"Brother Arlan is a goat amongst geese!"
'Brother Arlan' is suffering from a sudden onset headache as the familiar sentiments wash over him.
In one ear, and out the other; it was the only way to endure them. A lion amongst sheep. A titan amongst gods. Brother Arlan is a... Brother Arlan is. He had heard it all before on the space station. Being head of security extracted the unfortunate consequence of pure, excessive adulation. Not quite to the level of the trailblazers, but Arlan had really 'stepped up' during the incident with Anti-Matter Legion, despite his injuries… It left a sour taste in his mouth.
"Brother Arlan is the moon amongst fireflies!"
"..." That was a new one.
They stood at the foot of a multi-story pagoda in a world that was primitive in many ways, and shockingly advanced in others. The men who had spoken thrusted the not-business ends of their spears—steel-tipped?—into the ground, their eyes awash with gratitude as they spat platitudes at him instead of answering his damn questions. 'Brother Arlan' took a deep breath and began to count. By 'nine,' he had managed to locate the little bit of patience he had tucked neatly away in the corner of his soul.
"Anyway," he said for the third time since the farce began. "I don't need 'spirit stones', or soul-grade treasures. I need to find Lady Asta. She's got pink hair, and a deeply skewed perception on personal finances... Have you seen anyone like that?"
"Certainly, Brother Arlan. Truly, you are a venerable and stalwart cultivator with a firm grasp of the Dao. Spare some face for this young master and allow me to duly compensate you for the aid you have rendered."
The so-called 'young master of the Peng clan' snapped his fingers, and suddenly there was a gaggle of servants rushing out of the palace. They were carrying gold, jewels—various other treasures that failed to move him considering, well, Lady Asta. He was certain that the products used to maintain the sheen of Peppy's fur was valued at a higher price than even the shiniest of the trinkets present.
Arlan deadpanned.
Nanook give me patience. Because if THEY gave him strength, this entire world was doomed. Wait a minute...
It was unwise—practically heretical—across the cosmos to invoke the Ruin Author, but in that moment, there wasn't a single Aeon that Arlan identified more with. Any more anxious and he was dethroning the god. The urgency of the matter was gnawing at him. He needed to find her. She wasn't helpless, not even a little. Lady Asta was intelligent, resourceful, albeit a little goofy at times, but she was alone right now.
Arlan can still hear the damn Laughter.
The ship touches down in Planarcadia, and all at once the crew goes mad. Tears are streaming down their eyes, their bodies contorting under the sheer strain of frenzied cackling as he and Asta stare in growing horror. Then speaks a voice like a stage comedian delivering the funniest joke before the most boisterous audience in all of creation.
"Brother Arlan is—"
And then they'd woken up in this damn world. No crew. No way to contact the IPC. Just a pseudo-Xianzhou world, and the machinations of the most facetious god in the cosmos. That had been a week ago.
"Damn you, Aha..."
The man's face turned sour as soon as Arlan spoke. "You're laughing at me? Courting death!"
Arlan blinked. The Peng clan's young master had still been nattering on, and he had just unknowingly interrupted him. When he tried to recall what had been said, his memory spat out something, something, "magnanimous," something, something, "spirit pouch."
The young man grabbed a small burlap sack that a servant had been holding, and hurled it contemptuously towards Arlan. Distracted as he was, only his years of zero-gravity training, and killer reflexes, had stopped it from smacking him dead in the face.
All that talk of generosity, just to—Arlan opened the bag and inhaled sharply. Small the sack might have been, small its contents were not. Arlan ignored the mountains of spirit stones—the realm's currency, apparently—and instead focused on the fact that literally mountains worth of content could fit inside the bag in the first place. It was practically a curio! Madam Herta would love this, perhaps even enough to give him a little break...A good gift, definitely, but why? All he had done was slay a few monsters.
Suddenly, a voice rolled out like thunder. In a flash of light, an elderly man appeared before Arlan in a classic three-point landing.
"Junior, you dare?" he said, and his sword-like eyebrows—the fuck?—knitted into a scowl on his wrinkled face. "A toad that wants to eat swan meat! Kowtow to me thirteen times, release your nascent divinity, attend our young master's wedding to your lady Asta, and I might consider granting you a slightly quicker death."
Wait a minute… A wedding!?
But his mind latched onto the operative detail. "You know where she is." Arlan narrowed his eyes. "And only Madam Herta can order me to do...whatever the hell you were on about."
"How dare you!? Have we not been magnanimous enough?" There was that word again. "Have we not welcomed you into our hallowed halls?"
Arlan looked to his left, then to his right. Finally, he looked up at the sky. It was about to rain. No. He was in fact, decidedly outside of their 'hallowed halls.' Arlan raised an eyebrow.
"I should smite you where you stand!"
"Should" apparently meant something entirely different around these parts, because the elder had already drawn a sword and was closing the distance with a speed that belied his age.
He started chanting, "Ancient Divine Dragon of Severing Cloud—"
...Only to get a face full of elbow.
"Ju—junior, you dare..."
"Nope," said Arlan. "I don't get paid enough for this." And he had a very competitive salary. The head of security rolled his elbow into the senior citizen's jaw and sent him flying with a firm push.
The old man picked himself up in the shocked silence that followed. "Ah ha," he said, and Arlan had an impulsive twitch at the sound. "Truly, I had eyes but could not see. You're not just any martial artist, are you, Demonic Cultivator?" What?? "That dark skin, your white-hair." Arlan's headache got a tad stronger. "Bah, it is truly our Peng clan's greatest dishonour to have shown you any grace, fiend."
"Elder Fan..." the young master's voice trembled as he spoke.
"Never you worry, Hao'er." And he flashed a weary smile back at his fellow clan member. "My sword dao is steady, and true as Mount Tai. You'll see." He turned to Arlan. "As will you. Your demonic arts will not fool me so easily a second time."
"It was an elbow."
"Silence, wench! Have at thee, caitiff!"
Well, which was it? A wench, or a 'caitiff'? Arlan had been called worse by better, so he supposed he could take on both curses.
Elder Fan shakingly raised his sword again at Arlan and charged. The old man was stumbling, and in poor form, but he swung the weapon anyway.
Meanwhile, Arlan had an awkward look on his face, as he sighed—awkwardly. "A self-annihilator...?"
It was a guess, maybe. A maybe-joke. One interaction usually wasn't enough to gauge the path someone was walking on, and he certainly hoped the man wasn't actually a self-annihilator or he was finished. That aside, even Arlan didn't know his own path. Most people didn't, with notable exceptions like Madam Herta. But not knowing did little to restrict the flow of path energy.
Power thrummed under Arlan's skin, revving to the tune of his impatience. This time he would let the imaginary energy do the talking for him. It was known to be very convincing.
With a flash of purple, Arlan levied a casual swing of his own weapon into Mr Junior-you-dare's sword. Sparks flew, as did the old man for a second time. He tumbled across the cobbled pavement spasming all the while, before spitting out a mouthful of blood...
Seriously, what the hell was even happening?!
He hadn't even hit him hard enough to cause internal rupturing! Arlan really hoped they had medicine on this world.
"Heavenly Tribulation!" cried the servants and guards on retainer. The same who had been chanting 'Brother Arlan.' They had stars in their eyes now.
Conversely, the peng clan's young master had a horrified look on his face. "Elder Fan!" he cried.
"So," said Arlan. "About the lady's whereabouts..."
He let the implication hang, as the lightning danced around his body. Arlan rested his claymore on his shoulder. He took a step forward, the ground cracking against his soles. After seven days, Arlan was finally beginning to understand the culture of the region. At least as far as the Peng clan was concerned, a heavy fist was worth a thousand conversations.
He didn't get very far before he heard a third voice.
"Tyrannical demon!"
A second flash of light summoned a second figure into place. She stood tall, taller than Arlan at least, sporting dark hair, bright eyes. And upon seeing her jade-like skin, Arlan lost all faith in the healthcare of the world he was in. He hoped whatever she had was neither terminal... nor transferable.
The woman looked younger than Elder Fan. As a matter of fact, she looked even younger than the Peng clan's young master. Regardless, 'Hao' had elected to call her, "Ancestor!"
"Hm." She exhaled, snorting through her nose. "It seems the tiger father begat a dog son, Peng Hao! Just one Demonic Cultivator and thou cower behind thine elders."
The 'ancestor' disregarded Arlan to glare at Peng Hao who couldn't meet her eyes. When he finally bowed his head in shame, she redirected her focus to the Peng clan's 'guest.'
"Well? What say thou, Demon Cultivator? Were thou responsible for the beast tide thou rendered thine aid with?"
"Why are you talking like that?"
"..."
The woman coughed.
"Li—like what? Thou presume that I—that one intentionally elevates one's register?"
Arlan leveled a stare at her that was flatter than a back against the ground after Miss Himeko's coffee. "I?"
The woman coughed again.
"Fine. Spoilsport...You can't save your lady, but enough about her." The 'cultivator' clasped her hands together. "I am Peng Chuheng. Burn that name into your soul!"
Her voice fell, and there was a moment of silence. A lull in the moment. Arlan felt a power rise within her, that was shockingly close to path energy, and like he couldn't tell for himself, it was impossible to deduce which path the woman before him walked along. Just that she did. Unlike before, Arlan took a defensive stance.
"Rending clouds!" A colossal, illusory bird unfurled its wings behind Chuheng, then the winds screeched.
Trees were uprooted. Stones smashed against buildings, and made rubble out of infrastructure. Even the tiles of the pagoda were dislodged, becoming weapons in Chuheng's personal storm. The servants dispersed, the soldiers broke rank in a desperate frenzy—it was all they could do to evade the debris that whirled around her. But there was a scream. A solitary voice lost within the gale as a man too was uprooted from the ground and churned red inside the vortex.
Arlan planted his weapon in the ground, and for a moment, endured. He shielded his eyes, closed his mouth and lowered his body's surface area. But if that was all he was going to do, he might as well have just keeled over and died. Some sharp cut across his forearm. He thought back to the space station.
The anti-matter legion had struck on a random day, at a random system hour. All that had been scheduled were some routine security check-ups and casual inventory management. The Express was scheduled to visit, but it wasn't like it had been the first time the Herta Space Station had housed the Nameless. He was even supposed to have taken Peppy on a walk later in the day.
And then there was chaos. Blood.
His first real challenge as head of security—because really, who would tread on the domain of a genius—and he had frozen. A moment of brief hesitation while evacuating some researchers had cost him, and in its wake, lives had been lost. People he knew. People he hadn't. People he liked. People he hated. And all the while, 'Brother Arlan' had been entirely useless. 'Brother Arlan' had had to rely on the providence of the Astral Express crew.
The one saving grace was that Lady Asta, his employer...His friend hadn't been alone, had been surrounded by people willing to bleed for her if need be. Asta was able to take control of the situation then, with her crew, with her wit, with her resources. It was inspiring.
Yet here she only had her wit. Would it be enough?
More tears ripped along Arlan's skin as the indignity of it all settled in. At least the anti-matter legion had been honest in its intent. These people knew where Asta was. They were holding her against her will. And now they wanted to make him the bad guy, while trying to take advantage of her. What was it they had called him? A demon? Arlan would show them a demon.
"Can't save, huh—" Arlan bellowed into the wind, uncaring if his voice could be heard—"Been! There! Done! That!"
Electrons dropped out of their orbits. The air around him burned as it became ionised. Arlan opened his eyes in a world of purple. Power. Excessive, overweening power escaped him as he bled. The heavens above them darkened, the earth below them trembled, as the elements crowned Brother Arlan the sovereign of all the lands.
"Let me pay you back...tenfold!"
He hefted his claymore, bellowed, and dived his way into the storm.
***
Meanwhile…
"Young lady of the Interastral Peace Clan!" The speaker was a man with his head bowed in a kowtow. "Please accept our treasury as compensation!"
"Your treasury?" asked Asta, as she sat atop the highchair nominally reserved for the head of the Peng family. She sipped tea from some fine pottery. "No thanks." She was sure her outfit was worth more, anyway.
It had only taken her a moment's demonstration of her technological superiority, and suddenly, all that talk of betrothal and jade beauties had been quashed. Now the clan were terrified that they had targeted the heir to some powerful, and bloodthirsty faction that could lay waste to them at the slightest offence… That wasn't how Asta would describe the IPC, but it wasn't exactly far off, either.
From trophy hostage, to an honoured guest. She had to say, she much preferred her current circumstances. All that was missing was—
"Oh!" said Asta. "I seem to have misplaced my employee. Could you help me find him? He's got white hair, he's short, and he just loooves to tell people what to do with their money. Oh, he must be all alone and confused without me." Asta placed a fist under her chin as she sighed."Poor Arlan…"