WSP 043

Via’s Vacation

Taking a vacation as a princess was often rather difficult; being so well-known had its downsides. Via in particular tended to stick out like a sore thumb given her tendency for flamboyant outfits and taste for the finer things in life. Extremely fancy and respectable restaurants usually knew how to give her a truly relaxing time, but anywhere else? It almost assuredly depended on them not knowing who she was, for the moment they did, they couldn’t help but stumble over themselves.

Going to small towns usually solved this. This was unfortunately not the case with Willow Hollow since she had hosted the ceremony of the Moonshot’s launch. Everyone there knew who she was.

So she had to go in disguise without any of the outfits she loved, and she forced herself to shape her hair into something only mildly ridiculous: a smooth cut with four buns on top. She also wore a mask over her face and wide-rimmed glasses to break up her face, making it harder to recognize her. Her outfit was but a simple cloak—albeit one that was bright blue and showed little signs of wear.

She appeared to be traveling alone along the road to Willow Hollow. This was not true in the slightest. First of all, a royal dragon had dropped her off on the road less than an hour back. Secondly, she had a pair of agents watching over her from the trees. If they did their job right she wouldn’t see them until the end of her vacation. So far, there was no sign of their presence, but she had to admit she had never been the best at knowing when she was being watched.

For all her time spent being pampered in the palace, she appreciated the almost undisturbed nature of the land she was walking through. It was very early fall, so some of the trees had started changing color, but very few leaves were actually on the ground—and besides, most of the trees were evergreens anyway. The little pops of fall color would easily draw the attention of any traveler, even those not as aesthetically inclined as Via. For her, it did more than draw her attention, it made her mind start to wander, considering the beauty of those that burn brightest, but would be the first to fall to the dangers of winter… of course, even here, winter was far off. It wasn’t even a cold day.

Via hummed on her journey, a song her mother had taught her when she was young, something from the depth of the Wild Kingdoms with a meaning lost to time. She found that it was easy to skip in time to her music with her travel boots, something she was regularly unable to do in fancy shoes. Perhaps she could ask for some fancy shoes without heels at some point…

But that would be for when she returned to Axiom, which wouldn’t be for a while yet.

She skipped all the way into Willow Hollow. She was greeted by a few people on the street, but it didn’t seem like any of them recognized her. Good.

A cat even asked her if she needed directions to anywhere. She didn’t—she knew where Vaughan’s cabin was. She skipped her way all along the wooded path until she came right up to the bright blue front doors.

Ah, so they got those replaced, good.

She did a little twirl in front of the doors and knocked.

“Coming!” It took Via a few seconds to remember Jeh’s voice, but it took longer than that for Jeh to scramble all the way to the door and open it. “Hello…?” Jeh said, tilting her head.

“Jeh, it’s me.” Via removed her mask and lifted up her glasses. “Via.”

“Oh! Uh…” Jeh cleared her throat and bowed. “Your Highness.”

“Jeh, I’m on vacation, you don’t have to do that.”

Jeh lit up. “Great! Cuz I really hate doing that. Come on in!” She quickly led Via into the entry hall and the big couch. “I’ll go find Blue, she’s probably doing some math or something.”

Via unceremoniously flopped onto the couch and let out a long, dramatic sigh, sinking into its soft folds.

“Long journey?”

“Not really,” Via said. “I just skipped the whole way here and that took… a bit of energy apparently.” She chuckled. “Worth it, though.”

Jeh chuckled with her as she left to find Blue.

Via took the moment to just… let herself settle in. The couch was far from the many immensely comfortable sofas she had back at the palace, but something about this one was just so genuine. It had scratches and a few holes, but it still felt as though it was designed for her. Even her gauntlet spikes, often so hard to find a comfortable position for, weren’t causing her any issues.

She… was on vacation. At peace. At peace maybe for the first time since…

She frowned, a memory of her standing at her father’s grave flashing through her mind.

…I’m allowed to enjoy myself, she told herself. I don’t need to feel guilty for being happy.

“Via?”

Via looked up and locked eyes with Blue standing in the doorway. She immediately stood up and threw her arms around her. “Blue! It’s so good to see you!”

Blue was silent for a moment… but then she chuckled. “I’ve been so worried about you.”

Via removed herself from Blue and beamed at her. “You thought I was going to come here a bundle of tears and sorrow, huh?”

“Well… it was on the list of possibilities…”

Via shook her head. “There were a few weeks like that. But I wasn’t alone, I had my family.”

“You sure you’re okay?”

“Okay? Yes. The same as before?” Via’s smile faltered. “No… no, things have changed. I… I miss him. Mom’s gone off to bring justice, Grandma’s putting me through a lot…”

“The old Queen? I thought…”

“I’ll tell you all about it at some point, but I don’t think we need to start with all the drama and craziness today. Right now… I’m here. I’m on vacation.” She flopped back onto the couch. “And this couch is excellent.”

Blue narrowed her eyes at the couch.

“What?”

“I keep telling Vaughan we need to get a new one, this one’s too full of holes.”

“You shouldn’t get rid of this thing until it literally falls apart.”

“...Agree to disagree. It’s tacky.”

“But genuine!”

Blue rolled her eyes. “Did you want to do anything?”

“At the moment? No, I just want to sit and enjoy this couch. …Might like something to eat.”

“I’ll have Jeh cook up something.”

“...Jeh?”

“She’s an absolutely amazing chef, it turns out. Probably ran a restaurant or something centuries ago.”

“Wow… It must be so amazing, to have skills just come to you like that.”

“She does seem to really enjoy finding out new skills, even if…” Blue paused. “She doesn’t seem to like who came before her.”

“Another thing we should talk about later?”

“Probably. Maybe I should make a list…”

“Oh, please no, I get enough of that from Tenii.”

The two of them shared a laugh.

The vacation was off to an excellent start.

~~~

Jeh dropped a pile of papers on Vaughan’s desk. “We’ve done it.”

“...We?”

Scurfpea stood up in the chair so she could be seen by Vaughan. “We!”

Vaughan blinked and looked down at the pile of papers. The front page had a title. On the Respiration Limits of Humans and Dryads in a Closed System. “Is this…?”

“A full complete scientific report on everything Scurfpea and I have learned about breathing. I even have citations at the end!”

Vaughan quickly flipped through the paper, shocked. “How did… everything seems to be in order here. Did… Blue help you with this?”

“Nope! Just figured it was high time I tried to write one of these myself.” She paused. “I did use yours and Blue’s as references, though…” She shuffled her feet. “That’s fine… right?”

“Fine? That’s more than fine, that’s how these things are supposed to be written!” Vaughan chuckled. “The only issue I can think of is your name on it, you generally don’t see these published by non-wizards…”

Scurfpea gestured at Jeh. “Magic!”

“While yes she is magic, she’s not a wizard. She has no formal training.”

“Form all?”

Jeh cleared her throat. “Formal. Fancy. A way to do things how they ‘should’ be done. Everything in order, no chaos, no silliness, just… official business.”

“Formal…” Scurfpea raised a leafy eyebrow. “We are not formal at all.”

“Definitely not,” Jeh agreed. “Anyway uh you can just put it with your other papers Vaughan, my name’s already all over so many of them. Ace pilot!”

“I dunno, this is pretty impressive…” Vaughan leafed through it. “I’ll naturally have to edit it, but you might actually have what it takes to become a fully-fledged wizard. I’d consider sending you to the Academy if we didn’t need you here.”

Jeh paused. “...I’d rather not get too deep in the math anyway.”

“Not every wizard needs math. Though, yes, there would be math classes.”

“Hmm…” Jeh looked to Scurfpea. “Do you think I’d look stupid in a floppy and pointy hat? Because I do.”

Scurfpea seemed to consider this very carefully. “Yes.”

“Thought so.”

Vaughan chuckled. “Then maybe not. Still, if you’re interested in trying to push the intellectual side of being a wizard a bit more, my old textbooks are in the library somewhere. Maybe you should take a look?”

“...Maybe.” Jeh narrowed her eyes. “I smell a trap of being thrown into the Academy though. It doesn’t really sound fun over there like it is here.”

“I dunno, I’m sure you could get Pepper to take you on…” Vaughan waved his hand dismissively. “Ah well, something to consider, at least.”

“Thinking!” Scurfpea shouted in delight.

“Anyway…” Vaughan stroked his beard. “Rather than me reading this thing you’ve provided cover to cover just to figure it out, what did you two learn out there?”

“Scurfpea is like a weak air restorer,” Jeh said. “If she’s in the jar with me I can last a lot longer before passing out. She’s always awake when I do.”

“Fascinating…”

“Everything about the rates of me losing it is in the paper. The harder she breathes the longer I last, but she can’t keep that up forever.”

Scurfpea took a really intense breath and let it out, blowing some papers across the desk. “Lungs hurt!”

“I don’t think what you have are called lungs…”

“Oh. Home calls them liffiffs.”

“You’re really teaching her quite well,” Vaughan observed.

Jeh beamed even brighter than she had been previously. “Yep! I’m the best!”

“Best big sister!”

“Well, not really your sister…”

“Who else could be my sister?”

“Your family?”

“Don’t have sister. Or brother. Not even words for that!”

Jeh tilted her head to the side. “Dryads don’t have brothers and sisters?”

“Hmm…” Scurfpea scratched her chin. “We can have twins.”

“Why?”

Scurfpea shrugged. “Dunno!”

Jeh scratched her head. “Okaaay… anyway, uh. Vaughan?”

“Yes?” Vaughan said.

“I’m thinking of taking Scurfpea up on the next mission. That all right?”

“You’ll have to ask Lila but at this point I don’t see why not.”

“Yay!” Jeh picked Scurfpea up and grinned. “You get to go to space!”

“Yay!” Scurfpea’s already huge eyes got even wider. “...Moon?”

“No, no moon yet, the new ship isn’t ready.”

“Awwww…”

“But we should have it done before winter this time!”

“Yaaaaaay!”

“...We’ll probably have to ask Lila again about that so you and I are going to have to be excellent astronauts to prove you deserve to go to the moon.”

“I will be the best astronaut!”

“Impossible, I’m already best astronaut.”

“We’ll see…”

The two girls left the office, giggling and trying to one-up each other.

Vaughan sat back in his chair and stroked his beard.

What a strange group we have in this program…

~~~

There were a few places to eat in Willow Hollow now, though, really, most of them weren’t worthy of being called a restaurant. There was the bar-turned-hotel, the open bonfires Old Man Yinonnal threw every few days, Seskii’s stand (which only existed when she felt like it), and the Sanctuary’s little food pantry with some specialty food for holiday services.

But there was one proper restaurant that, at first, had operated out of a tent, but now had a full two-story building constructed out of properly chiseled stone. The sign proudly proclaimed the establishment’s name: Shakin’ Slime’s Scrumptious Snacks. It had started as nothing more than a simple slime selling snack foods he had learned to make wandering the Wild Kingdoms. Everyone liked it so much that he expanded the menu to include full-on meals that were generally traditionally Kroanite dishes cooked with methods from the Wild Kingdoms.

As such there were generally a lot of things on skewers cooked over an open flame with a wide variety of seasonings, as that appeared to be a common meal out in the Wild Kingdoms.

“...This… this is just like Mom used to make…” Via said, lifting one of the skewers off her plate and holding it directly upright, clearly experienced enough with this kind of food not to make a mess. She bit into a roast pepper on the end and let out a contented hum. “Yes… exactly like Mom used to make…”

“She was from the Wild Kingdoms,” Blue said. “I’d never eaten anything like this until I came back from the Tempest.”

“You have been missing out.”

“You and your sister already introduced me to a ton of food while I was in Axiom, I’m surprised you didn’t show me this if you already knew about it.” Blue paused. “And here I thought I would get to introduce you to something…”

Via chuckled. “Sorry! But it is really good. And… so many memories.” She took another piece off the skewer and savored it, chewing slowly. “...So many memories…”

“Aren’t they happy ones?”

“Oh, yeah, but… well Mom’s off on her journey and…” Via paused. “It’s a dangerous one, Blue. She’s up against… those people.”

Blue nodded slowly. “Yeah, they’re… they don’t mess around.”

“I pray every day that she’ll make it home safe but… I worry, Blue.” Via glanced out one of the windows, eyes losing focus. “I worry so much. I know I’m not supposed to, but… I just want her to be home.”

Blue frowned. “I was about to say that I worried about Jeh a lot, but… that’s not really the same, is it?”

“Hmm… no, if Jeh was on the quest you could be pretty sure she’d be fine. How about this, think about how you’d feel if your mom went out on a quest.”

Blue gave Via a blank look.

“Oh. Uh. Have I said something wrong?”

“I haven’t seen my parents in years. By my choice.”

“Oh… I’m sorry, I didn’t mean…”

“They wanted me to stay with the family business. Farmers. Simple farmers. Would never have to use my brain a day in my life…” She sighed. “I left for the Academy. Turns out Dad was right, that was stupid.”

“Well, you’re successful now.”

“Not really because I went to the Academy, though.”

“Well, maybe not, but you’re using your brain and you get to do so much! I’d like to think that any parent would be proud of what you’ve become.”

Blue looked down at the ground. “Maybe. But… I wasn’t exactly the favorite to begin with.”

“Siblings?”

“Four. I was the second youngest. I…” Blue grimaced.

“You really don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to.”

“I’m not sure?” Blue shook her head. “It’s been so long at this point. That place… it was certainly better than the Academy, but it was nothing like the life I have here. This is just… so much better. And not because I’m doing incredible things, but because… I mean. Jeh. Vaughan. Suro. Lila. Seskii. Even Krays. Everyone has each other’s back and… I trust most of these people with my life and—Via why are you crying?”

Via held her hands to her mouth. “I just… to not have a family that… it’s so sad…”

“Via, it’s normal.”

“Is it?”

Blue frowned. “...I… actually don’t know.” She was silent for a moment. “...Via, I just realized I’ve been talking about myself and not you. You were trying to get me to see something about your worrying?”

“Oh, that’s not important. Well, it is, but I saw that you had troubles and mine can wait. Things will come up as they come up.” She wiped her eyes. “Family is precious.”

“Sorry, I can’t just… get what you feel.”

“There’s nothing to apologize for. I shouldn’t apologize for being unable to get all your math talk! Or politics talk…”

“I don’t… do politics?”

“Grandma does.” Via sat back, an uncharacteristically grumpy expression crossing her face. “And she’s trying to teach it to me. Just me.”

“You mentioned that earlier…”

“Yeah. It’s… she doesn’t trust Wyett and Tenii. I… didn’t understand why at first, but I think it has something to do with them not being able to feel things as much as I do. But, like, they can order people to war, I don’t think I could do that.”

“I dunno, wars are pretty… undesirable.”

“But if you don’t send people to fight you get stomped…”

“...Yeah, I can see that. Understand that, even. Doesn’t mean I have to like it.”

“Doesn’t mean I have to like it either.”

Blue nodded slowly.

“...But that’s not the worst of it.”

“Well, yeah, you just lost…” Blue didn’t finish her sentence.

“That… that was hard, yes, but Dad’s with Dia now, and…” She shook her head. “I don’t just feel sad when I think about him anymore, I also remember who he was, how he was always there despite being the King, how much he loved us…” A tear rolled down Via’s face, but she was beaming happily in the memory. “He was a great man. A very great man.”

“But…”

“No buts. Well. Not about that. The but is… what it’s done to Wyett.” Via’s expression clouded. “Blue, he’s like a walking shell of a person.”

“He has big shoes to fill.”

“He’s not even really filling them, he sits on that throne and has Tenii do everything. He doesn’t talk much anymore, he doesn’t rant about his paranoid theories, he’s just… I don’t know what happened to him.” Tears started welling up in her eyes. “Tenii and I have been able to move on, but he… it’s like half of him is dead, and the other half is barely able to move him around.”

“I… I never got to know him but that doesn’t sound… right.”

“It isn’t. I… He had the least close relationship with Dad, he was independent, he was on track to be a great King… I don’t know what happened!” She wiped her eyes and started wringing her hands nervously. “Something’s wrong. I don’t know what it is. Tenii doesn’t know what it is. Hyrii doesn’t know what it is. I don’t even think he knows what it is.”

“...Maybe he cracked, like… like I did.”

Via looked to Blue, sniffing. “But… you got better. Your friends came. He had me, Tenii, and Hyrii. It. It should have had the same effect, right?”

“...There was a Yellow Wizard on that trip we took to Benefactor. He mentioned that we really don’t know how the mind works. Maybe it’s just… different.”

“Then… then what can I do?”

Blue tapped her hoof on the table. “Geez, Via, I don’t know. I don’t even know what got me back here, really.”

Via sighed. “...Don’t feel bad, Blue.”

“Via…”

Via gave her a smile—somehow fully genuine. “I mean it. Just because you can’t give me advice… just having you listen is good enough. Tenii’s not a very good listener… well, she is but not the sort that makes you feel like she’s really listening and she’s so busy all the time. …Hyrii’s a good listener. I should probably talk to her more often.”

“She probably has better advice than me. Though, it occurs to me that she’s probably feeling similar things. She is his wife after all.”

“Yeah… can’t believe I didn’t think of that. Oh, wait, yes I can.” She knocked on her head like it was a door and stuck out her tongue. “Dumb.”

Blue rolled her eyes. “You’re not very emotionally stupid. Very mature, actually.”

“Oh, I know that. But there was a trade-off somewhere.”

“Every time you say that I want to contradict you.”

“But you can’t!” Via snickered, wiping her tears away. “No one can.”

“I still don’t believe you don’t mind.”

“Some people are just stupid, Blue, like you are just smart. It doesn’t mean anything about what kind of person we are. Just traits. Simple traits. It’s what we do with these traits that define us.”

“...Am I doing well with mine?”

“I sure think so.”

“And what about you?”

Via paused. “It’s… dangerous to give yourself praise. But I can’t say I’m doing badly. Of course, that leads to pride and we all know that’s bad.”

“You’re the least proud out of anyone in your family.”

“Oh, that just makes it more dangerous!”

“Yeah… that lesson I know. Just because I’m the smartest person I know doesn’t make me the best. Learned that the hard way.”

“The easy way is preferable. Few people take it.”

“Yeah…”

And so the conversation moved on to other things, but even that which was frivolous still meant the world to the two of them.

~~~

“You good, Scurfpea?” Jeh asked.

“Good! Wait…” Scurfpea scrunched her face up. “...Excellent.”

“Excellent! We’re almost at space, so you better be ready…”

The two of them were in one of the Skyseeds—Jeh didn’t remember which one, she just knew it was one with a proper experiment airlock on it so they could move small objects in and out. It was decidedly cramped inside the nearly spherical glass enclosure, but Jeh was small and Scurfpea was even smaller, so they managed to fit just fine. Jeh was working the drive, but had opted not to use the air restorer—it wasn’t going to be a long trip and Scurfpea cleaned the air more than enough. Even if the experiment took three times as long as expected, they would be fine.

The sky around them was rapidly darkening… and a few stars were starting to show up.

Scurfpea pointed at the first one she saw. “Oooh! Star! Star!”

“Pretty sure that’s Qi, not a star,” Jeh said. “But the others won’t be far behind!”

She wasn’t wrong. At their rate of ascent, stars flickered into sight every few seconds, and soon the canvas of space was covered with the distant lights.

“Hmm… sparkling?”

“Sparkling?” Jeh blinked. “Wait, you’re right, I’ve never seen a star sparkle from up here… guess the sparkling comes from the air getting in the way.”

“Ooooh… perfect stars.”

“Maybe? I…” Jeh paused. “What even are stars? Points of light that are very far away. …We probably should have asked Wanderlust.”

“Starry stars…”

“Anyway, Scurfpea! Did you watch me use the drive? Think you can use it on the next mission?”

“Yep!”

“Good! Next time we’re up here I’ll give you the controls. For now, though… let’s run Krays’ experiment.” She gestured at a bag they’d brought with them. “We have to make sure to write down what happens to all these objects.”

Scurfpea nodded, watching intently.

Jeh removed the first object from the bag—a bag made out of metallic foil, sealed, with air inside. She gently placed it in the airlock, sealed it, and then released it into space while carefully holding it in an Orange aura so it didn’t just fly off beyond where they could see it.

The foil expanded quickly due to interior pressure, and subsequently a rip formed in the side. All the air within exploded out, sending little fragments of foil out into space.

“Failure,” Jeh noted as she brought what she could recover back inside, placing it in a second bag. She marked the failure on her notebook. “Scurfpea, want to try the second one?”

Scurfpea nodded, pulling out a bag made out of some kind of pink fabric. They stuck it outside and rather than exploding it just deflated.

“Hmm… failure, but due to not being airtight…” Jeh scribbled another note. “All right, next one, Krays gave us a lot of these…”

Material after material failed to hold onto the air. Jeh noted three different kinds of failures: deflations, rips, and explosions, which she quickly correlated to failure to hold onto the air, weak points breaking first, and uniform failures across the whole material. Lots of the plast-derived materials failed in the third way, including the rubbers.

“None of these are going to work for making a spacesuit…” Jeh grumbled. “Darmosil really is going to have to make us a suit of armor with sealed joints, isn’t he?”

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“Heavy…”

“In space that won’t matter too much. The big problem is that it’d be so awkward. Diving suits are awkward enough…” Speaking of diving suits, the next one was made out of diving suit material. It failed with a rip. “Uuuugh…”

“Bouncy ball!” Scurfpea said, throwing the next material onto the edge of the Skyseed. It did not bounce very well, but rather flattened against the edge.

“It has to be rigid to be bouncy and we don’t want that,” Jeh said, placing it into the airlock. “I’m betting failure type three. You?”

“Hmm… success.”

“You haven’t been right the last few times you said that.”

“Optimism!”

“Suuuure…” Jeh released the rubbery plast orb into space. It expanded in size visibly.

And proceeded not to explode. Or even leak air.

Jeh blinked. “What the…”

“Woohoo!” Scurfpea thrust her fists into the air, shaking the ship slightly, though Jeh stabilized it out of instinct. “We win!”

“We do…” Jeh poked the rubbery plast ball with Orange, finding that it could still deform with some effort. “Huh. Guess you can make spacesuits out of…” She checked to make sure exactly what the material was. “Plast weave material seven coated with number two.” She brought the ball back in and ran it across her arm to feel it. “That’s gonna be uncomfortable on its own…”

“So… we win.”

“We’re not done yet, we still have to test the others. Maybe there’ll be something more comfortable to wear in here…”

~~~

The Memory still resided deep below the royal palace in Axiom. A meeting was currently underway between the royals currently present and the Memory—though, admittedly, Ursulii wasn’t exactly engaging with the proceedings and was just sitting in the back in her rocking chair while the rest talked.

“Things seem to be… improving,” Tenrayce said, flipping through a file she had laid out on the table. “We haven’t encountered many active singers lately, though the song is still being sung in playgrounds everywhere.”

“We have to find a way to get rid of that…” Wyett grunted.

“Yes. Well. About that…” Tenrayce pulled out another file. “This is a secret experiment I had performed with the Academy’s new arcane vacuum device, design courtesy of Wizard Gronge. The results are… well, the actual curse part of the song is removed, individuals exposed to the vacuum are no longer compelled to keep spreading the song.”

“That’s… amazing news! Why aren’t we implementing it!?”

“Because it only removes magical compulsion. The song itself is still stuck in their brains normally. It’s evidentially very catchy. Far as the experiment can tell, the song’s curse will reassert itself the moment anyone who is fully aware of it is in proximity to someone who is fully cursed. Unless we can figure out how to instantiate a magic vacuum over all of Axiom—which would be disastrous for other reasons—it would always be reinstated rather quickly. Even for you, Wyett, unless you wanted to quarantine yourself.” Tenrayce gave him a look. “You do not want to quarantine yourself.”

“Oh… I see.” Wyett deflated, sagging back into his chair. Hyrii started massaging his shoulders, trying to work out the stress.

“Anyway, as I was saying…” Tenrayce flipped to another page in the file. “We have not encountered a singer operation in a while. Nor have we found any suspicious activity that points to the nameless society. They’re likely waiting for their next move, or perhaps their defeat at the Tempest was more of a blow to their resources than we predicted.”

“They have proven themselves highly intelligent,” the Memory pointed out. “We should assume they are plotting, not nursing their wounds. The Tempest reads like a side-project to me, not a major one.”

“If that was just a side project…” Hyrii didn’t complete the thought.

“We are doing everything we can to see them coming,” Tenrayce assured her. “Benefactor has not been attacked yet, meaning we still have enough resources to protect ourselves from direct confrontation at the very least.”

“It is a reasonable deduction that they are not very large in number, just in resources and knowledge.”

“Exactly. If we could take out their leaders they would likely fall.”

“Which is presumably why they are so secretive. Nobody knows who the leaders are, so they cannot be removed.”

“Which is what Riikaz is trying to find, right?” Hyrii asked.

Tenrayce paused at the mention of her mother. “She is… trying. But I for one doubt her success, Benefactor was not able to find it, and a mission of revenge is hardly something most would consider indicative of a ‘pure heart.’ “

“She’ll try other things, though.”

“Our efforts are likely to yield fruit first.”

Wyett frowned. “But we haven’t seen anything of them since the Tempest. If we have no leads, we have no progress.”

“That is… true…” Tenrayce sighed. “But they’ll have to try something eventually, and we are very ready for it.”

“You may be overconfident. Perhaps consider adding more defensive measures?”

“...Without keying the people on something being very wrong, I don’t think we can. Furthermore I don’t think the great secret society will take kindly to the average population knowing they exist.” Tenrayce frowned. “I’m not heartless. I don’t want to paint targets on our people and invite some kind of all-out purge.”

“That would be very difficult for them to do.”

“Would it? We’d be able to do it with the sunfire crystal. Who knows what they have?”

There was silence in the room.

“Go to space, get a weapon that can destroy cities…” Hyrii shook her head. “Never would have guessed…”

“That weapon, simply by existing, is a sobering thought. The forge of the sun at our disposal…”

Tenrayce flipped through the file. “Yes, well, what would we even use it on?”

“If someone attacks u—” Wyett began.

“There was enough collateral damage with the encounter with Benefactor,” Tenrayce interrupted. “We aren’t doing that again.”

“But you gave that order. Was it a mistake?”

“I still don’t know. I’m looking for alternatives in future operations. Such as our current investigations into the Rigid Plague.” She pulled out a sketch of the Shinelands. “One of our spying Skyseeds vanished out here. We think the Rigid Plague shot it down.”

“The Rigid Plague is highly active, is it not?”

“Very. We can trace movements of large groups of rigids across the Shinelands. They have not unleashed an all-out attack on any of our forces. Yet. But they are continually infiltrating the Wild Kingdoms and setting up places of power where they can funnel resources. We’ve found numerous examples of rigid roads being built.” She placed her hadn on a Purple projection device and displayed an image of one of the roads, cutting unnaturally through a thick section of forest. “The Plague has thrown all pretense of being a random disease out of the window, it is showing obvious and clear strategy on the grand scale. It has infiltrated Kroan territory without making any major military moves. The only settlements it has conquered are those with no ties to us, Shimvale, or any of our allies. It’s building up power and resources while avoiding engaging in direct conflict with us.”

“Except it shot down our Skyseed.”

“We got too close to something.” Tenrayce frowned. “Possibly the actual central hub of their operation. Which is something we could attack and do actual damage, which is not the case with the rest of the decentralized mess we see here.”

“We need to ask, what is the goal of the plague?”

“We know almost nothing about that. Both the mysterious society and literal demons have tried to pry information out of it, and it refuses to give anything meaningful. It’s hostile, whatever it is, but why is anyone’s guess, as well as to what end. Does it want to conquer us? Steal our resources?”

“Perhaps it is looking for something.”

“If it is, it’s sure spending a lot of time and resources spreading in all directions…”

“Is it spreading on the other side of the Shinelands?” Wyett asked.

“I… huh.” Tenrayce paused. “I don’t know.”

“We should send a Skyseed.”

“Yes, we definitely should…” Tenrayce frowned. “What we need is a stealth craft that can’t be seen easily, but everything glints in the sun so far. …We should get a Purple Wizard who knows proper invisibility to be a pilot.”

“It is possible the Rigid Plague can see through that.”

“Possible, yes, but it’ll give us some edge. Hopefully.” With that, Tenryace got to the end of the file and closed it. “I believe that’s all for now.”

“Actually, I have something to report.”

“You?” Tenrayce blinked. “But… you never leave. How can you…?”

“I’ve been studying the designs of the magic generator we’ve recently uncovered. I have come to the conclusion that many of the segments on the complex crystalline pattern contained within me are the exact same, junctions of all seven colors designed to produce quantities of magic in precise and directed manners.”

Everyone in the room was suddenly at attention.

“Progress on the message?” Tenrayce gawked. “But… but we never get that! Not on the stars, not on the symbol, not on the magic…”

“Well, that ends today. We have finally progressed far enough in magic knowledge to begin to understand this impossible blueprint we have. A major part of its construction is the generation of magic, and if I’m correct about the larger-scale arrangement, there may be structures analogous to ‘pipes’ and ‘guides’ for the created magic, shunting it into other areas.”

“So it’s self-powering?”

“Potentially. I suspect it just wants exact levels of magic in certain areas for some reason. What reason, I can’t even begin to tell you. But it certainly cares a lot about magic flow.”

“...Do you think you can extract designs for these ‘pipes’ from the plan?”

“Perhaps. Do you think it will be useful?”

“We’ve just barely discovered how to make magic generators, I’m not sure what exactly it would help with, but surely something.”

“It’ll give me something to do, at least.”

“I have to ask…” Hyrii said. “Any insights on the stars or the symbol?”

“Not the symbol, still have no clue what that means. But the stars… I’ve been thinking about the space program a lot, and how we think it’s possible to go to all the planets, even ones we didn’t know existed. What if the sky looks different if you’re far enough away?”

“The answer could be… out there.” Tenrayce blinked. “A multigenerational mystery, only now starting to get some hints of a solution…”

“If this is where it begins… all the threats we just discussed might be nothing in the long run. The solution to the oldest mystery of Kroan may be soon.” The Memory flickered. “Apologies, I believe I must specify that I’m speaking of soon in my sense.”

“I understand,” Tenrayce said, starting to grin. “Still… even hints of answers… I’ve wondered and wondered since I was a child. Maybe, some day in the future, when all this is behind us…” Her eyes all but sparkled. “Our descendants will finally be free of this mystery.”

~~~

Blue and Via were walking back to Vaughan’s cabin. Even given the growth of Willow Hollow proper, it was still a significant walk through the forest path to the cabin.

“You know, Jeh has started just using Skyseeds to avoid this walk.”

“Really?”

“Yeeeeep…” Blue rolled her eyes. “I guess it is faster but… so frivolous. We put so much effort into those things and she’s using it to barely move.”

“We could have taken it…”

“I have no magic talent and you aren’t trained.”

“Oh. Right.” Via rubbed the back of her head. “Silly me.”

“Plus all the Skyseeds are currently at the cabin or in space.” Blue looked up at the sky. “I think Jeh’s testing spacesuit materials today.”

“Silly me…”

“That has nothing to do w—Via? Via are you okay?”

Via had stopped walking. Her hands were balled into fists and trembling. “Silly me…”

“Via? Via, yes, it was silly, but that’s ok—”

“I know it’s okay!” Via shouted. “It’s always been okay! I’m dumb, but I’m still loved and I can live a good life and I can do good!” Tears in her eyes, she threw an arm to the side angrily. “I can’t lead people!”

“Via, that’s…”

“I knew you didn’t have magic talent. I knew I wasn’t trained. I thought we could take the Skyseed! Normally that’s just an ‘oh yeah, whoops, let’s move past that’ moment. But what if it was important? What if it happened in the middle of a battle? What if I sent someone on a job who was literally incapable of it and I just didn’t figure it out!?”

Blue stared at her, dumbfounded, unable to process exactly what was happening in front of her.

“Blue… you… you’re smart. You… you can think of an answer… right?”

Blue almost looked away from those desperate eyes in shame. But she didn’t. She forced herself to keep her gaze locked with Via’s as she thought. Blue’s stomach sank and twisted into knots—what was she thinking? How could she give Via an answer to something so… emotional? She wasn’t emotional, she was so bad at it she could crack under enough pressure, she knew that. That’s why she had people like Via around her to help. People who could cover her blind spots.

That’s it.

“I… I actually can!” Blue said, shocked with herself.

“R-really?”

“You aren’t good at critical thinking. You’re downright bad. But there are people who are good at it. Surround yourself with people you trust who can do it for you and help you make decisions. You help me deal with emotional stuff, and so does Jeh, and so does Lila… and for you, you have Tenrayce, you have me, and you can probably find others.” Blue excitedly tapped her hooves on the ground. “You know what your weaknesses are so you can find people to cover them! In fact… I think you already do.”

Via stared at Blue blankly for a moment. Then, slowly, she started giggling, which made Blue giggle, which quickly turned the giggles into laughs—but with these laughs came a flood of deeper, throbbing emotions. Soon the two of them were in a crying and laughing embrace as Via let it all out.

“I really am… so… so dumb…” Via managed, eventually.

“And that’s just fine. You have other things.”

“Other things…” Via finally broke off the embrace and looked to the sky. “...I can help everyone. They can help me.”

“I don’t know why your Grandma thinks you need to be trained so much since you have Wyett and Tenrayce to help you, but even if you do have to take charge like she thinks, you won’t crash and burn. Especially because she’s training you.”

“One of her lessons was about choosing a council of advisors…” Via paused. “Now that I think of it, she said a lot of things similar to this, I just didn’t make the connection.” She smacked herself in the head. “Whoops.”

“Whoops?”

“Whoops.”

What followed was a very awkward pause. A chill breeze blew between the two of them.

“We should continue this in the cabin,” Via said.

“Agreed.”

~~~

In space, Jeh and Scurfpea got to the last of the tests.

It failed in the explosive way.

“Okay, so, two successes,” Jeh said, looking at the notebook. “Literally everything else failed, wow.”

Scurfpea held up the two successful tests, both of which were rubbery weaved plast-derived materials known only by their numbers.

“Neither of those are going to be comfortable…” Jeh shook her head. “Well, if we have to deal with it, we have to deal with it.”

“Suffer for science!”

“We sure do. Kind of our job.”

“Yay!”

“That’s not worthy of cheering.”

Scurfpea crossed her arms. “Yes it is.”

“No it isn’t.”

“Yes it is.”

“No it isn’t.”

They continued this for quite some time.

“Yes it isn’t,” Jeh said.

“No it… wha?” Scurfpea tilted her head.

“Hah! I win.”

“...No fair.”

“One day you’ll know your words well enough to win. One day.”

“Hmph….” Scurfpea turned around, looking at the starry sky outside. She tilted her head to the side. “Wait. Star moving?”

“A moving star?” Jeh looked at where Scurfpea was. It took her a moment, but she eventually saw it—a speck moving across the blackness of space. “Huh, whaddoyaknow…” Almost without thinking, she started trying to project its orbital path. It took a few minutes of staring intently, but she was able to identify that it was in a very eccentric orbit around Ikyu.

And then it changed direction, pushing away from Ikyu.

Jeh blinked. It was still moving in the new direction.

“What is…?”

“Only ships do that,” Jeh said. “...Could be one of the other Skyseeds… but why would those be put in a wide shifting orbit? I don’t think any of the missions required that much of a….” She paused.

This was exactly what she had done to circumnavigate the globe way back when.

“Someone else’s ship…” Jeh said, eyes widening.

“Woah…” Scurfpea said, her expression mimicking Jeh’s.

“Hang on, I’m going to pay it a visit.” Jeh grabbed hold of the drive’s controls and reoriented the ship at an angle that pointed toward but not directly at the other craft. She was going to have to match its velocity and that wasn’t going to be easy, as it could adjust its velocity just like she could. Her plan was to take a wide arc and eventually come up from behind it, adjusting as she needed to. Since she could see it, it was close by. Well, relatively close, if they weren’t in space the distance would take hours to cross.

With her piloting skills? She could pull this off in a few minutes. Granted, it would involve pressing Scurfpea into the “floor” like a pancake for those minutes, but she’d be fine.

Probably.

“You good?” Jeh called back as she pushed the drive.

“Wheeeeeeeeeee!”

“Okay, good, got it.”

Jeh completed her wide arc, coming up behind the other speck of light. She realized with annoyance that she was most assuredly a few kilometers too far to the left and had to adjust to the right. Fortunately, she also had enough momentum to go much faster than her target, allowing her to catch up.

“Flipping!” Jeh called. She cut the drive’s power, allowing weightlessness to kick in. She rotated the entire Skyseed around and then kicked in the drive again to start slowing down.

She still overshot. The speck whizzed past so quickly she was unable to see what it was.

“Oh for the… let’s try that again!” She continued slowing the Skyseed down, still making sure they were roughly in line with their target. To her surprise, the target itself started adjusting its speed in an attempt to line up with Jeh as well.

The two still sailed right past each other at high speed once again, no more than specks.

“This is in fact much harder than it looks…” Jeh muttered, flipping the Skyseed again in yet another attempt to line up with the other craft. Even with the other craft cooperating, they slid past each other several more times before they even got close enough to each other that they could see their shapes.

But, eventually, they were able to see each other and use far gentler nudges to approach. The other craft was a metallic one, cubic in shape, and with a single circular window. It was hard to tell its size but it soon became apparent that it was slightly smaller than the Skyseed Jeh was currently piloting. The cube’s corners had little metallic nubs on them, presumably serving the same steering purpose that the nubs on Jeh’s ship did.

Inside the window was a human wearing a tight suit that wasn’t a style of dress Jeh had seen anywhere before—it didn’t even feel vaguely familiar like so many things did. The human was in a very tight and cramped space—but he had a chair shaped to his form, and Jeh could see that the Orange he was using to steer was built into the arms of the chair. Jeh didn’t see a central drive, but she supposed it could have been in the base of the chair or something.

“Hello!” Scurfpea said, waving at the man.

“Sound doesn’t travel in space,” Jeh said as she pulled out a Purple crystal. She used it to write “Hello” in the air.

The man also took out Purple, but he was evidently not very good at using it, for he could only project the words in white light, and not with much precision.

Jeh’s eyes widened. “That’s Desc!”

“Desc?”

“Envila’s language!”

“Yay!”

“Not yay, I can speak it, not write it, I just recognize the symbols. Uh…” Jeh used Purple to project a larger image into space, showing the two ships gently coming into contact.

The man seemed concerned and confused at this image.

“Okay let’s try to explain just with images…” She simplified the projections of the ships to a circle and a square. She used a stick figure for herself and drew it talking, with little squiggles coming out to represent sound. The sound did not travel between the shapes, but when the shapes were in contact, the sound traveled through to the square.

This gave the man understanding. He nodded.

Jeh took in a deep breath and carefully used Orange to nudge the two ships together. Very, very slowly. Eventually, though, the glass of the Skyseed made contact with… whatever the other ship’s window was made out of. Not glass, it didn’t make the right sound when they hit.

“Hello!” Jeh called in Desc. “Can you hear me?”

“You speak Desc!?” The man shouted in shock.

“Met a traveler from your part of the world!” Jeh called. “Her name was Envila. Know her? She was a fae, or an elf.”

“I’m afraid I don’t know her. A traveling elf is highly unusual…”

“Oh, she knew that. Anyway, uh, we’re from Kroan. Have you heard of Kroan?”

“No, I’m afraid you have me at a disadvantage.”

“Well, uh, it’s… that spot right down there, we’re almost right on top of it.”

“Are you the ones who launched the artificial star?”

“Artificial sta—oooooh, you mean the satellite! Yeah, that was us.”

“What was its purpose?”

“To prove you could launch something into stable orbit without a person to control it.”

“Oh. Cool!” He cleared his throat. “I am Enrique Fanova, chosen explorer of the great city of Descent.”

“I’m Jeh, and this is Scurfpea, we’re pilots of the Wizard Space Program of Kroan.” Jeh paused. “Would you like to come down for a visit?”

“You have a landing pad?”

“Yes, actually! I’ll be sure to lead you to it. We should probably stay really close so you can find it, small target after all.” Jeh clicked her tongue. “We shouldn’t be in contact, but we should take it slow. Hold on, I need to give Scurfpea some instructions.” She switched back to Karli. “Okay, so, I need you to land.”

Scurfpea’s eyes widened. “Really?”

“Think you can do it if you take it really slow?”

“Yes!”

“Good! Your job is to land this ship. My job is to drag the other ship with us.”

“Got it!”

“Okay.” Jeh switched back to Desc. “We have a plan. Scurfpea is going to run our drive and get us back to the ground, going very slowly. I am going to drag you with us. Good?”

Enrique processed this. “This is definitely not in the mission plan…”

“You’re an astronaut now, buddy. You will have to learn to deal with the unexpected. Your bosses can’t talk to you here, you have to make the decision. What’ll it be?”

Enrique thought about it for a few moments before nodding. “All right, you’ve been doing this longer, I’ll trust you. But I need to know you can get me back to Desc.”

“Oh we have plenty of ships, we’ll be sure to get you back, don’t worry. I’ll take you myself if I have to.”

“In that case… lead the way!”

Jeh nodded. “Disconnecting!” She moved her ship away from Enrique’s. She held out an Orange crystal and enveloped Enrique’s ship in an aura, holding tight. “Okay Scurfpea, take us down, slowly.”

“Right…” Scurfpea slowly turned the Skyseed until it pointed at Willow Hollow. Then she set the drive to one of its lower settings and started pushing.

Jeh gave Enrique a thumbs up, a gesture which he reciprocated.

It was time to perform a double landing.

~~~

Suro and Vaughan had a tradition; every now and then they would have dinner at Suro’s house, not the Cabin.

The main reason it was only “every now and then” and not “every other time” was because Vaughan’s Cabin was simply superior in every single way for actually eating food. Suro’s house was less ornate and, perhaps more importantly, was absolutely filled with kittens of all ages.

“I still have no idea how you manage to feed everyone,” Vaughan told Lila.

Lila chuckled. “I have a lot of helpers.”

Eifa rolled her eyes. “Child labor.”

“You’re hardly a child anymore.”

“You started me on this since before I can remember.”

“And now you know how to cook industrial quantities of food as a large team. Your complaint?” Lila smirked.

Eifa accompanied the next roll of her eyes with an overdramatic sigh and a flick of her ears.

“Drama!” A small white kitten shouted. “Drama!”

“Mefy, stop shouting ‘drama,’ ” another one droned as he tried to eat in peace. Three of his siblings were playing with his tail, so this wasn’t going to happen.

“We should get food from Slime’s Snacks,” one of the older cats said as she sniffed the bowl of tomato soup in front of her. “I know we can afford it, you’re the mayor, Mom.”

“We can’t order it every day,” Lila said. “Plus, Vaughan’s visiting, and that means a home-cooked meal.”

“It is quite good,” Vaughan commented.

“For tomato soup,” another cat grumbled.

One of the younger ones who hadn’t quite figured out talking yet was sprinkling seasonings into his bowl. He sniffed it, licked it, and then decided it was disgusting and hissed, dumping it on the floor.

Arki sighed, jumping out of his chair. “I’ll get it, Mom, don’t worry.”

Lila nodded. “Thanks. Though sometimes you should let your brothers and sisters do the work.”

“I’m not in the mood for an argument and I don’t think Vaughan is either.”

Eifa chuckled. “Still mister ‘I’m the responsible one’ after all this time?”

“Someone has to be.”

“Implying Dad isn’t?”

Arki gestured at Suro, who was sitting back in his chair blissfully looking at the scene before him with a really dumb smile on his face.

“Oh no, Dad’s entered thankful bliss mode!” a teenage white daughter said. “We need to be more chaotic!”

Arki shot her a death glare.

“But we have to shake him out of it!”

“No, you don’t, Quir,” Suro said, though he didn’t adjust his gaze in the slightest. “Just keep doing what you’re doing. That’ll be… great.”

Vaughan sat back in his chair, stroking his beard. “I am still surprised you turned out to appreciate such a chaotic family life.”

“Same here,” Lila said with a chuckle. “The quiet thinker of a cat, blessed with well over a dozen kittens? It should be maddening.”

“It is, sometimes,” Suro said. “But… not usually. It’s just… amazing, is what it is, that’s all I can say.”

“I still think there’s too many of us,” Eifa said. “But that’s just me being rude, and I’m supposedly a guest here and all.”

“It really is weird that you live somewhere else,” one of the older boys pointed out. “Why did you move out? You didn’t get married or anything.”

“Simple. Peace and quiet. Something you never know you want until you have it.”

“I mean, I sleep at night…”

One of the younger daughters slammed her paws on the table. “Comically missing the point! I win again!”

“Who were you betting against this time?” Arki asked.

“I don’t remember but I know I won! So whoever I bet with, fess up!”

There was no response to her.

“Phooey, more coins lost to the void…”

At this point Arki finally finished cleaning up the soup mess and sat down, sighing in relief. “So… Vaughan, I heard Mom and Dad talking about the new project the Crown is pushing.”

“The Lunar Library?” Vaughan asked.

“No, no, I mean the other one you don’t talk about as much.”

“Ah, the space station.”

“I’m kind of curious… why would you even want a space station? Like… why? There’s nothing up there to build on, why put it up there?”

“Well, I would say we should do it just because we can.” Vaughan chuckled. “But the Crown wouldn’t be funneling so much money into it if that were the case.”

“Greedy greedy Crown!” One of the younger daughters shouted, specifically the one that was trying to climb onto Vaughan’s back but failing due to a lack of coordination.

“What do they get out of it then?” Arki asked.

“There’s the obvious benefit of having a way to continually watch Ikyu from above, as well as store materials for other ships that might need them. It’s also a lot easier to move around once you’re in orbit, so if a ship could be launched from the station, you would be able to make a sleeker, more efficient design. It could also serve as a meeting place, or a junction for smaller ships to exchange materials, samples, and the like. It has several purposes, really.”

“Hmm… which one do you like the most?”

Vaughan leaned forward and grinned. “One I didn’t list. The interplanetary ship we’re designing is going to have to be assembled in space, we’ll need a space station before we can properly make it.”

“Why does it have to be assembled in space?”

“Simple. It’s going to be way too big to get off the ground in one piece safely.”

Arki nodded. “You had those answers in your pocket, didn’t you?”

“Absolutely. If you’re doing research in magic on outside funding, you have to justify it.”

“Wasn’t that one of the things you wanted to avoid by moving out here?” Suro asked, raising an eyebrow. “Making your living entirely off servicing the town, no need to deal with the ‘nonsense’ as you put it?”

“Yes. But I have to deal with it now.” Vaughan shrugged. “I still know how to do it.”

“When I grow up I’m gonna be an astronaut!” A very young black kitten said.

“Then you better work on your magic skills!” Vaughan said with a grin. “Pilots have to be able to fly the ships!”

“Magic skills… Magic skills…”

Suddenly, there was a very intense knock on the door.

“Who could it be…?” Lila asked aloud. “Everyone knows we’re doing this…”

“Vaughan!” Blue shouted from the other side of the door. “Vaughan!”

Vaughan groaned, slowly standing up and shaking two kittens off of him. He went to the door and opened it. “Blue, I am trying to enjoy a good dinner with my old friend.”

“I know that! But… Jeh’s coming back! With something next to her! And she’s coming in very slowly! It’s… come on, just look at the sky.” She dragged him out of the house with her telekinesis and pointed with a hoof.

Sure enough, visible above them in the dusky sky were two specks of light, flickering with Orange auras.

Vaughan squinted his eyes. “How could she have found anything…? She was just doing a materials experiment…”

“That’s what’s so weird! What could it be?”

“What else could even be up there…?” Vaughan started scratching his beard.

“Ooooh! Ooooh!” One of the kittens raised a paw. “A big rock!”

“Or your satellite,” an older one suggested.

“Satellite crashed,” Vaughan said. “At least… we think so.”

“It’s not glinting right to be that,” Blue added, revealing that she had the handheld telescope with her. She handed it to Vaughan. “Look, it’s glinting like it has flat faces.”

Vaughan held the telescope to his eye. It was hard to make out any details, but he could identify the ship Jeh and Scurfpea were in. The other object… clearly had flat faces given the way the light reflected off of it.

“...I should probably be there when it lands,” Lila said, sighing. “Eifa, can you gather enough to round things up?”

Eifa nodded. “Sure, Mom. You go look at whatever cool new space thing she’s brought back.” She winked at Lila.

There was some initial confusion as to where exactly Jeh was going to land, but it quickly became apparent that she was going for the Launchpad. A sparse crowd had gathered—at this point Jeh returning was routine, but some people loved watching the sky for her, and those that did had started spreading the word about the second light descending from the sky. Via was already there, though she was dressed in her blue cloak and mask to keep people from recognizing her.

The landing was the slowest one most people in Willow Hollow had ever seen. Jeh had gotten the quick landing down to a science long before the launches became public affairs; they had not seen the early attempts, and the speed at which the ship was moving now was akin to those. As slow as possible, as carefully as possible, gingerly approaching the landing pad with the intent to barely make a noise on landing.

At this point the other ship was clearly visible. Cubic, with a single window oriented toward the Skyseed. Through the Telescope, Vaughan noted that Jeh was not driving the Skyseed—she was focused on the other ship. Scurfpea was taking them in for a landing.

That explains why she’s going so slow, but this is quite a first landing for a new pilot to attempt… especially one so young.

Ashen approached the launchpad. “Quite a first journey for Scurfpea, apparently.”

“I’m not sure Jeh should have given her the controls…” Vaughan said.

“She’s capable enough. She’s been looking out for herself for quite some time.”

“She’s struggling, though,” Margaret said.

“Huh?” Vaughan tilted his head. “It looks like it’s going well…”

“It is.” Margaret frowned. “She’ll make it. But she has it on a very low setting, and I can see the orientation wavering. She might be running out of will.”

“You can see that?”

“We pilots get a sense for these things. Jeh has it. If Scurfpea continues, she’ll get it as well.”

With that, the Skyseed finally landed gingerly on the launchpad. Once it did, Jeh lowered the cubic ship down right next to them, setting it down neatly. Then she opened the Skyseed’s top, lifting Scurfpea out with Orange.

“I did it!” Scurfpea shouted. She was clearly utterly exhausted, breathing extremely heavily, and her eyes were a little red around the edges.

The crowd applauded.

She proceeded to fall over.

“Scurfpea!” Jeh shouted, jumping out of the Skyseed and running to her. “Scurfpea, you said you were fine!”

“Yeah, just… need sleep…” Scurfpea mumbled. “Sleepy…”

Jeh glanced up, looking around for a face she trusted. She found Vaughan’s first and looked at him with a confused, pleading look. Is she fine?

How should I know? Vaughan thought.

Ashen approached Scurfpea. “She is merely exhausted. I am surprised she managed to push herself so hard.”

“I was too focused on the other ship…” Jeh said, shaking her head. “I… I don’t think I could have done it without her, though.”

“She will be fine. Though you may want to consider creating protocols for moments like this. For now…”

At this, the cubic ship’s window popped open, revealing it to double as a door. The man within shakily stepped out, eyes wide, and face pale. He pointed at Jeh with a shaky finger and stammered something in a strange language.

Vaughan narrowed his eyes. That sounds vaguely familiar…

Jeh shot back in the same language and crossed her arms.

The man shook his head and leaned against his ship, catching his breath.

“What… did he accuse you of?” Vaughan asked.

Jeh shrugged. “Claimed I was insane for trying to land without proper landing infrastructure? Not sure what he’s talking about. Guess Descent has a special landing method?”

“...He’s from Descent?”

“Yeah! Fellow astronaut!” Jeh beamed.

Via let out a sigh. “I suppose that means my vacation is over, then… Time for politics.”

Blue patted her on the back understandingly. “You’ll do fine, I’ve got your back.”

Via nodded, removing her hood and mask. “Jeh, I’ll need you to translate.”

“You got it, Princess!”

The rest of the crowd started muttering about Via’s presence, but she ignored them. She turned to the foreign astronaut, but waited for him to make eye contact before speaking. “Greetings, traveler from afar. I am Princess Via Kroan, of the Kingdom of Kroan. It is a pleasure to meet another intrepid explorer.”

~~~

SCIENCE SEGMENT

It is very, very tricky to have two spacecraft meet up in space. Jeh and Enrique passed each other multiple times for good reason—at the scales in space, spaceship “targets” might as well just be singular points in space. The chances of pointing right at a point in the distance are essentially zero simply because it’s so small and so far away. Even if it wasn’t moving you would most certainly have to adjust your trajectory several times in trying to get to that point.

For things that move predictably in space, like planets, moons, and asteroids, a computer can make up for human fallibility in this regard. Wanderlust essentially did this when she sent the Moonshot back to Ikyu, noting the specific point she wanted to hit on Ikyu, calculating where it would be, and then launching the ship on that trajectory. Must be nice, being a Crystalline One who can do computations like that reliably.

Regardless, Jeh was not running any calculations, and even if the other ship hadn’t been moving, it would have taken her several shots to even get close to it. (Fortunately, the danger of accidentally smashing into a target is very low because of this.) However, the ship was moving. Jeh correctly identified from her experience that this meant she needed to match its speed, so she took a wide arc and came up behind it.

The ISS is orbiting above us at about 7.7 kilometers per second. That is very fast. So fast that if a satellite whipped by you at that speed you would barely have time to register that there was something approaching you. Now, both Jeh and Enrique are not actually in orbit, they’re doing a “sawtooth maneuver” which is not something we would ever do in reality because it would be such an inefficient use of resources and not really serve any practical purpose. Magic, once again, allows the Wizard Space Program to cut a lot of corners. However, just because the “sawtooth maneuver” is slower than an orbit, it is not slow by any means, the speed will still be comparable.

So you have two objects moving like bullets in different directions. Getting them to meet up is a nightmare. In the real world we, once again, rely on computers and calculations to pre-calculate everything about spacecraft meetups well in advance, and we try to avoid doing it at all if we can help it. But, occasionally, the Hubble Space Telescope needs to be serviced, and you can’t exactly leave your astronauts on the moon once you’ve landed them. So we have to dock sometimes, which means making sure we line everything up perfectly. Fortunately, we have an advantage over Jeh and Enrique in this regard, and it’s not just because “computers” or “pre-calculation,” though it does help. The main benefit is that essentially everything we do is on orbit tracks. Different-sized objects behave the same under gravity, and so a particular orbit for a big ship and a lander and a probe will all happen at the same speed. It makes it easier to get ships to meet up if everything’s moving on nice predictable circles, and not a wacky “sawtooth” that no sane person would ever use.

Unfortunately, after the ships are close enough to see each other and are moving at the same relative speed, we no longer have an advantage over the Wizard Space Program. They can just use Orange with finesse to bring two things together without any sort of connecting tissue. We have to maneuver our ships precisely toward each other and get perfect alignment with the pieces that need to touch to properly dock with anything. This is the part where things can go very very wrong because now the danger of crashing into each other that didn’t exist previously is suddenly present. Put a little too much force into docking and you can break the door. (Anyone who’s seen Interstellar probably has an image of a very particular scene in their head right now that illustrates docking hazards.) If only we had precise forces that we could apply at a distance without actually touching anything… oh well.

To sum it up: never use a “sawtooth maneuver” ever. It is bad. Do not follow these crazy characters’ examples. Even in their situation just because they can do it doesn’t mean they should be doing it. Such a waste of resources…