Eventually I would end up somewhere besides a broken teleportation capsule that was no longer connected to anything when arriving in Celmoth. But for the moment, that was the one I knew and also the one that was in the least awkward place. Then again, Midnight could probably lead the way and bring us to many more locations he was familiar with, but either way they’d have to pick a place.
It was always awkward to meet with important people, but Jet was just Midnight’s mother so she hardly counted. There was nothing official about our interactions.
“You know, I’d appreciate being contacted more than weekly,” Jet commented.
“It takes like a workday of effort to cast that spell,” Midnight protested. I slightly disagreed. It took about five hours of mana regeneration. Though if he was going at the base rate, it worked. Either way, recovering mana wasn’t effort- or if it was, it was faster than that. But again, it wasn’t my job to undermine my cat buddy’s position.
“It’s about half the cost of Gate,” I added. “And you know his fatigue point isn’t high enough for Gate yet.”
“Indeed,” she nodded. “It’s quite a time consuming process to gain these… levels. But our people have developed some valuable abilities.”
“It’s pretty fast if you fight,” I said.
“Only for you,” Midnight pointed out.
I frowned. “I mean, technically it’s still fast for anybody.”
“Indeed,” Jet confirmed. “They do develop better when challenged, as you already explained.” She turned her head. “It seems I should return to official duties. Midnight can guide you wherever you need to go.”
“And we can Teleport now!” I said.
“Well, yes, we have that technology,” Jet agreed.
I mean via spell. Which we… still hadn’t had any real chance to use, except testing it between our apartments. I’d kind of bought it on a whim, but then I’d been going between dimensions so much that it fell by the wayside. Maybe we could have gotten Strife from her San Francisco to her Japan? Though that was outside the easy bounds of Teleport. Probably best to practice first.
Ultimately, Jet and the people from Extra- including the old lady Angelica who was using some sort of power all the time- headed off to do official business. And the rest of us got to do touristy things.
“I feel weird,” Great Girl said. “As the only one in an outfit.”
“Besides me,” Midnight pointed out.
“Mine’s just camouflaged,” I added.
“... Right,” Great Girl said. “Shouldn’t I have gone with them for official business?”
Midnight shook his head. “Seems like a waste. They’ll grab you later for that stuff. Until then…”
I followed his gaze to where Izzy was wandering out one of the ground-to-ceiling windows. Onto the official climbing structures outside, of course, but most people wouldn’t go so easily.
“Be careful!” Midnight cautioned.
Izzy tilted her head, looking back over her shoulder. “Why? You guys have safety stuff, right? So even if I fall-” She stepped back, flailing dramatically at the edge. Khithae lunged forward, but she wasn’t anywhere closer to the window. Izzy cartwheeled through the open window back inside. “Relax, my powers are literally perfect for this even if there weren’t local protections.”
Khithae sighed. “I would still not suggest fooling around. Technology like that isn’t perfect.”
“... Right,” Midnight muttered in agreement.
Spot beeped and booped. Jerome shook his head in reply to his familiar. “No, I don’t think it’s really made for robots, buddy. You’d probably want arms and legs. Or some ability to climb.” More beeps. “Yes I’m sure they have some sort of cleaning robots here. But they won’t be the same as you.”
Great Girl looked on curiously. “So you can actually understand him?” Then she answered her own question. “Of course, he’s your familiar. That’s to be expected. I-” Her eyes flicked over to me. “Heard it from Turlough.”
Had she? I feel like I wouldn’t have brought that up because Midnight could always speak. Speaking of which, Midnight and I used Translation before creating the bond and never really stopped so we hadn’t tested if that just… worked. Along the way I’d learned to understand Celmothian naturally for those brief moments when the magic wasn’t up. But we really should just be able to understand each other after the bond. It probably happened more often than we thought between castings.
“Anyway…” Midnight said. “That’s not the best way to our next destinations. I suspect people want to put down their bags.”
Great Girl shrugged. She was carrying most of them, having more or less snatched them from people. “It’s really not a big deal, but I guess I don’t want to bump into things.”
We made our way through the hallways- once again admiring the wide windows with views of the city- before going up to the roof and a Celmothian flying disc. Midnight was just as nervous as before, even though it was probably impossible to fall off. But heights weren’t his favorite thing.
Soon enough, we arrived where we would be staying. We were met by some attendants on the roof, but immediately upon entering we found the ceilings were too low for most of us.
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“Great Girl,” I said to grab her attention. I was pretty sure all of us knew her real identity at this point but it would be awkward if something passed between the Celmothians and Earth by accident. Extra wouldn’t snitch, obviously, but the plan was to have wider communication eventually and that meant being cautious. She actually cared about her identity remaining secret, as much as she could. “I’m going to cast Reduce so we fit more easily.”
“Huh? Oh, yeah,” she nodded. “I’m ready. I… won’t fight it.”
I was worried she hadn’t actually understood me until I cast the spell, making myself, Jerome, and Khithae smaller… but she shrunk as well. Good.
Jerome needed it the least of us, but the ceiling was still only around four feet high. Plenty roomy for felines, but still too low even for a high schooler. Well, Jerome wasn’t actually in high school but I understood that was the correct age bracket.
“Our apologies for the hallway,” said one of the Celmothian attendants with us. “We only have one structure meant for humanoid heights. Aside from the low ceilings, however, the rooms here have been modified to fit your needs.”
What that meant was they made large mattresses and put them directly on the floor. Which was totally fine with me. And everything was quite comfy. The biggest change in my opinion, even if it didn’t look like it, was our doors. Us humanoids were given something like security cards, and the doors opened automatically. Midnight of course could do the same by registering his suit thing. Even normal Celmothians had non-military versions for manipulation.
“Will you need one for your… familiar?” the attendant asked, looking at Rob.
The cleaning robot beeped and booped excitedly. “... he says he would like one.” Jerome leaned in and whispered something, and the Celmothian nodded. I’m pretty sure the security card Rob got was blank, but he was happy to have it, putting it in Storage. Relatedly, I noticed that those without hands really liked Storage. I probably would too.
-----
We didn’t come to Celmoth just to laze around in a hotel all day, even if the mattresses were probably replicated versions of the best Earth had. We came to be fancy tourists hanging out with a not-prince.
And some day, we’d get to the tourism stuff. Once Khithae was done asking about the fall dampening fields and the flying platforms “So do you use ----- quantum ------- stabilization --- for these devices?”
“I’m going to admit right now that I don’t know,” Midnight said. “At least, not really. I’m more or less just college educated and I wasn’t going into this field.”
“What is your area of study?” Izzy asked.
“Magic,” Midnight said. “But it was political science. I swear it’s more functional here. We’re quite unified.”
“Because you have a constant enemy,” Great Girl pointed out.
“Well, we do, but…” Midnight petered off. “It’s not like we annihilated squirrels and blamed it on the other guy.”
“I’m not saying your people are responsible for the continued war,” Great Girl said. “But I bet a few people would prefer to keep things this way. You’d better be prepared for that.”
“Ugh. I don’t want to have to think about that,” Midnight said.
I had a solution. “You can always just throw meteors at them.”
“I… thought you said you didn’t buy that.”
“Not yet,” I confirmed. “But I have the points.”
“Meteors?” Great Girl asked. “Like, Meteor Swarm? I want to see it! Or is it like the Meteor spell?”
I frowned. “Is there a difference?”
“One is just a single big one with a long cutscene,” Great Girl explained. “But that’s a different genre so…”
“I’ll show you as soon as you secure somewhere I can cast it without being arrested or going into severe debt,” I said. “Assuming I don’t need the points for something else first.”
-----
There were probably a billion destinations on Celmoth, but many were historically related and most of us didn’t have the context for any of them. We did get to see some cool skyscrapers and a military base but even with our special connections we couldn’t actually see all of the latter. Not that I expected otherwise.
Wherever we went, those around us paid more attention to us than whatever we were there to see. I couldn’t fault them, given that Celmoth wasn’t used to having anything but their own people around- or worse, Bunvorixians. Our group stood out with the gecko-like Khithae, what seemed like humans of three different sizes, an orc, and of course a local not-prince. Oh, and a cleaning robot who liked to move around on his own whenever we were on flat ground.
Rob was good about not bumping into anyone, but sometimes they bumped into him and got surprised. Celmothians weren’t actual cats so of course they were able to comprehend he was some sort of robot, but human designs were far different from Celmothians. They had some mobile robots, but they focused more of their tech on interactive devices.
They did have some land vehicles, though it was clear they preferred a more open aesthetic. Things like trolleys that people could hop on and off instead of buses with closed sides that only stopped at particular points.
We saw some of that at the most relatable location Celmoth had, a zoo. Unlike Bunvorix which apparently had not done a good job with conservation, Celmoth did their best to keep their planet’s biosphere functional. A zoo was a way to get people interested in such things without having tourists crowding their planet’s jungles.
All of the sorts of things were familiar, but Celmothians were the most recognizable and they were not housecats. They did have squirrels, though. I wondered if they were the same sort that used to be on Bunvorix? From what I knew of the history the two groups had been fighting since they encountered each other after developing spaceflight, but they seemed to share some other species.
Zeb would have loved the zoo. Maybe she could see some on Earth, now that she was done shedding the shackles of war criminal.
It was a nice day at the zoo and it involved exactly zero attacks by aliens or extradimensional creatures. Nor had any of the previous excursions. I was almost beginning to get worried.
Well, at least tomorrow we’d get to see the Celmothians who ended up with classes. It was an awesome side effect from having returned to Celmoth the long way, via my old world. That was back when we’d had a harder time going directly among other things.
Hopefully they’d be up for sparring. Fighting new people should be good, and the Celmothians were interested in super powered individuals like Great Girl as well. Though the rest of us who came along all had classes, which was normal for me but not for anywhere else I ended up.