The monster roared, saliva dripping down from its throat, claws outstretched… and then it was gone. Or, to be more precise, they were gone, gone away from the mountain and its grim interior, to another… well, Yao wasn’t quite sure where they were. A new country, a new world?
Somewhere grim, of that she was confident. She was surrounded by a forest of grey, massive blocks of some dark and ugly stone bursting forth from the ground like weeds, only without any of the charm of weeds. Hundreds of windows were inlaid into their surface, proving that - tragically - these buildings were indeed inhabited by some sort of living beings.
And then there was the noise. It was a constant, roaring cavalcade, howling and badgering at her ears, hammering at her skull, pounding at her chest… She lowered her qi-enhanced senses to the level of a mortal but, that proving insufficient to reduce the awful horrible noise, had to reduce them yet further.
Art picked himself up out of a pile of garbage, bits of metal and plastic falling off his body, and dusted himself off. He looked about, his expression pleasantly surprised. “Well what do you know - that technique actually worked.”
“It did?” Yao said nervously, examining their rather horrid surroundings. “You… wanted to end up here? That’s certainly a unique teleportation technique… well, maybe not; there are plenty of techniques just like it. But usually they’re the sort of thing you use on your enemies.”
Art chuckled. “No, no… it was a technique I picked up from a cultivator a few weeks back, as thanks for a favour I performed. Properly speaking, it’s not a teleportation technique at all, but an escape technique: I believe he called it the ‘Home is Whe-”
“‘Home is Where the Heart is Technique,’” Yao interrupted, light dawning in her eyes. “I know that one. It’s a staple of some Samothrakian orthodox sects. Sends you back to your home in times of peril. A little unreliable - it’s useless if your home gets invaded - but a good technique nonetheless. At any rate, why is your heart set here?”
Art looked once more at the grey and the garbage, nose wrinkling as he properly took in the sights, sounds, and smells. “Oh, no, it’s not - who in their right mind would have their heart set in Megamegamegapolis, Wyiohiowa? No; it’s just that my family lives here.”
Yao nodded sagely. She knew that many transmigrators claimed to have had families in their past lives, although historians and scientists analysing transmigrators were unanimous in viewing said “past lives” as fabrications meant to justify their activities in her own world.
(After all, it was impossible that powerful demigods with abilities that could casually alter reality and the potential for near infinite growth had actually once been powerless high school dropouts working at a grocery store. Who would believe such an absurd story?)
This did not, of course, mean that Art didn’t have any family. Now that she knew where Art was claiming they were (the world of his “past life”) Yao was fairly confident that this was a grand illusion - the memory palaces transmigrators passed through as they descended from the Heavens onto Earth, and whose pure symbols guided and legitimised their activities - but it was entirely possible that he was near one of his fellow or familial deities who had not yet fallen to Earth.
The polite thing to do, she knew, was merely to nod along and pretend they really were in the world of his “past life,” and that his family lived here. Consequently this was precisely what she did, prior to asking, “So, do you have a commensurate technique that can take us back to our world?”
“Why of course I- wait a moment,” Art froze, desperately thinking, his expression growing paler and paler as the terrible truth dawned on him. “I don’t know any techniques that might get us back, not yet - the escape technique won’t work, since our world is not yet my home, at least I don’t feel it is - I spent most of my time there in an attic, after all - and otherwise I only know a Body Regeneration Technique and a Heavenly Sculpting Technique, neither of which are useful here. None of the magic from my past life concerned bilocation of the body; I was not an advanced enough wizard. Surely you know a technique that can help us out, though?”
Yao raised one eyebrow. “Hardly. I know all manner of techniques related to various aspects of combat - fighting, communication, rapid movement, etcetera - as well as techniques related to the Five Virtues, Four Womanly Virtues, and Six Arts… But I know nothing outside of the Confucian tradition, and I’m not a skilled enough cultivator to know techniques like ‘The Law is Universal’ or ‘Omnipresence of the Sage’.”
She paused a moment, thinking. “Now that I say that out loud, that’s not quite true.”
Art’s expression brightened up immediately. “So you do know teleportation techniques?”
“No. Of course not - honestly, I’m astounded you do, even if it’s only half of one, and one intended purely for effecting an escape and not actually going anywhere. No, what I got wrong was that I do know techniques from outside the Confucian tradition: I once spent four months undercover in a transmigrator group called the Understanding Idioms Excessively Literally Sect, and know a ton of - if I’m being blunt, largely useless - techniques such as the Keep Your Eyes Peeled Secret Technique, the 332 Ways to Skin a Cat, How to Count Your Chickens Before They Hatch, Jumping the Gun, etcetera etcetera.”
“Right, but… are any of those techniques at all relevant here?”
“Not in the slightest,” Yao said cheerily. “I guess we’ll just have to wander about aimlessly until we discover some technique that can get us home.”
Or until you give up on this ridiculous farce and return us of your own accord, was the subtext, although as Art was entirely unaware that Yao thought him a fallen god it entirely passed over him.
“Well,” he said, after a moment’s thought, “I guess if we’re here, we may as well visit my family.”
Yao raised one eyebrow - if he’d wanted to visit his fellow deities prior to returning to their world, he could have just said so - but didn’t disagree, following along obediently behind him.
Now Artemaeus had been an orphan since birth. His mother, when first she saw him, went ‘Oh lolly, what is that?’, and then promptly expired; his father had passed on six months prior, while boxing with a rhinoceros. (But you should see the other guy.) He did, however, have a sister, and it was she who he now purported to visit.
She lived about ten minutes distant, giving Yao the opportunity to experience the symbolic memory palace of a transmigrator in-depth. It was a deeply unpleasant experience - particularly when they passed out from the alleyway they’d been standing in and into the brightly lit neon square, filled with gaseous and noxious signs, all manner of people pushing and shoving, and even louder noises - but one she nonetheless paid meticulous attention to, scrawling down everything she saw, heard, and smelled into a small notepad.
The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
(Later, she would compile her miscellaneous notes into a cohesive narrative, add in a metaphysical commentary, and publish it in a peer-reviewed periodical called The Journal for Transmigrator Studies for the benefit of her fellow scholars.)
Art, who still knew nothing of her view of him, considered this the result of the tourist’s natural curiosity, and made no remark as the two passed through gaslit streets and under neon signs, only occasionally explaining what something was if he felt she might especially like to know.
They were halfway to his sister’s apartment when it happened. They heard a high pitched, snooty laugh, and a couple blocked the path in front of them.
The man looked pallid and unhealthy, his skin sallow and hair greasy, but he was clearly rich. His suit was made of a fabulously luxurious, if hideously garish, velvet; his shoes were made of the finest of leather; and his watch, which he was obsessively and conspicuously checking, was pure gold. The effect was admittedly spoiled not only by his bodily appearance, but also by the sling covering his other arm (the effect of an unfortunate truck accident some three weeks prior). Still, even Yao - who, as a princess of Great Xuan, knew wealth in the most intimate and fantastical of ways - was impressed.
His girlfriend, hovering about his shoulder, was the exact opposite. Her body was perfect in every way, her bearing and makeup accentuating its natural beauty. On the other hand, though her clothing looked superficially similar to that of her boyfriend it was nonetheless… tacky.
Perhaps it was the cut; perhaps it was the colours; perhaps it was how she wore it. But that it had been bought premade with the intention of looking like the clothes of the wealthy (without actually being the clothes of the wealthy) was something Yao didn’t doubt. She’d seen too many individuals with similar fashion choices in the court of her father not to recognise the attempt immediately.
It was the woman who had been, and still was, snickering snootily. She held one hand up to her mouth, in a transparently fake attempt to conceal the fact that she was smiling. “Well well, if it isn’t Ward.”
Art blinked, his pleasant face momentarily clouding in annoyance. He had no idea who this woman was, but nobody - nobody - called him ‘Ward.’ ‘Ed,’ which dropped the second half, was already irksome enough; to drop the first half was something he couldn’t quite abide.
“I’m sorry, who are you again?” He asked, a titch testily.
The woman gave a high, falsetto laugh. “Oh, please, you can play pretend all you want, but don’t pretend the sight of me doesn’t offend you-”
“No, actually though, who are you?”
The woman stopped in her jeremiad, expression uncertain. At last she realised that Art was not, in fact, performing a monumental cope, and her eyes bugged out of her skull. “Wait, you weren’t joking?”
“Why would I be joking? I haven’t the foggiest of clues who you are.”
“You… don’t recall me? At all?” The woman appeared flabbergasted. The man beside her shifted uncomfortably, his expression nervous as he watched her.
“For the last time,” said Art, beginning to lose his cheery demeanour. He considered himself a man with a measure of equanimity, but this woman’s obtuseness was beginning to wear on him. “I. Have. No. Clue. Who. You. Are. To quote the caterpillar: Who. Are. You?”
“…I’m your ex-girlfriend,” said the woman in some confusion. “You… really have no recollections of my existence?”
“Nope,” said Art, content to finally have determined this woman’s identity, “so, how are you? Looks like you’re doing well - found new love, out hitting the town. It’s good to see. I have absolutely no memories of ever having dated you; still, I wish you nothing but the best.”
“But we dated for nearly six months,” the woman whined.
“Really? Fascinating. You’ll have to excuse me; I tend to forget minor things that have little to do with my learning.”
“‘Minor’? I brutally betrayed you, you piece of trash, when I cheated on you with Hank here, only to then abandon you horribly to a terrible fate of endless misery.”
Hank winced a little as the woman squeezed his arm, though the object of his discomfiture seemed to be neither the physical pain of her grabbing his injured limb, nor the emotional pain of her embarrassing him by reminding him of his adultery. Rather he seemed to be upset for another, entirely different reason.
Art, however, was entirely undistressed. “I don’t know about ‘a terrible fate of endless misery.’ I’m doing pretty good, if I do say so myself. Still, thanks for feeling some guilt about all these presumably horrible things, even if they apparently weren’t that bad in the end.”
"’Weren’t that bad’? I had a group of thugs break your leg!"
"Buddha said: all life is suffering."
"And then threw you off a building!"
"We all have to learn how to fly somehow."
"And got you fired from your job!"
"Man, that was you? Thanks a lot! - I hated that place."
Yu said nothing. She was still trying to figure out who this 'Buddha' was.
"I took everything from you!"
"I don't even know who you are."
The two stared at each other. Art decided to clarify his remark, and make it less insulting.
“Literally, though - you still haven’t told me your name.”
“AARGH,” cried his ex-girlfriend, throwing her hands into the air. “There’s no winning with you, is there?”
“I don’t really care about winning, no - it’s not a race. It’s only about being a caring and curious person; and that we can all do together,” said Art, and pumped his fist enthusiastically. Yao wondered why, exactly, her transmigrator colleague was articulating this illusion, but she supposed it didn’t matter too much.
And then, finally, at long last, the as yet unnamed ex-girlfriend noticed Art’s irregular appendages (really, it was a miracle no one else had done so, but then again this was the big city of Megamegamegapolis, where anything could happen and anything frequently did).
“Eww, where did you get those?” She sneered, motioning to Art’s mechanical arm and tentacle (his feet were hidden by the shadows and his coat). “Is this some sort of cope for being a waste?”
Art didn’t recognise the term - at least, not as a pejorative - and did little more than blink in reply to this question. “Oh, no, I went travelling and worked on improving myself - doing a bit of self-cultivation, don’t you know.”
Hank jumped, panicked, eyes gazing blindly at Art. He’d been looking guilty for the entirety of their conversation, but now, now he looked greatly distressed, yet also resigned, as if some fell fate were awaiting him and he could not avoid it.
Art’s ex-girlfriend, however, merely sneered. She looked at Yao. “I can see. You even seem to have found yourself a new-”
The next word was not, alas, the sort of word that can be put in print, but it will suffice the reader to know that Yao was intensely offended by it. Her ahoge quivered with rage, and it was only with effort that she kept herself steady - only the Heavens knew what the gods could do to her, if she angered them.
The ex must have been able to tell she’d hit a nerve, however - as Hank looked on, horrified, she strode forward to meet Yao, the sneer growing ever larger on her face. “Well? You’re angry, eh? So what are you going to do about it?”
Yao said nothing in reply. Incensed - by Yao’s silence, by Art’s equanimity, heck, by the general uncaringness of the world - the ex raised her hand.
SLAP.
Yao stood stock still, frozen, considering. Frankly, it hadn’t been the worst of slaps - it stung no worse than the average blow of a mortal - but still, she felt it merited some reply. The goddess could possibly be offended if her blow was returned, could she?
Hank and Art looked on as their (in one instance, former if forgotten) girlfriend flew through a wall.