Rick wasn't entirely certain what had happened. He'd heard something bust his front door open, so he grabbed the shotgun his dad had given him when he bought his first home. He wasn't all that in-practice with it, but he'd been to the range a enough times to know how to load, aim, fire, and clean it. Honestly, he forgot about it most days and felt iffy a about having it at all until about ten minutes ago.

Next had come the weird part. He'd gone through his house, calling out that he was armed and hoping that would scare the intruder off. When he finally got to his front door, it was closed. He stepped up to check the doorknob when he realized, too late, that there was no such object. He yelped as his fingers touched not metal, not wood, but icy darkness. Recoiling from the slab of shadow blocking his doorway, Rick felt a tremendous pull jerk him back against it. He screamed and tried to shove free of the blackness, but every part of him that touched it adhered to it. Eventually, tired and freezing, he whimpered one last time as he fell unconscious.

Next he was aware, he awoke on a carpet of pine needles and twigs, with towering trees overhead. It was still dark, but the moon slipped through the alpine canopy. Something grabbed at his ankle and he cried out again, reaching for something, for anything. His fingers found that shotgun and for the briefest moment, his soul found hope. He snatched the weapon up and aimed it at the silhouette by his feet. "Get off of me!"

The creature, humanoid but not fully human, leaned in and tilted its rodent-like head, a menacing growl escaping its widening maw. Blam! Rick had pulled the trigger without even realizing, his fear taking over. The barrel had been lined up with the monster's face and should have pulped it, but... it was gone?

He sat up and tried to make sense of what was happening. The flash of the gun had illuminated it briefly. It had a head like a naked molerat, except for its mouth was full of needle like teeth. Its skin had been leathery and red as though stained with blood, and its arms had ended in twin claws that were much better suited for digging through flesh than dirt.

Then he felt something stab into his back. Rick howled in pain as he whirled on the rouge creature and pulled the trigger again. Nothing happened; he'd forgotten to cock it. Still, the beast reacted and was suddenly two feet to the right of his barrel.

"Get away!" He screamed.

Then there was a flash of brilliant gold light that washed over the monster. Out of nowhere, an enormous figure in gleaming armor charged into the light and slammed into the horror with its shoulder.

"To the ninth hell with ye, filthy rouge!" The interloper bellowed in a low, but discernably female voice. She brought her massive sword down upon the stunned creature and wrent its head from its shoulders.

The creature fell to the floor in a heap, leaving Rick and this knight person alone.

"Uhh... thanks," he said, still trembling. "What the hell was that?"

The woman took her helmet off, revealing a green face and tusks at each corner of her mouth, "Are ye daft? That was a rouge. Awful beasties, faster than an arrow and hungrier than a ghoul."

"And... red, I guess."

"Aye. Red as the blood in your veins."

Rick shuddered, "Well I don't know what the hell is going on here, but thanks for the rescue. Is there something I can do to pay you back?"

The woman grinned, "Aye, there's something you must do. The goddess Aiena has seen that I spare your life from that beast. Swear to worship her always, take the oaths of devotion, and I shall leave you be."

"Wait... what if I don't?"

"The goddess does not take kindly to those who repay her heroism with arrogance."

Rick wasn't the most religious person, but he still had his own beliefs - and they weren't ones he wanted to change. "B-but I am already, I mean, I already believe in a god. I can't just--"

"And did your god save you here?"

Rick looked from her to his shotgun and sighed. He might have, "That's not important."

"Which god is it? Toralin? Lyra?" She leaned in and gritted her teeth, "Say it's Yondun and I will slay you right here."

He backed away, "It's none of those! Please, just leave me alone!"

She raised her sword, "Aiena demands your conversion. If you will not accept her, you will die."

"Stay away!" He shouldered the shotgun. When she stepped forward, he fired. Brilliant light appeared where the buckshot should have pierced her armor and blown out her back. Sparks flew from the radiant barrier, but she did not stop. Rick stepped back, remembered to cock it this time, and fired again. The results were the same.

"In the name of Aiena, I judge ye wanting!"

And that was when the woman exploded. It wasn't a big ball of fire like the movies. It was mostly smoke, blood, and gore. Fragments of her breastplate slammed against... something in front if him. It was blue and translucent and it shimmered.

Rick was done touching weird non-solids for the night so he just backed away and swept the area for others, "Hello?"

"Greetings," said a voice from behind a tree. "Please take care where you point that thing. I'm neither as fast as that rouge, nor protected as that paladin was."

The bewildered man lowered his shotgun and fell to his knees, "What the hell is going on?"

The bespectacled figure stepped out from behind the trunk, little balls of light floating around him. He wore a classic wizard's hat and robes, "Ah, see, that is my fault. I'm having trouble getting a spell to work and I needed help from someone outside my context."

"You what?"

The man adjusted his hat, revealing long, pointed ears. "I'm sorry for the trouble I have caused you, but I needed a wizard from another world."

"A wizard...? I'm a computer scientist."

"Oh, blast! I could have sworn I told the spell to seek out someone good with using archaic language to design and properly write complex instructions for an automated entity to follow. What is someone who does that called in your world."

Rick cleared his throat and responded sheepishly, "Uh... a computer scientist, actually."

". . . so after I got hit by a truck saving a kid, I died, where God told me that I had died before my time. But in exchange, he told me I could reincarnate in a new world with all the memories of my old life. . . and one item from my own world."

"And you chose a gun?" Shadow asked.

"It seemed a good idea at the time," I said ruefully. "I mean. . . guns ended the age of the medieval knight, right? I figured that, with my gun, I would be unstoppable."

"Were you aware that our alchemists had learned the secret of black powder ages ago? And that gonnes were tried, but were deemed a dead-end technology?" the elf girl asked.

"I learned. . . quickly," I said. "The first time I shot at a bunch of bandits attacking a caravan, I thought I was going to be a hero. Then one of them held up their hand and deflected the bullet. Turns out that a simple Shield spell does a pretty good job of protecting from bullets as well as Magic Missiles."

Shadow sighed and rubbed her forehead in exasperation. "Yes," she said. "That would do it."

"They hit me with Hold Person, took me prisoner, and stole my gun," I said. "And that's how I ended up as a slave in the gladiator pits of Tharn."

"A place I know well," Shadow said. "I was a slave there once. It took me fifty years to win one hundred fights and earn my freedom."

"Yeah. . . well, I was lucky. Pitmaster Grimtooth decided I was too scrawny to make a good gladiator, and too dull to make good Manticore food, so he put me into the training course. Three months of high protein diets, constant exercise, and sword training. I figured that by the end of that time, I'd be a warrior true, and I could earn my way through the world by the strength of my arm and the steel of my sword. At least, until the first time I got put into a sparring match against another gladiator. Turns out that swordfighting wasn't my talent either. Grimtooth had given up on making me a gladiator, and I was due to end up as Hydra food, when I overheard him complaining to the Pit Lords about owing money to Senator Vornak. Which seemed strange to me because the Tharn Gladiator Pits were raking in money hand over fist, so why the hell weren't they turning a profit?"

Shadow laughed brightly, a sound like silver bells. "And that was when you made yourself indispensible to Pit Lord Olvan?"

"Yeah. . . turns out that Olvan had never heard of double-entry bookkeeping before. His scribes were skimming money off the top." I laughed ruefully. "It turns out that when God offered to let me take my prior knowledge and one item from my old world, the former was more important than the latter. Figuring out what was going on was child's play for any trained CPA. I managed to turn Olvan's business around, and his old scribes ended up as jobbers during the next gladiatorial games."

Shadow took a long sip of her icewine. "That still doesn't explain how you ended up here," she said.

"Well, it turned out that Olvan was good friends with Ser Ulrich. A lot of retired gladiators end up becoming sellswords, after all, and the Blue Daggers were the foremost adventuring guild in the land. Ulrich's books were better organized than Olvan's, but he was still running into issues with guildmasters stiffing him on their yearly tithes. Olvan figured that if anyone could figure out a solution to the problem, I could. So he set up the meeting, and we came up with a plan." I shook my head and sighed, memories of long nights by witchlight coming back to haunt me. "I thought I was done with middle management after I got hit by a truck, but it turned out that nobody in the Blue Daggers had ever learned project management. The guildmasters were trying their best, but they had never learned how to keep a project running smoothly, how to make sure people stayed on task without wasting time, how to value their employees rather than treating their workers like crap. It took me a year and a day of running the Valendil chapter of the Blue Daggers to convince them that my way would work better. After that, they had the guildmasters send me their best apprentices to train up in my method, and go forth to train up their own people. After some time, people outside the Blue Daggers asked me to help train them up on my method too, and I bought out my contract and went into business for myself. I got a charter from the Emperor. . . and here I am."

"And here you are," Shadow said. "And here I am as well."

"And here we are," I agreed. "Shall we get down to business?"

"Yes, indeed," Shadow said. "You understand, of course, that your tongue shall be cut out of your head and your eyes left for the ravens if you ever speak a single word of what I say to another living soul?"

"Jefferson Consulting Solutions treats client confidentiality as its top priority," I agreed. "Bound and sealed by a Tenth Level Geas."

"Very well," The black-clad elf woman smiled. "The Assassin's Guild wishes to undergo one of your 'restructurings.' Our members fight amongst themselves constantly, and bloodshed is common. What would it take to improve our organization's efficiency and prevent infighting amongst our members?"

"Sounds to me like you need one of our leadership retreats and corporate culture consultancies. If you look at our brochure here. . ."

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