First Person: The Sunset of Reason
The taste in my mouth was a symphony from hell composed of three movements: cheap tequila, bile, and regret. My head... oh, my head. Imagine Thor's Mjolnir and Captain America's shield had a bastard child, and that child was using my skull as its personal playroom. That's how I felt.
The last coherent memory I have is a nebula of strobe lights, the bass of the music thrumming so hard I felt my internal organs reorganizing to the beat of some DJ with god-like sonic aspirations. I was at a party. No, "party" is too civilized a word. It was an apocalyptic event of hedonism, one of those massive congregations you only see in teen movies with an unreal production budget and zero parental supervision. The kind of party that, in my previous line of work, would have ended with a twenty-page report and at least three arrests for disturbing the peace.
But I wasn't working. I was "socializing." My cousin, a college student with more hormones than common sense, had dragged me along. "It'll be fun," he said. "You'll meet people," he said. What he didn't say was that the "people" would be a horde of youngsters whose main aspiration in life seemed to be reaching an alcoholic coma before midnight.
I remember flashes. A garden gnome, one of those with a red hat and a stupid grin, being used as a piñata. Except instead of candy, it was filled with something definitely not for children. I remember someone trying to crowd surf and failing miserably, landing on a drinks table and creating a tsunami of alcohol and glass. And I remember the dare. There's always a stupid dare.
"Bet you won't drink the 'Particle Accelerator'," a girl with electric blue hair and more piercings than sense of danger told me.
It was a vile concoction, an unholy mix of liquors no human should ever combine. My FBI agent brain, the one trained to assess threats and make logical decisions, was on vacation in the Bahamas. The one that took over was my other brain, the one that runs on sarcasm and a profound underestimation of consequences.
"Particle Accelerator? Sounds like it'll give me superpowers or fulminant pancreatic cancer," I replied with a grin I hoped looked more confident than I felt.
"Only one way to find out, Agent."
Oh, shit. My cousin had been bragging. First mistake. My mistake was accepting the glass. It smelled of nail polish remover and bad decisions. The liquid had a radioactive glow. I chugged it. The world became a kaleidoscope of noise and color, and then... nothing. Darkness. The sweet, silent embrace of oblivion.
Third Person: The Stranger's Awakening
A man lay on the cold concrete of a rooftop. The morning sun, a relentless interrogation spotlight, bore down on him, dragging him from unconsciousness. He wore faded jeans and a black t-shirt with a band logo he no longer remembered if he liked or not. His shoes were, curiously, a couple of meters away, placed neatly side by side as if someone had carefully removed them.
He stirred, a groan escaping his lips. It was the sound of a soul tormented by a hangover of biblical proportions. Slowly, he pushed himself up, sitting and clutching his head with both hands as if fearing it might split in two. His eyes, clouded by sleep and alcohol, blinked, trying to focus on a world that refused to stand still.
He recognized nothing. Absolutely nothing. The building he was on was immaculate, a marvel of modern architecture. Solar panels, strange satellite dishes, and a metallic finish that gleamed under the sun. In the distance, the ocean stretched to the horizon, and the city visible seemed straight out of a science fiction magazine. Everything was too clean, too orderly, too... Japanese.
His training, buried under layers of nausea and confusion, began to resurface. With slow, deliberate movements, he patted his body. No apparent injuries, apart from a couple of bruises that were probably party souvenirs. He checked his pockets. Empty. No wallet, no phone, no keys. Not even the standard lint. He was completely clean. A professional would have called him "sterilized."
He stood up, using a metal railing to steady himself. The world took one last spin before settling. He looked down, at the school courtyard. And that's when reality, or the lack thereof, hit him with the force of a battering ram.
The courtyard was enormous, with perfectly manicured gardens and tiled paths. But what caught his eye were the students. Or, more accurately, the female students. Dozens of girls in uniforms that seemed too elaborate to be practical. Skirts, blazers, bows... a sea of teenage femininity. And in the middle of them, like a beacon of clumsiness in an ocean of grace, was a boy. A single black-haired, remarkably average-looking boy.
The man on the rooftop narrowed his eyes. Something about that scene felt familiar. Painfully familiar. Like a bad joke you've already heard but can't help but listen to again.
Second Person: Welcome to the Asylum
And then, you realize.
It's not just a school full of girls. It's that school. The memory hits you, not of the party, but of weekend afternoons when your cousin monopolized the TV. You see him, the boy. Ichika Orimura. The only man on the planet capable of piloting an Infinite Stratos. And then you see her, with her long black ponytail and severe demeanor. Houki Shinonono. And the aristocratic-looking blonde, Cecilia Alcott, laughing with almost insulting elegance. And the small girl with pigtails, Lingyin Huang, arguing with Ichika about some triviality.
No. Way.
You, a decorated former FBI agent, a specialist in behavioral analysis and interrogation tactics, have woken up not in a Tijuana alley after a bad night—which would be understandable—but on the rooftop of the IS Academy. You've transmigrationed, or been kidnapped, or you're in the most vivid and specific alcoholic coma in human history, directly into a f**king anime. A harem, mecha, teen drama anime.
Panic, that cold, unpleasant old friend, tries to climb up your throat. You suppress it with the force of habit. Panic is a luxury you can't afford. You're a professional, remember? Analyze the situation.
Fact 1: You're in a fictional world that, for some reason, is now real. Fact 2: You have no ID, no money, no idea how you got here. Your last memory is a drink named after a physics experiment. Fact 3: You're trapped in a high-security facility that's also a high school. A high school full of girls trained to pilot weapons of mass destruction.
Your mind, trained to see threats everywhere, doesn't see cute girls. It sees a minefield. Each of those students is a potential risk. Teenage hormones mixed with advanced military technology... it's the worst possible combination. It's an international incident waiting to happen at every hallway corner. And the epicenter of it all, the catalyst, is that boy, Ichika. A "high-value asset with zero situational awareness," as you'd classify him in a report.
Your primary objective crystallizes with absolute clarity, cutting through the hangover fog. It's not to understand why. It's not to become a hero. It's not, and God forgive you if you ever consider it, to get your own harem.
Your objective is one: escape.
First Person: The Escape Plan
Alright, brain, let's get to work. Leave existentialism to the philosophers and the regretful drunks. I'm both right now, but survival takes priority.
Priority One: Get off this rooftop.
I approach the edge again, this time with purpose. I observe the building's structure. No exterior fire escapes. Of course not. That would be too easy and aesthetically unpleasing for such a posh place. The only door I saw is secured with an electronic system. I could try to short-circuit it if I had tools, but my pockets laugh at my optimism.
Plan A (Brute Force): Dismissed. I can't break down a reinforced steel door. Plan B (Subtlety): Impossible without equipment. Plan C (Patience): Wait for someone to come. Bad. Very bad. The first question would be: "Who the hell are you and what are you doing on my roof?" I don't have a good answer for that. "I'm a former FBI agent who drank too much and dimension-hopped" would probably earn me a straitjacket and a padded room.
I need Plan D (The Lucky Idiot's Plan).
My gaze sweeps the building's facade. Pipes, ducts, ledges. My body is no longer that of a twenty-something at the Quantico academy, but I still retain most of my physical conditioning. I could try it. A descent of several floors down an almost sheer wall. What's the worst that could happen? Besides a painful and embarrassing death, of course.
"Don't be stupid," I tell myself out loud. My voice sounds raspy. "Gotta find another way."
I move away from the edge and start walking around the rooftop, investigating every corner. Behind a large air conditioning unit, I find something. A ventilation shaft. A big one. Big enough for a person to crawl through. The grille is held by screws, but they look standard. With a bit of luck and something I can use as a lever... My shoes.
I pick one up. The heel is hard rubber. I try it. I wedge the edge of the heel into the screw slot. It's not an Allen wrench, but with enough pressure and slow turning... one of the screws yields. A small victory. I feel like an evil genius.
"There you go, Sarcasm-Man," I murmur. "Your superpower isn't flying, it's low-budget ingenuity."
As I work on the second screw, I hear a sound. A metallic clack. It's coming from the rooftop door. Someone's coming in.
Shit.
Time is running out. Adrenaline, a far more potent antidote than coffee, floods my system, sweeping away the last vestiges of the hangover. Panic tries to knock again, and this time I mentally yell at it to go to hell.
I act on instinct. I drop the shoe and the grille and launch myself behind the air conditioning unit, ducking into the smallest, darkest space I can find. My heart pounds like a jackhammer. I try to control my breathing. In through the nose, out through the mouth. Just like the old days, waiting in a surveillance car for hours.
The door opens with a soft hiss. I hear footsteps. Light ones. Not security guard boots.
"Hello? Is anyone up here?"
The voice. It's female. Young. And it has a... German accent?
I dare a peek through a crack in the AC unit's chassis. And I see her. Silver hair pulled back in a long braid, an eye patch over her left eye, and a uniform that screams "authority." Laura Bodewig. The German super soldier. Ichika's self-proclaimed fiancée.
She scans the rooftop with an intense gaze, her eyes moving with trained efficiency. She's not just a student. She's a Level A threat. If she finds me, she won't be asking friendly questions.
"Chifuyu-nee said she heard a noise up here last night," she murmurs to herself. "Probably just the wind?"
Yes, the wind. I am the wind. The most hungover and terrified wind you've ever met. Now turn around and go, Gretchen.
She takes a few more steps, dangerously close to my hiding spot. My whole body is tensed, ready to run or fight, though both options are terrible. Run, where to? Fight a girl who could snap me in half without breaking a sweat?
She stops. Her head tilts slightly. And then, her eyes fix on the ground, right where I was working. She sees the ventilation grille with a screw half-removed. She sees my abandoned shoe.
Her posture shifts. She goes from "casual investigation" to "combat alert" in less than a second. Her hand instinctively moves to her hip, where she'd carry a weapon if this were the real world.
You're screwed. That's the second person's voice again, the voice of brutal, objective truth. You've been discovered. A fifteen-year-old German super soldier has discovered you because you forgot your shoe. Cinderella disaster version. Your FBI career would be the laughingstock of the office.
Laura doesn't shout. She doesn't call for backup. She simply stands still, analyzing the scene. She's smart. She knows whoever was here is either gone or... hiding.
And I, from my pathetic hiding spot, can only think one thing.
"Of all the rooftops in all the anime worlds, I had to land on hers."