The convenience store was only a couple of blocks away, and traffic was scant at this time of night, so they made good time. Theodora ran out ahead of him, dancing and skipping between the cracks in the pavement, and dropping back occasionally to hurry him along.

When they reached the corner across from the brightly lit store, a few cars meandered up the four lane main street, and they waited for the lights to change. Val reached his hand out to Theodora while they waited, and she looked at it like it was on fire.

“Daaaaaad!” she moaned.

“What?”

“I’m nearly eight! I can cross the road without holding hands!”

Val feigned a very theatrical hurt to crush the enormously real one that had just slammed him in the chest.

“Oh, well I apologise,” he declared as he withdrew his hand, “I had forgotten I was dealing with a fully-grown, eight-year old young lady.”

“It’s fine,” said Theodora, haughtily, turning back to face the road, and her eyes widened.

“Kitten?” she whispered.

Val turned, following her gaze to the centre of the road where a mewling, days-old ginger kitten was squirming and struggling to get its feet under itself. Somehow it had managed to avoid the traffic going in either direction, and it didn’t look like it’d been hit, but it certainly looked to Val like it was in serious trouble.

“Jeez, okay,” he said, his tone serious, “let’s see if we can get a towel from the -”

He turned back to Theodora, but she was already moving, almost running, and she’d already put herself out of his reach.

“TEDDY!” Val bellowed, but she was entirely focused on the quivering furball in the road, and entirely ignorant of the headlights rocketing towards her, “NO!”

Val launched himself after her, only a second or two behind, closing the gap quickly. 

Theodora reached down and scooped up the kitten as Val did the same to her, bundling her up just in time for Theodora’s terrified screams to join a chorus of screeching brakes and blinding lights. A truck tore through the space where Theodora had been standing only half a second before, sliding to a halt long past where it would have hit her.

Val stumbled onward toward the thin hedge on the other side of the street, and the bright lights of the store, carried by the momentum of his desperate dive.

He saw a second set of lights appear in his peripheral vision, lights belonging to a car that swerved into the outside lane to avoid the skidding truck, lights that were too close.

He felt Theodora leave his arms as he hurled her toward the hedge. He felt the hood of the car collect him, scoop him up and launch him off down the street. He felt shattered shards of glass lodged in skin. He felt the asphalt scrape and tear at him as he rolled and slid to a halt.

He was sure he heard screaming, crying, voices, but not the voice he needed to hear.

Ah, hell.

He held on, clawing at consciousness.

Please, just say something, let me know you’re okay.

“Daddy?!” Theodora’s voice was panicked, terrified, but clear, unhurt.

Well, Val managed to think, despite his synapses misfiring, that’s something, at least.

—

A small orb of light flickered into existence high above the ground.

A system of pure energy, with no physical limitations to contain it, it soared across the edge of the atmosphere, hundreds of metres above a wide, green forest. A trail of sparks followed the shimmering ball as it split and re-split into a dozen identical sparking comets. 

Far below the soaring lights, the forest gave way to a sprawling city of low-set, brightly coloured buildings set in tight, chaotic rows. A city not so much planned as birthed in waves from a central point, an enormous plaza set around a wide, circular pit that was, at this moment, thronged with a massive crowd of people. As the falling stars came into view they screamed and cheered their excitement.

A bright structure of delicate, intertwining crystal lattices near the centre of the plaza pulsed energy upward and outward, a beacon drawing the streams of light down towards the thousands of clamouring voices, the smell of cooking meat and the crush of humanity. The shining beacon pulled the balls of light towards the town at breakneck speed.

The crowd surged forward and their voices swelled as the spheres of pure energy collided with the interconnected filaments of crystal and sent bright, crackling electricity surging throughout the entire edifice.

“GACHA! GACHA! GACHA!” came the cry from the crowd, and a fresh wave of cheering and screaming followed.

The interlocked crystals pulsed, feeding the energy back on and over itself, building and building until a blinding flash swallowed the plaza, and the crowd collectively gasped and fell silent. The white light faded from the crystal structure, and the crowd murmured with barely contained excitement.

Standing in the open area directly under the crystal lattice were thirteen people, clad in white cloth draped simply around their shoulders. They looked around at one another. The group shared the same befuddled expression, though that was all they appeared to have in common, an equally bemused mix of all races, creeds, builds and genders.

A tall woman in heavy, expensive looking robes stood between the group and the gathered crowd, with her hands spread wide. 

“The summoning is complete!”

Standing at the back of the group, Val did not have time to register the meaning of the confusing words the woman uttered before he was struck by a wall of sound, the deafening roar of the citizenry, raised in joy.

Val was reminded briefly of the shining headlights, the screech of tires, but the place he had found himself was so foreign, so unexpected, he could not process what he was seeing, let alone try to work out how he had come from cold, bloodied asphalt to here. He looked around, seeking the only familiar face that would mean anything to him, but caught no sign of dark hair or big, brown eyes.

He made to move from his spot, but the tall woman, a Priestess of some sort, grabbed a bright, pulsing crystal orb from the edifice in front of her and held it high above her head.

“Heroes all!” she began, “Chosen by fate! Show us thine gifts!”

The orb in her hands glowed brighter, sending out a ripple of shimmering energy through the group of nonplussed summoned. Val felt the energy ripple up from his toes to his head, and looked on in shock as translucent windows, seemingly formed from the light of the crystal, appeared above each of them.

Amazingly, certainly unexpectedly, Val could read the words displayed, or at least most of them.

Above the heads of the others, their names, not all understandable or even legible to Val, though he recognised some of the languages by their prior appearance on take out menus. A series of numbers, values assigned to STR, DEX, MAG, WIS and a handful of other statistics that tickled his childhood memories of hours spent wielding plastic controllers in front of CRT television screens. And, finally, a CLASS.

He glanced around at the others in the group, who were also assessing each other. Two WARRIORs, a LANCER, MAGEs RED, BLUE, BLACK and WHITE, an ARCHER and a THIEF. Confusion reigned, but even the cold comfort of this strange structural class system was comfort for the group, a set of rules that had suddenly been applied.

Val noticed the others in the group looking at his displayed information intently, and looked up.

Name: Val Johanssen, no surprise there. Next, a series of numerical values that, were he in a more analytical mood, he would have noticed skewed considerably lower than even the most petite-built of those around him. Then, last on the list, the thing that had clearly caught the eye of his compatriots, and had even sent some murmurs through the front rows of the gathered crowd.

CLASS: DADDY.

“Uhh,” Val spoke, for the first time in this new world.

He looked around, noticing even the Priestess was now staring, incredulous, at his floating stat sheet. Her eyes drifted down to meet his.

“Daddy?” she uttered.