[color=8493ca][center][h2]Javal[/h2][/center][/color]

The last thing he could remember played over and over in his head.  An explosion.  Loss of control.  An utter worst-case scenario for an airliner.  Hopeless attempts to regain control and stay in the air.  A catastrophe the likes of which he had never experienced in all his time in a cockpit.  The captain had stepped out a few minutes prior, leaving him alone at the controls when the disaster struck.  For all his attempts to regain control, it was all futile- it went further and further down, plummeted into the ground, and then...water struck his face as he found himself on the ground, his face wet.  Strange, it wasn't a water landing.  Voices, then the feeling of trying to awaken him.

Was it just a dream?  A pilot's nightmare of being caught in a terrible airline disaster?  If only, but this wasn't his bed, and being awakened by being splashed with water was hardly normal. There were other voices beside him, protests at being splashed. And...was he still wearing a headset?  Could he still be dreaming?

Surely this couldn't be the aftermath of the crash.  At the speed and angle they hit the ground there was no way it was survivable, and even if it was, he definitely shouldn't feel so...intact.  No pain, no numbness of lack of sensation in his limbs, not even any real discomfort aside from the water in his face.

As he opened his eyes and sat up, it was clear this was no crash site.  The armored figure over him didn't look like any paramedic or emergency worker he had ever seen.   The attire on him was not his uniform.  The headgear upon him, it was not his headset.  And the screen in front of him was not an airplane's heads-up-display.

Either he had died and gone to...wherever people go when they die, or he was currently dozing at the controls, and in either case his life was well and truly screwed.

He said nothing as he sat up, trying to ignore the status screen which followed where he looked.  It looked like a cavern, and there were several others with him.  The armored knight, and what appeared to be two...elves?  This was neither a crash site nor a hospital.  The knight and elves, the glowing fungi, it all looked like inside of a game.  And the display, this status screen, it looked just like the menu of a game.

Finally looking over the status screen, he saw it provided a good deal of information.  It gave a name- Javal- stats, an inventory consisting of armor and a halberd, and race, listed as "human".  Indeed, the outfit he was wearing was armor and a halberd laid next to him.

[color=8493ca][i]Huh, it looks like I'm a Dragoon,[/i][/color] he surmised as he took a look at his helmet (which, curiously, was not evidently projecting the screen) over his inventory, stats, and the description of the "trajectory control" skill on his status screen.  [color=8493ca][i]This person before me must be some variety of knight.[/i][/color]  He had played enough games to be familiar with these archetype.  Fitting, in a way, that the crashed pilot become an expert at falling...

As he looked over it, the realization finally dawned on him...in all his life, when dreaming he had never been able to read as cohesively as he was now.  The text on the status screen made sense, and it didn't change when he eyes turned away and then back.  This right here was something he had [i]never[/i] been able to do in a dream.

But if he was dead...where were the passengers and rest of the crew?  Be it afterlife or reincarnation, was he still responsible for the passengers' safety?  In the very least, after his failure to save the plane, he certainly owed it to them.

Being reminded him of his duties was enough to get him up on his feet, and, with some trouble, figure out how to close the "status window".

[color=8493ca]"What's going on?  Where are we?  How did I get here?"[/color] he asked the knight.

[@Crusader Lord][@Thunder999999][@Expendable]