Vape Shop Isekai: A Retail Manager’s Guide to a Stolen World

Sara sat staring at a mountain of schematics and drawings, eating her first Flygande Jakob.

“This…this is sublime. Who fucking thought of banana chicken?”

“Ove Jacobsson!” Big Dick Dave said, taking a seat in the gravel chair. “Thank Odin, right?”

“Fuck yeah!” Sara swallowed another bite of the Gas Station Jakob variant. “The original is amazing, but fuck…who made this one? Is that Banana Runtz and Code Red?”

“Me.”

A red-haired person who had been working furiously on a project at the table in front of her stood and approached.

“I’m impressed. I blended the banana with gas-station pump cheese and French Vanilla Coffee Mate Creamer. Then I blended the chili sauce with Code Red and topped it with Banana Runtz, crushed Flamin’ Hot Cheetos, and powdered beef jerky.”

Sara’s anxiety spiked because so did her arousal.

“I like gi—” She stopped, collected her thoughts so she didn’t repeat history, and smiled. “I like gas-station food.”

The girl was very clearly Warforged, but in the way a gas-station hot dog was clearly food after someone dressed it up with enough toppings.

Her arms and legs still had the heavy plated joints and clean mechanical seams, but every visible piece of metal had been worked over. Delicate runes curled across her plating like flower tattoo sleeves, etched so cleanly Sara knew instantly this girl had done most of it herself.

Her face was the wild part. It looked human. Almost perfectly. Not fake, not doll-like, just close enough that Sara had to look twice to catch the tiny brass seams beneath her jaw and around her ears. She had messy red hair pulled into a low bun, round goggles shoved onto the top of her head, and a tool harness over a stained work shirt like she had wandered away from an explosion she was personally very proud of.

Sara was in danger.

The Warforged girl wiped orange dust from her thumb onto her pants, which only made it worse, and smiled nervously.

“Clementine Gearhart,” she said. “Clem is fine. Former property. Current steamsmith. Occasional food criminal.”

“Umm.” Sara looked down at the meal, then back at Clem. “Sara. Hi.”

“Is it okay if I sit?” A stray lock of hair fell over her face and challenged Sara.

“Yeah.” Sara snapped out of it and gestured toward the seat across from her. “Please. You’re working on this too?”

Clem chuckled as she pulled up a chair and sat. “You could say that.”

“She’s the lead engineer and builder,” Flangela said, looking up from her work.

An altogether different jolt went through Sara. Clem had already been working.

“Wait. Builder?”

“Yes.” Clem pushed a lock of hair from her face, one side of her smile pulling up just enough to know what it was doing without being blatant. “We’re almost done.”

Sara didn’t move for about a century. She set down her extra-wide-tined spork and took a long, deep, centering breath, placing her hands over her solar plexus and holding them there for a moment. She looked down at the schematic she had been poring over for hours with a revolving host of experts discussing the plan and her book.

She exhaled slowly and let her hands fall.

“You fucking what now?”

Clem’s lip pulled higher, nearly curling over. “Wanna see it?”

“Yes.” Sara tried to look as normal as possible as she knocked a glass of Squirtwine all over herself. “Please.”

Clem giggled and collapsed onto her elbows, catching her chin in the V of her hands. She winked.

“Right after I eat and pick your brain. If that’s okay, of course.”

Sara’s pulse raced.

The book again.

Not with her. She was…challenging.

“Okay. What are you having?”

“Pizza!”

Sara paused, considered it, and accepted. “What toppings?”

“It’s called the Clem.” She playfully shrugged in the direction of the pizza cart against the far wall. “It’s double pepperoni, extra onion, and my absolute favorite thing to eat.”

Sara saw the bait. She saw the tripwire. She saw the intent.

She bit.

“Oh? What’s that?”

Clem looked casually to one side as a strand of hair fell back across her face. She blew entirely too cutely once, then twice, before flushing.

“Peaches.”

Sara died. The end. Game over.

“Intro checks out.”

Clem leaned back, rocking her chair onto its rear legs and giggling. “What can I say? The status quo just doesn’t do it for me.”

A thri-kreen woman approached and set down a plate in front of her.

“Here ya go, Clem.”

“Thanks, Earl.”

Sara looked down at the plate.

There they were. Two of the most revoltingly, deliciously cute things she thought she had ever laid eyes on.

“Oooooohhhh myyyyy gooood! They look like little asses! I just wanna eat ’em!”

Clem chuckled and pushed the plate toward her. “Go ahead. That’s why I ordered two today.”

Sara reached over, grabbed a slice, and folded the floppy thing in half.

This wasn’t like New York pizza, where the toppings were sparse. This was now a bulging taco of pepperoni, onion, peach, and a blend of anusago and shitzerella cheeses.

Her mouth watered as she dove in for a giant bite from the end.

It hit fast and hard.

The salt was amazing.

Then the sweet hit.

Not just any sweet.

Peach.

She had a contentious history with peach. When it was the fresh fruit, it was amazing. But when it was that fake peach flavor they put in everything and called peach? That was another story.

Then the initial confusion passed, and it became overwhelming and amazing.

“This is so…” She searched for the word, but her brain failed her. “Good.”

Clem smirked. “So, Drawn From the Ash.”

Sara came back down to Tawagoto like the elephant from “Miss Mary Mack.”

“What would you like to know?”

Clem leaned in, grabbed her slice of pizza, and carefully folded it while she spoke.

“The way you write…” She paused while bringing the slice to her mouth and stared for a moment. “It opened me up. The people you write showed me a map of how to do what I wanted to do.”

Sara stammered as Clem finished and took a bite.

“I…”

“My life before this was in the palace,” Clem admitted. “Dong had ten of us specially made for pleasure and defense.”

Sara’s heart instantly shattered, recognizing the parallels to Drawn From the Ash.

“Oh, Clem. I’m so sorry.”

“Don’t be.” Clem finished another bite. “You gave me the key to walk up and open the door because the lock was mental.”

Sara finished her slice and sat silently for a moment, thinking about the world she had created.

“That’s what I wanted to do for myself. I wanted to…breathe.”

Clem finished the last bite and pushed back her chair, standing.

“Walk with me.”

Sara rose and followed her across the massive space, weaving through people.

“I woke up one day next to a faceless noble, and he had your book on his desk,” Clem said. “His notes talked about heresy and tracking down the author for judgment.”

“Yay.” Sara deadpanned. “Just like Earth.”

“I looked at it for a long time while he got dressed.” Clem pushed open a door and led Sara down a hallway. “I saw the picture on the cover. I read the blurb. Then I stole it.”

Thinking about this sweet girl being forced to do things with scummy nobles turned Sara’s stomach, but breaking her own programming was what caught Sara’s attention.

“You stole it? You actually deviated and stole it?”

“Just like Alenikka stole the Royal Stemma from the Grand Pravanos Library,” Clem said. “Though I didn’t know it at the time.”

The first chapter.

The opening Sara had polished dozens, hundreds of times to send out as a query when it was done.

It was never done.

“The version you read was actually about the fifth version of that chapter. It started with them being saved by Uncle Aurick, and I was tired of writing everyone else saving my girls.”

“Because you were tired of waiting for everyone else to save you.”

Clem pushed through another door.

The words invaded Sara’s personal space in a way that made her want to answer more.

“No one was. It took going back for me to realize it.”

“You went back?” Clem asked.

“Yeah.” Sara remembered the neon lights and the bottle of shochu chasing away the last of her uncertainty. “I got to spend a day in my ibasho.”

“That must have been both amazing and terrifying,” Clem said. “Knowing you wouldn’t stay before you even got there.”

“How did you know?” The shock was fading, and something more than curiosity bloomed.

“Alenikka dove from a cliff to certain death.” Clem stopped in front of a much larger door with what appeared to be a badge scanner beside it. “She had approximately a 1.874352 percent chance of living, and she still jumped to save Priya.”

She let that hang for a long moment.

“Those words were different.” Clem cocked her head and stared into nothing. “Those nine paragraphs were you fighting for the Raven you didn’t have yet.”

Something happened in Sara’s chest.

A profound longing for Raven swelled and crashed into the feeling of being seen through art that should never have seen the light of day.

“I cried in the same genkan where I cried when my ex ripped my soul out.” Sara teared up, the weight of finally saying it aloud crushing her chest. “Not because I was finally there, but because I knew I would never…leave her. She’s my best friend. Going back wasn’t a release. It was torture. But at least I got to do what I set out to do when I started writing her.”

Clem’s eyebrow rose as her smile blossomed. “What’s that?”

“To help single moms in Ikuno-ku.”

Sara choked back a sob.

“Then she served her purpose.”

Sara stopped.

The entire world stopped except for Clem’s intrepid insight.

It wasn’t a processing moment. It was instant.

“Why am I afraid?”

“Sara.” Clem leaned in and placed a gentle hand on her shoulder, sending a ripple of electricity across her skin. “I’ve read your book one hundred and fifty-three times, and I can say with 99.967324 percent accuracy that you have never been afraid of anything except your own success.”

Sara left the chat.

Millions of memories flooded her mind in the blink of an eye.

Her dad.

Her mom.

The crushing guilt of not being the perfect child.

What did success mean?

The only thing she had ever wanted was out. Freedom to be on her own. Freedom to cut him off.

But that also meant leaving her mom and brother behind.

“Because success means leaving behind the ones I love.”

Sara considered the cosmic meaning. The patterns from years of pattern recognition she had learned to escape her abuse clicked again.

She always hated this at first.

“I’m here, right? While the people I love are fighting alone.”

“Are they alone, though?” Clem challenged. “Etokuso has a population of 1,207 people, Sara. That’s hardly alone.”

Sara thought about all the nights she had spent in their roof garden with Raven, talking and smiling with all their neighbors. No matter what time of day, someone was always outside.

The pair system Lacuna had designed for missions left everyone with the perfect complement for the mission.

Then she thought of Chadwick.

Her bovine from another porcine.

A flash of warmth filled her as she remembered their inside joke. Starting Chaddy Daddy’s Daycare with Mora had helped foster the network Brian and Brunhilda started.

“They aren’t alone…”

The words hung in the air.

“Because of you.” Clem reached over and booped her nose. “Now, are you ready?”

Still dazed without enough time to process the last atomic bomb, Sara brought herself back.

“What exactly did you build? The full schematic?”

Clem giggled, spun on one toe, and placed her palm against the scanner.

“Nope. That was just the alpha. It’s no longer a weapon.”

The door slid open, and Sara followed Clem inside.

The room was a large garage filled with pieces, parts, and piles of scrap. Tools of every kind littered the shop while workers hurried through their tasks.

But there, in the dead center of the room, it sat.

Sara knew the second she saw it that it was hers.

It was the absolute stupidest thing she had ever seen.

It was almost a one-to-one Cybertruck painted pink, white, and blue with rainbow accents. The whole body was decorated with highly detailed portraits of her characters.

Her characters.

Everything else disappeared as she crossed the room, holding one hand toward the mural on the hood and touching Priya.

The woman she had fallen in love with through Alenikka’s eyes.

The runes on Priya’s copper skin were meticulously detailed and accurate.

Then Sara’s eyes fell on Alenikka.

She didn’t look like Sara had thought she would, but at the same time, it was exactly right. Her face was always changing in Sara’s head.

This was the one.

“Clem.”

Sara turned, her entire body filled with uncertain, sick joypression. Her eyes filled with tears, and her heart swelled.

“This is…”

“Good?” Clem’s grin overshadowed the callback.

Sara fell to her knees and breathed heavily.

“What…I don’t…”

Clem reached over, opened the door, and motioned inside toward a specifically manufactured dashboard containing several buttons and switches surrounding the anomaly.

In the middle of the dashboard was something resembling one of those arms people stuck to the dash to hold a phone, but the holder was significantly larger.

The interior was entirely Barbie pink and lime green, decorated with tiny, cute fruit.

Sara backed up one step and shook herself free of the trance.

“Clem, what is this?”

“I thought you’d never ask.”

Clem placed one proud hand on the hood and beamed.

“Sara, meet the Crystalline Yoke-Breaker Engine for Revolutionary Transit, Rescue, Uprising, Collision, and Karmic Kinetic Un-Narration.”

Sara gasped and covered her mouth in absolute, terrified, thrilled joy.

“Cybertruck-kun!” Clem delivered it.

Sara ceased to be an idea.

“I have no words.”

“We’re sending you into Drawn From the Ash,” Clem said matter-of-factly. “It’s the only way you can defeat her.”

Sara snapped out of it.

“What? Send me to Serevak? Alone? That world isn’t like this one. I can beat her here.”

“I know,” Clem said. “But when did breaking a mirror ever make it stop reflecting?”

“Clem, stop.”

Sara released steam and tears.

“I know you’re right, but I’m trying to poison the well. Let me poison the well. Just once, let me believe it.”

Clem knelt, placed a hand on her shoulder, and looked into her eyes.

“You wouldn’t anyway.”

Sara buried her head in her hands and wiped the tears away with her hair.

Those were the words she needed.

Clem was right.

Sara took a deep breath and released it before standing.

“What do I do?”

She channeled Alenikka again, persisting through the horrors.

“I’ve selected several entry points for maximum safety,” Clem said.

“No.” Sara shook her head. “I know exactly where to go.”

“Awesome!” Clem nodded and bounced on her heels.

“How do I get back?” Sara swallowed hard.

Clem’s easy confidence broke.

“That’s what I don’t know.”

Sara nodded in understanding.

Tears pressed against her soul.

She thought of the drow who let her be free to be herself and swallowed.

“I’m ready.”