The Gate - Going Home

Writing in the style of light novel/anime is probably one of the geekiest things you can do (behind the keyboard) and one of the most enjoyable. As usual I fell in love with my characters and couldn't let it go. If you missed the first two episodes, Stefan Hanover is hunting in the mountains and finds a gate that leads him to a different world where magic and elves and other anime type characters exist. He finds himself in a land embroiled in a bloody civil war with one way home, and he has no desire to take it. He ends up with a very anime style harem with an elf maiden for a fiancée, another elf maiden as a very grouchy mage/sister-in-law, a bunnygirl lover, a nekomimi (cat girl) and a fox girl

We find our characters in the hidden elven city of Vinnofri, and they receive the information they need to keep the promise that Stefan made to Lelu's father. 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"

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

"Our primary purpose is to release prisoners held by the dethroned prince Zorzal El Caesar. If any of you are captured this university and city will disavow you," said the University Archchancellor Har Chalktaw.

"Where are they being held?" asked Lelu.

Archchancellor Har Chalktaw unrolled a hand drawn map that showed the Falmart continent. "Here is where we are, here is where you and Stefan met, and here is where your mother is." He pointed to a small point on the map only shown by a tiny skull. "The city of Skotadi in the palace of Fonos."

"Palace? That's not so bad," said Stefan. Then he realized everyone in the room was staring daggers at him. Being new in Falmart he didn't realize that in the city of Butchery, the palace of Murder was not a vacation spot.

"She's being held as a hostage now, Zorzal is starting to learn politics and he's able to gain ransom money by holding your mother Lolah Klaatu Ando Sivan."

"Wait a minute," said Stefan. "Lelu, Layla, and Lolah... isn't that a bit confusing?"

Lelu asked, "What do you mean?"

"Your names!" Stefan said, "They're so similar to each other."

"Not at all," said Layla.

"They don't even sound alike," said Carny.

"Our names are completely different," said Lelu as she looked at Stefan a bit confused.

"He's starting to sound like dad," grumbled Layla.

"Ok, just checking, go on professor," Stefan could feel a headache coming on.

For the next hour Archchancellor Chalktaw outlined the layout of the city of Skotadi and where the armies of Prince Zorzal may be encamped. Skotadi was once the capital of the human presence in Falmart, it was built around the gate that brought the humans here, then the gate disappeared and cut off the humans from their originating country. Later another gate sprung open near where the new capital city exists letting hordes of new humans into Falmark. That one disappeared also and for two millennia Falmart waited for a new gate which opened at Alnus Hill letting the Japanese in to Falmart. This is just a brief history of gates opening in Falmart, there were gates on other worlds which gave elves, ogres, bunnies, cats, foxes, and other demi-humans access to Falmart. It's assumed that the dwarves were the original inhabitants, but that assumption could be wrong too. So far only the Japanese have been serious enough to do archeological research.

"Before we go any further, does anyone have anything to add?" asked Archchancellor Chalktaw.

"Yes," said Stefan, "I'm the one who came up with this idea, this is my responsibility. No one here is being forced to follow along."

"You and I are one, where you go, I go," said Lelu. "You're doing this for dad and me, I will be there to help."

"She's my mom, I have to be there also," said Layla.

"Me too," said Carny. "This is important to my family." She leaned on Lelu's shoulder and got a hug from Lelu and a pat on the arm from Stefan while Layla rolled her eyes.

"Awww bunny, thank you!" said Lelu.

"We are going for the honor of our hutch," said Glencove indicating herself and Jolietta.

"You're not warrior bunnies," said the archchancellor a bit confused.

"We were adopted as children by the grasslands hutch, we owe them our lives," said Jolietta.

Layla nodded, "Tesson Culp took in all children in need, regardless of race."

Carny took her cloak off the fairy cage and asked, "Are you two coming with?"

"Is Duck Soup and Cocoanut coming too?" asked Orla sleepily.

"Yes, they are."

"Then we're coming," responded Tana.

"It's settled then," said Stefan as he began to feel nauseous about this whole thing. These were his friends, his lovers, and Layla. He's led men into battle before, but they were warriors, marines, they were trained for war. The thought of seeing Lelu's or Carny's head sliced open terrified him, he had to do something.

"You may need one more member in your party," said the Archchancellor, "you'll need someone who can get into small spaces, spy on the enemy, bring back documents and keys and the like. You need a thief."

Stefan rolled his eyes; he'd heard this one before. "And you suggest what, a hobbit?"

He was suddenly the target of stares. Lelu patted his hand and said, "Honey, there's no such thing as hobbits, we've talked about this, remember?" Lelu found The Hobbit when rummaging around in his head back in Nangda while warming at Mayor Vanderhorst's chateau.

"Imaginary beasts," said Glencove.

"Grandma used to tell us "The hobbit's going to get you if you don't behave!" and the kits behaved," said Jolietta smiling.

For her part, Carny just looked terrified of something and trembled while raucous laughter could be heard from Tana and Orla.

"No," said the Archchancellor as he placed a cheap looking plaster statue of a small, fat, bearded man with a pointed hat and suspenders on his desk. "I was thinking of a Garden Gnome."

"A garden gnome?" asked Stefan in shock. "What's he going to do, keep snakes out of the gazanias?"

"Oy mate!" called the gnome as he walked up to the middle of the long table and stopped in front of Stefan. "I'd like t' see ye try, 'tis not all that fookin' easy. Snakes be fookin' tricky."

"No," said Stefan and Lelu. "No fucking way."

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

As the date of departure neared, Stefan, Lelu, Carny, Glencove, and Jolietta toured Vinnofri, the jewel of the forests. It truly was amazing what the elves did to make this forest look as natural as possible, yet still house hundreds of elves at the same time. Walkways connected tree to tree, houses were constructed to ring the trunks of the trees and give the occupants shelter and protection. At ground level the city was parks and lawns and playgrounds for elven children, the likes of which Lelu hasn't dreamed of in a century. Streams meandered between the trees and their gentle gurgling calmed frazzled nerves at night and so that Stefan and Lelu were getting the best sleep they've had in years.

For his part, Stefan was feeling better. Better than he's felt in a very long time. Now he starts every morning with a long, brisk run. Because his pack never weighs more than five pounds, he borrowed a wood carriers cradle and runs with 30 pounds of firewood on his back every morning. Every morning he returns to their apartment and even though he had been mentally caressing Lelu, he missed her. He missed her touch but mostly he missed her smell, and as the days went by, the scent of Carny became an important part of that melody of scent also.

Just outside of the entrance to their apartment, on the walkway there was a shower that Stefan could use to clean off the sweat and dust of his run and often Lelu and Carny would join him while Layla sulked nearby. "Why don't you join us?" Lelu asked one warm morning.

"No thanks, I'd rather not."

"No, you're joining us!" grinned Lelu and she grabbed Layla's arm and pulled her in the shower. Stefan stopped the flow of water as Carny and Lelu stripped Layla who was giving minimal return fight and pulled her into the shower. Soon the water was flowing, and Lelu and Carny were washing a squirming Layla while Stefan leaned against the outside wall of the house and laughed at their antics.

"Someone's having fun," smiled an elf maiden as she walked past leading her young son. He was a young one, barely fifty years old, for a human that would be ten years old, and looked up and smiled at Stefan, waving as he walked by. How many times in the past 500 years has an elf child felt safe enough with a human to smile and wave? Stefan swore there and then that he was going to provide a safe world for him and his friends to live in, even if it means fighting against Prince Zorzal, Princess Co Lada, and the entire Japanese Self Defense Force to attain that world.

That evening the entire team, Stefan, Lelu, Carny, Glencove, Jolietta, and Layla were sitting on blankets, high up over the forest waiting for the show. Their blankets were spread out on the top of a grotesque sculpture carved into the side of the mountain where they could look down on the entire forest city of Vinnofri as they ate their picnic dinner. One of the amazing things about this world was what the inhabitants called "Ground Stars," and they were up here to get a good view of them.

They had decided on the date to free Lelu and Layla's mother, they had decided on the plan, now it was time to decide on a departure date. The most conservative estimate for travel was three weeks. Stefan closed his eyes and thought about the logistics of this trip, this part made his head ache. He was used to traveling in Humvees where he could adjust the speed of travel to suit the plan, in a horse drawn wagon you only go one speed: slow. They have another meeting tomorrow night, then come hell or high water, they're leaving in two days.

Now, as the sky darkened, what Stefan had initially thought were fireflies began to wink to light. They became little mauve points of light. They were everywhere, in the trees, on the rocks, in the grass, in the air. After a time, they began to float upwards. Mauve specks of light drifted up into the night sky where they winked out at about 100 feet up. It was amazing to watch, and Stefan couldn't get enough of it. As Layla and Carny played a game of "Grab and Giggle" Stefan and Lelu leaned on each other and watched the show, occasionally breaking to kiss. "Does this happen in the winter too?" he asked her silently.

"Not as much, but we don't have a winter like you remember. There is no snow unless you're in the mountains." Lelu shivered at Stefan's memories of snowstorms.

"We need a home," he said aloud. "A place we can go when this is over and make some elflettes or elflings or whatever you call them, and raise them..."

Lelu laughed and hit Stefan's upper arm, which was so much firmer and larger now, "We just say babies."

Stefan sighed, "This is going to take forever. You and I, we could just pop in there, grab your mom, pop out and be home in time for the eleven o'clock news."

"We got more to do," insisted Lelu. "Besides, what's a leaven old clock snooze?" Lelu got a mental image from Stefan that she thought was a woman stuck in a box reading stories.

Stefan laughed, "It's nothing I ever want to worry about again."

"You come from a strange world," said Lelu.

"Yes ma'am," grinned Stefan as they watched the little mauve spots of light floating upwards. Because they were sitting up so high it looked like the world was rising up to meet them. Lelu shifted so that she was sitting between his legs leaning back against him. He eased her blouse up and off then pulled his shirt off and she leaned back against him, the feel of skin-on-skin where anyone in Vinnofri could look up and see them was a dizzying rush. The mauve light around them gave a sexy purple tint to everything. The three moons will be rising soon to add their reddish light to the illumination. "Gods, I love it here," sighed Stefan.

"Why do you love it here, Mister Oh-Taco," said Lelu silently.

Stefan chuckled; she found another interesting word in his head, she's so good and finding them and using them properly. He loves her curiosity, there's got to be a way to take her to the Smithsonian, she would have a ball there. "This place is perfect for us Otaku. There's demi-humans of all forms and magic! I'm surprised that there's no magic girls..."

"There's a lot of magic girls, I met them in prison."

"Now I don't have to wait for an anime series to be subtitled for me to enjoy it, I'm living in an anime world. There's so much good I can be doing here," he hugged Lelu tightly, "I want to spend the rest of my life helping you get that hell out of your head."

Lelu gasped at the mention of the hell inside her head. Fifty years of abuse by the guards and nobles of the Saderan empire has severe consequences. She's only been free for three years and it has been a psychological nightmare, but since bonding with Stefan, he's been there to lean on, someone to help and to show her how nice humans are, and how loving sex can be. Even when he was dying, he gave her someone to concentrate on, so she wasn't being tortured by her past.

He doesn't go rooting around in her head like she does in his. For one thing, he's given her permission to do so, Lelu has blocked many of those memories from Stefan and herself. She's terrified of what he could find in her head. If he stumbles into the memories of getting her eye gouged out or worse, he's likely to track down the guilty party who is still alive and easily found. She's not protecting the guilty party, she's protecting Stefan. Occasionally she'll clean out a section of her memory and let him play in there. That's how he learned Saderan and is learning to speak Quenya.

Then she realized that he was touching what they call the front of her mind, this is where the thoughts that she's currently thinking are generated and he noticed her going over all the ways he's been helping her survive this psychological nightmare she's stuck in. He started putting ideas into her head. "I need you to become closer to your sister," was the main idea, then beyond that the idea went on to say, "If this plan to rescue your mother fails, you will need Layla to lean on."

"I understand but," she twisted around and sat on his lap facing him, her hard nipples barely brushing against the ivory white hair on his chest, "If you don't make it, I probably won't either."

Stefan didn't detect any anger, or sorrow, or bitterness in her statement. It was a statement of fact, something they both now recognize that they are intimately tied together, if one dies, the other will surely follow. As their lips met and their tongues gently explored each other Stefan answered, "I didn't have a brother or sister, it makes me sad how you're so cold to each other."

"We're... dealing with it."

Stefan realized that Lelu and Laylah had issues in the background that Stefan was not aware of, and Lelu wasn't about to share them with him. That was the nice part of the bonding, Stefan discovered that his own private thoughts were his to keep if he kept them like that. He kept much of his career in the Marine Corps locked away from Lelu, he wasn't sure how she would handle modern warfare. In the same way, Lelu kept her five decades in the dungeon sealed away from him and only let Stefan have occasional peeks into her nightmare past. Their emotions, however, were wide open to each other and there was no way that they could find to hide them from each other.

Sharing their senses, what they're feeling, seeing, hearing, tasting, smelling, that had to be consciously controlled. The first time they made love they overpowered each other with sensation until they had to stop and sort out who had the penis and who brought the pussy to the party. They realized that was the goal, it was how all love making was going to be eventually, but they had to work their way to that point to appreciate it and to keep their sanity.

There were skills they needed to work on, like their communication. Immediately after The Kiss, that first inadvertent peck that set off their bonding, they found that they could communicate wordlessly if they were touching. When they're not touching, they can feel each other's presence, but exchanging thoughts and concepts at first was impossible. They found that if they had eye contact that they could exchange feelings, but more complex thoughts were difficult. That's when they realized it was a lot like verbal speech. If you are far away from someone there's not much that the listener can do to hear the speaker better, it's up to the speaker to speak loudly to be heard. So how do you shout a thought?

Then Stefan remembered something. Through the bleary remembrance of his slow recovery, he remembered Lelu and Layla arguing about him, then Lelu glared at Layla and Layla collapsed like a rag doll. Lelu knocked out Layla without touching her. "How did you do that?" he asked Lelu.

"I just told her to shut up, I did it stronger that time. It's something that we've always been able to do."

"So... you're bonded with Layla?"

"No, of course not. That's silly, that's..." she stopped and considered what he was implying. Lelu and Layla never considered themselves bonded, they were close because they were twins and there was nothing more to it than that. Maybe they were bonded in some manner.

Stefan decided to test a theory. He got up and stepped over to Carny and Layla and crouched down in front of Layla. He took Layla's hands in his then thought, "I forgive you."

"I don't want your forgiveness," Layla said out loud. Then she looked at Lelu then at Carny, "Why are you guys staring at me?"

"He didn't say anything," said Carny.

"Yes, he did, he came over here and said, "I forgive you."

"He didn't say a word," said Carny, who sat on the other side of Layla.

Jolietta lay on her side watching the ground lights with her head on Glencove's lap. "Not a peep," she agreed with Carny.

"Shush, you care for me, and you know it," said Stefan silently.

Lelu realized that she could "hear" him from 6 feet away. He was still holding Layla's hands and she obviously heard him. "No, I don't! I don't give a shit about you so leave me alone!" Layla shouted and pulled her hands free from his grasp.

"He didn't say anything," said Carny, but in the back of her mind she thought she may have heard something.

"You're imagining things," said Jolietta. Glencove has become more than a friend and co-adventurer for her, she was Jolietta's mentor and Jolietta was growing jealous of the fox's affection for Layla.

Then Stefan "heard" Lelu's silent plea, "Stefan please stop, leave her alone!" and he turned and smiled, that was what he was looking for. He was not looking for Layla's reactions even though he was impressed that she heard him, he wanted Lelu to bridge the distance barrier. So, it was possible, they could communicate without touching. Now it was a matter of figuring out how far apart they could be, how loud do they have to shout, and how does someone wordlessly shout?

Later back at their apartment, Carny was worried about Layla, the elf was still in a bad mood from her "run-in" with Stefan. Carny finally gathered up the courage to ask, "are you mad at him?"

"No bunny, I'm not mad at him," sighed Layla. It was a lie, but anxious bunnies are tough to deal with.

Carny stared at Layla sadly. Layla was so cool! A gold haired elf, and a twin to boot. Carny fell in love with Lelu, and was hoping Layla would be just as wonderful, and Carny sensed that deep down she was just as wonderful as her sister Lelu, but she just lied to Carny. "I know I'm just a bunny, I'm not very brave, and I'm not very smart. But I can cook better than anyone else, and I really thought you were nice. I would have preferred it if you had just said "Fuck you bunny" to me instead of lying to me to get me out of your hair."