Isekei Story idea 0.2

I’d been shot.  Killed.  Murdered.  Why?  Because I tried to help someone?  Did I have family?  Was I being mourned?  Forgotten?  Who was I?

I drew several breaths through my aching throat, coughing.  A name.  Name... from there I could build everything else...

Akira...

Was that my name?

Akira.  I’d been... nineteen?  Twenty?  Out of high school, but I hadn't started college.  Working at a convenience store trying to get life together.  I played a lot of games online... watched a bunch of anime.  Enough that everything I’d just gone through felt a little too familiar.  I hadn’t been hit by a truck, had I?

A gleam of metal upon the barrel slowly swinging to face me...

No.  Not a truck...

A person behind the shooter.  A friend.  Coworker.  Big eyes staring at me, desperate...

BANG.

I shook, coughing and cried out... but that wasn’t my voice.  This wasn’t right.

If magic is possible in this world... could I stop myself from getting killed?  Get a second chance?

Maybe...

I took several more breaths, listening to the rattle in my throat.  I couldn’t feel any clothes on this aching body.    Slowly I opened my eye, looking at blue sky lancing through my fingers. I lifted my hand from my face.  Not my hand.  Even dirty as it was, this wasn’t my hand.

It wasn’t even a boy’s hand...

“Oh god,” I muttered, my voice high and alien.  Above me, I stared at a length of rope swaying from a branch.  It looked as if it’d snapped.  Was that why my wrists hurt so bad?  I slowly moved my hand aside.  Oh god, there were things on my chest... not big things, but softer than anything I was familiar with.  The leaves were a strange blue green hue, and I’d never seen round leaves like that before.  Heck, I’d almost never seen the leaves period in the city.

Something twitched under my butt...

“Snake!” was the first thing I thought of as I tried to roll away, but I felt it batter my legs.  The grass was long and itchy and I wound up on my stomach.

The snake was still attached to my butt.  With trepidation, I reached back, felt along my spine, and... there.  A transition to fur.  I sat up, looking at the filthy gray fur on the tube like appendage.  I reached up, feeling the sides of my head.  No ears.  Slowly my fingers moved up into tangled hair... ears.  Furry... pointed...

...feline...

“I got resurrected as a catgirl?” I blurted.  Well, tried.  Immediately my aching throat seized up in a fit of coughing.  Slowly I shifted on to my knees.  This body was badly bruised.  Very badly.  I could feel my ribs easily.  Red blotches were starting to turn blue and were swollen up.  Numerous scratches, some scabbed over and others.  I had some patches of fur on my shoulders and between my... breasts...

Oh god I did not want to deal with that right now.

Slowly I looked around.  Was whatever had attacked this body still around?  I couldn’t see any...

That’s a castle.

That’s a castle surrounded by a city...

It wasn’t quite ‘generic fantasy castle;.  It sat on a hill at the center of a nearly concentric town.  Not perfectly round.  Just enough wiggle here and there to feel more normal in spite of the abnormality. Tall towers and a tall keep surrounded by walls a few miles away.  A river snaked around it.  I could see barges and boats.

Civilization.

I rose, trying hard to ignore everything from my ribs to my knees.  Clothes anywhere?  No.  Trampled grass.  I looked at the rope hanging, staring at the heavy knot and the broken rope.  I touched my aching throat.

Had this person I was in... been murdered?

The soul’s gone...

There wasn’t anything to do about it.  The rope was old, but I wasn’t in any condition to try and climb up and detach it.  I had no clothes, and I doubted that was good in any world.  Something had happened to this body and I had no idea what or why.  I wasn’t even sure I wanted to know.  Not only that, but I was hungry and dirty.

Usually the isekei hero gets summoned before the king, given some starting equipment, and some sort of goal.  Me?  I was recently deceased, in a body that felt as though it’d been battered by rocks, female and feline to boot.  If I ever did find out that voice that ‘helped’ me, I’d have some strong words to offer.

I walked in the direction of the castle, the easiest landmark around.  Aside from some mountains in the distance, it was the highest terrain.  I kept an eye open for anything large enough to serve as covering.  The temperature was tolerably warm and I had a stick I hope would serve me if I had to hit something.

The ears atop my head swiveled as they detected noise.  Creaking wheels.  Jangling chains.  Beasts of burden.  Cautiously I made my way forward, keeping behind the brush as much as possible.

A number of large wagons were being pulled down a paved road, each one with six large wheels and drawn by a wide bodied, six legged lizard the size of a hippopotamus.  Many were stacked high with a boxes, crates, and barrels, all destined for the city, I assumed.  The people seemed... human.  Humanoid.  Some had pointy ears and more delicate features.  Others were short, wide, and swarthy.  Some were... huge.  I gaped at the sight of a woman who must have been three meters tall with bright blue skin and horns.  What I didn’t see were people with cat features...

Up the road, I saw where one of the wagons had been pulled off.  The green and brown lizard was busy scooping mouthfuls of grass into its maw as a pointy eared man with a bow was adjusting something on its harness.  Several crates seemed to have fallen off and broken open and a woman in trousers and a tunic was busy trying to gather up the goods that had spilled out.

I moved along the bushes, not sure what everyone’s reaction would be to me.  Someone had attacked this body, but I doubted it would be people coming into town, right?  I moved till the motionless wagon was between myself and the convoy.  Tugging my... tail.. Between my legs and trying to cover my chest I coughed and said tentatively, “Excuse–”

The tall woman whirled, shouting a phrase like “Aht’la tah Felyn!”.  I guessed she was human, with long chestnut brown hair, and her eyes widened in shock.  She snatched up a piece of crate, gripping it like a baseball bat.  At her shout, the man at the reins drew his bow and notched an arrow with surprising swiftness.  I did the only thing I could think off: throwing myself at her feet, sob, potentially wet myself and cry out, “Please don’t kill me please don’t I know you can’t understand me but I’m from another world and I died once and I don’t want to die again and I think there was some kind of mistake and I know I’m babbling but please don’t kill me...” I trailed off, sobbing.

The tall pointy eared man was watching the bushes behind me, saying something in short definitive tones that boded ill for me.  But the woman hesitated as I groveled at her feet.  She said a phrase at a slow speed.  “I don’t understand you and you don’t understand me but I don’t want to die.  Please!”

The man repeated his phrase, but the woman knelt before me.  She pulled out a small purple crystal the size of her palm.  A purple light rose from it in a cloud and then settled on my head. There was a jumbled sensation in my head and then she rapidly stood back.  “Do you understand me now?”

“Where’s the rest of your warband, Felyn?” the man snapped.

“Oh thank you!” I gushed.  “I don’t know how you did that but thank you so much.  I don’t have a warband, I don’t know what a Felyn is, I don’t even know where I am and I not completely certain who I am.  My name is Akira.”

“Kill it, Lurue.  We can get a bounty from the king and call it a bonus,” he said coolly.

“Xoxothial!  Look at her.  Felyn or not, imagine what she’s been through.  She’s not acting like a monster.  We should take her into Gateway.  Maybe she’s an exile,” Lurue said as she looked down at me sympathetically.  I had no idea what this body had recently endured but I tried my best to look as pitiful as possible.  It wasn’t hard.

“Where there’s one Felyn there’s bound to be dozens more,” he said sharply.  “Besides, what do you think they’ll do at town?  Kill her and claim the bounty for themselves.”  There was a bounty on catgirls in this world?  Seriously?  If they planned on asking me to save the world from a dark lord or something, they could just fuckoff!  “What’s your plan?  Smuggle her to the darkmarket?  Keep her as a pet?  Get her sworn to the Law?”

“Why not?  If she can speak she should have a soul, no matter what the Unian church might say.  If she has a soul she’s not a monster and can be sworn to the law.  Besides, just look at her.  She’s just a kitten.”

I was?  I suddenly realized that my lack of boobage and their excess of tall might have another explanation and this coincided with really, really, REALLY wanting some clothes right about now!  “Worst Isekai ever,” I muttered under my breath.  That got an arrow pointed right at me.  I resumed patheticness.  I seemed to have a knack for it.

“Xoxothiel, if you plan on ever coming back to my bed you will help this Felyn get sworn to the lawstone,” Lurue insisted.

“Ugh,” the man gave one last look at the bushes but when no apparent army of catgirls manifested he slumped and lowered the bow.  “You’re going to get our license yanked, Lurue.  And for what?  A felyn?”

“For a girl needing our help, felyn or not.  Think what happened to her,” Lurue said.

“What... what happened to me?” I muttered before I realized I didn’t want to know that answer.  The possibilities for this body’s injuries... for the soul departing... suddenly took a much darker turn.  “Please... just tell me what to do and I’ll do it,” I said, face pressed into the dirt at her feet.

Xoxothiel let out a long sigh.  “Fine, but if we get our license pulled and evicted from the trader’s guild I swear you’ll never hear the end of it from me.”

“Wait,” I blurted, looking at them with dirt coming off my cheeks.  “I don’t want to get either of you in trouble.  I really don’t understand anything that’s going on.  What’s a ‘felyn’?  Why can’t I just go into town?  Why is there a bounty?  What is a lawstone?”

The pair shared another long look.  Lurue knelt to look me in the eye with a small smile.  “You’re a felyn.  You’re the people who used to live here before Mundi was founded.”

“And you’re raiders, murderers, and worse to anyone more than a day’s ride from the city,” Xoxothiel added, getting a glare from Lurue.  “She said she didn’t understand.”

“So... catgirls... are evil here?” I muttered in bafflement.

“The king says so, and the unian church backs them up too.  There’s a bounty for anyone who turns over a felyn’s head to the king,” she said.  “They claim felyn are just monsterkin and therefore have inferior souls, if not outright soulless monsters who escaped dungeons.”

“Most felyn are property.  They’re technically slaves, but a better word is ‘pet’.  After all, slaves are people.  Felyn aren’t people... at least to King Leopole.  Still the law applies to anyone who magically binds themselves to the lawstone.  It means you follow the rules, pay taxes, have to go to court for punishment, all that.  So Lurue wants to smuggle you into the city so you can swear yourself to the law.  It applies to those who swear, not to race or religion or title.  Either you follow the law, or you don’t.  Even Leopole swore to it.  Twice.  He had to a second time when he was crowned.”

I looked at her and got a smile and nod.  “But you’ll get in trouble if you sneak me in.”  This place seemed to put a pretty heavy emphasis on the law.

“Emphasis on the sneak.  We can say you’re an animal at the gate, but that means we’d have to hand you over to the slave market.  Trade guild rules wouldn't let us keep you.  I don’t know what’ll happen to you then.”  Given that there was a literal price on my head, I didn’t like someone else having a profit incentive that involved me losing it.

“We can also try to get you to the darkmarket.  Criminals are already outside the law.  You’d still be in danger, but they have some rules,” Lurue said with a worried smile.

“Honestly, the best thing for you would be to go out, find some other felyn and leave the country altogether.  They are your people after all,” Xoxothiel said as he pointed towards the distant mountains.  But they really weren’t my people.  They were this body’s people.  I had no idea what ‘cat person society’ would be like, but my brain kept going to yarn and scratching posts.

“I’m willing to take the chance and get you inside,” she said as she pulled out a medallion of a woman with a bow, a tiger and wolf flanking her.  “The Mistress of Beasts says felyn are people, not animals, and you look like you’ve been through a lot.  I don’t want to just load up and leave you without knowing you’ll be... better.”

I took a deep breath, pinching the bridge of my nose.  Try to swear myself to the law?  That put them at risk.  Accept my fate as a pet?  Who knew that that would lead to.  Try to get to the darkmarket and live on the fringe of society?  Or just leave town altogether and hope to find more ‘felyn’ like me.