I meant to put this in earlier, but we have a Discord server for Raphtalia/Naofumi: gHX46ds
Note that the "1+255" refers to level in current world + wave world. I used 255 because, after breaking level 100 in old pokemon games (gen 1), that was the highest possible value attainable before overflowing the allocated memory for that pokemon's level, resulting in it being reset to level 1.
Also: there are going to be original abilities and equipment. You have been warned.
chapter three: the rain
"No matter what happens, please don't forget me."
"Never."
He vanished in her arms.
It had been eight months since Naofumi's departure when Raphtalia, now overseeing her home village of Lurolona, received a letter bearing the official seal of Melromarc. The news it contained was dire - their world was on a collision course with another, and as a vassal hero, she was needed to combat the inevitable waves of destruction.
Raphtalia was pissed.
"Wasn't Naofumi-sama summoned to stop this kind of thing? Why is it happening again?" she demanded of the Melromarc court wizards. To their credit, it turned out they'd been tirelessly studying the phenomenon of the waves ever since the four heroes had been summoned, and they'd managed to glean a rudimentary understanding of the mana flow between worlds.
"At the core of our worlds, there is a central ley line known as the Terra Vitae." This she heard from the elder court wizard, who had overseen the research. "From it branch all the ley lines of the universe, each one the thread of another world.
"However, thousands of years ago, when the flame of mankind was newly kindled, a great cataclysm sundered the Terra Vitae, and many ley lines were severed, their worlds set adrift and left to rot in the lifeless void," the bearded man thundered, arms spread wide, lights down low.
Raphtalia crossed her arms. "In English this time?"
A much younger mage, her expression apologetic, spoke up. "Essentially, the worlds the four holy heroes were summoned from are disconnected from ours. They have no magic, and ordinarily there's no way to contact them. They're not even aware there are other worlds."
"And what does this have to do with the waves?" Aside from his duties as honorary chief of Lurolona, Raphtalia had in Naofumi's absence picked up his impatience.
"The dormant arcane energies called upon by - " began the elder wizard, but the mage talked over him, grimacing. Raphtalia's keen hearing picked up a few snickers from around the room.
"Well...the initial summoning spell utilised a type of ancient magic that connected directly to the Terra Vitae, pulling on even those severed ley lines to locate those suited for the roles they were destined to play," the mage explained. "At least, that's what we've got so far."
Just then, there was a timid knock on the councilroom door, followed by a thundering bang, bang, bang that shook the entire room and caused the doors to buckle.
"That must be the other vassal heroes," grumbled the mage closest to the doors, getting up from his seat to open them; before he could, however, they flew open on their own, sending him sprawling. A colossal bird, white with pink-tipped feathers, burst into the room, followed by a pale girl with a long green braid and a bejewelled chakram at her waist.
"Sorry we're late," Rishia apologized, bowing. "Filo had to come find me. Um, hi, Raphtalia."
"Rishia," the katana hero acknowledged. "And Filo."
"Onee-chan!" Filo boomed, still in her bird form and using an appellative she'd picked up from Naofumi. "It's been so long!"
"Filo, it's been three days," Raphtalia sighed. "You're not a dog."
"Filo is Filo!" she countered, transforming into her human form in a puff of smoke. She'd grown some since Naofumi's departure, but at heart, she was still the same Filo she'd always been; Raphtalia sometimes wondered if she'd ever become like Fitoria, reserved and thoughtful, but somehow, she doubted it.
"Back to the matter at hand," another wizard interrupted, sounding more than a little tired, and Raphtalia received the distinct impression that a lot of them had been skipping sleep for the sake of research. "For whatever reason, one of these detached worlds is now being pulled back towards our own. Whereas our summoning spells were able to tap into long-dead ley lines to pull individuals through them, whatever is happening now has set the very essence of both worlds on a direct collision course. To make matters worse, even the weakest conduit monster could cause widespread devastation in a world without levels."
"Meaning?" Rishia prodded.
"Well, as we're all aware from your testimony relating to the Spirit Tortoise incident and the heroes of the scythe and fan, during a wave, both worlds exchange magical energies, meaning that anyone who has gained power in either world will have access to that power in both. Those who have gained power in both worlds will temporarily experience a powerup proportional to their stats from the world in which they are not currently present. This also applies to monsters - residual invaders after a wave are reduced to a mere level one, at which point they are no match for most adventurers."
"We don't need to be reminded," Raphtalia sighed. "What you're saying is that even some common field monsters could destroy their civilization, right?"
"Correct," the wizard nodded.
"The energy signature we picked up from the other world matches part of the energy signature on record from the summoning of the four heroes," added the mage who'd interrupted the elder wizard, fixing Raphtalia with a look that she wasn't quite sure how to interpret. She did, however, know how to interpret the girl's words.
"You're saying that now our world is going to destroy the home of one of the heroes."
"I'm glad you picked up on it so quickly," the other nodded. "If the elder had started talking again…"
"Are we all needed in that world, then?" Rishia asked.
"Here's where it gets complicated," another mage cut in. "Through our research, we've managed to establish connections with a couple of parallel versions of this world, and though they're rudimentary at best, the information we've exchanged has made it apparent that they too are experiencing symptoms of this collision."
"Basically," the girl explained, spreading the fingers of both hands, "worlds connected to the Terra Vitae exist in clusters. They will never collide with other worlds within the same cluster, because they're attached to the same branch. They can collide with other clusters, but only if forced, which is what happened the last time there were waves - our branch and another were pulled together by...well, you know."
"Does that mean the other worlds had to summon heroes, too?" Filo piped up, bright-eyed and bouncy.
"We haven't been able to ascertain that as of yet," an older man responded, clasping his hands together in front of his beard. "All we know is that the worlds we have been able to contact are planning on sending vassal heroes as well, so we have decided to simply send one of you to scout out the early stages of the waves."
"I'll go," Raphtalia volunteered, instantly. The mage girl who'd given her the look glanced away, trying not to laugh.
"Filo wants to go, too!"
"Filo, he said one of us can go," the older girl sighed. "I don't think it'd be such a good idea to have you running around a foreign world by yourself, especially if it's one like Naofumi-sama's. People would probably have a hard time believing what they were seeing no matter which form you decided to take."
"Then onee-chan wouldn't be able to go, either," Filo retorted, pointing at Raphtalia. "Didn't master say people in his world wouldn't react too good to your ears?"
"He also said I'd look like I was wearing a costume and people wouldn't pay attention to it!" Raphtalia fired back, cheeks heating up, then -
"I think Raphtalia should be the one to go, out of the three of us."
Rishia spoke up, her hands together on her lap. Though quiet, her voice carried, and the other two stopped their bickering to stare before Filo turned away, arms crossed and a pout on her face. It was a mark of how much she'd grown that she didn't throw a tantrum - even though she must be just as desperate as I am to see Naofumi-sama…
"Filo, if it's possible, I'll see if I can get Naofumi-sama to come back," she suggested on a whim, as a peace offering, and Filo's entire demeanour changed in an instant.
"Really?" - then, without even waiting on a response: "Yay!"
As Filo began some kind of ritualistic dance, stomping in a circle with her arms in the air, Raphtalia turned back to the elder wizard, bowing deeply. "I apologize for my indiscretion. What will be required of me?"
"We predict that the next wave will occur in approximately two months," he replied, reading from the scroll under his nose. "At this time, the other world's dead ley line will come into close enough contact with our own thread of mana to reanimate, and during that period, a monster at approximately level fifty will become a conduit." They'd long ago determined that the game-like nature of the waves - that was, the way they tended to close when a "boss" was defeated - was in fact due to the way the waves themselves operated. During the intersection of two ley lines, certain areas of the worlds would become unstable and form invisible "seams"; when a monster with a particularly strong connection to mana drew close enough to one such seam, it would trigger a split, opening a rift into the other world and causing a wave. The monster itself would become the conduit for the invading world's mana, drawing in other, weaker monsters until either its death or the decoupling of the two worlds' ley lines, at which time the wave would close on its own. Due to the waves' destructive nature, it was often more effective to hunt down and slay the conduit rather than to simply wait them out.
"And what must I do?" Raphtalia pressed. She'd never actually utilised the vassal weapons' ability to travel to other worlds before; the only inter-world travel she'd done had been under the influence of the shield after it had been temporarily granted permission to enter L'Arc's world so that they could hunt down Kyo. Even after she'd found the katana in that world, the return trip had still been facilitated by the shield.
"You must track down the conduit monster, locate the rift it has created, and enter that rift. You will lose contact with us until the next wave from our world, so be sure you are truly prepared to leave."
"You might never come back if the waves end and you don't head home through the last rift, by the way," the girl cut in. "So try to come back before that happens, 'kay?"
"Right."
Raphtalia hadn't asked which world it was, but there was a one-in-four chance that it was Naofumi's, and that was enough for her.
That evening, after her bath, Raphtalia spread out on her bed, gazing at the thatched ceiling. She'd shared this room with Naofumi, long ago, but even though his old bed was larger, she couldn't bring herself to sleep in it. She could barely bring herself to look at his side of the room, and cleaning it was an incredible effort, so more often than not it was coated in a fine layer of dust.
She'd tried to change the sheets, once, but when it became apparent that they still carried his scent, she couldn't bring herself to carry out the deed.
"I miss you," she whispered, burying her face in his old blanket. Maybe it was a weird thing to do - she didn't know. What she did know was that it brought her comfort the same way he had.
"The strongest fighter in this world needs a security blanket?" Sadeena had once teased her, but Raphtalia's glare had been sharp enough to slice Keel's rock-hard fruitcake, and the older woman hadn't mentioned it again.
The next two months were both impossibly slow and a blur; each day felt as if it dragged on and on, but at the end of each week, Raphtalia would look back and wonder where the time had gone.
Sometime at the beginning of summer, there was a quiet knock at her door. "Raphtalia?"
"Come in. It's unlocked."
The door creaked open - I should oil those hinges, but I can never seem to find the time, she thought - and the soft firelight reflecting off the hearth illuminated Rishia's pale face, casting it into an otherworldly glow.
"Do you have a moment?" the other hero asked, expression serious. When Raphtalia nodded, she took a seat in the armchair by the tanuki girl's bed, closing the door with a soft click; Raphtalia herself lay upright against a pillow by the headboard, reading a book by candlelight. She supposed she could have used light magic, but its light felt far colder and more distant than the familiar warmth of candleflame.
"What is it?" she asked, and Rishia gazed down at her folded hands for a moment before she replied, eyes soft.
"I know why you volunteered to go through the rift."
Whatever Raphtalia had expected, this was not it, but the two had been friends for a couple of years now, so she let her guard down with a sigh. "Why?"
"You're hoping to see Naofumi-san, aren't you?"
His name, spoken aloud, disarmed her. She'd not heard it for months now, and its nearness, its intimacy, was startling. Raphtalia had long since been immunized to mentions of the "Shield Hero"; it was his title, nothing more, and getting emotional over it would be as silly as breaking down over the word "queen" or "duke".
Knock, knock, knock again, "come in" again. This time, it was Sadeena who entered in her demihuman form; Raphtalia knew the older woman preferred to remain as a therianthrope, but frankly, she was far too large to fit through the door that way.
"Rishia," she acknowledged, dipping her head to the Projectile Hero. "Raphtalia, a messenger just showed up at the gate. Said the mages' council had picked up a rift or something a day northeast of here by horse. They want you to get ready right away."
"Can right away be tomorrow?" Raphtalia yawned, stretching. "I was getting ready to go to bed…"
"Hey, don't shoot the messenger," Sadeena shrugged. "You go whenever you want. Just remember your boyfriend's on the line. That's why you wanted to go, right?"
"Wha - !?"
"Rishia told me."
"Sorry," mumbled the girl (traitor! Raphtalia thought) sitting to Raphtalia's right. "It's just...you feel the same way about Naofumi-san as I do about Itsuki-sama, don't you? Even Rino could tell."
"Who?" Sadeena cut in, raising an eyebrow, and Rishia jumped. One might have found it hard to believe that this shy, nervous girl was a vassal hero.
"Oh, um...she's the council mage who helped explain things in the meeting. We talked a little after you left, and it turns out she was with Motoyasu-san before Myne sold her into slavery."
"She what!?" Raphtalia growled, her tail lashing furiously on the bed beside her.
"Um...maybe I shouldn't have said anything…" Rishia murmured, but Raphtalia shook her head, reaching over to comfort her friend.
"It's okay. I'm not upset with you or anything." A gentle squeeze of the hand. "Myne just...well, you understand. That's not someone I can forgive."
"She must've really been a shithead to piss off Raffy like that. After all, you hung around with that sourpuss for two and a half years, didn'tcha?" Sadeena cracked, taking a swig from an unmarked bottle and giving Raphtalia a hard poke on the shoulder.
"Please don't call me that," Raphtalia sighed, planting her face in her hands. "And Naofumi-sama might be cold, but he has a kind heart. Myne...that woman was evil to the core. I know that the real Myne, or Malty, or whoever she was - I know she wasn't really in there to start with, but I can't just untie who she might have been from who she was. And where did you get that bottle?" she added, giving the offending vessel a sharp glare. Sadeena chuckled throatily between swigs, but said nothing more, and Raphtalia crossed her arms with a huff.
"Well," Rishia piped up, "I just wanted to say...we'll do everything you can to support you from this side, even if it's very little. I...I'd really hate to be apart from Itsuki-sama, and I can't even imagine what it must be like for you and Naofumi-san to be separated like this…"
Suddenly, Raphtalia understood very well why Rishia had so quickly jumped to her defense when Filo had tried to argue over who would enter the rift.
"Thank you, Rishia," she whispered, and the green-haired girl smiled her small, watery smile.
"Oh, yeah," Sadeena said, followed by a needlessly loud belch. "Whoops, sorry. Almost forgot to give you this, it's got directions to where the rifts are gonna start popping up."
"Sadeena, were you already drunk when you came here?" Raphtalia sighed, her mood shifting in an instant as she accepted the crumpled scroll.
"Maybe a lil' bit."
Unfurling the letter, Raphtalia didn't respond, though she did jump when a small gold device with a smooth, bluish stone embedded in it fell from the center of the scroll into her lap. Picking it up in one hand, she read the message aloud for Rishia and Sadeena to hear:
"To the Katana Hero,
We did not deem it wise to send you into the unknown with no means of communication. Attached, please find what we have dubbed the 'Leystone', a device crafted to facilitate inter-world communication. It is derived from the magics we used to contact other worlds during our experiments, with the limitation of reliance on the world's mana. This means that, during your time in the other world, you will be unable to contact us at-will, but we will be able to contact you by conducting the ritual magic necessary to funnel our world's mana into the other's ley lines. Due to the nature of the waves, the stone is capable of two-way initiation during a wave."
For a moment, Raphtalia stared at the stone resting atop her thighs, then picked it up, studying it; it was embedded in a small rectangular plate that was attached to a chain, presumably so that she could wear it like a pendant. Slipping it over her head, she let it settle comfortably on her chest where, so many moons ago, a slave seal had stained her skin. It was warm to the touch, and if she was honest, its presence comforted her.
She wasn't alone. She wouldn't be alone.
"Alright. I'll get Filo to take me over there first thing in the morning," she declared, placing the book on her nightstand, where it would - presumably - remain for quite some time. "You two should get some sleep yourselves. Rishia, are you and Itsuki heading out tomorrow too?"
"Yes, we'll be heading out after you to try and minimize the number of monsters that come through the rifts. If things are as bad as the council said, even a few low level enemies could kill a lot of people in that other world, so you should just focus on finding the conduit monster once you get through."
"Alright. Sadeena, you're in charge while I'm out, okay? And that means no getting drunk."
"Aw, c'mon," the older woman complained, waving the bottle at Raphtalia and nearly bonking her on the head with it. "Not even a little?"
"We need you with your wits about you. Eclair might govern the entire territory, but she can't manage every single village by herself, and Melty is still away at the capital. And before you ask, Gaelion is not allowed to watch the village for you while you drink. Do you remember what happened last time we left him in charge?" Raphtalia lectured.
"Uh...nope, not really. Enlighten me, o Katana Hero."
"He tried to give orders from the top of the barricade and broke the entire wall by mistake. It took two months to fix it." The tanuki girl sighed a long-suffering sigh. "How do you not remember this?"
A shrug and a belch.
"Gods, go to bed, please," Raphtalia coughed, waving a hand by her face. "And scrub your teeth before you do!"
"Fine, fine, I'm off. See ya later, Raffy, Rishia." And with a final wave, Sadeena staggered out of the room, leaving the door ajar. Rishia stood as well, making for the exit; when she reached it, she pulled the door open to stand silhouetted in the frame for a moment, and once again, the candlelight cast her pale face in a soft, almost ethereal glow.
"Good luck, Raphtalia."
"Goodnight, Rishia."
Click.
Raphtalia blew the candles out.
"Is that supposed to be the conduit?"
"Yep, yep!" Filo chirped. "I can feel it! It's got so much magic runnin' through it!"
The monster in question was a dragon, a little on the small side, with azure scales and curly, dark-grey horns. Raphtalia couldn't sense much from it, but as Filo was technically a monster herself, Raphtalia decided to trust the bird. Her insights hadn't failed them yet, and more than once, they'd saved a life or two - case in point, their initial encounter with a nue.
They hadn't been noticed yet; Filo had leapt easily up the steep cliffs around the thing's lair, perching atop the tallest one she could find. So far, it hadn't done anything noteworthy besides sleep, but the deep rumbling from the dark clouds above was Raphtalia's cue to keep her senses sharp.
Sure enough, within fifteen minutes, something in the air began to change. It wasn't the mana supercharge of the previous waves, where two active ley lines intersected to unleash overwhelming arcane energies - it was more like the earth was being drained of its power, magical currents converging into what she could only guess were the "seams" the council had mentioned.
Somewhere in the distance, something exploded in a flash of purple light that she recognized as one of Itsuki's abilities, followed by a series of blasts that shook the ground beneath their feet.
Below, the beast began to stir, raising its head to sniff the air with its great ugly snout. With keen eyes, she watched in disgust and fascination as some greyish membrane flared from the nostrils with each puff of breath. As it reached out to touch the edge of a seam, something began to tear in the very fabric of space, and Raphtalia sensed a great pull emanating from the rip...
"Ready, onee-chan?" Filo asked, and Raphtalia nodded, brow set.
"I'm ready."
"High Quick!"
Filo took off down the cliff at breakneck speed, Raphtalia clinging on for dear life as the dragon, drawn by the influx of mana, clawed at the rift, spreading it wider, wider, hauling itself through -
"Instant Blade: Flash!"
The momentum from Filo's ability carried over into her skill, and in the blink of an eye, she was through, the gem at the base of the katana shining a brilliant red - the dragon was just ahead, drifting through the awful, flashing void - she squeezed her eyes shut, but the lights were too bright, the colours too vivid, she couldn't breathe, and everything hurt, it hurt, it hurt -
With a sensation that she could only describe as being squeezed out of a very small tube, she found herself floating amidst clouds.
She didn't recognize the world below - massive, shiny buildings like colossal square beetles erupted from miles and miles of flat grey stone, with the occasional stand of trees here and there. The closest thing she'd ever seen to any of this was Faubrey, but Faubrey didn't even begin to hold a candle to what she was witnessing; machines like so many ants scurried across blackened paths between buildings, lights flashing or glaring everywhere she looked, an artificial candy city.
Translation up
A tiny icon popped up in the bottom-right corner of her status screen, indicating that her weapon was now translating spoken information for her. She still couldn't read the writing splayed out across the sides of buildings, and as she drifted slowly towards the ground, still moving with the clouds, it became apparent that these were characters she'd never seen before.
Wait, no...isn't this how Naofumi-sama wrote notes to himself? This script looks familiar. I think he tried to teach me, once, but we didn't have the time…
The colossal, glowing rectangles she now saw resembled signposts, if signposts were the height of trees and just as wide up top; the closest glared an uncomfortably bright red that hurt her eyes, with white characters reading "新しいコカ・コーラ・クラシックをお試しください". She didn't actually understand what this meant, but the side of the sign bore highly detailed images of bottles not dissimilar to Sadeena's preferred brand of mead.
Who even carved such a sign…? And if this world has no magic, how does it stay so brightly lit?
Then she saw it - just ahead, the dragon that had torn open the rift in the first place soared towards one of the buildings as countless smaller field monsters plummeted likes stones to the ground, emerging from streams of unstable wave energy to wreak havoc on the unsuspecting citizens beneath…
Stop the conduit monster first, she told herself. Cut off their connection to home so they're weak enough for the residents of this world to fight back.
Raphtalia didn't register that she'd drawn the katana until the words left her lips.
"Meteor Blade!"
In the aftermath of Raphtalia's skill, Naofumi could only stare - that was, until the dragon's severed head slammed into the pavement next to her, spraying blackish blood into the air and putting a dent in the sidewalk. It was easily several times her size; the blade of her katana definitely wouldn't have been able to reach the other side of its neck without an ability.
Something inside of him felt numb.
This can't be real. This can't be happening. How would she have gotten here? There's no way.
Logically, her presence checked out - he'd pulled his powers from Melromarc, after all, and this wave had clearly come from the very same world he'd left. Raphtalia was a vassal hero, with the ability to cross between worlds through the waves. If she'd come through to fight the waves from this side, then naturally, she'd end up here, but the coincidence was just too extreme for him to believe so easily. After everything it had put them through, would the universe really just allow them back together like that…?
As the lights faded from the sky above, Naofumi felt his old powers leave him once again, and quite suddenly, he was very much in the moment - and very much aware of the fact that everyone around had pulled out their phones and were now aiming them at the carnage, the monster corpses, and at both himself and Raphtalia…
Before he knew it, he'd taken off at a sprint.
"Raphtalia!"
"Naofumi-saaaah!"
An understandably confused Raphtalia let out a shriek as he grabbed her by the hand and fled the city at full tilt.
They drew stares, and Naofumi didn't need to wonder why: the shield hadn't turned back into the bracelet this time, and Raphtalia's features, clothing and katana were definitely out-of-place. Still, he kept on, ignoring Raphtalia's protests (even as she ran along with him), ignoring the cameras, ignoring the eyes that followed them all the way through the city outskirts until, entirely out of breath, they arrived at the entrance of the Shinto shrine he'd meditated in just an hour ago.
Wheezing, the two collapsed on the plank floor, and for a solid five minutes, they lay there, the only sound their labored breathing. When Naofumi felt he'd caught his breath enough to talk, he pushed himself into a sitting position, and Raphtalia did the same, cheeks burning. "Did you really want to be alone that badly?" she accused, though Naofumi had the distinct impression that she wasn't actually angry about it.
"It's not that," he huffed. "It's - do you remember the photo boxes in Faubrey?"
"Yes, what about them?"
"Everyone here has a device capable of something similar, only it's instant, and it can capture moving pictures and sound as well," he explained, as briefly as he could. "That information can also be shared across the entire world at the press of a button."
He'd missed her so badly, and yet the first words he spoke to her after all this time were to explain cameras and the internet.
With a long sigh, Raphtalia returned to the floor, staring unseeing at his knee. "It's been ten months since I last saw you, Naofumi-sama...and the first thing we talk about is photo boxes."
"Four months here," he said, avoiding her gaze. "And that's relevant information, isn't it?"
"It's just...I wanted a reunion like they have in the books," she pouted. "It's almost like we were never apart, though."
Ah. So that's it. Even though, with his curse broken, he'd regained the ability to feel a full range of emotions, he was still horribly oblivious to Raphtalia's more maidenly desires. "Well," he began, awkwardly. "Hi."
"Hi."
Silence. Then -
"I missed you."
Naofumi didn't even realise he'd spoken until he'd done it.
Raphtalia, just as surprised as he was, sat up again, ears perked. "I missed you too, Naofumi-sama," she murmured, and before he could stop her, she'd wrapped both her arms around one of his and pressed her cheek against his shoulder.
Stiffening, Naofumi allowed himself a moment to calm his nerves before reaching up with his free hand to pat her on the back, noting her wagging tail. She's just like a dog sometimes, he thought, fondly, and for the first time in months, he let himself smile.
For a long while - Naofumi didn't know how long - they sat there on the planks, the wood warm and a little soft from spring humidity. She clung to him, unmoving, unspeaking, and he ran his fingers through her long, light brown hair, slowly relaxing in her embrace.
At length, Raphtalia withdrew her face from his shoulder, though she kept her hold on his arm; if he was honest, seeing her looking up at him was endearing, but he'd never admit it. Not in a million years.
"Naofumi-sama, did you get teleported to the wave?" she asked, frowning, and he shook his head.
"No, I walked. Why?"
"So you were already here...is this where you live, then?" As she spoke, she studied the shrine, and he could see her eyes traveling along the length of the stone tablet in the middle of the floor, trying to make sense of what was written there.
"I live in this city, yeah. Not here, though," he added, shifting to a more comfortable position. "This is a shrine. It's not a popular destination, since everyone's so sucked up in city life nowadays. I thought it'd be the safest place to take you."
"Not your house? You do have a house, right?"
"Of course I have a house," Naofumi sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose. "I mean, it's not mine, it's my family's, but I have some claim to it. Anyway, my family's still awake, and I don't think I'd be able to bring you there without questions."
Just then, his phone rang, and he leaned into Raphtalia so that he could reach his pocket; seeing the number, he immediately picked up, raising the phone to his ear as, fascinated, Raphtalia watched him. "What's up?"
"Naofumi!" It was his mother. "Are you safe?"
"Yeah, why wouldn't I be?" He tried his best to sound confused as Raphtalia leaned in close, inspecting the phone with narrowed eyes and ears angled towards it.
"Did you get the alert? The military is ordering all civilians to return to their homes at once and remain there until they say so. There's nothing on the news about it yet, but Jun says there are some videos of it online already…"
And knowing the government, they'll probably be taken down, Naofumi thought bitterly. "No, I - wait, no, I did," he amended, checking his notifications - sure enough, there was a very official-sounding alert displayed at the top of the screen. "Right. I guess we have to go there after all," he told Raphtalia.
"We? Naofumi, who are you with right now?"
Shit. "Just a friend, oka-san!" he yelped, bringing the phone back up to his ear. "She uh - lives a city over and came back here for a convention, and she can't get back now. Is it alright if she stays with us for a little while?"
"Naofumi-sama?" Raphtalia prodded. "What's going on? Naofumi-sama, why is your mother a rectangle?"
"Raphtalia, this is a phone, my mother is talking through it."
He sorely wished he'd pressed the mute button.
It had started to rain by the time he wrapped up the call, and with a sigh, he opened his status menu to check what had become of it. To his surprise, it was still intact, though his added levels had disappeared, and he found that he could still access the passive abilities of his shields even if he couldn't use the shields themselves. Much like when he'd been transported to another world before, he was level one, but he wasn't starting from nothing - his stats were much, much higher than they should have been at such a low level. He supposed Raphtalia was in the same position, and with her back at his side, combat was no longer a problem for him.
There was one thing nagging at him, though…
"Raphtalia," he began, slowly. "How did you get here exactly?"
Just as she opened her mouth to reply, the pendant she wore (a pendant that, he realized with a jolt, he didn't recognize) burst into a brilliant blue light, illuminating the front of her tunic; when she pulled it up by the chain, the light cast the entire shrine into an eerie glow until, with a strange popping sound, what looked like a projection came out of the stone, floating in midair like something straight out of a sci-fi film.
For a moment, the image was blurred, jumping, glitchy, but then Naofumi sensed it - something that could only be mana, welling up through the shrine and flowing into the stone that Raphtalia now cupped in her palm. When the projection stabilized, the entire thing appeared to be of a puffy, white cloud, occupying the entire space allotted to it.
"Master! Master! Filo is here!"
"Filo, get back, you're too close to the circle!"
"Is this actually working?"
"Raphtalia, what is this?" Naofumi cut in, glaring at the pendant.
"Oh, um, it's called a Leystone," she explained, reciting from the letter she'd received just the night before. "It lets everyone back home talk to us through it. The mages' council made it for me to keep in touch once I was in this world...but ordinarily, it only goes one way, so I can't contact them outside of a wave event."
"Can they hear us? Or see us?"
"Yep, yep!" came Filo's voice, and someone huffed; the cloud-like projection diminished, and there was a puff of what looked like smoke before Filo's face came into view, beaming. Evidently, she'd been in her filolial form and standing far too close to whatever instrument was functioning as their camera. "Hiya, master, onee-chan!"
"Filo, please," and then Rishia was there, pulling Filo back with the gentle restraint of a parent consoling a rowdy child. "Raphtalia! And Naofumi-san. I'm glad you got through okay. The wave closed about forty-five minutes after you left, and I wasn't sure if you'd done it or not…"
"Was I really floating like that for forty-five minutes?" Raphtalia asked. Rishia frowned.
"Floating?"
"When I went through the rift," Raphtalia explained, and Naofumi was lost; as a legendary hero, he'd been forbidden from traveling to other worlds. "It was sort of like I was floating, and then I saw the dragon that opened the wave right under me. It really didn't feel like that long…"
"I don't know if this helps, but time apparently moves around two and a half times slower here than in Melromarc," Naofumi put in.
"So the two months between us detecting the first signs of inter-world collision and now were only a few weeks for you?" The speaker this time was a vaguely familiar girl with a short reddish-brown bob, wearing the traditional robes of the Melromarc mages' council.
"Something like that, yeah," he nodded. "If you can detect whatever the hell's causing these waves, do me a favor and explain why this is happening."
"You're the same as ever, Naofumi-sama," Raphtalia groaned. "Really, I thought you'd have at least been grateful I volunteered to go…"
"You what?"
"I'm sorry, but can you two have this conversation later?" the girl cut in. "I don't know how long the ritual spell will last, but I can give you a brief run-down of how the waves work and why your world doesn't have any magic in it."
"I don't have much of a choice, do I?" Naofumi drawled, quirking an eyebrow, and when the girl shook her head, he rolled his eyes. "Alright. Get on with it."
Over the course of the next ten minutes, she managed to summarize everything that the council had told Raphtalia, Rishia and Filo that day two months prior, beginning with ley lines and ending with an explanation of why he was once again being dragged into Melromarc's affairs.
"Oh, we've been doing more research ever since that meeting," she added, snapping her fingers. "Whatever's bringing these two worlds together isn't coming from Melromarc. Either it's strong enough to push your world into ours, or it's something on your world doing it. I don't really know a whole lot more than that, but you guys might want to try tracking it down if you can."
Just then, the projection began to jump again, sections of it reeling upwards like a damaged videotape, and Raphtalia sat up a little straighter. "You're breaking up," she told the group on the other side. "Is something wrong?"
"No, the ritual's wrapping up. I'm sorry for taking up so much of your time, but I thought the Shield Hero could use this information as well, and I wasn't sure how well you'd remember it."
"You could have just written it down when you sent me the Leystone!" Raphtalia objected, tail lashing, but the girl stepped out of frame, replaced with a bouncing Filo, a solemn Rishia, and - to Naofumi's surprise - none other than Amaki Ren and Eclair Seatto.
"What are you guys doing there?" Naofumi blurted out.
"Raphtalia's right, you really don't change," Ren sighed, shaking his head. "As the only sane legendary hero left - "
"Hey!" Rishia snapped. "Itsuki-sama is - "
"as the only sane legendary hero left," Ren went on, raising his voice to cover Rishia's shrilling. "I thought I'd check in on how you two were doing to help me figure out what I should do back here in Melromarc. Eclair here was just worried about you."
"Ren!" Eclair interrupted, and Naofumi, amused, noted the lack of honorifics. "Raphtalia, you had better come back soon! Leaving Sadeena and Gaelion in charge of Lurolona is not good for the Seatto territory!"
"Wait, I didn't leave Gaelion in charge of anything! Don't tell me Sadeena - "
"I'll take care of it," Rishia mumbled, defeated.
"Please, reign that woman in! I've never seen so much booze in one place!"
"Hey, Filo wants a turn too!" As the mana flowing into the stone ebbed, however, the projection went out, and the last thing they saw was Filo's wide blue eyes, staring fascinated at the shrine around them.
Silence again.
"Right," Naofumi huffed, getting to his feet and offering Raphtalia his hand. "We should really get going."
Glancing up at the cutoff walls, Naofumi saw that the rain had become quite the downpour, and neither of them had any sort of umbrella or cover with them. He couldn't exactly run down the street with a shield floating in midair over his head, but perhaps there was some other form of cover he could use…?
"The monsters here are very small," Raphtalia commented, watching the same wasp from earlier that day buzz about its crude nest. "That one's level two, but it's much smaller than even a level ten bee back home."
"That's a bug, Raphtal - wait, did you say it was level two?"
That can't be right. Nothing here can be anything above level one. The resources just aren't there.
He turned to study the wasp in question, status screen still up; sure enough, when his gaze settled on it, the little number next to its name read "2".
How the hell…?
"Naofumi-sama?" Raphtalia waved her hand in front of his face, trying to get his attention. "Is something wrong?"
"It's nothing." Shaking his head, he led the way out of the shrine, raising the shield to cover his head; Raphtalia's ears flattened at the chill rain, and with a sigh, he moved the shield to cover her instead, shifting it into the Leaf Shield. He had larger shields, but he couldn't yet access them, and besides, a leaf could at least be written off as rudimentary cover taken from the forest.
If there was one thing to be grateful for in all this (aside from getting to be with Raphtalia again? a small, honest Naofumi in his head asked), it was that there actually was a convention in the city at the time, so he and Raphtalia were able to take public transportation without too many questions - after all, they weren't the only ones who appeared to be in-costume. Naturally, she drew curious gazes, and Naofumi had to fend off more than a few overly-interested otaku.
"What are you supposed to be?" a guy on the bus asked him, staring at the shield. "That's some seriously low-budget cosplay."
"Freshly isekai'd," Naofumi grunted, with no further explanation.
"Your tail is so realistic!" a girl to Raphtalia's left gushed. "Can I touch it?"
Naofumi stiffened, he knew her tail was sensitive to the touch, and while he'd explained to her that they'd be pretending to be in costume, he hadn't had a plan in mind for if someone had actually wanted to touch one of them - would it be uptight of her to say no? Naofumi knew he shouldn't care, but he didn't want any ire directed towards her, even from strangers.
Then it hit him.
"Isn't that one of those fancy tails with the motion controls in it?" he cut in, pretending to study her tail. "I hear you shouldn't touch those. It might screw up the sensors."
"Oh! Sorry!" the girl apologized, jumping back as if she'd been electrocuted. "It's just really cool!"
"It's fine!" Raphtalia smiled politely, but the moment the girl looked away, the smile dropped, replaced with pure exasperation. "Naofumi-sama," she whispered, "is everyone in your world so weird?"
"...I'll explain later," he sighed, torn between laughter and annoyance.
The nearest bus stop to his house was about a mile away, and so they were forced to take off at a sprint, splashing through ankle-high puddles that drenched them to the knee as the stares of a thousand jealous otaku followed Naofumi until the bus drove out of sight. He knew why, of course; he was with an admittedly gorgeous girl in cosplay.
Not that he'd tell Raphtalia that.
With how soaked they were, the two of them might as well have gone swimming by the time they reached Naofumi's front door, which opened before Naofumi could even touch the handle. Standing there in the doorway was his worried mother, quite ready to cry; behind her was his father, expression unreadable, and behind him was Jun, fixing him with a look that quite clearly said we need to talk.
"Naofumi-sama?" Raphtalia murmured. "Am...am I not welcome here?"
"It'll be fine," he said, reaching back to give her hand a squeeze. "Just follow my lead, okay?"
His parents had never been overly expressive, so it spoke volumes that his mother was so distraught, but with company present, she did her best to appear calm and composed, even if it was obvious that she was neither. "Naofumi," she greeted, and he could see her throat working out some powerful emotion. "And you must be the friend he mentioned. Welcome to our home."
She bowed, and at a nudge from Naofumi, Raphtalia bowed as well. To his relief, she managed the correct angle, and he let out the breath he'd been holding. So far, so good.
"Sorry it took so long," he apologized. "We were pretty far away, and the convention got shut down, so the buses were almost all full."
"It's okay. As long as you're safe," she said, beckoning them into the hall. "You two are soaked, though - you really should go have a hot bath and change your clothes. Naofumi, do you have anything small enough to fit - I'm sorry, I didn't ask your name." She spoke to Raphtalia this time. "Forgive me, I've been worried about Naofumi."
"I understand completely," Raphtalia replied, with a kind smile. "My name is Raphtalia. It's nice to meet you."
Jun almost choked on his own spit, and Naofumi had a feeling he knew why.
"Just Raphtalia?" Naofumi's father cut in.
"Ah - yes. This isn't my home country," she explained. Before his father could ask where she was from that didn't use last names (though Melromarc did use last names, it was customary to refer to people by their first name and trade), Naofumi interrupted them.
"Raphtalia-chan, weren't you sick just last week? It might be best if you warm up as soon as possible."
"Raphtalia-chan?" she repeated, baffled, but before anyone could ask any more questions, he fixed her with a look that very clearly said don't ask questions, and she nodded, directing another bow at his parents. "I'm sorry. Naofumi-sama is correct, I was sick recently. Would you mind if I were to bathe first?"
Upon hearing the honorific, Naofumi cringed, and from the hallway, Jun snorted.
"Ah...sure," his mother said, expression shifting into one that Naofumi absolutely could not interpret. To his relief, they asked no further questions, and after the customary "thank you for taking care of our son", his parents let them head upstairs, Jun slipping away after them.
"Naofumi-sama?" Iwatani Katai repeated, looking as if he'd just taken a large bite of a very sour lemon.
"I don't want to know," his wife sighed.
"So, let me get this straight," Jun stated, gaze shifting back and forth between the two of them. "Your partner from this other world...came through the wave?"
"It's...a little hard to explain," Naofumi said. "It'd be nice if that rock of yours worked both ways," he added, to Raphtalia.
They were in Naofumi's room; Jun, dry, had taken a seat on the bed, while Raphtalia and Naofumi, still dripping, stood by the door. Raphtalia had removed her thigh-length boots, which were completely soaked through, and allowed Naofumi to hang them on the coat hook by their laces. (Naofumi had taken his shoes off at the door, out of habit.)
"It's not my fault I can't contact them," she pouted. "Maybe next wave."
"Speaking of the waves," Jun said, and his expression turned grave, "you uh, you guys might want to see this."
He stood up, crossing to Naofumi's desktop, and switched on the computer monitor; Naofumi supposed he'd left it signed in before he went out earlier. Opening the browser, Jun typed in a URL, and right there at the top of the page were a whole host of videos with horribly familiar thumbnails…
"Shit," Naofumi murmured. "There's not gonna be covering any of this up, huh?"
"Nope. They're still tallying casualties, but there are at least fifteen dead. Nobody attacked survived."
None of them spoke for a moment. On the inside, however, Naofumi felt like screaming.
I failed.
"Naofumi-sama," Raphtalia began, but he shook his head, waving her away. "Naofumi-sama."
Jun, concerned, crossed the room, reaching out to place a hand on his brother's shoulder. "Nii-san."
At the insistence of the two people closest to him in this world, he relented.
"I couldn't keep everyone safe," he breathed. "I...people are dead because I didn't do my job properly. I just ran off after the dragon died…"
"The wave closed then, too," Raphtalia reminded him, taking him by the other shoulder. "Everything went back to level one. You did what you could, Naofumi-sama. There were casualties back home, too."
He clenched his jaw and didn't respond.
"It's like what you told me when we first met," she went on, insistent now. "I might not have been able to save my parents, but I could do my best to make sure nobody else lost their families. Maybe you didn't save everyone, but if you hadn't been there, a lot more people would have died."
Jun, craning his neck to see the news article he'd left open, put in: "The attack was over a pretty large area. I'm honestly surprised there were that few casualties. They're saying it was some kind of biohazard, and the military was able to successfully contain it, but all the videos on niconico right now say otherwise." His brother rolled his eyes in a manner that reminded Raphtalia very much of Naofumi himself. "Honestly, as far as I can tell, this won't end well for the government, but at least you were able to save most of the people there. This isn't a small city, nii-san."
He understood that it was supposed to make him feel better, but if he was honest, it wasn't helping much. "I'll be fine," he said. "I just...need a little time. Maybe taking that bath will help."
"Oh, right." Jun withdrew his hand from Naofumi's drenched shoulder, wiping the water off on his jeans. "I'll leave you two to it. Dinner will probably be ready soon, anyway. You should hurry up."
And with that, he stepped out, leaving Naofumi and Raphtalia alone.
next chapter features bathtime