The clouds above Oregon were filled with infrasonic song.

The airplane hangar-sized cuttlefish swam through the sea of ash, directed onwards by the ergonomic command panel growing out of its brain. On the huts growing out of its chitinous back plating, dozens of inhuman creatures pondered this new world they had entered.

A lobster-esque critter looked out of a nearby porthole at the expanse of darkness. “I thought Earth was supposed to not have any mists?”

The passenger next to the lobster shook her head. “It’s not mist, it’s clouds. Which is like mist, but not magic, and only up. We’ll get a better view when we start descending.”

The lobster’s compound eyes pulled away from the porthole. “If you say so. I was promised distance.”

“Look,” said the other passenger, “it’s not like you can sign up for colonization efforts because everyone in this dimension died and expect the place to be all rainbows and rose gardens.”

One of the other monsters leaned forward in their seat, their segmented carapace sliding into place with the sound of rolling dice. “Hey, aren’t you from up here? That’s the whole reason why the chief let you come up free of charge. Isn’t the… murder-energy up here going to affect you?”

“Beats me,” said the passenger, casually inspecting a tied-up bundle of rope in her lap. “I spent a total of, uh… maybe two or three months up here, and I’ve been in the DB ever since. Plus, I used to be able to say for certain that radi–radiation, is what it is, would affect me. But then a magic piece of paper made me gain a metre, and now I’m not sure if I even have whatever it is that radiation needs to kill me. But what do I know, I’m not a radiation-ologist.”

“Probably should’ve figured that out before you went up here,” mumbled the lobster, “but whatever.”

The passenger shrugged. “Well, I’m in kind of a hurry. I’ve looked at a few maps that the scouts picked up of this place, and it turns out that I have way less time to… do what I need to, than I thought.”

The lobster’s stalked eyes traveled in a figure-eight pattern. “You know, you can just not talk about your super-secret personal quest, rather than just keep dancing around it like that. I’m not gonna pry. None of us care enough to.”

The passenger rolled her eyes in turn. “Yeah, yeah, I get it. Just not used to not being able to be candid, is all.”

“Well, enough about you,” said another monster. “Looks like we’re coming down.”

As the colossal Potirangi emerged from the ashen barricade in the sky, biothaumic nodes on its dark grey flanks flickered into activity, creating a flashing pinprick of multicolored light visible from both the ground and from behind the great beast. Then three more such pinpricks sputtered into being behind the first. Then another five. Then another seven.

Twenty-five Potiranga descended towards the snow-buried city, arranged in a V-formation that could be seen from miles away. The city block-sized monsters rumbled at each other, communicating in an alien whalesong as their captains coordinated the formation.

In the quarters of the first Potirangi, a soccer ball-sized grey orb rolled in through the curtain that served as a door. Three stalks protruded from the holes at the top of the ball, blinking at the passengers. In particular, the one who claimed to be the resident expert. “Captain here. Hey. Hey, you. This the place?”

“Dunno, probably,” said the passenger. “You’re the one with the… The map, sorry.”

“Yeah,” hummed the captain, “but does it look like the place?”

“Again, no idea,” said the passenger. “Just heard of this place, is all.”

“Yeah, yeah, if you say so.” The captain’s eyestalks seemed to strain out of his holes. “Commodore just thought to check in, since the place has a whole lot more humans than you let on.”

“…What?” The passenger got up from her seat and followed the captain outside the quarters and to the edge of the Potirangi’s deck. When she looked down, she blinked as she found dozens of spotlights angled up at the descending formation.

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“Just so you know,” hummed the captain, “You’ll be our go-to hostage if things go south with these people that you said didn’t exist. Be glad that the Commodore’s a little too optimistic to throw you overboard and turn around.”

“…Uh-huh.” The passenger turned around and went back to the quarters “I’ll go tell everyone else to start getting ready.”

“You’d best be doing that!” called the captain after her.

–

The captain rolled back into the Potirangi’s command room, near the nape of the creature’s neck. “Nuknuk? How’re things looking?”

The Potirangi’s helmsman glanced over its bladed shoulder at the captain. “Setting down in just a couple minutes, sir. It looks like the buildings downtown can serve as decent landing pads for the fleet, sir. Permission to proceed as such?”

“Granted,” came the Commodore’s squeaky voice, from somewhere within the forest of tentacles that kept her off the floor. “Just make sure that nobody picks any that might start moving.”

“Of course, ma’am.” The helmsman extended its proboscis and brushed it in a complex pattern against a pad of cilia on the room’s ceiling. The Potirangi’s rumbling intensified, and it was soon joined by a bone-vibrating choir as the formation began communicating its selected landing zones.

A squelching sound approached the captain as the Commodore approached him. “So, how did things look for our little informant?”

“She acted just as surprised as us,” replied the captain. “But, of course, that don’t mean much with her of all people.”

“True,” squeaked the Commodore. “But still, the rest of our passengers still need to feel like we don’t just let this kind of thing happen, bad for word-of-mouth marketing. If we get the time after we land, we’ll leave her to them. I’m sure it’ll instill a sense of frontier community spirit, or something.”

“You’re the boss, boss.”

The Commodore chuckled. “Y’know, I wonder if we’ve got anyone from Tragnil on here. Imagine seeing the person who almost wiped out your hometown get lynched for giving bad info about earth. World’s gone upside-down, kid, I’m telling you.”

“Sure has,” hummed the captain. “But hey, it’s good for business. Anyway, I oughta start getting all our cargo up and at ‘em, because there’s no way the village idiot is actually gonna go through with that herself. Might need to tell ‘em to scatter if things go south with the locals.”

“You do that,” said the Commodore. “But just remember, our policy isn’t ‘drop and ditch’. These people paid for us to help them get on their feet, and future customers aren’t going to do the same if we start going back on that.”

“Yeah, yeah, I know our model.” The captain turned and rolled out of the room.

As it turned out, the passengers of the formation’s leading Potirangi needed no instruction to get ‘up and at ‘em’. Three dozen monsters leaned over the rear port corner of the deck, gasping in shock and giving the occasional encouraging cheer at whatever had caught their attention.

“You’ve gotta be kidding.” The captain raced over to the crowd, rolling as fast as he could. His spherical form was haloed in rapidly-shifting rainbow light, and he floated off the ground and over the heads (or equivalents) of the gathered passengers. His eyestalks extended forward to take in the view.

Rope had been tied around a cracked-apart spur in the chitin of the Potirangi’s deck, one end leading off the creature’s side. At the other end of the rope, a scrawny figure clung to dear life, swinging wildly as the Potirangi lowered it among the tall buildings of downtown Portland.

“That little…” The floating captain turned to one of the Potirangi’s deckhands. “She’s gonna get herself crushed! Haul her up!”

The deckhand hurriedly grabbed the end of the rope and began pulling the length onto the deck, the rope jerking in their hands as the rogue passenger swung like a pendulum.

A particularly tall building approached, its roof just high enough to intercept the dangling passenger on her back-and-forth journey if the deckhand didn’t haul her out of harm’s way in time.

“Stupid kid,” mumbled the captain.

At the last moment, the passenger extended her legs and leaned into the swing, like a child trying to gain speed on a tire swing. The rope extended outward as it reached the peak of its arc, but before it could come back down, it got caught on a small tower of antennae on the corner of the building’s roof.

The rope wrapped around the tower, jerking the passenger at its end to the side. Before she could be slammed into the roof by the change in direction, however, she let go of the rope. She flew to the side, skidding against the snow-covered roof before striking a frozen-over air conditioner and coming to a stop. The rope wrapped around the antenna tower, got snagged on something, and ripped the tower up as the Potirangi passed overhead.

The crowd on the Potirangi erupted into exhilarated, if confused cheering. The captain stared downward as the passenger picked herself up, dusted snow off of her tunic, and waved up at the Potirangi.

“Remember today, everyone,” called the passenger, just as the lead Potirangi began to move out of earshot. “This was the day you almost made the indomitable Yang suffer the consequences of her actions!”

She watched the formation of Potirangi fly over her and breathed in the cold air. After months of tracking, now was finally her chance to start setting things right.

Yang turned and made for the building’s fire escape. Things could have been better, could have been worse.