[WP] When life gives you lemons, you burn the entire lemon grove down.

...

Life has a habit of giving me lemons.

Even in this world, where the people call them "Lelams," I get more than my fair share. It might even be safer to say, more accurate than just giving them to me, life really just throws them in my general direction. Pretty hard throws too: I'm talking Major-League style pitches, and usually only after life has gone about setting the damn things on fire.

So life typically gives me painfully fast-moving, on-fire Lemons.

I wish I was exaggerating, but fireballs do tend to happen on a regular basis around these parts and a fruit vendor stall was the main reason for the loss of my vehicle a couple months ago (although the mob of Holier-than-thou fanatics with torches and swords didn't make matters any simpler)

Previously, I never considered what a pain in the ass it would be to hitch a dinged-up camping trailer to a set of horses, but I sure do now.

Lemons. Lelams. On and on it goes.

Some things are constant, no matter what parallel reality you get dropped into, you're going to have bad-shit happen. Personally, I believe that the trick is to take advantage of ever tiny portion of non-lemon related thing that comes in your direction. Capitalize on ever tiny bit you can, and the small things add up.

For example: A reliable team of Adventurers.

By sheer happenstance, my second-in-command I saved from a pack of wolves. With timing and luck, my third-in-command happened to be spared from a gruesome fate involving a vampire, and the other three I saved from a disturbingly over-intelligent Guild-Leader with a narcissistic streak ten-miles long.

There is a theme going here: They all owe me something big, and I'm never going to collect on the bill. Not directly anyways, and never in full. Life-debts like that aren't something to waste willy-nilly: If you're smart, you leave them alone with low interest. They're worth more than you might imagine.

Honor-code has a lot more pull in this world than the last one I remember. It's all about who you know and how you interact with them. You put your best foot forward, and you keep doing that. More than any other place I can remember, this world defines a person by their actions more than their intentions.

But if you plan ahead obsessively, watching the horizon for in-bound flaming lelams like I do, intentions can put you in the correct place for actions that make all the difference. Things are going to go wrong, and there isn't much a person can really do about that- but the reaction, the fall-back to another plan, another idea laid-out as groundwork: That's where you can fight back.

Having my car torched and getting beaten to a bloody mess? That's a Lemon.

Getting thrown in a City's dungeon and threatened with dismemberment and execution (in that order) by a strict religious order who deemed me and my companions vile heretic scum: That was what I might consider a Lemon.

Sitting in that dungeon for days on end with no certainty to the passage of time but sometimes a delivery of off-tasting gruel, and pitter-patter of water-dripping from some unseen leak in the ceiling? That's a Lemon.

But swearing service to the first person willing to not dismember and execute us? That's a Best-Step-Forward. Serving this person with loyalty? Another step. Speaking with them and learning what I could about the world Earning their trust? Another still, and another after that.

Saving the city from an undead horde and a Giant Skeleton Dragon? At the end of the long march of my best steps forward, that's what some might consider a Magnum Opus. That's in Neil Armstrong's genre.

No shortcuts. One painful foot forward at a time. It's the only way I know how to do things.

See: I'm not from a world of magic and undefined powers. I'm from a place where science runs the show, and technology holds precedence over everything. Logic, reason, clear examples and solutions. We didn't have any save-all solutions like the people in this reality.

No fire-balls to cast, we had to rubs sticks together and find kindling.

No wave of the wand could move a giant stone or carve it for us, we have to make pulleys and tethers, and a lot of human labor.

There were no Magic crystals to flash with patterns and resonance beneath clever mages finger-tips: We had to waste generations of our greatest technical minds to coming up with the theories, and then lay cables down across entire oceans, and rocket ungodly complicated things into orbit to send light and electric signals.

I'm not a person that can just take the easy way. It's not in my heritage, and even if it were: My easy-way is this world's hard-way.

When someone throws a lemon, lelam, or a flaming hunk of metaphorical or literal horse-shit in my general direction, I'll do my best to duck and weave. I'll even do my best to take the blow with some dignity, but hell can freeze over before I forget about it.

You can bet your ass, I'm not making steaming horse-shit lelamade.

No.

See, I'm a nice enough guy, but I don't forget when something tries to fuck me over. Orcs, Goblins, Ghouls, Basilisk... They're all on the list, but at the end of the day it's people which bother me the most.

I don't forget when a group of zealous lunatics destroy my car, burn my possessions, beat my companions bloody, and throw us all in chains.

I don't forget when those same bastards argue to have our bodies cut up and paraded through the city while being kept alive by healing magics, and I seriously don't forget when those very same folk go about trying to repeatedly assassinate the only person with enough spine to be willing to prevent our sick and medieval execution.

Instead I push those memories down.

Way down, deep in the back part of my mind. "The Vault" if you want to call it anything, and I lock them down, nice and safe. I keep them there, so I can always go back and remember clearly, even while I exchanging polite formalities with them; sharing wine and laughing about the changing of the times like old friends.

Behind those smiling faces and fake laughs, we both know that it's only a matter of time. The Faith and Holy Order of this city has no love for me. So much as they might pretend to welcome me now with open arms as a Hero, the after-glow of the people's devotion will fade with the seasons. Sooner or later, they will try again to kill me, just as they did before: just like they've done with so many others. They hope I'll forget by then, I'm sure.

But they forget themselves.

I'm not from this world.

I'm not inclined to play by its rules and settle for the simple solutions or predictable patterns: I'm from a a different reality, where short-cuts don't exist.

When life gives me lemons, I wait patiently. I bide my time. I go down a long, long list: The Merchant Guilds, The Adventurers Guilds, the Mercenary bands, The Goblin infestations, the trade routes and the city tariffs, the word of mouth on the streets and in the taverns. I plan my steps piece by piece, and sip that horse-shit lemonade with a happy grin beside people that would quite likely prefer to see me dead.

Then I burn the entire lemon grove down.