Rachel was bored. Granted, the amount of times she had seen the same "earth-shattering" events play out over and over would make anyone either incredibly bored or border on the edge of insanity, so this was nothing new. In fact, she could swear that Valkenhayn had brewed the same pot of tea that he had made this very same day a few cycles ago.

But even through her bored exterior, something seemed different this time. Something was not quite right in this current timeline, as if new actors had suddenly appeared on the grand stage without telling her. She made a note to investigate this further, but only after she finished her tea this morning.

"Is something the matter, Madam Rachel?" Valkenhayn appeared out of nowhere, as he usually did when he thought Rachel wanted or needed something, "You seem troubled."

"Nothing you need concern yourself with, Valkenhayn." Rachel stood up, having finished her tea. "I'm going out for a bit. Watch the house while I'm gone."

"Certainly, madam."

Rachel clapped her hands twice, "Nago, Gii, let's go." Her chair from before morphed into an umbrella with a cat's face on it. But something seemed to be missing. "Gii, where are you...oh, that's right. Nago, spit him out."

The cat face on the umbrella spit the small, chubby red familiar out. Gii started to whine, but Rachel ignored it. Instead, she said, "Have you learned your lesson now, Gii?"

"Y-yes, I won't knock over a painting by accident anymore m-mistress..." Gii was still suffering from the horror of being trapped in his friend's mouth for a whole day.

"Good, then we're going." With that, Rachel shifted out of the area.

Somewhere in Orient Town, there was a restaurant that served what it claimed to be Oriental food. The man could have sworn it was little more than chunks of chicken-like substance deep fried and slathered with sauce so no one would notice, but then again he wasn't quite in a position to be picky. He took up a seat at a table as he tried to figure out what the hell was going on.

Some map he'd glanced at referred to this city as Kagutsuchi. That didn't seem like any city he'd ever heard of. Nonetheless, he had to eat something to keep up his strength, so he decided to stop in this place and grab some food. He hoped they would at least take his money here.

Just as he was about to grab his chopsticks and dig in, a strange, yellow, cat-like…thing jumped on his table and started eating the food right off of his plate with an audible "OM NOM NOM" sound. It freaked the hell out of this man.

"Hey, what the hell are you doing?" The man shouted, "This is my food, go buy your own!"

The cat-thing ignored him and continued eating. The man drew his short sword and tried swinging it at the cat to shoo it away. The cat responded by jumping back.

"Hey, rooster man!" The cat-thing shouted. Ragna could see the outline of red eyes and a pair of sharp teeth, but its face was otherwise hidden by the shadow of its overly-large yellow sweatsuit. "Why are you so rude? I don't attack you when you're eating!"

"But…that's my food!"

"C'mon rooster man, I'll take you on for it!"

"My name's Sol! Stop calling me rooster man!"

"Okay rooster man, you asked for it!" The cat-thing began shadow-boxing the air in front of it, "Rawr! Meowr! Ffft! You dare to take on Taokaka, the greatest vigilante ever?"

"Tao-what?" Sol cocked an eyebrow, "Greatest-what?"

"CAT SCRATCH ATTACK!" Large claws suddenly protruded from Taokaka's overly large paw-sleeves. However, because she announced her attack beforehand, Sol easily blocked the strikes as Taokaka scratched at him with her claws. "Hahaha! Wheeee this is fun!"

The infamous Sol-Badguy could have easily beaten this cat thing under normal circumstances, but the sheer craziness of her attacks and her attitude caught him off guard. "Dammit cat, get off me! I'm not playing this stupid game!"

"Okay!" Taokaka immediately stopped attacking. As Sol paused to examine this strange tactic, the cat-person leaped over his head, grabbed what remained of his food, and escaped from the resturaunt with his lunch plate. "Buh-bye rooster man!"

Sol's brain tried to comprehend what had just happened, when he heard an angry man shouting, "Hey! You pay for that now!" Sol turned to his right as he saw a chef from the restaurant gesturing at him with a butcher knife. "No free meal!"

"But that cat thing…"

"I don't care, you pay now, or you do dishes for dinner tonight! You run, I call cops!"

Dammit, barely an hour in this strange city, and already things had gotten weird. "Fine," Sol growled, dropping a few World Dollars on the table and walking out the door. He didn't hear the chef screaming that his money was fake as he ran before the guy could catch him.

This was going to be a long day.

Elsewhere, a blond man with a large sword found himself accosted by two men wearing blue armor. Each of them held a spear, though it was more ceremonial than anything that could threaten someone like, say, Ragna the Bloodedge, but it gave the NOL troops a small sense of security.

"Hey, look here Rosen." One of the armored men spoke, "Don't that look like Major Jin Kisaragi to you?"

"Indeed, Gilden," the other NOL trooper responded, "he does bear a striking resemblance to our missing Major, perhaps we should inform our superiors about this?"

"I'm sorry," The blond man said, "I don't know who this Major is…you're probably mistaking me for someone else."

"Well well well," Rosen spoke, "Tell me Gilden, am I blind in any way?"

"No Rosen, you got 20/20 vision!"

"Exactly, so unless my eyes are lying, you indeed look pretty damn similar to Major Kisaragi. You got the big sword, the hair, the pompous look…"

"I told you before, I'm not a Major of anything. My name is Ky Kiske, and I am serving the Inter…"

"Okay then, Ky, let's assume you are indeed telling us the truth. Then might I ask what you are doing impersonating an officer in the military branch of the Novus Orbis Librarium?"

"I don't know of this organization you're talking about, I'm just trying to find…"

"Well, it seems we got ourselves a smart-ass, don't we Gilden?"

"I'm afraid so, Rosen. Looks like we'll have to take him back to headquarters for questioning, see if he really isn't the Major."

"I'm telling you, I don't have time for this." Ky Kiske winced as Rosen pulled out a whistle and blew it hard. A few seconds later, Ky was surrounded by armed NOL soldiers.

"Well then, not-Major, I suppose you should free up your schedule for the next few days." Gilden snapped his fingers, "You're gonna be taking a little walk up to the Library here in Kagutsuchi with these men. Now we can do this real peaceful-like, or you can try to resist and there will be pain and suffering on your part."

Ky thought about his situation for a moment, then decided to tell the soldiers, "Take me to your commanding officer."

"Good, he's going along peacefully." Rosen and Gilden watched as the soldiers escorted him up the hill. When he was out of earshot, Rosen looked at Gilden and said, "Can you believe it, we actually captured a guy!"

"I know, Rosen, how often does that happen?"

"We should totally get smashed after this shift to celebrate!"

"Totally!"

A small rumbling sound echoed in the distance.

"Hey Rosen, that explosion came from the Port!"

"Not our jurisdiction, Gilden." Rosen gripped his spear tightly, "Besides, if there was an explosion, we're probably better off not investigating the cause of it."

"Yeah, you're right. Let someone else lose their life in a battle with a guy who's above any level they could hope to reach."