extremely qualified ambassador of earth

[bitterchill]

Vancouver, being Vancouver, lacks a vibrant night life, or for that matter a dingy one. Take this alleyway, for instance. Completely empty. Where are the muggers? Where are the filthy strays? New York clicks its counterfactual tongue in grimy disapproval.

That said: the alleyway is empty. It would be a shame if something... happened to it.

Comments

[bitterchill]

"Well. Nobody else is around, so I might as well do what I can."

He pauses. "Plus, the apartment is huge. I could house, like, at least four dimensional castaways before it started getting crowded."

[erinflight]

Alex laughs, semi-desperately, and says, "I'm Alex by the way."

[bitterchill]

"Oh, thank the Queens you remembered that part. It probably would have gotten awkward. I'm Ari, Ari Kaltmann."

[erinflight]

"Nice to meet you Ari," Alex holds out his hand.

[bitterchill]

Ari shakes it firmly.

"...Do you need to eat, or anything? This is a good area for restaurants. Otherwise I can show you the apartment."

[erinflight]

"I could eat. Do you think you could tell me a bit more about this world? All I know is that it's a 21st century earth that has magic."

[bitterchill]

"Dammit, I was going to interrogate you first. Fine, I'll explain as we go. Do you have any 21st-century food preferences, or should we just get Vietnamese?"

[erinflight]

"Vietnamese sounds delicious. We could trade off questions if you want?"

[bitterchill]

Ari sets off Vietnamesewards. "Ooh, good idea. So what century are you from?"

[erinflight]

"21st, but my home earth didn't have any magic. What are you, exactly?"

[bitterchill]

"Wizard, human, specialty for earth evocation and general proficiency with thaumaturgy. Layman-wise, that means I'm good at immediate combat magic involving dirt, stone, or gravity effects, and I can do various cunning magical rituals."

[erinflight]

"Sometimes I wish I could do magic. Is magic common here?"

[bitterchill]

"Nope! Magic, period, shows up in about 1% of the population. Maybe 3% of those magic-users have the potential to become actual wizards, and I'm in something like the ninetieth percentile of power for wizards in general. Which is pretty gratifying, really. Oh, and there's some kind of genetic component, like that my birth mom was probably a magic-user too."

[erinflight]

"Do most people know about magic? This looked like a normal earth as far as our scouting cameras could tell, but you were talking about wizardly rulers."

[bitterchill]

"The Merlin doesn't rule the wizards, per se. Just tells them what to do. He's more like a really powerful union boss than anything else. And no, most people don't know about magic. It's a significant minority that does, though. It's not like anybody tries all that hard to keep the secret; I mean, one of the most powerful wizards on the planet is in the yellow pages, for crying out loud."

[erinflight]

Alex laughs, "This is an interesting world. I think I'd like it here if I could leave."

[bitterchill]

"You know, I think that's not an uncommon opinion to have about this world."

They arrive at the Vietnamese restaurant, which is miraculously open at 2am. A table is procured.

"These guys like me because I exorcised their kitchen that one time," Ari says conversationally. "Some vengeful ghost from the motherland followed one of the cooks over and kept murdering the dishwashers."

[erinflight]

"How do you murder a dishwasher?" Alex slumps down into the chair and picks up the menu, "Anything particularly good?"

[bitterchill]

"Oh, not the machine, I meant the kids who were washing the dishes. Though I think she stabbed the machine a couple of times too. And I know bánh mì is a cliché, but it really is worth it here. And the shrimp spring rolls are just great."

[erinflight]

"Sounds good to me. Do you have any idea why I'm stuck here?"

[bitterchill]

"Nothing solid, but... it might have something to do with the forces that keep the Outsiders, well, Outside. There's a ton of stuff hedging them out, and it's possible you just sort of got caught on the other side of the fence?"

[erinflight]

"What are the outsiders?"

[bitterchill]

"Oof. Outsiders are... bad news. They're like these weird, physics-defying monsters that lurk outside reality and really, really want to destroy everything. So, understandably, there's a lot of defenses designed to keep them away from things we don't want ripped to tiny pieces. But something might have gotten kind of overzealous and kept you in instead. Which, I mean, all things considered it's a lot better than reality being destroyed, but kinda sucks."

[between_worlds]

"At least it didn't send me to the Outsiders. But you know, this might not be so bad."

Alex rests his chin on his hand, "I sort of stormed out on my boss and I wasn't going anywhere in particular when your world grabbed me."

[bitterchill]

"Ah, that's no fun. S'why I've never really been one for jobs."