“Go fuck yourself, Coultron.” Kay heard the elf woman shout.

“I don’t give two silver for who you do or don’t take orders from!” The armored man from the second group chimed in. “I just know that you can’t take us on. Leave.”

“But we don’t need to fight you!” Coultron shouted, “We just need to grab… Where the fuck did he go!?”

“He’s… over there!” A voice he hadn’t heard yet shouted out.

The shapes of two people walked between him and Coultron’s group.

“Leave, all of you.” One of the two people near Kay calmly called out. “This can only end badly for you at this point.”

There was some more shouting and posturing, but all of Kay’s focus was on his breathing. I think I’m having a panic attack. He didn’t have a huge amount of experience with them, but he was pretty sure he was having one. Or I’m about to have one?

His own personal mental health issue had been depression, so while he’d discussed the concept with his therapist once or twice before, he couldn’t ever remember having one. The dizziness, shaking, trouble breathing, and the complete and total sense of panic running through him seemed symptomatic though.

As Kay took deep breaths and tried to calm down he vaguely heard someone walk closer to where he was lying in the grass. “Guys? He’s freaking out.”

“He just got yanked into a different world and there was almost a fight right in front of him right after that, I’m not surprised.”

More people gathered around him.

“Well what do we do? None of us are mind healers.”

There was the rustling of clothing moving. “We have this.”

“What’s that?”

“It’s the same spell most mind healers use in situations like this, apparently. The BOA person gave it to me in case something like this happened.”

“Is it safe?”

“Why would the BOA give us a dangerous item to use on an Outworlder who’s panicking?”

“Good point.”

To Kay the conversation the people around him were having was mostly a background noise to his own rushing thoughts as he frantically tried to slow his breathing. As he lay there, a soothing warmth spread over his skin. His breathing started to slow as he stopped shaking, and he slowly calmed down as the warm feeling seeped into him.

“Should we be surrounding him like this? Doesn’t that look kind of threatening?” One of the voices asked.

“Damn, yeah, you guys come over here.” Another one of them ordered.

Kay slowly sat up and looked over at the voices. The five people that had confronted Coultron’s group stood a few feet back from him, close to the road.

The group stared at Kay as Kay stared at them, until eventually the elf took a hesitant step forward. “Hi?”

Kay slowly stood up and gave a small wave. “Hello.”

She smiled softly at him. “Sorry about that. You probably have no idea what’s happening, and us almost getting into it with those pricks probably didn’t help.”

Kay glanced around and saw that Coultron’s group was nowhere to be seen. “Uh, thanks?”

“My name’s Delilah. What’s yours?”

“I’m Kenneth, but you can call me Kay.”

“Well Kay, it’s a little late, but welcome to the world of Torotia.” Delilah spread her arms out and gestured around them. “My companions are Torren,” The man in full plate armor, “Arlen,” The man with the bow, “Dema,” The woman with animal ears, “And Dorian.” Dorian was the man with animal ears.

Kay nodded along with each introduction, but couldn’t help but stare at the ears on the two’s heads. He couldn’t tear his eyes away.

Noticing the silent staring at her head, Dema waved her hand at him. “You okay?”

“You have bear ears! On your head!” Kay blurted out.

Dema nodded. “Yeah, I do. Do you not have bear beastkin on your world?”

The mention of “his world” dropped Kay’s heart into the pit of his stomach again. He crouched down and started scrubbing at his face with both hands. “We don’t have beastkin at all!” He groaned. “Or elves! I mean, there are all kinds of stories and things, but they aren’t real!”

The five shared concerned looks, then turned back to watch Kay.

His mind racing, Kay suddenly remembered something his friend Raphael had told him once. Always the most logical and analytical of his small group of friends, Raphael was always the man with the plan. During what Kay had thought at the time was a trivial hypothetical conversation about the most important thing when getting transported into a different world, Raphael’s answer had seemed too logical and “not fun enough” as their friend Noah had said. “The thing with the characters that get isekaied is that you never see them reacting to the fact that they’ve been sucked into a whole different world. Probably ‘cause it’s not interesting to the people reading or watching. But your normal everyday, non-main character person would freak the fuck out. The problem is, depending on what kind of world you end up in, that’d totally get you killed. So the most important thing in my mind is keeping it cool till you’re somewhere safe. Have a meltdown when you’re sure you can afford to.”

Kay grabbed onto Raphael’s suggestion like a lifeline and forced himself to be calm. He knew it wouldn’t last forever, but it wasn’t supposed to.

“Sorry.” Kay said as he looked up. “I’m just a bit-”

Delilah interrupted him with a shake of her head. “Don’t apologize. I honestly have no idea what you must be going through right now, but you don’t need to apologize for it. You literally just got taken out of the world you knew and thrown into another one.”

“I… Thanks.”

“We should go.” Dorian said, looking around. “Coultron’s a prick and a coward, but if he finds some reinforcements he might try and push the issue again. Let’s get back before that can happen.”

“Right.” Torren, the man in armor, stepped forward. “We-”

“Take your helmet off.”

“Oh, right.” He reached up and pulled it off, revealing him to be a handsome human man with brown hair. “We’re the Oaken Five, a silver ranked party from the Adventurer’s Guild. We’ve been contracted by the local BOA chapter to bring you back to the city.”

Most of what Torren had said fit into the collection of knowledge from random stories and games he’d consumed in the past, and Kay didn’t have enough in him to start questioning what was going on in detail right then, so he just hoped his understanding was close enough for now. Except for one thing. “What’s the BOA? How did they even know I was here? And why would they send anyone to get me?”

“Well, they’re the Bureau of Outworlder Affairs. It’s kind of their job.”

“… They’re the what?”