> Chapter -2147483646 (Ranger Team 13)

“Hey, get the healer over here! I think this one is still alive!”

Marcus was shouting again. Alexandra sat up from where she had been napping in the back of their armored wagon. She wasn’t required to go out when they were in potentially hostile territory, and they had all figured weren't likely to find survivors. But Marcus was the team leader, and now that a survivor had been located, her oath required that she do something about it.

Sweeping the countryside wasn’t really a job for a lone ranger team, but their team always seemed to get the worst patrol routes. As soon as they had reached the gates of the city Odessos, they had received a report of sightings of a roving band of goblins attacking outlying farms. Alex had guessed they were probably the remains of a tribe that had previously been slaughtered by one of the legions during one of their border sweeps.

The empire was rapidly expanding now that the shimagu had finally been wiped out. There had been plenty of land to expand into since the surface dwarves had a dragon happen to them just after the end of the Fomorian war, and it had acquired a ton of new territory where the shimagu had previously enslaved the ogres and members of so many other species.

Alex was glad that she didn’t actually have to be concerned about any of that. For her very first class, she had earned a wood element healing class, which meant that instead of having to get married to some man, she had been able to sign up with the Rangers. They paid healers three times the standard rates, and didn’t even require them to go through the full military ranger training. She had insisted on doing it anyway, just to prove to herself that she could, and also to ensure that whatever squad she ended up being assigned to wouldn’t treat her with kid gloves.

Alex grunted and climbed out of the wagon, securing her gladius to her belt. She hadn’t had to use it a single time since she had received it at the end of training, but much like the soaring eagle badge she wore, it was part of the uniform she had earned.

Physically, Alex was taller than the average woman of Remus, partly due to her insistence on eating a balanced diet while growing up. Her parents didn’t understand why she had been obsessed with fishing and foraging for edible greens as a child, but once she had received her healing class, they had both stopped teasing her about it.

She also had blond hair and green eyes, both exceedingly uncommon in the empire, but there were many women who had a similar countenance, though it usually required weekly maintenance treatments with an aesthetician.

In short, Alex was gorgeous. An absolute smoke show. She was also extremely gay.

From the day she had turned 14, she had rejected every single suggestion of marriage her parents had presented to her. At 15 she had threatened to run away and join the army rather than marry some wealthy merchant’s son. She brought home a girlfriend at age 16. She ran away and joined the army the week after that.

Ranger training was a full two years, and then each of their patrol routes were intended to take another two years. Alex was now 27 and on her fifth patrol.

Alex strode over into the wheat field where Marcus was waving at her.

There were dismembered goblin corpses everywhere. Alex was inured to the violence of battle at this point, but she could tell that this one had been particularly brutal. And there, she finally saw the person Marcus had called her over to look at, laying naked, face down in the dirt, right in the middle of it all.

She ran over to the person.. no, the woman’s side. Gods, she was gigantic. Easily over six foot. The men of Remus barely topped out at 5’10”, and the majority of them were shorter than even Alex’s impressive 5’7”. Alex was practically a statuesque Amazon, herself, compared to the rest of the women of the empire.

Alex knelt at the woman’s side. Facedown as she was, Alex did what triage she could. There were no obvious wounds, despite all the goblin blood the woman had been coated in. Alex pulled one of the woman’s arms straight above her head and then tried to roll her over. Alex grunted with the effort. Fucking hell she was heavy.

“Gods, Marcus, help me roll her over so I can check that she’s still breathing. She’s too heavy for me alone,” Alex said.

Marcus knelt down, “Aw, the little girl needs help from a big strong man?”

“Shut up, asshole, she weighs a ton. She must have a vitality in the thousands or something.”

It then occurred to Alex that she hadn’t tried identifying the woman, distracted as she was by her thick, tree-trunk legs, the massive rippling back muscles, and Gods, that ass.

> [Child: Lv 8]

What the fuck? This woman was identifying with a child class? And it was blue? Alex knew that she had a modified version of the standard identify skill that didn’t quite work the same way that it did for everyone else, but this still made zero sense. She couldn’t believe that anyone could have caused this much carnage without ever going through even their first advancement.

“OK Marcus, on three. One. Two. Three.” They heaved. Together they managed to roll the woman over onto her back. Alex gawked a little. The woman’s front side was even more magnificent than her back.

Alex still couldn’t find any wounds. She checked for a pulse and felt for breath, finding both. She then tried pushing a bit of mana into her body, using [Rapid Regeneration], her generalized healing skill for when she had no idea what might be wrong, but it didn’t accept any of it.

“She seems to be completely uninjured, or whatever she has, I can’t heal. But hells, Marcus, she’s completely naked. Does anyone on the squad have any spare tunics that might fit her? There’s that new guy who’s pretty big.”

“Alexandra, his name is Pliny, and he’s been on the team for three years. Honestly, could it kill you to actually learn the team’s names?”

Alex snorted and said, “I don’t know Marcus, can you survive decapitation without me there to grow a new body for your head?”

“That was one time, Alex, and that megalosaurus came out of nowhere.”

“Nowhere? It’s a 12 Ra lizard that weighs almost as much as this woman here does. How does something like that sneak up on you?”

“I think it probably had some kind of stealth class, but forget it, I’ll go ask Pliny for a spare tunic,” Marcus replied. “Can you try and wake her up without seducing her?”

“Fine, slave driver, you never let me have any fun,” said Alex.

“No, I just know your type, and I saw how your eyes bugged out when you spotted her ass.”

Alex turned a bright shade of crimson. “Oh, fuck you, Marcus, I can’t help who I am.”

“Neither can I, dear, and that’s why we work so well together,” replied Marcus.

Marcus was also extremely gay. In fact, nearly everyone on Ranger Team 13 was some flavor of queer. Somehow, Marcus had a preternatural sense when it came to identifying others like the two of them, and over the years had managed to most of the other queer identifying rangers assigned to his squad. Alex guessed that he saw himself as something of a protector or father figure for the younger rangers, and she had very much appreciated the understanding after the first time she had been caught in a bath having relations with another woman. After locating her badge and a lengthy discussion about moral depravity involving the guard captain, the local magistrate, and the woman’s husband, Alex had been let go with a warning and a massive fine. The entire team had offered to pitch in to pay off the fine, but Alex refused. Ranger command paid her far more than anyone else on the team, and she had virtually no living expenses.

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Alex looked down at the woman’s face. It felt so familiar that it was gnawing at the back of her mind like a half remembered dream.

Alex then spoke out loud in a language that no one on this planet should know, “Hells, why does it feel like I should know you?”

The woman’s eyes instantly snapped open and stared directly into Alex’s.

She then spoke.

“Alex?”

Alex’s eyes went wide.

She replied, in the local language of Creation this time, “How do you know my name?”

The woman replied, in English, “What? I don’t understand what you’re saying. This fucking [System] thing is refusing to install language files or whatever.”

Alex’s eyes went wider.

“You.. You speak English?” Alex shout-whispered back.

“Of course I speak English, I’m from Michigan, just like you. Why are you wearing Medicus cosplay?” the woman replied.

“It’s not cosplay, I’m a dedicated ranger healer, and I’m damn good at it, too,” said Alex. “What about you? Who are you and how did you get here? And how do you know my name?”

“Well, that’s both a short and a long story. The short version is I’m Ada, and I have no goddamn clue. The long version is I’ve only been Ada for ... [System], display my current age.. right, about half a day,” said Ada. “As for how I got here? I still have no idea. I can’t remember much from yesterday, but I left work in the evening as usual, then just some blurs, and then I woke up several miles from here with these beauties.” Ada looked down and cupped her breasts for emphasis. “I don’t know how, or why, but this day has been very nearly a complete dream come true.”

It was at that moment that Marcus returned, carrying an oversized tunic.

“Hey, you’re awake, great. I have a tunic for you to wear until we can get back to Odessos,” Marcus said as he handed over the tunic. It was plain and somewhat rough cloth. Alex slipped it over her head, and pulled it down, then stood and pulled it down as far as it would go, which was about mid thigh. it strained across her chest. This would take some getting used to, she thought.

Ada then turned slightly and whispered out the side of her mouth at Alex, “Does no one have any pants?”

Alex chuckled and replied, “No, Ada, I think the elves and dwarves might, but it hasn’t really caught on here in Remus.”

“Remus? So it really is Roman cosplay? Those weirdos were never wearing pants.”

“Wait, how do you know so much about ancient Roman clothing?”

“SCA. My persona was a 15th century English mercenary, but there was a group that camped down at the lake every year that dressed up as Greeks and Romans. I think they hosting some sort of a BDSM orgy too, but I’d always go up to the woods and get drunk with the Tuchux instead.” said Ada. “Anyway, enough about me. How about you? How did you end up here?”

“I don’t have a lot of my memories from before, but I died and then I was born here, with memories of a previous life. But wait, how did you know my name?”

“I sat next to you in band class for three years.”

Alex’s eyes went wide with recognition. “Oh.. OH! Well, congratulations on the, well, everything!”

“Thanks. I finally figured it out a couple years ago, but hadn’t really managed to get around to doing anything about it, but it would seem that I don’t need to anymore. Did you know I had a massive crush on you back in high school?”

“You had a crush on me? Did you know that I had a massive crush on you? Which was incredibly confusing for me, because I had just figured out that I was a lesbian, and suddenly here I was, crushing over my band mate who made me laugh every day. I had assumed that you were gay and that’s why you never asked me out.”

Ada sighed. “I knew you were gay. I could tell from the way you gushed about Xena at me after every new episode. My dirty secret is that I was also watching Xena, wishing that could be me. That’s why I never asked you out. I figured you would just say no, and then you’d never talk to me again.” Ada sighed. “And as it turns out, I am gay. Just not the way either of us thought.”

“Huh? OH!” Alex laughed. “Also, wait, shit, I had another question. Why is your class coming up as [Child]?”

“What do you mean, [Child]? It said [Newcomer] after I accepted the integration install, and now it’s saying I can advance my class.”

“What’s a [Newcomer]? Everyone here always gets [Child of Remus] or [Child of Pallos] for their first class.”

Marcus just stood there, not understanding a word the two women were saying. It appeared that they actually knew each other, but Marcus didn’t know how that could be. This was the first time they had been assigned the route that went through Odessos, and he was pretty sure that Alexandra was originally from the other end of the Empire. But here they were, speaking some language that he had never heard before.

Marcus interjected, “Excuse me, ladies, but we are still in potentially hostile territory, so maybe, Alex, you should take her back to the wagon? Give her a once-over and make sure she doesn’t have any lasting injuries. Also since you clearly speak whatever language that is, try and find out what happened here?”

“Oh, yes sir, I’ll do that,” Alex replied, and let Ada over to the armored ranger transport wagon.

After reaching it, Alex climbed in first and gestured to Ada, beckoning her inside. The wagon shifted when Ada stepped in.

“Hey, what language was that you were speaking with that guy? It sounds vaguely Latin..y,” Ada said, waving her hand.

“Oh right, sorry Ada, they call it Creation, because it was apparently dumped into everyone’s brains at the time of creation by one of the Gods,” said Alex.

It was Ada’s turn to be surprised, “Seriously? Gods? As in multiples of them? That’s incredible. And they set all this up as some kind of Roman Empire fanfic? The classical era weirdos would cream themselves if they knew a place like this exists. Ooh hey, since I know the name of the language now, I want to try something.”

“OK, how would this work..” Ada muttered, ”I guess I’ll just go for it.” She took a deep breath, closed her eyes, and thought hard about what she wanted to have happen.

> [System Command: install language files for local language Creation]

>

> [Language files located. Transferring]

>

> [Creation language files successfully installed. Enjoy, user.]

Ada had gone completely still, but then she suddenly doubled over, gripping the sides of her head. And yet, she made no sound.

Alex rushed to her side, but it was an unnecessary gesture. Ada returned upright just as suddenly as she had collapsed.

“Oh wow, I can’t believe that actually worked,” said Ada. “Can you say something in Creation? I want to see how it does the translation.”

A perplexed Alex replied, “Ada, you already started speaking it. What did you do?”

“Um, so, earlier when I had first encountered those goblins, they yelled at me in that whatever goblins speak, and this [System] thing told me that it couldn’t identify the correct language files or whatever, so I figured when you told me what this language is called, I could just tell it what language to install. And it totally worked!”

Alex was speechless. She had never heard of anything like that happening. As far as she knew, everyone could customize their [System] interface somewhat, but apart from that, the whole thing was completely one-way. The [System] would tell you things like your own status and skill descriptions, provide notifications when you scored a kill or leveled up a skill, but that was pretty much it.

“OK well, let’s just put a pin in that for later,” said Alex. “Marcus wants to know what happened here, and why you were laying in the middle of a pile of goblin corpses.”

Ada’s leg started bouncing up and down. “Well, I don’t know what happened before I got here, but when I did the farmhouse was already burned down, and those goblins were all around. Some of them were cooking at a fire, and I was starting to try and sneak off when I was spotted. And then I killed them all. After that was over, I got a very startling revelation about myself from the [System].”

“What kind of revelation?” asked Alex.

“The kind that shows you under no uncertain terms that you’re no longer human.”