Fukona Isekai?!?
不幸な異世界
Fuk! Oh nah...isekai?!?
Jack blinked at the proffered bomb pop, a red, white, and blue frozen treat on a stick and still in its iconic plastic wrapper. He looked up at the old man who offered it to him, and considered how much he looked like a kind and burned out hippie. The old man's hat matched the color scheme and cheesy 1980s spaceship motif of the ice cream truck. As Jack peered at the old man's Grateful Dead concert T-shirt, it looked like it might actually be an authentic original from one of the first tours back before Jack was even born! Jack struggled to think again, trying to remember something he couldn't access. He didn't know when he was born, or who the Grateful Dead were, and he knew the 1980s were a time, but it didn't give him much more than an impression of styles and music that he couldn't really remember. It was the most jarring and frightening sensation as he struggled to remember what meant what, and when was when, yet completely failed.
He felt his heart pounding, and his chest was getting tight like some great weight pressed down on it making it hard for him to breathe. He closed his eyes and try to take a deep breath through his nose, which turned out to be a mistake as he got a very unfortunate nose full of the very exotic cocktail of scents he was currently wearing. This season's fashionable fragrance seemed to include rank sweat, human urine, and putrid rotting dog. Jack was not present enough to really understand what he was smelling, as he nearly asphyxiated himself by having a panic attack, and also vomiting stomach acid all over himself. The coveted bomb pop fell to the ground beside him, forgotten and rather irrelevant.
The old man bent down and rolled Jack over onto his side, and held his hair out of his face while Jack continued to dry heave after emptying his stomach onto himself. The old man patted Jack on the back and sighed loudly while shaking his head, waiting for the prone man to regain some sense of autonomy and composure.
It took Jack several minutes to catch his breath without smelling himself, while the old man wordlessly waited, somehow radiating annoyance without changing his facial expression or body language at all. As Jack sat back up, he noticed that Cal had just woken up, this time having not avoided getting sprayed by Jack's indisposition, due to having been caught completely defenseless while asleep.
"Oh dear gods and tiktok influencers! What did you get on me, you...! You! You JACK ASS!" The indignant rabbit spluttered at his perpetrator.
"Pick me up this instant and go to the stream to wash me off!" ordered Cal, before quickly having a second thoughts after fully waking and forcefully correcting himself "No! Never mind don't touch me! Sweet virgin, what do you smell like?!?"
The rabbit retreated from Jack, before shaking his head to clear off the fog of sleep and re-examining the situation.
"Oh you're awake! Buddy Friend Jack! I'm so glad you're okay but I'm mad at you and you smell horrible! I demand pets once I am clean and you are properly sanitized! I thought you were going to die but this old man helped and you've been asleep for 3 days I think!" Cal excitedly chattered away at his speechless buddy friend.
Jack smiled wanly at his overly excited and vomit drenched lagomorphic friend, before looking down to examine himself. His mental stability once again found itself struggling against deterioration as he looked over first his arms and legs, finding no trace of injury on himself. After exploring the rest of himself with his hands, looking for any hint or trace of his many life-threatening and excruciatingly painful injuries, Jack came away from the experience having his hands covered in a very unpleasant collection of filth and grime that had congealed into some sort of noxious slime.
"Three days?" He thought to himself "that explains why the dog bits smell so rotten."
Out loud to no one in particular, Jack asked "But what happened to all my wounds?" He continued on to placidly remark on his circumstances, hoping to use humor to improve his grasp oon sanity "My finger and butt crack aren't even sore, did someone suck the poison out?"
The old man finally spoke, but like the rabbit it was telepathically and his facial expression never changed. The sense of annoyance radiating from him intensified. Jack felt the hairs stand up on the back of his neck as the old man began to telepathically pontificate in a deep, gravely voice that seethed arrogance.
"No discussion till you cleanse yourself and your familiar. I carried you before, but you can walk unaided back down the hill to the stream to complete your absolutions. No more of the dark hounds will trouble you, I apologize for the oversight and inconvenience caused by the one you encountered prior. In recompense, I have expedited your shroud restoration and tweaked the recovery benefits of your punitive spell form to be shared by any of your familiars. The Lord of Caerbannog shall no longer need worry about the permanence of being eaten in the future."
The old man ignored the incredulous, penetrating stares directed at him by both a filthy naked human male and a dirty telepathic rabbit. He bent down and telepathically 'tisked' at Jack while picking up the discarded bomb pop, before returning it to a cooler in his truck. He pointedly ignored the well soiled duo, who exchanged silent glances before they turned to amble downhill together.
...
The two companions traveled downhill in silence, partially because they were each lost in their own thoughts, but mostly because both of them were trying to mouth breathe to avoid smelling Jack. It didn't occur to Cal that he didn't need to use his mouth to speak telepathically, and he was that focused on staying upwind of his friend. It took only a small handful of minutes for them to reach the stream.
As they arrived, Cal excitedly scampered ahead, plowed straight into the shallow water, and began rolling over to wash the stomach acid off of himself. Jack stared down at the cold and clear water skeptically before looking around for anything to scrub himself with. Finding nothing likely to help him wash or later dry himself, Jack sigh and stepped into the water before sitting down and beginning to splash himself.
"Oh dear" Cal dryly remarked at his buddy friend "reflected objects might be smaller than they appear and subject to shrinkage in cold water."
Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator.
Jack grunted in response before defending himself "very mature coming from a waterlogged rabbit who looks more pathetic than a half drowned cat. If you follow that up by asking if it's hand wash only, I'm going to tell the old man that I'm reconsidering his offer to call off those hounds."
Jack suddenly grew solemn and silent as he recalled his life and death altercation with one of those bizarre hounds. From his perspective it had only been a few minutes since that had occurred, and yet the mental disconnects he was feeling left an impression that it could have happened months ago. Jack grappled with another bout of internal turmoil, since he couldn't quite make sense of the jumble of emotions the recollection inspired in him.
Cal noticed jacks withdrawal, and held back any further antagonizing remarks. The ridiculous looking wet rabbit swam over to his friend, long ears slicked back along his head and neck, to keep water from getting inside. Even though he couldn't remember it, Cal had a lot of experience comforting his friend and acted without thinking. It didn't occur to him that they were both soaking wet, and his friend was only slightly less filthy. It turned out that there was not a lot of comfort to be had from a not-so-snugly soaked rabbit, when you are sitting in an icy cold stream, covered in a revolting concoction that you would much rather not consider.
Still, the attempt at comfort was not a complete failure. There was a deeper connection between the rabbit and the man. The old man had called Cal Jack's familiar. As the sodden bunny scrambled up Jack's leg and into the crook of his arm, Jack instinctively cradled the rabbit and held him close to his chest. Cal ignored the disgusting filth, focused more on the pain and fear he could feel inside the man, so close and real that it seemed like his own. He leant Jack some of his stability, somehow projecting his own deeply ingrained affection for the man back through the link they seem to share, forcing back the fear and confusion. Jack started crying, silently at first but then sobbing uncontrollably while still sitting there in the shallow running water of the cold stream, hugging his wet rabbit to his chest.
In that moment, Jack achieved a new all time record low existential dignity level for men in their mid 40's experiencing dissociative, altered-reality, involuntary relocation. However, he once again received no recognition or acknowledgment from any arbitrary system that may or may not exist. Perhaps this was because this moment was not actually Jack's personal all time low moment for dignity, and in fact it was far from it. It really wouldn't have even been in his top 10 worst moments of indignity. But, fortunately for him he was unable to recall those experiences at the moment.
Through some miraculous, arcane, or insane mystery of this familiar connection with Cal, Jack felt his mental and emotional stability bolstered as he started to experience the rabbits feelings of trust and affection for him. The rabbit and man certainly felt familiar to each other, and as they shared this moment they started to simultaneously understand the *familiar* nature of their bond. As they sensed each other's emotions through their connection, what they both instinctively understood to be some sort of mingling of their souls, they became more aware of the bond. As their awareness grew, so did the sensitivity and an intensity of their bond, until the point where they could vividly experience each other's emotions and were almost able to sense each other's thoughts. As their feelings resonated back and forth, even bereft of access to individual background memories of their implied shared history, neither man nor rabbit could deny the unreserved affection they felt for each other, or the comfort that it brought them both.
After several moments still sitting in the cold stream continuing to hold his soggy rabbit, recomposing himself after sobbing uncontrollably, Jack found himself feeling completely different, invigorated by the strange excitement of this deep and meaningful connection to his normally fuzzy (and not soggy) friend.
In an emotional display that was such an impressive turnaround it would have convinced any psychiatric professional that Jack deserved several serious diagnoses, the man found himself crying tears of joy and erupting into giggles as he smeared the unfortunate rabbit all over his slime and grime covered chest in an act of exuberant celebratory affection. If rabbits could gag and vomit, Cal would have. Fortunately thanks to the currently heightened bond, Jack was not oblivious to his friend's discomfort. He carefully sat up and held the bunny out in his hands away from his chest.
"Oh yes, why not just go ahead and use me as a loofah, why don't you!" scolded Caliburn Attenborough, Lord of Caerbannog.
"Well, since I don't see anything else to scrub with, I think I might just take you up on that offer!" Jack replied flippantly with a grin as he experimentally hefted the bunny in one hand and raised the other arm as if to wash his armpit.
Cal's eyes widen in lagomorphic alarm as he telepathically screamed "You wouldn't dar..."
...
Jack and Cal hiked back uphill, with the rabbit pointedly refusing to look in the direction of the human. Both man and rabbit were still damp, but much cleaner. In fact, Jack was remarkably cleaner than any man lacking soap and/or a pressure washer had any right to be after how revoltingly befouled he had been before his trip to the stream. Cal's fur was once again pristine white, other than the dark grey bits, and was slowly beginning to dry out and turn floofy.
"Oh come on buddy! I'm sorry! I thought it was funny! Besides, you're the one that snuggled up to me and I'm pretty sure that I have this fuzzy impression that you peed all over me more than once before you were housebroken, so it's only fair!" Jack complained to the rabbit.
"You even started it all with the shrinkage jokes and I know you know how patently false those accusations are considering, damnit, I can't remember, but I know I caught you being a pervy little voyeur somehow!" Jack continued his verbal barrage of defensive accusations against the telepathic rabbit who was pretending he did not exist. That last remark, however, managed to land a barb on the bunny.
"What are you implying? I would never! It's not my fault that rabbits are very sensitive to pheromones and have certain urges! I still have no idea why I was humping your arm and I absolutely certain that those recent circumstances are completely unrelated to whatever you're talking about that neither of us can remember anyway!" Caliburn, Lord of Caerbannog finally stopped ignoring Jack and retaliated emphatically."
After a moment of silence, Cal followed up with a much quieter and meeker set of questions that held a mix of fear and wonder.
"What are pheromones Jack? How do I know that word? How am I talking? How did you heal so quickly? What the hell is going on Buddy Friend?"
As they both stopped to look at each other, Jack took a deep breath before replying to Cal.
"I don't know buddy. We can't seem to remember anything and yet we know things, but not how we know them or what they connect to. We both know you shouldn't be able to talk and I should be dead, or close to it right now. I certainly shouldn't be right as rain and walking around right now. Then there was that weird dog thing that wasn't like any dog I've ever seen, but I couldn't tell you what a dog is supposed to look like. And then there's all these things about this forest, the trees, and the rocks of the hill. Something keeps telling me that this isn't anywhere from where we are from even if it seems like it, but I can't remember enough to know what the hell my brain seems to be trying to tell me. And now I just remember that I haven't even asked you about what you said about my eye before, though I think I've always only had one working eye. There's too much going on and too much craziness I can't even begin to figure out where to start or what to think. None of this is right and none of this may be real. I guess we're going to have to see what creepy disapproving extra dimensional hippy grandpa has to say, but when reality itself seems questionable, how much can we really trust anything that guy says? I'm just glad you're here with me buddy, I don't think I would be okay on my own right now. Not that I think I ever would have imagined going adventuring into an alternate reality with my pet rabbit as a sidekick. Did you get any death ray powers or the ability to shoot bees with lasers out of your mouth along with that telepathy?"
Caliburn, Lord of Caerbannog straightened his back and looked affronted. He narrowed his eyes at Jack before demanding an explanation "Did you just CALL ME YOUR PET AFTER DOING WHAT WE ARE NEVER AGAIN GOING TO DISCUSS OR ACKNOWLEDGE?!?"
Jack cringed and put his hands up defensively between himself and the irate rabbit, though that did nothing to protect him from the unexpectedly painful sensations stabbing his brain as the bunny berated him mercilessly. Through their link, Jack could feel the full fiery force of bunny indignation. While in his existentially questionable previous life, Jack might have found the damp bunny's rage to be impotent and amusing, the psychic empowerment that Cal's telepathy imbued him with was turning out to be no small joke.
"I'm sorry! I'm sorry oh benevolent and adorable Lagomorphic Overlord! I am humbled before your greatness! Please do not turn my meager human my brain into soup with your great and awesome psychic powers! I may not have much left up there after recent events and I'm not willing to bet on a second miraculous healing! I fully acknowledge bunny mental supremacy and humbly offer forehead pets or neck scritches and promises of future acts of contrition and atonement!" Jack playfully yet convincingly threw himself before the mercy of Caliburn Attenborough, Rabbit Lord of Caerbannog. Both of them could feel each other's underlying affection and growing sense of whimsy as Jack carried on.
"Very well, so long as you have remembered your place, I shall condescend to bestow mercy upon you, hooman." Cal allowed with mock dignity as his anger fled before Jack's antics.