The sight of those two headlights was burned into his mind.

There was nothing else to say about that moment, other than how unfortunate the young man had been. There was the sound of a tire popping, a few screams, and nothing more to warn him about the oncoming vehicle. It was nothing more than an extremely unfortunate accident at the curb, but even so, the result was obvious.

But even so, the pain the musician should have felt from being run into by a truck wasn't there. He theorized, of course, that the truck would probably have killed him on impact, but that made his current situation even odder.

Was he truly 'dead' if he was still thinking now? Did some form of 'afterlife' really exist? Or was he simply drowning in some form of unconscious thought while in a coma?

It was then, though, that Evan finally managed to open his eyes. It was nothing as dramatic as media had portrayed it to be, it seemed; he was simply here, lying in the middle of a field that seemed to be a far cry from the city streets he had just been walking through, and with nary a scratch on him.

"...Hm? Wait, this... I wasn't wearing anything this fancy, was I?" he asked himself, brow furrowed as he slowly pushed himself off the ground and brushed himself off. To be sure, a fancy suit complete with a cravat might be something he would wear at a performance, but simply walking towards his ride so he could transfer to an airport? Absolutely not.

After a few moments of looking around to see if there was any other sign of civilization, the musician simply let out a sigh of defeat and glanced towards the ground and noticed the form of an all-too-familiar object.

"A... Violin case?"

Figuring he really had nothing else to lose, the young man knelt down and opened the box, only to reveal that there was indeed a violin inside. Unfastening the bow and instrument from their positions, Evan slowly looked over the latter. The way the violin seemed to catch the eye was notable on its own, but after a few minutes of closer inspection (and recalling the various times he had seen such instruments in real life), the young man simply stared at the violin in shock before staring at each section of the violin in turn, as if checking for a forgery (which he really was). He was no expert, of course, but even so...

"I... This can't be real, can it? I never had the money to purchase one of these back home, so... Is this a joke of some sort?"

A Stradivarius violin... There was no way that someone would leave such a valuable instrument simply lying around in the middle of a field, and so Evan could only really draw one of two conclusions from its existence: it was a very well-made replica, or... Well, it was really a Stradivarius and he had just come across something that could go for millions at an auction.

"...As if. But... I need to confirm if this is a real Stradivarius. Yes, if it's me, then it should be fine," he said to himself quietly, as if attempting to rationalize the whole ordeal. "But what to play...? Hm... Well, for starters, let me try something simple. But first, tuning."

Taking a deep breath, the young man brought the violin up to his shoulder and immediately began to test the strings. The violin, amazingly enough, seemed to resonate with life in his hands even as he played a few test notes, and in an instant Evan felt confident that, even if this wasn't a Stradivarius or some other famous instrument maker's work, it would surely be well beyond what he had ever been able to play before now. With renewed confidence that the object in front of him was a quality work of art, Evan recalled a piece from his mind and began to play.

"Yes, this sound... There is strength behind it. This instrument is itself a masterpiece, but to think I would find something like this here and now... Ah, life is truly full of miracles."

And thus he continued to play, losing himself to his craft and putting aside all his worries for the moment. He could fret about the situation he was in later; to play this violin now was nothing if not a once in a lifetime experience that he couldn't afford to pass up.

Jiro blinked, looking up at the sky. The sky...? Why would he be looking at the sky? The last thing that he remembered was heading out to drink with some colleagues, and though it wasn't a common thing for the salaryman to not remember the rest of the night, it was by no means the first time... so how on Earth was it that he was waking up by all appearances in a grassy field looking up at a bright blue sky, with a cloud drifting here and there? He'd been in Tokyo, and that certainly wasn't as peaceful as this.

Correction: as peaceful as this, though it might still have a violinist somewhere in the vicinity.

It was at this point that the uncomfortable nature of Jiro's position became quite noticeable. At least three body parts were protesting the weight, slight as it was, pressing down on them, and twisting around to look revealed quite a few things. Right, so somehow last night had led to becoming a girl... something that had never seemed possible, but a developing vague recollection of bright lights suggested that it hadn't been entirely by choice. So... reincarnation? But wasn't that supposed to start from the beginning, not just dump you into things as a young girl with body parts that shouldn't exist...?

Jiro shook her head, getting to her feet now. At the least, she hadn't come back as a cricket or something, and kept all her skills. Maybe if this place had offices too, getting a job would be easier in the future... but first, maybe the musician over there would know where to go to get a meal? Or maybe have a mirror or something?

Getting closer, it was clear that the violinist was very fancily dressed. So, rich then? Great, he'd definitely know where to get something to eat, and Jiro tapped him on the soldier.

"Hey, where can get a bite ta eat?"

"♪♪♪~" Aria hummed as she walked alone through the roads crossing the rolling hills of Avaria's countryside. By now the fox girl was used to the lonesome traveler's life, and sincerely felt she would feel empty once her pilgrimage comes to an end. The wind in her face and the earth under feet felt as natural for her as the many meets and parting she had on the time she has been on the road and all the stories she collected in her journal.

What didn't feel natural, was someone playing music the middle of nowhere, like her ears seemed to notice.

"Well, that's certainly strange," Aria thought as she deviated from her course and followed the source of the music. A few moments later, she found herself staring at a person that didn't seem to belong to the place he was standing on at all. After all, normal travelers would at least be aware that this kind of performance could attract unwanted attention, right?

Even so, Aria waited until the mysterious guy finished his performance before interrupting him. "That was an impressive performance. I don't think I ever heard that piece before. Normally, I would spare some time to ask about it, but don't you think that you are being a bit careless, Mr....?" Aria asked as she eyed the careless guy from a few feet away.

However, it seems like someone else didn't have the same patience, or so Aria thought while a surprised smile graced her face, shaded under her cloak' hood. "Or perhaps, you are not? I'm sorry if I interrupted anything. This region is known to be home for goblins and bandits, but if you have a companion such as this, I don't think you are in any danger," she added, pointing towards the dragon girl clinging to him.

"By the way, excuse me for my lack of manners. I'm Arianna Aquarian, but you can call me Aria, a traveler and story collector. Since there seems to be no crisis around, would you mind telling me more about that piece you were just playing?"

There had been reports of goblins amassing in this location. While her status was not yet on the level of a full sword saint, it had fallen to her to lead a small contingent of local military in order to root out and destroy the potential incursion. This was a duty she undertook with the utmost seriousness, and pride in herself. She was performing a service to the crown, an important task that would defend the innocent and prevent the creatures from rampaging and attacking wherever they pleased.

Now that they were close to the location of the sightings, Ange had ordered the soldiers to dismount. Initially, they had been surprised, even temporarily, to be attached to even a sword saint in training, but nevertheless they had been eager to do their job and prevent a goblin incursion. This was the matter that was chief on Ange's mind.

And yet... something unexpected was happening. Certainly, the girl had heard all kinds of music before, but this hardly sounded familiar to her. No... something was strange. Also the fact that someone was playing music in the middle of a field when there was a potential goblin attack. That was, frankly, quite stupid in her opinion.

She approached the source of the sound, one hand on the hilt of her sword as she did. The contingent of soldiers that had been dispatched with her, numbering around a dozen, followed.

Soon enough, she came upon... A dragon child, a man with some form of instrument, and a hooded girl. For a few moments, the pink-haired swordswoman stared in mute confusion, before shaking her head.

"What, exactly, are you doing here?" Ange began, her hand tightening on the hilt of her sword, "Don't you know that goblins have been sighted nearby? This situation is awfully suspicious. In the name of the Crown, I demand an explanation."

Once his concerto had finished, Evan let out a deep sigh and wiped the sweat off of his brow. There was no doubt that this violin was well beyond what he should have any right to have (monetarily, at least), but for the moment he could relish the fact that he had been able to play a piece on it.

He'd apologize to the owner later... Assuming there was one, of course.

It was then, of course, that he noticed the small crowd that had gathered around him. He hadn't noticed the young girl tugging at his clothes while he was playing, but now that he could focus his attention towards something other than his music, he could see that she was... Definitely not human. It was at this point that Evan started vaguely considering the possibility of this actually being a different world entirely.

The arrival of a hooded traveler (who, for all intents and purposes, had assumed something odd about the child next to him) and a group of knights led by a young girl didn't exactly... Help matters much at all.

"Ah..." he began, wondering where to start before sighing and shrugging his shoulders. "Okay, let's just answer the questions in order. One: I do not know where this is, nor do I know where the nearest town or what have you is. You could call it amnesia or what have you, but quite frankly all I know is that I found this violin here and decided to test it. No use lugging around a broken instrument, after all. Next: I would be happy to tell you about the piece once... This has been resolved. It shouldn't be too hard to rewrite the sheet music if need be. And finally... Goblins?"

Almost as if on cue, the rumbling of the ground beneath the group caused Evan to turn around, looking for the source. If it was an earthquake, an open field like this was the safest place to be, but...

"Is that... Oh, god, you weren't joking," he said under his breath as he found the source.

A giant wave of green-skinned creatures, half-clothed and carrying rudimentary weapons, seemed to be rushing towards the group. Evan took a few steps back out of instinctual fear, his violin beginning to glow a faint blue as he shook his head.

"Alright, I did not sign up for this. I'm a musician, not a warrior," he said before the instrument in his hands slipped out of his grasp and floated above his head. "Aaand I've gone crazy. Okay."

As the horde of goblins neared, Evan took a few steps back, moving away from the goblins. For some reason, however, a certain music piece popped into his head.

And the violin... Well, it started to play it.

As the sound resonated throughout the field, the oncoming goblin horde seemed to slow down, their arms slackening. They continued to charge forth, of course, but at a far slower pace than before.

It took Evan a few moments to process the scene, but he could at least parse a few things: namely, that the violin he had just been playing was linked to him, and that it was applying some sort of... Magical effect on the enemies in front of them.

"...Okay, you know what? I'm just going to accept this fact and go along with it," he said, throwing his hands up in the air in exasperation. "Magic? Sure, why not?"

"Aren't you a bit too nonchalant for someone that claims to not even know where the closest town is?" Aria replied to the overdressed boy just as a group of what she assumed to be this kingdom's knights approached them.

"That's what I was trying to explain to them," she said when the girl that seemed to be the leader of the knights' patrol mentioned that goblins have been sighted nearby. "By the way, I'm Arianna Aquarian, a story collector and knight errant. You can call me Aria if you so wish," Aria added, lowering her hood and moving her cloak aside to reveal her sword.

The time for introductions would soon be cut short by what felt like an earthquake at first only to turn out be a veritable goblin warband charging at their direction.

"I knew that the people in the previous village said that there were goblins around, but... isn't this too much of an overkill?" Aria complained in a joking tone just as the boy drew his instrument and cast a debilitating spell on the goblins. "I'd love to hear an explanation for that too, but I guess that it can wait until we are done here," she added before singing a short verse of her own. With the following swing of her sword, a strong gust of wind hit the front row of the goblin's band, knocking them back with the force of a hammer blow.

"Even if we can stall them, their numbers are too great. What do you say, are we going to fight or retreat, milady Knight?" Aria asked the other girl that looked quite a lot like herself wearing clothes with an inverse color scheme.

"Me, useful against bandits?" Jiro asked, pointing at herself. Even if it weren't for the sudden unexpected change in height and gender, well... a salaryman wasn't exactly equipped for medieval combat, regardless of the lack of fear death could instil compared to project deadlines. "I couldn't say that I'm any more in the know or more useful in combat than our musician friend here..."

A point that was promptly undermined when the man's violin chose to display magical properties, helpfully slowing the onrushing tide long enough for the dragon girl to sort through her conflicted thoughts. Her common sense was telling her to run like hell, but her instincts were saying that these things were little more than nuisances. Given the presence of the mystical floating violin, Jiro opted to listen to instincts over common sense, which were suggesting very strongly something like getting onto hands and knees.

But if you listened to one instinct, it was hard not to listen to the others, which saw the comparatively diminutive red dragon bound from her starting position and onto one extremely confused and unfortunate goblin, throat pinned under one claw as she sniffed it curiously. Not a pleasant smell, but interesting--much more than the former office worker would have expected. And one squeeze meant a lot of holes in the goblin throat, too...

Though now she was rather far forward compared to the others, and it seemed likely the goblins would get over any fear of sudden dragons when they realised it was about the size of an mule. Naturally armoured or not, there were lots of them and the soft, vulnerable parts of this dragon weren't entirely out of reach.

Everything was suddenly happening very fast. The dragon child had transitioned into her draconic form, unexpectedly for someone so young, and thrown herself into the attacking goblins. The man, as well, had used his strange instrument to induce some sort of magical effect on the goblins as well. There was no real time to contemplate what this meant, or what it would cause. What Ange knew was simply that the horde had been disrupted.

"Knights, attack at will!" she declared, drawing her sword, as the contingent behind her drew their weapons as well. The thin, silvery blade of her weapon gleamed in the sunlight as she raised the tip towards the green-skinned beasts.

There was a ringing sound, as what looked almost like a miniature star traveled up the length of her sword. She shut her eyes and focused for a moment, her mind centered squarely on her duty to protect the people of this land and destroy evil.

When she opened her eyes, to observes it would seem like she suddenly vanished, only to reappear just before the goblin swarm. Seconds later, the backdraft from her sudden movement struck, a burst of air rushing through the grass. Her blade thrust forward in a flash, skewering one goblin and slicing it apart before she moved to the next, cutting it in half. Her movements, to anyone watching, were made with blinding speed. Goblins were hewn apart left and right, or skewered on the tip of her blade in a flash.

This was what it meant to be in training to become a Sword Saint.

As the violin he had picked up earlier continued to play its debilitating music, Evan took a few more steps away from all the combat going on. To say that the goblin slaying being done was anything less than a massacre would be a lie; in fact, it seemed as if the enemy forces could barely lift their weapons before being summarily struck down by the flashing silver-white blade of the apparent leader of the knights or the claws of the dragon girl. If anything, the scene reminded the musician of one of those 'musou' games or whatever they were called.

Of course, it seemed as if she wasn't the only one rushing into battle, as the other members of her group resolved to charge forth only a few second after the call had been made.

It didn't take long for the enemy's numbers to thin out to about half of what they had been, and the beautiful field that the group had just been standing on was now dyed a deep hue of crimson from the slaughter. Of course, Evan still wanted to just run away from all of this; despite everything that media might have otherwise told him, he was still a civilian in a war zone. One misstep, and he would lose his life on the spot.

"...Well, given what I remember of the last 24 hours, that's not exactly unprecedented. Dying, that is..." the musician thought to himself as he finally managed to simply brace himself to stay where he was. There was no point in running if someone could close distance like that in an instant, and it wasn't like he knew where he could run to, anyways.

"But... Magic music, huh? I guess it's quite fitting, but... Why this song to this effect? I need to experiment..."

"Well, I guess this answers the question..." Aria sighed deeply as everyone else rushed straight into the goblin horde, hacking and slashing without rhyme or reason. "It's not like I can turn a blind eye now," she said to herself before charging ahead with a speed that rivaled Ange's, thanks to the wind that propelled her feet.

As soon as Aria was about as far from the goblins as Evam, she jumped high up in the air, letting the fall add momentum to her next opening move—a kick right into the face of whatever goblin was unfortunate enough to not be able to get away from her landing zone, followed by a another blast of wind, sending any foes close to her flying.

However, if there was a difference in the way that Aria fought, compared to Ange and her knights, as well as the dragon girl, it was in the fact that, so far, none of Aria's attacks had the intent to kill behind them. Instead of cutting the goblins to pieces, she knocked them out, sundered their weapons, and blasted them away with powerful gusts. The way she weaved around the battlefield was akin to a dance, especially when accompanied by Evam's song and occasional bits of magical rhymes whenever she used her powers.

"You guys are terrible dance partners, y'know? Why don't we wrap things up and call it a day before you get your asses kicked even harder by someone who's not as forgiving as me?" Aria said to the nearest group of goblins. She could only hope that they get the message and retreat instead of trying to overpower them with sheer numbers.

Jiro had learned something else in the hectic little fight: goblin didn't taste that good. Oh, it was an easy--if somewhat slow compared to the way warriors were going about it--method of putting the little bastards down. Pin, bite. No more goblin, and their attempts to stop it were pitiful, no more than light scratches from that angle. Yes, she was quite happy to be on the side slaying the goblins, not opposing the warrior whose movement she could barely track. But they still tasted bad. Edible--overcooked, despite being blatantly raw, and stringy was her opinion--if needed but not something to seek out.

Long-term survival would probably be hard looking like a bloodstained monster, and eating the goblins wouldn't help... with the fighting dying down, common sense was reasserting itself, and the dragon shuffled back towards the musician and... well, stood up, for want of a better word.

"So, I guess the music is as strange to you as that is to me?"

Damn it, the blood hadn't gone away. At least her clothes seemed to be immune to staining... were they even clothes? Or were they just the scales in a different guise?