It took longer for Xander to find his way home than he was expecting.  Mainly because he had no idea where his home even was.  After an hour of wandering at random, getting use to the layout of Maoujanai Town, and then realizing he didn’t even know any landmarks to guide himself by, he checked his wallet and found his home address on his ID card, and used the GPS function on his phone.

“The corner of 7th and Heaven, huh?  Heh.”

Xander enjoyed accidental humor, and chuckled to himself as he continued down Heaven Street to the front door of his home, as indicated by the phone’s GPS.  It took a minute to find the right key to the front door of the ultra ordinary two story house without any remarkable features.  As soon as Xander opened the door, “FUCK MY EYES!”

He was blinded by intense light.

“Oh, I’m sorry, is this better?”

The searing light faded, but Xander couldn’t answer right away since he was flailing on the ground, clutching his eyes like he’d been hit with the exploding phosphorus of a flashbang grenade.  But Xander was able to respond with, “I hate this spin-off series!”  At length Xander was able to get his center of gravity back and struggled to his knees with tears and snot streaming down his face, blinking his eyes absently while a haze covered his visions.  All he could make out was that there was an outline of a person in front of him.

“I’m so sorry, Xander.  Come in and I’ll patch you right up.”

Xander’s hand was taken and he was fairly dragged into the house, sat down in a chair, and a gentle power washed over him.  The next time he opened his eyes, there was neither pain nor blindness.  There was a woman, though.  A grown woman wearing a pure white flowing housedress and an apron that said in poor engrish “Mother no best.”  She was about five foot eight in house shoes, had an immaculate face, and pale blue hair that flowed down to her hips without a single tangle.  She also had a pale corona of light emitting from her entire body.  It didn’t take much effort to feel that there was a calming sense of Divinity about the woman.

“Oh, fuck.  You’re the Goddess from the main series, aren’t you?”

The woman was surprised and a small burst of light around her head formed a momentary halo.

“Uh, that, uh, I’m- I’m-”  The woman pulled some note cards from her apron pocket and checked them real fast.  “I’m your mother, Xander.  Don’t you recognize Okaa-san?”

“The god of Earth isn’t going to come out too and claim to be my father, right?”

“What,” exclaimed the Goddess, dropping her note cards, “There’s no way I’d play house with my brother!  That’d just be weird!”

“So you admit you’re a Goddess, then?”

“Huh?  Um-um-um, Xander don’t play with your mother too much!  Or... I’ll get angry?”

“Look, I know that the mother in any shounen series is suppose to be super beautiful for absolutely no reason, especially when the father figure is suppose to be away overseas for unspecified reasons, to create the illusion that she’s an older sister instead of a married woman allowing readers to meaninglessly lust after them and pretend they’re virginal salvation figures they can still fap to…  But casting a frikkin’ DEITY in the role is just too much!”

Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.

“But you just said ‘salvation figure’ just now,” pointed out the Goddess. “Doesn’t that mean a Deity would be perfect for the role?”

“I’m not calling a divine being my mother!”

“Oh, Xander, I wish you’d grow out of your rebellious phase.  It worries kaa-san, so!”

Xander gripped his head with the fingertips of both his hands so hard it would not have been surprising if he started bleeding.  After a few seconds to push down the urge to hunt the author down and flay him alive, Xander asked, “What am I supposed to call you?”

“Moth-”

“Aside from ‘mother!’  What’s your name?”

“Oh!  Well, my true name contains enough power to rend reality, so… ummm… God- no… Dess?  Tess?  Tessa!  Call me Tessa-mama!”

“Why are you so into this role play, Goddess!?”

“Well, Deities are nurturing beings by nature!  It only felt right that I volunteer for this role.”

Xander exhaled a sigh so deep it wouldn’t have been strange if his lungs fell out of his mouth.  “Fine.  At least there’s one person in this series who’s happy to be here… Aside from Chaz.  Wait, why are only the omnipotent beings having fun?  Is this that, ‘Toying with mortals’ all those pantheon religions talked about so much?  If so, can I just go home?”

“Oh, but you are home, my silly boy!”  Before Xander could facepalm himself so hard that… you know, this literary trope is getting way too tired, so let’s just jump to Tessa plopping a plate of food in front of Xander.  Like, a big plate, of really great food.  Food that people in an undisclosed nation would spend five paragraphs describing for absolutely no reason except that the entire populace of their island nation are foodies and they’re addicted to gourmet entertainment.  “Now, eat your dinner, son!”

After being struck dumb by the impactful scent of the food and finally eating some in another two paragraph long description of taste as though it was a pile of words worth reading, Xander exclaimed, “If the meals are this divine, maybe having a God for a pretend mother is a good thing after all!  Food of the gods, maybe?  Oh, speaking of, when you healed my blindness, did you heal the rest of my body as well?”

“Rest of your body?”

“Yeah, you saw the bandages, right?”

“I thought you were just going through a Chuunibyou phase!  Who hurt you!  Why?!”

“Oh, Chaz was abusing his narrator powers in the first chapter and I turned into a rendered pile of mush due to physical trauma.  I got better though,” Xander added seeing Tessa’s face darken.  No, it literally darkened as through the corona of grace about her started consuming light instead of producing it.  A shadow fell upon her from nowhere as she called out, “Chaz!  How dare you lay a finger on my child!”

But the Goddess was absolutely jumping to a wrong conclusion, since a narrator is a blameless being that only reports what’s happening, and isn’t actually tormenting others for their own amuse-

“Don’t give me that, Chaz!  We’ve known each other too long for that,” called out Tessa, who spoke words without thinking about how old they made her look.

“That’s it,” shouted Tessa, as the light about her went from dark to a greater brightness than before with a ferocious tint of the sun.  She reached into a corner, pulled out a broom, and holding near the bristles, the shaft took on a glowing aura like a holy weapon of the ancient heroes!  She then began to smack the ceiling of the kitchen with the tip of the broomstick, futilely trying to-OUCH!

“Ha!  There you are,” called out Tessa in triumph!

Scuttle scuttle

“Oh, no you don’t Chaz!  You’re not getting away that easily!”

Tessa continued to smack her divine weapon of a broom into the ceiling, producing small shockwaves and thunderclaps at every impact as a continuous scuttling sound came from the ceiling.  Chaz was desperately working to stay one step ahead of the angry housewife’s divine retribution as Xander said to himself, “Still worth it for the food.”