This should probably be a more momentous experience than it feels to be. Though, I suppose a part of the reason I feel no powerful emotions at the sight, is the fact that I’ve not been all that dedicated to getting myself back here.

Earth isn’t going to solve any of my problems for me. It’s just one more backwater planet in a wider universe, another rock on the side of the road. It only means something to me, because I just happened to be born here.

That doesn’t mean it’s worthless. The creativity, and technology that we have here creates human resources that are valuable, even if others mightn’t see it. Wally, a half-prepared kid with a laptop computer, managed to create guns from schematics he had to rework from their foundation.

There’s talent here, I just need to give people the mana they need to shine in the wider universe.

Absorbing the sight of that large blue marble, I let the moment pass. It’s something familiar, but seen from a new angle, comforting, but reminding me of anxieties that I thought I’d left behind.

This isn’t the sort of challenge that I’ve faced before. I’m not going to crash into the middle of a war and fight my way out… and on the odd chance that I do, I’m confident in my ability to take a bullet or two. So long as it isn’t a magic bullet, that is.

“So, that’s your homeworld?” The captain asks, “Dry as my wife at the sight of me. With these mana levels, are you sure there’ll be something interesting here for trade?”

“Honestly, I’d prefer to keep it all to myself.” I say, “I won’t complain if you leave disappointed in my home. It’ll take a bit of work and polish to get anything here working out in the wider universe.”

“Yeah…” The captain doesn’t seem all that interested, but we’ll see if that changes when he sees more of it. “So are you girls flying down, or you pointing us to a landing grounds? You have another landing marker for me to lock in on?”

“Yeah, Nel packed one in there.” I say. “And ah… I mean… Can we fly down there?”

Vii hops up into the air before I can say a thing to stop her. With a flap of her wings, she summons powerful winds around her and flies out into the open space beyond the boundary of the ship. As soon as she breaks out of the barrier, which doesn’t block her passage at all, she flies.

From a gentle glide, to a bullet’s flight, she moves fast enough that I lose sight of her in the half a moment it takes for her to speed up. Before I can even let my worries settle in, she’s back again, moving her wings as if in flight, ignoring all common sense that I thought I’d already long lost.

“Magic.” I say, rubbing my head at the sight of her flying through space. I can already string together a few explanations, largely to do with her talent for wind magic, and her high relative mana density protecting her from the harmful effects of the vacuum.

It still bothers me.

“I think Vii might want to fly us down.” I say, trying to keep my calm as I try to figure out how to do this with some measure of safety.

“Well, I’ll be back in a week. Just have that marker set, and I’ll be there.”

“Alright.” I say, my brain no longer working.

“Let’s fly!” Vii says, spinning in the air as she offers one wing towards me as if to take me to a dance. “If you do that weightless thing, I can carry you along really easily. It’ll be fun!”

“How sure were you that you could breathe out there?” I ask, looking out into the vast nothingness and the distant stars beyond.

“Breathe?” She asks, tilting her head cutely.

“So…?”

“I make wind, apparently it works out here a little bit. We only need to hold our breaths for a few minutes until we get down to the planet. It’ll be fine.”

“Do you want me to drop you off?” The captain asks, chuckling at the two of us.

“Fly us a little closer and we’ll jump.” I say, “We’ve done that much before. Oh, and that island over there, if you don’t mind.”

“Aye, aye.” He replies, and again, I have some concerns regarding Chip’s translations that I refuse to voice. The sounds he’s making are awfully cheerful and relaxed, even as he gets his crew to fly us a little closer to Earth.

“Aww.” Vii slumps down to the deck at my side. “It’s fun flying up here. There’s absolutely nothing stopping me or slowing me at all, and there’s not even any oomph behind the pressure either, since there’s no mana here.”

“When we both have solutions to the breathing issue, then we can look at returning.” I say, as we break into the upper atmosphere. The ship flies with almost no regards for all the advanced mathematics that rocket scientists need to figure out, it’s pretty much just point and go.

When we’re close enough that I can probably breath, and navigate my way, through extensive experience with google maps, I hang off the side of the ship. Vii clings to the ship by my side, her eyes sparkling bright as she gazes down at this new adventure to come.

Vertigo places my attention firmly on my sense of gravity, a gentle but insistent tug at my flesh, pulling me back home.

On my first real adventure away from Earth, if I can bear to describe it so kindly, I was offered a choice not unlike this one. Either I stay on the ship, or I jump.

I know that I could choose the easy path this time, and it won’t lead to me dying. I could get a ride all the way home, but it doesn’t feel right at this point, after everything we’ve been through, taking the easy road here seems the wrong choice.

At this point, the fall is just part of the adventure, and the terror just another thing I have to pretend that I don’t feel.

“Ready?” Vii stands at my side. This time, I’m not alone, and I’m not without wings.

I close my eyes, take a deep breath.

“Ready.”

I fall.

Vii catches my extended arms with her talons, a firm grip but without cutting me. I remove my weight, and her wind wraps us both up as we fall through the atmosphere on a calm summer day. No clouds challenge us, and I can already make out the small shape of the city I call home.

In fact, it’s rushing closer much faster than I was expecting.

“Isn’t this a little too fast?” I ask Vii, my voice easily reaching her through the controlled winds.

“It’s fine. I’m in control. We can stop in a flash.” Vii says, breaking my understanding of physics. Then again, when you jump into a plane, it’s sometimes best just to trust the pilot and hope they know better than you.

The warm winds that wrap us together, push us through the air with such tremendous speed that before I can even take in the moment I’m getting asked for directions.

While I’m sure there are planes flying in the distance, and satellites that we passed on the way down, we didn’t notice any, which is something of a disappointment. I wouldn’t mind waving to someone through the window of a high-altitude flight like a less-heroic, more wide-eyed superman.

Flying fast as a jet, we slow down only because I can’t give her directions fast enough.

It’s strange, few people ever really look up, and though we move with incredible speed, I’m sure that Vii is subduing the sound of our flight. So, with little fanfare, and only a few students on their way home to notice us, we land right outside my apartment building.

“’sup.” I give the students a wave and casually head up the stairs to my apartment building. Leaving before they decide to pull out their phones and record us.

They stare at Vii, but we were at least well prepared enough to get her a cloak to cover her wings, which she’s pulling out now. Her feet? Well, anything that would work to hide them would be uncomfortable for her.

I don’t care to hide that much. This is a backwater planet in a mana dry corner of the universe, who really minds if a couple of billion idiots spread videos online.

We are using our ‘swimming’ Skills to reduce our impact on the world around us though. Really, that ability is much more useful than I was anticipating. It might make us vulnerable, but that’s better than leaving footprints in the pavement.

“Here we are.” I say, staring at the door painted a familiar beige and realizing I don’t have any keys on me. Too impatient to come up with a better solution, I blast the lock with as small of an annihilation spell I can make and push my way in.

“Home sweet home.” I say welcoming Vii inside. I kick a pair of shoes behind the door to keep it shut now that the lock is busted.

The lights flicker on, brightening the dark room. It’s as I remember it, though a little cleaner than I would usually leave it. The fridge is still running, and nothing seems out of place, so I suspect that my brother still lives here even if he’s not home right now.

I go straight to the home phone, a relic that still somehow persists around here by being bundled with the home internet services. I’ll contact my brother and get things moving, we only have a week to get things done here.

“Woah…” Vii looks about the place, blinking as she takes everything in. I’m not sure how much of this technology is genuinely impressive from her perspective, but her eyes certainly sparkle at the sight.

“A bit different from what you were expecting?” I ask.

“I… kind of thought there’d be more. This is your home. The place that you grew up. Future historians would kill to get a look at this place.” She says, poking at the cheap couch in the living room. It’s not that we can’t afford something more, it’s just that no one ever thought to replace it.

If it still works why replace it.

“Well, it’s not like I’m anyone important here.” I say, dialling my brother, while being careful not to break the delicate phone. Even guarding my power with a Skill, I can’t help but see everything around me as delicate.

“But, I mean, you are.” Vii insists. “You’re like, one of the most powerful beings on this world at the moment, if not the most powerful.”

“Huh…” I try to take it in, but the other end of the line picks up before I can think too much about it.

“Kyra, is that you?!” he practically screams over the speaker. I flinch at the desperation in his voice. “You’re back?”

“For a week.” I say. “I lost my keys, so I had to break the lock to get in.”

“I’ll get it replaced. I’m coming home now, wait for me.”

“Don’t you have work?”

“It’s fine. This is more important.” He says, hanging up before we can even talk about it.

“Well, I guess he’s not wrong.” I say, shifting the stuff around in my bag and getting a look at it. A dozen bars of gold that must weigh a good chunk, a collection of crystals filled with mana, reinforced to prevent leaking, and an enchanted marker to summon the trader back to us when the time comes.

Yet, it’s the mana running through my own body that is the most valuable thing that I’ve brought back. I could take a bullet, is what I thought, but…

Relieving the restrictions on my strength just a little bit, I don’t even get the chance to check anything, as my footstep leaves behind cracks in the tile beneath me. I didn’t even release a fraction of my energy.

If mana really makes this much of a multiplicative difference in strength, then perhaps I could even take a blast from a nuke. I mean, I’m not eager to test it, but… that’s interesting.

Taking over the world might be a stretch, considering I only have a week, but I could literally march into whatever country I like and beat up their heads of state. I could just march in there, shrug off their guards and give them a great big wedgie.

Not that I’m going to, but it’s rather nice to know that they can’t do anything to me.

Shaking the thought from my head, I take a peek at what’s in the fridge. It’s not empty, but nothing here catches my interest.

“Hey, Vii. Want to go shopping?” I ask. Turning to her where she stands in the living room poking at the buttons on the tv controller. She’s not yet figured out how to turn it on.

“Oh, yeah. Sounds good.” She says, nervously putting the controller back down and heading over to the entrance. She bounces up and down, while looking all over the place and I feel anxious just looking at her. She definitely seems to be extra nervous today.

“Give me a second to grab some money,” I say. There’s always some money in the house for emergencies, and while I’m not poor at the moment, I don’t think the local grocers have change for a 10-kilo block of gold.

Writing a quick message for my brother in case he returns before we do, I kick the door closed as well as I can without breaking it even worse. We head down the stairs and walk the streets, Vii gawking at every little thing the whole while.

I’m sure she was just as intrigued while flying us in, but I was a little distracted myself at that point in time.

“What’s that?” She asks, pointing at a car driving down the street.

“A car, it burns fuel to spin the wheels.” I say, giving a negligently over-simplified explanation. Vii doesn’t really mind, moving onto the next thing and staring at everything we pass by.

Even with the cloak on, Vii catches a lot of interest from those around us. Some take notice of her feet, more like that of a bird than a human, but they don’t really get up to much apart from pulling out their phones and taking pictures.

The sliding glass door to the shop opens up with the same familiar sounds. The air conditioning blows out over me, and air inside is cool and pleasant, it even smells exactly as I remember it. The aisles are lined up with fruits and vegetables that I can actually put a name to, and the shelves and freezers are filled with familiar brands.

I walk through, leaning on a trolly and pushing it along while throwing in this and that.

Human politics are certainly far from perfect, but this little moment of peace right here and now, is the sort of thing that I want to encourage from my own empire. It’s not that different from what I could feel in the academy, when I wasn’t paranoid about the welfare officers and unspoken rules.

Staring at a pack of potato chips, I realize what I want. It’s not this nostalgia, though it certainly hits home. It’s something bigger, something better.

I want to bring the best parts of Earth to the wider universe, but even more than that I want to see all the different cultures out there and steal the best parts of them too. I want to have a multi-cultural mess, with foods and ideas from all sorts of people and places mixing together in chaotic peace.

“What’s this?” Vii asks, pointing at the ice creams in the freezer.

“You want to try it?” I ask, throwing a few interesting flavours into the trolley. There’s nothing wrong with a binge every now and again, and I probably won’t see these foods again for a long while when I take my leave.

“Kyra?” Vii asks, hovering by my arm. “Aren’t you excited? You’re back home.”

“No, this is just a holiday.” I say, throwing a can of pineapple pieces in on top of the frozen pizzas. “We’ll be back home in a week, and I want to be ready to defend it.”

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Stats and Skills

~Mana Form:

Current mana density: 32,718 / 60,892 units

Current mana volume: 16,262 / 30,266 shards

Mana volume at crystallisation density (Max. mana volume):

Kyra: 30,266 shards

Kyra’s armour: 20,777 shards

Kyra’s throne: 1,109,298 shards

~Forms

Mana Canon

-Annihilation Heart (Adapted)

-Blood Fuel (20,000 mana shards)

-Bone Magic Storage (40,000 mana shards)

-Nail Shifters (50,000 mana shards)

Dancer

-Flash Nerves (8,000 mana shards)

-Quick Perception Mind (Adapted)

-Burst Reflex Muscles (35,000 mana shards)

-Layered space Muscles (80,000 mana shards)

Turtle

-Rebinding Tissue (Adapted)

-Catalyst Sweat Glands (140,000 mana shards)

-Repulsive Skin (80,000 mana shards)

-Prehensile hair (10,000 mana shards)

-Fatty Tissue Blood Storage (100,000 mana shards)

Investigator

-Wide eyes (5,000 mana shards)

-Wide ears (5,000 mana shards)

-Sharp nose (5,000 mana shards)

Misc.

-Clean bowels (Adapted)

~Favourited Skills:

-Tag and Film

-Trapping

-Stealth

-Mana surge movement

-Annihilation defence

-Annihilation flame burst

-Annihilation net

-Eyes of an Empire