Ichiro Inuyashiki spent some time with Doraemon and Nobita Nobi. For him, it was a strange kind of feeling to spend time with beings born out of an imagination. The two, kind and generous as they were, felt strange to him. He couldn't quite expand on his feeling; there wasn't quite a way to explain the feeling of hanging out with people who aren't real but real.
Inuyashiki constantly asked questions about Doraemon's gadgets and adventures.
Doraemon and Nobita were unnerved by Ichiro's knowledge; Ichiro knew a lot about their exploits and current lives. However, the thing that mostly unnerved the two was the fact that they were fictional.
A mere manga made by some author. An anime, still running to this day.
Long and silent, Doraemon and Nobita sat in trembling quiet, burdened by the strange realization that their lives were not their own, but merely the illustration of an author's pencil. After some time, Doraemon calmed down.
Doraemon explained that there were millions of dimensions. A dimension where they were fictional shouldn't be a surprise.
Inuyashiki asked if there were infinite dimensions; wouldn't that mean their original worlds were out of reach? Doraemon assured that just as there were infinite dimensions where he was fiction, there were just as many dimensions where he was real.
That would mean there were also infinite varieties of Inuyashiki's dimensions. However, for reasons Doraemon couldn't quite explain, he assured him that this infinite prison was, in a way, tethered but not currently linked to his original dimension.
It wasn't randomly hitting infinite dimensions, just specific ones. Otherwise, this place would have collapsed long ago due to the instability of hitting an infinite amount of dimensions.
Crunch!
Inuyashiki bit into a large radish. It really was tasty, just like Nobita had said during that Ancient Japan adventure movie he saw when he was younger. The young characters time-traveled to ancient Japan and chose to settle there after being grounded by their parents. They made their dwellings inside a mountain they excavated.
Forgetting the rest of the finer details, there was a scene that depicted the young gang consuming large radishes that, when opened, manifested the food they were imagining.
However, due to Nobita's chronic tardiness, he remained unaware of the radishes' mechanics and mistakenly ate one raw. It was still a viable way to eat it though.
Doraemon and Nobita stared at each other then laughed. They certainly remembered that. Nobita was quiet for a moment, he missed those three pets.
Inuyashiki also asked about the Bamboo Copter, Time Cloth, and the Big and Small Light. Their cheerful conversation distracted him from his worries, bringing him a sense of calm.
While lost in thought, the sharp ring of a bell jolted Inyushiki back to reality.
The bell originated from the Ringing Bell Indicator: a large bell suspended from a metal rod, secured by a suction cup at the opposite end. The bell can notify you of anything specific if you whisper your request.
Doraemon whispered about the collisions of both dimensions that created gaps of gateways.
The bell was currently ringing, meaning that this dimension had collided with another dimension. Doraemon hurriedly pulled out the Everywhere Door and thought about the other end dimension that was connected.
The door opened, revealing the dimension that was currently connected.
The other side of the door revealed an alleyway. Doraemon sent the Surveying Helicopter Drone. forward; it was a small helicopter with a small mini pilot that looked like a LEGO character piece.
The drone then flew out of the alleyway, then came back after a minute. The small helicopter drone then produced a small thumb drive-like device.
Doraemon plugged it into the portable sort-of laptop. The information cleanly reported was like an immediate flood; it took Doraemon some time to absorb everything, but to put it briefly, it wasn't Doraemon's nor Inuyashiki's world.
The world on the other side was hardly similar to the modern world. The names and continents were wrong, and so were the people and culture. The money was called 'Jenny,' and the current city that the door was tethered in was called 'Yorknew City.'
An obvious parody of New York City.
Not only that, some ants were causing some trouble. Not the tiny biting red ants but Chimera Ants. Doraemon didn't continue scanning the survey results. He merely closed the laptop and pocketed the everywhere door and Surveying Helicopter Drone.
"Don't worry, we'll get there. Eventually."
Doraemon assured Ichiro, who was on the verge of a mental breakdown since that was the sixth dimension this week, yet no sign of his original world.
The first dimension was a dud; the ruins of Berlin were in full view. The dimension was currently in World War II. A young Red Army conscript saw the door manifest and open, terrified and sticking to his training, shot his PPSH-41 at the door.
The second dimension was another dud, some sort of late medieval world. The world was currently being invaded by these large humanoids that were eating people. Nobita wanted to save the people, but Doraemon advised against it. Saying that this wasn't their world. A young soldier saw them before being crushed by a boulder.
The third dimension was another dud; the world was a place of abject ruin. The city, American in nature, was destroyed apparently because of some clones of a superhero. The survey drone helicopter spotted the supposed hero talking to a large floating man with a gauntlet in his right arm. The large floating man spoke something about worms and standing ready.
The fourth was a world full of robots. The fifth was a world full of overgrown plants. The sixth was the world with a city called Yorknew City.
Ichiro slumped, leaning his head against his arms, staring at the damp carpeted floor. Doraemon was there beside him, patting him on his back, no gloves this time. Just the pat of a friend comforting another friend.
(The next chapter is the resumption of the second battle of Priestella.)