Someone finds himself here unexpectedly.

He's actually asleep to begin with, and so has no opinion on this development.

He is human in appearance, very short, wearing clothing in an unfamiliar style, and has a strange silver web shining under his skin, glowing strands peeking out from beneath the long sleeves and high collar of his linen tunic.

A fifteen foot tall spider-thing stomps straight through what was left of a nearby house, its shiny black carapace broken up by ominously glowing red hexagons. That's probably loud enough to wake him up.

It is!

He is confused and alarmed!

It slows, stops, rears back...

...And shoots out a beam of searing red light that hurts to look at, towards something atop a cliff in the distance. The cliff is lighting up with little flashes of light and smoke. Something impacts but glances off the black-and-red thing, whistling metallically.

Now may be a good time to mention the similarly-themed and much larger creature flying off that way. And the red beams it fires a volley of every five seconds.

Tiro stands up, for the small improvement in vantage this gains him. What the fuck is happening?

To all visible effect, some kind of battle. With a lot of very loud ranged weapons.

Two human figures, each riding... Something, dive out of the sun and drop a pair of bombs on the spider-thing. It shatters into glowing white debris that fades quickly. Pieces of shrapnel pelt Tiro.

And one of the monster's friends following behind it takes a potshot at the flying pair, which gets blocked by a glowing circular shield.

One hand and a chunk of shoulder are torn away in sprays of glittering shards by the shrapnel impacts. They regenerate in seconds.

The scene is... confusing. And alarming. He is confused and alarmed. Again. But rather than get out of the way of further shrapnel, he climbs some rubble for a better view.

There's a whole column of those spider things advancing from the right. To his front is an ocean, a ways off. There are plateaus with flat areas between them to his left and behind him, all laced with what looks a lot like fortifications of some kind, but he's far enough away and there's enough smoke around that it's difficult to tell. The other side apparently has weapons that can send projectiles flying at rather insane speed, judging by the continued crack-whoosh and clangs of them flying past or ineffectually hitting the spider-things.

If he stays here long he's probably going to attract a red beam or get hit by a misplaced projectile.

Also, the giant flying thing? It's one of three. And if his vision is sharp enough, there are more human-figure-riding-things here and there. The bright blue 'shield' is pretty distinctive. They're mostly keeping low and out of the way, maneuvering for position.

Eh, all right then.

The silver lines under his skin glow, and he rises into the air.

This is an attention-getting course of action. Spider-things attempt to hit him with red beams that would go straight through rock walls given time. And they're used to faster targets.

Figures.

The beams smash right through him, fountaining bright glassy shards across the battlefield. He grits his teeth as crystal spars reach across his torso and reconnect, weaving themselves around the silvery net that still holds the shape of his skin even without any skin to shape it. And he zips straight up, just shy of the speed of sound.

There's a whisper in his ear in a foreign language. "Hey you, with the glass. You a civilian, or what unit are you from? Either way get out of there!"

This does not give him a lot of vocabulary to work with, but it does give him: "What?"

And he keeps gaining altitude until the spider-things look small.

"Just- Ugh, can't keep talking to you, I'm comms for the whole Tobruk Task Force, just fly toward the fortifications."

They're much more obvious and impressive from above.

In the absence of any clue what the fuck is going on, that seems like pretty reasonable advice. He flies toward the fortifications.

He's pretty clearly not a Neuroi. The cannons and machine guns aimed up at the sky don't shoot at him.

On the other hand, the Neuroi do shoot at him. He's hit straight through the chest by a lucky shot from one of the giant flying things on the way over.

A tight formation of flying people breaks off from the patrols flying around, and approaches. The use their blue shields to shield him from incoming fire once they get close. Curiously enough, they're all women.

One of them comments, "That is an interesting curse."

He nods. He doesn't really have the vocabulary to explain, and also his lungs are currently falling to the ground in a cloud of gleaming pieces. (Ow.)

The magic on him... is definitely interesting. It is highly unwitchlike in flavour. There is a thing that makes him able to understand the meaning of any words spoken in his presence, and the thing that makes him shatter and regenerate the way he does, which is very insistent that he should be able to regenerate from even the tiniest fragment of himself; and then there is the silver web that lets him fly and move quickly and accelerates his healing. The silver web is magically recognizable. It's impossible to confuse it with any other object, because it is so extremely and definitely itself.

She wants to poke at all of it, but there is other stuff to worry about. They keep flying towards the fortifications. A city is visible in the distance beyond them.

"So. You randomly appeared at the site of a battle between the United Defense Force and the Neuroi. As far as we can tell Neuroi want to exterminate all humans." A volley of lasers hits the suddenly-appearing wall of shields as if to punctuate her words. "We kill them when they attack, occasionally even take back some territory, but can't make any progress on figuring out where they come from. Scratch that we know where they come from just not how. You're a civilian so unless you want to volunteer to fight our job right now is to escort you to Tobruk Refugee Center." She observes his reaction to this prospect.

The 'civilian' shrugs. His lungs finish regenerating.

"I - can't make any progress - volunteer to fight," he says, hoping that if he echoes her exact words she'll get the hint about what's limiting his communication.

She observes his magic for a bit, then, "I you they we him her go stay yes no the a all some none stop wait-" Several people contribute to the word-stream.

He smiles and nods gratefully, then listens to everyone until he's caught enough vocabulary to put together what he wants to say:

"I would volunteer to fight, but I don't know how much use I'd be and the middle of a battle seems like the wrong time to try to figure it out unless you're losing badly. I can fly, move fast, the glass thing, understand words, that's about it."

"The real fight hasn't even started yet. We're doing hit-and-run as they move into position. The flying ones are the problem, really. Gonna slam into them with a combined attack from above and below once they're in range of the fortification's guns. Can you carry much, flying? It's a bit vicious and probably painful but we could give you bombs to deliver to the spider-heavies."

"Actually, understanding words could be useful," Someone speaks up. "The ground forces speak ten or twelve different languages. The officers mostly know English and know their jobs but it's a big headache for them apparently."

"I can carry bombs and understand languages. Takes time before I can speak languages though, I need the words."

"Okay, either's an option. But here's the thing. If you're going to join our hit-and-runs I would need you to know our signals and such. Large scale coordination is a huge part of our fighting style here. I really don't think you can help immediately, we're better off having you learn the ground forces' ten languages and helping coordinate there. I really wish we had smaller radios."