the day peace went missing

The suit I wore to my best friend's wedding went like this:

First, the pants. A pair of simple black slacks that let my long legs speak for themselves.

Then a maroon shirt under a black vest. The tie was a vibrant red and the brightest thing in my outfit. The jacket I slipped over that was also black.

For warmth, and just because I liked it, I donned a long black coat and could not resist combining it with a pair of black leather gloves.

Accessories were the thing that could make or break an outfit. A pair of pink studs and a long crimson scarf would do the trick.

To top it all off, I slicked my hair back and pushed a pair of round pink shades onto my face. You could say I was... viewing the world through rose tinted lenses.

I looked in the mirror. My reflection gave me a cocky smirk. We exchanged finger guns.

How's it feel to consistently be the best looking and funniest person in the room?

Oh, I wouldn't know- Just kidding, it feels great.

Damn, I looked good. Spending all that time and money shopping was totally worth it. Rubbing my chin, I leant closer to admire myself from close up.

As always, flawless. Thanks, honoured parents, for your great genes. At this point, I might as well usurp the groom's place and steal the bride away.

I imagined the face of exasperated resignation Ivan would make and snickered.

He'd bought me a plane ticket to Japan and even organised a place for me to stay though, so I'd let him off this time. Also, his soon-to-be wife would eviscerate me.

My phone rang. I grinned at wedding march ringtone I'd set. Speak of the devil.

"Ah, Ivan. Just the man I was thinking of."

I then had to hold the phone away from my ear as a loud and incomprehensible mess of syllables spilled out of the speaker.

"Ivan!" I yelled as soon as he ran out of breath. "Ivan, calm down. Chill. Be like me, be at... peace."

I cackled as he groaned.

"Peace, must you use that pun every opportunity you get?"

"You know I do. And hey, it got you to stop panicking, didn't it?"

That reminded Ivan and he started panicking again. Oops.

I gave up calming him down and started to make my way to the venue instead.

While I listened to him babble and made sympathetic noises when appropriate, I got ready to leave. I slung the chain attached to my purse over my shoulder, double checked the wedding gift, and polished my shoes a final time before putting them on, all with my phone firmly sandwiched between my shoulder and ear.

Ivan somehow still hadn't run out of things to panic about by the time I reached the hotel lobby. I waved goodbye to the concierge and left the hotel.

The skies were clear and cloudless today despite it still being a bit chilly, a good omen for Ivan's marriage. I pointed this out to him but it only fueled his anxiety.

"What if it's a sign that this is as good as it's going to get? I'm going to get jinxed by the weather!" he fretted.

I sighed and muttered, "Can't ever win with you, huh?"

This was the point I made the second biggest mistake of my life. (Don't ask what the biggest was.)

Instead of hailing a taxi, I decided to show off my outfit and took the scenic route instead. Sometimes, I wonder how different my life would be right now if I hadn't taken the train, or even just hopped onto a different car. But I don't have the ability to rewind time or look into parallel universes, so I guess we'll never know for sure.

It was a surprisingly empty train. The only other people in the car were five high school students, clearly skipping school despite not looking the type to do so. Three boys and two girls. They all seemed to be revolving around one of the girls. I remember idly thinking 'yas, girl, go get that harem', when the first indicator something weird was about to happen showed up.

The first time the air in front of me blurred, I didn't think much of it. The second time it happened, I rubbed my eyes and made an affirmative noise for Ivan. The third time, I shushed Ivan and watched carefully.

"Shhhush, Ivan, there's something weird going on here."

"Weird? Peace?"

"Shhh... Ah! It happened again."

"What? What happened again?"

"Not entirely sure, there was some kinda weird distortion in the air- that's the fifth time. Hey, are you five seeing this too?"

That last bit was said in Japanese and directed at the teenagers. But before I could get an answer from them, the floor lit up under our feet in a bunch of strange lines and symbols.

"Hey, Ivan, it's not normal for the floor of a train car to light up with something that looks like a magic circle, right?"

That was the last thing I said before vanishing from this world.

~◇~

Two things clatter to the floor. First, a small and prettily wrapped box intended to be a wedding gift for a dear friend. Second, a phone with a black cover, still in the middle of a call. On the other end of the line, one man yells his best friend's name over and over.

There is no answer.

~◇~

The next few seconds brought some of the most uncomfortable sensations I'd ever felt in my life.

It was scorching and it was freezing. It was moving too quickly and remaining motionless all at once. I was squished into a tiny sphere and spread out wide like fog in the sky.

It was no wonder that the emotion I felt the strongest once out of that paradoxical not-space was overwhelming relief. I wasn't the only one.

"Finally..." one of the boys who'd been in the same train car panted, "Solid ground!"

That set off the rest of them.

"Oh my god, that was awful!"

"Right? Seriously..."

I was so occupied with making sure I didn't have any chunks missing that when the cheering started, I flinched and spun a full circle, surprised I hadn't noticed the thirty or so people that were surrounding us.

They most definitely had not been there a minute ago. We most definitely weren't where we had been a minute ago.

What the fuck.

Swearing was uncouth. I felt nothing but contempt towards people who apparently would die if they didn't swear every other sentence. In this instance, however, I felt it was alright for me to say 'fuck' just once.

"What the fuck," I said out loud. "What the fuck."

Or twice.

The high school students looked just as confused as I was. Most of them did, at least. One of the boys with his mouth agape had an expression of dawning comprehension, and he clearly liked whatever it was that he was comprehending.

I, myself, was also getting an inkling of what was happening, and I most definitely did not like it as much as he did.

The six of us were in various positions in the middle of a masterfully lain mosaic. I'd managed to land on my feet. The others were either kneeling or lying flat on the ground. The mosaic tiles were either white or faintly glowing purple, and even as I watched, the glow faded until the only indication it hadn't always been just a simple white tiled floor was the positioning of the tiles. If I concentrated a bit, the tiles would form the pattern that had flashed on the floor of the train car just before we disappeared from it.

The pattern was about 10 metres in diameter, and the room we were in was about the size of my old high school gymnasium. The stained glass windows and gothic arches made it look like a church. At the front of the room were five statues, each one at least three times my height. They were arranged in a wide V, and different coloured gems were set into the marble as eyes.

In front of the lead statue knelt a beautiful woman. Unlike everyone else who was dressed in plain white robes, she wore a gorgeous lilac gown befitting a princess. The tiara on her head was inlaid with large precious stones that glowed like the mosaic had. When the woman unclasped her hands, the gems faded to a dull gray and disintegrated, but she only smiled and let a servant exchange it for another tiara, this one simpler and with smaller gems. The golden glow around her disappeared when she stood up and the noise in the room died down to a murmur.

"Welcome, otherworlders. This world needs the help of the [Five Legendary Heroes] once more."

There were six of us.