Harleking31: Pet the Polt
Good girl
Man's going to have an excellent harem
Re: While I agree that Polt is "Best Girl", she is also married Canonically, so Takei won't be touching that "like that".
As for the Harem... It wouldn't really be any sort of "Isekai" without one, but it'll also be just-as convoluted as Harem build-ups in other anime go.
That, and the "how" of it will be REALLY fucking funny~
*AHA*
"So… remind me again why this is the first time I'm meeting this person?" Takei asked as Zombina and Doppel drove him into town. "Or, you know, hearing about her?"
"Well, Joui-san is a bit of a recluse, and she doesn't like to meet new people, so we didn't want to introduce you to her 'too soon'," Zombina hummed.
"That and we just plain forgot about her," Doppel half-giggled.
"And you say she manages your website and all the computer stuff Kuroko can't be bothered to do?"
"Pretty much," Zombina shrugged. "She's a real wizard with computers, and when we were starting out, she was the second-lowest bid who applied for the job."
"Well, at least you guys had the good sense to not take the lowest bid on the market…" Takei sighed. "Anything I should know about her?"
"Well… she's a bit of a downer for one…" Doppel hummed. "At first we thought she was a hikikomori, but she goes out to get her own groceries, and she did her job bidding in-person, so she isn't a complete shut-in."
"Figured we should introduce you to her now since you're getting kinda popular after that Shoowaysha article," Zombina began.
"You were so corny~" Doppel giggled. "We love you too~" she cooed.
"-and we need to add you to our official website," Zombina finished as Doppel reached back to pinch his cheek. "You know, with your likeness being copyrighted and all."
"Well, let's at least stop by the bakery or something since we're imposing on her like this," Takei shrugged, spotting a bakery on their route. "…Wait, copyright?"
"That or trademarked. I get the two confused," Zombina shrugged.
"How does a 'Frogslayer' T-Shirt strike you~?" Doppel chuckled, transforming her schoolgirl uniform top into a black Tee with a picture of me standing atop a slain frog, the smoking barrel of my P-90 held dramatically upward as I posed like a certain space marine fighting the legions of hell.
"I think PETA's going to have a field day when they see that…" the T-shirt's subject deadpanned.
"People Eating Tasty Animals? I love those guys!" Zombina grinned, licking her lips.
*AHA*
This Joui person's place of residence was a run-of-the-mill apartment building in the heart of the city, located in a low-crime area and was surrounded by other apartment buildings and businesses. All in all, nothing too extraordinary about it outside the elevator being out of order, necessitating that we hoof it all the way to the top floor; an ill portend if ever there was one.
Being a shut-in was a common symptom nowadays of either being Quirkless in a society that perceived it as a sin, or just having a 'Junk Quirk' that stopped you from being a Hero and having your dreams crushed at every turn by those that were just "luckier" in the genetic lottery. While I was sure there were a myriad of other reasons for becoming a shut-in, there was something else that was bothering me.
Joui… Joui… Joui… Where had I heard that name before? It was on the tip of my tongue, but I just couldn't…
"Finally, we're here…!" Zombina groaned as we finally got to the top floor, the Joui residence on the far side from the stairwell.
"I know she doesn't like people, but this is just ridiculous…!" Doppel groaned irritably.
"That or she did it to get away from the street noise."
Most "Villain Fights" tended to be started on ground level, you know… And while the upper floors were the worst place to be when a building started falling over, most Villains capable of knocking taller buildings completely over were few and far between, and those that did manifest were rarely subtle enough to take anyone by surprise. Unless they were being heralded by a monumental distraction, at least.
"Ah, anyway, let's get this over with," Doppel said as she made a show of reaching into her pocket and pulling out what looked like a key, but was in actuality, just some of her polymorphic hair.
Just gonna pretend I didn't see that happen…
"Yo, Elma! We got a live one for ya!" Zombina said making her way inside.
Elma…?
Wait… WHAAAT?!
The three of us making our way through the dark hallway and into the living room, the living space in question was only lit by the glow of the TV and a table lamp, but what had my whole attention was the room's sole occupant, clad in only gray sweatpants and a white T-shirt. She had shoulder-length black hair that became purple at the tips, large breasts, a round face, and blue-colored eyes with slit pupils.
However, unlike the lovely shade of oceanic blue I'd come to know from when I'd seen her last, these eyes were the color of the sea on an overcast day. Worse than that, any exuberance I'd known her for had all but vanished, replaced with an apathy and lethargy that tore me up inside.
I want to tell myself that her looks, ON TOP OF HER NAME, are just a coincidence. But I quickly realize how-foolish that notion was after catching sight of a certain bespectacled young woman with bright red hair on one of the framed pictures on the wall, a pretty blond in "maid cosplay" and a white-lavender-haired girl in "tribal goth Loli" flanking her two sides.
"Zombina. Doppel," the woman named Elma said in an apathetic tone.
"Still binging non-stop in the dark I see," Doppel hummed.
"Yeah? What about it?" she huffed.
As the three women exchanged banter and dialogue, a thought occurred to me. And I wasn't sure I liked it.
Maybe this is a low blow… taking advantage of my meta-knowledge like this… but I just can't help it. Not when she's clearly suffering like this. Suffering like Evangeline, and Hohenheim, and so-many-other immortals who have 'lived too long' and watched those with mortal lifespans die around them one after the other until no-one they genuinely cared for was left. Fact of the matter was, though, the evidence was too strong for this to be purely coincidence.
Walking towards Elma past Zombina and Doppel, almost like I were in a trance, I gulped nervously as Elma looked up at me from her place on the sofa.
"Here, want some? It's cream bread."
" . . . What…?" Elma blinked as she looked up at me, the dullness of her ocean-colored orbs clearing up slightly as she stared me in the eye, deeper and deeper and deeper still. If she were using some form of her [Clairvoyance], I wouldn't have been surprised. "Who… Who are you…?"
"I'm a foreigner who's lost people too," I said somberly, jostling the bag of cream bread in my hands as her stomach growled. "Want some?"
Elma's eyes watering, and watering more until fat tears fell down her rounded cheeks, the next moment she lunged at me. Arms wrapped around my midsection, a pained wail left her lips as she held on like to a lifeline, my shirt growing wet.
*AHA*
"Did… Did I miss something?" Zombina blinked as Elma continued to sob unabashedly into Takei's shirt, the pre-teen hugging the woman back and stroking her hair as he whispered into her ear.
"Maybe she was just really hungry?" Doppel blinked.
"Nah, if she was, that cream bread would be gone by now…" Zombina deadpanned.
"Should… Should we give them the room…?" Doppel asked, shifting uncomfortably, feeling like she were intruding on something private.
"Um… Yeah, yeah we probably should…" Zombina conceded as she ushered the shapeshifter out.
*AHA*
Meeting Elma like this, it was definitely a real shock…
I mean, the entire time I was here, I'd just assumed I was in a post-post-post-series Tiger & Bunny-type of world, and that the guys who wrote it in my world had done the same thing as the guys in DC Comics' Earth-12 who wrote the "Justice Guild of America" comics that John Stewart read as a kid.
Seeing Elma here, real, in full 3D and color… That just threw everything I'd come to know about this world out the window more than the Rifts had.
I mean, sure, the other Rifts opened up to random places at random, but if Elma was here, that meant that the events of Miss Kobayashi's Dragon Maid was part of this world's history as well, not just the events of Tiger & Bunny… And if that was the case, what other worlds that I was familiar with before Reincarnating were actually a part of this world too? With how-much of my memory was missing due to being dumped into a vegetative coma-brain, I really could only speculate…
"So…" Elma asked wiping her tears away, her eyes red and still a little moist. "What's… *sniff* What's a Reincarnated doing here?"
"Oh, is that what we're called?" I asked without pause. "I take it you used [Clairvoyance] on me?"
"Something like that… Your soul is far older than your body by more than twice-over," Elma answered. "I have to ask, and feel free not to answer if you don't feel comfortable with it, but… How exactly did you Reincarnate? Did God make a mistake with his lightning bolt, were you hit by a truck, did you over-work yourself to death in a Black Company, or did a copy of the original 'Transmigrate' into another world?"
"That… I don't remember…" I answered. The 'lightning bolt' comment made me think of In Another World with my Smartphone; the truck comment… basically every cheesy Isekai in the history of ever…; the over-work to death in a Black Company angle made me think of Death March to the Parallel World Rhapsody, and the 'copy transmigration' made me think of World Customize Creator. "One minute I was back home getting the latest Ratchet & Clank game, the next… I was here…"
"Oh, I see…" Elma nodded. "How… How did you know those words?" she asked eyeing the forgotten bag of cream bread. "You… You weren't there for that, were you…?"
Ah… Right… That…
This was gonna be hella awkward.
"Back home, there was an anime I really enjoyed, Miss Kobayashi's Dragon Maid… though in Japan it would've been called Kobayashi-san Chi no Maid Dragon…" I answered awkwardly, flip-flopping between my formally-native English and my currently-native Japanese. "Um… The way it was explained in Justice League the animated series, was that the author who made the 'Justice Guild of America' comics, had 'a subconscious link' to an alternate earth, and what he thought was imagination was actually a 'psychic memory of the Justice Guild's real exploits'…"
"Oh, I see…" Elma nodded, taking the fact that I'd basically voyeuristically spied on her and the others' lives after meeting Kobayashi-san exceptionally well. "Was it any good?"
"I only ever saw the anime. I kinda up and died before getting around to the manga," I answered, much to my shame. "Real life gets in the way sometimes, you know?"
"I can imagine…" she replied. "I too had to work to support my hobby."
"You mean stuffing your face, right~?" I chuckled good-naturedly, the woman's face doing an impressive impersonation of a stop light. "N-N-Not that there's nothing wrong with it! Y-You were actually one of my favorite characters! Watching you enjoy food and life in general so much was always the feel-good upper I needed…!"
"Really?" she blinked, her expression brightening as she puffed up proudly. "Hmhm~ I suppose you have excellent taste in dragons, then~"
Ah… I should probably avoid telling her that Kanna-chan had my favorite Dragon Form out of the cast…
But I mean really! How can you beat something so cute and fluffy?! You just can't!
"Something along those lines…" I returned awkwardly, hoping her [Clairvoyance] didn't extend into full-on thought reading. "A-Anyway… I take it the events of 'Dragon Maid' happened in the 2000s or so?"
"2010s, give or take. Or at least that's when I met Kobayashi-san…" Elma answered, looking around mournfully. "As you can probably tell, a great deal of time has passed since… back then…"
"I can imagine…" I hummed somberly. "No seriously, I can imagine; another of my favorites, UQ Holder!, sequel series to Negima!, dealt with different flavors of immortals and how they did or didn't cope with the passing of all their mortal friends."
"Ah, yes, I can imagine that. Humans always talk about wanting immortality, but give it a century or two after their immediate friends and family all die off, and they become real downers about it."
Only someone functionally immortal like here could say as such with a straight face…
"Um… I really am sorry. About abusing my meta-knowledge like that. It was a real slimeball move and-"
"It's fine. Hearing how a Hero from Another World enjoyed our story so much… It made me really happy~" she smiled prettily.
D-Did my heart just skip a beat?
"I-I'm not really sure that's the kind of role I 'Reincarnated' into…" I said fighting down my blush response. "Given I reincarnated into a world filled with Heroes, it's just-as-likely I'm living one of those 'Reincarnated as a Villager' kinda stories."
Shiori and Kuromi can never learn I said as such out loud.
"Are you sure?" she asked tilting her head cutely. "I only took a cursory glance at first, but now that I'm looking at you very closely, I can see the traces of some form of Time God on your person."
. . . What…?
"What?" I asked aloud, momentarily distracted by her invading my personal bubble, the two of us practically nose to nose.
Dammit, heart! Keep your shit together!
"Oh, but it's no-one I know, so I can't be completely sure," Elma said waving her hands. "It's just a bit of a vibe I'm getting from you. I met a few Gods when I was actively part of the Harmony Faction."
"So you're with the Spectator Fashion now?" I asked, dredging whatever memories of Dragon Maid I could.
"Oh no, I'm still a part of the Harmony Faction. It's just that on the side, I'm helping keep the other Dragons squatting in this world in line. Once these 'Quirks' of theirs infected enough of the population, other-worlders from back home started getting carless with their cover. That attention-whore Nessie was squatting in Scottland well before Tohru got the idea into her head, and by the time I got here, everyone and their grandma knew her home address."
" . . . Huh…"
"What?"
"Ah, nothing. It's just… This whole time I thought I'd landed in a post-post-post-series Tiger & Bunny kind of world where the whole 'NEXT' thing gave way to 'Quirk'… but now I find out that Miss Kobayashi's Dragon Maid is mixed into it too, and… I guess I'm still… processing…"
I could give a lot of shit a free pass what with all the Rifts opening up to conceivably any possible universe, but having Miss Kobayashi's Dragon Maid mixed retroactively into my Tiger & Bunny and, well… All of a sudden, I'm not sure what's 'real' and what's 'not' anymore; Rifts notwithstanding…
"Next?" Elma blinked.
"It's an old acronym used for people with superpowers caused by 'an unknown mutation', the letters standing for Noted Entities with eXtraordinary Talents."
"I don't think acronyms work like that," she hummed. "Also, what's Tiger & Bunny?" she asked inquisitively.
"I'm actually really glad you asked that~ Can I borrow your computer?"
*AHA*
"Hey Doppel…"
"Yeah…?"
"Have you ever seen Elma this… happy?" Zombina asked as she and Doppel poked their heads into Elma's flat a little while later, she and Takei sitting on the sofa and watching old Hero TV Live! recordings and laughing up a storm, smiles on both of their faces, Elma's practically luminous with happiness as they ate cream bread together.
"No… It's really weirding me out."
"I mean… I kinda wanna ask what he said to her to make her open up like this… but I also don't wanna cheese off the chick who controls our website."
"You and me both…" Doppel shuddered. Sure, she pranked a lot of people relentlessly when she took PTO, and she certainly wasn't discriminating when choosing targets… but you don't fuck with the chick that can change the layout of your website with a few keystrokes. Certainly not in the Hero industry…
"Do we… Do we just leave them be?"
"Probably for the best…"
*AHA*
"So… you know the truth about me. What now?" Elma asked once Zombina and Doppel shied away.
"I… I don't know. When I thought it was just Tiger & Bunny I was living in, I didn't really have to worry about my meta-knowledge because all that stuff with Wild Tiger's generation and Ouroborous was a hundred years ago. But now that I've met you… It's probably rude to ask how the story ended… and where everyone went 'after'."
"You want to respect the fullness of our lives?" she groused.
"In as many words. What happened that the anime didn't cover… You don't have to tell me. I'm sure there were some differences between the anime I saw in my previous life, and what really happened in this world."
And boy was that a sentence.
" . . . We lived the best lives we could with our human friends," Elma said somberly after a moment. "Kobayashi-san and Takiya went first, then Taketo and Georgie, and then Riko and Chloe afterward. Shouta was able to bring himself and his family to the other world, and… A human life isn't very long for a bunch of dragons, but after we 'went native' as the saying went, it just… it really hurt us to let them go, one after the other in such short order."
"I see…" I replied, reaching over and taking her hand in my own, offering whatever sympathy as I was able to give. "It must've hurt… having old wounds opened like that…"
"Maybe a little," Elma said nibbling on another cream bread. "But it's like the old saying goes. 'It's better to have loved and lost, than to never have loved at all.' Our human friends' lives were short when compared to our own, but every day was… they were so much fun… and we got as much… as much meaning out of them as we could…" she said breaking down into tears.
"Elma…" I said reaching around and hugging her, Elma's arms tight around me as she sobbed into my shoulder. " . . . I can't make any promises, but I'll stick around for as long as I'm able. You deserve that much, at least from me…"
"Th… Thank you…" Elma hiccuped, reaching up and rubbing my hair. "You're a good boy, Tokei-chan."
"You can call me 'Takei'. It's what my friends call me."
"Takei-kun… Like the Star Trek guy…?"
"Which is ironic because I was more of a Star Wars guy."
"Aren't they basically the same thing?"
"Don't let any Trekkies or Padawans hear you say that, or you'll cause a race war…"
" . . . I'm really happy you reached out to me like this," Elma said after another long pause. "I haven't had a real human friend for so long…"
"Can't you still reach out to the others? The other dragons, I mean."
"We… We grew apart," Elma answered. "After Kobayashi-san and Takiya passed away, I helped Tohru and Fafnir as much as I could, but they still drew away in the end. Ilulu faded away into legend and became an 'Ayakashi' even though she's still at that same candy store, Kanna went back home, and Lucoa… After Shouta-kun passed on in his own time, she came back here, and hasn't had to pay for drinks or food a day since."
"I'm sorry to hear that. At the very least, I don't think they'd want to be pestered by someone like me… so you don't have to call them up on my account. You aren't just fictional characters from an anime I really liked. You're real, with real stories, and real sadness you're entitled to. You aren't a source of entertainment I can call up for my own satisfaction, even though it would be really neat to get the band back together."
"I'm sure the others would really appreciate that," Elma replied. "It honestly hasn't been 'all that long' for us, but from a human's point of view… Honestly, I'm happy to have someone in my life again that knows the real me. Food just hasn't tasted the same since then."
"Friendship is the greatest spice of all, right?"
"Something like that," Elma replied as she took another bite from her cream bread, her eyes glittering as she ate with gusto. "Mmmmm! So gooood~"
"I'm really glad I got that cream bread. I'm not sure I could've gotten through to you, otherwise."
"It wasn't the food that was important. It was the heart behind the food."
"That would've sounded much more profound if you weren't talking around cream bread," I said as Elma literally talked around two pieces of cream bread, one in each cheek like a chipmunk.
"A-Anyway!" Elma said swallowing the cream bread whole. "What all have you gotten up to since you Reincarnated?"
"Ugh, all kinds of random nonsense."
"Oh! Just like an Isekai Protag-"
"NO! No, do not call me that!" I said slapping a hand over her round, squishable face.
And that's the story of how I met "Smith-san's Dragon Programmer"…~
*AHA*
"Hey, you wanna go get some ramen?"
"YES!"
*AHA*
AN:
With all this talk of "Rifts", Miss Kobayashi's Dragon Maid felt too good to pass up on. Albeit, I put my own spin on Elma and the others in a "post-post-post-series" context, and only after a lengthy chat on my Discord page with a long-time reader who I'm collaborating with on a "Watching" story for my RWBY fanfic, "Giant-Slayer" (1-Million words and counting between two parts (currently)).
Hope you liked it, and I'm looking forward to your thoughts in the Review section! Last-chap was a little thin in those... but maybe that was because Chitose was a bit of a niche character and it was more Worldbuilding/"Filler".
Anywho, see you all next time!