My name isn't important, at least, not yet. What is important is why you came here, why we came here.
We are here to listen to a story...
The world I once knew…still existed. I just wasn't there anymore. You don't know it, but then again, how could you? I went on the first actual vacation I ever actually went on, Tokyo Japan. And let me tell you, it was a blast.
I was walking to the hotel when I saw a kid staring at something in the middle of the sidewalk, holding a laptop to his side. I wondered what the heck he was doing, but started to pass by him. I looked at him, and saw him falling foreword, dropping his laptop. I caught the laptop as the kid grabbed me for support, only for me to be dragged with him forward.
One moment I was seeing a city block, the next I was seeing a birds eye view of some pentagon structure....and I was falling along side this kid.
"AHHHH!!!!!!" I yelled alongside the kid as we fell from roughly a half mile up in the sky. Near the ground I closed my eyes, expecting to die at any moment. The kid landing on me, and I pushed him off of me. I looked around, and took a deep breath. Honestly? I should have died, but something lightened our fall.
What the fuck was going on? This all seemed familiar, but I couldn't think of what it was. It's like I seen this before. My nose started to bleed, and I felt confused. i started seeing things, but ignored them in favor of trying to focus on the now.
The people started speaking a foreign language, and I frowned. It sounded like Latin.
I tried to stand, but couldn't. I didn't have my legs. The kid I just pushed off of me was trying to stop the bleeding, and I examined him.
He was short, Japanese, and wore a blue and white hoodie…why was this so familiar?!
Trying not to think about it, I realized I was in shock. I wasn't feeling the pain at the moment, which didn't bother me for some reason. I took off my belt and tied it around one leg, the boy did the same with his belt as we tried to stop the bleeding. I looked around me, and everyone was shell shocked.
The people around me wore capes, with a five pentagram pendent holding the cape around their neck.
This was bad.
"DO SOMETHING!" I yelled, and a tall, bald man moved towards me, and said something.
Next thing I knew I was feeling the worst pain I have ever had, my legs were being cauterized. I didn't scream, but did grunt and gasp in pain, and bit into the leather of my watch as the man went from knee to knee...I lost both legs right below the knee.
And somehow that didn't bother me.
When the man was done, he said something to me with a look of pity, and I nodded my head to him. You didn't need to know the language to know what it was like when someone was apologizing.
I stayed quiet, and the boy next to me calmed down, but looked worried.
They started to bicker among themselves, and I could tell that the pink haired girl was being mocked. She walked forward, pausing as she got close to the boy and kissed him on the lips. He started to grunt in pain, and I saw smoke rising from his left hand, and smelt burning flesh. She looked to me, and I glared at her. She took a step back.
I'm not a pedophile, thank you very much, and I sure as fuck wasn't getting branded. There seemed to be a bit of arguing, and the only adult, a bald man with a staff, have a word of chastisement to the girl with the pink hair. I tried to dig though my tiny knowledge of Latin, Pax meant Peace, right?
"Pax!" The girl hesitated, and moved closer.
"STOP!" I yelled, pushing her away.
I then felt an impact on my back, knocking me down. I rolled, and tried to get up, but failed because of my lack of legs. A stone statue grabbed me and held me still on the ground as the pink haired girl ran up to me and gave me a quick peck on the lips, and I glared at her as she looked away. The boy next to me was screaming in agony, and I felt a burning pain.
I grunted, and bit into the stone statue, cracking one of my teeth. Oh god it hurt, but I wasn't going to let these bastards here me scream. Eventually the pain stopped, and everyone started to leave by flying. Situation? I was in hostile territory with a civilian; they used torture right off the bat after a ritualistic kiss. I was down two legs.
I picked up the laptop next to me as I examined my new enemies.
They have the abilities of flight, and they use wands. I can safely assume they use magic at this point, and if it's anything like Harry Potter then escape is not an easy option, not without my fucking legs and a stupid civilian with me. If only I had a gun...then I could just....Damn it, you don;t have a gun, just relax and focus on making these bastards pay for the torture.
Still, I had to escape…
I was let go as the statues crumbled. The pink haired girl barked at us, making it clear that she wanted us to follow her. We had to play along for now if we wanted any chance of escape.
I dragged myself along, until the boy stopped and put me on his back. This was humiliating....and he nodded his head when I told him thank you in japanese. I handed him his laptop, and he looked surprised to see it again. I WAS being polite and picking it up for him when he suddenly dropped it like that, nope, he had to drag me across the universe.
We went into a building, and I started mapping the area in my head, taking note of what was around me. Dark Ages in terms of technology, magic likely held them back technologically… No air conditioning, they still used candles, but it seemed that magic was assisting them.
We entered a room, and I nodded my head. I was assuming that this was the pink haired girl's room. I took off my backpack, and set it on the ground next to the door. He put his laptop next to it, and looked surprised by the fancy aura of the room. He set me down on a chair, and I twitched my eyebrow at the straw on the ground, and only one, rather large bed.
So...we are slaves. I growled, and the pink haired girl snapped at me, waving a wand around.
"No." I said, and her face turned bright red.
"Nolo." I told her, while pointing at the straw on the ground. I think Nolo meant 'I will not'. Studying Latin for a harry potter fanfic kinda helped. She started yelling at me, and I shook my head at her.
"Liberum" I told her, while hitting myself on the chest. She pointed her wand at me, and I felt something explode next to me, and the sudden impact of the wall meeting my back.
I felt my vision swimming as she started kicking me, the boy too afraid to do anything. I'm gonna kill this girl....
I grabbed her foot, and pulled, knocking her down to the ground. I held her down, and raised my fist to hit her, but hesitated.
Why did I hesitate?
She had a look of fright on her face…but that didn't matter. Why couldn't I do this?
I will kill her, eventually.
"No." I told her, getting up and offering her a hand. She took it, and backed away from me.
"Liberum." I said gesturing at her. "Liberum." I said gesturing to me. "Liberum." I said, gesturing to the boy who watched. I didn't know very many words, but it got the point across. I dragged myself back to the chair and sat down. The boy started trying to talk. I couldn't understand most of what he said, but I tried to communicate anyway.
"Kanojo wa….what-the-fuck-was-that-word…anata o rikai suru….koto wa arimasen." I struggled to say, but I got the point across.
"Japanese!" he said with joy, and I nodded my head.
"Hijō ni……Ritoru" He then started trying to talk to me in rapid fire Japanese, and I just gave him a look of confusion. Great, language barriers all around. The kid kept on talking, and talking, and I was getting annoyed.
"Satis!" she pointed her wand at the kid, and I tensed up. The boy tried to say something, but it just irritated her even further.
"Silentium!" A white ball of energy fired off and hit the boy and myself, knocking us over. The boy started to speak, and I started to understand what he was saying…but it was fuzzy, I couldn't understand everything, just some of what he was saying. It was Latin, that was for sure. Looks like I had to focus to understand, maybe because I was not the target of the spell, just inside of the explosive force of the spell.
"Quiet." I said, rubbing my sore head.
"I understood you!" The boy said with a look of disbelief.
"Then why are you talking? Be quiet while I try to keep the princess from killing us." I muttered, and the boy gave me a look of disbelief.
"Whhhhaaaa?" He said, and the pink haired girl sighed.
"Look, you two are my familiars, like it or not. This means that you two are meant to serve me."
"Not happening." I replied, "You do not enslave Americans, my people fought a war that killed tens of thousands for freedom for all." She looked surprised by my claim, but Saito nodded his head in confirmation.
"That happened with his people, my people were lucky enough to ban slavery without fighting that sort of war." The boy said, causing the girl to blush, she shook her head and clarified.
"Familiar, not slave." I arched an eyebrow, and I asked the obvious question.
"Will we be paid for our forced service?" She blinked in surprise, as if the thought never occurred to her.
"What? No, familiars are their summoners partner!" I nodded my head.
"Partner? So then what do we get out of this?" I asked, and she looked confused.
"Huh?" Dear god, it was now painfully obvious we were slaves in all but name.
"Well, if i am a partner, doesn't that mean that we share success?" She nodded her head, and I thought about this for a moment.
"Normally a familiar is a beast of some sort, not a Human." She commented, rubbing her head.
"Ah, so a partner like how my dog back home is my partner?" I asked, and she nodded her head.
"So slave really." I said, and she face palmed. Saito asked a innocent question before we could continue arguing.
"How does a beast that is a familiar get tamed?"
"What?" I saw where he was going with this, and jumped on it.
"Animals do not just become partners with some random person, it takes a degree of trust between the two. This would have to be established by the spell, right? So how does the spell make the summoned beasts cooperative?" I asked, and she blushed.
"I don't know." I could guess, but first I wanted to ask around.
"Who does?" I asked, looking at my clothes. Torn up, and some red stains that were slowly growing.
I was wounded from the explosion, I noted that it was a concussive explosion. I am bruised, and need to take things easy just in case I have a concussion. I tore up the shirt, using it to seal the wound on my chest. Thankfully her kicks were far too weak to break anything...
"I need new clothes, and you destroyed mine." Her mouth opened, and I glared at her.
"You get your own clothes!" She said, looking away.
"Typical rich girl." I said, gesturing for the kid to pick me up, and he did so.
"Where do think you are going?!"
"To get clothes my master, as you ordered." I said sarcastically, and she let out a screech of frustration. The boy carried me on his back out of the room as quickly as possible, knowing better then to stay near an angry girl with explosives.
"So...you're name?" I questioned, and he looked up at me in surprise.
"Oh! Name name is Saito! Nice to meet you!" I told him my name, and I sighed heavily.
"What's wrong?" Saito asked, and I glared at him.
"How did we get here? I get that we were summoned, but I saw nothing." I said, and Saito gave me a confused look.
"The green portal we went though." He said, and I narrowed my eyes.
"What did you see?" I asked, and he took a deep breath.
"There was a green portal..." That was something I didn't see.
"Describe it." I ordered.
"Well, it was impossibly thin, it was like liquid at the center, and mist at the edges...deeper green on the edges, it was...I don't know, I felt like I had to touch it."
"Mind compulsion..." I muttered, and he had a look of confusion.
"They used magic to make you curious about the portal, tricking you into accepting the deal...that might be the acceptance part of the deal the princess mentioned." I explained, and he nodded his head slowly while rubbing his chin.
"And this did something with my mind?" Saito asked with a healthy bit of worry.
"Our mind." I corrected. "I couldn't punch her." I said flatly. "Even though she just blew me up and was kicking me while I was down...." My jaw tightened, and I took a deep breath though my nose. I was pissed.
"Believe me, I wanted to."
"Ahh..." He said, and stayed quiet for a while. Damn it, we can't get depressed.
"Look, we need to figure out how to break this spell, no one should ever be a slave." Saito looked at me, and his face hardened.
"Right, we have to escape." He declared in a hushed tone.
"Not yet. If I am right, then they used mind altering magic to get you into the portal. Chances are that kiss did something with our heads...if we try to leave, there is a chance that the spell will make us want to stay." I commented, and Saito grit his teeth in anger.
"Damn it...this isn't going to be easy, is it?" He muttered, and I shook my head.
"Let's first try to even the score...we should try to learn magic." He got a surprised look on his face, and I explained it to him.
"At this point anything will help...but unless there is a library or a school nearby, I don't think we are going to have much luck."
"Can we even learn magic?" Saito asked, and I shrugged.
"Doubt it, but it's worth the shot." Saito nodded his head, and stayed silent as we explored the castle.
We found a supply closet with books and a small collection of what looked like wands, and a collection of hand written books....they must have been expensive.
I left them be for the moment, deciding to learn more before doing something stupid.
Thankfully, there were some high end clothes in here that looked like uniforms.
I mismatched, taking the butlers black pants, the waiters white shirt, and a black cloak. This would do for the moment. I tore off the lower half of the legs, now that I was doing without.
"Take a cloak. Right now you stand out too much...we can put your hoodie in my backpack when we get back to that girls room...what do you have?" I asked and Saito shook his head.
"What do you mean?" He asked, and I refrained from face palming.
"What do you have with you from our world?" I clarified, and he dug though his pockets.
"Let's see....Wallet, phone, keys...and some spare change." I frowned, but thought about it.
While I did change my clothes, my pants were only minor damaged...but my shirt was already destroyed. I took everything out of the pockets and did a minor inventory.
A pocket knife, a minor leathermen multitool, a pen, a notebook, my cell phone, I-pod nano on a wristband, my actual watch on my wrist, wallet, keys, some change, and a pair of headphones. I showed him, and he was surprised at how much I carried.
"Force of habit, anyway, I have more stuff in my backpack...I was buying stuff for people back home who gave me money to buy them." I said, and Saito nodded his head in understanding.
"Grab a pair of pants and a shirt, you are going to need to change clothes every now and then. Lets get back to that room before she thinks we ran away."
"Not like we would get very far." Saito muttered while picking me up.
"Less then an hour and already cripple jokes..."