Despite being the youngest boy in the car, Damion had elected himself the driver, guide, and general know it all boss. The rest of Ass Gang didn't really care: Trevor was too busy complaining about new anime on twitter, and Mike was too busy watching the best TV shows that you could acquire on websites with extremely legal and non-sketchy names like
Tv.Free.Russ.X222
where all the best bits were underlined with massive subtitles in Turkish. Thus, Damion got to practice his brand new skill of driving and listening to podcasts, humming as he cut through the winding switchbacks that led towards their hometown.
The inauspicious nickname of the Ass Gang had been given to the three of them when a high school bully had stolen all three of their PE shorts before the dreaded period, and the three had been called it from then to graduation, and since each had remained friends despite being cast throughout the continental United States by the whims of fate, finance and collegiate applications, they had needed a name for their private Discord chat server.
And thus!
Ass Gang had been born, webbing together Damion, Trevor and Mike through two third of a year spent in colleges across the country.
Ass Gang had been there when Damion had broken his arm riding across a highway overpass and some asshole had tried to pull over into the part of the road that he had occupied with his bike, flag, and piddly little bike helmet.
Ass Gang had been there when Trevor had gone out with twins, complete with shocked emojis, dancing gifs, and lots of "pics or it didn't happen."
(It had, there were, the twins had been very cute, but the trio had agreed it had been 'too weird' and it had never gotten past watching a movie in a movie theater and, according to Trevor, having all his popcorn stolen by two girls.)
Ass Gang had been there when Mike had been diagnosed with anxiety and needed to be talked through long nights of laying in bed and vibrating like a tuning fork.
In short, Ass Gang had well outlived the negative appellation and become something each of them had enjoyed. And it was why, when Damion's brother had gotten engaged, and the wedding had been arranged in their hometown, all three of them had agreed they had to get back home. Fortunately, Damion had done the math, and tested out his brand new driver's license (acquired later in life than usual thanks to the eminently walk-able state of his hometown) by swinging by each college in a rambling road trip that would end, at last...
In Isekai, West Virginia.
Each of the Ass Gang had needed to face up to the range of reactions to learning they were from Isekai. It fell into two possible reactions.
Okay, cool!
From most people.
Excuse me, fucking what?
From people who knew that Isekai was a Japanese word for
another world
. Whoever had named Isekai, way back in the 1800s, had no idea that a future consumer base would exist and be overwhelmingly voracious for stories of men and women being chucked via reincarnation, magic portal, accident, whim of godlike beings, or other contrivance into a world of fantasy, magic, adventure and so on and so forth. Damion had actually gone and read a few isekais, while Mike and Trevor both preferred to remain ignorant.
Some are really good!
Had been Damion's half hearted reaction.
They rounded a bend and Damion yanked an airpod out of his ear. His favorite podcast,
Dicefuck
:
The Movie: Revengence
stopped playing in his ear mid sentence whining about Dungeons and Dragons, and he called out. "Yo! Guys! ISU!" He pointed at the corner as they wound past the sprawling complex of West Virginia Incorporated Tech - which was one of the two reasons why Isekai had never hit the same hard times that a lot of other towns in West Virginia did. WVIT was a technical college and research campus that brought in students from well outside the state, who then spent money in Isekai (as it was only a few miles out of town.) It had all kinds of cool modern techno-gizmos, a massive library, CNC production machines for the engineering students and labs for the science students. The only reason why they three hadn't gone to it was simple!
It was fucking expensive.
Also, Damion was getting a BSA in English, Trevor was working in a nursing school, Mike hadn't picked his major. And while the "Isakai University" had some nursing programs and English programs, it didn't realllllly fit their aspirations.
Also, it was fucking expensive.
They wound past it.
"And when we leave, we can zip past Fort Isekai," Damion said, nodding to himself.
"There's nothing to see but a chainlink fence, dude," Trevor said.
"Yeah, still," Damion said. "We should do it for my bro's sake. That's where he lives now!"
Damion bit his lip. He pushed down the tiny twinge of jealousy he felt about his older brother. Gale Corville. Aka, Major Gale Corville, United States Marine Corps, top of his class, total badass Gale Corville. He was currently posted at Camp Bradley, which was a marine corps fortification and armory situated in West Virginia. Marines went there to train, rest up, practice their guns, and store a ludicrous amount of artillery, rifles, and armored fighting vehicles. Or something like that. All Damion knew was that half the town sold stuff to university students, and the other half of the town worked on the military base, and the third half of the town that didn't do either of that worked on...
That!
They had just rounded another mountain bend and, in a valley they drove past, they could see the Isekai hydroelectric solar battery. It was basically one huge ass solar farm built around the old coal mine. The solar power plant fed the town and the excess ran a ton of pumps which pumped the water from the bottom of the mine to the top. Then, once night had fallen and the solar panels stopped sucking down wattage from the glorious, glorious sun...those pumps reversed themselves. Water flowed through them, spinning turbines that created electricity to run the town at night. It was like turning the coal mine into one big green power plant.
"Hey, is it just me, or does the sky look kinda funny?" Mike asked.
"Uh, no, those are totally normal lenticular clouds," Trevor said, nodding.
Damion risked a glance up. He had to admit, Mike had a point. The town of Isekai, which was right ahead of them sitting in an isolated gully with the camp to the north and the university and the hydroelectric battery to the south, looked as if it was in the center of a column of slowly spinning clouds, reaching up and up and up like the finger of God himself. Damion kept driving, frowning as he looked from the clouds to the road. There was a dividing line between the shadowed area under the clouds and the roads.
"Well, it looks neat at least," Damion said.
They passed the dividing line.
"Anyway, think-"
And that was the last thing Damion said on Earth.
The thundering roar of displaced air shattered windows as far away as Geeringberg and made every marine in the camp hit the deck like they were being mortared. When the marines and the university students and what few electrical technicians were at the hydroelectric battery came to where Isekai had been located, they found a column of earth, about ten miles wide and a mile deep, had simply been scooped out of the ground like a massive cookie cutter had kissed the earth.
Major Gale Corville, in his dress blues, with a dozen marines and scientists, stood at the edge of the line and looked at where Isekai, West Virginia had been.
"...fuck," he said.
***
The sound had been pretty impressive inside Isekai as well - but fortunately, it wasn't nearly as loud. It was enough to make Damion slam down on the brakes and bring his car screaming to a stop. The whole car jounced forward, then stopped, as Trevor screamed. It was a fierce, sharp, almost feminine scream, as he looked behind the car.
"What the fuck?" Damion asked. He looked back.
The road behind them was gone.
In its place...
Was bedlam.
Hell.
There was a flat field, like they had suddenly been transplanted to Iowa or something. But instead of corn and wheat, there was corn and wheat that had been stomped flat, set on fire, and covered with tents and sharpened stakes. A burning farmhouse that looked like it had been yanked right from a history text book - or maybe Faerûn - sat near the front lines, and there were a whole lot of men in armor that were...running away from them, as if they were absolutely terrified. Something strange floated over their heads, but Damion had no time to really register any details. He snapped his head forward.
There was Isekai. Right where he had left it. Only it now looked strangely flat. The town
was
flat, but someone had put it in the middle of more flatland, meaning there were no beautiful mountains around it.
Then Mike shouted.
"Holy shit they have a prisoner!"
Damion looked back again.
The men had left behind a figure - someone humanoid and dressed in green. And they were nailed to a crucifix.
Oh yeah, the crucifix had a wheel shape instead of the classic bar and cross thing. But it was still a thing designed to hold a human being up until they suffocated. They had been murdering and torturing someone to death before the big boom scared them off. All that flashed through Damion's mind in an instant as he growled.
"Mike. Open the glovebox."
He threw his car into reverse.
"Oh shit," Trevor said.
Mike opened the glovebox.
"W-What's the password?" he asked, looking at the gleaming safe in there.
"One, six, six, two-" Damion said as he jammed down on the reverse and swung the car around. He had a fairly simple moral compass. At least one part of it had been formulated when, as a child, he had played the classic video game
Fallout: New Vegas.
Fuck crucifixions.
He slammed them to offroading and drove forward. His car, picked by his father, had been piss useless and a gas guzzler for most of the continental United States. But here? Now? It proved its mettle as it flew off the road and started to rumble straight at the fleeing men and their abandoned captive. The gun safe that Mike tapped at sprang open and Damion's pistol - another gift from a father who had been fairly sure that anywhere that had an urban population required at least going a little strapped - fell right into Mike's hands. "Shit," Mike whispered. "I don't know how to shoot this."
"Gimmi, gimmi!" Trevor said. He and Damion had gone to the range. Mike had always...well, that had been before they had diagnosed him with anxiety, so, he had just sat and buzzed and hadn't known why he had been so worried about everything. Trevor grabbed the gun and Damion had to do, as he had done many times before.
"Keep the fuckin' safety on!"
"I am!"
