“That wasn’t so bad,” Quentin said.
“This is not good,” Guanyin said.
They glanced at each other. Quentin made a shrug of deferral for Guanyin to go first.
“I think the Great White Planet is understating the problem,” the goddess said. “For the Dragon King of the Eastern Sea to get involved means this potential foe is incredibly powerful.”
I took it that since deep-sea sonar hadn’t revealed any draconic armies in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of China, the “Eastern Sea” had to be a Blissful Plane outside of my own reality, like the Mountain of Flowers and Fruit. “But that means he’s handling it, right?” I said.
“It’s his job as a spirit general of Heaven,” Quentin said to me. “That’s why there’s nothing to worry about. Ao Guang is a tough old bastard who absolutely lives for battling the forces of evil. I mean, during the whole deal with Red Boy and Erlang Shen, you and I wanted nothing more than for someone else to step in and help with demon troubles.”
“Yes, and that ‘someone else’ ended up being me,” Guanyin said curtly. “I’m not comfortable with happily distancing ourselves from a potential catastrophe.”
“You heard the Great White Planet,” I said. “What are we supposed to do? What are we allowed to do?”
“Gather information?” Guanyin said. “Train, rest, prepare? Be vigilant and available?”
Uh-oh. I had a sense where this conversation was leading. My fingers tightened around the spoon I’d been toying nervously with after the Great White Planet left.
“Genie, I know you have your big trip with Yunie coming up soon, but I don’t think it’s a good idea to step away from Shouhushen duties for so long,” Guanyin said. “You should reconsider going.”
I snapped the cheap disposable utensil, and the head went skittering across the table. I knew it would come to this. I had told Guanyin and Quentin months ago that I had this excursion planned. Guanyin hadn’t said anything back then, only smiled and nodded in a way that said she didn’t approve of it at all.
“I can’t bail on that,” I said. “It’s important to the two of us.”
“And so is maintaining planar harmony,” Guanyin said. “Or so I assume.”
The Goddess of Mercy was correct, technically. But she was conflating my wants with her wants. I had no overwhelming desire to be a champion of the cosmological order, only to see Earth and the people I cared about safe. I’d kept at the role of the Shouhushen because it seemed like the best way to ensure that.
“I’m with Genie on this one,” Quentin said. “She’ll be off-duty for four days. A long weekend. The multiverse isn’t going to collapse the moment we take our eyes off it.”
Guanyin had too much experience cleaning up the messes of gods and humanity alike to look convinced by that claim. She wrinkled her nose.
“Look, these still work, right?” Quentin tugged on his earlobes, where the demon-detecting earrings permanently sat. They were mine but infused with Guanyin’s magic. If a yaoguai ever got too close to a normal human, they’d start buzzing like angry flies. “If there’s trouble on Earth, Genie and I drop what we’re doing and take care of it. Like we always do.”
I wasn’t one hundred percent certain that I was making the right decision. It was usually easiest to do whatever Guanyin said. But in this case, I had to navigate the big gray area of whether she was my boss or my adviser.
“I’m going on my trip,” I said. “And that’s that. If we want to help Heaven with this problem, then we’ll figure out how after I get back.”
And hope it doesn’t bite us in the ass before then.
5
“Thanks for backing me up,” I yelled into quentin’s ear.
We were in our standard mode of transportation, him using his Cloud-Leaping Somersault to cross mighty distances in a single bound with me perched on his back for the ride. It was cheaper than paying for train fare.
“Hey, I know what it’s like arguing with Guanyin,” he said. “It’s impossible to have the moral high ground. Plus we’re talking about what could be your last high school trip with your best friend. Some things are sacrosanct.”
That he understood the situation and supported me made me want to wrap my arms around him tighter and bury my nose in his hair. A conscientious Quentin was like Superman without the kryptonite. Sun Wukong could shapeshift into nearly any form, and so far a decent boyfriend was among them.
He and I sailed toward an empty patch of highway. I hung on as his feet slammed into the gravel shoulder. I could hear the muscles of his quads and calves threatening to burst through the seams of his clothes from the effort of absorbing the shock while shooting us skyward again in a single touch. I blinked away the dryness from my eyes. Maybe we needed to invest in old-timey pilot goggles. There were a few kids at school into steampunk I could ask.
My town came into view. From up here, lit by a purple and pink sunset, Santa Firenza didn’t look quite as claustrophobic as it felt at ground level. Sure, it was mostly patchy lawns and vacant office parks, but there were no borders to be seen from this altitude. Santa Firenza dissolved into its surroundings, setting the precedent that one day I could drift far away myself.
There was something wrong with our descent, though.
“Quentin,” I said. “We seem to be heading straight at my house instead of a clear landing zone.”
“I’m going to touch down inside your room. I left the windows open.”
I nearly choked in outrage. “You moron!” I shouted. “Even if you can land without making noise, we’re never going to fit through the window!”
Quentin pondered the situation with a handful of our precious remaining seconds before impact. “Ummm . . . you’re beautiful?”
“Goddammit, Quentin!”
With a skydiving instructor’s precision, he flipped his orientation to me in midair and embraced me with my head cradled over his shoulder.
“Shrink,” he whispered into my ear.
The front-row view of our impending crash into my house loomed large. And then larger. And larger. Instead of flying through the air, which strangely enough I’d become accustomed to, it suddenly felt like were falling down a hole. A gaping abyss where the bottom layer was the interior of my bedroom, stretched to infinity.
We landed on carpet strands the size of Saguaro cactuses. Quentin chose not to roll with the impact and took the brunt of it all by himself, acting as a sledge underneath me. The friction tore his shirt from his shoulders; had he not been Sun Wukong, he would have lost the flesh from his bones as well.
The chivalrous gesture only pissed me off more. As the reincarnated Ruyi Jingu Bang, I was at least as invulnerable as him. If not more so.
The world shrank quickly as we ground to a stop. What looked like a burnout skid the length of a drag strip turned into mere inches in my bedroom. Quentin and I were full-size before I could even get nauseous at the perspective change.
Underneath me, his glorious torso was laid bare, the cover of a romance novel brought to life. He glanced at my hands braced against his chest and looked up at me hopefully, like this might lead to something.