Worlds War One

xlv [Ji]

Ji-Sung Choi was a lousy student. He didn't like to learn. It didn't come easy as it did for his sisters, and Ji had thought that unfair. They had never had to study for even major exams, and Ji had had to review before every little quiz. They could memorize entire poetic passages in one sitting, whereas Ji might take a whole week to retain a simple limerick. His sisters understood algorithms as complicated as any concocted by supercomputers, and Ji still mispronounced it "alergisms."

When Ji was twelve, he'd found Yu-na in their backyard using the telescope they'd gotten the previous Christmas for the three siblings to share—although there had never been any doubt it would be only the girls that would use it. Like the chemistry set the year before that and the microscope another year before that. But Ji had thought a telescope was pretty cool. Yu had been mapping stars, but Ji had wanted to discover planets no one had seen before.

"You can't see planets from other solar systems with a backyard telescope, Ji-Sung," Yu had sniffed. His sisters never called him names, yet they could make his moniker sound mocking by using a superior tone.

Now Ji felt like the first Human on some other planet. Twin suns shined in an indigo sky. One hung large and high above, blazing red. The other was low and yellow, a haze on the horizon. The field of flora was lush and blue, like the color of the sky itself had been grounded. Like the Great Nothing that was home to the Ghosts, this wasn't some alien landscape but an entirely different dimension. This place wasn't another planet. And Ji wasn't just a Human.

He was home.

The Misfits split into two squads. Lieutenant Robinson assigned him to her team along with Saanvi. In the distance was the Court on High. Walls made of alabaster stone reminded him of his new leg donated by the generous Golem. The structure looked like something from a painting made by someone long dead and not American. Ji hadn't been paying any attention during Art History.

"Beware," Penina had warned before the group split into two, "the rules of physics are different here."

Lieutenant Robinson led her team around the right side of the Court on High. No sooner had Ji decided to follow in that direction that he shifted position and was there. His vision blurred for a second like he still stood still, but the world had moved around him. It was a little like being on a merry-go-round and spinning, spinning, spinning with the world bleeding into a smear, then stop. Without lifting a foot, Ji arrived at the edge of the Court.

Instantaneously, Lieutenant Robinson arrived on his nine. Then a moment later, Saanvi Laghari appeared on his three. It was disorienting, yet somehow unsurprising. He had Angel blood, and he knew this was Arcadian normal at some level.

They didn't teach this stuff in high school. Or in basic training. Not even in the education of daily life. Ji learned the lessons of the Wider World during one crazy field trip.

"What was that?" Ji asked Saanvi.

"Spatial reconfiguration," Saanvi said. "I learned of it at Academy. The Angels are notoriously self-centered, to the point where even moving place to place is affected. They make their world revolve around the individual, surroundings changing to accommodate the personal perspective."

"They make their own science?" Ji asked.

"Science is merely one answer, and there are so many different ways to ask the question, Seaman."

Then Ji did it again, moving five feet farther along the perimeter of the Court on High. It was a sensation both eerie and ordinary. It felt instinctual, like breathing or managing not to fall off the edge of your bed while asleep. Half-Angel, his biological father's influence made the supernatural feel normal.

Lieutenant Robinson led the way around the perimeter of the Court, short jaunts of ten feet at a time. There were occasional apertures along the alabaster walls, and she would peer inside at each opening. Ji followed her lead, looking in at the interior of the Court grounds. Oblong benches surrounded a small hillock in a circle, entirely abandoned on this afternoon (evening? earliness?) in Arcadia.

"You're looking for something," came a voice behind them.

It might have been a question under other circumstances, uttered by another entity, but the splendid figure behind them didn't look like the type who had to ask anything. Such a divine creature surely already knew the answers to everything. Three sets of beautiful white wings stretched out to the sides, maybe twenty feet across from tip to tip. With skin as white as powder and hair like strands of silk, the Angel was everything any Renaissance artist ever painted. Gossamer robes concealed a figure neither male nor female.

"Pardon our intrusion, Sandalphon," Saanvi said. "Grave danger has come to Arcadia. We simply offer our help in defeating the threat."

"Danger," the Angel doubted. "In Arcadia. No one would dare bring strife to the home of the Angels."

"Mot had returned from She'ol," Saanvi informed. "We followed him into Arcadia."

"Impossible," Sandalphon dismissed. "No one can enter Arcadia undetected. We knew you'd arrived as soon as you stepped through the doorway from the Forsaken Land." The Angel examined Ji from head to toe. "You have brought the son of Raziel."

"Is my father here?" Ji asked.

"We don't have time for family reunions," Saanvi snapped. "Johnny Rotten is here in Arcadia. He has already attacked Earth, and the casualties numbered in the thousands. Whatever his plans for Arcadia, it isn't going to turn out well for the Angels."

"Perhaps someone tricked you," Sandalphon suggested. "We would be aware of incursion by someone as insidious as Mot himself."

"He is an original Architect of the universe, Sandalphon," Saanvi countered. "Nearly as old as reality. A contemporary of the likes of Adam and Lucifer, made from the miasma by God Almighty. Do you think that he couldn't walk among the inferior Angels unawares if he wished to attack Arcadia?"

"Inferior," Sandalphon repeated, simmering. "The very idea of a Demon in paradise is blasphemy at its highest. The Court on High will try you, and I will see you sentenced to eternal damnation in the pits of—"

"Uh, guys?" Ji interrupted.

Ji peered through an aperture in the wall. Inside, a figure who looked nothing like an Angel stood on the small hill in the stadium's center—an older man with a gray beard hanging down to his knees. He wore boots made of snakeskin, dusty jeans, and a well-worn brown leather jacket. His cowboy hat was black with a raven feather sticking out of the brim.

Mot was here. Johnny Rotten himself. He was surrounded by a hundred minions, undead offspring possessing hijacked bodies. As Ji stared at the army of zombies, Rotten looked back at Ji and grinned.