q: where the fUCK were you
a: stop mean to me :(
this fic's been stupidly fucking hard to organize because unlike my other stuff i didn't bother writing up a document for it, and while i know what i want to do, it gives me headaches trying to get there
anyway as of writing this sentence the fic has been inactive longer than it's been active so it's time to fix that i guess
couple of notes:
I finally decided to standardize the formatting for system displays. The light novels themselves are wildly inconsistent and I just do not care about adhering to their styles anymore.
i don't want to put a shit ton of focus on Jun since he's basically an original character at this point (only his existence as Naofumi's brother is canon) but I have two reasons why I'm putting focus on him at all: I wanted to showcase Earth's version of the system and how it's changed over millennia of dormancy, and it's not really possible to have Naofumi return home and somehow only use canon characters.
pee
Chapter Eight: Exposition
The alarm clock's 5 defense barely withstood Naofumi's half-asleep punch the next morning.
"Naofumi-sama, please don't break your things. You are the one who set it to make that noise."
Naofumi groaned.
Raphtalia had awoken several minutes prior and was more or less conscious, though she'd chosen to cling to his side until he woke up.
It was too early for the sun to shine, but they could hear the shower running; Jun was already getting ready for school.
Nine days until the next wave, the status screen taunted a drowsy Naofumi. What are you going to do?
What am I going to do? he agreed, swinging his legs to the side and sitting up. Rubbing his eyes, he became aware of two slender arms wrapping themselves around his chest, and before he could react, Raphtalia's legs came up to clasp him by the waist so that she clung to his back like some terribly overgrown koala. "Raphtalia?"
"Good morning, Naofumi-sama," she returned, pressing her cheek against his. Suddenly nervous, Naofumi swallowed hard, half-expecting to be interrupted, but there was nothing to interrupt them now - and when she moved to kiss his cheek, he turned his head to catch her lips with his own.
He'd caught her off guard, and there was an incredibly awkward second where their eyes met before hers closed and she exhaled through her nose, moving to close any gaps between them.
Then the shower shut off and Naofumi remembered that Jun absolutely could not go to school today, because of course his brother would obtain a teleporting gun with all the social awareness of a deaf pigeon.
"What do you think we should do for the next nine days?" he asked Raphtalia, while they changed, and the response he got was a shrug.
"I wish I knew, but it's your world, and I wouldn't even know where to start… Can you, um - can you help me with these hooks? I'm still having trouble with them," she added, and Naofumi spent the next five minutes wincing at the sight of her bare back as he tried his best to help her with a bra.
By the time they'd gotten dressed (and Naofumi had, spectacularly, managed to smack himself in the face with the straps), the sun's glow loomed heavy on the horizon, and the atmosphere in the Iwatani household was subdued; Katai was already prepared to leave for work, and as a uniformed Jun sans shoes descended the staircase on his way to the kitchen, Naofumi pulled him into the living room.
"Where the hell do you think you're going?" he hissed, keeping his voice low as to not alert their father. "You're really gonna go to school with that thing?"
"If I keep it in my bag, it should be fine, shouldn't it?" Jun suggested, infuriatingly naive. Naofumi had to resist the urge to tear out his own hair.
"What happens if there's a bag check?" he shot back. Naofumi had attended a public high school, and the occasional bag check had almost always caught him with some embarrassing manga or novel.
"I'm top of my class at a private high school," Jun returned, still unconcerned. "I don't think they're gonna check me."
"There's still a huge what-if," groaned Naofumi, burying his face in his hands. "Look, the last thing either of us needs is you getting arrested. Oh, and once they confiscate it," he went on, a far worse scenario occurring to him, "it'll keep coming back to you until they eventually figure out what's up with it, and you're definitely not strong enough to break yourself out with it. Assuming they eventually accept that it's not a normal item, you'll then end up getting kept in custody while a bunch of assholes in lab coats poke you and try to figure out why a gun keeps teleporting into your possession."
"...Nii-san, were you really thinking about whether or not I can break myself out of government custody?"
"Shut up," came the reply, followed by a long-suffering sigh. "Besides, Raphtalia and I are going to try and do what we can to power up the weapons on Earth. I hate to encourage my little brother to basically drop out in favor of turning into a chuunibyou, but you should really come with us."
Jun scowled at something over Naofumi's shoulder that apparently only he could see. "I was hoping we could at least put this off until the next break…"
"No. Like it or not, you're a Vassal Hero, and I know you didn't choose to be, but things are going to happen to you that are entirely out of your control - entirely out of anyone's control." Naofumi fixed Jun with a hard stare, hoping beyond hope that his brother would understand just how serious his status as a Vassal was. "What happens if you get summoned to the next wave? You'll just scare the shit out of us and then die. You've got a focus on dexterity, so if you level up, it's entirely possible that you'll be able to just run away by the time the next wave gets here."
"Just looking at your dexterity compared to your other stats, you're relatively faster than I am," remarked Raphtalia, who'd evidently finished brushing the knots out of her hair and who'd crept up behind a startled Naofumi. "You don't have a lot of defense or health, though…."
It was, Naofumi reflected, extremely odd to hear someone else tell his brother that he did not have a lot of health. Raphtalia, who'd lived her whole life in this system, was unperturbed.
Jun stared between them a moment, one hand reaching up to fiddle with the end of his perfectly-knotted tie. Then: "Let me make sure I've got this right...you're telling me to level up so that I can run away from things?"
"Basically," Naofumi shrugged. "You've seen the videos of the first wave online, right?"
"Uh huh."
"How fast were the monsters in it moving?"
It was Jun's turn to shrug. "I can't give you a number, if that's what you want, but they were definitely moving much faster than you'd think they'd be able to. A lot of people got caught off guard by it. Why?"
"Pull it up again," he instructed, pointing to Jun's pocket. Biting his lip, Naofumi's brother palmed his phone, unlocking it and navigating to a web browser; the three of them huddled around the screen, eyes narrowed against the harsh blue light as Jun keyed in the relevant kana.
Attack...in…
"This site uses cookies to ensure the best possible user experience," read a popup that covered the search field as soon as Jun began to type their city's name. The blonde keyed in a couple more kana before he dismissed it.
...city.
The video was, unsurprisingly, on the very first page of search results. The news had seized on it, uploading and reuploading the clip until it was impossible to tell who'd posted it first. Raphtalia, unable to read Japanese, studied the shapes of the characters instead, her eyes tracing every line, every curve, struggling to pick up anything she could.
Jun tapped the "play" button. The cell phone used to record the video lacked the frame rate to accurately capture the motion of anything that emerged from the wave, but that only served to drive home Naofumi's point. "You're going to have to move faster than this," he told Jun. "If you get summoned with the next wave, this is what you'll be up against. They might even be faster, since each wave is stronger than the last. Are you sure you want to just keep going to school like nothing's happening?"
His brother bit his lip, clearly reconsidering, and Naofumi knew he'd gotten through to the straight-laced blonde. "Where do I even start training for that?" he asked, and a status window flickered into view before their eyes.
"Well," Naofumi mused, tapping his chin, "Earth's starting to produce monsters, so we might be able to use them as fodder. Experience is weighted according to whoever contributes the most in a fight, so Raphtalia and I will hang back and only intervene if necessary."
"You're gonna let me fight by myself?"
"You sound shocked."
"I mean, I got into a few fights years ago, but… I've never fought a monster to the death."
"You've got a gun," Naofumi pointed out. "Literally point at stuff and pull the trigger. If Raphtalia could handle fighting monsters with a knife at age ten, you can handle shooting them."
"At age ten?" Jun echoed, choosing to focus on entirely the wrong subject. "How old…?"
Naofumi blanched as Raphtalia replied in full earnesty. "I've lived fourteen years," she told Jun, tail waving from under her skirt.
Jun's eyes shifted back to Naofumi, and the Shield Hero frantically waved his hands. "I'm not a lolicon!" were the first words he could think to say, and they didn't help at all. To his relief, Raphtalia cottoned on immediately.
"Demihumans age and mature differently than humans," she explained, matter-of-factly. "We don't measure our age in chronological years - we grow and mature based on our levels. To you, I'm about nineteen or twenty years old."
"Thank you, Raphtalia," Naofumi breathed. "Anyway - my point is that you shouldn't have too difficult a time. You're both a vassal hero and a ranged weapon user, and you've got both Raphtalia and myself backing you up if anything goes wrong."
This conversation continued a while longer, questions and answers ping-ponging back and forth between the three of them, and Naofumi could feel his brother's resolve wavering; at length, Jun gave a heavy sigh and bowed his head.
"Fine," he conceded. "I'll do it - I'm not dropping out, but I'll take the week off just for this. I don't like it, but I trust you, nii-san."
Relief, mingled with anxiety, flooded through Naofumi. "Thanks. Give me and Raphtalia a few minutes to eat and get our things in order."
"Right."
Naofumi's father had prepared natto with rice and miso, but Iwatani Katai was not known for his culinary prowess, and one whiff of the concoction told Naofumi he'd be better off cooking something himself.
Unlike his solitary endeavor the morning he'd first seen the shield again, cooking breakfast with Raphtalia was a cheerful affair. It wasn't their kitchen back in Lurolona, but it did have a microwave and a range hood, and Naofumi appreciated not having to get a faceful of salty ocean spray when he wanted to air out the kitchen.
"You know, I've always wondered what it would be like to just bite into an egg," Raphtalia commented, handing one to Naofumi. He cracked it against the edge of the counter, fixing her with the most critical look he could muster over his shoulder.
"...What?" Naofumi slid an eyedropper into the crack in the eggshell, using it to separate the egg white from the yolk.
"Just...crunch," she explained, as if these were perfectly normal feelings to have about an egg.
"Raphtalia, I'm concerned." He pulled the two halves of the shell apart, dropping the yolk neatly onto a steaming-hot bowl of rice, and reached for another egg.
After Naofumi (with Raphtalia's help) had prepared them both breakfast, they hurried to wolf down the food, then made their way back upstairs to grab whatever miscellaneous odds and ends they needed. For Naofumi, this included his wallet and keys; for Raphtalia, this was the Leystone, which she'd slipped into the drawer on his nightstand the previous night. As they returned to the first floor, the first thing Naofumi heard was Jun feebly attempting to describe a "family emergency" over the phone, but whoever was on the other end clearly wasn't having it. Raphtalia's ears twitched.
"What're they saying?" he asked her.
"He's saying that students 'try to pull this shit all the time' and that he's 'not getting fired again'. Naofumi-sama, what's getting fired? Do they use fire magic on you?"
Melromarc society had left Raphtalia blissfully ignorant to the replaceable nature of the Japanese worker.
Chuckling a little, he patted her on the head. "No, Raphtalia. It's when whoever you're working for decides that they don't want you working for them anymore. I'm guessing Jun's talking to the...whatever it is that monitors attendance." When I was in school, I'm pretty sure the attendance sheets just went straight into the shredder, he added, mentally, then went to help Jun with his crippling inability to lie smoothly.
"Excuse me," he said into the phone after having wrestled it from his brother's grasp. (Jun, who was shorter than Naofumi, languished with his fingertips several inches from the phone as Naofumi held it up out of reach.) The man on the other end was clearly not even listening at this point, so Naofumi raised his voice: "Excuse me!"
This got his attention. "Who are you?" he snapped, obviously not in the best of moods.
"My name is Iwatani Naofumi. I'm Iwatani Jun's older brother."
"...What?"
"I'm Jun's brother," he repeated, pinching the bridge of his nose. "I'll get to the point - he's not pulling shit on you, and you're not going to get fired. A serious personal matter has come up within our family and he's going to need some time off. Can he be excused from attending classes for a couple of weeks?"
"A couple?" Jun whispered, horrified. "I said one!" Naofumi waved his hand for silence.
It's nine days away, do you really think you'll be able to manage with just one week? he wanted to say, but he held his tongue. Such a specific timeframe would be suspicious.
The other end of the line was silent long enough that he checked the screen to make sure the call was still in progress; when it broke, the man's voice shook with sheer restraint. "We're going to need...to meet with a guardian," he informed Naofumi, pausing for a controlled breath halfway through.
Well, shit. "Do I count?" he asked.
"Are you his guardian?"
"No."
"There's your answer."
"Has it occurred to you that you'd be less likely to get fired if you weren't such a smartass?"
"Nii-san!" Jun hissed. Raphtalia bit her lip, torn between laughter and reprimand.
"Has anyone ever told you to - oh, sempai." His tone changed in an instant, and Naofumi covered his mouth to stifle a vindictive "ha!". "Uh, I was just...helping this young man. Yes. Unfortunately, it's beyond what I'm allowed to handle. Could you take the call, please?"
A series of loud clicks and thumps, followed by a yell and the slam of a door, preceded the tired voice of an older man. "Hello?"
"Hi. My name is Iwatani Naofumi. I'm speaking on behalf of Iwatani Jun."
"Oh, you're Iwatani-san's brother! Well, I suppose you're also Iwatani-san," the other amended, sounding pleased. "What can I do for you, Iwatani Naofumi-san?"
Good thing Jun is such a teacher's pet. "There's currently a family emergency going on, and Jun isn't going to be able to make it to school for a couple of weeks. It's pretty serious."
"Hmm. I see. And did Sakurai-san tell you that we require a meeting with a student's guardians for such situations?"
"Yeah." He also stopped just short of telling me to go fuck myself. "Can that be done afterward? They're kind of incapacitated at the moment."
"Naofumi?" his mother called, at exactly the wrong moment, and he stiffened. "Could you come here for a minute, please?"
To his relief, she must not have been loud enough to be heard on the other end of the phone, for the answer he received was hopeful. "Mm. Ordinarily, we wouldn't be willing to make such an exception, but for Iwatani Jun to be in such a situation...your parents may contact us when they are able. Please stay safe, Iwatani Naofumi-san. Send your family my regards."
"Will do," he replied, with absolutely no idea whose regards he was sending. "Thank you." He hung up, then said to Jun: "Just who the hell are you at your school?"
"What?" Jun asked, genuinely baffled.
"That guy said he'd make an exception specifically for you. By name."
"Being top of the school pays off," the blonde shrugged. "Plus, I go out of my way to give everyone a reason to like me."
Naofumi groaned. "That's too convenient, you goddamn teacher's pet. Here's your phone back, just stay here. Raphtalia, keep an eye on Jun."
"Understood."
After helping his mother reset her email password (he noticed no fewer than seventeen identical "your password has been changed" emails sitting in her inbox, all dated within the past week), he returned to the kitchen, where Jun was showing Raphtalia how to operate a smartphone. As she could neither read nor write in Japanese, she could only operate the actual "phone" feature, but Naofumi supposed being able to reach her by phone would be much better than not being able to reach her at all. Granted, it was Jun's phone, so it wouldn't be important unless he were to get her her own, and he didn't exactly have the money for that at the moment.
"Naofumi-sama, your world's technology is truly astounding," she remarked, not even turning around as he entered the room. "Jun-kun says you can use the...phone...to make food appear at your door."
"That is absolutely not how it works. Jun, please stop oversimplifying everything. Raphtalia is more than intelligent enough to understand the concept of ordering pizza."
"Sorry. I thought she might find it interesting."
"Maybe for lunch," Naofumi sighed, taking in Jun's sheepish grin and Raphtalia's perked ears and wagging tail. "Come on. Let's head out."
"Where are we going?" Jun asked, getting to his feet.
"I don't know. Let's just get you out of the house and pretend you've gone to school."
"Got it. 'Bye, kaa-san!" Jun added, raising his voice, and from the study came a "bye!" in return. Naofumi led the way outside.
"So," he said, as they walked; Jun was still in his uniform, including his bag, and he looked very much like a delinquent cutting class. Well, Naofumi reasoned, he is cutting class, but for a very good reason. "The first thing you're going to want to do is locate as many possible materials as you can. We gotta do that before we go hunting any monsters."
"Why's that?" asked Jun, forehead creased and one eyebrow raised.
Naofumi had been expecting this question, and he'd run into it often enough in Melromarc to have the answer memorized. "Only a fraction of your strength comes from actually leveling up," he recited. "The majority of your stats - and all of your abilities as a vassal hero - are gonna come from that gun and the different forms you're able to unlock, level and forge. Here," he added, pulling a handful of change from the pocket of his jeans. "Toss these into the gem on the side."
Jun stared. "Nii-san, I can't pull out a gun in the middle of the street."
This had not occurred to Naofumi, who blinked stupidly for a moment. In Melromarc, adventurers ran a dime a dozen, and it wasn't at all considered a threat to sit down at a bench and check over your weapons. Here, however, pulling out a sword or a gun would most likely get them arrested. "Right," he stated, surveying the area. "Uh. How about we just...use the bathroom?"
As reluctant as he was to leave Raphtalia alone anywhere, it was necessary if he and Jun were to actually feed in the upgrade materials on the fly. Naofumi hadn't brought his bag with him, so hauling them around wasn't exactly an option unless he were to somehow discreetly pack them into the shield.
They stopped in a nearby coffee shop and, upon discovering that only paying customers were allowed to use the restrooms, resigned themselves to stopping for a quick drink.
"Naofumi-san, what do the menus say?" Raphtalia asked him, staring awestruck up at the electronic display, and he patiently went over each option with her, earning more than a few stares as he explained what coffee beans were.
Five minutes later - after she'd ultimately settled on tea - they placed their orders, then picked a table by the window, away from any other customers. Leaving Raphtalia with their order number ("Wait until they call 619," Naofumi instructed), the two brothers slipped quietly into the restroom, which turned out to be for one person only and which made their situation feel far more awkward than it should have been.
"Alright," Naofumi said, as Jun shot a sidelong glance at the gaping porcelain maw next to him. "Pull it out."
Jun struggled with the zipper of his bag for a moment, then jammed his arm up to the elbow into the mass of textbooks and fished around at the bottom. With much effort, he managed to extract the vassal gun, a polished-silver revolver with a wrought grip. A jewel the color of summer sunset, embedded at the top of the grip, glittered under the cold fluorescent light.
"Nii-san, are you sure this will work?" Jun asked, studying the jewel. The gun was smaller than the shield, and it followed that the jewel was considerably smaller than its green counterpart. "What if it's too big to fit?"
"Try it and see what happens."
Jun brought the coin up to the gemstone, and as he'd feared, it was larger than the stone itself - but instead of the coin simply turning to light and "falling" into the weapon, the entire gun folded open with a mechanical whirring, revealing an amalgam of gears, cogs, springs and pins. Jun flinched, and for a split second, Naofumi feared he'd have to use the Shield of Compassion again - then a series of menus popped up over several sections of the weapon, and he realized -
Is this the upgrade interface? This is way more complicated than the shield, but it's not as if this thing isn't messing with the system as we know it already. I probably should have expected this.
Taking a closer look, he read the title on each menu out loud: "Barrel, magazine, stock, chamber, sight, body. Are we supposed to upgrade each part individually?" he asked nobody in particular; Jun certainly wouldn't know the answer. "That sounds like a real pain in the ass."
"Give me a second," Jun replied, leaning in to study each menu. From what Naofumi could tell, each one displayed the current status of the part over which it floated, while the jewel had taken on the role of a "core", suspended midair in the center of everything. At length, Jun tried putting the coin in again, and this time it worked.
《Aluminum Series》 10% unlocked.
Naofumi squinted at the panel, levitating serenely above the mass of moving parts. "Series?" he echoed, shaking more 1-yen coins from his wallet and handing them over to Jun; nine more and the message box changed to:
《 Aluminum Series》
0/10 - C
Set Bonus: None
Set Effect:
+1 Dexterity
Individual Bonus: None
Individual Effect:
- None
"What does this mean?" Jun asked, studying the text. "Zero out of ten...C? I can guess what a set bonus is, but…"
"There's...there's a lot to go over here," Naofumi sighed. "Do you want me to give you the rundown now or later?"
"Is there a short version?"
"I can try." Taking a deep breath, he tried his best to provide an abridged version of the convoluted network of mechanics that was the weapons: "So the zero out of ten is the weapon's proficiency, which goes up when you use it. When you max that out, you can either choose to try and awaken it - which will bring up its stats and power up its skills and sometimes unlock a new skill - or upgrade its rarity level, which is what the C stands for - common. Don't mix that up with how rare a weapon form is - something hard to find is going to give you a better weapon, too."
Jun raised his hand like a schoolkid waiting to be called on. Humoring him, Naofumi cocked an eyebrow, and Jun blurted out: "Skills?"
"Oh. 'Bonus' often refers to a skill. Like - I have a shield that has a special effect and an equipment bonus. The special effect can only be used when I have that shield equipped, while the equipment bonus can be used anytime."
"This is a lot to take in."
"Don't worry, there's more," Naofumi pretended to reassure him. "Your weapon also gets stronger with you as you level up and continue to use it."
"That's very organic."
Just like the smell in this goddamn bathroom, he bit back. "Moving on. The weapons have special slots into which you can insert either special monster drops or certain ores. I don't think we're going to be able to find either of those here on Earth, so we'll cross that bridge if we come to it." He racked his brains, thinking, then settled on one last set of power-ups, figuring it would short-circuit Jun if he went over the remaining twelve methods from Melromarc. All of these are pretty MMO-standard, anyway, and half of them just require you to keep using the weapon instead of knowing about some obscure mechanic, he decided. "You can also directly convert monster drops or ores into energy to power the weapon up with, either by a direct, flat stat increase or by trying to add a percentage bonus - and again, we're probably not going to come across ores, but we'll definitely run across common monster drops."
"Didn't you say we wouldn't find monster drops?" Jun interjected, frowning. Naofumi sighed, internally conceding defeat.
"It's - they're a different kind," he fumbled. "There's also smelting, where you can use ores to basically forge up a weapon, but we're not going mining for iron or whatever. You can also use the weapon to convert those things directly into energy to increase your own personal stats, but those are tied to your energy and not the weapon, so in the event we get isekai'd, you'll lose those stats until you have access to the energy stored in this world again."
Jun blinked.
"So...basically, everything just boils down to using the weapon or putting materials into it?" he summarized.
Naofumi surprised himself by laughing. "Yeah, that's...that's pretty much it."
"Can we leave this bathroom now?" his brother asked, following up with a cough into his shirt. "If someone else needs to use it for its intended purpose, two guys leaving it together is not going to look good."
"Even if we're brothers?" Naofumi said, oblivious.
"Especially if we're brothers, nii-san," Jun sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose. "And the actual reason we're both in here is even less legal than what people would otherwise assume."
...He's right. "You go out first, then," he said, then added: "Make sure Raphtalia hasn't done anything weird."
"Like what?"
"Use that big brain of yours and think about it."
Jun rolled his eyes, picked up the gun - which folded itself neatly back into a standard revolver shape as his hand found the grip - and slipped it into his bag, then exited the restroom.
When Naofumi followed suit several minutes later, he found Raphtalia sipping her tea and eyeing an oblivious Jun's iced mocha; Naofumi, who took his coffee dark as the inside of his head, took a seat and grimaced as the bitter bean-water hit his tongue.
"Naofumi-sama," Raphtalia said, tail waving and attracting the attention of everyone in the store, "can I try some of that?"
"Huh?"
"Um...your drink. It smells very good."
Naofumi snorted. "It doesn't taste anything like it smells," he warned her, pushing his mug across the table towards her anyway. She offered her teacup in exchange, but he shook his head; tea made him have to actually use the restroom, and besides, if he were to drink hot, earthy plant-water, he'd pick beans over leaves any day.
Jun took a long, deliberate sip of his mocha and said nothing, watching Raphtalia as she lifted the coffee carefully to her lips and tasted it. As Naofumi (and, if his barely-restrained laughter were anything to go by, Jun) had expected, her face contorted, but table manners of the highest order prohibited her from doing anything other than swallowing the foul brew with as much dignity as she could muster.
"Never mind," she coughed. "You're right. How do you even stand drinking that?"
"It's an acquired taste," he shrugged, taking another swig.
"You don't look like you're enjoying it."
"I'm not."
"So why are you drinking it?"
Naofumi stared into the coffee, unsure how to respond. Why was he drinking it? It certainly wasn't doing anything for his thirst, it tasted like shit, and he wasn't tired. With a sigh, he pushed it away from him again, leaving it to grow cold somewhere near the middle of the table. Raphtalia smirked and offered him her tea again, and this time he accepted a single sip, catching her eye as he drank.
By the time they left, Raphtalia having tried (and liked) Jun's mocha and Naofumi having purchased a bottle of water, it almost felt like they were having a perfectly normal day; even Raphtalia wasn't attracting attention anymore, dressed as she was in ordinary day clothes with a skirt long enough to hide most of her tail. Only the looming threat of the waves - only that damned timer - served to keep him in check and kill any good feelings he might have had otherwise.
The rest of the morning and afternoon were uneventful, with not even an oversized insect to get them sidetracked. Naofumi hadn't exactly had a plan for gathering materials - in fact, now that he thought about it, he'd gone out seeking only to move, to feel like he was getting something done, which was quite unlike him. Perhaps he'd cracked under the strain of having his home and family involved in something they had no familiarity with; at least with Raphtalia, she'd grown up in a world built around the System, which was a vital component of everyday life. Back on Earth, its mere existence was regarded as nothing more than an otaku fantasy, but one that would have cataclysmic effects if it came to be - and it had indeed come to be.
He ran his fingers through his hair and was on the verge of biting his nails before Jun spoke up from his left. The three of them strolled down a suburban sidewalk in the afternoon sunshine, the neighborhood eerily devoid of any sign of life. Some are at work, but I'm sure the rest are still frightened of something like the wave happening again, Naofumi had reasoned a couple of minutes prior.
"Nii-san, what happened at dinner the other night?"
"Huh?"
"Someone came to the door looking for you. What did they want?"
Jun's voiced lack the sharp tone he reserved for questions to which he already knew the answer, which told Naofumi that his brother genuinely had no idea what had transpired on the front step. A second's rumination was all it took for Naofumi to decide on being honest.
"Men in black," he sighed, exhaling through his nose. "I think you can guess."
"Yeah. I caught a glimpse through the window, and you weren't exactly being quiet. Were they trying to take you in for questioning or something?"
"Men in black?" Raphtalia echoed, one ear tilting forward. "Naofumi-sama, what…?"
"It's a term for government agents on top secret business," he explained. "They're always wearing black suits and - "
Dark sunglasses.
Hadn't a man in dark glasses been watching him on the bus the day the shield had returned…? With a start, he realized that it would be strange if he hadn't been under observation since his discharge from the institution. The government clearly knew about the existence of the waves and other worlds.
I've been a fool.
He'd rejected them that night, told them to stay away from his family, but he wasn't too proud to go back on that for the sake of everything. There were, presumably, other vassal heroes popping up around the world, both from Earth's newfound system and quite possibly from other worlds, but he couldn't see how any holy heroes would show up here, nor what weapons they would wield. It wasn't as if Earth had a summoning ritual...
Raphtalia poked his face and brought him back into the moment. Clenching his jaw, Naofumi looked directly at Jun.
"They wanted my help," he said, meeting his brother's eyes. "And I turned them down."
To his everlasting credit, Jun was sympathetic. "I can't say I'd have done the same," he admitted, "but I understand why you did it. Especially after...well, after they basically turned you into the mental case of the century. I read an article the other day on 'isekai syndrome', even."
"On what?" Naofumi asked, incredulous. He could very well guess at the nature of his involvement.
"It doesn't matter. Anyway, I was going to say, if either of them gave you a card, couldn't we contact them for assistance?"
"I pretty much told them to fuck off and slammed the door in their faces," the Shield Hero sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose. "No cards here."
Raphtalia, understandably skeptical of the government after the first months of Naofumi's stay in Melromarc, frowned. "Do you really think the government here would help us?" she asked. "I don't know much about your world, but I've been here long enough to get the impression that it's very, very different from mine."
"I'll put it this way. Melromarc's government didn't hesitate to push an agenda for the sake of power, even at the expense of innocent lives," Naofumi said. "Governments in this world are the same. Being an asshole's kind of written into human nature. It's just that over here it's more subtle and a lot of the corruption goes on behind the scenes. Something like the Three Heroes Church wouldn't just assume control like that here - they'd play the puppet master instead." He bit his lip and glanced up to see a bird peering curiously down at them from a branch as they passed underneath, feathers forming a chaotic scattering of black and brown across its wings. "It's always framed as if they want to help people, or if they have the public's best interests at heart while they lie through their teeth."
"I'm very familiar with that, yes," Raphtalia snorted, narrowing her eyes, and he knew she was remembering how they'd been demonized by the church. "So in this case, by working with them, you'd be playing the same role that Ren-san and the others did back then."
Raphtalia made her distaste for Itsuki and Motoyasu, whose minds had caved under the weight of their curses, very plain by virtue of omission.
"More or less, but in my case, I'd feel horrible doing it knowingly," he told her. "At the same time, the government does have access to a lot of resources that we don't, and the more I think about it, the harder it seems for Jun to work on leveling up or powering up the vassal gun. I mean, look what we've been doing all day - cramming likely material candidates into our bags and pockets without a monster in sight. I'll be the first to admit I didn't exactly have a plan in mind other than getting Jun out of school."
"So the issue we have to weigh here is - do we keep our ideals, or do we work with one enemy to stop another?" Jun mused.
"Hang on, since when has the government been your enemy?" Naofumi interjected.
"I was a delinquent once, nii-san. I know what it's like to hate the establishment."
"That's true, " he conceded. "Anyway, if we were still in Melromarc, I think we could stand to fight on our own."
"But we're not," Raphtalia continued for him, already on board his train of thought.
"No, we're not. We're operating on limited time with very limited resources."
Jun knit his brow, clearly thinking hard. "This is going to sound ridiculous, but couldn't we do something to get the attention of law enforcement? Once they find out about the weapons, I'm sure someone will contact the federal government and we'll end up getting the contact we need."
The thought of making a supernatural scene for the sake of getting noticed by top-secret operatives from the Japanese government, while tempting, had one fatal flaw that Naofumi immediately figured out. "Too much risk of collateral damage," he said. "Anything flashy enough to attract attention is also most likely dangerous to civilians or property."
A rattling clank, clank echoed around the deserted neighborhood as they turned a corner and the toe of Naofumi's shoe came into contact with a discarded soda can. The aluminum bounced and bumped along the pavement until it came to rest in the gap between two sidewalk tiles, and as he'd directly come into contact with it, Naofumi felt obligated to pick it up. The moment he touched it, it clamped shut on his hand, and he froze, confused.
"Naofumi-sama?" Raphtalia's voice rose up shrill from behind him, and the alarm in it spurred him into action. With his other hand, he seized the can, pulling it off of him and tossing it down the road; to his shock, it rolled to a stop, then reversed, picking up speed until it was hurtling straight for him - the can hit his shoe and bounced into the air, latching onto his pants leg -
Nothing happened. The can moved slightly, "chewing" the fabric of his jeans with the jagged edges of a long opening along its side.
"Uh."
With a frown, he reached down and picked it up, prying the "teeth" apart with his fingers; if he were anyone else, the razor-thin metal would have sliced his skin to ribbons and shredded his jeans. The can chewed at him still, doing nothing but blunting its own teeth. Eyes narrowed, Naofumi activated his status, training his gaze on the can -
"Rubbish, level one," he read aloud. "Raphtalia...this is a monster."
"Wait, you didn't know?" she asked, stepping forward to inspect the can.
"You did?" he countered, holding it up to eye level.
"Yes. It's just like the balloons back home."
Naofumi blinked, but before he could say anything, Jun interjected. "That's a monster?" he asked, leaning forward to study it. He'd clearly recovered from the paradigm shift that was seeing someone attacked by a sentient soda can.
"Check for yourself. It's got a health reading and everything."
For a moment, they stood there on the sidewalk in complete silence, and Naofumi realized just how quiet the world was. Spring was typically marked by a swelling symphony of song from both bug and bird, but here in the city outskirts, the only sound was the rushing of wind through leaves. Naofumi had seen a bird just a minute ago, so they weren't gone - but why were they keeping quiet?
Hang on a moment.
"Why would a monster like this appear anyway?" he asked, looking directly at Raphtalia now. "It's not a question I ever thought to ask, but how does something like a balloon or a soda can come to life?"
Raphtalia tapped a finger to her lips. "You know...I've never thought about it either," she admitted. "That's a good question. We could always ask next time the others get in contact with us."
"I'll set a reminder, I guess," he shrugged. "Still...in the meantime, what do we do with this thing?"
"If it's the first of its kind, we could turn it in to the police or something," Jun suggested. "I know you mentioned that we need monster materials and experience, but I think it might be better to raise public awareness of something like this first, even if they're not dangerous."
"They're pretty dangerous to an ordinary person," Naofumi corrected him, holding out the can to an apprehensive Jun. "Go ahead, touch the mouth and see how sharp it is."
"I'll pass. I'm guessing you're just too strong for it to hurt you?"
"Yes." Naofumi withdrew the little monster and, much like he'd done with the balloons outside the Melromarc capital so long ago, let it latch onto his shirt, where it proceeded to gnaw fruitlessly at the fabric. Hands now free, he zipped up his jacket and gestured to Raphtalia and Jun. "Alright. We can take it to the police," he decided. "If monsters like this are starting to show up, there's absolutely no way we're going to be able to keep this a secret anymore." The police probably aren't equipped to deal with this, but it's not like we can bring it to a scientist or something.
As they walked, Jun brought up a frightening idea. "You know," the blonde mused, "the fact that it's called rubbish and not can implies that there might be more types than just this one."
"Like the bottles in your bathroom?" Raphtalia asked, looking to Naofumi. He nodded.
"Mm. When they're empty, they're just trash, yeah. What Jun is saying is that pretty much all of our garbage is now at risk of attacking us, and I don't know if you remember what I told you in the bath, but the way things are set up in this world, we produce a lot of trash."
"I see…so there could be a lot of these, then."
The thought of every garbage bin in the country suddenly turning into a monster hive was not a pleasing one, and Naofumi grimaced, but said nothing.
By the guiding light of the map on Jun's phone, they took a bus downtown; everything seemed fairly normal, if still quieter than usual, and Naofumi had almost started feeling better when they finally reached the police station and found it as deserted as the suburbs. Even the receptionist in the lobby was nowhere to be seen, their chair empty and the computer behind the desk on standby.
Naofumi unzipped his jacket and removed the furious can from where its one-track mind had decided it should attach itself.
"Hello?" Jun called, scaring the holy shit what the hell out of Naofumi and Raphtalia.
"Jun!" he hissed, as Raphtalia's ears flattened.
"What? Maybe they're just in the back," Jun suggested. "It's not like it's hurting anyone."
"Has it occurred to you that I am holding a literal monster made from garbage?" Naofumi retorted. "Raphtalia - do you remember what happened in Lerno?"
"Oh - yes, of course. That was the town that the Spear Hero gave that seed to, right?" She bit her lip, and he nodded, pushing ahead.
"Remember what happened with the spirit tortoise familiars?"
He was, of course, referring to the swarm of bats that had overrun the village after the tortoise itself had awoken.
"You think these monsters are being controlled by someone?" she asked, glancing again at the rubbish. Its teeth had long since transcended blunt and become nothing more than crumpled, flat surfaces, as if the can had grown old and wrinkly during its stay in Naofumi's jacket.
"No - but the silence is the same. This place is either deserted for a reason or everyone in the building is hiding. Stay alert, Jun," he added, knowing full well that he didn't need to tell Raphtalia.
A quick check over every trash can in the room revealed nothing out of the ordinary, but that didn't mean nothing was wrong; besides, it was entirely plausible that the can in his hand had never held a drink at all. Now that I think about it, where were all the balloons outside of Melromarc coming from? Don't tell me the fields around the capital are filled with clumsy balloon salesmen. No, it was more likely that the "rubbish" monster had simply generated from the form of something nearby.
But why? he had to wonder. Why would Melromarc create monsters out of balloons? Why would Earth turn an aluminum can into a Japanese finger trap?
A door in the room behind the reception counter opened, and a haggard-looking police officer barged through it, all hustle and bustle; she didn't even notice Jun standing at the counter until he cleared his throat as loudly and politely as possible, at which point a strained and very clearly false smile made its painful way onto her face. "We're sorry, sir, but all available officers are currently occupied," she told him, sweeping a pile of paperwork into her arms. "If you have a non-emergency request, you can - "
"Occupied with what?" Naofumi interrupted, striding up to stand next to Jun.
"We're sorry again, sir, but we aren't allowed to disclose the full details of our calls to the general public."
Isn't that completely bullshit? he wanted to say, but held his tongue. It wasn't as if he hadn't felt as overworked as she looked, after all. And if the police are all occupied with actually saving lives and stopping crimes, what kind of priority does a sentient soda can have?
Still, if there were even the slightest risk of more of these things popping up and taking off someone's fingers…
Naofumi slammed the can down onto the counter, giving the officer a very good view of the way it continued to worry his hand with what remained of its teeth. He wasn't actually sure what to say, but was there a need to say anything when something so blatantly supernatural was occurring before their very eyes?
The officer stared at it, eyes wide and breathing labored, and with a jolt, Naofumi realized that this was not the shock of someone struggling to comprehend what they were seeing. "Officer," he said, keeping his voice as level as possible so as not to alarm her any further, "I don't know what the police department is so busy with, but this is extremely important. Is there anyone higher up I could speak to?"
"Nii-san, did you just ask to speak to the manager?"
"Jun, shut up."
"Who…?" the cop breathed, her eyes meeting his now, and he remembered what Jun had told him that morning about "isekai syndrome".
Even if I'm not known for being the Shield Hero here, he realized, I still have a name, don't I? I'm the case of the century, and I'm sure the police department here in particular knows very well who I am. Why didn't I think of that sooner?
He'd grown so used to having title recognition that he'd completely overlooked the significance of his own name.
"Iwatani Naofumi," he introduced himself. "Missing person of the year."
"Iwatani-san," the officer acknowledged, her voice shaking. "Yes, I - we're very familiar with your name here. I - do you know something about these?"
Something in her tone changed, lost its formality, and suddenly, instead of law enforcement, Naofumi could only see a confused, frightened person standing in the middle of the police station.
"Yeah," he told her. "Do you?"
The way she'd asked in the first place - not what is that? but do you know anything about that? - had already told him everything he needed to know, and her single, slow nod confirmed it.
There are more of them.
"Is this what you're busy with?" he pressed, shaking the can a little for emphasis; it growled around his fingers, a strange metallic sound like a crackling sparkler.
"I - yeah. Iwatani-san, how - how are you not bleeding?" she blurted out. "We've - the emergency department has been bringing in people with lacerated or missing digits ever since this morning, and…"
"What?" he interrupted, leaning forward across the counter. Shit. This is bad. This is really bad. "How many?"
"I don't know!" the officer nearly wailed, and Naofumi relented, taking a breath. Raphtalia put a hand on his shoulder, stepping forward to stand level with him.
"Let me handle this," she told him, voice gentle but firm, and he dipped his head, falling back to stand with Jun. "Miss, it's okay now. We're here. You're safe."
The woman's eyes found Raphtalia's ears first, then her face. "Please…" she whispered, voice low. "Who are you people? What is happening?"
There's no other choice now, Naofumi realized. No more staying silent. Everyone's got to know what's happening before society falls apart. With a long, resigned sigh, he lifted his jacket, pulled the shield from his belt, and placed it in its usual spot on his right arm; raising it high, he announced: "Change Shield!"
The shield he'd chosen wasn't flashy or impressive. It was no larger than the Book Shield he'd been using, and the only thing remarkable about it was the green jewel embedded in the face, but it was the shield he'd used the longest, and the one the citizens of Melromarc knew best.
"My name is Iwatani Naofumi," he repeated, then, taking a deep breath: "and I am the Shield Hero."
fucking shit i hated this chapter god FUCkingf damn it
ok anyway i finally am enjoying writing this again even if it feels like i've just rushed everything into oblivion for the sake of the first update in 8 months so whatever, not like i'm getting this published lmao