One Floo Over.
an experiment of sorts in HP.
I was aware of only one thing to begin with. Pain. All consuming pain that didn't leave room for anything else.
Eventually that faded enough that awareness of other details was allowed to seep in. I was lying down on an uneven surface. It was cold. It was dark. I was naked.
More details gathered as the pain retreated enough that I could concentrate on a pain-blocking technique. I was in a forest, an old-growth forest at that.
I got to the point where I could lift myself up and begin looking around. Open wounds had been bleeding but were now in the process of just that slow ooze sort of bleed. Splashes of blood from where it had been pumped. Looked like I was down a bit over a quart on blood. Still naked.
Some memories, but there were gaps. Sizable ones too. Why was I here? What was my mission?
Mission. Yes. I was with the Reality Relief Office. A sort-of volunteer group of the Afterlife that was aligned with but apart from any of the various Heavenly Bureacracies. Not aligned with the Adversary or any of those iterations either. More along the lines of the mortal earthly charity groups that sought to help people who were in dire straits of one type or another. If you are familiar with "Doctors Without Borders" or the "Peace Corps" or something like that you've got the general idea.
It was most definitely not normal for an operative to appear in the forest naked or injured though. So something had gone seriously wrong, but what?
"Inventory?" I tried. Nothing.
"Status?" I tried next. This got a result, but it was all gibberish with, symbols and letters and blinking blocks of alphanumeric text. Not what it should be.
Okay. Things were really really REALLY screwed up.
Because the Reality Relief Office was not part of any Celestial Bureaucracy, it had to do without the sort of resources that groups like the Divine Intervention Office (DIO) or the Office of Divine Justice (ODJ) had available. Quite often, that included items and skills acquired in other realities. Having no inventory access meant that those resources that I might have had available were out of reach. It also unfortunately meant that naked in a forest was not going to be remedied quickly.
Hephaestus, one of the Greek/Roman types, had become fond of videogames and had come up with an interface that the RRO had found useful for insertion into a timeline. It was based on what the typical RPG (Role Playing Game) interface had going. That it wasn't working was concerning. As it had no physical four-dimensional presence - it being damaged was another sign of how badly things had become.
Status though - the mechanism for that should have been available even if nothing else remained. It was among the most basic of functions.
"Mission?" Nothing. "Quest?" Still nothing. "Open Personal Log?" More nothing.
So - something had gone seriously wrong. I was on a mission of some kind as that was the only reason I could come up with for being on a mortal plane and not bunking with the einherjar or something. I had no mission details, no equipment, and was seriously injured though the repair mechanisms seemed to be working. A bit slow, but still working.
"Hint? Clue? Open access?" I tried to the same result of no immediate response. "Status." Same gibberish appearing in midair. "Activate self-repair protocol. Recovery. Close."
IF that was working, I could give it some time and could check back and maybe get some results. Maybe. Providing the whole mechanism didn't go down, and I'd give it fifty-fifty odds to be optimistic.
Now to find clothing, food, and information - preferably in that order.
And painkillers. Some naproxyn would be lovely.
The arrival of some sort of spotlight indicated that certain priorities might just have to be shuffled about a bit.
- Interlude 1 -
Wye Valley Constabulary Report (Preliminary)
At 0140 hours response to reports of strange lights and scream in the Forest Of Dean discovered a naked adult male with evidence of severe physical trauma. (See Medical Report)
Area near subject's location was burned in a radius of approximately five meters with no indication of damage beyond that. Possible incendiary device, further investigation continuing as to possible type.
Subject responsive to questioning but showing signs of possibly severe mental trauma. Alcohol tested for but not present in system. Initial assessment was cult victim of unknown type, with physical torture of subject (see photographs) as evidence.
Subject unable to provide name or identification, denies knowledge of past and shows signs of confusion when questioned. Subject placed in hospital under guard until further questioning can be done.
Forensics report pending. Blood stains present at site were sampled, though some was apparently shed during burn period.
- Interlude 1 end -
I groaned.
"Quiet you."
I managed to say something.
"What language was that?" asked a different voice.
"Sounded kinda like French or something," said the first voice.
"Latin." A third voice. Authorative.
I opened an eye slowly, resulting in a stab of pain at the light level. A hospital bed. Lovely. I'd already detected the restraint. Two security guards nearby. One nurse in plain black medical scrubs.
I closed my eyes and tried again. "Inventarium."
It wasn't Latin. They were just hearing it as Latin. What I was speaking was Celestial, which was something else altogether - Latin was just the closest thing to it locally. Aramaic wasn't all that close. Greek might have been closer. English wasn't even close.
[Recovery at 35% - Abort?]
That was the most encouraging response yet. "Inrita." (Cancel.)
"In what?" asked one of the security guards.
"Hallucinations," said the doctor. "Nothing showing up on the toxicology, but severe malnourishment and we still don't know what is killing him. Systemic organ failure and there are internal injuries that are very odd. Not unusual for his responses to not make any sense in this state - especially with the head trauma."
"So even with him being conscious now, we can't get answers?" asked one of the guards.
"The police will be here shortly," said the doctor. "They'll ask the questions."
"Loci Forma." Usually, when an operative was inserted into a timeline - a preset form was chosen. Reality Relief Office operatives normally had several of these, developed ahead of time, which fit more or less into whichever sort of setting you found yourself in. Following Hephaestus' RPG-based interface, these would essentially be saved characters with some only suitable for certain game types. The one I currently had was cobbled together and malformed. So switching to a different form/avatar/trope was pretty much mandated.
I could feel this body failing. Waiting for me to be alone so I could do this in private was pretty much a death sentence and I didn't know what was going on with everything scrambled as it was.
Three folders came up as usable with a quick count of twenty-seven folders that were unusable. Some, like Cyborg or Dragon, might have been just because the local universe or environment didn't support them. Some were definitely file-corrupted by whatever had done the damage to me and everything else involving the Avatar Insertion Mechanism.
That wasn't even something on the RRO equipment list, that was a mechanism overseen by Forgeworks - which was the group that was formed by Hephaestus to develop little projects like that interface.
So the choices were Cleric, Ninja, and... Schoolgirl?
What the hell?
I'd been born (the first time) male, but sometimes you got inserted into a female role. Souls not necessarily being Yin or Yang after all and the whole wheel of reincarnation was what the Avatar Insertion System was based on. It just wasn't comfortable, like when you were something in one of the worlds where humanity's base equation was slightly off. But "Schoolgirl"? Really?
I even understood why that might be on there - sometimes as an operative of the RRO you found someone major to the central flow of events had died or been erased from existence and you had to be inserted as that very person (or as close as possible) to fill the place. Sometimes you even ended up as a dog or animal companion. This was very likely such a case and where the role had been one of those long-term assignments lasting a decade or two.
Base matches with this reality indicated the Cleric file was 51%, the Ninja file was 32%, and the Schoolgirl was 97%.
Nope. Nope nope nope and get on the nope train to no-way-ville. No slam against the female gender, I just didn't want to spend any time AS one. I'd also been an animal companion of the feline variety according to one of the blocked choices and that would have also gotten the ticket to nope-ville. Not a choice I wanted to be stuck as until I figured out my mission and managed to pull it off or not.
Let's see. Basic data size indicated that I must have spent a fair amount of time in these particular identities. Decades. How was that possible? Ninja could be the sneaky assassin type or the legendary magician type, I couldn't tell at this point. Cleric was a White Mage sort of thing.
Ah. That might explain it. When the files were rebuilt, data might have gotten merged from corrupted files to fill portions missing in these three? Working theory at least.
An emergency at one of the other beds drew attention away. Now was my chance. I checked to make sure they were distracted and hit the choice.
- Author Notes -
Been reading a bunch of Harry Potter fictions, including some very well-crafted SIs but mainly alt-universe stuff. Just writing this to express a few ideas and scratch a creative itch. If you don't like, that's very nice but just go on to another story thank you very much.