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

Sara stared down the long track at Cybertruck-kun and trembled.

“Are you sure this isn’t just going to paint me on the wall behind me?”

Clem rested a reassuring hand on her shoulder.

“I’m sure, Sara. You’ll go right back to the highlands you requested. Once you’re there, the best hypothesis is that you’ll be returned somewhere when you figure out how to resolve this. You can still talk to us, and we can hear you, but try to only talk to us if you have to.”

Sara inhaled deeply and closed her eyes.

She held the breath and thought of Raven. The woman she wanted to spend forever with. The woman who made it easy to be her because she never questioned her reality. She only sat, accepted, and suffered alongside her.

She couldn’t let Raven get erased.

She had to get back.

“Okay,” Sara said. “Okay.”

Clem nodded and flung her arms around Sara, letting them drape over her with the weighted comfort she desperately needed.

“You got this,” Clem whispered, sending Sara’s nervous system into a state she wasn’t prepared for.

A chill crept up her spine. She bit the back of her lip until she tasted copper.

Clem didn’t so much walk away as sway her hips back and forth, distracting Sara from thinking about her imminent death only moments from now.

No.

Sara looked straight ahead at nothing as her life flashed before her eyes.

Cybertruck-kun roared to life and stared at her like a queer battlewagon with murder in its eyes.

The first rev made it real.

Her jitters became tremors as her muscles gave out and her bladder released just as it began.

Cybertruck-kun accelerated at an insane speed, its rocket attachment flaring.

Two hundred and forty miles per hour.

That was what Clem had told her.

That was what stared her down and glowed brightly as it activated.

By the time Sara opened her mouth, the air had already been knocked from her. The screaming pain of the back of her head cracking against the rock didn’t last long enough to feel before everything went black.

Everything was quiet, but she could feel.

Her eyes peeled open.

She blinked once.

Twice.

Rolling hills, cairns, and thickets of gorse decorated the Southern Highlands. From where she lay, Sara knew that if she turned around, she would see the Great Wall in the distance.

Looking over her shoulder, she could see where the world simply ended. Cleaved from the continent when a Colossus fell centuries ago.

Her eyes narrowed.

Huh.

Like Tawagoto.

“You don’t belong here.”

A young voice Sara had never heard but instantly knew called from behind her.

Sara moved slowly and turned around.

A thirteen-year-old girl stared at her like she was nothing more than an anomaly to assess.

“I came to see Alenikka.”

Jin didn’t flinch.

“You rode the magic.” She tilted her head. “You’re like her. There’s no fear where there should be.”

Sara swallowed hard.

It was true.

Ever since she had started building Etokuso, the vise grip around her chest had melted away. Being around everyone, being seen for who she truly was, liberated her.

But she had lost her danger sense.

“Please. My heart, she’s…”

“For love.” Jin nodded and turned on her heel. “Walk where I walk. The lynxes are on edge tonight.”

Jin scurried up the path leading over a hill. The other side was illuminated, and the closer Sara followed, the more noise she heard.

Then they crested the hill and looked down onto a flat stretch of the highlands where the Sun-Tartan clan held a celebration in Alenikka’s party’s honor because Jin had saved the clan leader’s daughter, Sorcha.

Sara took in the moment in pure wonder.

This was the why we fight chapter.

Two nomadic communities coming together to celebrate life and love beneath a clear sky.

Everything trembled as she walked among her creations, none of them knowing her role.

As she crossed the celebration, she saw Jin’s mother, Daiyu, quietly singing a vigil to survivors with other mothers while Miri tested new blades with the caravan guards.

People wrestled, ate, danced, and participated in strength competitions. There wasn’t a frown to be seen as Sara pushed beyond the main group and froze in abject horror at the silhouettes against the amber sky.

There they were.

The woman she became and the woman she fell deeply in love with.

“I need to sit.”

Her stomach churned, and her knees gave out.

Sara fell to her knees and elbows.

Two women were beside her instantly. They gently lifted her while one of the men set a bench beneath her. A stone mug of cold water was in her hands before she could regain her bearings.

“Are you okay, friend?” A woman with black hair and a sweet smile asked. “How’d you get way out here on your own?”

Sara’s brain short-circuited.

She didn’t know what to say.

She didn’t have a plan for this.

“I…”

“I found her on the north ridge.” Jin stepped over and placed a grounding hand on Sara’s shoulder. “She’s with us.”

Sara looked up to answer, but it was too late.

Through the crowd, they made their way to the front.

The woman in the sleeveless dhoti kurta, with burnished copper skin and snow-white hair, knelt and gently took Sara’s hand.

“I’m Priya. What’s your name?”

It was immediate.

The jolt from her touch pulsed through Sara like unfulfilled desire.

“Sara.”

“It’s good to meet you, Sara.” Priya smiled. “Can you walk now?”

“Uhhh…”

Sara couldn’t take her eyes off the runes covering Priya’s exposed arms.

“Yeah.”

Priya stood and offered her hand.

“Good. Come.”

Sara looked at the crowd surrounding her and at the Runefist’s offered hand.

The second her fingers touched Priya’s, she overloaded.

It was a moment she had died for forever, but it wasn’t the right context, so something severed.

Sara pulled herself to her feet, looked at Priya, then Jin, and finally Alenikka, who had already begun returning to their private corner of the party.

She could do this.

No more fear.

She had to save her people.

She had to save her moon lily.

They reached the perimeter of the camp, beyond the hearing of the main group, and Sara stared.

Alenikka sat on a stone jutting from the ground and patted the space beside her, smiling.

She was beautiful.

She was a woman who had seen hell and always made space for women in pain.

“Hi, I’m Alenikka.” The warm night air suddenly filled with her command. “Jin said you asked for me by name.”

Sara sat and took a deep, calming breath before releasing it.

One of the qualities she had written for herself that would challenge her now was radical honesty.

“I did.”

She took a moment to consider how to say the next thing, knowing how Alenikka would likely react.

“I have taken responsibility for a group of people who needed leadership. They’re…good people. Beautiful, chaotic, amazing people. And…I need help.”

Alenikka stared into the crowd and nodded slowly.

“You had to leave to save them, didn’t you?”

Sara swallowed hard, tears welling in her eyes as she thought about everyone back home.

“I did. I had to leave them. Had to leave her.”

“Is it hard where you’re from too?” Priya leaned against the standing stone before them and folded her arms over her chest. “For a woman to love a woman, like us?”

Sara smiled and dipped her head.

“Not in my city. The rest of the world might care, but I will and have spilled blood to protect the right to love.”

“I would say that’s noble.” Alenikka began, stealing an affectionate glance from Priya. “But we both know it isn’t.”

Sara cocked her head.

“I wouldn’t go so far as to call it noble, but I think it matters.”

“Women like us?” Alenikka looked at Priya, then Jin, then Sara. “We bleed because men decide we have to. They put a price tag on our autonomy, and that’s violence. Enacted by us or enacted upon us. We chose the former.”

“I chose neither.”

Sara felt the twinge of pain inside when she saw the first difference.

“We fought. We won. And then we lost. Everything. So my new plan? Just stop fighting. No more death. No more killing. Just living.”

“How do you propose to protect your people if you aren’t willing to fight?” Alenikka asked.

So did Sara.

Project Zeta was the biggest gamble she had ever made, and she had bet her people’s lives on it.

“Violence is never the answer. I refuse to believe it is.”

“And violence isn’t always physical,” Alenikka reminded her before standing. “Come. Let’s walk. You two go enjoy yourselves.”

Alenikka gestured for Sara to follow her up a small footpath into the hills.

She walked for a time, putting distance between them and the gathering.

“Where are you from?”

Sara’s nerves had adapted to the constant flux.

“Etokuso.”

“I’ve never heard of it.” Alenikka stopped on a small outcropping overlooking the entire clan in the distance. “Is that in Nalendrien?”

Sara held out her hands and looked down at her caramel complexion, realizing she was in her human body.

“No. It’s…from another plane.”

Alenikka studied her for a moment.

“What’s it like?”

Sara looked across the hills, knowing exactly what was out there.

“It’s a lot like here. Greed. Poverty. Corruption.”

Alenikka turned toward the vista and folded her arms over her chest.

“Universal ills persist beyond the veil. Of course they do.”

“It’s the same everywhere you go,” Sara replied. “Just different flavors.”

“So why me?” Alenikka turned her gaze on Sara. “You can travel realms, and you seek me out?”

Sara met her gaze and considered her for a long moment.

She really was everything Sara could have hoped she would be.

Her tired but attentive eyes surveyed Sara.

“What I’m about to say…”

“You’re my creator,” Alenikka stated plainly.

Sara’s blood ran cold.

“I…I’m…”

“You’re not the first mother I’ve seen see her child for the first time.” Alenikka studied her. “So what would you ask of me?”

Sara considered the times she had written similar things into lore and heard the loaded answer.

The only way to engage her would be radical honesty.

She was a rogue scholar and in tune with the same ecosystems Sara was facilitating in Etokuso.

“I need to understand why I created you.”

The words finally left her lips.

“I created so much suffering for so many people because I was screaming inside. I was in so much pain. And I thought…”

“That suffering would make us stronger.”

Alenikka closed the distance and placed a comforting hand on her creator’s shoulder.

A pit of base terror bubbled in Sara’s chest. Tears crashed to the ground beside her as she collapsed.

She swallowed hard, overcome, and slowly looked up through tear-blurred eyes.

“Yes. Because I had no one to show me how to survive hell, so I had to learn from you.”

Without missing a beat, Alenikka challenged her entire premise.

“How were you so sure we were going to survive it?”

Sara went blank.

There were no words.

“You…had to. Because I had to.”

Alenikka considered her answer.

“We’ve survived everything the world has thrown at us. I have them. I have Priya. Thank you.”

Sara choked.

“What?”

“Thank you,” Alenikka said again, plainly. “For providing such contrast to the horrific landscape we share.”

She kept her arms folded and turned her gaze toward the figure of her love smiling brightly over a shared meal below.

Tears welled in her eyes.

“They are so beautiful. Every one.”

Sara broke.

Silent tears streamed down her cheeks as she thought about her family.

Everything she had done, everything she had bled for, was to make sure every single person had representation of self in the community.

Everyone had a voice.

No comment boxes or polls.

Sara spoke to everyone who wanted her ear.

She had come to love each and every one of them as family.

“I don’t know what to do,” Sara sobbed. “I don’t think I can save them this time.”

“Because you can’t,” Alenikka replied. “You can only trust that the environment you provided allowed them to thrive enough to defend themselves.”

They had thrived.

All of them.

Not just the Earthers.

Everyone.

The social fabric of Etokuso was stronger than diamond.

No one left behind.

Everyone was given the tools to thrive for themselves.

But there was still one problem.

“How do I defend them from a projected version of you that seems invincible?” Sara asked.

“You stop treating me like I’m perfect,” Alenikka replied. “You gave me the ability to have flaws, and I have many. Some of which you likely know intimately. But have you ever wondered what happens between the chapters?”

Sara thought for a long moment.

She did.

A lot.

But that was space-time.

Thinking.

Developing.

It didn’t always make it into the manuscript.

Which meant she had to write the ending.

And she had to do it on her terms.

That meant the one thing she had not believed possible.

“I…have to beat her. You. Here.”

Sara twisted it all in her mind to make some kind of sense. She took a step back and cleared her head with a firm shake.

“Clem!”

Alenikka cocked her head and watched with curiosity as the sky opened like the lid of a box and Clem’s face appeared.

“How can I serve you, Sara?”

Clem put extra emphasis on serve while Sara remained focused.

“Can you get hold of Glandalf McKellen on Discord and conference him in?”

One side of Clem’s lip curled upward.

“Uh-huh. Just a second.”

“Who is that?” Alenikka stepped closer with something between confusion and intense, soul-pulling need.

“She’s the woman who killed me with Cybertruck-kun so I could stop my irresponsible teenage wish written in my journal from erasing my girlfriend and best friend,” Sara said like it was just Tuesday.

The lid widened, and Glandalf appeared.

“Hey, Sara! Are you okay? We’ve all been trying to find you!”

“Glandalf!”

Sara took a deep breath.

“Can you work with Clem to Cybertruck-kun my island and everything on it into Serevak?”

Glandalf didn’t move for a long moment.

“Yeah. That should be pretty easy since the source material is derived from your mind.”

He turned toward Clem.

“I’m giving you access to the shared drive. Dump your schematics in there, and I’ll have Chino whip one up.”

“I need to be there to scale the effect directly,” Clem replied. “Intercellular interception is very precise and requires highly specialized equipment to contain the temporal blowback from transdimensional memory parasites.”

“Oh yeah,” Glandalf said. “I always get confused about the helix rebonding sequences. This needs an expert. You need a ride?”

“I’ll port over after I grab my bag.” Clem tapped her keyboard several times and looked back through the opening. “Okay. I sent them through. I’m disconnecting and coming within five. Sara, where do you want the island?”

Sara looked at Alenikka.

“You know the land better. Where can I fit an island?”

“You’re the creator.” Alenikka did not take her eyes from the sky. “Create.”

Sara thought for one beat, but it clicked quickly.

“Under my feet.”

“You’ll overwrite this scene. You’ll overwrite the joy you created,” Alenikka warned.

“No, I won’t.” Sara was certain. “Because it will never make it to print. Do it.”

“You got it!”

Clem closed her portion of the lid and disappeared.

“Okay,” Glandalf continued. “Rob said he can have it ready in six hours. Can you hang tight?”

Sara looked at Alenikka, who had finally looked away from the sky.

“Come,” Alenikka said. “Join us and revel in what you created. We’ll keep you company and help if we can.”

Sara nodded toward Glandalf.

“Let me know when it’s go time.”