Unfamiliar Surroundings, Part I
Let's contemplate a young man named Hiraga Saito. It need not take long. Almost 17 years old, but still short, soft, and skinny. Maybe almost pretty, if you like that waifish look in men. According to his records, he was an average boy, with no positives or negatives.
Of course, that's utter nonsense, because That kind of average doesn't exist. What it meant was that Saito put in just enough effort to meet expectations, with no passions that stood out in school records. At least, in the high-pressure environment of Japanese social expectations, he wasn't flunking out of anything. He was just sort of there, one of the faceless members of the crowd, ultimately forgettable unless you were his teachers or parents.
You could say that he was a little underdeveloped.
And, well, he wasn't terribly happy with his circumstances. In particular, despite being nearly seventeen, he had yet to have a girlfriend. Unfortunately, it seemed that being a nobody – someone lacking in position, talent, charm, and so on – precluded female attention.
And guess what? It just so happens that the fear of languishing in lifelong lackanookie had him passing by a particular street at a particular time.
See, if he couldn't find a girlfriend at school, then there was always online dating. Online, he could be whatever he wanted, and who could say what was truth and what was a beautiful mask? Besides, girls on TV and on the internet were a lot prettier than anyone at school. Except that his laptop had been broken and he wasn't clever enough to get around the content restrictions on the school computers. So that afternoon he'd gone to get his laptop repaired, and now he was heading home.
And it didn't matter to him where he was when something strange happened: The strangeness was going to happen that afternoon, no matter where he was. Specifically, a flat oval suddenly appeared in front of him, shining like a mirror.
And the fact that he just happened to have exited the train station only moments before didn't matter to the people around him, either. They were properly polite, minded their own business, and walked past him without a second look. So even though Saito was a bit on the slow side, and didn't react very quickly to things, nobody disturbed him as he stared at the mirror in dull bemusement for several seconds.
It was maybe two meters tall and a meter wide, and it seemed to be floating a few centimeters above the ground. And he had an urge to go over and poke it. It hadn't yet occurred to him to panic, or that there might be danger, so he began to shift his weight, preparing to step-
Then a gaijin came out of the train station. He was tall and fat, like most Americans only moreso, and his barbaric face twisted in obvious delight as he spotted the floating oval.
"Hologram projection! Neat!" the gaijin declared – in English! – while he passed the oval. Then he paused, frowned, and circled it. (And ignored the cringing discomfort from the passersby at his rude and blunt actions!) "Huh. Wait, unless-" he knelt down and waved a hand under the oval. "Nope!" Then he stood back up and waved his hand over the top. "No wires and no shadows!"
The gaijin was very loud. Again, Saito only made average grades, and so he could just barely follow what the gaijin was saying. Why couldn't he speak Japanese like a civilized person? With the backpack and the dufflebags he was clearly a tourist . . . where was his guide? Saito watched MTV like any normal boy, so he knew all about Americans. Why were they allowing an American gaijin to run around like a regular person? If he got excited he might pull out his guns and start shooting everywhere!
If his computer got shot he would have to get it repaired again, and he didn't have enough yen left for that. Finding a cute girlfriend would be a lot safer than hanging around a crazy gaijin. Saito shook his head and walked on home. Even if he did feel some lingering curiosity about the floating oval, finding a cute girlfriend was what he really wanted!
Meanwhile the gaijin felt a brief moment of panic, but when he pulled out his phone it was still working. Which meant the weird shining oval wasn't being supported by a strong magnetic field. This was good news, it meant he didn't need to reinstall everything, but he was running out of explanations for the mystery. He'd very nearly walked on by, thinking it nothing more than a clever hologram display, but his interest had been piqued when he'd been unable to find the edge of a projection arc.
Had someone figured out large-scale laser projection? The oval could be a plasma sustained by focusing a laser on a specific point of air - but he hadn't felt any heat. He shifted both dufflebags to his left hand and slowly poked at the oval. No radiant heat at all. A cool plasma? How did someone manage that? He was expecting a static shock at some point – or at least someone coming up to politely ask him not to mess with the demonstration – but it never happened. His forefinger was now knuckle-deep in the silvered surface, and nothing was happening-
The surface of the oval surged forward and enveloped him entirely.
Everyone politely minded their own business and kept on walking as the oval winked out of existence.
He seemed to be high above the courtyard of a massive castle. And it was getting bigger. Quickly.
Falling!
. . .
Falling?
. . .
Eyes say yes, inner ear says no. Must be just an image, like IMAX. His stomach still felt like something was horribly wrong, but he breathed deep and slow to settle it, and tried to wait more-or-less calmly to see what would happen next.
Which was a sudden impact on the ground that had been rushing towards him, raising dust into his nose, then into his mouth as he started to sneeze. Ow! Sonovabitch! And yuck, that dirt tasted like dung!
The small cloud of dust slowly settled as he spat out as much as he could and looked up.
Into a very pretty face. Elfin features, pale skin, no epicanthic folds(which was a little odd, after vacationing in Asia), and light strawberry-blond hair that was looked close enough to pink to suspect dye. She blinked, and his eyes were drawn to her own, which were also pink. Yeah, she had pale skin, but albinos have white hair. So, dye or contacts, or maybe both.
A quick glance down revealed that any bosom was hidden under a neck-high white collar. Okay, so she was slender enough that she might be jailbait, or possibly a very pretty boy.
While he was trying to process that, a look of shock came over her face. She got up, ran to a nearby grownup, and started yelling in some language he didn't recognize. The grownup said something in reply, which only made her respond even more emphatically, waving her arms frantically. Behind the girl and the adult, someone else said something and the crowd burst into laughter.
Oh, hey, there was a crowd. Teenagers dressed up for Renfaire, each with a strange pet-
Giant red lizard with tail on fire! Next to a busty redhead laughing louder than anyone else. Now, normally the gaijin would have payed more attention to the redhead, filing her under: Hot girl with magnificent breasts; to flirt with or fantasize about as soon as possible. Normally. His mind was too busy focusing on the honest-to-goodness pokemon next to her. Oh, and the blue dragon on her other side, standing protectively over the much shorter girl with the staff and the book. Wait, what was that?
Staff. All of them were holding something that could be described as a staff or a wand. Well, except the guy with the rose, the blond one cooing over the big hairy brown ball.
What the hell was this, some weird Harry Potter / Pokemon crossover LARP? He felt sore all over from the impact, and there was still a sense of dread in his stomach – something seriously weird was going on! – but he pushed himself to all fours, then straightened up with a groan to a kneeling position to get a better look and maybe even stand-
The pretty androgyne was back. Kneeling, he was just barely shorter than . . . her? She had to be about 5 feet tall, then. Before he could react she had a firm grip on his cheeks – soft fingers, cool fire spreading across his face – and was saying something in a firm voice.
She still wasn't speaking English. Or Japanese. He didn't speak it very well, but he knew what it sounded like, and this wasn't it. Her language sounded a little like French. Maybe. It had been a long time since that semester in 8th grade.
She finished her speech and paused. Then her eyes widened slightly. She shook her head a little, as if to clear it, but the wide-eyed look returned. Then, with what sounded almost like a sigh of resignation, she leaned towards him. Some of her hair fell over his face, bringing a smell of flower-scented soaps and maybe a hint of girl. It had clearly been way too long since he'd had a girlfriend if she was affecting him this much just by-
Definitely too long. The kiss was hesitant, but the shock of it – the softness of her lips, the scent of her exhalation into his mouth – sent heat and desire all through his body. At least the pit in his stomach vanished. Strange place, and he had no idea what the hell was going on, but starting off with a kiss from a pretty girl meant things were probably looking up.
Although let's hope she is a girl-
Down, moron! Figure out what's going on before we worry about the jailbait!
She'd pulled back and had straightened up, looking at him expectantly. His lips were still tingling, he was still flushed with heat, if anything he was feeling even hotter . . .
Hot nothing, he was burning! This was worse than a sauna! Steam started to rise from his body, every nerve was yelling for relief, and suddenly PAIN! as runes etched themselves on his hand-
The girl looked down on him in what seemed like frustrated fury as he screamed and collapsed. The laughter behind her was louder than ever.
Then everything floated away on a sea of agony . . .
A/N: Yeah, it's an OC replacement for Saito. Three promises: The OC doesn't know the setting. The OC doesn't have native superpowers. The OC will take rather longer to activate Gandálfr than Saito did, in canon.