A confounded and agitated preoccupation with discerning his surroundings did not mean that Henry missed the lone figure drawing near.  As soon as he spotted the Kaiser, he turned his full attention toward him.  Relief washed over Henry to discover human life in this place.  Against all odds, he would have rather not been transported to some sort of barren astral plane or the afterlife.  He had many more things to do and people to kill, after all.  A normal person might have been wary of the newcomer, but Henry carried along with his indelible merriment a sort of casual arrogance that only befitted individuals so sure of their own strength that they didn’t care to flaunt it.

Denys did not strike him as terribly unusual.  His fanciful longcoat reminded Henry of Robin’s, and his mask obviously recalled images of Gerome, Cherche’s son from the future.  In his right hand he held a blade of immediately recognizable quality, simple as it was.  When the newcomer raised his hand in a move Henry instinctively -and correctly- assumed to be in preparation for magic, the dark mage instantly prepared to cast a countercurse, but as he could not detect any sort of foul sorcery at work, he kept his spell hand at bay.  In only a moment the potential problem passed, and Nero felt the lance wound in his side disappearing.  Smiling pleasantly at the stroke of good luck and its giver’s positive manner, he replied, [color=d8bfd8]”Not a darn clue!  One minute I’m walking along a lovely beach, then I’m in this boring place.  Talk about anti-climactic.  My name’s Henry.  That healing magic is awesome!  I wish I could do it.  Imagine: make a cut in someone, bleed ‘em silly, then heal the cut and do it all again!  Hey,  d’you mind giving me a hand with something?  I want to run a little test.”[/color]  He couldn’t imagine why this guy would say ‘no’ to such an innocuous request.  Maybe Denys wanted to fret about where they were a bit more, but Henry didn’t care as much.  Whoever brought him here would surely explain sooner or later, and afterward, he could pay that individual back for messing in his business.

[center]-=-=-[/center]

The player cracked his knuckles, not exactly sure what awaited him in the game Street Fighter 5 but nevertheless a bit nervous.  Everyone he knew who understood a thing about this game, or fighting games in general, told him that even if Street Fighter was one of the simplest fighting games available, one would need to put in countless hours of practice to even have a chance at beating other people.  Getting destroyed again and again without the chance to learn anything did not exactly appeal to this player, but he thought he would try nonetheless.  First things first: he needed to pick one of the characters in the game to act as his in-game ‘skin’.  He scrolled through the list, counting off twenty or so.  Some of the ladies caught his eye, but he decided that with how immersive these games were, he would feel dirty if he picked one as his playermodel.  The man called F.A.N.G. caused him to raise an eyebrow just at how odd he looked, but that man paled in comparison to one of the last characters on the list.

One look at Birdie made the decision clear.  He was a huge, fat man -over 500 pounds, in fact- with a giant yellow Mohawk, axelike sideburns, a British punk outfit complete with ridiculous collar and tattered jeans, and even [i]yellow body hair[/i].  To some he might have looked like a repulsive slob—actually, he seemed that way to this player, but the player also thought it so incredibly comical that he could pick nothing else.  He chortled under his breath as he made his selection.  A menu popped up, and the player steered himself toward training mode.  [i]Alright, time to see what fighting games are all about.[/i]  He poked the training mode button with a sausagelike finger and the world went away, replaced by a darkness wreathed in effulgent code.  

When the world appeared again, it was something entirely different.  The first thing Birdie saw was a cow, only a few feet away and halted momentarily in its grazing to look at him with big, brown eyes.  All Birdie saw was a fatally undercooked hamburger, however, so he leered at the beast.  [color=yellow]”Wot are yew lookin’ at?”[/color]  He pulled himself ponderously to his feet, scratching a backside made itchy by contact with grass.  In fact, the wisps of pollen in the air penetrated his nose, eliciting a wet sneeze from him.  With a grimace and the back of his hand he wiped away its residue before looking around.  Compared to urban London, this place looked like the boonies.  To be honest, he couldn’t see very far due to encroaching nighttime, but the hills, grass, and bits of farm he saw were enough to convince him.  A second look around turned up definitive signs of life in the form of several individuals not too far away from the cows’ pen in which he currently stood.  At this distance, he couldn’t quite make heads or tails of what a couple of them were wearing.  Between the one man and two women, there was no consistency in dress or style.  As best he could make out, they simply stood around talking.  [color=yellow]”Blimey!  Wot sorry git sent me 'ere when all I wanted to do was sneak in some practice for miss Karin?”[/color]  Shrugging his shoulders, he started toward them, easily stepping over the cow fence as he did.