~Pilot~

Falling into wormholes was not my hobby.

So when I slipped off a bridge, traveling to a different world was not my intention.

I was walking home from the company building, trying to not get soaked in the pouring rain when a lightning bolt struck the ground near me, and I fainted.

Not one of my proudest moments.

All I knew was that I slumped off the bridge, and that it changed from being freezing cold to a comfortable, humid warm.

I awoke, but didn’t move. Someone was poking me.

“Oi. Are you alive?”

No. I am most likely dead. Hm. Death felt a little too damp for my liking. Were my clothes going to be eternally wet? Lame.

Poke. Poke.

I was getting angry. Let me sleep. I was dead anyways.

I didn’t think death would be this miserable. Why did it smell like oil, metal and trash? What kind of shitty place was this? Why was there an evil demon already punishing me? Didn’t I have to be judged first? I wasn’t that bad of a person.. I think…

Poke. Poke. Poke. Pooooooooooooke.

That was it. If they poked me one more time I was going to let them have it. I would-

Poke.

I violently arose. I was angry and I was going to let them have it. glaring at the offender, I stared into a pair of eyes that shone like Emeralds.

She had a nice feminine figure, that was mostly hidden by her baggy uniform and cloak. I could not see her face, but her eyes shone from under the hood. A large rifle was slung on her back, and various makes and models of unfamiliar pistols hung from her waist. She gave me a condescending glance.

“Oh, so you are alive.”

“O-of course I am?”

She glanced at the place where I was previously laying. She stated bluntly, “You looked pretty dead when you fell from the sky.”

What was this lady talking about? Now that I looked around, the sky looked awfully dark. Glancing around, I saw these buildings with holograms, which seemed to be the only source of illumination. People with baggy uniforms just like the ones that the person had so rudely awakened me had. When I looked into the distance, I saw these giant columns that climbed far into the darkness above.

Wait. Holograms? Where was I?

“Excuse me for the weird question, but where am I?”

She gave me an odd look. “The third level, of course. Do you have amnesia? Or are you just stupid?”

“No, like what world are we on.”

She gave me an even weirder look. “Sekari. You have strange clothes. They look like what Topsiders would wear.”

I was in a different world? My stomach felt like it had thousands of butterflies in it. I could feel the blood rush from my head and I passed out again.

What a shitty isekai summoning…

As soon as I hit the floor, I woke up again. My mysterious companion went about poking me repeatedly until I finally got up. She offered a gloved hand, and I took it as she helped me up. She gave me a bemused glance.

“Do you do that often?”

“Ah, uhm, maybe?”

“How have you survived this long?”

“I….”

She gave me a dismissive look, and then began walking. Not knowing anything about this mysterious place, I quickly went to go follow her. She noticed that I was attempting to catch up but made no motions of slowing down. People looked at me and my clothes with an expression that I could not attempt to decipher.

“Look mama! His clothes are funny!”

“Sssh!”

“A Topsider? Down here?”

“You think he's got anything valuable?”

“Those clothes look like they would be worth quite a lot of money….”

I couldn’t help but feel subconscious about my appearance. A person like me was not used to standing out, so when everyone was looking at me it was quite overwhelming. I could feel the blood rush from my head. My companion, who I still did not know the name of, glanced at me quickly and sighed. She took the cloak off of her body, revealing matte black hair and a curvaceous figure that was not hidden by the baggy clothing and offered it to me.

“Here. You attract too much attention.”

“Thank you,” I replied, trying to avoid looking at her directly, lest I pass out again. I asked her, “By the way, what should I call you? My name is Kitayama Takeda.”

She stared at me cryptically. Her once dull bright green eyes hardened, as she gave me a judging stare. I did not look away, but the only thing that was going through my head was,  You’re actually doing it! Talking to a girl! Dontpassoutdontpassoutdontpassoutdontpassout”

After what seemed like an eternity, but was actually 10 seconds, she sighed and murmured, “Call me Amellia. With two Ls.”

I wasn’t sure why she mentioned that her name had two Ls, but I decided not to push it. My head was swimming. I was holding a conversation! I haven’t passed out? I must be improving!

“Oi. Are you going to just stay there, or do you want to actually do something?”

Whoops. I apparently stopped in the middle of talking and was standing in the middle of the road like an idiot. Looks like the next thing on my agenda was talking and walking. It took me 17 years to hold a simple conversation with a girl, how would I stand against this giant challenge that awaited me?

Amellia took me down to a bustling market, selling things that seemed to be oddities. It was a crowded, cramped place that fit way too many people into one alley. A vendor was selling weapons and parts, which were just laying carelessly across a rickety table. Didn’t these people have gun handling laws?

The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

The alley seemed to stretch on forever, and I was having a rough time trying to keep up with my gracious savior, who seemed to flow through these crowds, not even the large gun that was strapped on her back seemed to touch anyone. I, on the other hand, was running into everything. Muttering half-hearted apologies and quick “excuse mes” I tried to navigate the brutal river of people. When I looked for Amellia again, I had lost her.

Panic began to well up inside of me. Where was she? How was I supposed to get out of here? My head went blank. I could already see black spots. Then I turned around and ran into a pair for familiar green eyes too close for my liking.

In a monotonous voice that couldn’t have scared me more than anything she intoned, “Are you just going to stand there?”

I fainted. The last thing I could register was Amellia  catching me, picking me up effortlessly in a fireman carry.

“...kind of shitty… can’t believe… survived… you have...”

When I woke up, I was in a metal chamber that looked similar to what I envisioned as the inside of a mecha robot. Amellia was leaning on the side of the wall, staring at me disdainfully.

“For your sake, I’m not going to ask how you survived, or why you fell down, or why you look like a Topsider-dropdown.”

“Why are you helping me?”

She gave me the first emotion that was besides cold indifference. She had a ghost of a smile on her face, and she gave me a handgun off of her waist. It was a simple weapon compared to the other ones she had, but I appreciated the act. I wondered if I could ever shoot this gun without fainting.

“... ow is feels to be abandoned, and I don't want to wish that on you.”

“I’m sorry, what did you say?”

“...forget it.”

She threw a uniform at me. It was a baggy uniform, with deep pockets that reached down to the knee.

“You stand out too much. Keep your head down and blood up.”

“I'll pay you back for this. I promise.”

A look of amusement crossed her face. She motioned to the door, and promptly Sparta-kicked the door right off of its heavy-metal hinges.

“Come. We're going to sell the stuff you have.”

What. Barely 3 hours into my isekai trip, and I had to part with my only memorabilia of Japan? What kind of savage, cutthroat place was this?

“Do I have to?” I implored, hoping that Amellia would have some pity on this sad, depressing personage. The only response was a roll of her eyes as she walked straight up to me and promptly got too close for my liking, causing me to pass out. The last thing I heard from her was, “loser.”

When I arose from my impromptu nap, I was being hefted over a shoulder in the market. Of course, no one seemed to care about what should've been the odd sight of a man being carried over a woman's shoulder. She seemed to notice that I had awoken because she dropped me on the floor.

Ouch. The dirt tasted like sadness and rubber. And the people were merciless, stepping on me and kicking me while I struggled to stand up.  After a few seconds of being pushed on the ground, I gained my footing and searched for my aloof benefactor.

She seemed to materialize in front of me, keeping about a meter between us so that I would not faint, and gestured to follow. While weaving through the crowd, I noticed that while all the people looked human, some of those had limbs replaced by metal, whether it be an arm, leg or even in one case a torso replaced by robotic functions. Glowing fruit were sold on stands, each of them looking like giant upside-down strawberries that had a clear outside and glowed various colors. Blue was by far the most common, but there were variants of green, pink, purple, white and yellow.

Amellia noticed my fixed stare on the fruits, and told me, “Shukusolis. It’s what most of our meals have in them. We make it into bread and other stuff.”

Shukusolis. This weird fruit was a staple? That meant that it had to consist of carbohydrates that filled these people up, and were easy to grow. I reached out to touch one of them, and it wiggled like a Jello would. Before I could get transfixed by the alluring jiggling, Amellia pulled the back of my cloak and pulled me into a indoor market inside separate from the chaos of the outdoor one. There she lead me to this store with characters that I could not read. It seems that while they spoke the same language as the Japanese, they had a different alphabet system as we did. It consisted of boxes and angles, which were perfectly straight.

Inside the store was an old man, a mysterious hooded figure and Amellia. She was discussing the price of my old work clothes, without my consent of course, and I knew that I would never see them again. Quickly I sent out my thoughts and prayers to one of the few things of Japan that had came with me to this brutal and unforgiving world. Over the course of a 20 minutes they haggled back and forth, which meant that there were no set prices that you had to follow upon, and you could bargain for a lower price. Amellia’s expressionless face won the argument, and the price for my clothes was agreed upon to be 2,000,000 Leurats. (AN: 1 leurat = 0.01 USD)

Amellia looked at me, and asked, “anything else that you want to keep? Because I'm going to sell everything else.”

I reached for my phone, which received an odd look from the wizened storekeeper, and pocketed it. Amellia reached into my wallet, and pulled out a faded photo that I took from my high school days.

She looked up and asked, “Are you sure you don’t want to keep this?”

“Is it really worth that much?”

Jiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii~

I could feel the deadpan stare bore into my soul and eat it alive. She pointed to the photo and more importantly, a blue part of the photo that I wouldn’t think of twice.

“You have a picture of the sky”, she spoke in an incredulous tone, “And you’re asking if it's worth much?!?!” (EN: Remember that when he woke up, there was no such sky or celestial object to be seen)

I haven't known her for long, but I would never be able to expect an outburst like this. It was one of the few rare moments where she would act with any obvious emotion and not keep herself composed. She took a deep breath, and prepared the roast session.

“Are you stupid? You must be. To have something worth so much, and just to say, how much money is it worth? You must be a gremlin. A demented, monkey-like gremlin. Do you have something in your head that stunts your growth? Or were you born with something missing up there? I know your mother must have dropped you when you were younger. Frequently. Like every day.”

This is why I had problems interacting with people. One moment they are your best friend, and the next they roast you like a pig on a spit. How could you trust people like that? Humans were so, so mean. While I wallowed in despair, Amellia plucked the photo from my hand and offered it to the shopkeep. The man’s eyes widened so much that I thought that they were going to pop from his head. He started naming numbers that were reaching over 20,000,000, when the hooded man that was browsing the weapons came over and interrupted the two.

He hefted a bag full of Leurats, each bill reading 10,000, with a bag the size of the luggage cases that one would carry to an airport to travel internationally. He looked at the photo and smiled wistfully, giving me a small smile.

“I haven’t seen the sky in years…” He whispered softly. He turned to Amellia and offered, “I’ll trade everything in this bag for that photo. Amellia quickly grabbed the bag and began to inspect the contents, looking over bill after bill. I quickly did the math in my head, and it turned out to be a whole lot of money because I sucked at math. She stood up, dusted herself off, and offered to shake his hand on the deal. The mysterious man took the offered hand and shook it with a trembling limb. He carefully placed the photo in a pouch, tucked it into his pocket and left the establishment, disappearing amongst the crowds of people in the indoor market.

Amellia made her way to me, hefting the duffel bag over her shoulder. She said, “I would let you carry your money, but I think you would faint and we would lose it. We should take this to a bank.”

“H-how much money is in there?”

“A lot. Enough to buy you a house. And if you do not mind, I would like to stay there too. You would probably benefit from me staying there as well. You’re the only person that faints when a person invades your personal space after all.”

Ugh. She had a point. Even though she did say some very degrading things towards me, she had been nothing but helpful, and I did promise to repay her. I was still trying to wrap my head around the amount of money that I had. I needed a drink.

“Amellia, do you know where the nearest bar is?”

She gave me a confused stare. “Bar? What’s that?”

My eye twitched. It couldn’t be. But it probably would be… Still, I had to try.

“Tavern? Saloon? Pub? Sakaba? Lounge? Clubhouse? Ale House? Nightclub? Place where you get drunk?”

With every single variant, Amellia got more and more confused, before she asked, “What is getting drunk?”

No. No way.

~~~~~~~~

Meanwhile, the Sharietes(a variant of deer domesticated underground) grazed on the the fruit that was presented to them, perfectly at peace, eating and resting in the darkness of the underground. Life was good for them. Not a worry.

Then an agonizing scream was heard.

“NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”

Primal instincts surged at such an agonized scream. The Sharietes formed a tight herd, the youngest ones shoved into the middle of the group while the adults that were fit for combat formed the outer ring, eyes desperately searching for the threat.

After a few minutes, the eldest Sharietes began breaking on the circle and began to return to normal habits, grazing on the food. Soon, all of the sharietes followed the example slowly, returning to what they were doing, without a care in the world.

Life continued on, unabated, for the Sharietes on the farm.

~~~~~~~~