POV: Sayaka
She was older than everyone else in the room combined. She was also the least educated. And she was increasingly convinced she was the least suicidal, which was really saying something in her case.
As near as she could tell, everyone in the room thought the hero’s arrival would go something like this:
MIO: Brave hero, we welcome you to Tenka! Please help us! This is our most desperate hour!
HERO: My goodness! Was I brought to another world by magic? But I am from Earth and believe such things are impossible.
RUNA: It is true! Please save us from the Demon King! My body will be only a small part of your reward!
HERO: I require no reward to save this world! Though your beauty is… intoxicating.
SAYAKA: Die.
HERO: OK, I can respect the blonde.
This guy would be pulled from his home, and confused - not delighted. By definition, summoned heroes were men of action. He would act like one.
In preparation, Sayaka made a list of eighteen questions for Facilitator Mio, who was diligent and reliable when it came to procedures. Stepping outside that procedure was not always easy for her, though. Sayaka found Mio, as expected, in the library reviewing the histories of prior heroes.
The first question Sayaka asked was, “What records do we have of issues from previous arrivals?”
Mio had said, “The Demon King’s armies make it to the capital sometimes. They destroy what they find before we can push them back. We only have good records for seven heroes and spotty records for another two dozen. There isn’t anything to worry about, though. We haven’t had an incident in the last five hundred years.”
No ‘incidents’, but no proof. Lovely.
Sayaka’s second question: “In Earth's history, when have they ever lost military progress?”
Mio looked up and pursed her lips for a moment, “Never since the fall of Rome. I'm not a diamond-class Earth historian, of course, so- Hey! Sayaka-sama! Where are you going?”
Sayaka had left because she was too disgusted to ask anything else. Mio wasn’t even the worst of them; she was actually one of the better ones. The entire scholarly crowd suffered from the same arrogant blindness. Tenka had no real clue how often heroes arrived ready to kill.
And Earth’s guns? They must be better. A lot better. Maybe not even guns anymore.
Some criticized Sayaka’s attitude and claimed she couldn’t walk into a room without wanting to kill someone. In Sayaka’s experience, every time she walked into a room there was always someone who needed killing.
If the hero were deranged, she would need to de-escalate any potential catastrophe, perhaps permanently. She was sure she could keep the death toll down to three or below.
Attempting to assess the potential hazard area hadn’t gone much better. The wizards had tried to explain what she would see when the hero arrived, “Imagine if we were two-dimensional creatures watching a three-dimensional person being compressed into a two-dimensional one; it would look like that.”
“So is he really fourth-dimensional?” Sayaka had asked. She felt it had been a reasonable question.
The wizard had laughed condescendingly, “No, no, Sayaka-san. He’s like us, but we’ll be transporting him across the ninth. You see, there are three dimensions of space, then three of time, but we mathematically treat those as one, because-”
“Shut up immediately,” she had ordered. He outranked her, but people listened to irritated assassins.
It wasn’t as if any of these people were dumb. They had their view of reality and hadn’t been pulled out of it enough to understand that things can always go wrong. Always.
- - -
The ritual had begun. Mio had found a candidate fast, considering she had billions to choose from.
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The wind picked up as more air got sucked into the middle of the room. The magic circle and the runes alongside glowed brighter, deep violet fading into blood red. An odd thing appeared in the center. The wizard had been correct. The man at the center of the circle seemed to come together from all directions while simultaneously appearing to fall from a great distance.
Yeah, if something like that happened to her, she’d slaughter everyone until it was time to stop for lunch.
The hero appeared in the center and staggered as if he really had fallen. His back was to her. He was wearing a large, smooth coat of exotic Earth manufacturing. Likewise, his pants and boots hadn’t absorbed the snow that covered him. He turned to face his summoners.
The hero had snow in his hair and an unkempt beard. His eyes were hidden by dark glasses and his face was twisted in rage.
Sayaka was certain she was the only one who noticed his hand gripping something at his waist.
A few wizards stepped back, recognizing that something was irregular.
Sayaka’s eyes narrowed and she gripped some ‘creatively procured’ magical restraints. The hero wasn’t the only furious and paranoid person in the room. Sayaka had been doing this for centuries; it would be an interesting test.
Mio smiled, and her training kicked in. She spread her arms and slowly walked towards him. “Brave hero, we welcome you to Tenka! Please-“
The hero pulled out a weapon that Sayaka recognized; it was a gun. He stumbled with it briefly. Perhaps he was untrained or out of practice. A lousy hero if he didn’t know how to use his own tools.
The wizards and ritualists scattered; the smartest thing those guys had done all day. One of the wizards yelled, “anti-gunpowder enchantments! Now!”
*CRACK* *CRACK* *CRACK*
Sayaka went into action.
- - -
POV: Mio
The hero’s pistol was terrifying and loud. She froze, her arms still extended in greeting. The wizard who’d drawn blood for the ritual screamed in shock as bullets smashed into his body. The new hero was more snow demon than man. He hadn’t listened to her welcome speech. Mio wasn’t trained for this. She was scared. Should she protect someone?
There were more explosions from the pistol and the wizard’s retaliatory invocations. Mio’s role in the summoning ritual descended into an obstacle separating combatants. She took deep breaths. If her fate was to protect someone else… she didn’t know how to finish the thought. She dropped her arms and held on to her braids, which would at least look better than screaming.
She could hear Runa behind her, laughing to herself.
One of the wizards cast a shield spell to protect others and screamed as bullets hit him.
“The gunpowder spells aren’t working!” another yelled.
Then Sayaka rolled into view, running and tumbling like an acrobat. The hero tried to shoot at her and peppered the wall as she ran ahead of his aim, her twin ponytails streaming behind her like war banners. Then she stopped abruptly and faced him. The hero had his pistol pointed right at her.
“Not taught to kill a woman, are you, hero?” Sayaka asked seriously. “We’ll have to fix that.”
Then she threw small glowing rings at him, and the rings grew in the air as they came near him. He tried to shoot them, but he either missed or the bullets passed through. The rings wrapped around him, pinning his arms to his sides and binding his legs together. He fell to the ground and struggled like a deadly snake.
“Mio. Mio!” Sayaka called out. “You’re up.”
Mio didn’t move. Things had gone wrong. She didn’t know what to do.
“The welcome speech,” Runa said kindly from behind her while wizards were still doing their best to keep from screaming. “Do the welcome speech again.”
Yes. The welcome speech. That was protocol.
Someone was calling for healing. Others were rushing to provide aid. Mio smiled as best she could and made sure her arms were extended.
“Brave hero, we welcome you to Tenka! Please help us! This is our most desperate hour!”
The hero didn’t react to her and angrily labored against his bonds. Mio paused because she was supposed to in case Runa or Sayaka needed to say something. They didn’t so she continued.
“Our world is in peril. A Demon King of untold power has arisen to conquer our peace-loving people. Your aid is needed. Only you can save us. Your rewards will be a thousand times over any danger you overcome, as would befit a man of your stature.”
Nobody spoke. The hero was still struggling on the ground. Runa was giggling for some reason. In the background, Mio thought she heard the voices of people attempting to contain the chaos. She cleared her throat. The next part was if he didn’t seem to understand her.
“Oh! But I see that our words confuse you! Our language is close to Japanese. Do you not know it, brave hero?”
He yelled at her incoherently. Now she had to find out what he spoke, so when they taught him their own language by an enchantment-based transfer, they wouldn’t accidentally erase anything he already knew. He was Caucasian. The protocol was to start with Latin.
“Latine loqueris?”
He growled. French was next. Runa was covering her mouth, muffling her laughter. Sayaka looked bored. Mio gave her own tongue a small bite to stay focused.
“Parlez-vous fran?ais?”
The hero finally spoke and Mio was happy she knew the language. “If you don’t fucking let me go, I will murder all of you and sue your dead bodies!”
“American!” Mio yelled to the wizards. “The hero is American!”
The hero roared profanities while a very nervous wizard applied an amulet to the hero’s forehead. The hero struggled in defiance and even tried to bite the wizard’s hand as it drew close. They hadn’t summoned a man, they had called forth a rabid beast. Even the phrase ‘wild and untamed’ would imply a certain noble savagery that he did not have, just viciousness given human form.
The wizard was able to implant their language, Tenkan, into him. The process stunned the hero, a welcome side effect. Nobody knew what to do until Sayaka directed them to a nearby safe room to keep the hero in until he calmed down. She knew all kinds of odd, useful things like that. Mio tried to compliment her, but Sayaka groaned and rolled her eyes in response.
It wasn’t the first time she had received that eyeroll and Mio didn’t think it would be the last.
