The Gate - A New Green Man Appears

The only thing geekier than becoming an "otaku" and zealously ingesting anime and manga as fast as it pours out of Japan is writing fanfiction based on those imaginary worlds, so here we go; this is me "geeking out." I got my start in fiction writing by creating fan fiction based on the TV show Farscape under the nom de plume PKAmmoTroop. Now decades later I return to form and indulge my inner geek; this is my first foray into anime-based fanfiction.

If you're not a fan of Japanese anime, it's not a single form of entertainment. The films of Hayao Miyazaki are some of the most beautiful, moving pieces of art set to film to date, while other examples are complete and utter crap. I stumbled across an anime series called Gate: Jieitai Kanochi nite, Kaku Tatakaeri, it is exciting, funny, serious, entertaining, and militarily accurate, something not seen in American cinema. The author of the original books, Takumi Yanai, created a theme by naming many of his characters after alcoholic drinks because most of his readers don't speak English so it will sound exotic to them. I chose to continue that theme with my characters, see if you can catch the themes. There are also some other themes that I've been wanting to try in a sci-fi/fantasy piece, such as the use of pheromones in a relationship... and dragons. You can't believe how well a dragon will liven up a story.

As always, except for the characters that I invented, I don't own these characters, I'm just borrowing them and their world from author Takumi Yanai, A-1 Pictures studios, and Sentai Filmworks LLC. who created the source material "Gate: Jieitai Kanochi nite, Kaku Tatakaeri"

Preface: Years ago, when Europe was digging their way out of the rubble of WWIII, and China was still reeling from the Crash of 2025 an event occurred in Japan that sent the modern world spiraling out of control and almost started WWIV. In the heart of Tokyo, the upscale shopping district known as the Ginza became host to a portal to another world. It appeared in the middle of the city looking for all the world like an ancient Roman temple. For several moments it sat silent, shoppers from all over Japan who were at the Ginza district rushed to the temple to photograph the phenomenon. They were gathered in front of the building when the massive doors began to slide open.

Shoppers were trampled to death by the flood of soldiers that poured out of what is now called The Gate. A huge angry legion armed with swords and shields looking like they were a historical recreation of a Roman legion poured into the city on foot, in chariots, on horseback, and riding on dragons. They drove ahead of them huge four-armed angry beasts called ogres that merely wanted to tear people apart. Bipeds that looked like angry wild boars bowled through the crowd like tusked cannon balls. Terrified shoppers were slaughtered by the score.

A Second Lieutenant in the Japan Self Defense Force (JSDF) who was on leave from his unit, Yoji Itami, was there when the gate opened. He convinced the Tokyo police to shelter the crowds in the imperial palace, an act that would have been considered sacrilegious at any other time, but the emperor agreed and the gates to the palace opened, and the grateful subjects poured in and this act saved thousands of lives. The invading army captured many civilians and dragged them back through the gate to another world as slaves while other invading soldiers began hammering at the gates of the Imperial palace. Finally, the JSDF struck back, Cobra gunships from a nearby SDF base cleared the skies over Tokyo of dragons then trained their guns on the legions. Their three barreled 23mm gatling guns spewing out 1500 rounds per minute mowed down the invading army. Armored SDF vehicles eliminated pockets of resistance, leather shields and armor do not slow down a 7.62mm full metal jacket rifle bullet.

Then several weeks later the JSDF poured through the gate and for the first time, a modern army set foot on another world. The Japanese Army and subdued the massive armies waiting for them on the other side of The Gate. Armies of several kingdoms attacked the Japanese military and were slaughtered by modern weapons. This attack was a plot concocted by the leader of the Saderan Empire, Emperor Molt Sol Augustus. He had sent armies of allied countries through the gate first hoping they would be slaughtered, and they were. Then he sent the remaining allied armies charging head first at the invading SDF when Japan appeared on their side of the gate.

After four hours of fighting 10,000 men lay dead on the field of battle and there are no other armies left to challenge Emperor Augustus for control of the Saderan Empire other than Japan with whom Augustus at once began peace negotiations.

Japan immediately built a large base on the Saderan side of The Gate which is now known as the Special Region to Japan. Japan enjoys complete control of information and travel to and from the Special Region. They put a news blackout on everything to do with The Gate and other than videos of the attack on the internet the world at large had no information on The Gate at all. Japan occasionally allowed scientists from allied countries to travel to the Special Region but this news blackout was a justifiable reaction to the events of 2028 because many of the slaves that the armies brought into Japan through The Gate remained in Japan and begged for sanctuary. However, by our standards those poor souls were weird. Very, very weird.

Was the world ready to meet actual elves? Gnomes? Bunny girls? Fox girls?

~~~~~~*~~~~~~

February 17, 2031 - Stefan Hanover knew he was in deeper trouble than he originally suspected. He was decked out in his finest Mossy Oak camouflage pants, shirt, field jacket, boots, hat and gloves. His backpack and scarf were also printed with branches and leaves in the Mossy Oak style, even his rifle was Mossy Oak camouflaged. He looked like an armed brush pile. Right now, he felt like a lost brush pile. He could be back in his safe, warm Arvada Colorado apartment with his anime and manga collection, he just got a classic Witchblade Amaha Masane PVC figurine ($248 on Ebay, an eechi classic!) but somehow, he let himself be talked into going on a hunting trip up in the mountains with a few boys from the VFW. He's done his time stomping the boonies and the sandbox with a gun and now he's done with that shit. He's tired, he's retired, he just wants to pop some corn and watch some classic DVD's he got from the nieces for Christmas. They gave him Dirty Pair (it's not what you think) and he wants to geek out and binge the whole series, but instead he's freezing his ass off and wandering aimlessly on a mountain looking for venison on the hoof.

And then to top it off, exactly what he didn't want to happen, happened. He was trudging along with his hunting partners in the frigid Colorado winter up high on Mt. McClelland when he got interested in what looked like the remains of an ancient narrow-gauge railroad roadbed. Or maybe it was a tramway for ore carts pulled by mules or down on their luck miners for pennies a day. Either way it would be nice to walk on a bit of level ground, his ankles were killing him from being cocked to the side from walking on the steep slope. He had slung his .243 rifle and followed the level path along the side of Mt. McClelland, occasionally he'd pause to look at the tiny trickle of Cabin Creek thousands of feet below him. How his hunting party got lost he'll never know, one moment they were about a hundred feet above him, struggling to move across the steep mountain face, the next moment they were gone.

The level pathway came to a huge boulder that was sticking out from the side of the mountain and as Stefan approached the boulder, he heard voices from the other side of the bolder shouting, and he heard metal clanking. "What the hell are those guys doing?" he thought to himself. It was then he realized that the voices he heard were not speaking English. People from all over the world come to Colorado to get lost in that Rocky Mountain High while getting good and high, so it was probably a tour group of some type, hikers from some flatland like Holland, but then he heard horses snorting and whinnying. He slowly worked his way around the boulder, terrified that his overpacked backpack was going to put him off balance and send him tumbling down the mountain.

As he got around the boulder, he found that the path opened into an expanse of level ground a good part of which was man made, a large part of the mountain was hewn away to create this area. Pieces of timber and ancient boards and rusting cans showed that there were probably a couple of small buildings here at one time. Now here was a mystery, this mine was listed on his map as an exploratory dig, exploratory digs generally present themselves as a hole in the ground and a pile of rubble, if there's anything left to see. This had to have been a working mine. The strangest part was the mine entrance, normally mine entrances are small, quite often just big enough to get an ore cart through, but this mine entrance was HUGE!

This historical find was why Stefan was there, he likes snooping around the Colorado mountains more than hunting. He's a damn good shot so to him hunting is more like harvesting, which is why he's carrying such a small caliber rifle. He could put a bullet right where he wanted it to hit, multiple tours as a sniper taught him that, so he doesn't need a canon like a 30-06. Stefan preferred the laser flat trajectory and range of the .243 round; and if you hit the heart, it will put a deer down quickly and you won't ruin much meat. The chance to explore abandoned mines or townsites was much more exciting to Stefan than filling his freezer with venison.

But where were the men he heard? Where were the horses? Snow began to fall, and the wind picked up, this was a hint to him to drop this investigation and get back to his party. Winter storms can come up in the blink of an eye with no warning and can bury you, drown you, or throw you thousands of feet down the side of the mountain. Mountains aren't nice, they don't like people.

He saw movement above on the side of the mountain and realized that it was his lost hunting party. He pulled out his little FM walkie talkie and keyed the mic. "Hey, down here, straight down from your position. I found a level place to rest."

"Don't move, we'll be right down," replied someone from the trio above him. Probably Pat, the self-appointed leader of the group.

Relieved that he found his team, Stefan began to investigate the mystery of the voices he heard before. He noticed that here and there were hoof prints in the dry earth. These weren't tiny burro hoofprints, they were big, and they weren't shod with U shaped horseshoes, the prints left behind looked like someone put iron sandals on their horse... like the Romans did.

The prints led into what looked like a Roman temple set in the mountain side. It was the tallest, fanciest, mine entrance he's ever seen. It was even odder when you consider that the state of Colorado was sealing off old mines as fast as they could find them. Being close to Denver, Mt. McClelland was well hiked so this mine should have been sealed off decades ago. This could be a very dangerous thing. Old mines were not dug flat and level, the miners followed the gold veins so mine shafts were not straight and level. If you explored one you would be crawling through a semi horizontal mine shaft that dips and dives, smashing your skull on "headbangers." You could quite easily find yourself in a thousand-foot freefall into the dark. Quite a few amateur mine spelunkers in Colorado never came home because of this. Stefan turned on his flashlight and found himself in a beautifully carved tunnel, the ceiling, walls and floor were perfectly smooth, the corners were square, and it was big, three cars could comfortably drive side by side through this hole.

He walked confidently, there were no "headbangers" reaching down from the ceiling, in fact there were no timbers holding the ceiling up. When he realized this, he had walked quite deep into the tunnel. He turned around and the entrance of the tunnel was dark, had the tunnel closed? He looked over his shoulder and saw light at the end of the tunnel so obviously he got turned around at some point. He began walking toward the light streaming through the portal, he can't wait to show the guys this mine.

Outside on the mountain, Pat Johnson, Aturo Dean, and Jon Rivers climbed down to the old mine area and there was no sign of Stefan. "Da fuck?" said Pat scratching his head.

"I saw him down here," insisted Arturo as he called for Stefan on his hand-held radio. All four men carried a radio and being such a geek, it was Stefan who insured that they all had their radios turned on and set to the same frequencies and performed occasional radio checks. They called Stefan "the Damn HAM" (callsign KB0LVZ) because of his insistence on using the radio. Pat decided to try their alternate means of communication and jacked a round into the chamber of his .22 pistol. All four men carried a pistol of some sort, mostly for rattlesnakes and plinking, but they have other purposes. Pat held his pistol up and fired three rounds into the air. The trio remained silent waiting for a return signal from Stefan, but all they heard was distant echoes from Pat's signal shots.

"Well, he didn't get in here," said Jon as he inspected the mine entrance, the tiny opening was barely three feet tall and securely blocked with cement, rebar, and boulders. "Maybe he found an alternate entrance."

~~~~~~*~~~~~~

Stefan Hanover stepped out of the Romanesque tunnel entrance into a sunlit meadow, birds were chirping, long fragrant grasses swayed in the breeze, impossibly bright green leaves bobbed in the breeze on nearby trees, bright blue and yellow birds fluttered through the air, and far off in the distance a dragon floated lazily on an updraft.

Not a dragonfly, a dragon.

"Awww fuck Toto," muttered Stefan starting to feel sick. "This sure as shit ain't Kansas no more."

He turned around to travel back to ice cold Colorado but the tunnel exit, which was a small Romanesque temple when he stepped out, was now a collapsed wooden shack. Shaking, he slowly sank to the ground and knelt trying to fight back the nausea, a fight he lost miserably.

About an hour later Stefan realized that the tunnel was not coming back and that he's got to find shelter because another dragon was circling to the... What direction is that? east...ish? The sun is moving in the opposite direction, so it's got to be east. He took off his field jacket and rolled it up then tied it to his backpack then dug out his binoculars and compass. The compass spun lazily which showed that this place wasn't earth. The dragon was slowly making its way toward him, its flight path appeared to be following a dirt road. His binoculars showed that the dragon was looking for something on the ground, as was the guy riding on the dragon's back.

Holy shit.

"If those bastards slipped some blotter acid into my canteen, I'll shoot each one of them in the balls," he swore. He needed to find cover, if that dragon was real and not an LSD hallucination, it would see the wrecked cabin and come looking. He pulled up some sod and covered his puddle of puke with it, then collecting his gear he headed out, plotting his revenge on Pat, Jon, and Arturo with every step.

He crossed the road crouching low and scurried stealthily across the meadow and came up to a large evergreen tree at the edge of a forest, its lower branches bent low to the ground, trees like that make a nice place to hide so Stefan ducked under the branches and hid. The branches stuck out from the massive trunk like spokes from a wagon wheel axle and since the needles were only at the ends of the branches, they made a shelter like a large teepee. He could see out reasonably well and hopefully the dragon couldn't see in. He pulled off his backpack and pushed it up against the trunk of the tree, then lay flat on the comfortable mattress of pine needles and gathered up his courage to go peek at the dragon.

He crawled maybe two feet when someone dropped down through the branches and landed on him. When he first ducked under the shelter of the branches he never bothered to look up, typical rookie mistake. Whoever it was that pounced on him had the strength of four men and manhandled him with ease. And whoever it was had an enchanting odor, he was suddenly addicted to that scent, it filled his sinuses and caressed his brain. His attacker suddenly became gentle and carefully flipped him over with ease then clamped a hand over his mouth. He was looking up at a beautiful young woman with long flowing silver hair spilling out from under a shapeless dark blue hat. She didn't have white hair which some people call silver, nor is it light gray hair which most people call silver, her hair is SILVER, metallic silver hair. Silver like a chrome bumper. It glittered in the spots of sunlight that streamed through the pine needles, and he ached to see it in direct sunlight, it must be glorious. Stefan has never seen anything or anyone so beautiful in his life. And her eyes! Her eyes are large and expressive, they're a rich, dark metallic gold in color and he realized that she could see right through his eyes into his soul.

Her nose is tiny, her cheekbones are pronounced, and her complexion is utterly flawless. Her skin is the color of a bale of wheat straw gleaming in the sun, a white gold of undying glory. Her mouth and ruby lips look like they were made to be kissed, and for some reason even though she had just manhandled him with ease, kissing her is what he wanted to do most. But it was her smell, it was intoxicating! It wasn't a perfume, it was her, so feminine, so delicate, it was a background smell that seemed to be waiting for him his entire life and now here it was.

Gathering his wits, he tried to push her up off of him and he found his hands full of her softball size breasts, under her dark green tunic she was not wearing a bra. Ignoring his hands she held a finger to her lips, a sign even he couldn't miss, then she took her hand off of his mouth and very quietly and slowly said, "Anata wa midori no otoko desu ka?"

Her words sounded familiar, but at the same time they were very foreign. Feeling incredibly stupid and praying that this was a greeting Stefan grinned and said, "Uhhhh... Hi?"

The mystery woman suddenly looked intensely relieved, she was nearly in tears when she softly and slowly said, "Domo arigatou gozai masu!" Then with a delightful squeal of joy she threw her arms around him and gave him a man crushing hug. Again, the smell of her filled his head, it spun his mind around in circles, he wanted to bathe in her fragrance. He wanted to strip her clothes off and rub himself all over her just to mark his body with her scent. In spite of the fact that there's a dragon outside big enough to eat him and his car in one bite and he's in the clutches of a woman that could bench press Rhode Island, he found he was painfully erect.

But then... wait, what? Stefan isn't a master of languages, most of his life he spent shooting people, not talking to them, but he does know bits and pieces of several languages. He can say hello, goodbye, and order a beer in English, French, German, Spanish, Italian, Turkish, Korean, and Japanese, and he knew that this slim beauty just said, "Thank you so much," in 100% pure, unadulterated Japanese.

Right now, he wanted to push her off of him, undress her, and try to find out what she was talking about by licking her entire body. She continued to mutter joyfully in Japanese and a musical language he's never heard before. Then another moment of clarity broke through the spell her odor had on him. He had a sinking feeling in his stomach... she speaks Japanese. She had asked him something and he responded by saying "Hi." He was trying to say hello, but she heard "Hai," the Japanese word for yes and responded by saying thank you very much. He had agreed to something, which is why she suddenly became very, very happy.