“Man, do I seriously need to do that?” Jana asked, spinning in her new home’s chair.

“Jana, you’re one of the most famous public figures in the world, an event like this can’t just go unaddressed,” a stern male’s voice said through her phone.

“But, like, it’s personal shit. It’s not the public’s business.”

“Did I invite a ‘but’? Stop being a hardass and fly to my office so we can handle this.”

Jana sighed, briefly slouching her arms before raising them up to speak. “Ugh, I will, but you better have some great rhetoric that says nothing that matters ready for me.”

“It’s already ready.”

She leaned back up, surprised. “Really? I haven’t even told you the details, you know.”

“I know. I prepared it a few months back, so that when this type of thing happened I could do a few minor modifications and call it a day.”

“You rascal, you~That’s so disrespectful in so many ways I can’t even begin to describe it.”

“And hopefully you’ll find the script itself far more inoffensive.”

“Okay, but before I do any rehearsals, I gotta call a few more people. Do you have a few hours to wait?”

“Sure, I guess I’ll get another damn coffee while you’re at it.”

“Addaboy, I’ll see you,”

“See you…”

She heard him sigh just as she hung up.

The new apartment was one room, and high in a high-profile skyscraper. It wasn’t as glamorous as it could’ve been, but it had two floors and a large observation window, with a balcony behind two almost invisible glass doors, which she had opened, letting the chilly outside invade her room. The balcony was definitely needed as well, for obvious flight-related reasons. Jana hadn’t even lived in the place for a day, and had just unpacked her things.

She briefly considered doing something fun to spite her secretary(not that she actually disliked the hard-working guy), but she wasn’t in the mood for it. Besides, she seriously did have things to handle. A direct speech about Psychi’s disappearance, the aforementioned speech on her fight with Parkarka, her super-secret surprise, and…

She called someone else.

“Hello, who is this?” a woman’s voice said.

“This is Jana Pontoon. Your boss,” she added smugly.

“O-oh um…” A moment passed. “I-sorry, I didn’t recognize the number.”

“It’s fine, I don’t usually call the Psychic Research Database personally very often. Hey, could I order some information, maybe a conference with someone knowledgeable on a particular subject?”

“Sure, absolutely! What in specific do you need info on?”

“Space Flight.”

A man watched, leaning back in his chair as Jana floated through the window of his large office, falling onto her feet.

“Well, you’ve sure been busy,” he said unamusedly.

Jana smiled almost sarcastically. “I’m sure you have, too, Mayer.”

Mayer rolled his eyes, leaning forward to look at his computer, set on his table in the center of his somewhat lavish office, high in the sky. He wore a generic tuxedo for work and had silky dark brown hair, swept to the side in an almost suave manner. His appearance was juxtaposed to his annoyed expression, seemingly unhappy to see Jana. “I sure have. What even have you been doing, anyhow?”

“I guess you’re referring to that small sum of three million dollars?” Jana said, quite aware of her references.

Meyer sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose with closed eyes. “Yes, I am.”

“Don’t worry about it,” she said with a shrug, hopping to sit on his desk.

“You can only make me worry more. I was really hoping you wouldn’t have taken that trait for your father when you took over, but that was naive.”

She sent him a shit-eating grin.

“Okay, so if we’re going to avoid that matter, what about Psychi? You clearly know something about her, or else you wouldn’t be caught in so much drama at the moment.”

“That’s a secret, really,” she said without any sarcasm. “I couldn’t explain it and sound reasonable on any continent.”

“How so?”

“I dunno, but I’m getting the feeling I just got involved in real-ass magic.”

Mayer blinked rapidly, twitching his head with an expression of ‘are you serious?’. When Jana said nothing to backtrack, he just shook his head. “Fine, whatever, ‘real-ass magic’. Thankfully for you, I’m prepared with an addendum saying you have nothing to add to the mystery.”

“Nice.” She grinned. “You’re really on the ball today.”

“I’m trying to retire, not run this shit on the seat of my pants.”

“Good luck with that,” she said skeptically. “If you didn’t spend money on limos, you wouldn’t have a money problem.”

“Oh shut up, plane girl, you of all people can’t lecture me on that.”

She clicked her tongue. Not my problem. “Anyway, the speech?”

“I provide my deepest apologies for what happened in Italy yesterday, and I will try to avoid any more conflicts like that…”

Jana stood in a press room in front of a podium, standing with a polite posture, her hands clasped in front of herself, and wearing a formal dress.

She paused, thinking for a moment, before saying, “Normally, I would pay for all of the damage done out of my own pocket, but as you know, Parkarka has claimed liability for the collateral damage of our fight. So instead I will still be taking that money out of my own pocket by donating half of the repair costs to the town, and half to a reputable charity.”

She continued, moving into a heavily modified portion of the speech. “Also, although it is speculated that I am in some way related to Psychi Purdue’s disappearance, I assure everyone that I am looking into the matter personally, and attempting to learn what happened to her. However, the investigation is ongoing, and may take a long time to finish. Another concern brought to me is that people are questioning my trip across the globe with her brother, Jeremy Purdue. I included him as part of my investigation, and he was not with me against his will, as many people have claimed.” She paused, deciding to go off script. “Also, for those bozos’ information,” she leaned closer to the microphone, leveling with her audience. “Jeremy and I are fucking friends, I did not kidnap his ass.”

“Moving on…I’ve also gotten a report about a Psychic League official having done some sick things to some young girls in Mexico.” She leaned closer to the mic again, a glare on her face. “Just an FYI, Mr.Monhagal, I’m fucking coming for you, and I will literally send you to fucking Brazil. Mexico cannot save you. The law cannot save you. Begging for mercy cannot save you.”

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The reporters nervously shuffled, their mutterings cut to silence as the room grew quite visibly cold on the bottom.

She nodded, her expression melting into a fake smile. “We at Psychic League don’t condone such activities, and he will be immediately…discharged from our company. We have a zero-tolerance policy for people like that in our company, and so do I.” She finally added, “And again, Mr.Monhagal, You know who you are. Run. That concludes my address, thank you. Any questions?”

Quite a few hands came up, and the first one she picked asked, “Jana, do you intend on actually sending him to Brazil, or do you plan on doing something else with him?”

She tilted her head. “No, I was serious. What, did you think he deserved worse?”

“Umm…” The reporter tried thinking of an answer to the question better left unanswered, but she quickly picked a different one, sparing him of the answer. “Who is leading the investigation on Psychi Purdue’s disappearance?”

“Me. Psychic Master Madam Illuma as well.”

She picked another reporter.

“Jana, how much are the estimated repair costs of your fight with Parkarka?”

“We avoided causing property damage, however much of the land we harmed was important to the tourism economy of the town. My financial specialists have worked with damage surveyors to estimate the damage to be worth upwards of five-million dollars in total.”

She picked another reporter. “What exactly instigated the fight between you and Parkarka?”

“The fucking elephant in the room,” she muttered outside the mic’s range, before leaning back in, “No comment.”

Meyer gave Jana a fake smile, sitting in his office.

“So, what did you think?” she asked, stepping in.

She’d attended the press conference the day after her talk with him, and now she found herself back in his office after being called up.

“You just love making my work difficult, huh.”

She nodded. “Kinda, yeah.”

He pressed his forehead against his palm. “Okay, well, do what you want. Let’s see my notes…” He clicked on his computer. “Umm…well, you didn’t catastrophically mess anything up, though some people, especially in Mexico, are getting angry with you and threatening sanctions.”

“Bro, I raised half of their military force, I’m not afraid of fucking Mexico.”

“Fair enough…umm, are you seriously going to drag that man to Brazil just to make an outdated meme out of him?”

“Yep. I’ve got some friends there who’d be glad to get on my good side. I’ll even make a meme post of me flying over some prison in Brazil with him on social media.”

“I really hope you get bad press for this shit.”

She sent him a smug, taunting smile. “I really hope you aren’t defending a rapist pedophile.”

He shook his head. “That’s not-” He sighed, cutting himself off. “I hate you.”

“Love ya’. Anyway, any more to say on the matter?”

“Well, you donate way too much money, I guess.”

“I come from poor roots. You buy limos, I donate limos.”

“You aren’t ever going to let me live that down, huh?”

“No.”

“Lastly…Madam Illuma? I wasn’t expecting that. It’s a smart way to track Psychi down, asking her.”

“No, I know where Psychi is, I just can’t get to her.”

He furrowed his brow. “Seriously? Where?”

“I’m not at liberty to discuss that.”

He shrugged. “Anyway, that will require some image control if she plans on making an episode out of you.”

“We can worry about that later.”

“Good, less on my plate…Oh, and one last thing. Why did you bring her brother with you? Psychi’s.”

“Umm…I needed to investigate her disappearance, and I wanted company for the road.”

He frowned. “Company? You’re more social than you seem, I get it, but dragging him along that whole way…?”

She sighed. “You guessed right, there’s one other reason I did it. It’s because…”

“You’re saying it’s just this easy?” Jana asked, standing on a plane runway in a space suit.

The suit had been originally used in a private venture to make the record of the highest non-super psychic flight, where they had to fall back down after flying upward for over three-hundred kilometers. The suit had been put to storage afterward, and hadn’t seen use for long over a year.

Jana wasn’t really a space maniac, and she didn’t see the point of the venture, in honesty, but it had been a passion project between a few of the top players in the Psychic Leagues. The company was based around doing the impossible and overcoming limits and all that snazzy, saccharine stuff, so she wasn’t about to mention how pointless the endeavor was.

Besides, at the time, she’d been too distraught, stressed, and scared out of her mind that she hadn’t really paid attention.

A woman in a while lab coat and standing in front of a bit more space supplies checked her tablet, frowning. “Oh, that should be all. I made a few modifications to the space suit so that it wouldn’t be as stuffy in there for you…you don’t really need most of its benefits, after all.”

“So…I won’t get irradiated if I fly too high?”

“Of course! But…it is somewhat dangerous. If your suit gets any tears, the cold air of the mesosphere will likely start to freeze you.”

“I am literally immune to cold.”

“Oh. Well, more bad things will happen, I’m sure. Also, under no circumstances should you let down your psychic barrier, as you’ll be flying so quickly that you’ll be crashing through particles like bullets…and that would shred your body.”

She was saying a lot of things that Jana already understood about flight, but she waited to speak. “So how high do I fly?”

“You should be fine at any elevation, but…you might have problems if you fly too high. I’m not a rocket scientist so…” she motioned her head to the side nervously. “Yeah. But…does seventy kilos up sound good to you? How long does it take to fly that high?”

Jana shrugged. “Like…three, four minutes. Maybe less.”

“Wow…” she muttered. “So…I’d suggest getting a good idea of how high you want to fly, then sticking to it.”

“I want to make a two-thousand-kolometer trip in less than twenty minutes. How fast do I need to be to do that?”

The woman took a minute to search something on her tablet. “Erm…normally your terminal velocity is…?”

“Casually? About seven-hundred kilos an hour.”

“Right…so, putting that in, your G factor must be 10…and to get a result of…six-thousand an hour, we lower the air density…so, to accelerate to six-thousand kilos an hour, you will need…yeesh, you’ll need to be over forty up.”

“Over? I thought the air wasn’t dense up there.”

“No, but when you’re that fast, you create a lot of drag.”

“Yeah, I get it…so do you think I could get it done in twenty?”

“Considering you fly faster the higher you get, you’ll want to launch yourself directly upward to start. You’ll need to adjust for the curve of the earth and-”

“Yeah, yeah, I know how to handle high-speed travel.”

“Oh, I guess you would. Sorry. Then…do you think you know what to do?”

“Oh yeah, I do.”

Jana hovered in the bounds of the mesosphere, looking around through her suit’s tinted lens. “So that was two and a half to get up here. You said I’m a hundred up?”

“Uh-huh. Do you have enough air?” the woman said on the other side of her receiver.

“For sure. Which way do I go from here?”

“Do you know which way north is?”

Jana took in the mesmerizing curvature of the Earth, the air cuddling Earth’s surface, visible from on high. “Yeah. Oh, and I entirely forgot, what’s your name?”

“I’m Nala Jenner, nice to meet you.”

“Jana Pontoon. Tell me when to get going.”

“Right. I’ll track your position from down here. Just fly northward and I’ll tell you when to stop.”

“Alright. One, two, three!”

Jana burst through the practically nonexistent air surrounding her, accelerating at a dramatic pace.

“One- no, three- Six-hundred kilos an hour and rising!” Nala said. “You know, I’m surprised you exert so little force. Your telekinesis is only ten times as strong as Earth’s gravity.”

“Not exactly, but either way, gravity is pretty sick. Have you ever dropped a stick then followed it as it fell?”

“No…”

“Well I have. It goes damn quick. Make it ten times as fast and it can make a crater.”

“I never thought about that.”

“The more you know…” Jana muttered. It was difficult for her to tell whether she was even moving, so high up, but she could feel the air battering it. “How fast?”

“You’re nearly there, at five-thousand an hour.”

Jana flew in silence, her pace still quite casual. She didn’t even lower the cross-section of her barrier, just to make sure she was replicating a casual flight. At this point, she’d finally noticed the earth moving below her. In fact, it was moving quite fast, considering how high up she was.

“Am I at six?”

“In just a few…and you’re there. This should be your top speed. You can cruise now.”

“I already was cruising…”