The sensation of waking up was weird, since I haven't slept in a very long time, I've neither woken up either. I was greeted by a bunch of notification screens, which I ordered to postpone until I get my bearings straight.

As I got up, I heard a voice. "Ah, you're awake. What fortunate timing."

I looked around and saw that the voice came from Xedne. Kala and Yaten were here too. They were sitting at a table, I was in a bed not too far away. There was another bed in the room, unused, but there wasn't much else.

"To start, how about we tell you what we know and you can fill in the blanks?" I nodded. "We found a Hidden Hand hideout yesterday morning from reports of noise in the area and when I arrived, I saw you unconscious on the ground and a number of dead bodies of Hidden Hand agents. The only ones alive in the building aside from you were children who were locked up in the basement. They heard fighting but didn't see or hear much in terms of specifics of what occurred. Now, please tell us what you heard and experienced."

There wasn't much point in hiding things from these folks, so I nodded and began to speak… but no sound came out of my mouth. I tried to say various things, but nothing.

"I knew it, she's cursed. Seems like a silence curse." Kala noted.

Curses are a thing? Well, with magic and Skills stuff, I guess that isn't too surprising. I mimed the act of writing. There's more than one way to communicate.

Xedne understood what I was going for and gave me what seemed to be a sort of pencil and paper, as well as a wooden board to write on. I put the pencil onto the paper and…

…Something was wrong, my hand wouldn't move. Was I nervous? Afraid? I didn't think so. I wanted to write, but…

"Is something preventing you from writing?"

I nodded in reply to Xedne words. Certainly, it seemed something was.

"Writing Skill sealing curse." Kala commented. "It'll be impossible for her to write until we can get rid of the curse."

"There's a Writing Skill?" Yaten asked the question that came to mind. Certainly I don't remember seeing a Writing Skill in my status.

"It's one of the hidden Skills, like Breathing, Eating, and Walking. All technically skills, but the System seems to think it's unnecessary to show them unless you specifically ask for it." Kala seems to be the System expert here.

"Why didn't they just seal the Breathing Skill then? That would make anybody unable to talk."

"It's simply far easier to seal something like Writing than something like Breathing. Or rather, I don't think anybody's been successful at the latter. Skills aren't equal."

"Is that so."

"Still, can't talk, can't write. It's going to be difficult to get any information this way."

Well Kala, there's actually a bunch of ways to communicate without either of those two. Let's see, sign language will take a lot of time to learn, so that's out for now. Well, I remember Xedne said it's possible to use magic without spells, minor elemental effects can be done without a full fledged spell. Let's see, using the Wind element, I can try vibrating the air in a specific way, and…

· . A beep sound came out.

Xedne looked at me curiously. "Did you make this sound?"

I nodded.  · . Then I shook my head.  ·· . I made a thinking pose.  − .

"A short sound for 'yes', two short ones for 'no', and a longer sound for 'I'm thinking'? This form of communication could be useful." Xedne observed.

"The problem isn't 'yes' or 'no', but everything else." Kala protested. Yaten seemed a bit lost at the moment.

· . I beeped to get their attention, then mimed opening and reading a book. Xedne thought for a moment, and then took my board, pencil, and paper and started writing.

Soon, I got back the paper, but with writing on it. "Is this what you wanted?" I looked at the sheet and  · , nodded.

It was the alphabet of the local Kalensha language, arranged in a 5 by 5 grid with 5 vowel letters and 20 consonant letters. It was surprisingly similar to English. That said, with the Kalensha Language Skill, I understood this well enough. I began pointing at the different letters one by one, and producing a combination of short and long beep sounds.

I was, in essence, recreating morse code for another language. I have some memory of morse code, but never ended up using it much. I knew enough of the basics of it to do this, however. Making these beeping sounds using the Wind element takes up surprisingly few MP, I can do a number of beeps for just 1 MP.

After I went through the alphabet, I beeped out a sentence and waited.

Xedne slowly sounded it out. "H-e-l-l-o, c-a-n y-o-u r-e-c-e-i-v-e t-h-i-s? Hello, can you receive this? Yes, I've received your message well, Yuri-Ann."

"Well, this is pretty complicated and slow, but at least it works." Kala noted.

"Indeed. Is this a technique from another world, Yuri-Ann?"

Felt like the room froze in time for a second until I broke the silence with a  · , and a nod.

"Wait, what's this about another world? Yaten, do you know anything about this?" Yaten shook his head quickly.

"Did she not tell you? Perhaps she was scared of you." Kala's face turned to one of guilt. "She told me she has come from another world, though it seems to have been an accident and not of her will."

"Is… that so."

"Now, this isn't the sort of thing you should talk about to just anyone, but as you two will be taking care of her, I felt it was best for you to know."

"Y-yes, I understand."

"Since we have that out of the way then, let's hear her perspective as to what happened that night."

I sent out a number of beeps, eventually saying "I got kidnapped from my room that night. After I arrived at the hideout, I escaped from the bindings and killed most of them, but two escaped."

After translating my beeps, Xedne replied. "I'm familiar with your strength. Although you are rather strong for your age, it is still not nearly enough to take down a Hidden Hand hideout by yourself without extraordinary luck. I can tell that you're still hiding something from us; I hope you can trust us to tell the truth."

At this point, I noticed something, my own thoughts have been a bit strange. She's using a Skill, isn't she? Something to enhance her influence, a social Skill. …Of course she's been using a Skill, people of this world use Skills like water. I don't think she's being malicious though, but it's difficult to be sure. There's something I should say though.

I beeped some words. "Your fault."

"My fault? What is?"

"Your fault I got kidnapped."

Xedne was taken aback a bit, although she regained her composure with time. "Indeed it was. You have my sincerest apologies. While adventurers may face many dangers as they do their work outside, we should at least ensure that they remain safe while they stay here. I'll look into what I can do to improve our members' safety here and you will have compensation for the troubles you got into."

Oh, huh, that's good, I guess? I didn't expect that much when I said that.

…Right now, these three basically want my trust and partnership. And also right now, I have some sort of organization that kidnaps children and probably other bad things after me. And I'm in an unknown world, can't effectively communicate to others, and am frankly not that strong here. I need help. I need allies. And for that, I need to trust these three.

I started by beeping out a sentence. "While I was in the hideout, I got help."

"Help? From whom?"

At that point, I changed to my vampire side.

"Me."

Meophist

I think I'll end the chapter here. I had ideas for her vampire identity not getting found out until much later, but well, stories evolve as they're written, I guess. Also didn't expect her to lose her communicative ability, but that can become an interesting wrinkle, I think.

I'm not too sure how to do the pseudo-morse code thing, but doing it like this for now. Tell me if it's causing any problems.

Next chapter will have backstory, assuming it goes as planned which isn't really that much of an assurance considering how things have gone so far. After that is probably some character sheets. A lot changed since the last time we saw it, and it hasn't even been that long. Also, adding Mute Character to the tags.