Full summery:
Tales of Vesperia. A story with a complete asshole of a protagonist we all love, a female lead which would have Tumblr feminists in a tizzy calling sexism, a dog that only says woof but everyone thinks is the coolest character, an annoying twelve-year-old kid nobody really likes but is secretly loved by all as the dork character, a fifteen-year-old girl who really needs a restraining order, an old man who's trying to figure out his life after he died, and a skimpily dressed elf girl who everyone fondly thinks of as the female version of the main character.
Fun as it is... My favorites are the darker characters. Why do they do what they do? Why do we label one man a villain and another a hero when one was just trying to get the inevitable over with and the other rushed into conflict with little explanation and just happened to get the favorable result.
I love to pick all of their brains, however, that would take a magic portal to another world, something I do no have. I have something better.
My death.
I wake up in a foreign world, terrified, yet excited. Mainly terrified if I have to be honest. I knew nothing of what happened to me. I spoke no common langue, I had no recollection of myself, and I was terrified.
I faced anxiety, I faced the godawful factor of being a social outcast because I couldn't speak, which wasn't the truth, I could speak, but the saddest thing is about being in JRPG's, is that they're Japanese and they're in Japanese. In other words, fuck you, English speakers.
Everything hurts. Everything fucking hurts. Everything fucking hurts like a motherfucker.
A loud clang breaks me out of my self-pity and groans of pain as I try to open my eyes and figure out where the noise came from, even though it's probably just one of the two cats I own trying to wake me for food. Instead, I see a woman in her late twenties or early thirties putting down a tray with a glass of water and soup on a clean desk next to me, which sure as hell isn't my desk because mine is covered in crap.
It's now at this moment that I realize I've been kidnapped and am being held for ransom. Or, at least I think so until I see the kind smile of the woman when she sees that I'm awake.
And now starts my living hell.
"Ah, Ohayo!"
I nod slightly to acknowledge I hear her and wince at the pain from my neck moving. She looks concerned as she says some random gibberish I can't understand as she puts a hand to my forehead and runs out of the room. She comes back in a few second with a wet rag and says something else I don't understand, but I assume means roll over by her hand motions, which I do onto my back. She places the rag onto my forehead and smiles at my sigh of pleasure as the cold fabric cools my burning face, which I just realize feels like I face planted into the sand of Death Valley for a minute.
She says something else in gibberish that sounds like an East Asian language but I'm too tired to think about it too much to figure out which one it is. I would say Japanese, judging, by the way the words end. Well, I think that Japanese is the only one that sounds like that. I can only figure out which languages are which when it comes to Asian languages with Japanese, Korean, Viet, and occasionally Chinese since I was surrounded by Koreans and Viets when I was younger, weeaboo enough to like anime, even though I'm half Japanese, and therefore not a weeaboo.
The woman says the same thing again as she frowns causing me to look at her strangely, not having any idea what the hell she was saying. Seeing my blank look, she says the same thing again impatiently. Can she not speak English or something? Or did I suddenly travel to Japan last night and fall off a building.
Fall off a building, huh?
Listen up boys I'm gonna die, the seconds counting to my final cry, ah!
"I'm kinda over humanity today, don't worry, Hedrik," I say jokingly as I reference a young girl from a game I loved when I was younger as music blasts in my ears. Funny that I'm fitting her situation perfectly, minus some other thing. We still have the about to jump off a building, though! Heh. Life is Strange.
Mark my words, y'see I'm breathing in the open gates to Hell
"Don't worry?! You're about to jump off a ten story building!" Hedrik yells at me next to the roof's entrance as he tries to run over to me. How fitting that it's raining, granted, it's always raining here at this time of year because it's too warm to snow.
I'm snap out of my imagination as the woman repeats the sentence again angrily, adding something else in the process. I unconsciously move my hand to my throat and shake my head at myself at the weird ass thing I just did, only for the woman to look shocked for a moment and say two words I understood, the rest being gibberish.
"Gomen! Watashi wa,"
In other words, sorry, I, the subject of a sentence, and the rest I don't know. She just keeps talking with an apologetic look as I keep looking at her with a blank stare. It's at this point I realize I probably just fucked up and she thinks I'm mute now, not that I have any idea what the fuck she's saying. Well, this is going to be a shitty few days until I figure out what's happening and call the police- wait, where the hell is my phone?
Okay, let me get this straight, I'm currently lying down on a bed in pain and angst, the only person I've seen so far is a woman who only speaks Japanese who thinks I'm mute, and I have no idea where my phone is now that I look at myself! This is great. Just peachy. Nothing's wrong, why would anything be wrong? Ahahahah, nothing could possibly be wrong!
"Ne, daisobu?"
"NO, I AM NOT FUCKING OKAY, I AM NOT PEACHY, PLEASE KILL ME."
Is what I would like to yell, but that frankly won't help anything. Instead, I just give her a look that said that and shook my head. The woman's face turns into one of, 'yeah, figures' and says some else I don't understand as she helps me sit up, taking the now warm cloth from my face. I hug the blankets close to me as she grabs the tray with water and soup, which looks like tomato soup, and lets me move my legs so she can place it in my lap. I grab the spoon before my mind registers how much it actually hurt to do that and I wince.
There's a certain line between kindness and condescension, and this woman almost passes it when she tries to pick up the spoon and feed me. She gets the message after I don't do anything and stare at her with a 'what the fuck' look before she finally gives me the spoon. I try my best to eat the soup as I suffer the pain of sore joints and a godawful headache, which I'm sure the food will help, but those godamn window curtains being open sure as hell aren't!
After putting some soup in my mouth, which isn't that bad but could use some half-and-half, I gesture to those godamn curtain and try my best to show that bright sunlight is not helping my pain in any way. She gets what I mean eventually, with some furious and painful gesturing on my part, and with a smile, she gets up from the desk's chair and closes the curtains for me, which I give a grateful look for. Without the light blinding me, I could see I was looking at a really tall and thin woman with light brown hair in a low ponytail, hazel eyes, and moderately pale skin. In other words, not Japanese at all.
A kid yells something outside the room, causing the woman to sigh, tell me something, and leaves to probably check on the kid, leaving me alone in the dark and now silent room, not that I really care. I hum to myself as I drink some more of the soup, it slowly becoming easier to move. I move away my silver hair as I lean over to be able to eat easier-.
Wait. The fuck?
My hair is silver?
I move the tray off my lap and move my hair in front of me to see that to my right that my hair is in fact silver. That's not even the end of it for God's sake, my hair to my left is dark blue, what the fuck is this? Did someone bleach and dye my hair when I was kidnapped? I mean seriously, what the flippy fuck fuck is this? I liked my flat and oily dark brown hair!
"You know what? Fuck it. I ain't got no fucks to give, screw this! Let's go!" I sing quietly to myself as I grab the tray and eat the rest of the soup, the pain slowly ebbing away. I can't do anything right now so I give up. I might as well figure out where I am first, as my hair color is the least of my problems. Instead, I'll think about how that soup really could have used some salt at the very least, but I'll shut up, the soup was fine. I'll just drink water.
I hear the door open again to see the young woman again who smiles when she sees that I had eaten everything. She moves the tray from my lap to the desk and holds out a hand to me as she says something. I guess that she wants me to stand up so I take her hand and try to get off the bed and stand on the wooden floor, only for my legs to give out from under me, which is definitely a new experience. The young woman patiently waits while still holding my hand as I attempt to stand up, which I manage to accomplish very shakily.
Slowly but surely, I manage to walk to the door, which, sadly enough, is only two meters from the bed. The woman says something again and opens the door. She grabs my other hand after I don't protest and walks me down a hallway, it now being much easier for me to walk. We pass several others doors in the hallway and as I look at the walls, I see some peeling wallpaper and some random drawings probably made by a child. Somehow, the place looks like it should be gloomy beyond belief but it instead feels rather homey.
The brunette, who I've decided to name Nancy in my head, says something again as we turn a corner into a large room that I unconsciously nod to. In the room there's probably a good thirty kids, that are rather tall, look like they're in the age range of two to eight, with the exception of one preteen and one teenager. Nancy lets go of my right hand and says something to all the kids who are looking at us before all the kids say hi to me and I wave back.
As Nancy keeps talking, I look around the room to see three chairs and a sofa around a coffee table, which six kids were at while drawing with crayons. The floor is carpeted with more of the slightly peeling wallpaper on the walls and several windows letting in plenty of sunlight, and past that a yard with dark green grass.
I look at the kids to see they are all staring at me and Nancy intently. I also see some kids with odd hair and eye colors. There are some normal ones, but most were ranging from pastel blues to some bright reds. For instance, there were two girls sitting on the couch who had pigtails, one with green hair and the other the aforementioned bright red. One girl who looks about three has black hair with red tips and silver eyes, which could easily be dyed hair, but why waste hair dye and bleach on a three-year-old when you could fix peeling wallpaper?
Nancy looks at me again and says something to me with a smile. Not knowing how to respond, I just stare at her and she soon looks like she realizes something. She hits herself lightly on the head before saying something to the kids. The younger ones look disinterested like they rather keep playing with each other as they line up in front of me, but any kid who looks older than five give me a sad smile of pity as they line up behind the other kids.
"Watashi wa Milo desu," the youngest kid here who's also the front of the line says before he walks back to where he was before. Luckily, I know that he said his name was Milo. Now to forget it in ten seconds.
"Watashi wa Ana desu," another young girl says before running back to the coffee table she was at before.
This continues on with all thirty-two kids, the only interesting thing being when Nancy let go of me without thinking to stop a kid that looks about five from jumping off the sofa to the coffee table. That of course, made my legs go out, as I had no support, making me fall to the ground shocked. After a few seconds, I realized what had happened and gave a small laugh and smile as to say to ignore it, which the other kids in line returned as Nancy realized what happened and apologized.
"Watashi wa Neo desu," the teenage girl says along with something else I don't understand, which Nancy responds to. With that, the line was gone and everyone was back to what they had been doing. Nancy then introduces herself as Natalia, which I nod to. I'm still going to call her Nancy because I like it better and I disliked that princess girl from Tales of the Abyss named Natalia.
She says something else as she gestures to the room and smiles. After I realize she means go play with the other kids, I make a beeline to the coffee table to draw, not before, of course, I fall on my face because my legs don't work.
I slowly walk/crawl to the table as I wave off Nancy and the stares of other kids. Luckily, the table isn't that far away, so I only have to go through that demeaning process for twenty seconds before I grab a piece of paper, a relatively unused violet crayon, and get to work. At least, I try to. The second I pick up the crayon, I feel heavy disorientation as I stare at the crayon in my right hand before I realize my body wanted to grab it with that hand, but my mind wants to use my left hand like I normally do. I test out each hand and realize while it's a bit harder to use my left hand, the feeling disappears as I start to use it to draw.
I look behind me to see Nancy smiling at me, making sure I'm not breaking anything. I look at her for a moment and eventually she gets the point to leave, but she still glances at me every few seconds. As much as I would love to figure out what the hell is happening and find my phone, I doubt I'd be able to escape her watch as I'm sure she's paranoid about me. That leaves me with the option of waiting until I'm not under a hawk's gaze and then look around, which might take days to be able to do. Why am I even surrounded by a bunch of kids in the first place? I'm pretty sure this wouldn't be the best place to keep me if I was kidnapped because I can just run out the door and find the police. Ugh, fuck it, I'll just draw.
That's basically how I pass the time for the next hour or so. I don't really know how long I'm sitting here, as there's no clock to look at. The whole time I draw three-fourths view portraits as I grumble inwardly about my lack of eraser to fix the lips I mess up in a bunch of pictures. After I've gone through ten papers on each side and three crayons, I look up again to see some of the older kids yelling at each other while playing a card game. I take this moment to roll my head for twenty-second to help the soreness that came from leaning over for however long I had been.
"Ah! Sugoi!"
I jump in surprise to see the green-haired girl with pigtails from before looking through all my drawing, which I would find very rude if those pictures were in my sketchbook, but they aren't and she looks eight, so I'll tolerant it. The little girl says something else to me and looks at me amazingly, to which I nod unconsciously to after years of people asking the same stupid annoying question of "Did you draw that?" after they see my drawings.
The girl looks at me amazingly as she runs over to the red-haired girl from before with some of the pictures and shoves them into the girl's face excitedly. The redhead just nods and smiles awkwardly to the other girl's enthusiasm as she tries to stop the other girl from shoving the pictures into her face. I glance over at Nancy to see she's looking at the two girls with a smile before she glances at me and meets my stare. I shrug and lean back on the sofa behind me to close my eyes for a moment.
Ne, ne!" I jump as I open my eyes to see the green-haired girl next to me who spouts rapid-fire Japanese at me, looking really happy as the other girl with red hair sits behind her friend quietly, giving me a small smile. Honestly, I have no idea what she's saying, but she's looking at me like she just asked something so it'd be weird if I didn't say anything.
Hesitantly, not knowing what else to do, I nod slightly. The girl with green hair, who I'm going to name Holly for simplicity's sake because I already forgot her name, beams at me while she grabs a paper and crayon. Her redhead friend, who I'll nickname Emmy because it sounds cute and I also forgot her name, does the same and patiently waits for something and quietly whispers to Holly. It's at this moment when I see them staring at me expectantly that I figure out that they want me to teach them how to draw. So I do.
Or, at least I try.
"Ne, Daisobu?" Holly asks me as she sees me picking at my food. I nod at her and continue picking away the mushrooms which, sadly, makes up half the dish. Who makes a dish with just mushrooms, mushroom sauce, and fries for god's sake? Oh, right... My dad does that quite often, but that tasted better because he made a cream sauce and not whatever this is. Even then he would make steak with it and I would just eat that with apple sauce for as a replacement for the cream sauce, and yes, apple sauce, steak, and fries sound weird but it tastes fine.
Eventually, I give up on picking away the mushrooms and eat the fries. There isn't much food in the first place anyway, which makes sense since food portions in Japan are much smaller than the United States, not that this is a very Japanese meal. I look up to see that everyone else isn't even half done eating so I sit quietly and watch everyone else finish in ten minutes or so and get up to put away their plates, which, unlike mine, are completely empty.
I tap Holly on the shoulder to grab her attention and point at the mushrooms and then her. After a couple moments she gets what I mean and says what I think means "No, thank you" before she taps Emmy on the shoulder and asks her something, who nods happily. Holly then asks me something which I nod to, hoping for the best before she takes my plate and gives it to Emmy, who gives me her plate. I stand up and follow another kid from the dining room to the kitchen and deposit the plate in the sink before awkwardly going back in the dining room not knowing where to go.
I bump into Nancy on the way in who stares at me for a moment before she asks me something. I stare at her blankly before she laughs and ruffles my hair, which I give her another stare for. I suddenly realize she was probably talking about the food as she chatters away about something else to me.
Nancy walks back into the dining room, leaving me awkwardly standing in the kitchen before she walks back in the kitchen with Emmy and Holly following her. She says something happily to them, which they nod to, replying with their own words I can't understand. Nancy then looks at me and asks me something, and while waiting for my response, she suddenly realizes something and laughs before she gestures for me to follow her out the door.
We walk out of the kitchen and I wait in the living room as Nancy calls all the kids to attention and tells them what I suppose are instructions on what to do. Once she finishes, all the kids start scrambling around to put away their toys before running down the hallway Nancy guided me down earlier, all the while I 'm hugging the wall because the stampede is almost as bad as a middle school hallway after the bell rings.
Minus the swearing and random screaming of, "ARE YOU A LESBIAN!?"
Yes, that happened.
After the stampede finishes, Nancy stares at me for a few moments before telling me something and gestures down the hallway before she ran down it herself. Not knowing what to do, I follow her before she turns a few corners and I get lost. I sigh before I look at the door to my right and realize it's the room I was in earlier. Wow, this door knob is really low... Then again, everyone else seems to be freakishly tall.
Just as I put my hand on the knob, Nancy runs out from down the hallway with a bunch of clothes. She opens the door while telling me something and puts the clothes she was carrying on the bed before opening the curtains to get the last of daylight in the room. She stares at me for a moment before I realize she wants me to try them on.
As she turns around to give me privacy, I look at the clothes before me to see one pair of leggings, three skirts, a long-sleeve shirt, a white sundress, three plain T-shirts in light versions of the individual primary colors, and underwear. Next to that is a light pink footie pajama thing that looks comfortable but will certainly be a pain in the ass to use the bathroom with it on, and an oversized shirt with pajama shorts on top of it.
I grab the shirt, shorts, and underwear before I change, almost not noticing the lack of a bra on my body. In a few moments, I'm done changing and folding the clothes I had on before. Nancy looks at me with a smile before she moves to put all the clothes in a drawer that's in the corner of the room.
She says something else to me as I sit on the bed, suddenly realizing how tired I am. Seeing that fact, she finishes what she was saying abruptly and moves back the blankets for me, tucking me in once I get under them. She then pulls the curtains back together and closes the door as I fall asleep.
This kinda just an experiment, the amount I update depends on feedback, but I'll try not to be horrible as long as I have motivation.
So... A Whole New World is dead... This good enough to replace it?
...Though I doubt anyone here has read that story, and if you have, I pity you for having to read that horrible middle school child writing...
Not that this is better...
Oh well, I hope to have character sheets done by chapter three, not that it'll actually happen because I'm a lazy procrastinating bitch- okay, I'll stop.
...New story hype anyone...?
No?
Okay...
I'll leave...