Archive of Our Own ^beta

When I found the strength to open my eyes again, all I could see was red.

A small part of me wished it stayed that way. The rest kicked that feeling down. I was the last thing standing between this world and a monster born of an unfathomable darkness -- not just Hekseville and Jirga Para Lhao whose peoples I’ve vowed to protect, but Eto and subjects who were little more than a hazy memory. Even if that was all they were, even if their senate would rather let everything below their city be swallowed by darkness than shine a light to drown it out, I wouldn’t let this… thing have them.

Too many had already fallen. Their faces ran through my mind like water flooding down a drain: Permet; Yunica lying broken beside Commander Yuri, their rebel army strewn all over Vendecentre; Lisa, dragged down with the Bismalia and countless other lives when, for all its imposing armor and firepower, it’d been swatted out of the sky; poor Cecie trying to slow down that monster only to be crushed into the ground.

I’d even lost Dusty, ripped from me like I’d lost a limb. And Raven…

But pain was another thing altogether. I could feel it in every bit of me, so much a part of my body it was like a second skin – a sore skin that burned and ached just beneath the surface. My leaden limbs couldn’t even stir long enough to lift myself an inch off the ground.

My eyes focused. It was like waking from a nightmare to a reality that was much worse.

Even through the crimson murk I could see it. Big, ugly, standing among flames. More terrifying in the new light, its bulk eclipsing Vendecentre’s square, a place almost unrecognizable without its warmth and liveliness. The sight of it filled me with a purpose I knew I couldn’t fulfill. And yet…

“I have to… go…” My voice came out so beaten and broken it had taken me a moment to recognize it as my own.

I tried again to just push myself up but my arms had stopped responding to my pleas completely. The pain was drifting away, too, and taking my consciousness with it. I held on to the hurt. It was the only thing keeping me from slipping.

Then it started speaking. But it wasn’t really a voice I heard. It was noise – grating and echoing, booming inside my head like it were a thought of my own.

“Little One, why do you endure such pain?” it said. “Why do you fight?”

I said nothing, not out of defiance, but because every word burned my lungs and shot nausea from my chest to my head.

“Whether or not you accept it… everything will return to nothing. The world cannot escape that fate.” Its words only made the pounding worse.

“That… doesn’t matter…” My fingers stirred and with it the beginnings of hope, but that was all they could do. And then they couldn’t.

“You have fought so bravely. There is no need to suffer anymore. Accept the world I bring forth and you will have everything you desire.” I could’ve just imagined it, but I could swear it leaned its monstrous maw closer to where I lay to say in a voice almost human, “Let me ease your suffering.”

What—what did it mean by…?

“The city you adore… the people you love. You can have it all.”

But how…?

“You won’t even remember me. You won’t even remember this deal. A world without end. A world forever at peace.” It sounded insistent.

“I can’t… but…”

But I couldn’t resist. My body wouldn’t even move and the pain was fading away. I felt nothing – not the hard ground digging into my skin, the icy air biting me to the bone, or the fires’ heat burning away the world I loved. There was nothing left for me to latch onto. I couldn’t fight back. The red turned to black.  Then all I could hear were its final words to me.

“Little One, there is nothing more to worry you. Accept my world. It’s your best and only choice.”

That wasn’t a choice. It was betrayal.

It didn’t matter what it said. It could try and convince me that I’d forget everything in its perfect new world, but I knew, I knew that in my heart, I’d never forgive myself, even if I forgot what was causing that self-hatred. It couldn’t erase that kind of guilt.

So I said nothing. As the blackness ate away at the edges of my vision, I stayed quiet, hoping I looked as defiant as I felt. The pain was gone but I wasn’t numb. I felt a fire deep within me, hotter and brighter than that which engulfed the square. I cradled that heat, kept it stoked with my very being.

And slipped into a world of darkness.

-

But I wasn’t there for long.

Hundreds of voices reached me from what felt like another place altogether, uniting in a single chorus of familiar words.

“Is that…singing?”

Yes, it was. And I knew the lyrics.

A song about red apples and a gentle sun; parting clouds and long waits. A song that was as much a part of me as the voice that had sung it every night in the crushing solitude of my palace’s bedchamber. Those Etonian memories were altogether just a foggy mire, but the song was forever etched in my soul.

And to hear the people of Hekseville come together under its harmony…

My world was still numb and dark but I latched onto those voices and held tight, grounded myself before I could slip again. Every new verse fanned the flames at my core.

“I can…still…”

The chorus grew louder, easier to hang onto, as my senses returned in full.

Feeling came back but all my aches and pangs didn’t. Red-hot determination took their place.

“I’m being…called…”

My fingers moved first, twitching and stirring until they were digging into the ground, balling into fists, gravel in my palms. Then my arms, settling underneath my body and pushing myself up until I’d raised my torso.

My sight returned in a sudden, brilliant flash of light, then I was staring down the square’s ruined brickwork. The hundreds-- no, thousands-strong choir almost overpowered the sound of flapping wings and airboat-sized claws raking the air.

My head came up easily, no longer held down by what had felt like stones, and I met a sight that I could have never expected: that massive, terrifying Darkness flailing its arms at dozens of flying Nevi like someone trying to swat away a swarm of hungry mosquitos. It was as if the last piece of an intricate plan had fallen into place. That’s how I knew it was Syd leading the charge.

If the song was hope, this was affirmation.

I pushed myself back to my feet and even as revitalized as I felt I surprised myself by how easy it was. I didn’t stagger toward the monster either; I strode, my purpose and how I would achieve it clear, even if I had no idea how I knew what I knew, like a secret my body had been keeping from my mind were about to spill.

As big and scary as it was, the monster was overwhelmed. It clawed the air in desperation but the Nevi slipped through its finger. Its breath burned the sky and a few Jiu but their numbers were replaced as fast as they were destroyed, and then some. It roared, its frustration booming throughout the city, and lashed out all over again, results the same.

It saw me and that frustration turned to fear, or something close to it. The sprawling wings on its back spread out wide and batted the air, kicking up a fearsome wind that tossed the Nevi around and pushed me back. I brought my arms in front of my face and dug my heels into the brickwork until they caught between the cracks and anchored me.

Its wings slowed until they stopped and with it the wind did too. Smoke billowed out from the corners of its maw, its head reared back, centered on me, and just before its hot pink-white breath could wash over me, a cloud of Nevi smashed into its snout and sent the shot wide, searing a long, deep line into the ground, its edges coal-black, and burning the last tree in the center to ash.

I started walking again. The fire within had nowhere left to go but out. And it did, wrapping around my body as an aura of hopes and dreams and righteous anger that threatened to incinerate anything that strayed too close.

The Darkness bellowed and snapped its jaws at the Nevi, earth trembling when it shattered some against the floor, but it couldn’t drown out the song in me, and it couldn’t shake me down.

I stopped. Whatever passed for its eyes met mine.

Without sparing a single word, I called out to Dusty.

And to Xii.

They didn’t come to me as a little black cat and crow, but as a panther and phoenix spiraling around me as I took to the sky. At our flight’s zenith, we touched and the whole world went white.

Dark, starry shadows circled me until we joined together and they gained form: a great, black, celestial body that was as much Dusty as it was Xii, lit up bright by red and blue veins with me at the center of it all. That kind of strength was like nothing I’d ever felt before. I didn’t realize I was yelling until I was on the attack.

I raised my clawed hands and spread my wings and from them came hundreds, if not thousands of cosmic panthers and phoenixes. They pounced and soared, blotting out the sky and leaving no inch of ground uncovered by their mass, scaling entire buildings in seconds to get at their prey.

Confusion set into the monster’s unreadable features until the first of the phoenixes reached it. Where they collided they stayed as dark stains, blacking out angry flesh just like the rest of the murder did to the sky. It understood then. And it was terrified.

It twisted and struggled but it didn’t fight back. As a harbinger of darkness, it must’ve known what the end looked like.

Those thousands of Xiis and Dustys covered its bulk, clawed up its torso, drowned it out in a dark darker than itself. A horrible wail tore into the very air itself.

Its red body turned a star-dotted black.

The dark turned to light, pillars of it bursting from its form and shining brighter than anything I’d ever seen until the Darkness went limp and fell a beacon that lit up all of Vendecentre.

And then it blinded the world.

When the light dulled and we could see again, the snow was falling a little lighter, and where the monster had stood there was nothing but fire and rubble.

Something that beat at the air like wings but not quite brought my attention skywards.

I’d been expecting more Nevi, so I was only half-startled when my eyes fell on the giant, bloated, fish-looking thing like what Raven and I had encountered in Neu Hiraleon. Even knowing what I did now, maybe my first instinct would’ve been to start kicking it, but seeing Syd standing at its forefront waving down at me, that urge died before muscle memory could kick in. I waved back with a paw and wing.

We drifted back down to the ground, Syd’s Nevi joyride dipping just low enough he could slide down its… face?

Front.

He slid down its front and then the big fish-thing took back to the sky on too-tiny fin-wings. The surviving Nevi followed.

As soon as my feet touched the ground, Xii and Dusty melted right off me, congealing back into a little cat curling around my ankles and a big crow perched on my shoulder. I prefered them that way.

Syd started moving without hesitation, walking across the square, but I could tell he wanted to run. Even now, he was keeping up an act. For his own sake this time.

I walked too. He stopped before I did.

“I never thought I’d see you again.” The words left my mouth before I had even figured out what I was going to say, but I didn’t regret them. “I guess we have Bit to thank.”

Syd’s mouth twitched into a weak smile, a battle between conflicting emotions showing in that briefest of movements. Too many things running through his mind to keep up even the simple charade that allowed him to say he was fine. So he didn’t say that. Instead, he said, “Do you...have to go?”

I smiled back, earnest. “Hey, do you remember? You stopped me 100 years ago. But I’m so much stronger now than I was then.”

That seemed to put a proper smile on his face. The worry was all in his eyes now. They looked too tired to be his. “I know,” he said simply.

I beamed at him. “I’d do anything to protect this world.”

I needed to make it clear this was something I wanted -- that I wasn’t just doing this out of necessity. That I really was ready to do anything. He already knew, I’m sure. But I wanted to lessen the pain that came with whatever had to happen next.

That war of emotions settled into an unconvincing mask of neutrality, eyelids too heavy, mouth too tight. He never could sneak much by me before, but he’d gotten better. So much better.

I could feel myself starting to mirror the look. I mustered the best smile I could -- a task so simple made too difficult by the pangs in my chest -- and turned away. “That’s why I have to go.”

I couldn’t stand making him wait any longer. I walked away, Dusty at my side and Xii flying beside my head.

Every step weighed heavier on my heart than the last. But the rubble of the square, the broken trees, the ruined buildings people had called home and work just minutes ago, the images of my fallen friends seared into my mind -- they all spurned me on.

A second pair of footsteps accompanied mine and relief swept over me like a gravity wave.

I stopped at and looked over the square’s edge. Syd did the same by my side. We peered into the endless abyss creeping up the World Pillar to swallow Hekseville whole, an everlasting expanse of darkness that somehow got even darker the closer to the center I looked. It seemed a thousand miles away and yet also like it could reach us at any moment.

He made an awkward little half-chuckle. “This is like the end of one of those great suspense novels. Long way down, isn’t it?”

“Not if you’re falling down.” I turned to him. “It’s the fall back up that takes a while.”

His mouth gaped for a moment before it closed and turned up at the corners, a bit of hope in his eyes. He nodded. “Right, right.”

“You don’t want a hug? As Syd this time, not Alias.”

Syd’s smile started resembling that lazy, know-nothing one I was so used to. “Let’s save that for a happier occasion.”

In that moment, I still wasn’t sure everything was going to be okay, but it sure felt like it. “Sounds like a plan.”

I stepped onto the edge. The darkness looked even closer from up there.

Dusty jumped on alongside me as soon as I turned back to face Syd, Xii perching himself on my shoulder. There were a hundred different things I wanted to say to him -- a hundred different things I’d never gotten the chance to and maybe never would. But there was no time.

I settled for the one thing above all he had to know.

“Syd…”

The darkness had stolen his gaze away from me but the sound of his name brought it back.

“...thank you. For everything.”

His smile shifted again, to one that tugged at the corners of my memory. “No, Kat. Thank you .”

I had to close my eyes, compose myself before the tears could escape. There was no way I’d let his last picture of me be a sad one.

When I opened them again, they shone with the best light I could fake. “Goodbye.”

It felt good being able to say that to him for once. Maybe it was a sign things would be different this time.

He saluted me with two fingers to his temple. “Until next time, my Gravity Queen. You were, and are, amazing.”

One deep breath, then two, then I leaned back.

Then I was falling.

Falling.

Falling until I couldn’t see Syd’s face peering down on me.

Falling past Vendecentre’s levels until I was racing by the metal supports keeping it attached to the World Pillar.

Then I fell past those too.

I fell and the city shrank and shrank until it disappeared into the clouds.

Loneliness was already settling into my chest. I felt a hollowness that only dug deeper when my thoughts drifted to Raven.

She’d helped me reach Eto and got chained up in a dungeon for her troubles. She’d held back Elektricitie, an unbridled force of nature, while I restored memories lost a century ago and suffered the full brunt of her immeasurable power. The last thing I’d told her was that I’d be back for her.

And yet here I was, falling to an uncertain fate without so much as a goodbye. It was unfair, cruel, and wholly undeserved. But there wasn’t enough time. Hekseville would drown in the black ocean if I waited for the farewell I wanted more than anything. Even with that knowledge it was hard to forgive myself -- maybe even impossible. But I hoped Raven could.

As if they could sense my creeping despair, Xii and Dusty fell on either side of me, keeping pace with wings and paws. The hollowness filled out a bit.

With the city gone and nothing else to see, I turned myself around to face the darkness.

It was a cloud blacker than black, the darkest night ever conceived. It covered everything, swallowed the horizon in every direction. The comfort of Hekseville’s warm, nighttime air slipped from my body the closer I got, replaced with a dreadful cold that seeped into my bones. Nothing could hope to live within its borders.

And then I was inside it.

Its heart, the black hole, was the mouth of a hungry storm, sucking up all the light in the world and then taking more. But if someone could choke it out, it could never rob anyone of anything ever again. And that was exactly the plan.

The Creator Bit told me something after I recovered the memories I lost a century ago: there was another way…

I would have to become a singularity and seal the darkness within the black hole.

He hadn’t said anything more than that, hadn’t offered an explanation as to what would happen or why it would work. He’d just told me what I needed to do and left the rest to me. I guess ambiguity is a necessary skill of all Creators.

The cold and the sight of the heart of darkness got to me, so I turned away and hugged myself, hoping I could at least keep what little warmth I had left. Dusty and Xii hadn’t faltered, not even then.

The black hole swallowed us like it swallowed everything else. Then there was nothing.

My power flared up. Jupiter Style. I was surprised its light hadn’t been torn away from its attachments on my arms and legs, lighting up my tiny spot within the belly of the darkness like the last star in a dead sky.

I felt the familiar rush of gravity flowing through my body, and an unfamiliar strength that must’ve come from Xii, and I knew what would come next: that power would extend out and around me as black motes that, in here, would only blend in with my surroundings, spinning my body around fast enough to form the singularity of a micro black hole.

Except that didn’t happen. Not exactly.

The motes were instead a brilliant white that stood out against our light-eating backdrop, and Dusty and Xii matched their intensity in respective shades of red and blue. The guardians spread out to either side of me, reached an invisible point, and stopped. Then they spun like the opposing winds of a storm, I the eye, faster and faster, farther and farther out, until they were simply two halves of a  single, solid, ever-expanding disc. At a certain point I’d started spinning too, yelling my lungs out with all my furious indignation, righteous sense of protection.

When the singularity took shape, it wasn’t a pit of deep dark like the new world I found myself in; it was the same blinding light that had drowned the monster in Hekseville.

What happened next was like an inverse corruption -- a purification that stretched out and burned the dark wherever it touched it, leaving behind incandescent rays in its wake. Streams of light escaped the confines of our singularity, claimed their own colors of blue and gold, red and green, and streaked ever further across the dead sky to the very borders of the black ocean.

The steady sound of whooshing wind all around me distorted into a trembling cry, primal and unstable, like an injured animal dying a slow, agonizing death from the inside. The farther the white hole reached, the more violent the cries.

It was the second-sweetest song I’d heard all day.

But already I knew I couldn’t keep it up for long.

I’d never maintained a micro black hole’s singularity for longer than a few seconds or larger than a few feet in diameter and doing both at the same time was quickly taking its toll. The red aura that lit my skin was fading to a duller shade, my breath left my lungs faster than I could inhale it, my eyelids felt a thousand pounds heavier. A deep fatigue settled into my muscles, like I’d been running and fighting for a week without sleep.

But I had to keep going, going, going until there wasn’t even a drop of this ocean left to threaten the people I loved.

That thought reinvigorated me. With a cry of my own, I willed my gravity to spin faster, spreading the light farther and farther until I was sure it had breached the black hole itself, but I wasn’t taking that chance. I kept going.

Going.

Going…

And then my light head got the best of me. All I could do was hope I’d done enough.

My long journey has come to an end.

My last thought before unconsciousness hit me all at once was a message to my other half.

“Raven...”

-

I hadn’t expected to wake up, but I did. Everything was dark.

Was this what it meant to be a singularity: an eternity of cold, empty nothing, spent so that everyone I knew and loved could live the lives I’d never be a part of again? Seeing Newt’s and Echo’s baby grow up, helping Hekseville rebuild and bridging the gap between its people and Jirga Para Lhao’s, being there for all those who helped and fell in the battle against the Darkness…

All the things I’d miss.

All things that added more weight to an already heavy heart.

Worst of all was that I’d never even know if they were okay, my friends, heroes who’d fought their hardest with only the hope that something might work -- that someone might stop a seemingly unstoppable force -- to spur them on. I wanted to believe they’d all made it, licked their wounds and rejoiced at their victory, but doubt gnawed at me, eating away at my thoughts until that was all I could think about. I would’ve cried if I thought I could, but the tears never came. All I could do was stay as I was, cold, empty save for my sorrows, deprived of any and all sensation.

Except...it wasn’t cold. It was pretty warm, actually, like a sunny afternoon spent in one of Vendecentre’s parks. And I wasn’t completely numb. In fact, I could feel something poking me in the stomach. When I concentrated on that feeling, I found that it was actually several somethings.

And that was how I realized my eyes were closed.

One part relief, another part terrified that if I opened my eyes, I’d find a reality worse than what I’d already imagined swept through me. But I had to do it eventually. I’d never see my friends again if I never, well, saw.

My brain told my eyelids to open but they disobeyed, preferring to stay shut. And I couldn’t really fault them for it. They felt like they’d gained a Jupiter Style of their own with how much they weighed. Trying my limbs was even less useful. They wouldn’t even stir.

I gave it a few minutes for my body to catch up to my mind and wake up, counting off the seconds in my head.

After about 237 of them, I tried again, just my eyelids. Giving it the usual amount of effort got me nowhere, so I tried harder. And harder. Harder, harder, harder until it felt like any more strain would pop my head like a balloon. But on the brink of a headache, they twitched open the slightest bit. From there, opening them the rest of the way came easier.

I hissed as light blinded me, burned my retinas and pounded at my head until it resolved into the picture-perfect image of a bright and cheery sky populated by hundreds of tiny, floating islands. There weren’t any birds this low down the Pillar, but they wouldn’t be out of place chirping and singing in a setting so peaceful.

I was lying on a piece of jagged rock jutting out from the World Pillar, jabbing harshly into my body through my clothes. Fully conscious, discomfort settled in wherever those blunt points poked. No fair! How come I had to feel them when my body couldn’t even move?

But getting my eyes to open had gotten the ball rolling, hurried along by the stinging against my stomach. I didn’t have to try so hard to get my hands underneath me and push myself to my knees.

Just to be sure, I scanned the world around me with a laser focus, to see if it was really as serene as it looked. But there was no trace of darkness to be found, except for some lazy shadows.

My eyes followed the Pillar up to where it disappeared into the clouds, and I groaned. I must’ve fallen even farther in my sleep after...whatever had happened with that whole singularity deal.

I got a sigh out, but it turned into a yawn halfway through. “How long have I been out?” I said, scratching the back of my head.

Nobody replied.

I turned and half-expected to be alone, but Dusty was right beside me, sleeping on the ground like its pointiness didn’t bother him. Lazy cat.

But Xii was nowhere to be found. I hoped that meant he’d found his way home.

“Well, it couldn’t have been too long. I’m still so tired!”

On cue, another yawn pushed itself out of my mouth. We wouldn’t be flying anywhere anytime soon.

I settled myself to a better position that wouldn’t be so bad to sit in for however long I had to wait, but finding it wasn’t easy. The whole rock was spikes!

It was as I was shifting around that I noticed I had undergone a bit of a drastic transformation.

“It’s white!” I shouted at the cloth that wrapped around my forearm loud enough to startle Dusty out of his sleep.

I looked down and my stomach fell as I realized the same was true for the rest of my clothes. Even my headband hadn’t been spared. Flashes of my time as Queen Alua came rushing back. I shivered. “Well, white isn’t really my color, but at least it’s not stuffy like that big dress…”

Dusty looked at me like I’d just stepped on his tail, but he still climbed on top of me and set himself down in my lap. I scratched him behind the ears.

“We did it. We ended the end of the world.”

Dusty gave a quiet meow of lazy affirmation.

But hearing those words out loud struck me with a surge of adrenaline that didn’t let me do anything less than bounce where I sat. “We...we did it. We did it! We saved everyone!”

I suddenly had the strength to jump to my feet, catching Dusty as he shot off my lap and spinning in place with him hugged to my chest. “Syd, Raven, Cecie, Lisa -- we saved them all!”

Dusty was too tired to try to squirm out of my arms, so he got himself comfortable instead.

“But so many of them got hurt…” I hugged Dusty closer. “I hope they’re okay.”

He didn’t even meow.

With every heartbeat, purpose filled my chest until my eyes hardened and homed in on the clouds, trying to see through them to get at Hekseville on the other side. “We need to get back as soon as we can.”

But my little guardian had other plans involving lounging and dangling in my arms, and that left very little room in his schedule for flying. He needed motivation.

“Okay, then. Wouldn’t you rather be curled up in your bed back home? You can’t do that from down here…”

That got his attention. He looked up at me, stars on his body shining a little brighter. My power started flowing through me tenfold.

“That’s the spirit!” The gravity around me shifted tentatively, like I was taking my first steps all over again, but a little bit of focus got me steady. Carefully, hopefully, and a bit wobbly, we started the long descent back up. “Let’s hurry back. Who knows how long they’ve been waiting for us?!”

-

“It’s the fall back up that takes a while.” That’s what I’d said to Syd before I’d left. What I should’ve added is that it takes especially long if your guardian is a sleepy cat who has to stop every few minutes because he keeps dozing off in the middle of the trip. I couldn’t blame him; I didn’t feel much better.

“It’s okay, Dusty,” I said, scratching along his back and trying not to let my shaking legs give out under me. “Take your time.”

His body heaved in my arms, harder and longer than any other time we’d stopped to rest, and his twinkling stars were looking a little dim. He was pushing himself too hard too soon. But at least we were almost home.

I looked up, through a gap in the clouds, and saw Hekseville waiting for us. It was barely more than a dot in the distance, yes, but we could see it now, and that was something.

My power flowed stronger, more like a steady stream than the sputtering sprinkler it had been just a second ago, but I waited until Dusty started pawing at me impatiently before I got going again. With a Lunar Style spring jump, we were back in the air.

The first time we’d stopped, I’d considered using spring jumps to climb the rest of the way, that way Dusty could get his rest and we wouldn’t have to take so many breaks. But as soon as I took the leap my legs went numb and we only got up a fraction of what Lunar Style could usually do. I’d ended up clutched onto the side of the World Pillar until Dusty felt good enough to fly us to a little island where we could stop and catch our breath. If Lunar Style hadn’t made me so light, my arms would’ve given out too.

So that idea was out and a compromise had to be made: we shared the burden. I spring-jumped to get us started, and Dusty flew us as far as he could.

It was slow going. We’d been at it for maybe an hour when usually this kind of trip would be a few minutes at most. But when I saw Hekseville again, off in the distance, I decided it didn’t really matter how long it took us to get back. At least we had the chance to return, and that was more than I thought I’d had just a few hours ago.

That was more than some people got.

I thought of Cyanea and what she’d said before she just...disappeared. “As the Dream Guardian, this is my last act… Now the world is yours to protect.”

What did that mean? Were the other Creators gone too? Gade? Bit?

The real Cyanea, the little slumbering girl, told me we might meet again someday. Did that extend to them too? Was that something the ancient, all-knowing Cyanea had told her just so she wouldn’t feel sad about leaving?

These questions had started popping up in my head as soon as I could think straight again, and every time they came back they brought a few more along for me to contemplate. But trying to think of them and fly at the same time made my head light and fuzzy, so I pushed them back each time, promising myself I’d go over them as soon as I was back in Hekseville -- preferably in bed and sipping something warm and sweet. But then I felt a little guilty, like I was being callous for not devoting myself to answering the question of what happened to this world’s Creators. Even if they had been frustrating to work with, they’d always turned things around for the better in the end.

Dusty’s energy was starting to wane again and there was a comfortable chunk of grassy, floating rock just a few yards to my right, but I didn’t aim for it. I went for the World Pillar itself and reached it just as Dusty slumped listlessly on my shoulder.

My hands and heels dug into the rock before I could fall. Hekseville was so much closer now, its different districts and the railways that connected them easier to make out. The better I could see it, the worse my homesickness got. It was time to pull my own weight.

After saving the world, a catnap wouldn’t cut it. I needed to sleep for a whole day at least if I wanted my body back in fighting shape. Or even just walking shape. But I still had to try.

My nails dug deeper into the rock and I settled back on my haunches, muscles tired and sore but complying at least. Dusty seemed too out of it to worry.

One deep breath, then two, then I threw myself.

Then I was flying.

-

Just one more jump. One more and we’d be home.

Well, not home, home, but back in Hekseville at least. Vendecentre.

I stood on one of the beams connecting the city to the steel base wrapped around the World Pillar, and just above me was the first layer of the city. I’d flown through it enough times to know it was mostly stalls and small parks surrounded by a ring of houses.

My legs burned like someone had lit a fire underneath them and left them to roast for an hour, ready to melt off my body any second now.  I was already starting to lose sensation in them. I was almost thankful. But it’d been worth it. Dusty was looking much better, head perked up and taking in the view, tail swinging curiously. My power was like an open lake now but I knew that was nowhere near full strength.

So, at the risk of well-done legs, I readied myself for that last jump. Pain shot up my muscles and bones to my head but I did my best to ignore it. Just like before.

I shot up -- or would’ve, if my legs hadn’t lost all their momentum at the last second. I barely made a jump I normally could’ve cleared easily, only coming level with the ground and leaving me to scramble for the ledge.

My arms swung wildly, hands groping madly, and I managed to slap my palm against the concrete but wasn’t fast enough to dig my nails in.

I fell.

A familiar noise rang in my ears and my skin turned deep red. I wasn’t falling anymore.

“Phew. Thanks, Dusty.”

I floated back to the ledge and landed myself there, not willing to put him through much more than that, and stepped over the waist-high fence myself. There was a bench just in front of me, and I stumbled my way there until I just dropped myself on it. To my tired body, it felt like the fluffiest, comfiest bed I’d ever lain on.

I let out a long, satisfied sigh. “Hekseville, sweet Hekseville.”

My eyes closed. Now that we were back in town, away from all the World Pillar time shenanigans, there really was no rush. Just a quick nap and then we’d be off again…

“Oh, wow!” said the far-off voice of a little girl.

My eyes fluttered back open. “Wha--?”

“That’s a neat costume, lady!” A little boy this time, slightly closer.

“Huh? Costume…?”

I rubbed the sleep from my eyes until I could see a bit better. I don’t think I even got enough rest for it to be considered a nap; the sun was only slightly more downcast. Unless I’d managed to sleep an entire day away. But if I had, it hadn’t done much to help.

“And your kitty too! How did you get him to look like that?” The little girl that time.

“Wait, you mean you don’t remember…?” I started to say. But then it hit my groggy mind.

Of course they didn’t remember me. Nobody ever did. Twice before I’d disappeared, and both times I was forgotten about, all my hard work thrown right into the sewers.

Each time I got replaced.

Time worked funny around the World Pillar. I could only imagine how much had passed in Hekseville. Enough that I was a distant memory, I was sure. Why should this time be any different?

I was starting to feel like a foreigner in Hekseville -- my Hekseville -- for the third time in my life. My heart couldn’t have sunk faster if I’d tied weights to it and chucked it over the edge of the city. An acidic pit of despair took root in its place.

“You look just like her!” said the little boy.

Just like who? The city’s latest savior?

“But she didn’t wear white.”

“Yeah,” the little girl agreed. “She wore black!”

Wait, black…?

“Didja make the bangles yourself? They look a lot prettier than the stuff you can buy at the store.”

“And that blue stuff all over you. They shine just the way hers did!”

Were they…? Were they talking about…?

My eyes finally focused until I could see clearly. This piece of land was a tiny rest area with a couple of stalls and plenty of benches for people like me to take a load off, decorated by grass and flowers. A modern art installment that looked like some sort of tree made out of pipes had sat near the middle last time I’d been through. But now there was a statue instead.

A statue of me.

It was about the same size as the art it had replaced, painted meticulously to catch my features. It stood on its tippy-toes, facing the sky, one arm stretched up and pointing.

I caught myself staring in awe. Then I blushed. The sentiment was nice and definitely appreciated, but it also felt weird to look at myself like that. And how much money had it cost? Hopefully not too much it took away from people who needed it.

But still, I had to wipe away the beginnings of tears from my eyes. They did remember...

The little girl’s voice brought my attention back to the kids. “Did you have to tan to get your skin like hers?”

“Were your eyes always red or did you have to buy something for ‘em?”

“Seriously -- your kitty!”

I smiled and giggled. “Oh, no, I didn’t buy or make any of my clothes. I--”

My words died in my throat the second I could see the little girl crystal clear. She was maybe seven or eight, brown-haired, wide-eyed. But she was dressed like me. The cloth didn’t look as smooth and the bangles were probably handcrafted out of paper mache, but that was very undeniably a costume of me.

“C’mon, tell us, miss!” she said. “Mom said I’m too young to help people like the Gravity Queen did, but she said dressing like her was alright.”

I considered telling the truth, but not so deep down I knew I couldn’t. This little girl, right now, wanted to be like me. Right now, she was asking me all these questions, planning out a future where she’d help people, because she believed she could. If I revealed who I was, she might go away from this overjoyed and ecstatic that she got to meet her heroine, but the revelation might leave her thinking she could never be as me as the real me. Maybe it’d crush her dreams before they could start becoming reality. But if I was just some random stranger with a really good costume, what was stopping her from being like me one day? That stranger managed to get there -- why not her?

So I didn’t say who I really was. I could do that later, for everyone to see. Right then and there, I only said, “I have a friend -- he made my costume. All of it.”

The little boy’s eyes lit up. “Wow, really?”

“Yeah. He’s a policeman, if you can believe it! But he always was good with his head…”

“And your kitty?” the little girl insisted.

I sat up and scratched the back of my head. “Well, that’s a little more complicated…”

Both kids huddled up closer to me, all ears.

Oh, boy. How was I ever gonna explain that...?

Dusty meowed next to me, looking as expectant as the children. He was just loving this.

I took a moment to think, then I sighed and began. “Well, there’s these little catsuits you can buy…”

-

We waved goodbye before I walked off, steps a little lighter even without Lunar Style. They’d been very good listeners the whole way through, and even better inquirers. I’d lost count of how many questions I’d answered. Probably a few dozen. Ultimately, my growling stomach brought an end to our meet and greet, and I left with no end of apologies.

“Come on, Dusty. Let’s go see if we can’t get that stand-owner upstairs to honor his promise of a free meal.”

“Mew?”

“Y’know, by Loop Line Station 3? We helped him get his flyers around.”

“Meow.”

“Yeah, I know it’s probably been a while, but he might remember what we did for him. Hopefully. Then we can take the station down to Auldnoir. I don’t think I can walk around much longer.”

But the thought of food was more than enough to keep me going. At least for a little while.

I’d noticed that the little rest area was pretty empty. None of the stalls had been staffed, and only a handful of people ever passed us by. Some of them didn’t even give me a second look, but the rest stopped and stared like they couldn’t believe what they were seeing. They never came to me to talk, though, even when they looked like they really wanted to.

Vendecentre’s streets were the same. I only passed the odd, stray person, and every establishment I came across was unmanned. It made me a bit uneasy. As the business district and its political sector, it was usually busier than even Pleajeune! How much had things changed while I was gone?

Dusty meowed most of the way there. Was he trying to tell me something? Well, whatever it was, it would have to wait until my stomach was a little quieter.

We reached the station, and just like everywhere else, it was a ghost town.

“Just what in the world is going on?!” I said with no small amount of exasperation.

My hope had been the only thing keeping my hunger at bay, but without it, it swept through me all at once. My stomach growled, louder, more insistent than before, enough to rock me where I stood. I held it and almost fell to my knees.

“So...hungry!”

Something inside me gnawed at something else. My legs gave out and I fell on my shaking limbs.

“Yoo-hoo!”

I looked up. A portly man leaned out from around the other side of the station’s staircase entrance, beckoning me to come over. His apron was stained with what looked like blotches of juicy meat. Just the sight had me salivating.

Against my legs’ wishes, I shot to my feet and dashed over.

His stand faced the edge of the city, a modest little thing. But its displays were stacked full of all kinds of meaty stuff of all shapes and sizes -- some I’d never even seen before! Ropes of sausage links hung from metal bars running along his roof. Cuts of ham bigger than my head sat all around him. One of those mystery meats was on proud display atop his grill, its smell dispelling any doubts I might’ve had. I couldn’t settle on one thing to stare at, and I’m pretty sure I was drooling.

The man cleared his throat and put on a great, big salesman’s smile. “Welcome! Welcome! I was afraid I wouldn’t get any customers today, what with the festivities and all, but here you show up out of nowhere -- like my own Gravity Queen!”

Festivities? Well, that explained the empty streets. Come to think of it, the square, just a few floors above the station, sounded pretty lively. At least I was coming back to something good for once. No evil, tyrannical mayor. No…

Come to think of it, Dr. Brahman had been an evil, tyrannical mayor too, just less obvious about it than D’nelica. Huh.

Hekseville might have a bit of a political problem.

I pushed those thoughts from my mind. “What’s the occasion?”

The vendor looked like I’d just pulled his leg. “Oh, come now. How can you get all dressed up for the holidays and not even know what you’re celebrating?”

“But this is how I always dress…”

He didn’t seem to hear me. “Well, I suppose I can’t give you too much guff. It’s only an unofficial holiday after all. Today marks the one-year anniversary of the day the Gravity Queen herself jumped into the darkness below and stopped it from swallowing up our city!”

My eyes went bright and my heart beat lighter. “Oh, wow…”

They really, really did remember!

He nodded. “‘Oh, wow,’ indeed! As you may have noticed, my...competitors are nowhere to be seen. They’re probably all up there celebrating, maybe taking a trip out to Auldnoir to visit the site where she first showed up. But I suspect most are just using the special occasion to laze about at home. Not me! I’m here to serve up hearty meals all day.” As a demonstration, he took his hand out from underneath the counter, a massive, mouth-watering meat skewer held in his equally meaty grip, presenting it like a delicious trophy.

I was about to ask for the price when he took a bite out of its side. I winced as my heart broke.

“I have it on good authority that this was one of the Gravity Queen’s favorites,” he said through a mouthful.

“It sure is,” I almost said.

“Oh, yeah? Who’s the authority?” I said instead.

“Oh, no. I’m not giving away such a crucial source. You’ve already beat most of Hekseville in the costume department -- even if it does seem as if you mixed your darks with your lights. I’m not giving you a bigger leg up on the competition, considering I’m part of it.”

Only most of Hekseville? Who could have a costume better than the real deal?

“So, what’ll it be?”

Oh, right! I’d almost forgotten about my appetite.

My eyes scanned his wares, but no matter how big or succulent the meat, my mind kept going back to that glorious skewer. I said as much.

The vendor’s face flushed an embarrassed shade of pink and he scratched the back of his hair-netted head. “Oh, dear. Well, I’m afraid that’s going to pose a problem. You see, I didn’t expect many customers to come by, so I only made a limited supply. And, well, those skewers are my favorite too, and standing around all day without much to do tends to leave one a bit peckish… What I’m saying is that that was my last skewer.”

“Oh. Well, couldn’t you just make some more?”

He turned pinker. “I could, if I had the right meats. But, again, I wasn’t expecting many people, so I didn’t bother actually...bringing them.”

He gave me an apologetic look.

Common sense told me to pick something else, but my stomach said skewer, and in the end it had more say in what went into it.

The vendor sighed. “Of course. I’ll just head over to the warehouse where I keep my, well, wares, and get what I need.”

My face burned red with shame. Stupid stomach. “I can get you whatever you need if you just tell me where to--!”

He waved me off. “No, no, it’s fine. A good businessman has good business sense, and what I’ve displayed today is anything but. Let this be a lesson to me for my foolish lack of foresight.”

The vendor took off his apron and set it down on the counter before he walked off with a hand motion that said he’d be back soon. Guilt weighed heavy on my shoulders.

“Mew.”

“Oh, don’t be like that. I already feel bad enough.”

I turned to the benches lined up along some decorative flowers and took the rightmost one. Might as well try and squeeze a little extra shuteye in. My eyes closed almost as soon as my head touched the wood.

Soon I was in that in-between world of sleep and awareness, that delicate little plane where time stretched on forever and ended in an instant. Thoughts melted into each other, turned to fuel for dreams, and I slipped into blissful unconsciousness.

But click-clacking footsteps yanked me right back out.

At first they were hard and low in tone, then light and higher, like the runner had transitioned from a cobblestone floor to a metal one. They slowed to a stop. I turned over and put my hand over my ear.

“Here I am again...Even when I know it can’t be her…”

My eyes shot wide open. Raven?

I sat up slowly, Dusty jumping up onto the bench beside me to look himself.

My eyes lit up like fireworks. It was her! She was okay! The last time I’d seen her, she was broken, burned, beaten in such a complete and utter way that even her unconscious expression reflected the feelings of someone devastated and hopeless. But now she looked just as strong and capable as ever, standing at the edge of a pier. Seeing her like that carried my heart to new heights.

But it crashed as soon as I noticed something was wrong. The confidence she usually carried herself with seemed to be crumbling around her. Her shoulders shook and...were those tears falling to the ground? I strained myself to listen.

She was sobbing.

I almost rushed over and asked her what was wrong but it all came back to me and slapped me upside the head. I’d done this.

The last she’d seen of me was in the Etonian dungeon, a confused queen who could barely make out her friend and guardian. That’s the kind of thing that needed closure -- closure she’d never gotten even now, a whole year later.

I don’t know why I didn’t immediately rush to her. Maybe it was the sight of her hurting right in front of me, coupled with the knowledge that I was the culprit, that made me so apprehensive. That was probably it.

I very carefully crawled over the bench, down to the flowerbed, and crawled over that too. I reached the end and gingerly set my feet down on the cobblestone ground, wincing when they clacked just a little too loudly but easing up when Raven failed to notice. Then I pushed myself off and snuck my way up to her.

Her hand went up to her face, stayed there for a few seconds, and came away stained in black mascara. Seeing that was a worse pain than any black hole could hope to inflict on me.

I was extra slow when I reached the metal port she stood on even when I wanted to race over and wrap my arms around her. The metal would be quicker to give me away than stone.

It was when she sniffled that I decided I was close enough. My mouth opened to speak --

“Meow.”

My head whipped to glare in Dusty’s direction.

Raven gasped. “Ka--?”

I turned, slowly, and met Raven’s very teary, very happy eyes. I could only give a sheepish smile in return. “Surprise --”

“Kat!” she said as she lunged at me, arms wide open, and trapped me in a hug that squeezed the air from my lungs and threw me off balance, not just because my legs could hardly support my weight -- let alone hers too -- but because she wasn’t a very physically affectionate person to begin with. The shock alone nearly toppled me.

“Hey, Raven. L-Long time no see, I think? Urk.”

If she noticed my discomfort, she didn’t react to it. Fair enough. I’d kept her waiting, after all.

Her body shook against mine as sobs wracked her head to foot, and soon I was supporting her more than she was supporting herself. My tired knees wobbled.

We fell to the ground but she didn’t let go.

Raven’s tears were rare things. I’d only ever seen her cry once before, and it’d broken my heart to see her so distraught. This time was no different. Whenever they touched my skin, I burned with a shame hundreds of times stronger than what I’d felt falling from Hekseville to the black ocean. I blinked, and suddenly I was crying just as hard, endless rivers streaming down red-hot cheeks.

“I waited for you,” she said between breaths. “Every. Single. Day. I waited. We waited.”

“I knew you would,” I said, voice shaky, returning the embrace. “I knew. Thank you. And I’m sorry.”

Her voice got lighter. “For what?”

“Leaving without a goodbye. I promised I’d go back for you, all the way up in Eto, but I never did, and I should’ve waited for you to --”

She hugged me tighter, more reassuring. “You did what you had to, to save us all. Just like you always do.”

Her words, that gesture, and the raw emotion that carried them both eased the knot of guilt that’d settled itself so comfortably in my chest until it unraveled. Only cathartic relief remained.

I don’t know how long we stayed like that, crying into each other’s hair, rusting the port with our tears. Long enough that it hurt, but still not long enough.

But eventually we did pull away. I used one end of my scarf to wipe away my slick cheeks and the tears that still threatened to fall from the corners of my eyes. Raven did the same with her sleeves.

We didn’t get up immediately, nor did we talk, letting an easy, comfortable silence drift between us. Occasionally she would reach out and touch my cheek or chin, just to make sure I was really there. Her face lit up whenever her fingers met my skin.

“Hey,” she said finally, wearing a tentative smile, “what’s with the fancy outfit?”

I returned it. “Oh, I just thought I needed something a little special for the occasion.”

A look of confusion crossed her features before she realized what I meant. “That color doesn’t really suit you.”

I laughed. So did she. “Yeah, I think so too.”

“Syd can always make a new one.”

My next few words caught in my throat, strangled by anxious hesitation and worry. The look she gave me, curious but subdued even through red, tear-stained eyes, got me to keep going. “How did…? How is every...?” I stopped, swallowed, and tried again. “Is everyone okay?”

Raven’s features took on a sudden neutrality that sank my hopes just as suddenly. “There were losses,” she said with as little emotion as she could allow. “The Garrison, Yuri’s rebels … At least they fought for something real.”

“Oh…”

I’d expected that, I think. We couldn’t save everyone, especially in war. And that’s exactly what Cai had brought when he’d freed Elektricitie -- war. My hand stung with the memory of our last meeting.

I’d use my other palm next time.

Raven smiled again, small, for my sake. “Most made it through, thanks to you. Yunica said as much.”

“Yunica?! She’s alive?!”

Raven nodded. “Permet too. Just talked to them back in Endestria. I was just as surprised. They hadn’t showed up back in Hekseville until today.”

Until today, huh? Sounded like I was right to worry. I couldn’t imagine someone like Yunica taking even a day off, much less most of a year. Her injuries must’ve been pretty bad to keep her down that long. But she’d taken some of the worst wounds I’d seen on anybody, so if she was still walking around after that, year-long hospitalization or no, then I had hope that what Raven’d said was true. My friends were all okay.

That helped lift my spirits a good bit.

I must’ve been beaming a little harder than I’d meant to, because Raven chuckled as she stood. She held her hand out for me to take. “Come on. Banga’s in town and they’ve been asking about you the whole time they’ve been here. Let’s go give them a surprise.”

I grinned a wide grin that pulled at the corners of my eyes and took her hand. “Sounds like a plan!”

She pulled me to my feet. That lasted for all of two knee-knocking seconds. I fell, and she was quick to catch me again.

“Sorry,” I said into her shoulder. “Took a ton of jumping to get back up. Legs still hurt.”

Raven looked at me, then to the station entrance. “Well, if you were hoping to take the train back to Auldnoir, you’d be out of luck. It hasn’t come back in hours. Nobody’s really used it all day. Can you fly?”

I looked to Dusty, who was curled up on the floor and trying to sleep again. I shook my head.

“I guess I’ll have to fly you home myself then. Banga can wait.” She bid me to stand for a second before turning around and motioning to her back. “Hop on.”

I made sure to turn on Lunar Style before I did, settling my chin into her shoulder, Dusty hanging onto a scarf.

Raven jumped into the air and we were off over Vendecentre before I knew it. She didn’t have to go up that high; Auldnoir was on a lower level than the downtown district, funnily enough. She took a detour over the square.

Raven didn’t have to poke or prod or say something to get me to look down, and she didn’t do so either. She knew I knew she wanted me to. So I did.

I was finally able to put an image to all the liveliness I’d heard.

What had to be half of the district crowded the park, lining up for what looked like miles at the food stalls. So high up, I couldn’t read what any of their chalkboard signs said, but I could make out drawings of some pretty familiar figures, namely little black cats and girls dressed in black and gold. Some were drawn more...artistically than others, but the sentiment was felt all the same, and that feeling was an overwhelming cocktail of too many emotions to note that warmed me on the inside as much as the lazy afternoon light did my skin.

Families had set up picnics on the grass, under the shade of newly grown trees. Kids chased each other all throughout, black, twin-tailed scarves trailing behind them. A few of them even came close to matching the little girl in their costumes’ accuracy. Cat-shaped balloon animals were a popular sight.

A very particular little airboat had set itself up at an empty spot at the very edge of the center, near the police station. It had the longest line by far, customers-to-be eager and excited. They stepped up empty-handed and left with helium balloons shaped like the sun motif that rested on my stomach.

“They’re hoping to kick off a new tradition,” Raven explained. “At night, right before the day ends, they’ll let those balloons go, into the sky. It’s supposed to represent how you used your light to banish the darkness below.” She shook her head lightly, chuckling. “Kinda loses some of its meaning when they’re sending the balloons up . But it’s still a nice gesture.”

I nodded. “It’s the thought that counts.”

And what an expensive thought it was.

This new atmosphere was the day to the nightmarish night of just a few hours ago, when this place was dead and empty, burning, buildings crumbling down to the last brick. Now it was the site of the biggest celebration I’d ever seen! And it was supposed to be happening all over Hekseville? That was crazy just to think about! And kinda dizzying. But that was probably just the exhaustion.

Raven didn’t spend too much time in Vendecentre’s skies. After we cleared the air over the square, she sped up, her skin gaining a light tint of that blue aura of hers. The district was soon well behind us, right around the same time my eyelids started gaining weight. I closed them and settled my cheek more comfortably against Raven, wind blowing through my hair, those warm feelings in my chest further stoked by our closeness.

This time I fell right past that in-between and straight into unconsciousness, a smile on my face as everything went black.

-

I woke up to my candlelit home.

The lamp was off. So was the T.V. But the fan kept the place nice and ventilated.

I pushed myself up in bed and leaned back against the headboard. My aches and pains were gone, for the most part. Now I was in the recovery period of weak, sore muscles. I had to wonder how long I’d been out.

My stomach gave me an answer, however vague, hurting with the sure signs of starvation. Maybe it was because of this that my nose immediately picked up and homed in on a long piece of foil-wrapped something on my desk by my rocking chair.

I pushed off the blankets, swung my sock-covered feet off the bed, and stumbled and wobbled over to it. Felt like I hadn’t walked in a week. I hoped that wasn’t true.

I took the thing and brought it up to my nose first. It smelled like a skewer, but it was too thick to be a typical one. Then I remembered the vendor back at the station and my stomach dropped.

I’d forgotten all about him! Was this from his stall? Did Raven go back and pick it up or something? I wanted that to be true. I’d feel horrible for wasting his time like that otherwise.

Guilty fingers practically tore away the wrapping in an instant and freed the steamy smell from its prison. “Ahhh. Like heaven in my hand.”

Dusty popped up from under the bed and came meowing over to me, rubbing himself against my legs. He was probably as hungry as I was. Luckily for both of us, there was more than enough to go around.

I tore off a chunk of meat and let it drop. He swooped in and caught it in his mouth before it could hit the floor.

It was nighttime in Hekseville. Nights were always so pretty, but the last one I’d witnessed had been anything but. More of a nightmare. I was all too eager to replace that memory with something better.

The outside air was warm as I took a seat near the ladder leading up to the house, letting my legs dangle over the edge, nibbling on the skewer. The sky was mostly obscured by the big, thick pipes running all around above me, but the bits that peeked through the gaps were a sight to behold, stars twinkling like --

“Dusty!” I shouted as the cat guardian jumped into my lap and nearly yanked the skewer out of my hand. “No! Bad! You have to ask for it!”

He fought against my palm as I tried to push him away, but he slipped and fell off my thighs. He settled back on his hind legs and looked ready to try again.

I thought fast.

“Here!” I snapped the stick holding the skewer together in two and held one half in front of him. “We can share.”

He settled down in the face of my offer, dropping his pouncing stance and taking his half of the skewer in his mouth just to drop it on the floor and curl up around it, where he ate it one nibble at a time.

I sighed. I was wrong: that skewer as a whole hadn’t been anywhere near enough to satisfy my empty stomach. Now all I had was a piece. Hopefully Raven would come back soon. And with groceries.

But thinking of Raven only brought my thoughts to Syd. What did he do nowadays? Probably still a cop. I hoped now that his grand scheme was over and done with, he used his real genius to help Hekseville. He probably did. Syd had always been a good man -- even when he’d been Alias.

It was hard thinking of these things relativistically. For me, it had only been a few hours -- give or take -- since I’d seen anyone. But to them, I’d been gone for a whole year! They’d done and seen so many things in that time no doubt, and I’d missed all of them. And when we eventually reminisced, they’d talk about all of that, but I’d still be stuck a year in the past, trying to fit all their stories into my own, shorter timeframe.

That just wasn’t something I could ever get used to. Hopefully, I’d never have to again.

Soon I’d stripped the stick of its meat and tossed the bare thing into the trash. Funny thing about hunger pangs is that they only get worse after you eat just a little, but not enough to satisfy.

I doubled over, hugging my stomach. “Blegh. I think I’d rather be back in that black hole.”

“Feeling homesick already?”

My head whipped up so fast I had to shake the hair that landed in my face away. Raven was back, floating at eye level just a few feet away, a couple of big, bulging near-bursting paper bags levitating around her. An assortment of aromas wafted from them and tickled my nose. I didn’t immediately realize I was licking my lips.

“Heads up!” she said, tossing the bags my way and taking me out of my reverie.

Hunger stole enough of my wits that I didn’t think to catch them with my own stasis field until I already had my hands out and reaching. Everything around me lifted a few inches off the ground and then dropped back into place, but the bags held in the air and floated into my lap.

Deep-fried and well-done meats; sweet pastries and breads; warm soups and ice-cold drinks; their scents all assaulted my senses until my saliva was almost dripping onto the bags.

Raven landed in a cross-legged, sitting position on the other side of the ladder. She motioned to the bags. “You get first dibs.”

I wiped my mouth and nodded, reaching inside one and taking out a takeout box that smelled particularly smoky. Raven almost looked disappointed, but the look left her face as quickly as it had appeared.

She took out her own as soon as I set the bags down between us. Inside hers was some sort of swirling, sweet-n’-sour stew and a wooden spoon that could’ve passed for a ladle. She filled the whole thing and started gulping down.

I almost tore my plastic box in half as I opened it, which would’ve ruined the three-course rice, sweetbread, and steak meal inside. Yum. I took the plastic fork and knife tucked into the corner and dug in.

I wouldn’t say we ate in silence. I didn’t, anyway. It sounded like a couple alley cats tearing into their first decent meal in days. We didn’t talk until I was on my second plate.

“So,” I said through a mouthful of gravy-glazed chicken, “what’ve you guys been up to since I’ve been away?”

Raven held up a finger, asking me to hold on while she drank half the stew in one go before she sighed, satisfied. “Nothing too exciting. There aren’t a lot of power-hungry politicians or world-ending monsters running around anymore.”

“Thanks to you,” she wanted to say. I could read it on her face.

“But,” she continued, “there have been some cases Syd’s needed my help with, worse than petty crime.” Her face darkened. “Much worse.”

My gut told me to pry into it. It also told me I shouldn’t ruin a perfectly good meal with that kind of talk. So I compromised. “But it ended okay, right?”

The darkness lifted a little. “Yeah. It all turned out alright in the end.”

“Good. You had me worried for a second there.”

Raven tossed her empty, licked-clean box aside and took out one of the sweeter-smelling ones, its wooden surface marking its contents as something special and expensive. When she opened it, she got a faceful of steam from a smorgasbord of freshly made pastries. Donuts and breads and cookies and tiny cakes -- it had it all! My eyes wandered over every last sweet and stumbled on something I’d never seen before, but it was big and bloated and looked like it would burst any second with jelly filling. My stomach said I needed it and my head agreed.

My finger shot out, pointing at nothing in particular. “Hey, is that Syd?”

Raven’s eyes followed, gave me the opening I needed. I took it.

My hand fell hard on that ballooned pastry. The lid fell even harder on my wrist as Raven shut it closed. Pain stung all the way up my arm and shot out of my mouth as a half-stifled cry.

My next cry came out full force when I tried to pull back out only for her to push down harder.

She turned to me, slowly, and I was suddenly aware of how much her shadow loomed over me. “I said you get first dibs. After that, it’s every shifter for herself.”

My nods were extra shaky. “O-Okay, Raven. Got it! That box is all yours. Gimme my hand back now, please?”

Her eyes pierced so deep into mine I doubted there was any corner of my mind where any of my secrets could be safe. But she relented with a smile. Eventually. “I’m joking. Mostly. Here, take it.”

I eyed her carefully, uncertainty showing in the way my gaze flicked back and forth from the box to her face, but she only pushed it a little closer and shook it in offering. I swiped it in a blur of movement before she could change her mind.

It smelled even better so close to my nose, like cupcakes and milkshakes and strudels all jammed together into the perfect filling and packed into a freshly baked slice of heaven. I let the aroma linger before I took my first bite, long enough that Raven started giving me looks.

I opened my mouth and brought it between my teeth but as they closed in on it, guilt started weighing down on my soul. It felt like eating it would deprive the world of a masterpiece of the culinary arts -- rob it of a little bit of happiness and wonder. To take a bite … Well, I might as well go out and deface one of Saghassi’s paintings. Oh, sure, there were plenty more where this came from. It was made in a bakery, after all. But were any of its jelly-stuffed brethren just as tasty…?

Maybe I was cradling the world’s last bit of gold in my mouth. I couldn’t deprive it of that.

But then my teeth squeezed a little too tight and leaked some of that jam onto my tongue and there were no more regrets to be had.

The first bite had my cheeks bulging with what had to be pure, baked joy. Somehow, someway, it tasted a hundred -- no, thousand -- no, a million times better than it smelled. My lips stretched into a big, almost-painful smile. Tears openly fell down my face.

“Kat, what’s wrong?! Are you allergic?!”

“Sho-o-o-o gooood,” was all I could say. More words meant less chewing.

The worried look stressing her features relaxed into something more muted and amused. “Hmph. Now you’re the one who has me worried.”

Time lost all meaning as I ate that whatever it was. Had I been eating it for hours? Days, maybe? My whole life?

It didn’t matter. Not until I was licking my fingers clean and found myself yanked back home from cloud nine. The world felt a little darker, colder, down here.

Raven watched my shifting expression intently. Something must’ve caught her eye because she took that box of baked goods with all the movements of someone who was trying to be watched without actually going out and demanding the attention.

She reached into the box and, from some unseen corner deep under a buffet’s worth of sugary delights, pulled out another jelly-filled something. It looked and smelled exactly like the one in my stomach. I was instantly drooling all over myself again.

But that one was meant for her. She made that perfectly clear when she bit into it.

I smacked my lips. “Got any more?”

She shook her head. “Just the two. They may not have all the bells and whistles of an anti-gravity cake, but anti-gravity eclairs can burn a hole in any wallet just the same.”

So that’s what it was! The first time I’d heard of any sort of anti-gravity pastry was back when we were still stuck in Jirga Para Lhao and Vogo asked me to run an errand for him -- a shipping job for a “dangerous delivery.” It’d just been cake, but I guess anything can be dangerous if it involves carting around a box full of food while a hungry Raven is nearby. Doubly so if she’s been waiting for that food for weeks.

“Where’d you get ‘em from?”

Raven gave me a smile, small, but mischievous all the same. “I had them flown in.”

In my sugar-rushed state of mind, I didn’t immediately realize what she was getting at. I frowned when I did. “Is that a real answer or are you just reminding me of how you almost killed me over cake?”

“I was only trying to get you to drop it.”

“Yeah? Well, your methods leave bruises! What if it had hit the floor? Then nobody would’ve had any!”

“I could’ve caught it.”

“And if you’d missed?”

Her smile fell right off. “It would’ve been the second-biggest mistake of my life.”

Second, huh? “What’s the first?”

A glower so deep and dark it was like staring into the black ocean again took over her expression. “D’nelica.”

I started looking for my next plate. “What was up with that, anyway? A lot of people could’ve gotten hurt.”

“That can wait,” Raven said, a little too eager. “Right now’s not about any government corruption or black seas. It’s about welcoming you back.”

“Shouldn’t Syd be here too, then?”

“He should, but that airbike of his is a real junker. It probably broke down on the way here.”

“Oh. So he is on his way?”

“Yeah. He took off from the station the second I told him you were back --” she motioned to our private little buffet,  “-- while I was out getting all this.”

“Couldn’t you have just flown him over here with you?”

“I could’ve.” Raven took out a big plastic cup from the second bag and jabbed a straw into its lid, from which she took a long drink and sighed contentedly. The question still hung in the air. She didn’t answer.

“But you didn’t…?” I said, trying to goad her on.

“I did not.”

“Will you tell me why if I make it a little more obvious I want you to tell me why?”

Her cup had run empty but she still sucked on the straw. She only took a break long enough to say, “It might help.”

“Okay. Why didn’t you bring him along?”

Raven set her drink -- ice at this point, really -- aside. “Reunions are easier when it’s just one on one. I wanted to get that chance. And I wanted it for Syd, too.”

Oh. Well, if that was the case, I was more than appreciative. For a second there I was starting to worry our separation had made her a little possessive, or worse, they’d had a falling out while I was away.

“Syd,” Raven started, “he’s the only other person who missed you like I did. I didn’t understand at first, until he told me everything -- about Eto, his death, your fall, and how from the very beginning, you’ve only ever wanted to help people.” She chuckled, the sound bitter as it left her mouth. “You would’ve made a perfect queen if they’d only accepted you.”

The memory hurt, but it was a hurt that mingled with the joy her words left in me. One won over the other and I smiled. “Thank you for thinking that, Raven.”

She nodded, opened her mouth like she were about to say something else, then closed it abruptly. “Speak of the devil,” she eventually muttered, but I knew that wasn’t what she wanted to say.

Syd’s airbike putt-putt-puttered around the corner, smoke sputtering from its engine and trailing lazily behind him. He wrestled with the controls but it looked like they were winning, a funny sort of frustration set deep into his features. I couldn’t help but laugh a little.

That died and turned into a gasp as it dipped before it could reach land, falling below the edge of our pipe house’s platform where we couldn’t see him.

I was on my feet and glowing, Raven alongside me.

But then, like a fat, struggling bumblebee, the airbike raised itself back up, wobbling, sure, but enough life in it to land with all the grace of a one-winged pigeon. Syd looked up from where he was hugging the handlebars for dear life and gave us a little apologetic smile.

Raven was unamused. “I’ll give you two that privacy I promised,” she said, heading inside the house, pastry box and food bags in her arms.

I wasn’t sure a thin little curtain could really count as privacy, but I appreciated the gesture nonetheless.

I floated down to his level as he disembarked, coughing and waving smoke away from his face. Syd was a tough one to read. There was no knowing where I should’ve started off with him. But lightening the mood was a good bet.

“Aren’t you supposed to be good with machines?” I said, so careful to come off as joking I sounded tentative.

But it worked, Syd turning to me with that easy, lazy smile of his. “What can I say? I’ve had wine on the mind.”

Wine had kept him from doing important work? Well, at least that was a total Syd thing to do. Maybe he’d taken my disappearance a lot better than I’d thought he would.

But then, almost throwing himself at me, he wrapped his arms around my shoulders, hugged me tight, which was totally not a Syd thing to do, and I realized I was wrong.

A year’s worth of worry and heartache slid off his body, muscles relaxing from a tension I couldn’t begin to imagine, even in my singularity-induced fatigue. Then I remembered that it hadn’t just been a year.

Ever since my -- quite literal -- fall from grace, from Eto to Hekseville, he’d been preparing, both himself and me, lining up the pieces of a puzzle only he could see. And even once he’d done his part as the Hekseville Phantom Alias, he still had an act to play. A day never went by when he could let his guard down, or else he’d risk having his whole ploy crumble away. I don’t think my adventures made it any easier on his plans, either. Or his heart.

But here we were, black ocean drained, city saved, all of us alive and well. He’d fulfilled his duty. He could finally relax.

“Hope you don’t mind, but I’m cashing in that hug now,” he said in a quiet voice I wasn’t used to, the kind you get after a long night’s sleep.

I hugged back, tighter, smiling so hard it could’ve gotten stuck like that. I wouldn’t mind if it did. “Well, a promise is a promise...”

We stayed hugging for a long, long time. How long didn’t matter, but enough time had passed that it felt like all the weight had fallen off his shoulders and right onto mine. Not because of responsibilities or regret or anything like that, but because all the sugar had left my system and I couldn’t ignore the soreness anymore. Luckily, he read my mind, or maybe just felt how slack my limbs were getting, and let go.

I expected him to have something all ready to say, just like the first time we’d met as Kat of Hekseville and Syd the too-ambitious-for-his-own-good but well-meaning cop, not Alua the Fallen Queen and Syd the master strategist and loyal advisor. But for the first time since I’d known him, he was completely, utterly speechless. His mouth moved and stopped with a dozen unworded thoughts, face twisting into a look of confusion even he himself was unfamiliar with.

The opportunity was too good to pass up. With my cheekiest smile, I said, “What’s the matter -- Kat got your tongue?”

Syd looked like I’d just smacked him out of a daydream, but he composed himself quickly and shook his head with a grin. “I just didn’t know where to start with your new wardrobe. Black always did look better on you, my queen. But I guess I should say thank you instead. It’s where we left off, after all.’”

That did sound like a good place to start…

He had more to say -- a lot more, I imagine -- but I had my own thanks to give. “Between both of us, I think you’re the one with nine lives. And you’ve spent all of them helping me.”

Syd put a hand to his chest and dipped his head in a mock bow. “They were lives well-lived.”

“Thank you for believing in me -- up in Eto and down here, too. I don’t think any of us would be around if you hadn't done all that you did.”

He chuckled sheepishly, rubbing the back of his head. “All I did was make a robot with a fishbowl for a head. The rest was all you.”

“But your Alias, uh ... alias -- it taught me how to protect people! It gave me the chance to be Hekseville’s hero and give them hope when they needed it most. And in the end, that hope is what saved the world.”

His mouth made a shape that said he wasn’t going to try and refute that. “I spent a lot of time thinking of what I’d do to keep you safe you once you reached Hekseville. Every day I scrapped another plan, each more grandiose than the last.” He smiled to himself, a small one. “Believe it or not, Alias was the simplest one.”

I wondered what could possibly be more convoluted than that . Maybe I’d ask him sometime. Probably shouldn’t, though. That was one headache I could go without.

“But it worked,” he continued, “because I realized I couldn’t keep you safe. I’d already tried that, and failed.” Syd grabbed at his back and winced with phantom pain. The memory probably hurt worse. “But you could protect yourself, and you could protect people. You always could; you’d just never been given a chance. When I realized that, Alias came easy. After all, every great suspense novel needs a good villain, and I’ve--” he bowed more formally that time, “--read ‘em all.”

His pose and suit brought back flashes of the Hekseville Phantom. I probably should’ve seen that twist coming, now that I think about it. Or trusted my dreams a little more. I guess all that reading really had paid off for him.

But still, I had some suggestions. “Not that I’m complaining, but couldn’t you have figured out a way that didn’t put so many people in danger?”

“It was risky, can’t deny that. But I would’ve gone with something safer if I thought there was even a chance that something might go wrong. The senate might’ve been willing to throw away these people’s lives, but I’d rather take a page from the Kat playbook.”

“But there were all those Nevi--!”

That train of thought led me to my answer.

He was Alias. Alias had controlled Nevi somehow. And when I’d faced off against the Darkness, Syd had swooped in on Nevi wings. In all the commotion, I’d chalked it up to another one of Bit’s favors -- a small army to help in the fight. But no. That was all Syd. Even before when it was just him acting from the shadows, he had the Nevi in his control. He’d held their leash, and if he’d told them not to bite, they wouldn’t. Somehow. Realizing that brought a sense of relief that surprised me. And yet…

“How’d you do it?”

His smile got bigger. I didn't need to be any clearer. He knew what I meant. “Well, the fishbowl bot wasn’t the only trick up my sleeve…”

He trailed off, sniffed the air, and a second later made that face he did whenever he caught a whiff of something delicious -- and free. “I’m guessing you two haven’t finished that fancy feast Raven was lugging around…?” He sounded hopeful.

My eyes rolled so hard it almost hurt. “No, but right now she’s alone with all of it so that could’ve changed in the last few minutes.”

“Then we’d better head on in. We can save all the explaining ‘til we have some food between us.”

“What food?” Raven said from inside the house, voice muffled by what had to be a mouthful of the very stuff she was trying to deny even existed.

“At this point, I think we’re better off going out to eat,” I said.

But Syd was already halfway up the ladder. “Any other day, I’d agree. But this is a special occasion. We shouldn’t be spending it out in a crowded restaurant; we should be celebrating here, where it’s nice and private.”

“Don’t trust him. He’s after the eclairs,” Raven said, voice clearer, as her shadow moved against the curtain, showing her shifting boxes around.

I looked to Syd, who didn’t stop climbing.

“Nonsense!” he said. “I just don’t want Kat getting swarmed by a fanclub or three while we’re out going restaurant to restaurant. It’s bad enough when it’s only you and half of Hekseville lines up for an autograph, but add the Gravity Queen to the mix and you’ll get the other half, too.”

“I-I have fanclubs?! As in, more than one ?”

“Oh, yeah. Used to be only one, but it got so big its members started arguing over the littlest things: your favorite foods, most frequented spots around the cities, speculation on your birthday and, uh, love life...”

“My what?! W-Well, I don’t see how that last one’s any of their business!”

But still, it was nice to know people thought I was interesting enough to be thinking about all that stuff, even if some of it was a bit too personal. Maybe I’d pop in on one of their meetings someday and give them some answers.

Syd reached the top of the ladder and crawled underneath the curtain until he was on the other side, where he was instantly met with loud warnings and furiously flapping wings. I listened and watched their shadows, Syd’s relaxed but measured and placating pose contrasting with Raven’s tense, defensive stance.

It was strange seeing Syd like that, so willing to walk into Raven’s meal nest. He usually put a respectful distance between himself and her food whenever we ate together. Anti-gravity sweets are powerful stuff.

That nagged at me, though. Raven had said we’d eaten the last of them, but she hadn’t told him that. She’d just warned me that he was after ‘em. So that meant...

“Wait, eclairs ? There’s more?! You said you only bought two!”

Raven said nothing. Dusty sensed conflict and jumped out of the pipe house, landing at my feet.

My gravity started shifting immediately, and her silence only amplified the effort that fed into it. It was like I’d tapped into a hidden power supply, an endless expanse of energy for me to draw from and break off the weights keeping me tethered to the ground. It reached out and grabbed the pipe house curtain in an iron grip, nearly tearing it clean off as it flipped over onto the roof. Whatever argument Raven and Syd were having died as they turned on me.

That distinct, unmistakable aroma of baked perfection wafted out of the house and flavored Hekseville’s air.

I shot Raven the most accusatory scowl in my arsenal. “Liar!”

“‘Every shifter for herself,’ remember?” she said with a roll of her shoulders.

“So that’s how it’s gonna be, huh? Well, I can play dirty too!”

Syd suddenly looked a lot less willing to be in the room. “Kat, Raven, can you please not do this so close to the buffet?!”

But his mediation fell on deaf ears. Raven was already shifting, the air around her impossibly light. Syd moved off to a corner of the room and did his best to make himself a small target.

“You sure you want this?” Raven said.

The missing eclairs lifted off from their hiding spots, floating around her head like moons around the world. The hungry look I gave them was all the answer she needed. She settled back on her heels, ready to strike at any second, and I did the same. We moved in perfect synch.

We even lunged at each other in the same instant.

But in that split second we were flying through the air, I felt it, the bond Raven had talked about that linked my thoughts with hers. I felt what she felt: a fiery passion that so rarely took precedence over her cool-headed nature, but above even that was joy, deep and wide as a river and directed wholeheartedly at me.

It was overwhelming feeling that kind of connection for the first time, a bond more like an intricate web of thoughts and emotions than a straight thread -- a faint, second mind speaking to me from deep within my subconscious. I only caught bits and pieces of what was going through Raven’s head, but still I was able to decipher a message, clear as day.

“Just like before she left.”

She was eager to rush back to the way things used to be, and I was more than happy to oblige. So I put a smile on my face and reached out with my own stasis field. It clashed with hers in a gravity-fueled game of tug of war.

She smiled, too.

The telltale whine of flying fireworks startled us to a midair stop and out of our fields. Just a couple seconds later, a rainbow’s worth of colors splashed over my body and colored the pipe house walls before disappearing just as fast as they’d arrived.

“Looks like the ceremony’s starting,” Syd said.

Raven relaxed her posture. “Aren’t fireworks supposed to go up ?”

“Not these. I thought you knew how this celebration worked.”

She shrugged. “I’d only heard about the balloons.”

“Well, before they get to that, they’ll shoot fireworks down to light up the area below town, to replicate that lightshow Kat gave us when she, well, more or less blew up that black hole.”

“And then the balloons?”

“And then the balloons.”

The air whined again and I turned in place, still floating, to face another explosion of color, this time lower down than the last and so it only lit up the stone platform the house sat on. But just from that I could tell these were stronger, brighter fireworks than what was usually used in even everyday Pleajeune. The town was really going all out, wasn’t it?

I floated down to land at the edge of that platform. Raven and Syd followed and sat when I did, on either side, so we could watch the whole light show together.

They fell like rain, trailing hot sparks that heated the air in front of us. Those sparks kinda resembled jelly beans that’d been left out in the sun too long, white in the middle and a brilliant yellow at the outside. I caught some in stasis like trapping fireflies in a jar, reeled them in, and they floated around me like it too. They didn’t wink out like I’d expected them to, not even as the fireworks that’d spawned them popped below our feet in dazzling displays of Hekseville’s thanks.

“Long-lasting, aren’t they?” Syd said curiously, leaning in closer to my field but not close enough his hair could catch fire.

“Sure are,” I agreed.

“Just don’t burn the house down again,” Raven said in typical, stone-faced fashion.

“Hey, there wasn’t even a first time!”

“Well, there was definitely an ‘almost.’”

“Is this about that time you tried your hand at cooking?” Syd said. “When you had to use the last of your bathwater to put out a flaming stove?”

My face burned hot, and the sparks had nothing to do with it. “It was an oven.”

“And expensive,” Raven oh-so-helpfully added.

I let my field and the sparks scatter to the wind. “If you’re such a hotshot cook, why don’t you try it?!”

“I don’t think our wallets could take that hit.”

“I’d be willing to throw in some cash for that,” Syd said. “And some extra for a fire extinguisher.”

I jabbed my finger Raven’s way. “Ha! You hear that? Time to put Syd’s money where your mouth is!”

Syd raised his hands defensively. “H-Hey, I only said ‘some’ cash. I have to eat, too.”

Raven crossed her arms and smirked. “Impressive. Between the three of us, we might be able to buy one of the nicer hand-me-downs in town.”

“Oh, I think we could do a little better than a hand-me-down. Guess who just got promoted -- again.”

“Chaz,” I guessed, “and you’re planning on asking him for a loan?”

“Can Bulbosa give himself a promotion?” Raven said with a faked thoughtfulness on her face, finger to her chin, that almost looked sincere.

“No, not Chaz; no, he can’t; and yes, the pay’s good. Thanks for asking.”

A volley of festive explosions brought our attention back to the world below. It was thick with color, more than I’d ever seen in one place -- more than I’d even known existed -- streaking like falling stars, passing each other by so the trails they left criss-crossed, zig-zagged, spider-webbed every which way until the dark undersky and its clouds were drowned out by vibrant, lively fire.

It was dazzling, mesmerizing, and tempting me to just jump off and fly among the stars. So that’s what I did.

I had to kick off the ground to clear the sloping stone right below us, but that came easy enough, and then I was falling again, this time to a bright, warm, inviting place. A startled Syd called out my name above me.

I maneuvered myself so I fell face first, diving alongside rockets full of vivid imitations of my singularity rainbow. The wind kicked back my hair, nipped at my skin, blew my clothes against my body, but it was easy not to mind.

The sounds were nearly deafening so up close. It was like being back in Jirga Para Lhao, being shot at by the Bismalia. And the flames that bloomed looked so different right before my eyes. I could pick out every individual mote, see the little details in the patterns they burned into the sky as they raced all the way to a sudden, fizzling end. But the journey there was beautiful in ways both intricate and grandiose. Every little light was art in itself, but together they made masterpieces.

I fell so fast that even when one of the fireworks blew right next to my ear, I was far below the explosion by the time it spread, leaving the heat and thunder well behind. I was as appreciative as I was regretful. My trip was already coming to an end.

Too soon, I reached a point where little color could even reach, popping above me instead of beside me, even the sounds a distant distraction. That was probably far enough. With all the reluctance in the world, I shifted gravity, ready to fall back into the fire.

Or I would’ve, if my powers had decided to cooperate with me just once. But they didn’t. For the first time in a long time, I was really falling.

Panic didn’t set in all at once. My heart raced into my throat but a message still managed to squeeze through. “Dusty!”

Out of the corner of my eye, I spotted a little black body falling with me. Unmoving.

My stomach dropped.

I did the only thing I could think of: I flailed. Instead of working with gravity, I fought against it. I kicked and groped and scratched at the air in the hope that if I did it enough, something solid might manifest for me to latch on to.

And I screamed, a long stream of terrified nonsense that I couldn’t even hear. My pounding heart was louder. The rushing wind was above that.

Among my nonsensical words, my subconscious managed to slip out another name. “R-Raven--!”

My clothes suddenly tightened around my front and I came to a dead stop, dangling in the air, even as my mind stayed a whirlwind of panic and loud, indecipherable thoughts.

I started rising until Raven’s face was right beside my own, Xii flying circles over her head. Dusty lay nestled underneath her other arm, comfortable as could be.

“Maybe you should make sure Dusty’s awake next time you go jumping off into the ether,” she tried to deadpan, but her voice cracked, lips trembled, eyes screamed desperation.

All I could offer was a lame, sheepish smile. “Sorry I worried you. I guess Dusty and I still aren’t at a hundred percent.”

She closed her eyes and  took a moment to reel back her emotions. It stretched on for ten long seconds until her eyes shut tighter. It looked like she was having a lot of trouble.

“Raven…?”

Without either hand free to stop the tears that brimmed at the corners of her eyes, they fell in abundance. “Just...give me a second.”

I did, and then I asked again. “Raven, what’s wrong?”

“I just...was worried, is all.”

“I bet. But it’s more than that, isn’t it?”

She sniffled and fell silent.

Dusty stirred in that motion that said he wanted to be let down, and she complied. Her arm immediately crossed over her face as he fell onto a nonexistent surface, walked over to me with newfound energy; well, as much energy as a cat was allowed to show, anyway. He meowed and with it I felt energy rushing back into my body. I could shift again.

So I did, and Raven let go.

I floated around so we were facing each other and tried again, wordlessly, only putting a hand on her shoulder.

She put her arm down eventually and her mascara-stained eyes met mine. “On the way back, after you’d fallen asleep, I had some time to think -- to doubt, really. I couldn’t believe you were really home. All that waiting, hoping, hopelessness … A part of me hadn’t expected it to all be worth it.” She winced, like admitting that hurt to say. Or shamed her. “I only accepted this was real when I came back and you were waiting for me outside the pipe house. By then I’d already decided that, if you really were here, I’d do whatever it took to go back to the way things were a year ago; the quicker, the better.”

I smiled faintly, but I didn’t mention the message I’d gotten from our bond.

“Then you jumped, and suddenly I was losing you all over again.” Her gaze fell and stared into the dark sky below us. “It felt like an old wound ripping open just as it was starting to heal.”

Oh. Well, now I felt lower than I would’ve if I’d just fallen all the way to the bottom of the World Pillar. My cheeks grew red, ears hot, chest panging. But I had a duty to help her out of the slump I’d put her in, so I quickly shoved that shame back for the time being and focused on comforting her. She let me pull her in, wrap my arms around her shoulders, and nestle my cheek against hers. She gave a full-body shiver in return.

“I’m here to stay, now and forever,” I said softly. Then I added, “Just as long as you’re around to watch my back. Never know when I’ll try something stupid again.”

I couldn’t see her smile, but somehow I knew it was there all the same. “In that case, I guess I can give up any hope of ever sleeping again.”

And that got me smiling too as I pulled away, hands going down to take hers so I could rub my thumbs over her knuckles in an old gesture I’d picked up from a time and place I couldn’t quite remember. “I’ll try and make it easy for you.”

“I’d appreciate it.”

For almost an entire minute, it was just the two of us in a little space of our own, the chaos overhead completely invisible, inaudible. Even Dusty and Xii were respectfully quiet.

We didn’t say anything. We didn’t have to. We just knew. And we knew when to move on.

My attention went back to the fireworks display, Raven’s too. Their light shone against our faces and played with the darkness of Raven’s hair in pretty and interesting ways. That gave me an idea.

“Come on,” I said, letting go of one hand but holding onto the other tighter. “I know how we can start going back to the way things were.”

She quirked an eyebrow. “Oh? How’s that?”

“You remember that last big Pleajeune festival? Although I guess for you it’d be second to last.”

“The one that ended with you burning yourself over most of your body? Yeah, I remember. Why do you…?” Her eyes shone with comprehension. “You wanna give it another go?”

“Yeah! I’m ready this time!”

She chuckled. “Are you now? I think I’ll be the judge of that.”

“Judge all you want, but I bet I can get closer to ‘em than you can!”

Her smile turned into a grin. “This won’t be like our little mining competition, will it?”

“Nuh-uh. No practice round; no more than one go.” I thought about something that might entice her to take it seriously. It didn’t take long. “Whoever wins gets the rest of the eclairs!”

That got her attention, grin looking a bit hungry, eyes narrowing with a newfound focus. “You’re on,” she said resolutely.

I grinned along with her and let go of her hand, then put some space between us. She did the same, and soon we were about a block away from each other. The fireworks raged on.

There was no countdown. We knew when to go.

We shot up like rockets, the air whining, headed right for that colorful storm. And in the blink of an eye, we were in it.

All around us shone striking hues, powerful and energetic and intense. Sporadic. They matched our dance.

Like her namesake, Raven was a natural in the air, gliding over, under, around the flames that streaked through the sky with only inches to spare, every motion moving to the next with all the fluidity of a gentle wave. Her skin transformed into a canvas, painted by every color on the palette. Her expression was set in that casual neutrality that came so easily to her.

I don’t know what sort of face I was making, but it couldn’t have been anything as flattering. I actually had to work to avoid an extra-crispy fate, and my features probably reflected that. My eyes moved a mile a minute, scanning every inch around me for the next explosion, the next fireball I had to duck under. Inelegant yelps and squeaks escaped me every time a spark strayed too close and singed my skin. My flight was choppy, stopping mid-air every other time I had to outmaneuver one of those tiny, falling stars. I could feel my face burning red, and not just from my aura.

I’d been running on fumes ever since I’d woken up all that way down the World Pillar, but I managed to keep going, pushing myself a little farther every time I thought I’d reached the end of my reserves. It wasn’t adrenaline that carried me; that was quickly running low. It was the joy, the thrill, the pure exaltation Raven subconsciously communicated through our bond, and that I was sure she could feel from me.

Physically, we were separated by a good few meters. Mentally, we were as close as could be.

And then the show reached its climax.

They came rapid-fire, like a rainstorm complete with deafening thunder that drowned out the long, continuous sound of my heartbeat.

I moved faster -- both of us did. We had to. Spots in the air that’d been safe just seconds ago burned bright and forced us to twist and turn in ways as dangerous as the fire that threatened to scorch us. Our routes thinned and thinned until we were squeezing through manhole-sized gaps in the combusting clouds, where avoiding a burn or five was impossible. Keeping a straight path as shockwave after shockwave assaulted the air around us was a battle we only just won by the skin of our teeth.

I kept track of Raven out of the corner of my eye. We were much closer then than when we’d started, and closing in every second. Her emotions had shifted to a distress that mounted with every near-miss, mixed thoroughly with what remained of her thrill.

I only felt the distress.

So maybe it’d been a bad idea. Maybe I should’ve learned from the first time, said never again, and found a better way to go back to the good ol’ days -- preferably a way that wasn’t so hot. And maybe, just maybe, I should’ve waited until I wasn’t so dangerously close to collapsing. It probably would’ve hurt less if we’d just recreated our first real encounter. I’d take a boot to the head over roasting alive any day.

The only consolation was that, whether through some ability gifted by our guardians or our own natural resilience, whatever burns we’d walk away with wouldn’t stick around for long.

I yelled as the space beside me, between me and Raven, exploded and tossed me into a wall of fire that lit every nerve in my body up. My first instinct was to raise a stasis field. My second was to clamp down on that impulse. I remembered the one rule we’d made that day: “If it’s not flight, you can’t use it.”

So with grit teeth and great effort, I threw myself back on track, skin smoking, the equivalent of a flying limp weighing me down, Raven no longer in my line of sight. But I did spot something almost as good.

Safety. A big, open spot to my left, two blocks before me, like a bubble actively keeping out the dangers around it. What a relief! I needed somewhere I could stop and collect my thoughts, find a route out of this airborne inferno.

Without wasting a second, I locked on and homed in.

The air got thicker with smoke and the suffocating smell that accompanied it, clouding my senses, leaving only the explosively blooming lights to guide the way. They weren’t very good at it. My burns only got worse.

But with no other choice, I pressed on.

I gave it everything I had -- all my focus to guide me, my willpower to shrug off the burns that resulted when my focus failed, and my energy to get me out fast before my willpower could give out. I didn’t have it in me to use any of it effectively, only able to throw it all at my problem and hope for the best. For a while, all I got was pain for my troubles.

But then the air started clearing, the harsh, thick gray thinning and thinning, the explosions and colors less frequent until I escaped into that impregnable bubble where everything was a relieving shade of empty-sky black. My first breath within was deep and sweet.

Ten seconds hadn’t passed before Raven popped in opposite me, just as breathless and burned and miserable-looking. Her hair, usually so flawlessly neat, looked like someone had taken a big, electrically charged balloon to it. Her skin was smudged with soot, and it even darkened some of the red in her hair so it matched the rest. Her clothes looked as if a storm had personally tried to rip them off her body and only barely failed. Smoke billowed off of her and formed a cloud of its own over her head. She stood -- floated? -- doubled over, hands on her knees to steady herself, huffing and puffing.

I got the first shot in. “Looks like I’m getting those eclairs after all!”

Her eyes lifted even as the rest of her didn’t, and a small smile spread as she took in my form. “It does look that way, doesn’t it?”

It took me a second to realize she’d just fired back. “W-Wait! I mean, uh, you look like you got a lot closer than I did. You’ve got soot all over the place!”

She straightened up, rolled her shoulders, and closed her eyes until her breath was back under control and her body relaxed. Then she chuckled. “Guess that means I win.”

What? No! She couldn’t have her eclairs -- er, cake, and eat it too! “N-No it doesn’t! Nobody’s won until we’ve made it out!”

“Then one of us had better hurry up and win. I don’t trust Syd alone with free food.”

We moved closer, meeting in the middle, and shared the determination set so deep in our features. Our auras flared to life, like airboat engines revving up before they sped off in one long burst of speed. We didn’t move, didn’t blink, all our focus channeled into building up our energy until it was time to count down.

“Three,” we said in unison.

“Two.”

“One--!”

The world slowed to a near stop as in between us, red, shiny, gleaming in the light of its contemporaries, fell the biggest rocket I’d ever seen. By the look in Raven’s saucer-wide eyes, I guessed the same went for her.

“Grab it!” I tried to say, but my words didn’t escape me fast enough.

We saw the brightest colors we’d ever seen.

-

Our coughs came out black and dry. We stopped long enough to wheeze, but that only irritated our scratchy throats and we coughed harder. The world smelled like burning … everything. When I closed my eyes, I could still see the rainbow.

“Kat, Raven, are you two alright?!” Syd said as he stepped down the ladder as fast as he could with drinks in his hands, having rushed into the pipe house the second he spotted us rising back to his level. The balancing act he played almost knocked him off at each rung.

I nodded a small nod, to keep from agitating my burns any more than I had to, as we landed on the platform, holding onto each other’s shoulder for balance. He pushed the cups into our hands. We took them gratefully.

Dusty and Xii immediately took to grooming themselves, showing their disapproval of our little game with meowing and chirping, respectively.

Dusty was one to talk! He’d gotten me into plenty of trouble before, and the one time I do the same he has the gall to chastise me ? Oh, we’d have a long talk about that...

Our first few sips were only used to rinse out our mouths and then promptly spat over the edge of the city. We made it about halfway down our drinks before we actually started, well, drinking. They went a long way to assuage our bone-dry throats. We sucked until only ice rattled and the styrofoam started crumpling in our hands.

I glanced sideways at Raven, at how the soot she’d worn earlier paled in comparison to how much caked her then. At least it matched her mascara.

I’d gotten it just as bad. My newly whitened suit could’ve passed for its old black.

I tried to get a word out -- coughed one last time, and then tried again. “Tie…?” I croaked.

She looked at me, wiping gunk off her face. She managed a smirk. “Tie.”

“You two were gone a while,” Syd said. “What happened?”

My mouth moved but only what had to be the cooked remains of my lungs came out.

Raven took over. “Chicken.”

Syd looked like she’d just went up to him and smacked him on the cheek. He recovered quickly enough. “If worrying about your well-being makes me a chicken, then sure, I’m poultry.”

Raven shook her head. “We were playing chicken.”

“With fireworks?” he said in a purely joking tone.

“Yeah.”

He looked to me, a little bewildered but still somewhat expecting Raven to be bluffing. It was hard to tell with her. But when I nodded without a hint of hesitation, only the former remained. “You two are more a danger to each other than anything the World Pillar could throw at you.”

“That’s a funny thing for the Hekseville Phantom himself to say.”

His mouth opened, made the shortest sound, and then closed again. He had nothing to counter with. “Touch é .”

On our way back up, the fire-rain had lightened up to a fire-drizzle, and by the time we’d touched down it’d all but fizzled out. Where once there’d been thunder, only dull thumps remained. Darkness returned to Hekseville’s undersky. That meant the balloons were coming up soon.

Dusty whined as I shifted again and floated into the pipe house. There, I grabbed the essentials with my stasis: our blanket, a basket just big enough to hold Dusty and Xii, the bags of food -- which had, surprisingly, been left untouched -- and, of course, the eclairs. I spared only a few seconds in front of the mirror to muss up my hair a bit more, and then I was outside again. Raven and Syd waited for me at the base of the ladder.

“Looks like you’ve got something planned,” Syd said.

“I was thinking we could have a picnic for the balloon ceremony.”

“Really? But we won’t be able to see anything from down here.”

I pointed at the lively Auldnoir above us. “That’s why we’ll go up there.”

Raven almost looked like she disapproved. “You’d get swarmed the second someone saw you, and I don’t think you’re in any condition to handle that.”

“It’ll be fine as long as we lay low. And with our disguises, that won’t be very hard.”

“What disguises…?” she started to say, until she happened to catch sight of her sooty hand. “Do you really think that’ll work?”

“Positive! Just earlier I was walking around town and nobody knew it was me -- and that was with just a color swap to my outfit! If our faces are smudged up like this, and our hair’s all messed up, nobody will ever think we’re the real deal. Especially not when there’s so many convincing costumes around.”

Syd sucked in air between his teeth. “‘Convincing’ isn’t exactly the word I’d use…”

I gave him a pointed look.

“...But at least their hearts are in the right place,” he added.

I nodded. “They sure are.”

Raven mulled it over. Then she said, “Well, it’s your special day. This decision should be yours too.”

“Agreed,” Syd said. “So, any idea how to get up there without blowing your cover?”

I tipped my head to the edge of the platform. “Well, I was thinking your airbike might work--”

As if it’d been waiting for an excuse, the airbike in question coughed its gears out, belching smoke and making all kinds of sharp, clunking, dying sounds. The force made it bounce once, twice, then it toppled over onto its side where it stayed, leaking fluids and stinking up the place. Our noses crinkled.

“--but you might have to get it fixed first.”

“And we don’t exactly have time for that, so what’s our plan B?”

My fingers came up to my chin as I thought. “How long would it take to take out the engine?”

“Not very. Why?”

I focused my field back inside the house, looking for the toolbox Syd’d left for us once upon a time. “Well, we don’t actually need the ‘bike itself to fly…”

-

“We need more sway. Give it more sway!”

“I am making it sway!”

“Well, it’s not convincing enough! They’re gonna figure us out!”

Syd grabbed the ‘bike’s handlebars tighter and rested more of his bodyweight against them. “Kat, please, I think we’re swaying enough.”

“Huh? You think so? Well, you’re the airbike expert here.”

“Right, and as the expert, I have to say I don’t think I’ll be able to keep my dinner in much longer if all this rocking keeps up.”

“Oh. Sorry…”

Removing the engine had been quick, made even quicker by a little gravity shifting. It’d also been dirty, and the extra grease stains lent themselves well to our disguise. While Syd and Raven had cleaned up the ‘bike, I’d slipped back into my heels and wrapped up our supplies and a couple of argumentative guardians in the blanket, tying it closed like a sack. Now it rested slung over Raven’s shoulder, who sat at the very back of the ‘bike and kept close to me to keep herself steady. Every time our cooperating stasis fields purposely shook the ‘bike, her arm tightened a little more around my stomach.

It was a good thing Syd didn’t drive an airboat. Otherwise, the strain of keeping it aloft might’ve actually activated our auras and ruined our whole disguise -- or Raven’s, really, since she was doing most of the work. Then again, maybe it wouldn’t have. I wasn’t really sure just how strong our powers were anymore.

We passed plenty of houses on our way up, but, thankfully, they were all either empty or simply had their lights shut off, so we didn’t have to worry about keeping up appearances just yet. But one of Auldnoir’s bridges was coming up, and that most certainly was not empty.

“Alright, we’re almost there. Act natural!”

Raven nudged my back. “Are you telling us that, or yourself?”

“Er, you? Me? Both ?!”

“Relax. Your fatigue’s messing with your nerves. It’ll work out.” Her hand came up across my chest to rest on my shoulder. It felt a little … better than it should’ve. “And if it doesn’t, I’ve got your back, remember?”

I was blushing. Why was I blushing?! “O-Okay. Just don’t fling anyone off the city!”

“Hmh. Wouldn’t dream of it…”

We rose over the bridge, only catching the attention of a few people who didn’t have anything better to focus their attention on. And even then, they didn’t linger on us for long, returning their gazes to the goings-on around them. There was certainly enough to look at.

The Fountain Plaza was packed full of people standing shoulder to shoulder, chest to back, holding each other up to make room for others. Unlike Vendecentre’s square, there was no room for kite-flying or running kids. Everyone just kept to their own happy section of the crowd. Nobody could take a step without nudging someone else in some way, but the mood was so good it was pretty much impossible for that kind of triviality to spoil it.

The air itself was alive with a hundred different conversations, punctuated by laughter and cheers. I could point out tens of people, usually kids, waving around a sparkler, or throwing some bright, cheery explosive over the edge of the city, or -- wait, were those dolls? Of me?! I had merchandise! And Dusty did too, sure, but I’m pretty sure he wouldn't be as impressed by their simplistic, cloth-and-stuffing designs. But they could’ve been a few sticks and a blonde wig and I still would’ve smiled so much it hurt.

Smaller, portable food stands had set up along the local ones and down every available streetside, up-and-coming entrepreneurs and self-employed vendors taking advantage of the festivities to cash in on one big payday. Even if dozens of stand owners had all come up with the same idea, there were still certainly enough customers to go around.

A balloon-dealing airboat like the one I’d seen back in Vendecentre had parked near the fountain itself and looked to be still open for business. That fact, combined with how not a single hand in that ocean of people was left without a balloon to hold, amazed me to no end. Just how stocked were they?!

Finding a spot to land went about as well as expected. There was no chance we could just settle down amidst the crowd like that, so we pulled back to a more orderly area, an entrance of sorts all the way down the street, where the cops were managing the incoming traffic. A couple of bright cones marked where their jurisdiction began and ended.

We had to go even farther back to a raised, mostly barren lot reserved for parking, the same place I’d defeated my first Nevi. Thanks to the miracles of public transit, there weren’t many ‘boats or ‘bikes to congest it.

As soon as we stepped off the airbike, Syd took a moment to steady himself against the nearest wall until the green left his face. In the meantime, I turned to Raven.

“Want me to carry our stuff now? Those two can’t be making it easy for you.”

She shook off the offer. “It’s fine. They’ve actually been pretty well-behaved the whole way here. Dusty only scratched me once.”

I gasped and glared at a particularly large, boxy bump in the blanket. “Dusty!”

A muffled mew, smug and satisfied, was his only reply.

“It’s fine. Really,” Raven insisted. “I get the feeling he was just trying to let me know how he felt.”

My scowl didn’t drop. “When we get back home, we’re gonna have a long talk about this.”

He didn’t respond that time.

Syd joined us again, breathing a little hard, but still looking much better than he had just a bit before.

“Are you good?” Raven said.

Syd nodded, stopped to collect himself again, hand held to his mouth just in case, and then continued. “Yeah, I’m alright now. Let’s head in.”

We went down the stairs along the side of the lot and joined the shapeless crowd moving into the celebration area, although it was pretty tiny compared to the one already inside. It seemed like most everyone who wanted to attend was already there.

We were one foot past the traffic cones when a loud “hey!” stopped us in our trail. I immediately feared the worst. Raven tensed up beside me. But Syd had a smile on his face.

“Serval!” he said like he were greeting a longtime friend. “They’ve got you working this beat?”

A man around my age, four years older at the most, strolled over to us -- well, to Syd, really -- from his post at one side of the street. I could tell he was young because of the way he filled out his uniform; he looked like he had a couple years left until it would properly fit him. But beside that, he kinda looked like every other cop I’d ever seen. Those visors of theirs really discouraged individuality in the rank and file.

He beckoned for us to step to one side so we wouldn’t clog up the people funneling into the plaza, which we did, before he continued. “Yeah, well, I needed some way to impress Bulbosa, and working security for one of the biggest celebrations in Hekseville’s history probably turned some heads.”

“This festival’s that big a deal, huh?” I couldn’t help but say.

Serval looked at me like I’d just grown an extra arm. “Well, yeah. This is the Gravity Queen we’re talking about. I can only think of a couple things bigger than that.”

“Don’t mind her,” Syd said, interfering before his suspicions could grow. “She’s from Jirga Para Lhao. The Queen’s a big name over there too, but we got her first. It’s only natural we’d make a bigger deal than they do.”

Serval’s gaze stayed on me, and the way his face scrunched up told me his eyes were narrow behind his visor. Sweat started forming on my brow.

But Syd had just thrown me a line, and I did my best to hang on tight. “R-Right! The, uh, Gravity Queen was a real help when our council went nuts and started conscripting people for the mines. And again when some city came alive and started eating up ours.” An instinctive smile trembled across my lips.

Whether or not he’d bought it was impossible to know without some sort of X-ray. No matter how long he stared at me, he didn’t get any easier to read.

I must’ve been sweating bullets. That I couldn’t explain away. It was a chilly night. But wiping it away would’ve just wiped my disguise with it. So I stayed stiff, a smile on my face so forced it was trying to shake itself right off. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Raven wearing the body language of someone who wanted to step in and help but hadn’t quite decided on the right approach.

Thankfully for us -- or, rather, me -- he turned away, to her, and spoke. “Well, in any case, it’s nice to see some originality for a change.”

It was like she’d been readying herself to charge at him and he’d just come up and stuck his leg out in front of her right when she took off. She stumbled on her thoughts. “Huh?”

“Your Raven costume. I mean, don’t get me wrong; it’s great seeing all of Hekseville dressing up to honor the city’s greatest hero--”

“Greatest?!” I blurted out. His mouth twitched in a way that made the rest of my words come out as a flattered mumble. “W-Well, I don’t know about that…”

“--but it gets kinda dull seeing it for the…” his head turned ever so slightly in my direction, “...hundredth or so time.”

What, my outfit? Dull?! There were a ton of words that’d been used to describe my clothes, but “dull” had never been one of them, and I got the feeling that this time wasn’t any different.

“Oh. Thanks,” Raven said simply, but tinged with a subtle irritation that mirrored my own.

He didn’t catch it, of course, and her faked approval only emboldened him. He turned to me fully, looked me up and down. “Now that I’m looking at your costume a little closer, it looks like you got it in the wrong color and tried to paint it last minute. Explains the gunk all over you.”

That proved it! Raven had gunk all over her too and he never mentioned it. He singled me out! This Serval guy was just trying to get to me, and if I had to guess why, it was because I hadn’t immediately considered the festival a big deal, which, by extension, meant I hadn’t immediately considered myself a big deal. It was kinda funny, in a way: he thought my attitude toward the city’s hero -- me -- was rude, and so he’d decided to defend my honor or something … by insulting me. Ironic.

I didn’t have much I could say without throwing away my cover, and if he was so big a fan he’d feel offended on my behalf for the littlest thing, he’d either shout my name once he realized who I was or he’d take the quieter option and faint. Couldn’t risk it.

Then Syd had to open his mouth. “Yo, Serval, how’s the club doing these days?”

Serval straightened, face relaxing except for the subtle excitement of someone whose favorite subject just got brought up but was trying to play it cool. “Oh, the Gravity Knights are doing alright. Just last week we…”

Gravity Knights, huh? He sure didn’t fit the knightly profile. But whatever. Anything else he said past that point I tuned out. I’d had just about enough of this guy. I wanted to move past him already and get to the show, and Raven felt the same way, a hundred fold; I felt her annoyance as a red-hot, flaring presence in my temple. Just our luck that Syd would decide to keep the chit-chat going. Couldn’t he tell just how rude his cop buddy was?

I looked at him and our eyes met. “Let’s go already!” I said through my expression alone.

He replied with a look I’d long been familiarized with, one that told me he had just the right idea to get out of whatever our current problem was. But whereas he usually followed it up with a plan, that time he said nothing, instead turning back and nodding, going along with whatever story Serval was going on about his fan club...

Wait, fan club. That’s it! Syd had mentioned how there used to be only one big club for me, but it’d split off into all kinds of different splinter groups because of tiny disagreements. Now that profile, that one he sure fit: a touchy and obsessive know-it-all who cared more about silly trivia than actually following the ideals of his, er, role model…? If I could beat him at his own game, that’d probably be enough to get him off our backs. Embarrassment is crippling for his type. I just had to pick the right topic.

A thought drifted into my consciousness from the outside until it was my own, like a bucket of water splashing into a lake. Raven again. “Food,” she’d said.

I thought of the eager stand owner back in Vendecentre. That was my angle of attack.

“Hey,” I said with fake cheeriness, “you seem like one of the biggest Gravity Queen fans I’ve met so far, so I’m wondering if you could answer something I’ve been wondering for a while.”

My words tugged out the smuggest smirk I’d ever thought possible from him. “Yes, I am the biggest Gravity Queen fan you’ll ever meet,” it seemed to say.

What he actually said was, “Yeah, sure. Shoot.” That was probably more arrogant.

I steeled myself. “What do you think the Queen’s favorite food was?”

Syd grinned proudly, and Serval looked about as pleased. “That’s an easy one,” the latter said. “It’s a highly debated topic, but the answer’s obviously meat skewers. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.”

I thought about that. Now, meat skewers were great, that was true. But were they really my favorite food in all the world? I just couldn’t see it. In fact, it was kinda impossible to single out one thing. I guess I like anything that tastes good.

So I said as much. “I don’t think that’s true. I think she liked anything and everything.” I didn’t add the fact that sour stuff was usually a big no-no, or that I had a particularly big sweet tooth.

Serval looked like I’d just insulted his mom, he was so offended. But he didn’t really have any way to contest me, other than asking the (second) most knowledgeable person on the Gravity Queen in the vicinity. “What do you have to say about that, Syd?” His tone said that he expected him to be on his side, like the whole thing was a foregone conclusion.

“I think she’s right,” Syd said, still wearing that grin. “Kat never was a very picky eater. The only person with a bigger appetite and less judgement is -- was -- probably Raven.”

Raven didn’t argue.

Serval’s face took on a look of absolute horror, jaw slack, cheeks sunken, all pale. Paler, anyway. His lips and tongue moved like there should've been noise coming out of his mouth, but he was deathly silent. I started worrying that it’d soon be a little too literal.

But then he spoke, and his voice matched the look. “O-Oh. I see. G-Good to know.” He looked at nothing, hand going up to and gripping his collar until his knuckles went white. “Excuse me,” he said, already pushing past us. “I have, uh … someone I need to talk to.”

“Taking an early break?” Syd shouted after him, through the throng of people between them. “The ceremony’s about to start!”

“I-It’s fine.” The wind barely carried his voice back to us. And then he was gone around a corner.

Raven was quick to speak up. “What was his deal?”

“Oh, Serval? He’s a good guy, usually. Just … a big fan of Kat’s work.”

“Apparently not big enough to recognize her when she’s standing right in front of him.”

“The visor doesn’t help.”

“He just … shut down,” I said, my mind a little unwilling to process what my eyes had just seen.

Syd nodded. “Yeah, fans can be like that.”

“ Fans? It’s not just him?!”

“Well, they did break up for the smallest reasons, almost like they were looking for all the excuses they could.”

“Y-Yeah, but that was nothing like I’d thought it’d be! Even if I didn’t really do anything wrong, I kinda feel bad now, like I just kicked an aggressive puppy...”

Raven put a warm hand on my shoulder. “I wouldn’t say that. Puppies are small and adorable. He was only one of those things.”

“And besides, it’s not the first time he’s gotten himself in one of these moods,” Syd reassured me. “He’ll get over it."

“I hope so,” I said. I’d already had to go after one obsessive fan before, way back when. A small army’s worth of them had to be dealt with before they could reach that level of creepy. “Maybe I should pay a few of these groups a visit; see if I can straighten some stuff out.”

Raven already knew my intentions, either from reading my mind or remembering the story I’d told her of “Alias’s” miraculous return from the scrapheap. “If that’s what you think is right. Just don’t get in over your head and take up therapeutic work, too. I don’t think you have an outfit for that.”

“Who knows?” Syd chimed in. “Maybe a visit from their heroine will do ‘em some good, like one of those classic TV PSAs. ‘Kat the Gravity Queen says: bomb threats against the city are not romantic!’”

I laughed. Raven chuckled. Syd did his best not to look too proud of himself. And then a voice rang out over some loudspeakers reminding all attendees that the show would begin in ten minutes. Those who hadn’t made it in yet started to run. We joined them. That poor officer Serval’d left to do the job of two men nearly dove out of the rushing mob’s way.

Finding a spot for ourselves was harder than finding a place to park. Our options were more limited, the space smaller, and every square inch seemed to have already been taken. We weren’t really walking so much as shambling forward at a snail’s space through the reveling citizenry, stopping whenever people packed themselves in too close and either waited for them to make a path we could squeeze through or found a different route.

Syd’s height came in handy. He stood at eye level over most people’s heads, and so he served as navigator on our journey to find the tiniest patch of land we could settle our blanket on. We braved the people ocean and stayed steadfast -- but then three minutes had passed and we started to fear that our little picnic was a lost cause.

Then, a miracle.

We reached the actual fountain part of the Fountain Plaza, where people sat all around its perimeter, clinking glasses with and passing food to strangers, trading compliments like candy, and sometimes actual candy to the kids in the crowd. It was a much friendlier atmosphere than I was used to. But that was only half the miracle. The rest came when one of the families -- consisting of a mom, dad, and their preteen son -- saw our plight and took pity on us, moving themselves and their own picnic aside, making just enough space for us to settle down.

“It’s the spirit of the holiday,” the dad said as we started setting up our stuff.

“This time of year really has a way of making you think about others,” the mom added.

The son tugged at his balloon’s string impatiently.

We thanked them and finished setting up. The woven basket that served as our guardians’ makeshift carrier sat right in the middle, where all three of us could keep an eye on it and obscure it from view with our bodies. The drinks and food boxes came out next, open and placed around the basket, within easy reach of all of us -- including one gravity-shifting cat’s curious paw.

I swatted away at him, not hard but enough that he got the idea and slinked back inside, leaving behind a hungry meow. It was enough to guilt-trip me.

I chose a box of steamed beef for myself, took off a healthy chunk, and slipped it under the basket’s lid. “You two share, alright?” I whispered through the cane.

Dusty meowed again, happy this time. Xii crooned after him.

Syd’s eyes flicked from box to box, never staying on one for longer than a second. They had a glint to them. “Ah, nothing like a hefty buffet to go along with a celebration out in the great outdoors.” His eyes stopped on the small stack of eclairs and that glint shone brighter. His hand was out and reaching before even he knew he was doing so.

An invisible force plucked them away just as he neared, low along the ground so nobody around us could see. Syd looked to Raven, who was pulling out the biggest, juiciest chicken drumstick I’d ever thought possible without even sparing him a glance, like she wasn’t to blame. Her first bite nearly left the bone bare.

She swallowed and said, “You didn’t earn these.” Then she downed the chicken with what looked like tea.

Syd grinned and took a box for his own. “And what would I have to do for that honor, exactly?”

Raven’s field split up four of the five eclairs between us -- two for her and two for me. The last floated just an inch off the ground.

“You’d have to play chicken with us,” I said through a mouthful.

He wasn’t grinning anymore, but he did chuckle, although a bit uneasily. “Y’know, they don’t look so appetizing anymore…”

Raven nodded -- that was the answer she was expecting -- and took the fifth eclair in her right hand. A butter knife floated into her left. She measured carefully but quickly, then cut once. A perfectly even half went into my pile. She bit into the other.

Just as we’d finished settling into a comfortable pattern of chewing and drinking and feeding the cane basket, a man in what looked like a carnival ringleader’s costume, with a moustache to match, ambled up to us through the crowd with all the confidence and dexterity of a seasoned performer. His face looked like it was used to smiling, mouth wide, eyes worn at the corners by laugh lines. Balloons of all shapes followed him closely, tied to both wrists.

“Welcome! Welcome!” he said as he stopped at the corner of our blanket. He tipped his big hat at each of us in turn. “Ladies. Sir. I can see the three of you are big fans of the Queen’s work -- and not just because you’re here. You girls’ costumes are impressive work!”

He didn’t mention any of the grease and grime covering us. For that, he got a “thanks!” from me, but Raven tensed up, just barely, and her eyes narrowed into the kind of look people give someone who’s about to try and sell them something. If that was what was going on, I’d be sure to retract my thanks.

“But if you’re going to be a part of the ceremony,” he continued, “then you’ll need the right equipment!” He tugged on his balloons’ strings for emphasis.

“And how much would this ‘equipment’ cost, exactly?” Raven said, every word phrased like a subtle warning.

He smiled wider. “For the low, low price of free, you too can pay your respects to the one and only Gravity Queen!”

Pay our respects? I leaned close to Syd and whispered, “Does he think I’m dead?”

“Can you blame him?” he whispered back. “Besides falling down the World Pillar, nobody knows much about what happened to you. Everyone’s just been left guessing for the last year. People have wild imaginations.”

I’d left people wondering, huh? Guess I should’ve seen that coming. But it hadn’t been the first time I’d disappeared without warning for a long while. Every time before, I’d come back to an indifferent Hekseville. Maybe a couple people here and there would ask me where I’d been, but other than that, nobody had really seemed to care. There certainly hadn’t been any big, city-wide parties or festivals held in my honor. It was just weird to come back to a people who actually cared about my time away.

Weird and wonderful . I’d have to take care of the confusion soon, though. Maybe after that Banga visit Raven had promised me.

The big-hatted balloon man sounded like he was wrapping up his speech to Raven. “...and as the proprietor of my fair share of shops, organizing other like-minded entrepreneurs to provide free balloons for the festival took just a few calls. I even made some new contacts with our friends over in Jirga Para Lhao. Even the stingiest store-owner would jump at the chance to make this day the best it can be, free of charge. Ah, but enough about business. This day’s about our city’s heroine, not some silly old men and their silly little deals!”

He’d been holding his hands behind his back the whole time he’d talked, but when he brought them back out, they were holding a series of balloons of all kinds of sizes, shaped around and tied together so they looked just like the silver moon on Raven’s chest. But, wait, he’d done all that in a few seconds and without even looking?! He seemed more like a magician than some balloon-seller! Maybe he really was a ringleader...

“Here you are, ‘Raven,’” he said with a wink.

Raven thanked him and took the string, just as awed by his magick as I was in her own, Raven way.

He turned to me and bowed. “And what would you like, my Queen?”

There was really only one choice. I pointed at one of the balloons tied to his wrist, naturally shaped like the sun on my stomach, not improvised like Raven’s moon. He grinned like he’d expected that answer and undid the knot.

“An excellent choice,” he said as he handed it to me. “And as for you, sir?”

“I’ll take a Dusty,” Syd said almost immediately.

“A ‘dusty’ what?” The magic man paused for comedic effect, and then, with a self-satisfied smirk, said, “Of course, sir! Of course! I’m just joking with you.”

I took a glob of meat and tossed it into the basket before my guardian could start hissing. Better safe than sorry.

The Dusty balloon was a simplified depiction of the real deal, round and smooth at every end. But it was made of some sort of reflective material that really went a long way to sell the idea that it was constantly shifting in shape, the stars on its surface almost looking like they were moving. It was impressive, and a little sad that all that hard work would end up getting lost in the sky’s endless expanse in just a few short minutes. Maybe I’d buy one after the festival -- if I could convince Dusty not to pop it. He might not be too keen on that kind of competition.

With all of us properly supplied and the ceremony about to begin, the man tipped his hat one last time and bid us farewell. “Happy ballooning!” he shouted over his shoulder, waving as he strolled back to his stand.

We waved back and thanked him again.

Raven twirled her balloon’s string around her finger and gave it a tug. “I think I like what you did to Hekseville,” she said in my direction.

I pointed at myself. “Huh? Me? I don’t think I really did anything.” But that wasn’t quite true, and even I couldn’t deny that. “Well, I guess I’ve done a lot, but I don’t think I had much to do with the city changing. That’s all on the people.”

“Don’t sell yourself short,” Syd said. “Changing might have been their choice, but they needed someone to inspire them to make that change.”

“Do you really think I had that big an effect?”

“Well, I certainly am seeing a lot more Kats running around than usual...” Raven mused.

“Trust me, there’s a ton of more subtle things you haven’t seen yet that have your influence all over ‘em.” Syd took a sip from his cup that dragged the moment out for an unbearably long time. “People are nicer, more generous, more willing to lend a hand to complete strangers than ever before, and that in turn’s shot the city’s standard of living through the roof. In the last couple months alone, city hall’s been so swamped with volunteer requests for the Endestria renovation effort, they’ve had to make a waitlist just to deal with it! Face it, Kat: you’ve done more good for the city in your short time here than any government project or royal decrees ever could.” He topped off his speech with a winning smile.

The idea that I’d helped the city just by being me … It was almost too much. Emotions -- too many to keep track of -- swelled in my chest, put an extra, sweet strain on my heart. “I didn’t do it alone,” I said to keep the conversation going and my thoughts in check. “Come to think of it, I haven’t seen any stuff for you around, Raven. You’ve done just as much for Hekseville as me.”

Raven smiled a smile tinged with regret. “There you go selling yourself short again.”

I had a hundred different ways to contest that, but Syd spoke first. “It’s not like the city just forgot about her. In fact, today was originally meant for both of you.”

Originally? Something cold ran up my back as I feared the worst. Raven’s past dealings with the city hadn’t exactly been noble. She’d done things that scared people for reasons I couldn’t quite place. But eventually, she’d turned it all around, helped Hekseville and transformed her image from one that struck fear into people’s hearts to a symbol of hope. And yet some people could hold a grudge. Had some of them been government sorts with enough sway to keep Raven from being celebrated alongside me? I had to know, even if I was afraid of the answer. “What kept them from doing that?”

Syd just kept smiling and motioned his head Raven’s way. “Raven did.”

Wait, what? I turned to her and met her eyes over a pile of meats almost as tall as her head. She shrugged, mouth stuffed, and left it for Syd to explain.

Which he did. Kinda. “She practically stormed into the building where they were planning the day’s festivities and demanded that they keep her image from the event. I think they almost called us on her.”

But that didn’t explain why . That was an answer only she could give. I looked to her with that expectation.

She swallowed, cleared her throat, and said very clearly, very definitively, “Today’s all about you.”

There was no jealousy in her voice, no envy. It was just a simple statement. She wasn’t the jealous type, anyway -- especially not over something like this. Public recognition wasn’t very important to her in the first place.

She continued. “You say I’ve done just as much for the city, but I’m not the one who jumped into a black hole to save the world. I think you’ve done just a bit more to earn your own day.”

Again, I had a hundred different rebuttals about how that didn’t matter, that this wasn’t a contest over who did what, that she deserved to be recognized all the same, but she held her hand up.

Her expression turned sympathetic. Or was it empathy I saw quivering in her eyes? “I know what it was like for you, being the city’s hero. You told me how even after you did your best to help people, they forgot you when you disappeared -- twice! And sometimes they weren’t all that grateful for the help in the first place. But that’s never stopped you. There’s not a request you’d turn down, or a person you wouldn’t help. It’s what you do. It’s who you are. I just felt like you deserved a day for yourself, where people couldn't ignore you, for them to appreciate everything you’ve done. You deserve it.”

I didn’t have a hundred different answers to that. I didn’t even have one. “You … kept them from celebrating you so they could focus on me instead?” My voice cracked.

Raven nodded. She’d already explained herself. She didn’t have to say anything more.

But I had too much to say. Words of gratitude escaped from where I’d been keeping them in check and fought their way to the forefront of my mind but tripped over themselves in the haze of my now-whirling emotions. I had to reboot myself, clear my head, wrangle my feelings, just so I could figure out what to do next.

Letting some of that gratitude out sounded like a good first step. “Raven, you didn’t have to do that. I don’t mind sharing.”

She nodded again, the gesture smaller, slower than the last.

“But,” I continued, inching closer to her, “thank you. You have no idea how much it means to me that you feel like you do.”

Tension left Raven’s body, only now visible as her shoulders relaxed, her face softened, chest slowed its rising and falling until it was back in tandem with a more natural breathing pattern. Relief replaced them all.

“Another but!” I took her balloon-anchoring hand in between both of mine. “The second I feel good enough to shift properly, I’m flying down to city hall and demanding that you’re included in next year’s celebration too, and you’d better not try to stop me!”

Her humor came back, lips forming a small and easy smile. “Well, if you insist…”

“I do insist! I insist a lot!” I took my hands back. In one of them was my own string, now neatly tied to hers, our balloons floating side by side over our heads and thumping into each other. Raven’s eyebrow rose in that suppressed surprise of hers. It was a rare thing to coax out, and I beamed in self-satisfied pride. “There! This can represent us. What’s mine is yours, including today.”

She looked like she had something else to confess, but the right words wouldn’t come. Her mouth stayed shut even as her eyes shouted a dozen different things. The look reminded me a little of the one she’d had back up in the pipe house, before Syd’d arrived and she’d changed her mind. Even our bond didn’t make things any clearer, her thoughts a mess of contradictions that passed me by before I could latch onto any.

But just like in the pipe house, she was saved once again, this time by the static-y crackle of the plaza’s loudspeakers. A silence fell over all of Auldnoir as naturally as a gentle wind. The same went for her mind, stilling until the thrashing waves had receded and all that was left was a placid pool of water. The only ripples were the occasional remnant impulse.

Curiosity crept through me but I ignored it. The last thing I wanted to do was pressure Raven on something she obviously wanted to take her time with and figure out before she came out and said it. Instead, I turned to Syd and kept my voice low as I asked, “Is it time for the balloons?”

“Almost,” Syd whispered back. “But first we have to sing a song.”

“Song? Which song?”

My answer came from the loudspeakers in the sound of a slow, almost melancholic accordion. I caught the notes immediately: the introduction of my red apple song. But the tempo, the mood, they were so different from what I’d sang. They made the song sound sad -- the kind of sad saved for someone you’ve lost…

And then the entire city started to sing.

“A red apple

Fell from the sky,” they began in a beautiful, unified voice, carried by more emotion than I was prepared for.

“Across the clouds

A gentle sun shines

On the ones we’re waiting for.”

And then a whole host of instruments I couldn’t put any names to replaced the accordion and gave the song a more upbeat sound. The sadness wasn’t gone, just lessened and joined by something a little bit happy, and a whole lot hopeful.

The dam that held back the swirling tide of emotions within me had held steadfast all throughout the night, from my reunion with Syd all the way to just a few moments ago, Raven’s confession. But it’d taken a beating the whole way, cracking until it was more like a stone spiderweb.

On the second verse, it crumbled to dust.

All pretenses of keeping myself hidden were wiped away along with my rapids of tears, streaking across my palms and forearms. Those I missed soaked into the blanket, black and dirty with soot and engine grease. Somewhere beyond the sound of my own hopelessly happy sobbing, I could make out Raven’s and Syd’s voices mixing with the crowd’s. I’d shut my eyes and I hadn’t even realized it until their gentle hands were on my arm and thigh, prompting me to open them again.

The world came back to me in one big, blurry picture. I wiped and wiped, but the tears just didn’t stop flowing, so, eventually, around the song’s halfway point, I just let them.

My body’s aches returned with every twitch my sobs brought out of me, but it was a good ache, because for once it didn’t come from a long, hard-fought battle with a monster six times my height and a quarter of my temper, or from a harrowing shift down in the mines. It came from a love so overwhelming I couldn’t help but feel it set deep into my muscles and bones, run over my skin like a warm, comforting rain, like the fire that’d picked me up and carried me to the end of the world. But now it was gentle and fit snugly within me.

In the midst of all of it, my grip on our balloons slacked for the tiniest of tiny moments. That was all it took for them to slip out of my fingers. Raven let go as I did. They drifted off into the night, intertwined, two halves of a whole, and twinkled like the brightest stars in the sky. And the only ones.

But then, at the song’s climax, another joined them, then another. Then three at the same time. More and more, bit by bit, until they blocked out the actual stars for miles in every direction.

The song ended. The singing turned to cheers and claps, thundering so much I thought the city might shake right off the World Pillar. Raven looked at me with the most radiant smile I’d ever seen on her. Syd grinned proudly and wide.

“I think I speak for all of the city,” he said, “when I say welcome back, Kat.”

I sniffled and finally cleared my eyes, looking around at the people of Hekseville -- my people, my Hekseville -- and beamed again, brighter than a world-saving singularity.

Feels good to be home.

-

And so ends the journey of a girl who fell from the sky and changed the world.

But a journey is just another beginning and end -- one grand story among many other, not-so-grand ones. Mine began when I woke up in Hekseville, and ended when I reunited with the people I learned to love.

Not every quest is so big and life-changing. Those smaller adventures are still stories worth telling, even if all they changed was a handful of minds, or gave a few people hope.

Or maybe just gave one person the peace she’d never known she needed.

But those stories, well...

Those are other stories for another time.