Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Ok, maybe sneaking onto a plane hopping spaceship wasn’t Angus’ smartest decision, but it’s not his fault! That ship was practically calling to him and who was he to ignore the call of curiosity and potential knowledge! He didn’t know that it was scheduled to leave only four hours after he stepped on board and he certainly didn’t know that he’d never be returning to his home ever again. If he had known that, well… he still probably would have gone on board. At least this way he was alive, besides, it’s not like he was leaving a good life behind. All his belongings were in the tattered old backpack he wore anyway, so he wasn’t leaving any material things behind either.

Perhaps we should back up for a moment, and let you know how Angus even got himself into the situation he found himself in. It had started, as all things do, with a basic curiosity. He had been watching the news in his grandfather’s house when he saw the headline: IPRE Announces Mission To Explore Outer Reaches Of The Planar System. Needless to say, Angus was immediately hooked. He had always been fascinated by the Planes and what, if anything, was beyond them, so he kept close tabs on the mission, watching for new developments, he even got to go to one of their early press conferences! He, of course, had snuck in, but the point was that he saw it and got to learn a bit more about each of the adventurers and what their respective roles on the mission were.

From there it was simply a matter of waiting until they launched and came back to learn of their findings. And Angus hated waiting around. What intrigued him most, was their ship. It was so unique and powered by bonds, something completely unheard of! He would kill for a chance to see the engine up close, to really take a good look at it and attempt to understand its mechanisms and subtle intricacies. So that’s what he did. He waited until the ship itself and the launch bay were largely empty and then he simply snuck on board. The few remaining people in the launch bay must have rolled really low on their perception checks because they didn’t even turn around when Angus took a heavier-than-intended step onto the loading ramp.

The actual inside of the ship wasn’t really much to look at. It was relatively small with about the same dimensions as a small yacht, all steel grey with appliances and fixtures built low to the ground, probably because their Captain and chief biologist were both shorter races, Angus guessed. There were seven small bedrooms, each had been personalized with a few belongings to signify who it belonged to. All except for one, which was left strangely bare. Angus took a mental note of this before continuing on in his exploration.

The kitchen was small and pretty cramped, though this didn’t really seem to be of much note so Angus shrugged before moving on again. The next room he came to seemed to be some sort of lounge area, a place to spend the downtime over the course of the two months probably, though Angus doubted that there’d be copious amounts of downtime. The lab was next and this was one of the rooms Angus had been excited to see. It was the same steel grey as the rest of the ship, but there was so much high tech equipment that Angus had no clue the uses of nor how to operate them, but they were exciting to see nonetheless. There was a long table and, oddly enough, a coffee pot just sitting on it. They were probably expecting some late nights, but Angus still found the sight funny. And, finally, he came to the engine room.

The Bond Engine was beautiful. A white loop that was constantly spinning and emitting a faint light and low whirring sound. Angus found himself transfixed by it, it was so… pretty wasn’t the right word. Amazing? Facinting? He didn’t know, but he couldn’t even begin to describe it, it was as if the very sight of the thing made his mind go blank. He couldn’t think properly, but he was filled with such a strange feeling of needing to be exactly where he was, like he was somehow supposed to be on this ship. It was a strange feeling that he could hardly begin to comprehend, but he felt it so strongly he stood rooted to that very spot for an uncertain amount of time. Eventually he snapped himself out of that weird trance-like state and turned to make his way off of the ship when suddenly he was stopped in his tracks.

There were voices coming on board, and the constant humming from the Bond Engine was getting louder and louder. Angus felt a panic rise inside of him and he set off through the ship at a brisk pace. But the voices were getting nearer and he had no choice but to duck into the nearest room to him. It was the empty bedroom. Angus stood in that room deadly quiet, terrified of being caught. He wasn’t supposed to be there. If they found him hiding in that room who knew what they would do to him! His age might count for something in his favor, but he wasn’t too sure about that. How long had he even been on the ship? He was certain it had only been twenty minutes at most, but when he looked down at his watch, nearly four hours had passed. Well, three hours and forty-seven minutes, to be exact, but the point stands. How long had he been examining the engine?

Angus couldn’t think, his mind was racing and he was starting to panic. Would they take off with him still on board? And, if they did, how long would it be until he was found out? He couldn’t fathom the repercussions he might face and found it easier to keep his mind as carefully blank as possible. He’d figure this out. He had no choice but to figure this out.

The next few minutes seemed to crawl by and Angus had no hope of escaping the ship. Its crew was constantly up and down these hallways, he would have no way at all to even think of leaving this room. So he sat on the bed and clutched his backpack to his chest. There was a small, porthole window on the wall, but he didn’t dare look out of it, too scared of giving himself away. He felt the ship lurch suddenly, and realized that it was starting to launch. He inhaled a shaky breath and felt a tear fall down his cheek. The ship flew up into the stormy sky effortlessly, and Angus finally chanced a glance out that small round window. They were up in space now, and they were passing the stars and finally, they reached outside the Prime Material Plane and Angus nearly choked on his own breath. It was beautiful, but it was also wrong. There wasn’t the correct number of Planes here and, as Angus counted again, sure enough, there was a thirteenth plane, descending onto the Material Plane below. And there were shouts from on the ship, Angus heard panicked questions and orders being tossed back and forth as he watched this massive plane reach into his home.

The inky black tendrils of this plane reach around the ship and Angus catches glimpses of bright colors inside these tendrils as the ship lurches out of their reach, dodging with skill and luck. The ship speeds away from the planar system and Angus has the distinct feeling that they won’t be coming back to this plane again, that they left just in time.

And he also has the very distinct feeling that he’s gotten himself into a bigger mess than he bargained for.

Chapter Text

Angus spent the next several hours trying to wrap his head around just how utterly messes up this situation was turning out to be. He could still hear voices outside the room he had shut himself into, but they didn’t sound as panicked now, only really, really worried. He just wanted to go home, but that wasn’t possible anymore he didn’t think. He let out a shaky breath and glanced through the small porthole window again. What he saw outside wasn’t what he had expected, but he didn’t really know what he was expecting.

The world he saw below was covered in dense forests and trees, the sky was an odd blue color, and there seemed to be only one sun. Then he noticed just how high up the Starblaster was and he had to back up, suddenly overcome by a large bout of vertigo. Slowly, he sat back down on the tiny bed, wondering again why the room was so bare when all the others seemed to be decorated in some way or another. The mattress wasn’t very comfy, but Angus had slept on worse. He didn’t even know if he was going to sleep here, the thought of someone finding him while he had dozed off wasn’t something he was very comfortable with. So he waited. 

The time passed slowly over the next few hours. Angus didn’t do a whole lot except wait around, and he could’ve chalked the tediousness of time up to boredom, but it felt more like anticipation or even fear. He tried not to make noise as he listened to the sounds of people moving about on the ship and tried to remember their names and jobs. He had honestly never really paid that much attention to the actual people on this mission, having been more interested in their goal. He knew the captain’s name was Davenport and the lead researcher was called Bluejeans, but the other faces didn’t have a name to them, they were just blurs in the background, something you only ever notice if you’re looking for it. And Angus hadn’t really been looking. He knew one of them was a journalist, and two were scientists working under Bluejeans. They had a fighter for extra protection, he remembered, and a biologist too, but he couldn’t put names or jobs to the other faces.

He was going through his bag for a granola bar when he felt the ship descend. Chancing another glance out the small window, he could see a small clearing that Captain Davenport seemed to be landing in. He must have decided to get a look at this strange place from the ground as well as from the air, and Angus supposed that was a logical course of action. He wanted to go out and ask what was going on, but he couldn’t bring himself to leave his unintentional hiding spot just yet. He also knew that the longer he waited the harder it would be when he actually decided to make his presence known to the group. So he could make himself known right then, or he could wait until he was discovered. He decided on the latter option as that was the easiest.

He had some of his favorite books with him for entertainment, a notebook so he could write his thoughts and speculations about the crew down, and about 4 different pens so he was set on the entertainment front. As far as company, well, he had no choice but to keep to himself now, so he supposed he would just have to deal with that fact for the time being, not that he was particularly itching to go introduce himself to the crew. I mean, what would even say to them: ‘hey I’m not supposed to be here but i snuck onto your ship so here I am! Whoopsie!’? No that sounded ridiculous, even if it was pretty much exactly what had happened to get him in this situation. The whole thing couldn’t possibly get any worse, though, so Angus just sighed and pulled out a book and tried his absolute best to read it even though the words were swimming on the page in front of him. 

It became clear, after Angus found himself reading the same sentence for the tenth time, that he wasn’t going to get any reading done, so he shut the book and put it back in his bag. His head was swimming with so many thoughts and worries that he was honestly surprised how well he was handling everything. Sure, he couldn’t even begin to process what he saw happen to his home mere hours ago, but maybe that was a good thing? If he wasn’t able to really understand what had happened, then he might not have to really ‘process’ what he saw happen. It wasn’t exactly a good thought, but at least it gave him some small bit of comfort.

But what he really wanted to do was to do something. He had always had trouble being still when there was so much to learn. Now especially he was finding it difficult. He was in some strange world he knew nothing about, and he wanted to know everything about it! The knowledge was right there, just off of this ship, just outside of that door, just outside of his reach and that was more infuriating than anything. He hoped he didn’t have to wait too long for someone to find him.

Two days.

He only had to wait two days before someone opened the door to that small bedroom and found him inside. He had been reading again, finally able to put his busy mind at rest for long enough to focus on reading. He had, of course, already read this particular book before, but it was his favorite so he was reading it again. He had been so engrossed in its pages that he hadn’t even heard the loud voice call out that he was going to check the spare bedroom, he hadn’t even noticed the heavy footsteps approaching and, by the time the door was swinging open, it was already too late. Angus looked up, eyes wide and body rigid with panic, and was met with a friendly looking face that quickly morphed into an expression of confusion. 

“Uh, Cap’nport?” He called, and Angus took note of the roughness of his voice. He couldn’t do anything but sit there unmoving while the man stared back at him. “Did we bring a kid with us?” Angus stayed rooted to his spot as this guy, the fighter he guessed from the look of him, though looks can tend to be decieving, continued to call out to his captain. “What’re you doing here, little dude, what’s your name?” Angus startled a bit when the man addressed him, how was he supposed to respond to that?

He had barely stammered out a single word when the captain showed up in the doorway, asking something along the lines of “What the hell are you talking about, Magnus?” and then, “oh,” when he too noticed Angus, still sitting really stiff with his book in his hands. The captain, Davenport, Angus remembered, stepped into the room then, and Angus couldn’t help but notice the caution in his movements, almost like he wasn’t sure if Angus was a threat or not. The very idea of Angus looking even remotely threatening was laughable, he was just a little boy! How was that threatening? Davenport cleared his throat some before asking, an edge of professionalism and coldness to his voice that reminded Angus vividly of how his father would speak to him, except his father always looked at Angus as if he were a filthy animal, Davenport just looked distant, “Are you from this plane?”

Angus shook his head ‘no’, his words leaving him as a subconscious wave of fear flooded him.

“Are you from… our plane?” Davenport asked now, and Angus thought there was a measure of… hope in his tone. Angus nodded, and was surprised to see Davenport heave a sigh of relief and visibly relax, offering Angus a small smile underneath his moustache. “What’s your name, kid?”

“My name- uh- my name is Angus, sir,” He managed to say, his voice slightly rough after two days of no use. 

“Well, Angus,” Davenport said, “welcome to the Starblaster.”

Angus sat uncomfortably on the large couch in the lounge half an hour later. He was to meet and be introduced to the rest of the crew when Lup, Taako and Barry got back from their short expedition into the surrounding forest. Magnus had already introduced himself, and Angus was slightly put off by just how friendly he was. He had been sure everyone would be angry that he was here, but Magnus and Captain Davenport just seemed… relieved. Angus couldn’t understand why they would be relieved, he wasn’t supposed to be here! He was a stowaway! He didn’t even know these people so what was there to be relieved about? The whole concept was strangely foreign to him and he wasn’t sure what to do with the information, so he opted to just sit quietly and wait for someone else to say something.

Magnus and Davenport stood by the door, their voices were low so angus couldn’t make out what they were saying, but he knew it was about him. They were probably deciding what to do with him. Deciding if they should kick him out and leave him to fend for himself in this world none of them knew the first thing about. He wouldn’t blame them if that's what they ended up doing, he could handle himself on his own anyway so he wouldn’t have too much of an issue. But just the thought of being kicked out filled him with an odd sense of broken trust and betrayal that he didn’t understand because he didn’t know these people.  

He watched as Captain Davenport pulled out a stone of farspeech and said something into it, he didn’t bother listening to what was said, he assumed the captain was just calling everyone into the lounge so they could discuss what to do with him with the full team present. Angus supposed that was fine and shifted his weight a little uncomfortably.

“Hey, cheer up, Ango!” Magnus said and Angus noticed him coming closer now. He chose to ignore the nickname for the time being. “We’re not getting rid of you if that’s what you’re thinking,” Angus just looked at his cheerful face in confusion.

“We’ll talk more when Barry and the twins get back,” Davenport supplied, “Lucretia and Merle should be making their way in here now.” Sure enough, a minute later two more people entered the room. There was a human woman (maybe in her early twenties?), with long, curly white hair and darker skin and a dwarven man (older Angus guessed, but he really didn’t know what was considered to be ‘old’ by dwarf standards), with a long grey beard and similarly dark skin. The dwarf wore a garish floral print button down shirt under his bright red IPRE jacket, a combination that gave Angus a bit of a headache if he looked at it for too long. The woman wore a simple black shirt and brown slacks under her red IPRE robe, a much more pleasing-to-the-eye combination if Angus were to say. And both stopped dead in their tracks when they saw Angus sitting on the couch.

“Uh, Dav?” The dwarf, Merle, said, “why the fuck is there a kid on the ship?” Angus dropped his eyes to the floor, not wanting to look anyone in the face. Davenport said something about waiting for the others but Angus didn’t hear it, his head was swimming and he felt like he shouldn’t be there, because honestly he shouldn’t have been there, not really. He was only there because his curiosity got the better of him yet again and his desire for knowledge decided to ignore all consequences of his actions. But it was better than being dead he assumed.

Lucretia, Merle, Davenport and Magnus talked for a bit, but Angus wasn’t listening. If they had tried to get him to talk he didn’t know, he was so lost in his mind. The events leading up to this moment were replaying in his mind on loop. He still wasn’t sure how he had spent near to three hours staring at the Bond Engine, it felt like it had only been ten minutes. The only thing that came to mind as an explanation was that, because it was powered by bonds, maybe it sensed his bond to the people on this ship and sped up his perception of time to ensure he came on this mission with the crew. He wasn’t even sure if that was a thing the engine could do considering his base level knowledge of bond theory, they don’t teach you much about that particular topic in school so he only knew the very basic level details.

“Angus?” a voice questioned and a hand was placed on his shoulder. Angus flinched back violently and looked up to see the human woman from earlier, Lucretia, looking at him in concern. There were three other people in the room now too that angus hadn’t heard come in. A human man with mousy brown hair, square glasses and wearing a white tee-shirt, jeans and a red robe (Angus recognized him as Bluejeans), and two elves that looked nearly identical except one was male and the other was female, Angus didn’t know their names. Lucretia looked a bit startled by how Angus had recoiled from her and drew her hand back. “Sorry,” she apologized meekly before “but you weren’t answering the question.”

“Sor- sorry, ma’am,” he managed to say, hating how small his voice sounded in that moment, “I didn’t uh, I didn’t hear the question,”

“I had asked what you were doing on the ship and how you got here,” Davenport said. He was standing in a very professional pose but his voice remained calm and almost kind. Angus took in the other faces around the room before answering. Lucretia sat next to him on the couch, a journal opened in front of her and a pen at the ready, Magnus stood not too far away, an excited grin plastered on his face and Angus guessed he was always smiling, Bluejeans looked nervous but there was also a curious glint in his eye. Angus couldn’t get a good reading on the elves, their faces were carefully blank. Slowly Angus began to tell his story.

“I’m sorry,” he said, falling back on apologies as a way to try and make the truth seem less like what it was, “but I wanted to see the Bond Engine and how it works and you didn’t really go over it in any of the press conferences. So, I decided that if I sneaked onto the ship, then maybe I’d be able to get a better look at the engine, and I did! It’s really cool, by the way, and I still don’t understand exactly how it works, but I think it did something weird to me because I was staring at it for three hours? I didn’t mean to stay on the ship, but by the time I snapped out of it you guys were boarding and I had no way of leaving without someone seeing me so I- I hid? And I know I shouldn’t have done that but I-” he faltered then, realizing he was rambling, and he felt his face go flush before he looked down again muttered an “I’m sorry.”

He shouldn’t have opened his mouth. If he had just stayed quiet then maybe they wouldn’t be staring at him with their faces contorted into expressions of pity. He didn’t even know what there was to be pitied, he literally broke into their ship and flew into space with them without their knowledge just because he wanted to know more about the stupid Bond Engine. He chanced a glance up at the surrounding faces. The two elves had looks of mild amusement on their faces which Angus found vaguely concerning, Magnus was grinning for some reason, Merle seemed to be similarly amused (again, why? Had he said something funny?), Lucretia had on a smile that Angus thought looked sad but he could just have been reading it wrong. He glanced then to Barry and Davenport, both of whom seemed to be having a silent conversation and Angus felt his anxiety start rising again. But Davenport nodded and Barry smiled.

“Angus,” Barry addressed him, “you said you were interested in bond theory?”

Chapter Text

They were the only humanoids on the planet. That much was apparent right away. They didn’t know if the animals that did inhabit this plane would be hostile toward the team so they only went out on short expeditions to explore and gather information for now. Angus wasn’t allowed to go with them just yet as his strength was knowledge and not combat or magic. It wasn’t that he wasn’t allowed out because he didn’t know how to defend himself at all , no, Davenport had explained that it was because his understanding and capabilities were very basic and chances of him surviving should things get dicey were very slim. And, yeah, Angus got that, he did, it was the logical course of action, but it still hurt. He still wanted to be able to explore and learn about this world firsthand and not just from what Barry or Lup or Magnus relayed to him from their expeditions. 

He really did try to be grateful that they weren’t kicking him off the ship, and he tried to be grateful at how easily he seemed to slot into their routine, like he was meant to be there in the first place. And he was, so it wasn’t that hard to pretend, in fact he didn’t have to pretend at all, that’s how easy it was. But he just couldn’t help but feel like an intruder. Like he wasn’t meant to be there, not really, even if the Bond Engine seemed to think he was. Because you’re not supposed to be here, he reminded himself, you’re only here because you snuck onto the ship and lost track of the time.

That was still bothering Angus too, the Bond Engine. How and why did it seem to think he belonged there? If his working theory was correct, then the Engine had somehow slowed down his perception of time and made him think three hours was twenty minutes to keep him on the Starblaster. What he didn’t know was how it could do that. Was it a one time thing? Could they replicate that scenario? If it was a one time thing would everyone just think he was crazy for coming up with a theory like this? He supposed he could ask Barry or Davenport about his theories, but he wasn’t sure how to bring it up in conversation, so he opted to remain silent. If it ever seemed relevant then he’d bring it up, but for now the reason Angus was here was the least of their concerns. 

They had spotted the Light of Creation, the tool used to build the Starblaster, fall from the sky the evening of the day they found Angus, and then, mere hours later, the sky turned dark and across it flashed these bright white eyes for a fraction of a second. Barry and the twins immediately jumped to start triangulating the Light’s heading, shooting questions back and forth, asking what the Light was doing here, how it got here, why it was here at all. Was it a coincidence? Eventually Davenport decided that whatever the case, the crew needed to retrieve it before anyone else on this planet, animal or not, could lay their hands on it.

It was a day about a three and a half months into their stay on this bizarre world, while Angus was out foraging for berries with Barry and Magnus (the twins wanted to make some sort of pie or tart with all the cool fruit here but Angus hadn’t gotten much more out of them than that as they were pretty cagey around everyone except for each other) that he brought up the question that had been plaguing him since before the ship even launched.

“Why am I even here..?” He asked, not really intending to speak his thoughts out loud, but sometimes they found their way out no matter how hard he tried to keep them in. He sucked in a sharp breath as soon as the sentence left his mouth and he could feel his face start to heat up in embarrassment.

“What was that little dude?” Magnus questioned casually as he threw a handful of these really vibrant pink berries into one of the baskets they brought outside with them. Angus ducked his head further as he felt the heat move down his neck. He hadn’t meant to say that out loud and now they were all going to think of him as ungrateful and he didn’t want that.

“Uh, nothing!” He said in lieu of an answer.

“Mmm, didn’t sound like ‘nothing’ to me, did it sound like ‘nothing’ Barold?” Magnus shifted the question over to Barry who glanced up nervously, his eyes darting around in search of something. In search of a way out, some escape route, Angus deduced, but he also deduced that Barry had decided he was better off answering from the way he sighed and his shoulders slumped slightly. 

“We’re not gunna, uh, we’re not going to chew you out or anything, Angus,” he settled on saying, “we’re kinda all we have right now, so, you can say what's on your mind.” Magnus said something else encouraging from Angus’ other side, but the boy was too busy trying to think of a way out of this to really pay attention.

“It’s nothing,” he mumbled again, plucking a weird blue and green berry from a nearby bush.

“Aw, c’mon, Ango!” Magnus persisted, slinging an arm over the boys narrow shoulders in a friendly manner, but also in a gesture that said ‘I’m not laying off until you tell me what’s going on.’ Angus kind of hated that but he was smart enough to know when he wasn’t getting out of a situation no matter how hard he might have tried.

“It’s just,” he began, but where do you even begin with a subject like this? His feeling of wrongness? His feeling of rightness? His fear that this was all some huge mistake that’s going to come back to bite them very, very soon? His questions about the Bond Engine? About what it could possibly do? He didn’t know, but he supposed it would be easiest to start simple. Work from small to big. That’s how he liked to do his detective work: start with one clue, work your way up and watch the picture get bigger and bigger until it fully took form. It was a starting point if nothing else. “I shouldn’t be here.”

Magnus and Barry exchanged a look that told Angus they’d had this conversation before, when he wasn’t around to witness it happening, and that put a sour taste in his mouth that he couldn’t quite put a name to. It was like it was fine for him to have that thought, but as soon as everyone else acknowledged it too it was like a magic missile to the chest. Barry sighed then and adjusted his glasses on the bridge of his nose.

“Angus,” he began and, though he still had that nervous air around him, he seemed to be confident in this discussion. It was maybe a very subtle thing to notice, but angus was good at picking up subtleties, that was his job as a detective. “None of us think that that’s true.”

“What?” Angus cut him off before he could continue his thought, “how can that not be true? I literally snuck, unauthorized onto the ship and hid in that empty bedroom until you launched! I’m pretty sure that makes it quite clear how much I’m not supposed to be here!” He waved his hands as he spoke, shrugging Magnus’ arm off of his shoulder in the process, in an attempt to convey just how very much not supposed to be there he was.

“Yeah, that is true, Ango,” Magnus continued, “but you’re here now right?” 

“And, besides, you said you were examining the Bond Engine for three hours right? And that it only felt like twenty minutes?” Angus nodded along as Barry spoke, “Well, we don’t really know all of the Engine’s capabilities, maybe it sensed that you could have a strong bond with our team and altered your perception of time to make it so you had no choice but to come with us.” Barry paused to let this sink in, and as Angus thought about it, it was pretty much exactly what his working theory had been, but that didn’t mean he didn’t feel out of place.

Angus opened his mouth to say something then, but the words didn’t come out. They had already had this conversation and still wanted him here? He thought for sure that there would be at least a small amount of resentment from the crew at his being there, but, honestly he was glad that this conversation had been so… easy. He supposed he shouldn't have been surprised that Barry would lean on logic and facts for his argument, as logic and facts were where Angus was most comfortable, and he supposed that he shouldn’t have been surprised when he found himself believing what the wizard was telling him. All in all, Barry was probably the best person to have this conversation with him, Lucretia and Davenport a close second and third. He felt himself smile then, and his gaze dropped to the forest floor as he idly plucked a berry from the bush and put it into the basket. Magnus and Barry seemed to sense that the conversation was over then as Magnus quickly dove head first into talking about his latest sparring session with Lup.

They brought their berries inside half an hour later after collecting a good two baskets of them and set them on the small kitchen table before going and washing the berry gunk off of their hands in the sink. 

“Aw, dope! You got the berries!” Lup cheered as she entered the small kitchen, blonde hair pulled back into a high ponytail and showing off  her undercut, Angus noticed Taako following close behind, his face a mask of boredom and nonchalance. Angus often found himself wondering what was going on behind that mask, it seemed to perfectly placed, to, what was the word? Brittile? No not quite that… he couldn’t place a finger on it but he knew he’d be able to see past it sooner or later, he’s a detective, it’s his job to know people and what they were thinking. 

“Yup!” Magnus responded to Lup, his face morphed into a buoyant smile, “we weren’t sure how much you wanted though, so we decided the more the better!”

“Well there should be plenty, thanks guys,” she smiled at them all, reaching the small distance to ruffle Angus’ hair despite the boy's protests. “Oh! Barry!” She said then, as if the thought just occurred to her, “Ko and I were going to try and make some more progress with that mongoose family before it gets too dark, you wanna come?” Barry agreed and the trio made their way outside again, leaving Angus alone with Magnus. 

Angus liked Magnus, he was funny and rowdy and liked to mess around with him in a way that reminded him of how an older brother might mess around with his younger brother. Angus hadn’t grown up with any siblings but he liked to imagine it would have been something like this. But right now he just wanted to go over more of their notes on the Light so he’d be prepared for when they got it. They just had to wait for Davenport to get back with Merle from their trip to track its heading. The crew was fairly positive they knew where it would be and, should the captain and Merle have tracked its location properly, they should be back within the next week or two.

Angus headed to the lab to go over some notes.

 Davenport and Merle came back a week and a half later, with the news that they knew where the Light was. It was being used by a group of animals which essentially functioned as this planet’s leaders. The Power Bear, the Wisdom Owl and the Instinct Wolf. All their group had to do was negotiate a way to retrieve the Light.

“Easy enough, right?” Merle commented after he and Davenport finished giving their report.

“I don’t know, Merle,” Lucretia spoke cautiously, and Angus noticed she had stopped writing for the first time since she’d come in the room, “I think we’re going to have to be careful about how we approach this one,”

“C’mon Creesh,” Taako spoke up now from his spot on the small couch where he leaned on Lup’s side, playing with a lock of her hair and only appearing mildly interested in the conversation, but Angus could tell from the way his ears twitched occasionally that he was, in fact, fully engaged. “What’s the worst that can happen?”

“Yeah!” Magnus joked now, “not like this meeting’s going to be the end of the word!” 

Lucretia bit her lip but said nothing.

It turned out things could go very, very badly, but it didn’t happen right away. They had several meetings with the Royal Beasts to discuss negotiations with acquiring the Light from them and they were reluctant to agree. It was close to a year on this planet when they were in one of these meetings, and Angus swore they were close to getting it, maybe not this meeting, but the next one for sure!

The Bear was quite fond of them because he had been training with Magnus (Angus couldn’t claim to be surprised when the fighter had said he wanted to train with the bear), and was on the IPRE’s side for most of the negotiation. Angus actually thought they were going to get somewhere this time! But then the sky darkened and everyone was put on edge. It looked like it was sure to storm, but the clouds overhead didn’t move and the world was plunged into grayscale. 

It was difficult to keep track of what was happening after the first inky black tendril shot down from the sky. They rushed back to the Starblaster then. They didn’t have the Light but that didn’t matter, they just needed to leave. 

Angus tried to stay with the group, but in the panic of all the animals he got separated. He didn’t know which way the Starblaster was and his thinking was too irrational and panicked to reason his way around his situation. He could feel the tears coming then, they prickled at the corners of his eyes and stung. A deer ran into him and knocked him to the ground then and he felt his breath get knocked out of him momentarily. Where was everybody? Why was this happening? He closed his eyes then, fully expecting to die from this… this thing that was attacking them. But he didn’t die. He did feel something though. Like a string just below his navel pulling him toward something. He didn’t know what it meant, but he stood up and followed it anyway. His legs shook terribly as he ran in the direction it pulled him, but he didn’t look back because he could see it now, plane as day: the Starblaster.

“Angus!” A voice was calling and it sounded frantic and panicked. “Magnus!” The voice called again and Angus recognized it now. Lup. Angus didn’t respond though, his words refused to work, but he ran in the direction of that voice as fast as his legs could carry him and soon she saw him too. Her face lit up and she rushed to meet him at the ship, slinging spells at the inky black army as it attempted to move in on them. Lup pulled Angus on board and shunted him behind her. “Go inside!” She told him, “I’ll do what I can out here!”

“But-!” 

“Go!” And Angus went inside the ship. 

He wasn’t sure if Magnus ever made it on board, but he knew that even if he didn’t he wouldn’t have survived for long down there and he felt a tear finally escape his eye. Taako and Barry and Lup and Merle were still attempting to fight off this foe even as Davenport brought the ship into the sky, Lucretia at his side, while Angus stood inside the ship and tried not to panic over the potential loss of his friend.

They were barely out of the planar system before strings of light began to rip them apart as the Bond Engine whirred. Tiny threads of bright white ripped them apart and sewed them back together and… Angus was back in his bedroom on the Starblaster. Exactly where he had been at the start of this year, but not where he was just moments ago.

He stumbled to his feet and out onto the deck in a hurry. Magnus was there, alive. They all were, but Magnus had a black eye and they all appeared to be just as confused as Angus was.

“I think,” Magnus began, “something weird is going on here.”