USER: Z3ke

  THREAD: Weird Question

  Wow. Okay. Gotta say that I didn’t think this thread would take off or become so…contentious. I’m gonna ignore most of what has been posted because it’s obvious that you’re all fans of this video game and the lore and everything and you’re all talking in short hand that I’m not gonna understand.

  First off, I gotta admit that I was never a fan. Never played the game or anything. I don’t know what a Reclaimer Camp is and I don’t have the first clue what the difference between Emberveil and Null Protocol is. I have no idea what a Redcap is or why I should stay away from it. Since I lack all that knowledge you all have, it means that your references are going over my head.

  Before this whole thing went off the rails, Gravemind suggested that I should post a bit more information if I wanted to get an answer to my question. My problem is I can’t get you any of that information. I can’t tell you exactly where or when this hypothetical would take place. It’s…complicated.

  Let’s just say that the hypothetical person in this situation who has been dropped into the world doesn’t know whether it’s during any of the games that you all mentioned. They just woke up somewhere and nothing is familiar.

  Liminal_Archivist

  Translation: this is all a setup for a fanfic.

  MushroomCleric

  Dood. You suck at this.

  1) This is the General Discussion section. Fanfics don’t go here. Your hypothetical question fits into General Discussions, but you’re writing a fanfic. Don’t use us for research man.

  2) If you’re trying to write an isekai fanfic then you gotta tell us that your character was isekai’d. The whole start to your fic is weird and confusing and not at all good.

  3) If you want people to engage with your post, you gotta sell it. Use your words. Seduce us with your prose.

  SixtySix

  What Mushroom said.

  Mmm. And type slower. Sexier. Let me enjoy it.

  Z3ke (Original Poster)

  Not writing a fanfic, just need some info. Like…survival tips or something. What would you all do first if you were stuck in this world? Is there a guide or something for new players? Is that a thing?

  BabyBloos

  Nah. Play by our rules or GTFO.

  Tag this as a fic. If you’re trying to pull off a bit, then commit to it. If you’re writing an isekai fanfic and your character needs our help to “survive” or whatever, then start writing like your life depends on it.

  Z3ke (Original Poster)

  Seriously?

  All I need is basic information. What should I be looking out for? Is there a faction that is useful to a newbie? Is there a way for a (hypothetical) person to not be in this world anymore? I need help and you’re all…what, holding my question hostage until I perform for you?

  StoryLeech

  Nobody give him any answers until he decides to play along.

  Z3ke (Original Poster)

  Really?

  Z3ke (Original Poster)

  Fine.

  I’ll play along.

  Z3ke (Original Poster)

  First thing you all need to know is that my name is Zeke. I’m from New York. I fell asleep on the subway when I was headed home last night and when I woke up I found myself in a strange new world. There was this scary chick looming over me with a handgun, so I ran the fuck away. Now I have no clue where I am or what to do. I don’t recognize anything in this world. I don’t know anyone. I never played any of the games. I just got dropped off in this weird ass town and there is nothing nearby.

  Is that enough info for you all to start helping me?

  MushroomCleric

  Saying it again. You suck at this.

  Write your fanfic like a story. Otherwise nobody is gonna care.

  I’ll start you off. How’d you get isekai’d into the world? Who was the chick that was “looming” over you? You said you got dropped off in a weird town…how’d you get dropped off? Describe the town.

  Come on man. I shouldn’t be more invested in building your shitty fanfic than you are. You started this thread, how about you add to it?

  Z3ke (Original Poster)

  Alright. Fuck it.

  But after I finish writing everything that happened, I don't wanna see any comments saying “fake” or “fanfic” or anything like this. I know none of you are gonna believe me when I say that this is all true and happening to me but…it’s all true and happening to me.

  When I’m done telling this story, I expect to receive some kind of information in return.

  Z3ke (Original Poster)

  So. My story.

  I don’t really wanna get into the whole David Copperfield - this is my life and here’s a tale of my childhood and all that - stuff. But I figure it’s what you all want so I might as well beef up the word count.

  Like I said, I’m from New York. I’m a bartender working in Manhattan. El Pedro’s. It’s a rinky little dive bar in midtown where I’ve been working for the past couple years. Last night, after my shift ended, I was doing all the closing duties: putting up the chairs, filling out the liquor sheet, pouring myself a post-shift drink.

  After tossing out all the drunks and doing all the closing duties and giving everything a quick wipe down, I got ready to leave. Keys. Lighter. Cigarettes. One last sweep through the place to make sure that nobody died in the bathroom. The fact that that is a legit part of closing shift duties should tell you what kind of bar El Pedro’s is. Finally, I shut out the light and left to go home.

  We’re one of those Manhattan bars that closes somewhat early. Around 2AM or so. Other bars on the block are still open by the time I’m headed home and there’s always a few people hanging around late at night. After I left the bar, the city was starting to settle into that strange period between night and day. It was too late to go completely wild, but it was too early to be completely sane. People were out and about and they were trying to decide what to do with the rest of their night: go home with somebody or stay out and get more drunk.

  About a block from the bar I could make out the sounds of a bunch of drunk college kids making a nuisance of themselves. They were hanging outside the pizza place; their night just getting started.

  I lit up a cig and just stood there, letting the exhaustion of the night’s shift creep into me. I’m not old. But I am past the age where bartending is still considered “fun.” I’d outlasted most everyone that I started at El Pedro’s with. Cooks, dishwashers, managers, and even a few rats. Either I’m incredibly reliable or I’m just too stupid to quit.

  Bartending has always been easy. It’s one of the few jobs I’ve ever had that’s never made me feel like a fraud. I don’t mess up a tab or forget and order. I know when to smile and when to laugh and when to cut someone off and when to ignore the assholes who snap their fingers at me to try and get my attention.

  Still, whenever I think about bartending and doing the job long term, my guts twist and I’m hit with a massive wave of…not depression. Not exactly. Maybe regret.

  You know what? Now that I’m typing all this out I’m realizing that it has very little to do with my current situation. I’m just gonna skip forward a bit.

  I finished my cig and headed towards the subway. My hands were stuffed deep in my jacket pockets and my brain was doing that thing it does where it tries to build a to-do list for tomorrow just to prove that it’s still alive and functional.

  Stop by the bodega to pick up some food. Do my laundry. Pay the rent. Pay my phone bill. Sort out my shit life.

  By the time I got to the subway I was hit with another wave of sadness and regret. If you’ve ever been to New York, you no doubt know the smell of the subway. It reeks of piss and beer and late-stage capitalism. Why put money in public transit when Uber and Lyft exist? I stepped over the usual passed-out drunks curled up at the entrance and made my way down to the station platforms.

  Swiped my card at the turnstile.

  Balance: $1.60

  “Figures,” I muttered to myself, because talking to yourself in public is normal for anyone in New York.

  My card didn’t have enough money on it for a ride tomorrow. I’d need to top it off. Shove a twenty in the machine and buy myself a couple more rides on public transit from the bar to my tiny ass apartment out in Brooklyn.

  I don’t even live in the bougie upscale area of Brooklyn; those spots on the map that have all been gentrified by young professionals and hipsters spending their parents’ money. I live with the rats and the trash and the grime and the assholes doing the druggie lean all night long.

  Unauthorized usage: this narrative is on Amazon without the author's consent. Report any sightings.

  When the subway eventually screeched into the station, I summoned enough energy to crawl my way inside. The car was mostly empty, which was one of the pluses of getting off work at such an odd hour. The graveyard shift was already at work and the night people had scattered to whatever corners of the city they crawled back to before sunrise.

  An empty row of seats stretched out before me and I slid into one at random. My legs finally stopped protesting at the long shift I’d just worked, and instead settled into a low throb. I stared down at the floor. Sticky. Scuffed. Grimy. Glanced up at the flickering lights before letting my eyes wander to the window just in time to catch a blurry outline of a hollow-eyed bartender who needed a shave and a haircut staring back at me.

  How was this my life? What was I doing? Was my existence just an endless loop of late night shifts and subway rides?

  I let my head fall back against the window and my eyes slid shut as the train lurched forward, pulling out of the station and rocking gently as it picked up speed. The rhythmic clatter of the rails acted as a lullaby, pulling me under into something between sleep and resignation.

  Just for a second I let go.

  Just for a moment I allowed myself to drift.

  I woke up drowning. The first sensation to hit my body was cold. It was a piercing, bone-deep cold. Water surrounded me and pressed in on all sides. Panic surged and my brain was desperately trying to figure out what the hell was happening.

  The jolt of panic fully woke me and I looked around and realized I was in a water tank with glass walls and thick cables that trailed from it. My lungs screamed at me.

  A gunshot cracked and the glass holding in the water spider-webbed. It exploded outwards and a roar of noise and pressure ripped through me. I fell out of the water tank and slammed into the floor.

  I could barely hear alarms wailing as I coughed and choked and gagged on the floor. My heart thundered in my chest and blood pounded in my ears. I pushed myself to my hands and knees and looked around, trying to figure out what the hell was happening to me.

  My panicky thoughts told me I was in some strange room, and not the subway I’d fallen asleep on. The room was dimly lit with flickering red lights, and a few other water tanks were spread around. Each of the tanks held a person.

  That’s when I saw her. A woman stood tall in all the chaos and she glanced down at me. Her eyes were flat. Empty. There wasn’t any pity or anger or other kind of emotion there. She held a pistol casually in her left hand. Her right was covered in some sort of black metal. There was a massive revolver peaking out of her jacket. The thing looked so heavy that I doubted I could have lifted it. She was obviously the person who’d broken me out of my watery prison, but the look she shot me told me I wasn’t safe with her.

  I did what any sane person would do when they wake up drowning and come to before a woman holding a pistol. I fucking ran.

  Adrenaline flooded me and I bolted away, my feet slipping on the soaked floor. I nearly went down, caught myself on a nearby table, then launched myself forward and sprinted away, lungs burning and muscles screaming and panic rising. I passed a bunch of water tanks like what had held me, each of them with a person suspended inside.

  I escaped the room and then heard gunfire start up again. The woman was shooting at me, so I serpentined my way through the hallway, trying desperately to make myself as small a target as possible. I tore around a corner and sprinted down a hallway, desperate to get away from the psychotic lady with the gun.

  My clothes clung to me and my shoes squeaked on the floor. I didn’t make it very far before I saw the bodies. First one. Then three. Then more. Each of them was sprawled out in the hallway. Some were wearing lab coats, some were decked out in armor. All of them had blood pooling around them, pouring from numerous bullet wounds.

  She did this.

  That thought got me running faster, trying to get away from the psycho chick hunting people down. I leapt over the corpses and slipped slightly in the gore-slick hallway.

  I eventually found myself in a large open chamber. It looked like someone had built a modern Stonehenge only…miniaturized. Thick metal slabs were arrayed in a perfect circle in the middle of the room and each one glowed with small glyph-like etchings.

  I was too stunned to take it all in, only able to see what was right before me. I couldn’t make heads or tails of any of it. I’d fallen asleep on the subway and then woke up drowning and was now standing in the middle of a weird pagan ritual site.

  Before I could wonder if my mind had snapped and I was hallucinating things, gunshots brought me back to reality. At the far end of the room was a full-blown firefight. I don’t know who was shooting at whom, but I heard the sound of automatic gunfire which told me to stay away.

  I flinched and ran towards the nearest slab of metal, hoping to put something solid between me and whoever was shooting. I had no interest in getting involved with whatever the hell I’d found myself caught in the middle of.

  I reached the glowing slab at full speed. And then I slammed straight into a wall.

  “-agh…fuck!” I groaned, crumpling to the floor in a heap.

  Pain exploded in my face and I reached up to rub at my nose, wondering if I’d broken it or if it had always felt like that. I rolled onto my back and stared blankly up at the ceiling. The floor beneath me vibrated faintly. Steadily. Rhythmically.

  I sat up slowly as blood trickled down from my nose onto my shirt. A smooth metal wall was in front of me. That’s what I’d slammed into going full speed. A poster on the wall caught my attention: transit lines. What the hell was a poster detailing transit lines doing…in whatever the hell place I’d woken up in.

  Remembering the gunfire, I panicked and jolted to look behind me, expecting to see the crazy woman chasing after me. Instead, there was a tiny, very normal-looking restroom. It was the same type of restroom that you’d find on any Amtrak train. The door swung slightly on its hinges and I could see inside it from my spot on the ground.

  My brain panicked for a moment. I’d expected to see dead bodies and the lab and those massive glowing slabs and a firefight. But instead…I found myself on a train. How the hell did I get here?

  My mind ran through everything that just happened, trying to catch up and fill in the gaps of my knowledge. I’d been in some kind of weird lab. Rushed away from a firefight and tried putting odd glowing metal slabs between me and a bunch of violence. Then, I’d somehow ended up slamming into a wall that broke my nose, and I was currently laying on the ground in the middle of a train.

  With how everyone was staring at me, I realized how it must have looked: a man sprinting full-speed out of the bathroom and faceplanting directly into the wall.

  A kid two rows away from me let out a quiet and stunned “...whoa.” An older woman gasped when she saw the blood flowing down my face. Someone laughed. A man a few feet away leaned halfway into the aisle to get a better look at what was causing all the commotion.

  All I could do was sit there with my cheeks turning bright red as I tried to process how I’d gone from falling asleep on a subway car to drowning in a large water tank to becoming the most chaotic thing these passengers had ever seen.

  Eventually I was able to stagger to my feet and I found an empty seat to collapse into. My clothes were still wet, my face was all sorts of messed up, I had no clue where I was, and the train that I’d found myself on was unlike any I’d ever ridden before.

  I was used to the NYC subway. I’d been riding the thing for most of my life. This train car was unlike any subway train I’d ever been in. It was more like a passenger car on an Amtrak train than the subway. The key difference between this train and what I was used to was the fact that, outside the windows, I wasn’t seeing either the Manhattan skyline or rats playing deathmatch on a crowded platform. The only thing outside was green. Endless amounts of green.

  Trees stretched for miles, only broken up by wide-open fields that looked like the pictures used in Windows backgrounds. It was like someone had paved over Brooklyn and Queens and replaced everything with the goddamn Shire.

  My attention slowly drifted to the train car itself, and that’s when the weird really started to sink in. Unlike every subway car I was used to, this train was clean and spotless. Immaculate, even. There wasn’t any half-chewed gum stuck to the seats, no mystery smells that made you hold your breath until the next stop. The sticky floors had all been cleaned and polished. There weren't any scratched-up plastic seats or the faint smell of piss and beer clinging to the air.

  The train had the faint smell of flowers, which threw me for a loop and made me way more suspicious than I thought possible. My brain simply couldn’t make sense of the scent of flowers on a subway car.

  The cleanliness of everything wasn’t the only oddity. The passengers were all…weird. None of them looked like New Yorkers. I’d spent enough of my life riding the subway to recognize the usual late-night crowd I expected to be on the train with me: bartenders and retail workers sporting dead-eyed exhaustion, slumped-over drunks, hoodie-clad insomniacs, and overworked souls headed home or headed nowhere at all. None of the passengers I saw had that look about them.

  Instead, each of the passengers looked like cosplay enthusiasts. They were all wearing long coats with buckles everywhere, lace-trimmed collars, boots that had been polished to a mirror shine, and jewelry that looked like they were either antiques or movie props.

  Each of the passengers had the look of someone who had just stepped out of a Victorian Era-meets-steampunk fever dream. Their dress sense made me briefly wonder if there was some kind of convention in town.

  I glanced down at what I was wearing and tried not to feel self-conscious. Compared to everyone else on the train, I definitely looked out of place. My jeans were soaked and sticking to my legs. My black Converse All-Stars dripped onto the polished floor. I was sporting a black El-Pedro’s shirt with the logo peeling off. In short, I looked like a hungover hobo who’d just stumbled into a cosplay convention.

  Because of that, I could feel everyone’s eyes on me. They weren’t shooting me hostile looks. It was more confusion coming from the other passengers. Like they were asking themselves “who the hell is this asshole who slammed himself into a wall and is now dripping water all over everything?”

  After taking this all in, a dozen thoughts popped up in my head. Was this limbo? A coma dream? Had I not woken up in a lab with a crazy psycho woman standing over me? Was my body just dead on the subway, riding laps through the boroughs? Was this the afterlife?

  Lost in my thoughts, I barely felt the temperature in the train car shift. A shiver ran up my spine and the hairs on the back of my neck stood on end. An instinct started screaming at me. Something primal and ancient. You’re being watched. I turned in my seat and found a man standing over me. No. Not standing. Hovering.

  His uniform was tailored to perfection. It was ink-black and crisp and covered with strange pulsing symbols that looked to have been sewn into the fabric. The man was broad-shouldered and stood ramrod straight. There was a bit of extra weight around his midsection, and his beard was flecked with just enough grey to say “experienced” but not so much that it screamed “retirement.”

  He looked like a chubbier, slightly more intimidating Lance Reddick. He was like if Lance Reddick did a stint as a sorcerer in a dieselpunk remake of Murder on the Orient Express.

  He smiled down at me which instantly put me on guard. It’s not like his smile was threatening or condescending or anything like that. It was more…all-knowing. Like he was saying “I don’t think you belong here,” in the most posh and polite accent.

  “Ticket, sir?”

  My mouth went dry and I tilted my head up at him. I blinked, still groggy from having slammed face-first into the wall moments earlier. My brain malfunctions and I wondered when the last time I’d seen a ticket collector on the subway was.

  “Uh…ticket?”

  Nobody had ever asked me for a subway pass before. Hell, I’d seen more rats carrying slices of pizza around that I’d ever seen fare enforcement on the subway. But when an intimidating Lance Reddick look-alike demands your ticket, you present your ticket.

  I reached for my wallet and found…nothing. Had I dropped it when I was running? Was it back in that lab with the crazy lady and all the shooting? I patted my pockets. Front, back, inside jacket. The more I searched, the more my heart dropped.

  No wallet. No phone. No subway card with $1.60 left on it. No crumpled bills from the shift that I’d just worked. No beat-up Moleskine notebook filled with whiskey-soaked fragments of half-baked ideas.

  Gone. All of it.

  My heartbeat hammered in my ears and, for some reason, I figured the best thing to do was pat myself down again. Maybe if I was a little more frantic in my search the universe would be forced to cough up all my shit. I looked up at the fake Lance Reddick and tried to tamp down my panic with, what I hoped, was my most disarming smile.

  “So, uh, funny thing. I think I misplaced my ticket.”

  He raised an eyebrow at that and I inwardly sighed and resigned myself to the fate of being fined a bunch of money that I didn’t have or being kicked off the train at the next stop. Instead, he smiled down at me and I only became more confused.

  His eyes were filled with something…ancient. That’s the best description for it. When he smiled at me, it scared me a little more than anger would have. I can understand anger. If he’d started screaming at me that I was trying to ride the subway for free, I could deal with it. But what I couldn’t understand was why fake Lance Reddick was smiling suddenly.

  “Easy there,” he said with a quick pat on my shoulder, almost like an adult trying to calm a particularly panicked child. “You must be an outsider. Don’t worry about the ticket.”

  He pulled a handkerchief from his coat pocket and held it out to me. “You’re bleeding.”

  “Uh…” Before I could thank him for the handkerchief or ask him what he meant when he called me an outsider, he continued on his way down the aisle. I watched as he walked down the train car and approached the next few passengers. None of them flinched at his presence. They simply looked at him and then reached into their pockets or bags for little slips of paper or polished metal - tickets, apparently - nodded politely, and then returned to their books or gadgets or vaguely occult-looking devices.

  When fake Lance Reddick went far enough away that I started calming down, I decided to tackle the big question facing me: where the actual hell was I?

  Obviously I was on a train. But it wasn’t the same subway train I’d fallen asleep on. It wasn’t the beer-slicked, graffitied iron coffin that dragged me across New York every night, where the stench of piss and takeout food lived together in an unholy alliance.

  I stood from my seat and picked a direction and started walking. The gentle rocking of the train calmed me a bit. It was a familiar feeling. One I was used to. I was able to balance myself with the steady swaying of the train as I moved to the next car.

  What I found in the next train was as surreal a scene as the one I’d just left. Leather seats. Brass accents. Not a single loose screw in sight. I kept my head down and tried avoiding eye contact with the other passengers. Halfway through the car, I froze in my tracks. Sitting by a window, reading a newspaper like it was just another morning commute, was an orc.

  Green skin. Thick, jutting tusks. Shoulders like a fridge with a gym membership. He was sporting a sharp, black blazer that was fitted perfectly over his massive frame. The man looked calm. Bored. Completely different from every other orc I’d ever seen in a movie or video game. I just stood there, transfixed, in the middle of the train car, watching as he flipped through his newspaper like he was checking the financial markets or searching for updates on the war in Middle-Earth or something.

  I stared.

  He flipped a page.

  I kept staring.

  Slowly, like a man running out of patience, he glanced up at me, took in my soaked and shabby thrift-store appeared, broken-in Converse shoes, slightly frayed jeans, and let out the deepest and most world-weary sigh.

  “Fuck off.”

  I blinked and my brain rebooted enough for me to realize how rude it was of me to just stand there and stare at the man. I squeaked out a tiny, “uh, yea, okay,” before hustling along. Had I just been yelled at by Shrek in a bespoke blazer?

  I walked into the next train car, hoping that it might lead me back to reality. Instead, I entered what looked like a first-class lounge. There were clusters of plush armchairs placed around wooden tables. The scent of cigars filled the air. And at the far end of the car was an incredibly fancy bar.

  I’d been in a lot of bars over the years, ranging from dive bars to neighborhood hangouts to sports bars to country clubs. This bar was the kind of place where you’d order a whiskey you couldn’t pronounce just so that you’d feel important and try to brag in front of a Tindr date who was way out of your league.

  Standing behind the bar, wearing a uniform straight out of a hipster’s wet dream, was a dwarf.

  Full beard, thick arms, rolled-up sleeves, immaculate red vest and black bowtie, and polishing a glass like every stereotypical bartender in all the movies and shows that I’d ever seen. He barely reacted as I stumbled into his bar car. He simply gave me a quick once-over while continuing to buff the glass in his hands, almost like confused and wet humans wandering into his weird ass train bar was a common occurrence.

  Then things got even stranger.

  A screen flickered to life in front of me. It appeared in the air, floating like a hologram projected by some invisible god. Bright green text shouted for my attention.

  [Class Unlocked: Bartender]