"Fuck, fuck, fuck!" Dan was not having a good time. He walked around the bathroom with his hand on one side of his face and his gun on the other.

"They can't do this to me, who do they think they ar-" But the gun had nothing to do with Dan's emotional state, no, he was just in the bathroom of a shooting range, his favorite one, in fact.

"-h, but I need this job… and I've been through worse, right? Right!?" Sadly, being at one of his favorite places didn't calm him down like it normally did.

But he didn't usually have to deal with Sandra 'The Bitch' Henkins getting 'his' promotion. Maybe he didn't do as good a job as her, but Dan had a sinking suspicion that he would have had more luck if he had been 'sucking off' his boss instead of 'sucking up' to him.

How else do you explain a 6 year model employee being passed up for a 6 month new hire with two strikes on her record already?

Suddenly, Dan stopped going through the highs and lows of anger and sadness, not because he calmed down, but because he peaked.

"BUT THAT DOESN'T MEAN THEY CAN KEEP ON DOING IT, FUCK!" Before he even realized what he was doing, Dan pointed his gun at the ceiling and fired thrice.

And that was the end of Dan Orlin, not because the raining drywall caused him to slip and fall, proceeding to cause him to slam his head on the sink, no that'd be stupid.

In fact, it didn't happen at all. Dan was standing perfectly still when something fell from the top of the roof and bonked his head.

That too, did not kill him, it instead caused a brief magical girl-esque transformation. However, instead of becoming a crossdresser, Dan turned into glowing particles and zipped away.

The end of the Orlin line, defying all expectations by managing to be due to something fantastical, instead of how much of a loser Dan was.

---

Pain, pain and confusion were what Dan felt upon waking up.

The pain came from the massive headache he felt.

The confusion came from how he ended up standing in the middle of some gentle valley. With woods to one side of him and a field that looked almost like any other he'd ever seen, except that there were a lot more rocks.

That, and the oddest feeling that he couldn't quite place. Like having your glasses on your head while you search for them, while the trashcan is on fire.

Aka: You're missing something that's important, but something is clearly and urgently wrong.

"..." Dan came up blank. His mind offered him problems at times, but never were they in the form of blackouts or lost memories.

The confusion trumped the pain, and the pain trumped his still reeling emotions.

So Dan stood there, in the middle of God knows where, a twenty something white dude wearing jeans and a T-shirt, feeling the wind blowing his hair, gun still in hand.

Eventually, all Dan said was, "Well fuck, I don't think I'm going to get back to the range in time to explain myself."

"At least I'm not far from civilization, that farm doesn't look too far aw-" Then Dan heard the clinking in his ears, then felt the weight on his hair. In that order, that's how conked out he was.

Wincing as he pulled a few strands of hair that were stuck in a thin chain, he got a better look.

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It was odd, the whole situation was odd, but Dan couldn't tell where this trinket could have come from.

It was a coin on a chain, but it was neither a normal coin nor chain. The chain was thin, golden, and looked delicate as sin, but when Dan squeezed it, it felt as if his skin would give before it did.

The coin was almost normal by comparison, albeit old and Asian looking. Dan had nothing else to compare an unmarked golden coin with a diamond hole in it. It was…

"It's like it's from a fucking anime…" Yeah, that.

Dan ignored it, naturally. Looping it onto the front of his pants via the right belt loop.

Odd behavior, but Dan couldn't be made to give a fuck. Anytime he tried, the confusion settled back in for a moment. Something about the necklace unsettled him, as did everything about the situation.

But Dan wasn't the type to sit around crying about his problems. Unless it got bad, but to be fair, he normally is pacing when that happens.

"Hah… At least I'm wearing my 'cOmBAt BoOts'. I think they're made for marching." As such, Dan made his way to the homestead on the horizon.

…

1 hour later

...

As a man with nothing to hide, Dan walked right on up to a man working on a farm, thinking, 'Hah, who does gardening with their pajamas on?'.

Being a Country Boy™ himself, he stopped some dozen paces before making himself known.

"Yo man, you know what county I'm in? It has to be pretty far out in the boonies to have this much real estate free."

The man, who upon closer inspection was vaguely Asian, short haired, and middle aged, around 30 to 40 at most, was getting angrier the more Dan talked.

Dan, because of how 'bleh' he was feeling, didn't notice and kept on talking. "You, uh, got anything to wet my whistle? Yeah? I'm more parched than a whore in church, so… Would a whore in church be thirsty? I mean, maybe for something, but that's not the message I want to send… Oh right, the saying is 'sweating mor- I mean, I'm sweating more than a whore in church, and I could really use a drink of water. So if you'd be so kind to give me a drink and a way to-"

Dan felt something that he'd never felt before, setting off his monkey brain. He hardly heard the farmer, but that didn't matter to the farmer.

"You'll be getting nothing! Damn ye! I'll be dead before I let some city whelp help himself to my house! Now git! Get, you hear?!"

Now normally, Dan had enough sense to bounce when some yokel got angry. But his mind froze. Several things battled for his attention, driving Dan's good sense to the back of his mind.

Things like:

Neither one of them were speaking English.

He could feel the man's anger.

He knew this man's name, among many other things.

Now, many say that the difference between an excuse and a reason is how much the person you're telling it to cares. Farmer man, however, didn't care, because he had neither.

He stepped forward, fully intent on defending his land.

The effect was instantaneous. If the anger activated his monkey brain, the actual killing intent in the air triggered his lizard brain.

It all happened in under a second.

His eyes focused.

His breathing eased.

His feet became planted firmly in the ground.

He stanced up.

And that was when the farmer knew he fucked up. Not because he knew what a gun was, nor because he was skilled enough to recognise alien martial arts.

No, like Dan apparently can, this man can read auras as well. A monumental burst of anger was immediately smothered by tempered killing intent.

It was immediately obvious that this was no lost city slicker. No, this was a man who had killed before and was trained in the martial arts to do it again. And it was clear the warrior was deeply offended that he had dared make a move on his life.

And while all that was true, it was a really dramatic way of saying that Dan occasionally hunted and was a semi-professional marksman.

The farmer stood there, as Dan's anger spiked and fell as he reacted to feeling killing intent for the first time. Perhaps it was a testament to Dan's skill that he didn't shake at all.

It was certainly testament to the intimidation factor. Dan standing stock still in motion and killing intent as he was a maelstrom of anger.

Such a shocking sight finally made the poor farmer fully open his senses towards Dan. Causing his next statement.

"A-apologies, Lord Cultivator. I had eyes, but I did not see the mountain! Mercy!"

And wasn't that a mindfuck of a sentence?