The Oracle (Various Rising of the Shield Hero x Modern!Reader)

Chapter 3: Meeting

"So, what are you doing here in the middle of the woods?"

She.....honestly didn't know the answer to that. One moment she was ignoring her homework and distracting herself with anime, and the next she was in the woods. She unfurled from her crouched position, only for her muscles to kindly remind her that moving felt like a ton of boulders crashing directly onto her soul.

"Ow! Owowowowow everything hurts....Ugh," She moaned as she flopped backwards onto the ground. Unfortunately, the pain didn't stop there as she hit the corner of the book she found earlier with the back of her head.

"OW!"

She looked over to Ren for help, only to find him covering his face with his hand and lightly shaking. Was he seriously laughing at her?!

"Hey! Don't laugh! This seriously hurts....." she all but whined at him. She couldn't see them, but she could tell by the quiet chuckling somewhere behind her that the rest of Ren's party found her predicament just as if not more funny than he did.

"I....I'm-m not laughing...I assure you..."

"Oh, sure. Lie to my face, why don't you."

That did it. The two more boisterous members broke out in full-on laughter and Ren fully retreated into his arm, his hand no longer enough to hide his grin. (Y/n) pouted at them. It took a good while for the three of them to calm down enough to speak again.

"Ahem. Well, since you're injured, treatment should come first. Then questioning." He kneeled next to her, scanning her for injuries, but not quite looking at her, "It's true, You're on extremely low HP. Not even a scratch on you though, from what I can see. How on Earth did this happen to you?" She looked up at him dryly.

"Well, we aren't on Earth, are we?" He looked up at her in alarm, "And dimensional transport without dying beforehand will do that to you, I guess."

"Dimensional transport?! Are you saying you were summoned to this world as well?" (Y/n) simply shrugged at him.

"Heal first, talk later." She shifted her head uncomfortably. "And put this book in my backpack, will ya? It's stabbing my skull." He jumped to attention at that.

"Right. Bakta, Heal her. Then bring her to the camp." With that, he picked up the book, turned it over in his hands curiously, then placed it in her bag before standing up and walking through the brush, presumably towards the camp he spoke of earlier. The blue haired mage looking guy, who (Y/n) now knew was called Bakta, stepped forward, raising his staff.

"Decipher the laws of nature and heal my target. Healing Wind!"

A green wind swept around her, lifting her off the ground. She could feel her strength returning to her. After a few moments, the wind slowed and set her gently onto the ground. Now filled with energy, (Y/n) spun around to face the mage and bowed, thanking him profusely. He looked away with a curt nod and a scowl, but the light red on the tips of his ears betrayed the fact that he was happy to receive the praise. The ninja girl and the blond boy approached her as Bakta hurriedly retreated.

"Man, you should have seen it though! There was this huuuuuuge pillar of light coming from this way! We were thinking it was some kind of high level boss and went to go kill it for exp, but we found you instead! What a shock, right?" The blonde excitedly chatted.

"How did you manage to get the Sword Hero to smile like that?! Are you magic? He's always so 'Serious Business' about everything! We rarely ever even see him since he split us up into different training zones. I've never seen him laugh like that before...Oh! My name's Farrie, by the way! That dunce over there is Tersia, and the big quiet guy over there who looks like a criminal is Welt." The ninja girl, now known as Farrie, leaned in to whisper in her ear, "He looks all scary like that, but trust me, he's a huge softie. He knits in his freetime, I've seen it!" She giggled at the bewildered look she was given.

"Hey! You weren't talking bad about me, were you Farrie? And did you just call me a dunce?!" Tersia shouted, childishly balling his fists.

"Oops! That's my cue to run! It was nice to meet you (Y/n)! Have Welt show you to the camp, kay?" With that, Farrie jumped off into the trees, an angry Tersia hot on her heels. (Y/n) chuckled warmly at their antics. They seemed like a lively bunch. She turned to the only member still with her, who was off to the side looking like he didn't know quite what to do with himself. She decided to take the initiative and walk up to him. He seemed a lot less intimidating now that she saw how the rest of the party had interacted with him. He jumped slightly when he heard her speak.

"Uh, You're Welt, right?" He nodded at her.

"Could you, uh, show me the way to the camp?" He stared at her a moment before nodding again, then turning and walking towards the woods. (Y/n) had to jog to keep up with his pace. He only noticed he was walking too fast when about five minutes in (Y/n) tripped on a root, and so he simply picked her up so she was sitting on one of his arms and carried her the rest of the way. (Y/n) actually didn't mind this. It was ten times better than walking, and hey, a free ride is a free ride.

It took about twenty minutes to arrive at camp. By the time the two managed to get to camp Ren and Bakta were already situated around a fire and preparing food. (Y/n) wasn't really hungry, considering she had chinese leftovers right before she got tossed into a forest, but that didn't really matter, because she fell asleep only five minutes into being carried. It was fairly late when she was summoned, to her credit. The two around the campfire sighed exasperatedly at the girl, and Ren told Welt to put her into Farrie's tent until she woke up.

The rapidly growing list of questions would have to wait for later, it seemed.

~~~

And I felt guilty and updated again! I won't promise anything, mostly because I'm inconsistent as h e l l but I finally have a clearer image of where I'm going with this story and I'm excited to write it! Sorry we've only run into Ren and have barely interacted with him, but the rest of his party is so fun to write! they all have canonical names, but they were all in a clump so I had to kinda guess who got what name....

If you know which name goes to which person and I got it wrong, please tell me!

I want this story to be at least kinda accurate....I've been reading the shield hero wiki to make sure I'm doing things right, but I'm pretty sure I've already messed up Ren's characterization.....Sorry Ren.

I think I might need to update my Ouran fic next, so keep an eye on that if you want a vague window of when I'll update this next.... Or just read it if you like Ouran and modern variousxreaders. It's my first fanfic, but I like to think it's pretty darn good.

Shameless self advertisement aside, I'm really grateful to all of you readers for sticking with this story for so long even though so little has happened. I can't promise much, but I can promise that I will never fully drop this story. My updates are slow, and they come once in a blue moon, but I Will Update. I can promise that.

Please remember to lend me your comments, criticisms, and suggestions! I'll definitely take them into account, and they might just shape the story itself.

~AstroLeap