosen heroes? Please, they were going to be thrown into a fucking meat grinder! At least with someone like this in charge. And that little kid… Kai shuddered at the thought of what was going to happen to him now.

  Wait, that didn’t have to be the case. The surrounding guards were hesitating at the king’s draconian decree, and he might have enough time to grab the child and make a break for it. Chances were, he’d get cut down before he left the castle, and even after that, they’d be on the run from this asshole Reginald. On the other hand, he did mention how Kai and the other Earthers would grow powerful incredibly quickly, and that could mean the means of carving out a life away from the king’s influence! There was hope!

  Yet, as Kai willed his feet to move, they stood still. Despite his consciousness screaming at his muscles to be a hero, they refused to. They preferred to stay a coward. He preferred to be a coward. Kai closed his eyes and gulped his spit with a terrible grimace. Was this the kind of man he wanted to be? No, but it was the kind of boy he was.

  As the first armored soldier took a clanging step, the room went quiet again. Kai opened his eyes to see who amongst them was braver than he, and came across a different sight entirely. All over the throne room, several swirling discs appeared out of thin air, surrounded by strange symbols and a purple-backed swirl that seemed to be a hole in the universe itself covering the rest of its surface.

  Out of those circles came a new stream of armed soldiers, dressed completely differently than the ones lining the throne room.

  “This is the Terran Defense Force! You stand accused of abusing Earther Summoning Rituals! Stand down and you will be spared!” one of the newcomers shouted in a deep, yet authoritative voice.

  This time, the guards didn’t hesitate, and they flew into action with swords raised. It didn’t do them much good.

  In less time than it took Reginald to lose his temper at the little boy, the strange soldiers had already secured the room. The sulphur yellow-tipped spears and halberds cut through the guards’ arms and armor as if they were made of butter, leaving behind a trail of still-spreading rust wherever they made contact. And the weapons used against them merely bounced off their thick, fabric-like armor. After the first few dead at their hands, the other soldiers decided to surrender rather than continue the futile defense.

  “What are you doing?!” shouted the king, as he began to rise off his seat. He sat up several inches before letting himself fall back down to the fluffed cushion.

  “Making the right choice,” replied the same man of the strange army who had originally announced their intent, as he casually made his way towards the no-longer-regal king.

  “I’ll have your head! All of yours!” the monarch continued to shout impotently.

  “King Reginald III, I think I’ll just call you Reggie whether or not you mind-”

  Before he could complete his sentence, the robed woman standing beside king Reggie blasted a gout of fire from her hands, striking the newcomer straight in the torso. The frantic smile on her face faded into horror as the man simply brushed off the residual embers from his armor and continued towards them unabated.

  “Nice trick there, with that firebolt there, Miss Court Wizard,” he said cheerfully in reply. “Bigger than average, but I won’t call it a fireball since I’m not standing in a flaming crater right now. Honestly, why is fire always everyone’s go-to spell? I mean, it’s so generic and easy to counter when you expect it!”

  The earthers stared at the brash man as he continued his little speech. To Kai, it felt as if it was mainly for the man’s own benefit, as if he craved the chance to monologue but rarely found a good opportunity to do so. Either that, or he really had some kind of a bone to pick with Reggie.

  “That’s why we’re all wearing heatscar spider silk armor,” he continued without pause, just like his walk up the unnecessarily tall dais. “The stuff is perfect against fire and blunt force weapons, they just slide right off! But that’s what due diligence gets you, an easier time. Now let me show you something even cooler.”

  “I’ll show you exactly why fire is-” started the woman, before pausing mid-sentence at what happened next.

  The newcomer lifted a hand and snapped a finger. The air around the court wizard grew light, something missing from it. In fact, that very absence drew out the same stuff from the lady through diffusion, making her remove the hood on her robe and begin panting.

  “What did you do?” she asked between her pants.

  “That there’s a null magic spell! It should be possible for wizards such as yourself to cast it, if the teaching of magic in this World wasn’t constantly undermined. You’re just dealing with a magic vacuum, you’ll be fine. Now as for you, Reggie…”

  The soldier removed his visor to reveal another young man of slightly mixed ancestry. His black hair and slightly almond-shaped eyes were complemented by the near-vertical scar running down his left cheek and somewhat sharp cheekbones. While the newly summoned had eyes of wonder and bewilderment, his were similar to the very granite that made up the walls; cold and hard.

  “All it took was a petty border war for you to start summoning Earthers. It wasn’t enough for you to draft your peasants who aren’t gaining anything from this but you had to press gang people who aren’t even your own citizens. Even children! I would say I’m shocked, but that’s part and parcel for a King in a Gilded World. It’s been a while since I’ve been deployed to a Noblebright World, but it’s rarely as bad there as it is in worlds like this one. It honestly gets tiring policing over the worst of humanity, if you all can still be considered the same as the rest of us.”

  The King was speechless. Though he took no insult sitting down, he knew not to let his anger get the better of him, and who knew how many more tricks these strangers had up their surprisingly sturdy sleeves?

  The man turned to the people still standing within the onyx summoning ring. “Ladies and Gentlemen of Earth, my name is Artyom Choi,” he started. “This piece of human feces, Reggie, decided to kidnap you all to fight in a stupid war that he started over a little bit of farmland.”

  The young child who had asked to go home pulled on the sleeve of a young lady next to him and asked for the meaning of feces. Her reply made him giggle.

  “On behalf of the Terran Otherworldly Advocacy League that I represent, I apologize for the terrible inconvenience. Whenever exploitations of Earther summoning rituals like this occur, we try to assist the victims and prevent those abuses from happening again. Fortunately, it appears that the summoning ritual you are all standing on hasn’t quite cooled down yet, and it may be possible to send you back. All we need is…”

  “Found it!” shouted one of the other soldiers in a nasally voice, awkwardly grabbing a sheaf of yellowed papers from one of the courtiers. He didn’t look quite as disciplined as his peers in terms of physical fitness and demeanor, but his reaction to the notes showcased where his true strengths lay. “It’s definitely rune magic, only level 5 degradation to boot! Just give me the signal and I’ll send everyone back.”

  “Alright Abhi,” replied Artyom, giving him a thumbs up. “Go ahead!”

  “Hold on!” shouted Kai, grabbing everyone’s attention. “I’m not going back home, there’s nothing for me there.”

  “We could exclude you from the ritual,” stated Abhi, taking another look at the sheaf of papers in his hands. “You’d just need to step out of the ring.”

  “We could, but is being shanghaied any better than wherever you’re from? You sound American, so even joining the army would get you a much better way of life than whatever Reggie had planned for you.”

  “That’s enough!” shouted King Reginald. “First you insult my court, but now you insult my army? I won’t stand for this...”

  A strong gust of air shoved Reggie back into his throne, and a spear of coalesced light pinned his robes to the seat.

  “You can sit down then. But please, shut the hell up,” requested Artyom.

  Reggie complied.

  Artyom turned back to Kai, awaiting his anwer.

  “Well, maybe not here, but somewhere? I’ve seen a few anime about this happening, and it’s always a chance to build a new life for yourself. That’s what I need.”

  Artyom took a few seconds to take in what Kai had said. He took a deep breath, and put on a warm smile. “What you need, my friend, is therapy. I don’t really know your life story, but it’s always better to send more emotionally complete people to Worlds if we want to help other Earthers. It’ll take a bit before you’re ready, but we’ll get you there.”

  Kai processed Artyom’s answer before his eyes began to widen. “You mean you want me to come with you guys?”

  “Indeed I do. Once you’re prepped, we can drop you off in a nice Fairytale World to live out a peaceful life, or you could even choose to join us if you’re looking for a bit of a challenge,” said Artyom with a wide grin.

  “Hold on,” said Abhi, turning towards Kai and the rest of the crowd and regarding them with a stern and cautionary expression. “If you step out of that ring, then you’ll never be able to go home. You’ll be stuck here with us, the rest of the multiverse, or king Reggie over there. Think carefully before you-”

  Kai leaped out of the ring and landed with an acrobat’s flourish. His wide, shit-eating grin told the TOAL agents everything they needed to know.

  “Well alrighty, then!” exclaimed Abhi with a dry smile as he rolled his eyes. “Anyone else want to jump into a massive, life-changing decision without really thinking about it like this guy over here?”

  The young boy in the audience forcefully shook his head. The others didn’t say a thing.

  “If you’re hesitating, then it means the answer is no. And if you’re saying no, then it also means no!” said Artyom with a laugh. “Don’t worry, you might end up getting spirited away like this again in the future, hopefully to a place much nicer than this with a way home. Those portalled once seem to have a knack for getting called again, that’s why we’re giving you these souvenirs.” The half-asian man took out a set of small metal pins out to everyone left in the circle, including Kai who was patiently waiting outside of it.

  With everyone now in possession of a souvenir, Abhi began chanting. The runes in the ring began to glow again, and a blinding flash of light enveloped the boys and girls standing inside.

  “Thank you!” came the voice of the young boy before they all disappeared, safely back home.

  “So what should we call you?” asked Artyom, regarding his organization’s newest guest.

  “It’s Kai. Kai Freeman.”

  “Well Kai, it’s a pleasure to meet you! Let’s head back to headquarters and I’ll give you the grand tour.” He led Kai through one of the portals, on a brand new journey.