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"Isekai Truck Hunter in Nine Minutes"
A Short Story by KeeperAbra
( Hope you enjoy! )
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In the dead of night, I see the end coming for me: two googly-eyed headlights getting bigger and brighter. I close my eyes and say goodbye to my wife in my mind—but instead of turning into a stain on the road, there’s a loud bang followed by crumpling metal and exploding pneumatic systems. A shower of glass bits and metal shards cut up my clothes and my face—been a long time since I got wounds like this—but I’m alive.
I look up, and in place of my instant ticket to another world, is another, fully-intact garbage truck, smashed into the side of the first truck’s cabin. The door flings open, and in the driver’s seat—is my wife.
“Jane?”
“Get in if you want to stay in the world a little longer!”
“What? Jane”—she flashes me a killer smile and it isn’t the good kind, so I go in the truck.
I’ve never gotten on one of these things before. The foothold is a lot higher than I imagined, and I didn’t expect to use any amount of upper body strength, but sedentary I may be, I’m not a total weakling.
Finally seated beside my wife, I notice she’s wearing her wedding gown—wait, my eyes aren’t right. “Jane, is that armor? What the fuck’s going on!”
She says nothing and turns the steering wheel as aggressively as the wheel of a pirate ship. I can hear her quietly swear, “Shit, shit, shit, there’s more of them.”
Lady, how many murders have you committed in the past half hour? “Jane—”
She hands me a game console controller. “Look, there’s no time to explain! There’s two trucks behind us right now, and I need you to blow ‘em sky high!”
Panels and screens light up in front of me, targeting crosshairs in the middle of each of them.
Dude (romantically), what the fuck. “I’m not committing vehicular manslaughter without an explanation!”
A horn blares from the left side of the intersection we were about to cross. Jane makes for a controlled brake and steers right, throwing me against the window as our cabin butts up against the other truck’s. Staring at the cabin of the other truck, however, and I can’t see a driver. It’s steering itself, what the fuck.
Wait. This has happened before, minus the chase scene. I saved Jane from a truck just like that. She was going to get run over, and I pulled her out of the way. We got married soon after, but…they never found the truck’s driver.
The truck butted sides against us again, shaking me out of my thoughts. “God-damn-it, Joe!”
“Alright, alright!” I pushed the controller’s right stick around, and there’s some kind of motor whirring above me. The view on the screen’s also moving around, so…a turret? Why didn’t I see it from outside? I swivel it around until I see the truck butting up against us, and I squeeze on the R2.
The thudding of autocannon fire thumps at my chest, shaking the cabin, and holy shit this is awesome. I think Jane rolled her eyes at me. Am I smiling? I’m smiling.
There’s another two still behind us, but I’m afraid I might hit the rear of our own truck if I aim that far back. The bumpiness of the road is getting transmitted straight to the turret’s aim point, and camera stabilization is a myth around these parts, apparently.
“Use the left stick to move the turret up and down the rail,” Jane says. The hell is this, a tutorial? Well, I do what she says, and I can hear the turret rolling down to the rear. Cool. Finally with a clear line of fire, I let loose on the two trucks behind us. The first one blows up after a few shots, satisfying like popping bubble wrap, but the second one…
“The fuck,” I blurt out. “There’s a force field thing over it!”
“It’s already gotten this bad…” Jane mutters. “Stupid god. Alright, we’re heading to the river.”
“But what about this guy—”
“Just keep hammering it and it’ll blow up eventually.”
“Where’s the ammo even come from—”
“What do you think’s in the back of the truck, huh?”
“What’s even happening—”
Jane groaned. Whoops.
The second truck blows up—finally—after a while, but I keep quiet the rest of the trip. Then Jane starts accelerating.
“Uh, that’s a river straight ahead.”
“I know,” Jane says with a smile.
“Do you hate me, now?”
“A little.”
I feel hurt. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay.”
“So why are you still accelerating?”
“It’ll be all okay.”
I mean, at least we’re going out together.
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Our truck breaks through the guard rails. That thing where time stands still? Yeah, it’s real. The nose of the cabin splashes into the water, then the windshield cracks, and I meet the wall of water head on.
Instead of finding more water behind that wall, however, I find another world: a space of all-sky and all-white ground. The truck rolls to a stop, and the cabin is perfectly dry. In fact, the windshield’s just still right there, like it was never broken at all.
“You can let go now,” Jane says. I look over, and it looks like my hand snuck up to hers on the gearshift all on its own. “But it’s romantic,” I say. She smiles, and it’s a little softer, before she says, “Can you hand me the baseball bat, dear?”
The what.
Knowing better than to ask questions at this point, I lean forwards and search for the baseball bat in question with my other hand. My fingertips graze against something cool to the touch, so I grab it.
I didn’t think it was anything special until I actually pull it up and take a look at it. Well, it’s a baseball bat, alright, but glowing like some sort of holy plot device?
Handing it over to my wife, I can see her smile has turned a little more bloodthirsty—thankfully not directed at me, but holy shit, who dun messed up to make her like this?
“Stay in the truck, dear,” she says. She slides on out of the cabin, slamming the door shut. I admire the way she walks, at least up until the moment she starts banging the bat on the ground, letting it ring, then shouting, “Oi, you shitty god!”
That’s when I notice the cardboard box, far enough away to be the size of a grape to me, just sitting there—and a cat jumps out of it. Its shadow enlarges, until it consumes the cat, becoming an even bigger, edgier cat—a tiger or something, with shadowy flames instead of fur. I’ve already got the controller in my hand, ready to press and hold R2.
Even with that, Jane is still just hella mad. I mean, if you’ve got a holy banhammer like that, I guess most things wouldn’t faze you.
Wait, she called it a ‘god’… Jane, why are you fighting a god?
“Wake me from my slumber and suffer the consequences,” the cat says. Its voice echoes from all directions, and it’s giving me a slight headache. Still, I’ve got my finger over R2, ready to go any time.
“There’s hundreds of fucking daemons rampaging around down there! Do your job right!” Jane complains.
The god looks at her. “Don’t wanna.”
I guess I’m just human, because they turn into blurs, and next thing I know, there’s a holy baseball bat knocking out an eldritch tooth out of that cat. The whole god’s flung up head-over-paw, but it lands paw-first, anyway—because cat, I guess.
“Suffer the conseque—”
Jane’s…giving it a beatdown. Holy shit, who did I marry? Each time she hits it with the holy baseball bat, a little bit of shadow gets sheared off, and she keeps at it until it’s down to the size of a normal cat. This isn’t even a fight scene, this is just animal abuse.
The cat leaps back, limping. For a moment, it looks at me, sending shivers down my spine, only then to look back to Jane. “My time is at an end.”
“Don’t you fucking dare—”
“Goodbye, mortal realm.”
A fucking truck materializes out of a portal and runs over the cat, exiting through another portal just a few yards away.
Man. I don’t know what just happened. Jane’s just kicking the air like a kid, now. Let me just roll down the window… “You okay?” I shout, poking my head out. She looks up at me and looks back down, back to kicking nothing.
Poor girl’s got me climbing down the truck and up to her side. “Hey, uh, tough day.”
She finally smiles. “You’ve always been so bad at comforting other people.”
“But it works.”
She sighs. “I’ve dragged you into something shitty, Joe.”
Hm. Well. The shadow-splatters on the pristine ground are just a bit of a hint about that. “What is this place?”
“Earth’s divine realm,” she says. Before I can ask more, something behind her blooms—something feathery.
“I’ve always thought you were an angel, but damn.”
“I’m supposed to be retired, though.”
“Did I get married to a 10,000-year-old Keeper of Civilization or something?” I chuckle.
“Something like that.”
“Cool.” Wow, wait, that was a joke.
She looks away from me, maybe a little…apprehensive about something. “What’s on your mind?” I ask.
“Now you know,” she says, looking me straight in the eye—then away again. “They’re hunting me, finally. They’re tired that I still exist.”
“Who’s ‘they’ ?”
“Gods of other worlds.” She shrugs. “I was something like a freelancer, but because of that, I know too much. I struck a deal with the god of Earth to keep me hidden. I just wanted peace.” She looks at me. “I thought I found it”—she smiles, then frowns—“but they found me, instead. So, this is goodbye.”
What? I’ve grabbed her wrist before I even knew it. She looks at me, and I try to say something, but the thoughts don’t turn into words. I can tell she’s also trying to say something, but, I guess we’re both in the same predicament.
I can only say what’s in my heart right now. “What do we need to do?” I ask.
“Huh? This isn’t a problem a mortal like you would know to deal with—”
“Then teach me.” I shake my head. “You’re not the only one with a past. Well, the scale is a bit off…”
“What do you mean? You’re the sweetest man I know—not like I know a lot of men, but still!”
“ ‘Life is something that just comes and goes.’ That’s what I tell myself every time I pulled the trigger,” I tell her. I never wanted to tell her. Her eyes are wide, but there’s something different—a spark of an idea.
“Perfect,” she says.
“What—”
Taking a look around, she nods, confirming something to herself. “There’s enough divinity just lying around in puddles here to get you started. Say, do you want to become a god?”
“Sounds like a hassle.” Pretty fucking sure the cat offed itself for good reasons.
“True”—she nods—“but we get to stay married forever.”
“Cool.” Holy shit, what a dream come true. “Where do I sign?”
Jane starts stripping off her armor. “Whoa there, lady, time and place.”
“This is part of the process.”
“I thought you said you didn’t want kids.”
“Maybe when you reach Level 100, it’ll be feasible.”
“What—”
She fuckin’ flashes me. “Please sign here.”
I open my eyes—respectfully—but instead of a spicy view, I see her heart, blazing too bright to look at directly, and wrapped in indecipherable words made of gold.
“What—what’s that?”
“Every freelancer works with contracts,” she says. “By signing here, we will be bound together for eternity. Not even death will pull us apart. You will absorb the leftovers of the former God of Earth’s divinity, and you will become Earth’s new keeper.”
“Damn, did you come up with that on the spot?”
“Yeah, I’ve been doing this for a long time. So, gonna sign or not?”
No hesitation, I thrust my hand into the heat.
“Ow.”
“Sorry. I didn’t think you’d feel that.”
“It’s literally my heart.”
I did not think that through.
The golden words wrap around my wrist, then my arm, then the rest of me. The words sink into me, then the puddles of shadows scattered around float and orbit around me, stretching infinitely thinly until they can slink in through the pores of my skin. I can feel cold and warmth around me all at once, starting from my feet and climbing up to the top of my head—but it’s not scary, not when my wife’s right there to assure me. Just like that it was done.
Her first words once I pull my hand away: “Ha. Can’t get away from me now.”
***
Joe, God of Earth. Level 1.
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Jane, Keeper of Civilizations. Level 365.
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I guess it’s us against the world, now.
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A/N: I'd be glad to see some comments if you liked this story. I'll make sure to offer a potato and +rep in reply!
As for why I'm not making this a series, that's because I'm still working on Kalender:AntiHarem, WaRo, and Overlord VTuber, and next year I have even more stories lined up. I will be cursed for ages if I do not finish what I start, which is also why I'll stick to pumping out short stories while working on the longer projects.
Anyway, thanks for read! Don't forget to claim your FREE potato on the way out!