The next day at school, Cassie was sitting on a bench outside kicking her feet, her eyes were downward and she was pouting slightly when Larson approached her.

“What are you doing?” He asked.

She didn’t even glance over at the voice that spoke to her, “Do you think Roman is lonely at the house?” Cassie spoke.

Larson crossed his arms, “He wasn’t lonely before he was pissing in my home, so I really doubt it.”

Cassie looked at Larson as he sat beside her, “He just needs some home training! He’s still a puppy so relax, he won’t be doing that anymore soon.” She affirmed.

“How do you even know what breed he is?”

“Because I love dogs! He’s a Boxer… plus I looked it up to be sure.”

Larson just shook his head at her, “Either way, the damage is already done and I have to buy carpet cleaner… or remove the carpet.”

“That latter option sounds like the way to go!”

“Are you gonna do it? Because it seems like you only pick options that involves you doing no work!” She smiled at him confirming what he said, “I swear-” Larson reached to grab her neck, but Cassie reacted and tried to resist him.

“It’s not like that, you’re the one who said it!”

“Yeah, with the hope you wouldn’t say what I was thinking you would!” They struggled for a bit until they heard someone call them which ceased their fighting.

“Sorry if I’m interrupting something.” Jax approached them and gave a soft smile to the pair.

Cassie took this chance and ran behind Jax, Larson sighed and got up.

“He’s trying to kill me, Jax!” Jax just chuckled and didn’t move, allowing Cassie to hide behind him. Cassie stuck her head to the side and spoke. “D-don’t you hurt him just to hurt me!”

“I’m not gonna hurt you so calm down.” Larson sighed. She still remained behind Jax. “But, did you find out anything?” Larson said, looking at Jax.

“Yeah, my mom thinks my grandparent’s place might have a few books that they kept, but other than that my grandfather was really secretive, so she doubts if he even gave anyone anything.”

“Not to insult your family, but what’s the point of having years of research if you wouldn’t keep it or share it with anyone?”

“I said she doubts, I never said for sure. I remember my grandfather telling me a little bit about his research and one thing for sure is that all of his research is somewhere. I just have to think or find out where he would put it; but for now, I know my grandmother should still have at least five of his books in her house. I asked my mom to have her send them to us, they should be here in a week or so.” Jax explained.

“Good, in the meantime we can spend time trying to get to Pluto.”

“Was that the planet you guys found stuff on?”

Larson nodded, “Yeah, NASA had a blurry image of something that looked human that was dated about fifty years ago. So that’s our best lead.”

Cassie finally moved from behind Jax, “Lars says we have to get enough speed and jump in the direction of Pluto!”

“You think you two really can?”

“I don’t know about her, but for sure I can run and pick up some considerable speed.”

“Well, you need a bit more than that.”

“Isn’t that inertia and stuff?” Jax chuckled at Cassie's remark.

“Yeah, it’s Physics.” He reached in his bag and pulled out a notebook, “I can figure this out for you guys, but I need some numbers.”

“Whatever you need, we’ll deliver!” Cassie said.

Jax nodded, “I don’t have class right now today, so if you guys want, we can get this done and I can work on the calculations later. Then when school’s over we can test my theory.” They simply nodded to Jax. He then wrote down something on two pieces of paper and handed them to the pair. “Alright, then I need your weight and your height. While you’re getting that, I’ll look into air resistance on humans.”

“Are you sure the government won’t be concerned about what you’re looking up?” Cassie asked.

“I don’t know if that’s even true or not, but I’ll just be looking up drag forces. I’m assuming something already, but you guys have to get some serious speed because essentially you two need to float upward for as long as you can.”

“So it’s not forward momentum?”

“If anything that might get in the way," He said to Larson, "So yes, it’s more perpetual motion than anything else.”

Cassie began to groan, they both looked to her and saw her rubbing her temples, “Uh, so it’s a bunch of science and math stuff… right?”

“Yeah and don’t worry, you won’t have to worry about actually calculating any of it, or even understanding it. I’ll figure it out and just tell you what you guys have to do.”

Cassie nodded, “Still, all this talk about big numbers and big formulas is giving me a headache.”

“Then think about Roman.”

Cassie instantly perked up and giggled.

“Who’s Roman?” Jax asked.

“He’s a dog she forced me to take in.”

“Oh, because dogs are really in tune to phenomena like you guys?”

Cassie chimed in, “See? He got it and I didn’t even have to say anything.”

Larson rolled his eyes, “Shut up, let’s just hurry up and give him the numbers he needs.”

Larson took Cassie and began to drag her off despite her protests otherwise. Jax just chuckled and sat down to get to work on understanding drag forces.

...

They eventually came back with the numbers he needed.

“Oh, and don’t tell Lars my weight.”

“You think I-” He stopped and just let out a large breath.

“She is still a girl Lars.”

“You’re both idiots. Look, unlike these humans I could care less about someone’s weight!”

“Still, don’t tell him my weight.” Cassie restated.

Jax nodded to her. Larson just glared at her, so Jax tried to distract them, “Well, I have a good handle on the drag formula. I was gonna ask my teacher to proof it a bit though.”

“They won’t think anything of it will they?”

“No, if I say it’s something from a show, they’ll just think it’s like a GameTheory or something.”

Cassie giggled at that.

“Okay, then we’ll meet back up after school.” Larson said.

“I think I know a good place where you guys can go to test out your speed, but it’ll be better if we go there as soon as we can.”

Larson looked to Cassie, “So you better not be late!” Larson said angrily to her.

Cassie smiled and nodded, “I’ll be out early don’t worry!”

…

By the time school was over Cassie was on time and they were driving to the location Jax mentioned. Cassie was looking out the window and soon her and Larson realized they were going to a track.

“You mean no one comes here to work out?” Cassie asked as she leaned forward in the backseat.

“Not that I know of, and even if they do, normally people go home once it starts to get dark out because there’s no lights anywhere near here.”

“So how are we supposed to see then?” Larson asked.

“We’ll use my high beams, don’t worry.” He kept driving until he eventually got to a good spot and he turned off the car. Cassie got up first and began to run around the area for a bit. Larson and Jax remained by the car to talk. “Okay, I can just tell you the actual numbers, but for Cassie I’ll use a demonstration.”

Larson nodded and listened to Jax and his explanation.

Cassie was running and jumping around until she thought about something.

“Wait!” She yelled to them both; and either she was too far away for them to hear or they were ignoring her. She huffed and looked to the sky. “Jax said we have to launch off in that direction… so does that mean we’ll fall in the same direction too?” Cassie was curious and decided to ask him. She went over to them and caught him on the tail end of their conversation. “Hey, how are we gonna get back on Earth?”

“Good question. That’s up to you guys. If what Lars said is true, then reentry isn’t going to be a problem; but if you land somewhere you’re unfamiliar with it might be hard to get back to here. I’ve told all this to Lars, so you guys should pretty much back in the same area you left at. Hopefully, I’m right and it’s not anywhere near people.”

“You really thought all this through Jax!”

“Well, this does interest me.” He said, Cassie smiled at him, “Anyways, I’ve told all the numbers to Lars, but I’ll explain it differently to you Cassie.”

“I’m glad you understand that numbers mean nothing to me.”

He smiled, “I figured as much,” Jax then took out a small ball on a string, “Essentially, what you two need to do is what this ball is doing.” He then spun the ball as fast as he could before letting it go. They watched as it went a bit away from them, he went and got it. “The faster I spin this the further it’ll go.” He spun it once more, but did it slower this time and it didn’t go as far once he released it. Once more, he got it and began to spin it as fast as he could. “You guys have to get this fast for your height and mass, which is a lot in comparison to this little ball.” They both nodded to him, he stopped spinning it and spoke to them. “For now though, I wanna see how fast you two actually can go.”

“You’re gonna use a radar gun on us?” Cassie asked in an excited tone.

“Sorry if you wanted all this to be fancy and what not, but you can measure someone’s speed by taking how long it took to get to one location over the distance. In this case, this is a standard track, so if we go from the same point every time and get back to that point I’ll be able to measure how fast you guys are going.”

“Man, more numbers?” Cassie complained.

“She’s never gonna get over this, let’s just give him a test run already.” Larson spoke as he walked over to the starting point.

Cassie skipped over and Jax looked around before finding a broken part of the bleachers. He took the board and set it down in front of them.

“Okay, on my mark, run back to this point.” They nodded and got ready to run, “Three, two, one!” They took off and Larson was back. “Time!” Jax yelled, Cassie was a second behind him and groaned.

“How are you so fast?” Cassie complained to him.

“Unlike you, I don’t waste my time doing nothing all day."

“Hey, I do productive stuff… sometimes.”

“Key word there.”

Cassie and him were cut off when Jax spoke up, “Woah…" They looked to him, "I-I really didn’t think you guys would be this fast.” Jax seemed baffled, but he was able to regain himself, “So, uh, you guys ran approximately four hundred meters in two seconds… or three seconds for Cassie.” She pouted, “But that means you guys can run at 200 mph!”

“Okay, now that means something to me. How cool is that?” Cassie said jumping around.

“So what will we have to do to reach your theoretical number?” Larson said.

“I didn’t even think about exhaustion, but hopefully you guys have good stamina because you’ll have to run like that for an hour… and now that I’m thinking about it, it’d be good if you guys could use some kind of outside force to push you.”

“You mean like launching us or something?”

Jax nodded, “But we’ll consider that a last stitch effort, I think you guys can do it just by jumping alone for right now.”

“I think we should see how long Cassie can run for first though. She’ll be the biggest issue.”

She gave an annoyed look to Larson, “You’re so mean to me.” Larson rolled his eyes, “I’m not the best runner, but I don’t like to lose, so if Lars is running with me, I’ll be sure to pull out something that’ll be sure to help me!” She declared.

"That's perfect," Jax said, "Now we’ll be moving onto test number two: stamina!”