Isekai Family Robinson: A slow-burn Isekai

–Earlier that day–

Matt watched as Allie disappeared into the jungle, and fought against the sinking feeling in his gut, the same feeling he'd had each and every time he'd watched her get into her car and drive off towards the airfield, where a plane was waiting to take her back to a place filled with sand and death. And just like those days, he watched her until he could no longer see her. And then he kept watching, fighting against his own worst fears.

He'd never once revealed the fear that churned in his gut every time she left. She had enough to worry about without adding his own fears for her into the mix.

A slender hand slid into his own, and he looked over to see Bel standing beside him, watching him with sympathy in her brown eyes.

"She's gonna be okay dad," his daughter said to him gently. "Mom's tough. She'll be okay." She punctuated her words by squeezing his hand once. "Don't go to pieces on us now, okay?"

"I thought I was supposed to be the parent here," Matt said, smiling slightly.

"You are. So get to it already," Bel responded, smirking.

That got a laugh from Matt, and he cuffed her playfully on the back of her head. "Smart aleck."

"Gee, I wonder where I could have possibly gotten that from." Bel stuck her tongue out. Then she grinned and ducked under Matt's second cuff. "Come on dad, you said we've got a lot to do. So let's get to it. Maybe we'll randomly get some more cool powers."

"Yeah, cool powers." Matt snorted. "The last 'cool power' almost left me flat as a pancake."

"So we'll try harder this time."

Matt chuckled and continued bantering with his eldest as they walked back to the Dilligaf and where the other kids were waiting for them.

"Alright troops," Matt said as he drew near. "Tu madre is off to scout out the area, which means it's up to us to get home base all ship-shape before she gets back. And to help us with that," Matt grinned and leaned down to grab something out of a pile of tools and equipment he'd left beside the yacht's hull and came up with a clipboard in his hands. "I've made a list for everyone!"

The kids all groaned. Matt was famous for his lists and delegation skills back on earth, much to his children's chagrin.

"Yeah yeah, I know, but this isn't a beach vacation and we all need to pull together," he said, still grinning. "So let's get started. Lucas! This list is for you," he handed a sheet of printer paper liberated from the Dilligaf's communications room with a bunch of bullet-pointed chores on it. "If you have any questions or run up against anything you're not sure of, come and ask me. Okay?"

"Sure dad," Lucas snagged the list and started scanning it immediately and eagerly.

Matt handed out the rest of the lists as the other kids came forward. Most of the chores were simple, if time-consuming. He had them hauling equipment out from the Dilligaf for sorting in the better light outside the yacht. He also had them on rotating lookout duty, with Dinah taking the mid-shift because he wanted her working with the rest of them at first so hopefully she wouldn't feel ostracized when it was her turn to go off and keep watch.

The lists looked like busywork to an untrained eye, but Matt understood that organisation and preparation were the king and queen of their present situation. He'd read too many accounts of people in natural disasters suffering or dying because they hadn't made proper use of their resources or hadn't prepared for the worst well enough.

And he would be damned if his family was going to suffer that fate.

The morning passed in a blur as they all took to their tasks with gusto. Tarps were laid down and weighed with rocks, and then equipment and gear was stripped off the yacht and laid down on the tarps for Matt's perusal later. He'd assigned Olivia and Lucas a room each to essentially strip bare of anything that wasn't nailed down, and given Dinah the task of sorting them into different piles and sections based on potential usefulness. And Bel, with her rifle, took the first lookout turn on the deck of the yacht.

Matt joined her there, bringing up some battery-operated power tools with him to start bringing down some of the larger pieces of the solar array. Power was going to be their most important resource, and he was determined to have at least a functioning solar panel setup by the time Allie got back.

They settled into a comfortable routine of work. It was not difficult, but there was lots of it to be done. Ordinarily Matt would have put on some of his favorite songs to help the time pass quicker, but without electricity to power the ship's speakers there wasn't much point to it. So instead he hummed to himself some of his favorite oldies, and before he knew it the others had picked it up as well. Soon the yacht rang to the sound of young voices belting out the silly verses of "The Mighty Quinn" at full volume while they worked.

Matt was just removing the last bolt from the third solar panel when the sound of gunshots reached him. His head snapped up as one, two, three quick shots blasted out from somewhere to the west. He could feel everyone stop around the yacht as heads craned and hands cupped over ears, listening. He saw Bel heft her rifle and turn towards the sound of the shots. He waited a heartbeat after the last shot faded, then yanked the handheld radio from his belt and keyed it on.

"Allie? Come in Allie!"

"I'm here Matty," the radio crackled after a second that felt entirely too long. He felt his heart unclench just a little.

"We heard shots," he said next, trying to keep his voice calm as the kids turned to focus on his conversation. "You okay?"

"Just dealing with some local wildlife." He could hear the smirk in her voice as she ran through an abbreviated account of her encounter with…

An acidic land-based floating manta ray. Sure. Why not.

"if you see one coming towards you, just shoot it. Not sure if they're predators or not, but they're dangerous, and that tail of theirs can extend farther than it looks."

"Roger that. You coming back in?"

"No, I'm going to keep going. We still need information on what's out here, and I haven't found anything worth cheering about yet. I'll keep going."

"Stay safe Allie." He tried to put as much of what he was feeling right now into those words, and prayed the radio would carry his thoughts and prayers over to her.

"I will mi corazon," she said. "Keep your eyes peeled as well."

He let out a deep breath at his wife's calming words and slumped against the masthead. Back on earth, when she'd been away, he'd often wished he had more information about what she was going through. That he could have been near enough to talk to her and offer her help. He now was starting to be glad that he never had been. Hearing those shots, and not knowing what was going on, was worse than if he'd only heard about what had happened after the fact.

"You okay Dad?" Lucas' voice made Matt look up to see his son standing over him, arms full of an assortment of random kitchen implements, looking concerned.

"I'm fine," Matt said after a breath. "Just… Taking a moment to get my head on again." He paused and raised an eyebrow. "Why are you up here with all that?"

"Huh?" Lucas looked down at the stuff in his arms. "Oh! So, you know how the kitchen is closer to the deck than it is to that hole in the hull? Well, I figured, why not work smarter like you're always saying? So I made a slide."

Matt blinked. "A slide?"

"Yeah, come see!" Lucas nodded his head towards the yacht's railing. Matt stood and followed his son over to see that Lucas had lashed a couple of tarps together, along with what appeared to be a couple chair legs, some lengths of rope, and a liberal amount of duct tape, and a few other odds and ends to create a tarpaulin slide attached to the side of the boat and anchored at the bottom by a couple of stakes driven into the ground. The slide actually ended right at the 'sorting tarp', where the current organizer was waiting ready to receive whatever slid down.

"See? Easier to just carry stuff up here and let it slide down," Lucas said, and then demonstrated by dumping the bric-a-brac in his arms onto the 'slide'. It clattered and zipped down the tarp and ended up in a pile on the sorting tarp.

"Not bad, buddy," Matt said, eyeing the slide. It was utterly ungainly and looked like it might fall apart at any second… But his foreman's eye saw where his son had reinforced the obvious weak spots, and used other things to reinforce the tarps so that it wouldn't break under pressure.

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"Not bad at all," he said, grinning and clapping Lucas on the shoulder. "That's good thinking!"

Lucas beamed like the sun itself before heading back into the yacht to grab another armfull of stuff. Matt watched him go, and felt a mix of emotions run through him. Pride, that his boy was obviously thinking of ways to improve himself and his work. Shame, that he couldn't remember seeing this side of his son before this probably because he'd never been around long enough to see it. And determination, to be present in his son's life–in all his children's lives–just like he'd sworn he would.

He turned back to the solar panel and started to pick up his spanner again, then paused. No, before he'd do that, he needed to check on the others. If he was going to be present, then he needed to be present, by God.

The next while was spent enjoyably going from one kid to the next, seeing how they were doing, enjoying a brief conversation, and offering advice or commiseration before moving on to the next. Even to his own ears, it felt a little awkward and stilted. But he could see in their eyes that they understood what he was trying to do, and they responded to that if nothing else. His children were smiling as he moved on, and that was what mattered.

He was just about to move away from Dinah, who was proving to be an absolute whiz at sorting the various implements from the yacht based on how useful they might be for survival in this new world, when a quiet chime made both of them stop. There was a soft burst of golden light just in front of the seated teen, and when it faded there was… A coin. A coin roughly the size of Matt's palm, spinning slowly in mid air right in front of Dinah's chest.

"Wha?" The girl blinked owlishly at it, then looked up at Matt. "What just happened?"

"I have no idea," Matt said, squatting down next to her to watch the coin spin. It looked slightly different than the coin he remembered getting from the crab.

"Where did it come from? I didn't do anything. I've been sitting here sorting stuff. Didn't you get yours when you killed that giant crab thing? Why is this one here?"

"Olivia!" Matt called, not making a move toward the coin. "Could you come here for a minute?"

A few minutes later not only Olivia but Lucas and Bel were clustered around as well, everyone staring at the coin as it spun.

"What do you think, Liv?" Matt asked.

"Looks different from the one you and Mom got," Olivia said, squatting on the balls of her feet and peering at the coin from all angles. "See? This one has pictures of like wheat and stuff on it. And I think that's a hammer, isn't it?"

"Gavel," Lucas said, also peering at the slowly-rotating coin. "Like what judges use."

"But why is it here?" Dinah asked. She'd edged away from the coin as the others came closer, seeming perfectly willing to put as much distance between herself and the object as possible.

"Okay, so, in the books," Olivia started, still frowning at the coin, "there's always like some sort of experience system, right? You gain levels by doing things. Usually its for killing monsters or completing quests. Just like in video games, right?"

She glanced around, getting nods of understanding from the rest of them before turning back to the coin.

"But sometimes, the systems are a little more deep. Sometimes people can get experience just for completing mundane tasks, or they level up skills by doing things associated with that skill."

"So like, you dig a hole, you get better at digging holes?" Bel asked.

"Yeah, kinda." Liv nodded. "I think that's what's going on here. The coins are, like, an activation item of some kind. Mom and Dad killed a crab, so they got coins that activated their system stuff."

"The broken system," Lucas muttered, unconsciously ghosting his fingertips over the bracer still on his wrist.

"I think that this is the same kinda thing," Liv continued. "Like, Dinah, you've been sitting here for hours, sorting out the stuff we've been bringing you and getting organized and stuff… I think you might have done it good enough or maybe just long enough that the system has leveled up your… uh…"

"Random Crap Collection skill?" Bel asked with a snort.

Olivia snerked. "Yeah, exactly. I think you've leveled up your Random Crap skill and so the system generated a coin for you to bring you in."

"Okay, great, cool," Dinah said, looking at the coin like it might bite her at any second. "So how do I get rid of it?"

Matt saw his daughter blink. "Wait," she said, "you don't want it? Why not?"

"Uh, because it's busted and it almost killed your dad?" Dinah said, giving her friend an incredulous look. "Why would I want it?"

"Because it's a gateway to cool powers and superhuman abilities and, like, adventure and stuff!" Olivia said, turning back to stare covetously at the coin. "You could learn to do magic. Or maybe fly! Or–"

"Or fireballs?" Lucas asked, getting a similar hungry light in his eye.

"No fireballs," Matt said automatically. And hadn't his life just taken a turn if that was a phrase he was going to be repeating.

"Lightning bolts, then?" Lucas asked hopefully.

"No."

"You suck, Dad," his son said, deadpan.

"I know. It's part of being a parent." He watched the coin for a long moment, then blew out a sight. "Let's leave the coin for right now, then. No one touch it. We'll just shift our sorting operation down a bit so it's away from the thing. We don't have to come to a decision right now, that's for sure."

He paused as he remembered gaining his own coin. "Dinah," he added, "why don't you take over guard duty from Bel. Probably best to get you away from the coin for a while, just in case it tries to get tricky."

"Yeah, I like that idea," the teen said, glaring at the coin.

"Alright, get your gun and–"

Matt was cut off by the sound of a distant shot. Everyone went quiet and still as Matt turned, ears straining.

"Probably just–" he started to say as his hand went towards his radio, then another shot rang out. Then another. And then a veritable fusilade as his wife, wherever she was, unloaded what sounded like an entire clip as fast as she could pull the trigger.

"Mom!" Lucas was on his feet.

"She's in trouble!" Bel said at the same time, and Matt saw her hands tighten on her rifle. "We've got to go–"

"Everyone stay here," Matt thundered in his Foreman's voice, and the wrecking ball of authority in it slammed into his kids and glued their feet to the ground. He hefted his shotgun and started to move in the direction of the gunfire, which was still going on. "Bel, you're in charge. Take care of–"

And the words froze in his throat as he realized what he was about to do.

He was about to leave his children alone, unsupervised and undefended, in the middle of a hostile new world. He was about to run off into a fight that he might not return from, that he and Allie both might not return from, and leave his children alone.

His frantic dash ground to a sudden halt before he even reached the tree-line. He felt his entire body quiver like a bandsaw blade with the need to go help his wife with whatever she was fighting… But he couldn't.

"Dad? What are you gonna do?" Bel asked, her voice sounding small.

Matt took a deep, shuddering breath as more shots rang out in the distance.

I have to stay.

Allie had fought for years in the desert, against men who at best wanted to kill her in gruesome ways just for existing. She was tough, strong, and capable. She was a warrior.

He might be able to help her, if he got to her in time. And if it had just been the two of them, he knew he would have been off like a shot.

But they weren't alone.

Some march to the fray. Some guard the home gates.

"Dinah," he said, not turning back to his kids. He didn't want them to see his face right now. "Get up on the Dilligaf, fore. Cover that direction. Bel. Aft section. Lucas, Dinah, Olivia, you guys get up against the hull facing the beach. Holler if anything comes from that way. I'm going around to the other side. If you see anything that isn't Mom coming our way, you yell. If you think it's dangerous, you shoot and yell. Got it?"

He didn't hear anything in response, so he forced himself to turn. His children were staring at him with wide eyes, tense and unmoving.

He breathed again.

"Mom is a soldier and a fighter," he said as another trio of shots punctuated his words. "She's survived war and came back to us. She will survive this and come back to us. We need to make sure it's safe for her when she gets back."

"But–" Lucas started to say, and Matt was ready to interrupt him. To his surprise, he didn't have to.

"Do what Dad says," Bel said quietly. "He's right. Remember what I said back when the TV announced the army was pushing forward into enemy-held territory?"

Lucas frowned, then visibly took hold of himself an nodded. "Mom's dangerous."

"Mom's dangerous," Bel echoed, nodding. "So let's do what Dad said."

"Yeah," Lucas sniffed and reached back to touch the shotgun slung over his shoulder. "Okay."

Matt watched as the kids hustled off to their assigned positions, then he turned and made his way to the jungle-side of the hull, his shotgun in his hands and held in a white-knuckle grip. The shooting was still going on. She must have gone through three full clips by this point.

"Father," he whispered a prayer, "please protect her." His heart ached to sprint to her side, to be with her. And he dearly wished he could do something, anything, to help her now.

And then something went ping.

The scroll, the one given him by the clam, was suddenly in his hands and unrolling of its own accord. New words blazed across the parchment in brilliant letters.

Thou may transfer a portion of thine earned [margarine] to Alejandra Albright to aid her. Doest thou wish to transfer?

Matt blinked, staring at the words. He didn't have a clue what the thing was talking about, but…

"Yes," he said. "Yes. If it will help her!"

Thou has agreed to a transfer. Thou hast 2 earned [Margarine]. How much doest thou wish to transfer?

"All! All of it!"

Transfer complete.

Matt felt something tug, and a tiny pinprick of light emerged from somewhere near his chest and zipped off in the direction the shots were coming from. He had no idea what he'd just done, he could only pray that it was something useful.