A frantic, ant-like energy seized Cinder Town the moment the war council adjourned. The grim tidings of a potential alliance between the Black Hand and Snaggletooth's warbands acted like a spark to tinder on the already taut nerves of the settlement's small leadership. They scattered from the third-floor office like leaves before a gale, their faces set in masks of purposeful dread. Even Harry Potter Michael, who usually cultivated an air of detached, lordly calm, felt the insistent tick of a phantom clock in his veins.
He knew, with a certainty that chilled him more than the Wasteland's deepest night, that a return to his world was not merely advisable; it was imperative. It was a gamble tied to the bizarre temporal tides that flowed between realities. The window for procurement—for turning modern currency into post-apocalyptic salvation—was terrifyingly narrow, perhaps a single opportunity. But war, even the ragged, knife-fighting sort practiced in the Wasteland, was a beast that fed on gold. Or, in his case, on crisp, deceptively clean banknotes from a world that still took such things for granted.
The old adage, muttered by generals in history books he'd barely skimmed, echoed in his mind: "To fight is to burn money."He looked down at his hands, which had never held anything more lethal than a sales contract until recently. Now, his most potent weapon was a rust-scabbed, utterly shell-less 76mm tank gun—a toothless dragon parked by the gate. To make it roar, or even seem like it could, would cost a fortune. The funds in his satchel, which had felt so substantial just days ago, now seemed pathetically meager. A cold knot of anxiety tightened in his stomach. It wasn't just the battle itself; it was the aftermath—the medicine, the food for refugees, the rebuilding. His financial calculations painted a bleak picture of insolvency.
Before he could embark on this desperate shopping trip, however, a different, more speculative idea took root. It was a gamble, born of late-night scrolling and a cynical understanding of a certain corner of the internet. He needed to diversify his revenue streams.
"Faye, Lynda. A moment, if you please," he called out, his voice cutting through the hurried footsteps echoing in the hall. The two attendants stopped and turned, their expressions a mixture of curiosity and obedience. He waited until the last of the other officials had vanished down the stairs, the sound of their retreat fading into the general murmur of the alarmed town.
Once they were alone in the corridor, he adopted a conspiratorial tone. "My dear ones, I require your assistance for a... special project. I need you to change. Into those JK uniforms from my world. And the hair… the twin tails, remember? Meet me on the rooftop. We are going to create some visual… assets." He attempted a smile that he hoped was charming but feared looked slightly unhinged.
The girls, though baffled, complied with the quiet acceptance that still sometimes surprised him. A short while later, on the flat, wind-scoured roof of the tavern, Michael stood with his new smartphone raised. The late afternoon sun cast long, distorted shadows, painting the gravel-covered tar paper in hues of orange and grey.
"Faye, my dear, that's it... now, a little more swing in the hips. Imagine you're… stalking something playful. And the tail! Yes, let it have a life of its own! Think of our… games," he instructed, his voice a blend of artistic director and flustered adolescent. The camera lens focused on the fox-eared girl, her form silhouetted against the vast, bruised sky. A strange, hybrid sensation filled him—part creative fervor, part sheer, awkward guilt.
"And Lynda! Don't try to copy her. Your power is in your stride. Command the roof! Own it!" The wolf-hybrid, taller and more solidly built, moved with a powerful, grounded grace that was utterly captivating in its own way. For the next hour, the rooftop became a strange film set. Michael, playing the part of auteur, shot five or six short videos, the phone's storage filling with clips of the two young women in various "fashionable" outfits he'd acquired—clothes that felt absurdly delicate in this context. It was, he told himself firmly, perfectly wholesome content. The sort of thing that, in his world, could amass views for reasons he preferred not to dwell on too deeply. It was a means to an end.
After the impromptu shoot, the heat of creative excitement was quickly doused by the cold water of necessity. Time was slipping away. He shouldered a bag containing his most crucial asset—the pouch of gold coins—and headed for the Wuling Sunshine. The van now sat behind the tavern, hidden in a hastily erected lean-to that smelled of dried mud and old straw. This was his new, improvised gateway, a far cry from the relative security of the mountain cave. The thought of being ambushed mid-transit by raiders was a chilling new variable in his already precarious existence.
He was not so foolish as to travel empty-handed. The van's rear was loaded with over four tons of scrap metal—shattered car frames, twisted rebar, the worthless detritus of the old world. In his world, it was a pittance, barely covering the fuel for the journey. But every little bit counted now. Under the watchful, silent gaze of Zach the Ogre, who stood guard at the lean-to's entrance, Michael took a deep breath. He reached for that cool, spinning knot of energy behind his eyes, willed the gateway into existence, and drove forward into the familiar, gut-lurching twist of reality.
The transition was as seamless as ever. One moment, the dry, dusty scent of the Wasteland. The next, the cool, cavernous silence of his rented warehouse unit, smelling of concrete and diesel. Pale light filtered through the high, grimy windows, indicating it was daytime. His first act was not to unload the scrap, but to pull out the two new phones. One, his personal device, felt like a relic from another life. The other, a cheap burner purchased with a pre-paid SIM under a name that wasn't his, was for operations requiring… plausible deniability.
With frantic fingers, he used the burner phone to create accounts on several short-video platforms. He uploaded the clips of Faye and Lynda, adding only a generic, upbeat music track from the phone's library. No filters, no fancy edits. He had to believe their unique, otherworldly allure—the flick of a fox tail, the untamed grace of a wolf-girl—would be enough to cut through the digital noise. It was a Herculean task, compressing the weird, desperate beauty of his fiefdom into sixty-second clips for the consumption of a world that would see it as pure fantasy.
The burner phone had barely finished its uploads when his personal phone vibrated insistently on the concrete floor. The screen lit up with the name "Wang Contractor." Michael sighed. He could guess what this was about. More manual labor. More offers to pour concrete under the sweltering sun.
He accepted the call, preempting the usual spiel. "Boss Wang. As I explained last time, it's not that I'm unwilling, but my schedule is genuinely impossible right now."
Wang's voice, however, was breezy, almost conspiratorial. "A-Niu, my boy, I remember everything! You mentioned once, just in passing, about the possibility of sourcing… international labor. From Africa, perhaps? Men with, ah, robustphysiques. The paperwork, you said, was a complication."
Michael froze. He had indeed muttered something of the sort during a particularly desperate moment, a wild fantasy about solving his manpower issues with magically-bound Wastelanders. He'd dismissed it as sheer madness.
Wang barreled on. "Well, I've made a connection! A high-ranking official from the East Malaysian consulate in Yangcheng. A man of influence! For a small… facilitation fee, he can smooth over many bureaucratic hurdles. I could set up a meeting. You should go to Yangcheng, talk to him!"
East Malaysia?Michael wracked his brain. It sounded vaguely familiar, but the name was irrelevant. The sheer absurdity of the situation—discussing consular officials while standing in a warehouse that served as an airlock to a post-apocalyptic hellscape—nearly made him laugh. Wang's desperation for cheap, disposable labor was truly a force of nature.
"Boss Wang, I… appreciate this. Truly. But tomorrow is particularly bad. I might have an hour, two at most. A trip to Yangcheng is out of the question."
"An hour is plenty!" Wang exclaimed, as if Michael had just revealed a brilliant plan. "I'll speak to him. I'm sure he can drive to you! It's no trouble at all. Though," Wang's voice dropped into a confidential murmur, "there would, of course, be some incidental expenses to cover. The fuel, the tolls, the… wear and tear on the official vehicle. And a small token of respect for the gentleman's time. Regardless of the outcome."
"How much of a token?" Michael asked, the question leaving his lips before his brain could engage.
Wang adopted the tone of a man driving a very hard bargain. "For a high-ranking consular official to make a special trip? The petrol, the tolls, a little hongbaofor his trouble… I'll be frank, it can't be less than five thousand. But don't worry! I'll negotiate fiercely on your behalf!"
The number hung in the air. Five thousand. Not for the labor, not for the visas, but simply for the chanceto have a conversation with a man whose title Michael wasn't entirely sure was real. It wasn't an exorbitant sum. In fact, it was strikingly mundane, the cost of a decent dinner for two in some parts of the city. It was the sheer pettiness of it that struck him. Here he was, trying to finance a war for survival against axe-wielding fanatics, and he was being offered a cut-rate, potentially fraudulent immigration official for the price of a used refrigerator.
He felt a hysterical laugh bubble in his throat, a mixture of despair and profound bewilderment. The chasm between his two lives had never felt wider, or more utterly, surreally ridiculous .