The Iron Will of Genie Lo

by F. C. Yee

  But the second-biggest difference seemed to be the self-assurance wafting through the air, thicker than cigarette smoke. Everyone spoke like they had the utmost confidence in the way the world worked.

  Like, they were literally talking about how the world worked. “. . . and that’s why piracy doesn’t represent a loss of incremental sales to the artist. Plus it forces them to go on tour more, so they connect more with their fans. I’m really doing them a favor by not paying for the album . . .”

  “. . . see, the Swedes parent their children the right way. They make them use knives at the age of two, and they keep them outside in freezing weather. Kids today are too spoiled . . .”

  “. . . yeah sure she’s the CEO of the fastest-growing wind farm company in the world, but if you read that interview closer you can tell she’s missing out on the political situation entirely . . .”

  By the time I reached the end of the hall, I was fairly convinced that the only way college students could communicate was by taking turns explaining reality to each other. It was like they’d handed out operating manuals to life itself during orientation, and everyone was convinced their particular copy was the only error-free one in existence. If I had a dollar for every time I heard the words “It’s all a big scam,” I could have paid for a fake ID and a fancier drink.

  I glanced over my shoulder to see Yunie chatting with a mousy-looking guy in a turtleneck who, while very obviously and painfully smitten with her, at least seemed to be listening intently to what she was saying while maintaining a respectful distance. She gave me a little violin-bowing motion with her hand that indicated she’d found a fellow musician. We traded “I’ll be okay on my own” waves and I turned back, only to crash straight into another girl.

  I looked down out of muscle memory and almost apologized into her collarbone. I awkwardly scanned up, and up. It turned out the reason I was having trouble finding her eyes was because they were level with mine.

  Holy crap.

  ’Twas the unicorn. A girl who was just as tall as me.

  “Genie, right?” she said. “Genie Lo?”

  She shifted her cup into her left hand and stuck out her right. Her wingspan was so great that she had to tuck her elbow into her ribs to do it, or else she wouldn’t have enough space.

  Ah, the elbow tuck. How familiar a feeling.

  “Uh, yeah,” I said, shaking what I could grab of her fingers. “How do you know my name?”

  “Ji-Hyun told me she had some guests and that one of them was a hot prospect. Kelsey Adekoya. I’m the assistant captain of the volleyball team.”

  Kelsey had short, dark braids and a wide, easy smile, but the peppy intensity in her eyes made me think I was staring at Jenny 2.0. Upgraded for the game with an extra half-foot of reach.

  “Okay, I’m about to come off as weird, but I stalked your high school’s website and looked up your stats,” Kelsey said. “You’re a beast. Please tell me you’re gonna try out once you get here.”

  Once I get here. Like it was a sure thing. I didn’t want to rehash the speech I gave to myself earlier about not coming to this school to a complete stranger.

  “I–I don’t know,” I said instead. “I kind of assumed I’d have to drop sports due to workload.” That much was true, regardless of where I ended up. I knew I was going to prioritize courses over athletics. And I’d probably have to get a part-time job as well.

  “Aww,” she said, making a face like she’d been gutshot. “You can be on the varsity team and keep up your grades at the same time. Just don’t take so many credits, and you’ll be fine.”

  My brain needed to process the idea of not pushing myself to the brink academically. How was I supposed to keep my life options open if I didn’t at least double major? The concept was rationally appealing but still unpalatable, like cilantro.

  Kelsey took my scrunched-up thinking expression as a signal to switch tactics. “You know, you forge lifelong connections on a college team,” she said. “A lot of our alums hook each other up with jobs once they graduate.”

  “Pssh,” someone said in my ear, disturbingly close. “If that’s what you’re after, you’re barking up the wrong sport. Come play basketball instead.”

  I turned to see another girl crowding in on our conversation. Even though she was swaying a bit, I could still tell she only gave up a few inches to Kelsey and me. A rounding error at this scale, really.

  Three giantesses under one roof. The revolution had begun.

  “We have so many investment bankers in this year’s graduating class alone,” said the newcomer. “Basketball is the sport of leaders. Volleyball is what you do at picnics.”

  “Goddammit, Trish, wait your turn,” Kelsey snapped.

  “I’ve never played basketball before,” I said.

  “That’s okay,” the other, drunker girl said. “Ever heard of Tom Dinkins? He was a swimmer up until his senior year of high school, and then he became arguably the greatest power forward in the history of the sport. We can teach you handles.”

  Kelsey was desperate not to lose her momentum. “If it’s connections you want, you can’t do any better than the dean of our business school. She’s former volleyball. You’d have an in on the number three program in the country.”

  Trish waved the statement off and nearly caught her finger on Kelsey’s necklace. “An MBA doesn’t mean anything these days. B-school is all a big scam.”

  My breath was feeling shallow. “I, uh, need another drink,” I said, even though I hadn’t had any of my first one. “Excuse me, ladies; I’ll be back.”

  I wormed my way toward the staircase, fearful of an ambush by the school’s “reaching things on the top shelf” team. If Trish and Kelsey were continuing their argument without me, I couldn’t hear them. The music was louder now, the air stuffier. I needed some space.

  On the way down the stairs I passed two different couples making out, or maybe the same couple twice; I couldn’t tell under the beanie hats. I didn’t stop once I reached the steps to the apartment. The atmosphere there was so cloudy and skunked that I had to walk around to the back just to clear my head.

  There was a stoop that faced the pool, so I plunked down on it. The pool itself was much less impressive an amenity than it had sounded when Yunie and I looked up Ji-Hyun’s address a day ago. Apparently the nearby buildings and townhouses all shared communal access to it, which meant it was difficult to get a single party to pony up for maintenance and lifeguard fees. Right now it was locked behind a surrounding chain-link fence. A sign told any would-be swimmers that they’d have to wait until the chemicals reduced the algae levels to the point where the water wouldn’t sicken anybody.

  That was okay. I wasn’t planning on taking a dip. It was comforting enough to listen to the gentle sloshing from the night breeze. The smell of bleachy fumes was preferable to smoke at the moment.

  The way Kelsey and Trish spoke to me like it was in the bag that I’d have the chance to play for one of their teams had exposed an uncomfortable truth—I didn’t know what I was doing with this whole college thing.

  Yeah, I talked a good game about getting in. But I hadn’t spent any time thinking about what life would be like on the other side. Breaking through the gates had seemed so distant a concept that I never bothered to figure out what I wanted from the college experience itself, and now it was dancing in front of my face, asking me to choose.

  I had made a big mistake, treating College with a capital C like a monolithic concept, a single finish line. When in fact there were tons of complications. Repercussions. The biggest of which boiled down to money.

  I’d left it unspoken before, but the biggest reason why I couldn’t see myself at this school was because it was expensive. Of course my family couldn’t afford it outright. And the more I’d learned about the financial aid process from my college adviser, the murkier my choices became. Even a decent aid package might require my family to pitch in an amount that looked small to others but would be completely
devastating to us.

  Just get a full scholarship! said an inner voice that was some combination of the ignorant me of a year ago and terribly scripted movies about college.

  Sure! I thought. The prize for being poor was that I’d have to compete yet again with other needy, motivated students for a limited pool of free money, a tournament within the tournament. I’d have to look twice as exceptional and win the Quarter Quell. Easy peasy.

  I laughed to myself. Who was I kidding? I wasn’t that special. For crying out loud, by college standards I wasn’t even that big. Full-ride scholarships didn’t fall from the sky for semi-special wafflers like me who couldn’t formulate a simple theory about how the world worked.

  The door behind me opened violently and a boy stumbled out, kneeing me in the back of the head.

  “Jesus, Axton, knock her over why don’t you?” a girl yelled from inside, over the din of the party.

  The boy caught his balance and smoothed the lapels of his jacket. “Maybe if you didn’t push me,” he said calmly.

  “Maybe if you weren’t such a shill, you prick!” a completely different voice roared, a guy this time. The door slammed shut as the exclamation point on the insult.

  “I’m sorry you had to see that,” said the boy who’d been booted out. He gave his hair the same treatment as his clothes, checking carefully that each gelled strand was in place.

  Not that it had hurt, and not that I wanted him anywhere near me right now, but he could have at least made sure the person he’d run into was okay. Plus he’d interrupted my alone time at a really bad moment. When he opened his mouth to speak again, I shot him a look so harsh it could have finished sterilizing the pool.

  The kid got the message that this doorstep was my territory. He adjusted his cuffs and did a little two-fingered salute at me before walking away into the night.

  The fact that he had been wearing a ridiculously expensive outfit for a simple off-campus rager sent my brain on a return trip to the dark valley of money problems. I had been selfish the first time around, thinking only of myself and my tuition. Of course the higher priority was my mother. My family.

  Guanyin’s handwaving around my mother’s health scared me more than anything else. The uncertainty that we would have to live with was an unwelcome, permanent addition to our family. The scene that had played out in the hospital was like a horrific inversion of birth, my father rushing to my mother’s side while I held her close and waited for the terrible news.

  Even if I worked while I went to school, I’d be saddling us with a burden that would be difficult for our combined efforts to manage under the best of circumstances, with Mom and Dad both healthy. Forget this school. Every single one of my first choices was expensive and out of state. I’d made a list for Santa like a greedy little brat, putting down a pony, a diamond ring, a castle in the sky, without thinking about the logistics.

  The chlorine was getting to me. I closed my eyes and wiped a tear off my nose. Good children used their wishes on their parents’ health and happiness. Or world peace. I hadn’t been a good child.

  “Shouhushen!”

  I woke up from my reverie, thinking maybe I had imagined hearing that.

  But no. The speaker was standing in the pool right there in front of me, where he hadn’t been a second ago. He was knee-deep in a section where the waters should have reached his chin, as if he was standing on an invisible platform.

  It was an old man. Not as weathered and wiry as the Great White Planet, but still rather bulky and strong, full of piss and vinegar, able to smack around a dozen whippersnappers half his age.

  He wore a coat of exquisite bronze lamellar armor that accentuated his ramrod-straight posture. And he stood completely motionless, with only his eyes following me intently, as if he were a British guardsman sizing up my threat level.

  There were too many windows facing the courtyard. “If you know conceal, you’d better do it right now,” I said to him.

  From what I had gathered, concealment was a fairly basic spell among spirits both great and small. Luckily this guy was no exception. He made a quick series of hand gestures, more formal and ornate than Quentin usually bothered with, and the telltale fuzz of magic descended over us, blocking him from mundane view.

  The old man was a complete newcomer to Earth, I was sure of it. There was no human-looking character out of a historical war drama among the yaoguai under my supervision, and he didn’t have quite the same ambience as a full-fledged god.

  “You picked a bad time, buddy,” I hissed. “I don’t care who you are and how you got here, but I’m off duty. And this is one of the worst places on Earth to conduct business. Do you know how camera-happy people my age are?”

  With a smooth, expert motion the man drew a sword from the scabbard on his hip. The handle glittered with jewels, but the blade he brandished at me was definitely not ceremonial. It looked sharp enough to cut the prow off a battleship.

  “Respectfully, this matter cannot wait,” he said.

  11

  I looked at the sword, glinting in the light of the street lamps. So it was going to be like that, huh? I was supremely grateful for the threat. The Universe had detected my imminent meltdown and sent me a gift-wrapped jerk to beat the daylights out of.

  But before I could complete my ritual pre-fight knuckle cracking, the man did something unexpected.

  “Shouhushen!” he cried. He twirled the sword around so that the tip pointed toward his unprotected throat, holding part of the blade with his bare hand to do so. Rivulets of blood dripped from the edge where it bit his skin. “You must listen to my plea!”

  The mood flipped like a crashing car. “No!” I shouted, waving frantically. “No no no! Don’t do that. Easy now. Let’s talk. Let’s talk, okay? Start with telling me your name.”

  Big fat tears began to roll down his face, though his sword never wavered. “I am Dragon Ao Guang, Guardian of the Eastern Sea.”

  “Wait, Ao Guang? Used-to-own-the-Ruyi-Jingu-Bang Ao Guang? Ao Guang who’s supposed to be hunting down a gigantic extradimensional menace right now?”

  “Yes,” he said, trembling. “I was entrusted by Heaven to seek and destroy the source of demonic qi that threatened the harmony of the cosmos.”

  Oh no. Oh hell. There was only one reason why the dragon general would have appeared before me, right here and right now.

  “I failed,” Ao Guang whispered. “I failed Heaven, and I failed the spirits under my command. My army lies in ruins and now every plane faces devastation!” The blade sank deeper into his skin, as if leaning on it was only thing keeping him steady.

  My worst fears were confirmed. First thing first, though. I had to stop him from doing what old Chinese generals in history often did after a humiliating defeat.

  “Drop the weapon, soldier!” I roared, doing my best Sarah Connor impression. “I want a full debrief, and I’m not going to get it from a dead dragon!”

  I wasn’t sure if Shouhushen outranked General of Heaven, but Ao Guang relented and shakily lowered his sword. He stumbled across the surface of the pool until he reached the concrete edge and sat down on a bench, his armor pieces jangling against each other. His sword clattered to the ground, and he slumped forward, staring at the space in front of his feet.

  I entered the pool area, breaking the padlock on the gate. It was as much of an impediment to me as a Cheeto. I gingerly sat down on the bench next to Ao Guang and waited for his chest to stop heaving in and out. I hadn’t noticed at a distance, but he was bleeding from a wound across his back that had slashed clean through a section of his armor.

  “Tell me what happened,” I said, gently this time.

  “We were ambushed in a Blissful Plane not far from Earth,” he said. “The enemy . . . we couldn’t see it. My soldiers started dying like flies. It was as if we were being cut open by invisible blades. There was no one around us, no spells being cast. There was no one to strike back against! We simply perished where we stood!”

&
nbsp; Ao Guang was deeply traumatized by the rules of battle being violated. “We couldn’t see it,” he repeated with a shudder. “It was like a . . . a Yin Mo.”

  Yin Mo. An invisible monster, an unseen devil. I had to stop myself from demanding more details. The guy had just said he had none to give.

  “It was a massacre,” Ao Guang went on. “I managed to form up the survivors and lead a retreat. We had to get off that plane of existence entirely. In my haste, I opened a gateway to Earth, using the largest, most familiar concentration of spiritual energy as a beacon.”

  “My aura,” I said. Back when supernatural hijinks first started happening in my hometown, the explanation was that as the Ruyi Jingu Bang, I was basically a gravity well for this sort of thing, pulling ambient weirdness into my orbit.

  Ao Guang nodded. “Shouhushen, I am deeply sorry. I had to get my remaining men out of there. I would have gladly faced death on my own, but I couldn’t throw their lives away so carelessly. I beg your understanding and forgiveness.”

  I reached across his shoulders and patted them reassuringly. “You did well.” I could have learned a lesson or two about command and sacrifice from the old coot.

  He froze at such informal contact and then broke out weeping again. “Thank you,” he whispered. “From one Guardian to another, thank you.”

  Ao Guang suddenly leaped off the bench, picked up and sheathed his sword, and stood at attention. “The Shouhushen is as magnanimous as she is powerful!” he bellowed. “I swear my unyielding loyalty to her in life! In death, may my liver grace her table alongside the marrow of phoenix and juice of jade!”

  “Uh . . . Thanks? I guess?” I’d never been offered someone’s viscera to eat, but from context I took it as a nice gesture. “We can take care of you and your men in a few days. I just have to find a place that’s big enough and far away from humans that—”