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."

[erinflight]

"I guess not then," Alex laughs, "But yea, I'm from the Organization. There are a lot of things out there that hate humans, and we try to keep the human worlds safe. I'm one of the scouts. If whoever is in power here seems reasonable, I'll try to talk to them. "

[bitterchill]

Ari laughs. "That's adorable. No, no one reasonable is in power. Everyone with power is terrible and should be avoided at all costs. You might have some luck with the Merlin of the White Council of Wizards, if it weren't for the fact that he'd immediately kill you and fling your remains into the sun because you come from beyond the Outer Gates."

[erinflight]

"That's, that's good to know. Maybe I should go home and reevaluate, I'm not equipped to deal with hostile wizards." Alex grips his teleporter and closes his eyes. Nothing happens. He grows very pale.

[bitterchill]

"That looks like a bad thing," Ari hazards.

[erinflight]

"It's not working. It's not working at all. That's never happened before!"

[bitterchill]

"Well... shit."

Ari tries to think of a solution. He can't try to send him back, on account of the Seventh Law being enforced by scary people with swords. He can't help fix the amulet, because he has no damn idea how it works, in addition to which that's still Seventh Law territory.

Eventually, he just goes with, "D'you want to stay in my apartment while you get back on your feet?"

[erinflight]

Alex looks up from where he'd been uselessly fiddling with the teleporter, surprised, "You would do that? You don't even know me."
He smiles and says very seriously, "Thank you."

[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."