As they continued wandering through the maze of retail goods, Mikayla didn’t hesitate to take advantage. Keldryn found his bag becoming the receptacle of a shopping spree, his survival gear and the materials from Astralia’s Spear joined by such arcane things as powerboards, digital alarm clocks, YA books and DVD box sets. Mikayla had breathed an audible sigh of relief when she found what she called ‘a laptop with a DVD reader’. “It’s got a USB port too! If I can just find a generator, I can use this to charge my phone and to watch movies!”
Keldryn was long past the point of just smiling and nodding, and was half-considering sending a complaint to the faeries that the Ataraxian System’s translation was glitching out. There were far too many words being bandied about that he had no frame of reference for.
He boggled at the latest load; an armful of canisters that Mikayla had gathered. “Here, help me load all of this up!” she insisted, dumping them all into the bag and running back for more.
Keldryn picked out one of the metal cans and frowned at it. “Do we really need to bring so much ‘anti-perspirant deodorant’?”
“Keldie, it is one thing for me to reek like a pig when we have no hygiene products. It is another for you to not notice because that’s normal for you. But I refuse to pass on a chance to freshen up with shampoo and deodorant, damnit!” Mikayla insisted.
“. . Is this a Stranded thing or just a girl thing?”
“Bit of both. Ooh! Wait!” Her eyes lit up, thunderstruck by a brilliant idea. “You have got to let me try shampooing your tail! We can apply some conditioner, comb it and blow-dry it -“
“Absolutely not,” He’d already heard enough to know he wanted no part of this.
“But you’d be so fluffy,” Mikayla whined. “And I already found a hairdryer, too,”
“There is nothing wrong with my tail,”
“I’m not saying there is, but it can still be improved!”
“Absolutely not!”
He breathed a sigh of relief when Mikayla conceded the point and went back to foraging, searching ever more desperately for this thing called a ‘generator’.
“Huh. This looks advanced,” Mikayla frowned.
“What do you mean, advanced?” Keldryn raised an eyebrow and looked over the machine she was investigating. It looked like a large box with glass sides and four strange metal arms visible within, sitting at rest.
“It’s labelled as an All-In-One 3D Printer with injection points for metal, plastic, resin and glass?” Mikayla sounded surprised as she squinted at its instruction manual.
“And?”
“I don’t think anyone in my world had invented something like this yet,” Mikayla clarified. “3D printers could only use resin, from what I recall. Could this ship have come from my future?”
“Maybe? I dunno. Are we taking this?”
“No, no point without a supply of material to feed it,” Mikayla denied, moving on to the next storage container.
She stopped.
Keldryn peered over her shoulder and his ears flicked up in surprise, because he actually recognised what this was, or so he thought. “Is that a toy of an Armour Core?” No, actually, he had to be wrong. There weren’t any Armour Cores in Mikayla’s world. But the image on the cardboard box certainly looked like the little figures crafted in the likeness of famous Goliaths that he’d seen some rich children playing with.
“No, it’s a model of a Gundam. I believe it’s called Gunpla,” Mikayla abruptly sat down on a pallet, cradling it in her arms. “My little brother loves these,”
Keldryn made a small noise of understanding and settled next to her. “Do you miss him?”
“He must be so worried . . my parents, too. And Cat. When I just didn’t come home . . and I might never see them again . . it’s already been a week. How long does it take for someone to be presumed dead?” Mikayla sighed, wringing her hands. “There’ve been Stranded people in the past, right? Did any of them ever find their way home?”
“I don’t think I’ve ever heard of a Stranded person trying to go home in the first place,” Keldryn said apologetically.
“What? That doesn’t make any sense. I can believe that some people would go all-in on an isekai fantasy, but every single one? No way,”
“Sorry, dunno what to tell you. I’ve never met any, just heard about their reputations. I know some of the big names in the Coast were once Stranded, like the Sunwing Raider, or the Great Adventurer,” he winced, noticing how Mikayla’s face fell. “Sorry. I know that’s not what you want to hear,”
“Well, thanks for being honest at least,” she sighed. “Doesn’t matter. Either I’ll find a way or I won’t. And, in the meantime . .” She looked down at the Gunpla box in her hands. “I’m gonna take some of these. To remind me of home,”
As she stared at the stack of Japanese paraphernalia, it was as though something clicked into place. Whether it was her resolve, or her Willpower, or just her peace of mind, she’d never felt more focused than she had at that moment. It was like the Mana in her veins had finally come to life, was finally ready to heed her call.
Enjoying the story? Show your support by reading it on the official site.
So she pressed her fingers together and her fist caught fire.
Keldryn’s eyes widened. “Hey. You did it,”
Mikayla looked at her hand, burning merrily with a flame that played over her skin without so much as warming it. “I did. System? Did that work? I’ve got the Technique now?”
[NEW TECHNIQUE SAVED: FIRESTARTING PUNCH (CRUDE)]
Her lips split into a wide grin. “Awesome. I even skipped straight past Faulty and into Crude!”
“Most people wouldn’t use a Technique that they hadn’t refined to at least Basic,” Keldryn felt the need to inform her.
“Quit being a killjoy,” She waved her hand. The fire didn’t abate. “. . Crap, how do I turn it off?”
“Stop feeding it Mana!” Keldryn commanded.
Mikayla closed her eyes and focused on cutting the flow of ‘fuel’. She almost pressed her hand to her head to focus, but fortunately remembered that only her hand was currently fireproof before she could burn herself. A few seconds later, the fire sputtered out, and she breathed a sigh of relief. “. . Yes! Awesome! I did it! I got it! Yay!”
“I’m happy for you, but keep it down!” Keldryn looked around, his tail bristling. “We don’t want to get the attention of a Kaiju!”
“Eep. Right. Sorry. Got it,” she nodded, settling down and scanning their surroundings. Both breathed a sigh of relief when, over the course of the next few minutes, nothing appeared to attack them.
Mikayla chuckled as they loaded the pile of Gunpla into Keldryn’s bag. “Y’now, if these actually are from the future and I manage to get them home to him, little bro will flip out over having unreleased Gundams on his shelves,”
“You don’t know?” Keldryn asked as he helped her load up a stack of colourful cardboard and plastic.
“I never got into anime. Comics and manga, sure, those are close enough to books. But all the shouting and colourful lights just gave me a headache,” Mikayla sighed.
Keldryn nodded sagely and pretended to know what she was talking about, and Mikayla was too preoccupied to call him out on it.
They split up again, drawing closer to the grounded container ship as they continued to pick their way through the debris in search of the fabled generator. Keldryn only had a vague idea of what they were looking for, but was ready to call Mikayla over if he saw anything that he thought might be their target.
Unfortunately, what he found was both much less useful and much more worrying. “Oi. Mikayla?” he shouted, cupping his paws to his mouth.
“What’s up?” She was already rushing to join him, carrying two boxed sets of kitchenware in one hand and a novelty Harry Potter lamp in the other. “Here, you can keep one of these,” Mikayla declared as she dumped the kitchenware in the bag. “They’re for cooking and I’m sure they’re much better than whatever medieval pots and pans you’re used to,”
“I think I found one of the ship’s merchants,” Keldryn solemnly explained.
Mikayla dropped the lamp, and it broke into pieces as it hit the ground.
There was a pile of rags and bones strewn about in the dirt, scattered haphazardly around a human skull. The clothes had been shredded, but were still recognisable as a sailor’s outfit. Mikayla swallowed the urge to puke. The bones were white, they’d barely been weathered by the elements at all, but there wasn’t a single scrap of meat left on them. This man’s death had without a doubt been excruciating, and, more worryingly, recent.
“Kaijus are usually big enough to eat people whole. Something that would gnaw the meat from a man’s bones like this,” Keldryn frowned. “It’s not normal. I don’t like it,”
“We should bury him. Put him to rest,” Mikayla murmured.
“No, we need to quickly and carefully figure out exactly what killed this man, and then get out of here before we meet the same fate,” Keldryn retorted. “We don’t have time for whatever ritual you’re picturing. Our lives come first,”
“Right. Okay, yeah, that’s fair,” Mikayla agreed. She looked up at the slightly lopsided hulk of the hull. “So. Time to stop scavenging and go investigate the ship itself?”
“Yeah, I’d say so,” Keldryn considered the edifice of metal, scanning for any convenient holes. “I know I said this was probably a Kaiju nest, but I expected a big hole in it somewhere leading to a den and I’m not seeing that. How do we get inside?”
“From the top. Don’t forget, this thing’s supposed to go in the ocean. See that line where everything above it looks a bit less weathered? It was built for there to be water coming up to there, there won’t be any entrances below that line,” Mikayla explained.
Keldryn’s eyes widened. “Wait, are you telling me this thing is a boat?”
“Uh. Yeah? Was I not clear about that?”
“No! But it’s huge! Where would you even find a big enough lake for it to float in?”
Mikayla savoured the feeling of being the one to give Keldryn the ‘are you ignorant or just stupid?’ look. “Do you not know what an ocean is?”
“Can I assume it’s a really big lake?”
“More than seventy percent of my world is covered in water,” she quoted, and grinned as Keldryn’s eyes grew wide.
“That much? That’s insane! What do you do with that much water?”
“We build boats like this one,”
“. . and suddenly I can see why,”
Mikayla hummed. “So this world has much fewer and smaller oceans? I’m really curious to get a look at this Global Map now. Well, that’s for later. This way. The ship was leaning against a hill, if we run around to the other side we can climb up and go in from the top that way,” she suggested, already taking off. Keldryn nodded and followed along.
It took half an hour of picking their way around and up a hill full of loose dirt, but they managed to climb up to the level of the container ship’s bridge without incident, and jumped onto the deck. Keldryn stopped and inspected it, brows furrowed. “This floor is made of metal. And so are these railings. How incredibly extravagant,”
“No, that’s pretty normal,” Mikayla shrugged as she made her way up the steps towards the elevated building rimmed with windows. “This way. Let’s get into the bridge,”
“Why? That section is too small for a Kaiju,” Keldryn questioned.
“Because I’m going to introduce you to the wonderful world of security cameras. The bridge should have equipment that’ll let us see everything that’s happening all over the ship,” Mikayla tried the door, only to find it locked. “Oh, this won’t do,” She focused, directing her Mana, and her silver-red sword manifested in her hand. A few deft strokes later, the door fell off its broken hinges.
She blanched when she saw what was inside. “Uh. Keldryn?”
“What is it?” he questioned, climbing in after her and struggling with it a bit more due to his height.
There were three corpses in the room. Two were human, and the third was a horse-sized black monstrosity clad in a shiny carapace with six legs, antennae and mandibles. Dried gunshot wounds peppered its head and upper body. If Mikayla didn’t miss her guess, it was a Kaiju version of an ant.
“Oh no,” Keldryn’s ears stood on end. “This is an anthill,”