Arablest/ Prototype

When I opened my eyes, I was no longer on the field. I appeared to be in a simple room, and I was lying on a cot of some kind. There was a young woman sitting a stool next to the cot I was lying on. The only other furnishings of the room were two windows, a table, a lance hanging on the wall, and the door.

I shifted my position, and then groaned. My wounds still hurt, but they were bandaged.

“Oh, so you’re awake.” said the young women. “Are you all right?”

I looked at the woman, and then glanced away. Despite her plain clothes her… form was rather pleasing to the eye. It didn’t help being a healthy 16-year-old. I sneaked another glance from the corner of my eye; she appeared to be about the same age as I was, actually. But still. I had never been in this close proximity with another girl before, and it was making me extremely nervous. The closes I’ve ever been to a girl was in class, but class was always full of people, and I rarely talked to the students next to me, so it never bothered me then. I closed my eyes and took a deep breath to calm myself.

“Where… where am I?” I finally managed to ask, collecting myself as I sat up. Amazingly, it didn’t actually hurt that much to sit up, despite the numerous wounds. Perhaps they were all shallow? But even then, they still hurt a bit.
“You’re in the village of Barcanta. I found you injured on the plains nearby, and took you in. Are you feeling any better?”
“I… I s-suppose, yeah... eh, what is your name, miss…?”
“My name is Leona. And yours?”
“I..I’m Jeremy.”
“Jeremy? That’s a strange name. I also find your speech and mannerism strange… But that is of no matter.”

There was a short silence as I processed and sorted the newfound information. The girl’s name was Leona. She was certainly good looking, and completely out of my league; I would have no chance of getting someone like her as a girlfriend. No—I never had a chance of getting a girlfriend in the first place, and I never sought to get one, so why am I getting all nervous? I took a deep breath, and before long my nervousness about being close to her was pretty much gone. If I treated her like everyone else, like I normally would have done, then I should have no trouble. So what if my eyes are attracted by her looks? It’s what’s on the inside that counts, after all, and I don’t even know this girl. She could have been the one to have taken me away from home against my will, for all I know, or perhaps she was taken here along with me. But if that was the case, how did she know where I was when I didn’t?

Either way, I knew I was in this ‘Barcanta’ place against my will.

And that brings up the next point I processed. As far as I knew, I’ve never heard of a place called Barcanta. I’ve looked at maps before, but this name was like no other. It couldn’t be in another language, either, because I was speaking English, and the girl actually understood me. That actually told me a lot; as she was very fluent with English in this shabby place, English was likely to be either a native language here, or a language that was taught here as well. That cut off a lot of places where Barcanta could have been. Then again, there was no way I could have travelled so far in such a short amount of time, so it was likely I was still in the U.S.… assuming I was out for less than a day. Even then, if I was out for a day, there was no way we could have left the U.S. already. I had no choice to ask the girl where this place was; but I didn’t want to. I hated starting conversations, and asking questions was usually out of question for me.

You see, as I was brought up, I learned that questions were seen as a sign of weakness. However, right now I was desperate, so I gathered the courage to speak.

“You said this place is called Barcanta? Where is this place? I’ve never heard of it before…”
“Barcanta is in the country of Raalte. Surely you’ve heard of that?”

…Raalte. That only confused me more.
As far as I knew, there was no place on the maps that even resembled the name Raalte.
I didn’t know what to do, when I realized that I should probably see if I could contact home.

“Eh…I can’t say that I do… I thank you for your hospitality, but… um… could you let me use your phone? I don’t have one on me.” I asked, cautiously. If she refused outright, she might actually have been the one who abducted me, but if she didn’t have one, than perhaps she was in a similar predicament.

“Phone? What is a phone? I’ve never heard of that before…”
“Hm? Oh, uh, never mind, then.”

… What?
First, cell phones should be extremely common these days. Just about everyone I knew or saw (except me) had cell phones. Even the third world countries have heard of them; they even had newer technology by new, if I remembered correctly. So who was this girl, who has never even heard of a phone? I mean, seriously. Even people who lived in rural areas in third world countries had phones by now.

The woman stood up. “So, are you feeling any better? You must have been in a tough battle to be scratched up like that.”
I stared at the floor, because I still could not bring myself to look at her. I was never able to look at anyone directly in the face. It was… difficult for me to do that. Perhaps this was another part of my upbringing. It was a bare plain wooden floor.

As I stared at the floor, I searched frantically for an answer, a reason for my injuries. I didn’t know the cause myself, either, so what should I have said? Stuttering, I decided to tell the minimum truth.
“I…er… I remember… I don’t know what happened…” I finally managed to stutter out.
“Well, no matter. Here’s your sword, and some clothes and other strange materials I found in the bag next to you.”
I picked up the rapier that I was sure was not mine, and looked in the bag. There were clothes in there, and also some books. Written in English, as well, which was fortunate, I guess, but these books weren’t mine. In fact, there was no way that the entire contents of the bag could have belonged to me; the clothes were strange, as if right out of a video game, like the ones I wore. But the strangest thing was, inside the front cover of the books, read: Property of Jeremy.

I didn’t recognize the books themselves, but I was certain I had never received books like these before. Therefore, these books must have belonged to someone else who was also named Jeremy. But I guess I should hold onto them for now.

“What are these anyways?” Leona asked, holding up one of the books and looking at it curiously. I’ve seen tomes and other similar things, but none had writing like this.”
“It’s a book.” I said. I had never seen the books before, however. I suppose I would spend some time reading them now that I didn’t know what to do here. “They are usually good sources of information.”
“I see…” said Leona.

…She didn’t even know what a book was. Seriously? What is wrong with this place?

Feeling a little better, I started to stand up, to get out of the bed. I suddenly realized that this must have been Leona’s bed, but that didn’t bother me. A bed is a bed, even if it belonged to someone else. I’m fine as long as no one else was sleeping in it as well; that would be too strange.

As I stood up, however, we both heard a loud noise outside. It sounded like someone or some people where hitting pieces of metal tougher. The noise repeated over and over again, and I heard loud grunts, and then screams of pain.
I reacted first, staying calm as I tried to access the situation. “What’s happening?” I asked, as I ran to the window to see what was going on outside. “I hear screaming. What’s going on?”

“We—We’re being attacked by bandits!” exclaimed Leona, who grabbed the lance on the wall, ran to the door, and opened it.
“Wait!” I cried, before she could step outside. “You’re not going to fight with a lance, are you?” I said, thinking of the guns the bandits would probably be carrying. The lance was clearly an ornamental object; nobody used weapons like those anymore. If you wanted to fight, you brought knives and stayed hidden, or you brought guns. From the sound of it, though, it sounded like they were going at each other with metal pipes or something.

Well, bandits would normally be armed, and obviously guns would be the obvious choice for bandits. However, I heard no gunfire. Perhaps It really was ok to use a lance; it might help scare them off.

“What’s wrong with this lance?” she asked.
“I… I don’t want you to get hurt.” I said, suddenly feeling kind of stupid. “I’ll go with you.”
“Are you sure?” she asked, concerned. “You’re stilled injured, you know.”
“I’m fine.” I took a few steps forward, and drew the rapier, lunging a few times with it before sheathing it again. I wasn’t sure if I could do this. “We’ll keep each other alive, all right?”

I was afraid not because of the bandits, but because of my own inadequate skills in swordplay.

You have to remember that all the fighting techniques I learned, I taught myself.

Well, to be more accurate, I was scared of dying.

“Right!” she replied. And as she turned around out walk out the door, I finally winced from the pain of my wounds. I had been holding it in, having trained myself to resist pain multiple times because of my interest for martial arts. Well, to tell the truth, it didn’t actually hurt that much. I could still run, sort of, without limping.

When I finally took a step outside, I was surprised to see men armed with axes fighting a few outnumbered and weaker citizens, armed with pitchforks and such. Only Leona, I, and one other man were armed with real weapons.

But axes and swords, of all weapons? Who even owned such weapons anymore… Wait
This is a rural place, after all. Would it not be strange to hold ceremonial weapons or weapons passed down from their ancestors? If so, then perhaps it would make sense. Besides, most of the citizens were armed with ordinary farm tools.

But why didn’t anyone have a gun? I didn’t understand. Perhaps everyone here couldn’t afford one? This is a rural place, after all, and bandits usually want money, as well. Still, even without firearms, I was afraid to go to battle because of my lack of skills.

And where was the government when you need them? Then again, why would the government care about such a rural place as this…? All that meant was that I should fight, or run away to ensure my survival. I might have promised the girl that I would help keep her alive, but I would probably be useless on the field, and end up getting in their way instead. Besides, why should I care about their lives?

Leona herself had already charged into battle without hesitation, and had just run a lance through a bandit, blood splattering all over the place.

However, I knew a thing or two about fighting with these weapons: I knew, even with the lance’s long reach, in theory it would be at a disadvantage over the pure power of an axe user, because with an axe you can use your power to negate the lance's only advantage of long reach. Once inside a lance user's reach, they can become quite vulnerable to shorter weapons such as an axe. In theory, anyway.
And every bandit had an axe.

Not only that, it obviously would take some time to pull your lance or any weapon out of a corpse, and her lance was still inside the now dead bandit's body.

Leona withdrew her lance, and as she did so, I saw a bandit closing in on her, and she had no time to dodge, attack, or block.

But what could I do? I was too far, and even if I was close enough I was truly a coward. There was no way I could suddenly run into a fight on my own will. I would rather run then step in and try to save someone I barely even knew.

I froze as fear of what was going to happen as I watched the bandit swing down the axe.

The girl I just met was going to die, and I couldn't do anything–!