Sensing movement in my room, I immediately shot upright from a dead sleep, only to find Lala gathering my dirty clothes and stacking the dishes from my midnight snack.
"Girl, it is entirely too early to be sneaking up on people. And how on earth did you get in here anyhow? The door is only supposed to open from the inside while occupied."
"It’s an innate skill of my race you see. As long as we’re there to serve, most doors will let us through" Lala answered by way of explanation.
Now that’s a useful skill. But a bit unnecessary here, since the rooms clean themselves. A fact I quickly explained to her.
"Oh, um sorry Miss, I didn’t know" she responded, ears drooped and head lowered "I’m sorry to have bothered you" Lala turned towards the door.
Now I feel bad for making her feel bad.
"No, as you said you didn’t know. I’m not mad, let’s go get some breakfast then return to your room and you’ll see that everything is clean and tidy once again."
"You two ladies have a good sleep?" Karl asked, catching up to us in the hallway just after we passed his door.
"Yep" we both chime in unison and he laughs.
"Well then, let us discuss this week’s plans. We’re making some changes in light of current events"
What current events? And how would he even know, unless there’s a television in the lounge that shows the news or the base got a communication.
Plates of breakfast in front of us, we all sat down as Lala stared at her plate in wonder at the assortment of foods.
"Is it really alright for me to eat this? From the same dishes that you were served from?" she wondered out loud.
Karl patted her head and I felt a surge of jealousy run through me. "Hands off my soft fluffy bunny" I mock snarled at him, bringing myself a pat on the head and Lala a soft blush.
"You sure do blush easily" I thought, not realizing I’d spoken it out loud.
"Sorry Miss, nobody was ever this nice to me before, and I’m not entirely sure how to handle it."
"Now that we’re all done flirting over our food, should we get down to details?" Karl pressed on. "News came through this morning that Seattle fell last night. Battle lasted under 24 hours, enemy unknown, but suspected to be dragon riding humans"
A gasp of shock escaped me. How could a major city in a country as highly armed as the United States fall in a single night? That is insane.
"The military is on their way now, 4 pairs of the Task Force have been dispatched as well, plus the national guard. Or what remains of it after fire bombing by dragons outside the portal."
Things are really looking dire. In just a month, things have gone from scientific curiosity to major cities wiped off the map. What do we do? What can we do?
"How about the Washington state wolf packs? Are they involved yet?" I asked Karl, trying to get a grip on the situation.
"They’re on site now, but having issues with the flying opponents. Word has it they’ve got the ground under control outside of the city though."
Wolves do many things well. But they don’t fly.
"What do we do next?" I asked, curious to if the Task Force had assigned us anything in light of the new circumstances.
"They want the Safe House to become not just a place for mages, but a staging area for the Great Plains defences. We can’t guarantee that portal openings have anything to do with population density, so it’s quite possible that we’ll get as many as the more heavily policed areas, and someone needs to protect the food supply."
At this point Lala decided to jump in. "How big are we talking? Karl taught me the metric system’s basics last night, because it was the closest to the system I know, but I’ve never seen a map of your country."
At this, Karl produced a map of North America, evidently made in Canada, as it had metric distances on it.
"This is where we are now" He pointed at a spot somewhere in North Dakota "This is where our Task Force headquarters are" He pointed at the city of Minneapolis. "and this is the city that just fell to Dragon Riders" he circled Seattle on the map.
Lala looked in awe at the map "How could this be one country? All these dots are castles right? And the big ones are castles with surrounding towns? This size is insane"
Me and Karl exchanged a look, daring the other to be the one that broke her illusion and explained that the big dots were cities with tens or hundreds of thousands of residents, and the spread out markings had millions.
Karl gave in first "You see this dot near the base? That’s a city called Fargo. It has 125,000 people living in it. The dots represent the size of the city, and the spread out huge ones have millions of residents. This country has over 300 million people in it altogether"
I could see the poor girl’s brain simply stop due to overload before she collapsed from her seat into my arms.
"I’ll take her to her room to sleep it off" I told him "I’m pretty sure she’s going to need some time to assimilate all this new information"
Karl waved at us leaving and shouted, "bring her by when she’s ready, and I’ll cast the literacy spell on her" before we passed out of sight down the hall.
Lala came to just as we were reaching her room. "Was he serious?" she asked before her eyes were even open.
"Absolutely". This answer caused her to shake her head, trying to make sense of the world she has been brought to.
Sitting her down on the couch in her room, I went to the bathroom and poured a couple glasses of water, unwrapping the sanitized cups on the counter. Relaxing beside her we just sat in comfortable silence for a few minutes before she began a simple conversation, covering the basics of geography, fashion, food, and politics. Everything she thought essential to know. What really shocked her was the lack of Kings and slaves, the only system her world had known. But after explaining that we started there and then moved on it all started to make more sense to the overwhelmed bunny girl.
"I guess we should get you back to Karl, Lala. He says he’s got a literacy spell to cast on you, so you will be able to read the languages you can speak. That should be nice, right?" Lala looked absolutely ecstatic at the news.
"Yes! A hundred times yes! Once I can read I can have a real job and help you two who saved me" she exclaimed.
I’m not entirely sure I’d agree with that characterization, I’m fairly sure that Karl just wants someone to do his paperwork for him. To the point he’d likely have abducted someone eventually anyhow. But Lala and me are going to be great friends, I can tell already.
Lala announces she should shower and change if she’s going to be going to work, and I don’t really see a need to argue. Until she comes back in a black and white checker pleated skirt, white blouse and knee socks with black Mary Jane shoes. Don’t get me wrong, she looks adorable, but I’m increasingly concerned with what she was taught about fashion.
"Lala, how did you decide on that outfit?"
"There is a book here, on the shelf. This outfit was pictured with what was obviously a teacher, so it must be the correct outfit for learning, right?"
Looking over at the shelf and its assortment of generic reading material, I find one called ’The Fashionable Submissive’ right out in front, obviously the only one read. Oh no. This is not at all good. What sort of weirdo leaves that sort of reading material in the guest bedrooms at what is essentially a workplace?