~oOo~

Log Horizon © Mamare Touno

This work provided under section 107 of the copyright act of 1978

Chapter 8

~oOo~

Even with the discovery of portal talismans, Shoryu hadn't seriously entertained the thought of crossing back over to the real world. Sure, he'd had a vague idea that he wanted to see his parents again, that he'd want to return to high school, and maybe go to college.

But his best friend Hein was already in Crescent Moon with him, his guildmates were fun to be around, and taking quests as Crescent Moon's battle team leader was enjoyable..

So he'd expected to be one of the last members of Crescent Moon to leave Elder Tale, and wouldn't hesitate to give Crescent Moon's younger members precedence in crossing over.

As such, the fact that he was back in the real world didn't properly sink in until after Minori, with the help of some consumable mana regeneration items, successfully revived Krusty.

She finished giving Krusty a very abridged briefing of what he could expect just in time to be forced back to Akihabara.

Shoryu sat down, put his head in his hands, and tried to work through what he was feeling without suddenly falling apart.

His post-battle jitters from adrenaline leaving his system were making that somewhat difficult.

Okay. Okay.

Minori had already alerted his parents to the fact that he was fine, and his Wolf Fang race wouldn't be a huge surprise because of the joint photograph Crescent Moon and Log Horizon had taken and uploaded to the internet. So he wasn't anxious about his parents.

He hadn't been prepared to be a diplomat- he was a fairly quick thinker, but not a strategist like Shiroe or Minori. But the intention had been for Krusty to take over when the next party came through anyways, and he didn't feel a pathological need to avoid responsibility, unlike his carefree friend Hein. So he wasn't worried about that either.

So then what was causing that queasy feeling in his stomach?

He looked around.

Oh, yeah, the property damage.

At least the truck had been mostly undamaged because of Minori's reflexes.

BologneseMaster seemed to be having similar thoughts, a pained grimace on his face.

Was this why superheroes wore masks, so they didn't have to pay when they broke something?

Shoryu was sorely tempted to mutter something dramatic about "vanquishing evil," and vanish into the night, as uncharacteristic (and ridiculously stupid) as that would be.

But there had to be some leeway when he was trying to save lives, right?

Police sirens wailed in the distance.

He shook his head, and slapped his hands on his cheeks. He needed to at least act confident; it wouldn't do for his first impressions to be "violent thug" and "moody teenager" respectively.

"I wonder if my family will recognize me," mused BologneseMaster.

And wow, didn't that make his fears seem trivial?

He tried to think of some way to comfort the felinoid, but Krusty got there first.

Even kneeling down, Krusty dwarfed the diminutive Assassin. Without his Wolf Fang skills activated, Krusty's words were inaudible to Shoryu, but when he finished his speech, BologneseMaster chuckled and seemed to regain some of his regular cheer.

Shoryu had known on an intellectual level that Krusty was charismatic- he had to be, to keep the loyalty of his thousands of guildmates in D.D.D.- but seeing an example of that charisma in real life was an entirely different experience.

All three stored their weapons away into their magic bags.

After a few more moments of waiting, emergency vehicles began swarming the scene, a cavalcade of police cars, fire trucks, ambulances, and even the occasional JSDF vehicle.

Krusty spoke for the group, and Shoryu and BologneseMaster stayed back and let him handle the first responders.

Eventually, the news crews descended like a swarm of locusts, and Shoryu found himself fielding interviewers. He of course tried his level best to direct their attention to Krusty, although he still had to answer some banal questions about himself.

Enough news choppers flew over the area that he didn't notice one of the helicopters was landing until a man and women jumped out of it, rushed towards Krusty, and embraced him.

The reporters surrounding him rapidly switched focus to Krusty, and between the mentions of the Diet and referring to Krusty's mother as "Representative," Shoryu gathered that she was a legislator.

That explained where Krusty got his political acumen. He remembered something about him going to Yale, too…

Shoryu and BologneseMaster took the chance to sidle out of the way.

"Well, what now?"

BologneseMaster shrugged. "Your family near here?"

"Not really, but I know the bus schedule. What about you?"

'It'll take a bit of running, but I can get home in a few hours. If they haven't moved, anyways…"

"Won't your, err, you know-"

"Don't worry about it. I'm an assassin; avoiding attention is what I do."

Shoryu nodded. "Alright, I'll see you later, I guess…"

"Only if I let you." BologneseMaster winked, then disappeared.

Shoryu skirted around the reporters, then jogged to an isolated bus stop. He switched out his armor for the less conspicuous clothes in his bag, hid his Wolf Fang features, and removed his bandana. He probably still looked a little weird, but that was unavoidable.

He waited patiently for the late-night bus in the bus stop, but vaulted himself on top of it as soon as he heard the rumble of an approaching bus.

Vaulting up to the top of the bus stop, Shoryu prepared himself to do something he had always wanted to.

He crouched, then exploded forward, successfully landing on top of a moving vehicle.

To his relief, the bus driver didn't stop.

He laid down and watched the few stars he could see in the sky through Tokyo's light pollution.

~oOo~

Walking through his old neighborhood was a bizarre experience.

Familiar and homey, punctuated with jarring bouts of mental dissonance.

This was the cost of respawning.

He initially missed the street his home was on, having forgotten its name, and the appearance of the building on the end.

He had been sure a childhood friend had lived there, before they moved away.

But he could have resigned as Crescent Moon's battle team leader, and he didn't.

He saw a car pull out of his house's driveway.

It took him a little while to make the connection.

"Hey, wait!"

Shoryu ran after the car, and nearly collided with it as it screeched to a stop.

His Elder Tale character had been based on himself, but had been created when he was thirteen, and was therefore shorter than he had been before the Catastrophe.

But his parents still recognized him, which was good, because if he had just looked at their faces, he wouldn't have recognized them.

~oOo~

The Round Table Alliance didn't interrogate Eins in a dimly lit room. They didn't form a kangaroo court, or threaten him with being sent back to the Cathedral.

What would be the point? What justice could they extract?

After all, it was perfectly within his rights to withdraw Honesty from the alliance at any time, and as a large guild, they had provided much of the mana and funding required to build the portal talisman.

But he still felt the full weight of their accusatory gazes.

He had worked with them for almost two years, and genuinely respected them and their opinions.

So it was hard to see the betrayal on Marielle's face, and the disgust on Isaac's.

But Eins viewed himself as a principled man, even if no one else felt the same.

So he explained to their stony faces that Plant Hwyaden had promised only one thing to him- that they wouldn't monopolize the technology like the Round Table Alliance would.

He was gratified to see their faces shift as they realized he didn't do it for personal gain.

With the exception of perhaps Marielle, his colleagues led guilds where many of their players were at least resigned to being stuck in Elder Tale, if not outright enthused.

He could even sympathize- being the kind of player who had enough time to lead a massive guild like Honesty, he wasn't the kind of player who'd had a whole lot of ties back home.

But Eins led the less elite, less driven players. The players who'd had relatively ordinary lives before the Catastrophe, who played Elder Tale not as an escape, but simply a hobby. Interacting with them, he saw every day how badly they missed their family and friends.

He'd understood, and even agreed with the decision that his guild would be one of the last to have a representative sent back home. After all, his guild had few exceptional players, and they were sorely needed to keep order.

And yet, aside from how slowly it was taking to move the Japanese Adventurers back, he knew Adventurers from other regions would have an even more difficult time making it back to their respective nations.

It was a bit soft-hearted of him, but this political squabble with Plant Hwyaden wasn't worth denying the entire world their way back home until the rest of the Alliance felt good and ready.

Of course, Eins knew he'd be "asked" to step down from his position as guildmaster.

His betrayal would be swept under a rug, and no one would know of how he martyred himself.

… Maybe he should write a book.

~oOo~

"Item six on our agenda." Kazuhiko cleared his throat, and rustled his sheaf of papers. He had positioned himself between Nureha and Indicus. The latter, despite the already hour-long meeting, still maintained an acerbic glare towards the former.

The ten seats of Plant Hwyaden lounged in an opulently adorned compartment, dimly lit by an assortment of candelabras. Trees blurred past the circular portholes, distorted by the space-warping magic of the levitating train.

"We need to discuss last night. Indicus, if you please."

Indicus opened her mouth, but was interrupted by KR, as the green-haired elf made an offhand comment about "saving the best for last."

She sneered at him, but didn't deign to comment. "Eins has been our agent for months, but so far had been of limited utility. It came of something as a surprise that he'd be willing to give us one of the portal talismans, but it wasn't outside the realm of belief." She grimaced. "We had originally planned to send Nureha through anyways, and decided that would be our best option regardless. But Nureha decided it would be okay to waste our time being indecisive with the follow through, so the Genius got through and our plans got fucked."

Finished summarizing, she returned to glaring at Nureha.

Uncharacteristically, Quon spoke up. "Actually, I don't think Nureha had anything to do with it – I think something about how much energy it takes to make a portal spawns geniuses. That's why the Geniuses showed up after the Catastrophe, and why one just happened to be present when we opened the portal."

Jered smacked him. "Shaddup boy, don't interrupt your betters." The elderly elf shut down Quon. Had this not been so in-character for him, Kazuhiko would have suspected this to be an intentional deflection. Jered continued. "The important part is that we've still got a summon on the other side of the portal feeding us data. What've they told us?"

"Very little," said KR. "Aside from the short timeframe, I haven't gotten its paws on any computing equipment it could use."

"Then try harder, you incompetent jackass."

KR rolled his eyes, ignoring Indicus's snide remarks.

"Has any progress been made on reverse engineering the portal talisman?" Roreil had an almost innocent expression, his round features and round armor giving him a childlike appearance incongruent with the atmosphere of the meeting.

"Not yet, blondie. We've had even less time to work with it than KR." Zeldys's words were clipped, but not polite.

The train rattled.

Kazuhiko gave a perfunctory glance to the outside of the train and noted that they were now over the mountains that separated Westelande from Eastal.

Returning his attention to the group, he sighed. It seemed like placing the discussion about their next move at the end of the session had backfired. All this stress wasn't doing him any favors. If it hadn't been for his status as an adventurer, he knew the grey hairs in his otherwise long, black mane would have quickly multiplied.

As such, he needed to return their attention to the topic on hand.

"All that aside, what will our next move be?"

To his surprise, it was Nureha that spoke. Kazuhiko had known her home life had been exceptionally unpleasant, and she had developed extensive self-esteem issues due to that. He'd seen improvement over much of her first year in Elder Tale, but she'd been backsliding for the past few months, likely due to Indicus's abuse.

"We still have the portal talisman. Our plans will continue."

For all that she was a figurehead, her charisma was powerful when she chose to use it.

Indicus of course began immediately squabbling with her, but the other seats seemed amenable to simply maintaining the status quo.

Indeed, he had been ready to propose the idea himself. He'd joined Plant Hwyaden out of a sense of duty, but that didn't make the countless administrative tasks easier. Reducing their numbers, and by extension, Indicus's power base, would be extremely beneficial.

~oOo~

IMPORTANT NOTICE: As of today (6/12/16) on reddit's /r/anime subreddit, a contest for deciding the best girl is ongoing. Currently, Akatsuki, Marielle, and Lenessia are in the running. For the love of DATABASE make a reddit account and start participating! Let's COUNTERACTION RISING all over those inferior anime girls!

A/N: Thanks to Mizu25, my beta!

Last edited 6/13/26: The last Shoryu section has been moved back to chapter 9, due to advice on reddit. It's been slightly modified, but not by much.