Fukona Isekai?!?

不幸な異世界

Cal silently held Jack's desperate gaze, his own bright blue bunny eyes narrowed. The silence stretched out as neither party moved or spoke for several heartbeats, before 's Cal's eyes suddenly widened in surprise.

Returning to Attenborough's voice, Cal telepathically exclaimed "What happened to your eye Buddy Friend?!"

Jack smiled in relief when Cal returned to Attenborough's voice, before cocking his head questioningly to one side.

He replied to the rabbit's surprise with a rather calm and nonreactive demeanor "Huh. You're right, only one eye works. Hey, Could you just call me Jack instead of Buddy Friend? Not that we aren't buddies, but since we're somehow on speaking terms now, it won't feel so weird if you use my first name."

"What the hell is going on anyway?" Jack went on to muse aloud as he felt the haze of panic lift from his mind, taking a sense of tunnel vision with it. Ignoring Cal, who had begun to stare even more intently at him, Jack finally took a moment to fully take in his surroundings.

Jack and Cal stood facing each other in a wooded depression, through which a small stream flowed further downhill. Through the spaces in the leafy green treetops, Jack could make out vivid bright blue skies. Rays of warm sunlight filtered down through the leaves to cast dappled shadows on the dirt and sparse patches of brownish-green grass. A cool breeze picked up once again, causing Jack to quickly remember that he was completely naked as goosebumps spread across his exposed skin. He noted the clear water of the stream before stepping further from it and wrapping his arms around himself, rubbing with his hands to try and warm himself.

"If it weren't for the breeze, or if I had some clothes, this weather would be perfect!" Jack exclaimed out loud to no one in particular as he continued to look around the depression. He noted that they seem to be in a small ravine, with thicker Woods continuing up both slopes rising from the banks of the stream. Jack decided that with how clear and cold the water was, this must be flowing from a natural spring and not runoff from the forest. He stopped to consider the geology on display, but it felt like parts of his thoughts were missing. Judging by the mix of broken limestone and red granite mixed in the stream bed, he and Cal were in a forested mountain range or set of foothills somewhere. He felt like that rock combination should tell him something, but since it was still evading his mental grasp he started looking at the local flora instead. The trees were all a mix of firs and maples that Jack didn't recognize, which ruled out being anywhere he felt like he should be personally familiar with. Realizing that he only had a weird fuzzy impression in his mind anytime he tried to think of places he might know, Jack's tension mounted, but he resumed examining his surroundings. Jack had only just started paying attention to the previously forgotten ice cream truck music that he still could hear, when Cal interrupted his concentration.

"But your name isn't Jack, Buddy Friend!" Cal excitedly insisted.

"Eh?" deadpanned Jack, turning to stare down at Cal.

'Jack' raised his left eyebrow and met Cal's gaze before inquiring "It's not? Then what is my name?"

Cal tilted his fluffy rabbit head back to match his friend's gaze, raising his two bunny ears up in alert. Dark grey, almost blue colored patches of fur surrounded both of Cal's eyes, giving him the appearance of wearing either a mask, or excessive amounts of eye shadow. He wouldn't have been entirely out of place in an '80s hair band, if that type of band typically included telepathically gifted lagomorphs. Other than the splotches around his eyes, and a speckled trail of similar fur running from his neck down his back to his tail, Cal's fur was bright fluffy white. An unusual long white mane gathered around his neck, and tufting up from the back of his head. His little white paws had a bit of dirt on them, but otherwise Cal was completely clean, unlike the man he was matching stares with.

Jack was tall, lanky, slender and marginally athletic. He was unusually proportioned with a long torso and broad shoulders. With his identity in question, without really knowing what he was doing, he went to check his pants pocket for a wallet and ID before remembering that he was not wearing any pants. When he noticed that he was unconsciously patting and grouping his own thighs and posterior, he grew a bit self-conscious and was distracted from his recent identity crisis. If he could have remembered his absent driver's license, or what it was, he would have known that it accurately said he was 44 years old, 6'4" tall and weighed 195 lbs. He had long, wavy dark chestnut brown hair that came down just past his shoulders. His facial hair, a few days of unshaved stubble that ran along his wide jaw and framed his mouth and chin with a trace of becoming a goatee, matched his hair color. Both were streaked with a few hints of gray and lighter undertones. Currently, his luscious locks of lustrous long hair was tangled with sticks and leaves, and wasn't particularly flattering as it framed his face and collected off to one side as if he had attempted to toss it over one shoulder fashionably, leaves and twigs be damned. His eyes however, were an outstanding oddity. Jack's right eye was a normal dark green with healthy white sclera, although it was rather bloodshot at the moment. His left eye was another matter entirely, having dark red sclera and a bright pink iris, both of which shined reflectively almost like a cat's.

Jack's body was lightly muscled, and defined. While he didn't have a six pack, his frame lacked many of the smoothing lines of fat that would normally be expected of a man in his mid 40's. He had only a small trace of belly fat on his long torso, and his ribs could almost be noticed with how modestly he was muscled. He had long arms and legs, a narrow waist, broad shoulders and back, and a long neck. Rather than calling him athletic or muscular, wiry was a much better description. He had a large simple chest tattoo, of a hooded, half-closed eye right over his solar plexus. Around both of his forearms, Jack also had matching ouroboros sleeve tattoos, stylized with intricate snakes.

Cal struggled for a polite, serious telepathic tone, when he went to respond to his friend. It was quite difficult, since his friend was standing there stark naked, legs spread wide, hands on his hips, with mud and snot smeared across his otherwise angular and reasonably handsome face. With how much the man completely lacked dignity at the moment, Cal couldn't even remember what his friend had just asked. So, Cal instead repeated his earlier question.

"What happened to your eye?" Cal asked again.

"Don't change subjects, I asked what my name is!" 'Jack' demanded in response.

"Huh? But your bad eye is a funny color!" Cal responded before continuing on to try to 'say' something but finding himself unable. "It's...it's...ugh! I don't know, but it's not Jack!"

Jack's face grew more concerned and he leaned his head backwards in thought before replying:

"Well, I can't seem to remember either, so just call me Jack for now. We both seem to remember your name, or nickname at least."

Jack paused a moment before continuing on the question Cal.

"Do you remember your full name, and what do you mean by eye is funny colored?"

Cal straightened his fuzzy little body up as tall as he could before proudly declaring in David Attenborough's borrowed voice "Caliburn, Lord of Caerbannog!"

With markedly less enthusiasm and volume, Caliburn, Lord of Caerbannog then answered Jack's other question "Oh, well, your left eye is all shiny pink."

"I've got pink eye?" Jack asked defensively as he took a step back, splashing his right foot into the cold stream.

Between the cold water, and the breeze picking up again, Jack felt himself once again chilled, causing him to wrap his arms back around himself again. As he resumed rubbing his skin with his hands for warmth, and now standing and running water, Jack was once again reminded of his over full bladder that he had been ignoring.

"Hold that thought!" Jack ordered urgently, while taking several steps out and away from the stream, before turning his back to Caliburn, Lord of Caerbannog. He then demonstrated the utter lack of self-consciousness possessed by an emotionally exhausted middle aged man who really needed to pee. Jack adopted a wide stance, leaned back, and with a deep, satisfied breath, relieved one of the primary sources of physical discomfort that still plagued him.

It was midstream when Jack suddenly recalled another primary source of physical discomfort. Thoughtlessly, Jack moved his free hand from his waist to his posterior, to begin a vital exploratory and extraction endeavor. Shortly after the fingers of his left hand began digging for something far less welcome than treasure, Jack felt a burning, piercing pain lance up his left middle finger, from just underneath the fingernail. The sudden intense pain inflicted on those very sensitive nerves caused him to completely forget what he was doing and jump in alarm. Turning around and stumbling backwards, Jack nearly sprayed Caliburn, Lord of Caerbannog, who narrowly avoided the indignity by leaping backwards himself.

Jack spastically waved his injured hand around, trying to dislodge what appeared to be a large black wood ant that had partially imbedded itself underneath his fingernail. When his energetic flailing failed to achieve his desired goal, Jack reached out with his right hand to grab the offending insect and wrench it free. As soon as he pulled the malicious attacker off, Jack tossed it away with every ounce of strength and resentment he could muster.

Panting, irate, and befuddled, Jack stood in the clearing staring at nothing until David Attenborough's soothing voice gently prodded his awareness.

"Hi, you need a bath. You're, uhm, dripping." Caliburn, Lord of Caerbannog observed helpfully while poking his head up from behind the convenient rock he had sheltered behind. His little bunny ears were angled attentively towards Jack, who held Cal's complete attention.

Jack seemed to stiffen immediately in response, his eyes widening in deranged lividness as he turned towards Cal and lunged with a snarl of rage!

"I'm sorry! I'M SORRY!!!" Cal squeaked in confused panic as his prey instincts kicked in and he scampered to his left, away from his enraged friend. Without looking back, Cal bolted away from Jack and under a nearby bush where he immediately began burrowing for safety.

Behind him, Cal heard some very confusing thuds, cracks, snarls, and growls, which were finally punctuated by Jack bellowing out "DON'T YOU TRY TO EAT MY BUNNY MOTHER FUCKER!"

This brain rattling warcry was followed by what sounded to Cal like panicked canine yelping, more thuds and snaps, and a superfluous number of growls from Jack. Cal didn't stop digging until he finally heard silence broken only by Jack's labored breathing.

Cal cautiously surfaced from his shallow improvised panic room, and poked his fluffy bunny head out of the undergrowth to take stock of the situation. He was taken aback to witness Jack, torn to shreds from bite and claw marks, but standing victoriously over the corpse of a muscled, vicious looking large black canine of some kind. Well, Cal was assuming it was a canine of some kind based on the general body shape and noises he had heard, but it was hard to tell with how thoroughly its head had been flattened. Jack still clutched one of the dog's back legs in one hand, as if he had grabbed it to keep it from fleeing, and a bloody, dog-brain-smeared rock in his other hand.

It wasn't difficult for Cal to quickly realize his previous misunderstanding and deduce the likely sequence of recent events that he hadn't witnessed. His Best Buddy Friend hadn't tried to murder him! Buddy Friend Jack, Cal would call him whatever he wanted, Jack in fact had just saved him from being eaten, by beating some sort of mutant warhound to death, almost barehanded!

"Buddy Friend Jack! You're bleeding lots!" Caliburn Attenborough, Lord of Caerbannog exclaimed in concern to his savior.

Cal's friend continued to stare blankly at the dead canine for a few moments before blinking thrice and making eye contact with the rabbit. Jack smiled deliriously at his friend, feeling a dual thrill of victory at having both defeated his foe and having been called by his newly preferred name. The smile lasted about as long as the last cupcake at a preschool party, as Jack's eyes rolled into the back of his head and he fell forward onto the conveniently squishy, yet inconveniently *squishy* corpse of the canine.

...

The first thing Jack noticed as awareness once again returned to his beleaguered and abused mind, was the now familiar and much louder music of an ice cream truck. For what seemed like hours or maybe days, Jack drifted in darkness with no sensation of himself other than hearing and thought. He could occasionally hear someone shuffling around, moving things, and humming along with the repetitive tune that sounded like it was playing from a very old and inexpensive loudspeaker. As he slowly became more self aware, he remembered his desperate and impulsive battle with the strange battle hound that had suddenly lunged from behind a boulder to try and eat his only friend in existence, who happened to be a talking telepathic rabbit that sounded like David Attenborough. Still unable to feel all the excruciating pain that he knew awaited him once he regain sense of his body, Jack found himself and reconsidering all of his recent experiences and reflecting upon the sanity of his reality.

"None of this makes sense, I have probably completely lost my mind somehow" Jack admitted to himself as he struggled to process the obscene hot mess that was his current understanding of reality.

"Seriously, after all those times I made fun of how most men will claim they can fight any wild animal bare-handed, what the fuck was I thinking?"

"I don't think I'm thinking, I think. I don't know if any of this is real but I couldn't let it hurt Cal! Not my buddy! But damn it! I don't even remember anything else other than the rabbit, and I don't even remember how or what I know about him!"

Jack felt the threads of his threadbare sanity unraveling further as his rumination began to attack his fragile hold on reality. He found himself questioning how he even had the perspective to ask himself the questions he was trying to field, growing more and more frustrated as he came up with blank after blank.

"How do I even know that being excessively pissed off at the dog for trying to bite my junk probably reflects some sort of unhealthy phallic attachment or insecurity?! From what I saw, I'm well above average! I think!"

Jack's internal dialogue, along with his underlying mental and emotional state, continued to degenerate.

Suddenly, he felt his bodily sensation return all at once, along with blinding light that slowly faded and became tolerable as he found himself blinking. Surprisingly, he was not experiencing any of the substantial amounts of physical pain that he had been anticipating. He could feel a warm fuzzy presence against his side that had to be Cal. As his eye adjusted, and his vision clarified, Jack found himself looking up to see a bemused and bedraggled elderly man smiling down at him.

He sat up, painlessly, and once again remarkably refreshed. Cal remained asleep and snuggled against his left thigh as Jack took in his surroundings. He discovered he was still in the same hilly forest as before, sitting on the ground in front of an ice cream truck that looked as if it had rolled right out of the streets of 1980s American suburbia. Judging by the hat the overly friendly elderly man was wearing, along with a Grateful Dead concert T-shirt and tattered blue jeans, Jack felt it was a reasonable assumption to assume that this old man must be the proprietor. Jack opened his mouth to ask the first thing that came to his mind, but before he could speak, the old man broadened his smile and reached out a hand towards Jack, offering him a bomb pop.