“Quentin’s not a three-headed mountain monster though,” I said. “We were planning on holding that in reserve, in case things got super ugly.”
Guanyin couldn’t process this. “Genie, what—this is—I don’t—”
“I’ll explain on the way out,” I said.
“Halabeoji,” Yunie called.
Ao Guang came trotting over, his hooves clip-clopping elegantly against the stone. Yunie had groomed him to the nines for the honor of transporting the Lady of Mercy to safety. His mane shone like a shampoo model’s, and his armor glittered like magic.
Quentin helped Guanyin into her mount and took Ao Guang’s reins. We shared a grin. We looked like the pictures of ourselves in my children’s book. The Monkey King and the Ruyi Jingu Bang, leading a holy figure atop a dragon horse.
“Xing Tian can’t be defeated,” I said as we walked away, cool guys not looking at the titanic donnybrook happening in the background. “But Guan Yu and the Great White Planet helped me do some research, and it can be stalemated. You proved that. All I did was swap myself in for you, and substitute blissful peace for . . . you know. Anger-fightin’. My usual.”
Guanyin twisted frantically in her saddle, still trying to comprehend the scale of what was happening behind her.
“Believe it or not, the hard part was learning how to transfer part of my good karma to you to wake you up,” I said.
“I was surprised she had any to begin with,” Quentin said. I clubbed my life partner in the back of the head.
“Genie, this is monstrous!” Guanyin cried. “You’re going to leave two-thirds of yourself behind on this plane, holding off Xing Tian!? You’d be struggling for eternity, your mind split into parts, never able to truly focus on a single priority! You’ll never be free of this duty!”
“Gee, sacrificing myself in a never-ending battle for good? That sort of sounds like someone I know.”
“This isn’t funny!”
“Sure, it’s a little awkward,” I said. “I was wondering if the version of me that’s talking to you would have to come back here to swap places with a me over there on a regular basis. You know, take shifts to make things fair. But I think that’s unnecessary. It feels like we’re like the same person at the same time.”
To prove my point, a big-I gave normal-myself a thumbs-up the size of a grain silo, and then went back to wrenching the ankle lock I had on Xing Tian.
“So yeah, constant struggle,” I said. “Such is life. If you feel that bad about it, there’s a chance we may come up with a better solution before the end of time. We have a pretty big brain trust now.”
One of Ao Guang’s crab generals waited for us by the glowing purple portal, its claws extended to serve as a platform that Tiny could stand on. She bowed at Guanyin as we approached, though without zoomed-in vision, the gesture was barely perceptible.
“Genie, wait,” Guanyin said. She slid off her dragon mount and took me by the shoulders, staring me in the eyes. “Are you . . . taller?”
“Ugh, yeah,” I admitted. “I kept growing through high school.”
“Through high school?” Guanyin suddenly looked stricken. “Learning to do this, it had to have taken at least—Genie, how long have you been trying to rescue me?”
I bit my lip. Guanyin grabbed Yunie and lined us up in front of her. She examined our faces.
“You’re not girls anymore,” she murmured. “You’ve gotten older. You’re young women now.”
She hiccupped. And trembled. And began to weep.
I pulled her close and hugged her hard. “Genie really wanted you to be there for our college graduation, but we weren’t quite ready at the time to pull this off,” Yunie said softly. “We’re sorry we couldn’t come sooner.”
Guanyin bawled into my shoulder. The Goddess of Mercy, who had seen countless lives come and go over the centuries, weeping over a few lost human years. She had a little bias for individuals in her after all.
I let her finish crying it out. Tiny had gotten much better at holding rifts open, so there was no rush to jump through.
“Oh man, we have so much to catch up about,” I said to Guanyin. “The last few years have been absolutely bonkers.”
“You should see how Genie’s managed the yaoguai on Earth,” Quentin said. “It’ll blow your mind. The situation’s incredibly bizarre right now, but you can’t argue with the results.”
“We also went on all these spiritual adventures,” Yunie said. “Both across Earth and the other planes of reality.” She turned to Quentin. “We had to have legitimately saved the world like what? Two or three times?”
Quentin shrugged like he’d lost count.