by F. C. Yee
Erlang Shen doubled over. “I see you’re as mild of disposition as ever,” he gasped.
I was going to grab his head and knee him in the mouth next, but a pair of burly arms held me back. “Hold on there, child,” Guan Yu said. “He’s helpless. It wouldn’t be right.”
That was easy for him to say. Guan Yu hadn’t been dicked around by Erlang Shen and his plot to conquer Heaven by using me as a weapon. I cursed Guan Yu’s stupid warrior’s code of righteousness that prevented me from tearing the traitor god apart limb from limb while he couldn’t fight back.
“What is this bullcrap?” Quentin shouted at the Great White Planet.
“I explained everything!” the Great White Planet said. “Were you not listening a moment ago?”
“This is a trick!” I said. I tried to mash my big toe into Erlang Shen’s eyeball.
“If it’s a trick, then it’s being played on me as well,” Erlang Shen said as Nezha dragged him backward, farther out of my reach. “Do I really look like I’m the one in control at the moment?”
“Everyone CALM DOWN!” Guanyin yelled.
In this case, “everyone” mostly referred to me. I stopped struggling. Guanyin motioned with her hand at the Great White Planet, indicating that he needed to take another turn speaking.
“As I made clear,” he said. “Despite my strident recommendations to the contrary, a number of influential members of the pantheon decided that the best successor to the Jade Emperor would be someone who shared his bloodline. But the Jade Emperor has no children. Erlang Shen is his next closest relation.”
“That doesn’t make any sense!” I said. “He was going to overthrow Heaven itself! He’s a traitor!”
“In the Jade Emperor’s absence, the narrative played out a little differently in the minds of the court,” the Great White Planet said, making a face at having to relive the memory. “Most of his crimes took place on Earth, far away from their sight. So it was easier for Lei Gong and the others to interpret his actions as a hero’s mistake on the way to redemption through the Mandate Challenge. After all, who better to replace the Jade Emperor than someone who’d earnestly tried once before?”
“Tamade!” Quentin shouted. “I knew they were stupid and hidebound, but not that stupid!”
“On the contrary, Erlang Shen’s backers are feeling very wise indeed.” The Great White Planet snorted. “After all, true masters of the Way find wisdom in the counterintuitive and illogical.”
I wanted to find these geniuses who thought Erlang Shen’s personal journey was more important than Guanyin’s record of service. And I wanted to show them with my fists exactly how much I hated them. “The only reason why his crimes aren’t such a big deal to the gods is because we kept the fight from reaching their doorstep!” I said.
“I know, right?” Erlang Shen said. “I was going to slaughter the other gods like cattle, and now they’re praising me for being a visionary! To think that I could have simply waited for my moment to claim the throne. The troubles of being ahead of your time, eh?”
Guan Yu caught my fist from behind again. He had good reflexes for a big guy.
“Look, I’m as surprised as you by this turn of events,” Erlang Shen said. “One moment I’m in Diyu having my intestines twirled around a white-hot metal fork as one of the infinite tortures that await family betrayers, and the next I’m being hauled to Earth for my shot at unlimited power. It’s very disorienting, so you could be a little more sympathetic to my situation.”
“I’ll kill you,” I said coldly. It was less of a threat and more of me matter-of-factly stating a solution to my current problem. I’d done it once before, and I wouldn’t hesitate to do it again.
“You can’t,” the Great White Planet said. “No lethal harm can come to him while he’s in those restraints. And like it or not, he is an official candidate to receive the mandate. He must accompany us to face the challenge if succession is to be legitimate.”
I felt like weeping. I had gone through several low points during my career as a demon hunter and then as the Shouhushen, but this was the most I’d ever felt like straight-up quitting. I’d have preferred to march Erlang Shen straight into the assembly of Heaven and let the monster loose. Every god would have seen exactly how wise they were in an instant.
I looked at Guanyin. If someone was going to stop me from declaring war right now, it was her. She’d tried to warn me about the frustrations of dealing with the celestial pantheon, but I hadn’t listened.
The goddess was amazingly, astoundingly calm when she should have been more enraged than any of us. She wore her cool, logical face, a Vulcan calculating the most amount of good.
“Well, we’re not leaving him here on Earth unsupervised,” she said with a final shrug. “He could hurt someone.”
And that was it. As if that were the only important thing, preventing harm to dogs and children that wandered too close to Erlang Shen, like he was a sharp stick. He could take someone’s eye out!
She saw me staring at her. “What?” she said. “I’d rather he be surrounded by a group of us somewhere far away from Earth than keeping him on the same plane as humanity.”
Guanyin didn’t spare a word for this injustice inflicted upon her. Only others mattered, as usual. I couldn’t tell if I loved or despised her for it right now.
“Then Quentin and I are coming with you,” I said. “There is no way I’m letting this bastard out of my sight until this business is over and he’s back in Hell.” I shot a look at the Great White Planet to see if he had any objections that I could summarily overrule. If he did, he held his tongue.
Erlang Shen’s throaty chuckle added the punctuation mark to her decision. “Oh, this is going to be fun,” he said. “But now that the matter’s settled, I have a different question. Why is this uniformed gentleman approaching as if he can see us?”
I turned slowly, keeping an eye on Erlang Shen. He could have told me my own name and I would have treated the statement as a trick.
But sure enough, a security guard was hustling over from across the lawn, on the double. Several people on the sidewalk were watching our motley gathering, whispering and pointing to each other, and at least two were in the middle of uploading video selfies with us in the background. Dawn had turned into morning while we’d been arguing, and the apartment courtyard seemed to have come to life.
An uncomfortable silence passed through the group as the white-shirted guard slowed down at a cautious distance. He began muttering into a shoulder-mounted walkie-talkie as he approached.
“What happened to our spell-cloaking?” I said.
“Ah! It’s possible I broke its effectiveness when I summoned my weapon through the boundaries,” Guan Yu declared, without a hint of shame for his actions. “The Green Dragon Crescent Blade is mighty indeed.”
If I pushed on my eyes any harder they were going to pop out the back of my head. “So . . . we were visible this entire time.”
“I also could have broken the concealment,” Nezha added in a helpful voice. “I did travel from the waiting room of Hell directly to Earth.”
Erlang Shen threw his head back and howled with laughter. He nearly toppled over before Nezha caught him by the chains and righted him.
The guard was close enough to hear the squawking of his radio. “Central, we have a possible four-eighty-two,” he whispered into his shoulder. As he looked up, his expression changed from suspicion into a neutral smile.
“Hi folks,” he said. “Do you care to explain—”
“Family visit,” I said.
“Student film,” Quentin said at the exact same time.
The guard glanced back and forth between us. I put up a finger to say let me handle this. Quentin crossed his arms in a huff. He liked being the one to make up stories.
“A student film, about a family visit,” I said. “That’s why some of us are dressed weird.”
“And who is us, exactly?” the guard said.
“Granddad,” I s
aid, grabbing the Great White Planet and shoving him forward. The old god looked supremely offended at my rough treatment, but it wasn’t like he could dock me personal points on the mandate.
“My uncle from the country,” I said, pointing at Guan Yu, whose reflexive beard-stroking added a fitting air. I waved at Nezha holding up Erlang Shen. “My cousins. Also from the country.”
Erlang Shen snickered at my lack of improv skills, but Nezha gave me an earnest thumbs-up of encouragement.
“And, uh, my siblings,” I said for Quentin and Guanyin combined. Anyone who was dressed in modern clothing was not from the country and Guanyin almost always blended in flawlessly. “They’re helping with a movie I’m making about . . . the dichotomy between traditional Asian values and modern sensibilities. Hence the fashion divide.”
The guard nodded in understanding. “Well, thank you for that explanation,” he said. “You’re all detained until the police get here.” He pulled out a pencil and notepad.
“I said it was a student film! You can’t outlaw a student film!”
The guard pointed at Guan Yu with the eraser end. “He’s carrying a weapon. We have strict rules for props and cosplay around campus. Not to mention there’s a giant hole in the lawn.”
“That hole,” I sputtered, “is CGI.”
“Don’t even think about running, unless you want this upgraded to felony vandalism. I need each of your names. You can start with ‘Granddad’ if you want.”
A giant paw came down on my shoulder. “I can see you’re in distress, Shouhushen,” Guan Yu said. “Allow me to assist!”
The guard was startled by the sudden motion of Guan Yu’s great bulk. “Sir, step back now,” he said. The guard dropped his writing implements and reached behind his waist for possibly pepper spray, a Taser, or, god forbid, a gun.
“Forget!” Guan Yu bellowed. A tiny arc of lightning sprouted from his free hand and crawled over the stunned guard’s skull, knocking his cap off and leaving a trail of soot over his bald head. The poor man’s eyes rolled toward the sky, and he collapsed on the grass.
“There,” Guan Yu said proudly. “He won’t remember the last month or so.”
“A month?” I shrieked. Guanyin’s work on Ax had been surgical down to the second.
“Well, hopefully that long,” Guan Yu said. “I admit I’m a little rusty.”
A boy and a girl sitting on a bench across the courtyard had sprung to their feet and were yelling in approval of what they’d seen. They might not have understood exactly what had happened, but they appreciated figures of authority getting dunked on. Their followers had to see this.
I gestured toward our audience. “You—you Earth noobs understand why this situation is bad, right?”
“Of course!” Nezha said brightly. “The position of Shouhushen requires a delicate balance of action and discretion. Unguided revelations about the spiritual world to mundane humans are not only embarrassing, but potentially very dangerous.”
He pointed his finger at the couple. “Forget!”
A solid beam shot from his hand. It flew across the lawn and knocked the boy clean off his feet, sending him tumbling backward over the bench to the ground. The girl stared at the empty space he no longer occupied, and screamed.
I had to admit I was impressed by Nezha’s aim. But for all his precision, he was just as oblivious as Guan Yu.
“So . . .” Guanyin said to me as her competitors for the mandate gleefully chucked spells left and right, the cries of terrified people filling the air. “It felt like any muscle I moved would have made the situation worse.”
A forget spell the size of a grapefruit whizzed by my head, fluttering my hair.
“Sorry,” Quentin called out. “Trying to get in on this action.”
“Can we just go?” I said weakly. “Through the rift or whatever? I can only deal with so much. I don’t think I want to be on this plane of existence right now.”
Guanyin patted my shoulder. “Maybe that’s for the best.” She snapped her fingers. “Hey! Train’s leaving the station!”
The gods got their last few licks in with their technically harmless spells. The lawn was littered with slumbering people, like there’d been a gas leak. This was a catastrophic break in the masquerade that Heaven nominally tried to maintain.
“Is there a category for subtlety?” I muttered to the Great White Planet. “Because if there is, I hope you’re taking notes.”
“Don’t tell me how to do my job,” he said. “But yes, there is. Despite what you may think, I’m not oblivious to your champion’s talents.”
▪ ▪ ▪
Guanyin led us into the pool area. Backtracking along Ao Guang’s route to Earth meant ignoring the chemical levels and jumping in.
“Wait,” I said, barring the entrance with my arm and causing a pileup behind me. “We shouldn’t be letting Erlang Shen near water.”
I couldn’t see him roll his eyes, but I knew he was doing it. “These wouldn’t be very good restraints if they let me use my godly powers,” he said. “Though the fact that our journey begins with my personal element means the Universe favors me as the eventual victor.”
The Great White Planet was actually writing that BS down in his notebook. “Seriously?” I yelled at him. “He gets points for a coincidence?”
“There are no coincidences when it comes to a Mandate Challenge,” the Great White Planet said. He tucked the notebook back into his robes. “And every little action counts. I have to go first so that I can judge your entries from the other side.” He smoothed down his robes and slid into the water feet first with nary a disturbance to the surface. As soon as he was completely under, he vanished like cotton candy.
I was starting to grow suspicious of our judge’s fairness, but no one else was bothered. “You heard the man,” Guanyin said. She smiled at me before diving in with the grace of a striking cormorant.
I couldn’t help but feel that prior to our little pep talk last night, the old Guanyin would have waited for the rest of us to go in front of her, shepherding each god through like she was loading a peewee hockey team into a minivan. New Guanyin led the way and didn’t wait for slowpokes. It was a subtle difference, but one that made me immensely happy.
“She’s going to get points deducted for that,” Erlang Shen commented. He seemed to know more about the mandate process than the rest of us, which only made my alarm bells ring louder. “It’s discourteous to push your way to the front of the—”
I smashed my palm into Erlang Shen’s face, shoving him into the pool so that he flopped in without dignity.
Quentin and Guan Yu chuckled. Nezha gave me a worried look and jumped in after Erlang Shen.
Guan Yu whapped Quentin hard in the solar plexus. “Splash check!” he roared. He leaped into the air, not toward the water, but the diving board. The springy plank bowed to the breaking point under his weight and propelled him skyward, reaching half the height of the surrounding buildings. At his apex, he curled into a cannonball and plummeted into the deep end.
The splash he made was like a depth charge. Quentin threw up a casual barrier spell to keep us dry as the water rained down. I was surprised there was any liquid left in the pool.
I expected Quentin to answer the challenge immediately with some flashy attempt to best Guan Yu, perhaps climbing the stairs to a nearby roof and cliff-diving in that way. But instead of following his friend, he paused.
We were alone, just the two of us. It was a good opportunity to talk about whatever we wanted.
“I’m about to be the first human being to visit a different dimension,” I said. “I feel like this is a momentous occasion. I’m like an astronaut.”
Apparently what I wanted was to joke around like normal. It felt like ages since we’d spoken without being mad. My mother had gone to the hospital less than a week ago. Distance from Quentin had messed up my sense of time.
He grimaced. “Yeah, but astronauts don’t have to fight the living embodiment of thei
r deepest personal terror in order to get to outer space.”
My jaw dropped. “That’s what’s required to cross into another plane?”
“It’s either that or voluntarily give up a portion of your soul,” he said, scratching the back of his head. “The Screaming Hand forces you to choose.”
I stared at him. He maintained a solemn expression for as long as he could before he cracked and burst into a chuckle. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I was messing with you. That was mean.”
I was both pissed off and secretly delighted that he wasn’t stonewalling me. Why couldn’t it stay like this forever, us messing with each other? Why did we have to trade in a perfectly good compact relationship for a larger model with more baggage? In hindsight, I would have taken a million Quentins dive-bombing my bedroom window if it meant property destruction was our biggest problem.
“But in all seriousness,” he said. “Blissful Planes are weird. They’re like certain spots on Earth, only exaggerated and simplified at the same time. Things go from geographic to conceptual as you travel through them. Your head could go a little fuzzy.”
“Thanks for letting me know,” I said. I meant it without sarcasm. Mind trips seemed to be the theme of this weekend.
Quentin wasn’t done though. “Genie, we should talk,” he said. “I’m afraid of what’ll happen if we don’t.”
So was I. I knew exactly what would happen if we couldn’t figure ourselves out. I’d witnessed the slow-motion crash that was my parents, and Quentin and I were falling into the exact same pattern. Starting out angry and finding new reasons to stay angry. Waiting for things to get better instead of making them better. Letting an outside event become a wedge between us.
I’d had the ultimate “What Not to Do in a Relationship” guide in front of me for years, and I still couldn’t figure a way out of this trap. For all I condescended toward my parents, I was no better at opening up to the boy I—
I shook my head. “We’ve lingered too long,” I said. “Let’s go. The others are waiting.”