“Huh,” John said as the two boys had a momentary face off. “Well, we must’ve been “fated” to meet.”

He instantly cringed and gagged. “I’m never going to make that joke again.”

Fate just stared at him, slowly getting back up but not taking his eyes off John.

“What are you doing here?”

“What do you mean, what am I doing here?” John said. “The old man told me to come here. I think his name was Elfin or something like that.”

“...why here?” His voice was soft but serious, like a razor sharp blade in the sheath, not quite yet dangerous but still ready to kill.

“What do you mean why here?” John said, cocking his head to the side. “Isn’t this the closest adventurer’s guild?”

“...no?”

John crouched down and held his head in his hands, rocking back and forth.

“Are you fucking kidding me?!” he moaned, squeezing his eyes shut. “You’re telling me we didn’t have to come all the way here?”

“There a problem with this place?” Albert said, somewhat insulted.

“Yes there’s a fucking problem!” John groaned, falling backwards. “Do you know how much walking I had to do?”

“...your problem is that you had to walk?” Alber said incredulously.

“Well, yeah,” John shrugged. “Isn’t walking a pain in the ass? You know how much I had to walk? You know how long it took?”

Albert just shook his head.

“Anyways, what are you doing here?” John asked Fate. “Come to think of it, I never really introduced ourselves, right? Wanna go do something?”

“...since when did we get so friendly?” Fate said cautiously. “Who are you, anyway?”

“Wh- huh?” John said, cocking his head to the side. “I’m the other guy from the testing center. Or… don’t you remember?”

“No, I know that,” Fate said. “I mean, why are you so interested in me?”

“Because you’re the [Protagonist],” John wanted to say. “Because you’re useful.”

That was really it. Ultimately, everything could be judged as useful or detrimental to John’s end goal. That included [Characters]. They weren’t people. They were tools. That was something that had been drilled into his head a long time ago. It was also something he tried to ignore, just like everything else he knew.

“...well, we’re both kids,” John said. “And we both got the old guy’s letter of certification. Why not?”

“That’s… kind of a stupid reason,” Fate said.

He looked down and noticed Prota for the first time. Her emotionless face looked back into his, and she blinked in greeting. In a way, her face seemed as much a mask as the black one he was wearing. She noticed him staring and flinched, hiding herself a bit behind John.

“This is your sister, right?” Fate said suddenly.

“Uh- Huh? Yeah, why?” John said.

“Is she really your sister?”

“Wh- what kind of question is that?” John said, confused. “Why would she not be my sister? Is it because she has white hair and I have black hair?”

“She doesn’t talk a lot,” Fate observed. Prota squirmed as she was being put in the limelight by a stranger, but remained passive otherwise.

“Should she?”

“You talk quite a lot,” Fate shrugged.

“I talk for her,” John said. “Got a problem?”

“Ok, but can she talk?” Fate said, suddenly dropping down and staring deep into her eyes.

Prota flinched and stepped back, tripping and falling over, her hair flying all over the place.

“Hey, what the hell’s your problem?” John exclaimed, grabbing Fate by his shirt, displaying his first signs of anger.

“...” Fate just grabbed John’s wrist and threw it off. “I’m asking the questions here,” he said quietly, bending back down to help Prota up.

Prota, however, flinched as his hand approached her, and she scurried back until she hit the wall, trembling.

“...does she still have an aversion to being touched?” John thought, gritting his teeth. “I should’ve seen this coming.”

He’d been with her for more than a year, and he’d been the one to help her back up from the hellhole she’d been living in. Since then, she’d gotten used to him, and while the most she’d really done to express her feelings was with slight twitches to her facial expressions, she’d opened up to him in a way.

He’d forgotten that she was still someone who closed herself off to others. Despite his previous thoughts about [Characters], he was having a hard time seeing Prota as just a [Character]. He was on the fence between treating the world as real or fiction, and Prota was the only thing pulling him towards seeing the world as “real.”

“Hey, have you ever heard of personal space?” John said, darting forwards and getting himself between Prota and Fate. “Are you some kind of pedophile or something? Do you have something for little girls?”

Fate flinched and stepped back. “Wh- no! What the hell is wrong with you?” he exclaimed, raising his voice for the first time and breaking his mysterious and calm demeanor.

“That’s my question.”

Both stepped back and took a moment to cool down. John was on the edge of punching Fate in the face, or in this case, mask, until he felt Prota tug on his sleeve.

“...I’m ok,” she said quietly. “It’s ok.”

“...huh?” John was surprised. She didn’t look ok. Her hands were trembling, and she was looking down at her feet with shaky eyes. “Are you sure?”

“I’m ok,” Prota repeated.

“Mmm… well, doesn’t matter anyways,” John said with grit teeth.

He was pissed off that Prota was being harmed in such a fashion, but was also pretty annoyed that Fate had the gall to waltz in and to whatever he pleased, right in front of John. Despite his goal of making Fate his ally, John was sorely tempted to put Fate back in his place.

“...she spoke?” Fate said. “...sorry about all that.” He seemed genuinely surprised and apologetic. He started to turn around, but felt a strong hand grip his shoulder and spin him around. He looked into John’s eyes and saw… nothing. Chills ran through his body as John glared at him.

“Your bad? No shit it’s your bad. What’re you gonna do about it?”

“...get your hand off of me,” Fate said quietly.

The pressure in the room increased as the two faced off, unwilling to give any ground.

“John!” Albert roared. “That’s enough!”

John turned to face the old veteran, and for the first time in a long time Albert felt and emotion he’d forgotten about.

Fear.

“Yeah? Fine, I’ll take it outside,” John said, loosening his grip. “Wouldn’t want to mess upy our pretty little office. Come on.”

He glared at Fate, who was plenty annoyed himself at this point.

“...fine,” Fate said. “But not here. Somewhere where everyone can’t see us.”

~~~

“...here?” John said. They were deep in the forest, far out of sight from anyone around. Someone would have to come looking for them to find them.

Prota sat on a rock, her passive face slightly worried as she looked at John stretching against a tree. The pink fox that was always around Fate was beside her, licking its paw and unlike Prota, appeared generally unconcerned.

“It’s far away,” Fate shrugged. “Out of sight.”

“No, I mean this is just so stereotypical… never mind,” John said, shaking his head. His head had cooled down slightly during the walk, but he was still annoyed enough that he wanted to follow through on his words.

Fate reached behind him, pulling his sword out of his sheat, revealing a razor sharp katana, the blade shining in the light that streamed through the dry leafless branches overhead. It was the sword he’d put aside during their first fight. The snow crunched underneath their feet as they faced off.

“...a katana…?” John muttered. “Do those exist here?”

His eyes widened. “No… no. Please, god, don’t make it a… is this an isekai genre story?” he groaned, taking a deep breath in and burying his face in his hands. “Are you… are you kidding me? How could you make this any more generic? For the love of god please…”

Fate, unaware of John’s thoughts, held the sword in his right hand, pointing it at John.

“Ready?”

John threw his head back and sighed.

“That’s what I should be asking you.”

His head snapped back down, revealing a bright left eye as he dashed forwards, his fists trailing behind him. Reaching Fate in no time at all, he swung, missing but pulverizing the tree behind him.

“Sloppy,” Fate observed, dashing behind John and thrusting with his blade.

John dodged, but then looked behind with wide eyes as he noticed that two of the trees behind him had been cut cleanly in half.

“What are you, some kind of trained swordsman? What did you do, practice each stroke a million times or something? I remember this one guy that thrusted over a billion times.”

“T- he did what a billion times?”

“He thrusted,” John grinned, dashing back in.

Fate ducked and swung again, but John was just too light on his feet. Fate’s swordsmanship was extremely good. John would even go as far as to say he was probably a master swordsman, and if his theory about the world being an isekai was correct, he’d either inherited the ability as a gift or had been some kind of swordsman in his previous life. However, none of that mattered because John was not fighting back with a sword.

He was fighting with his fists.

Both parties knew very well that one hit was more than enough to end the fight. John’s blows were not only quick, but they were also strong. He was whirling around like a tornado, fists and feet flying everywhere as he went in and out like a boxer. Fate was responding well, his blade flashing neatly, but the problem was that his opponent wasn’t trying to counter his blade; he was only dodging it.

There was nothing for Fate to parry or counter; he could only lash out and try to hit John, but John was too quick for him. Most of his training was going down the drain.

“Not bad,” John called out about fifteen minutes into the fight. “You haven’t been hit yet.”

Fate didn’t respond; he just increased the speed of his blade.

Over the past fifteen minutes, John had been able to make some observations; for one, Fate’s swordsmanship was far better than Fate’s magic. They weren’t even comparable. He was pretty sure that if he’d responded to Fate’s sword with a sword, he’d have lost a long time ago. However, that meant that he was new to magic, whereas he was most definitely not new to the sword. That would’ve explained why he’d been using magic before; it would look too out of place for him to display such impressive skills with the sword, and he probably wanted to train his magic skills anyways. The advice from before made sense, too. Fate hadn’t been advising John to avoid fighting because of something someone else had said; it’d been out of personal experience. Fate, too, was a highly experienced fighter.

“Fucking isekai genre,” John muttered. “Gotta be the same type of protagonist every time, huh?”

This also meant that Fate was likely some kind of samurai or ninja or something in his past life, probably Japanese too if the genre held true, and that the sword probably meant something to him. All useless information, but interesting nonetheless.

“Thanks for showing me your swordsmanship,” John called out five minutes later. He’d come to a decision. If Fate was going to reveal some of his cards, so would he.

“In return, I’ll show you something of my own.”

His right hand blazed as a small fireball appeared. He threw it as hard as he could, missing, but setting the tree behind Fate ablaze. However, Fate was momentarily distracted, almost missing John’s next blow.

“That was weak,” Fate remarked.

“Well, excuse me for not being a magic master like you,” John said sarcastically.

It was true. John’s magic wasn’t very strong. Unfortunately, there was nothing he could do to increase its intensity.

He formed a few more fireballs and flung them like baseballs, all of them missing, but lighting the ground beneath them causing them to dance in and out of the flames.

Five more minutes in, both of them were panting.

“You’re running out of mana, aren’t you?” John grinned. “Strengthening your body like that for so long.”

“...mana?” Fate muttered. “Oh. Right.”

His eyes shone, and John could almost see the smile underneath the mask.

“I should start using mana.”

Suddenly, he appeared right in front of John, his blade right at John’s throat.

Prota, had been watching the match anxiously. She hadn’t liked any of it from the start, especially John’s insistence on fighting Fate, but as she saw the blade flash, something snapped inside her just like something had snapped inside John when he’d seen Prota on the brink of death while fighting against Elfin. She reached out, an ice spell flying out, catching the blade just in time to freeze the air between John’s neck and the edge of the sword. It didn’t stop the katana, but it gave John enough time to react and doge, narrowly avoiding an unwanted haircut.

“Huff… huff…” she fell to her knees, exhausted.

“...Prota?” John said incredulously. “...how… how did you do that?”

“...let’s stop here,” Fate said, uncomfortable at how close he’d gotten to killing John.

John walked over to Prota and picked her up. “Hey, you ok?”

Prota nodded weakly.

[She used up a lot of energy casting that, of course she’s weak]

[Piss off] John responded to Zero’s taunt.

[I’ll piss on- never mind]

John put her up against a tree and collapsed himself, wiping his face down with a cloth he’d pulled out from his hoodie. Reaching in again, he pulled out two water bottles.

This was his gamble. They’d exchanged a lot throughout the fight, and gotten somewhat used to each other. Now that Fate was slightly less suspicious of him, it was time to test a theory out.

“Want one?” he called out, tossing it over. It was a standard plastic water bottle, one you might find in any convenience store or grocery store on Earth, but nothing like that you would find here.

“...” Fate caught it and opened it, but not before John saw the look in his eyes.

It was that of surprise.

“That’s an interesting blade you got there,” John said. “Never seen anything like that.”

“...really?” Fate said quietly. “You sure?”

“Mm… no. Have you given it a name? I’d name it something like… katana. It has a nice ring to it.”

It was an extremely obvious bait. Any reader would groan at how blatantly obvious it was. However, John was confident that the writer, whoever he was, would let it slide. Fate would bite.

“Yeah, that’d be a good name,” Fate said. “I’ll think about it.”

The mood was a lot more mellow now as the two cooled off.

“Sorry about earlier. I was checking something,” Fate said after a moment’s silence.

“Something to do with the kidnappings?”

“How’d you- never mind,” Fate said shaking his head. “I’m sure you have your ways of finding things out. Yeah, something like that.”

“...did you think I was a kidnapper?”

“...yeah.”

John laughed. “Yeah, I get that once in a while. Do I give off kidnapper vibes? I can sort of see myself in a white sliding door van, driving around with a sign that says “free candy.” Yeah, I can-”

John stopped as Fate spun his head around and stared him in the eyes.

“...you… you’re from Earth, aren’t you?”