When she opened her eyes, the first thing she saw was absolute darkness, as if she had never opened them in the first place.

Did she trick me too?

Then she blinked and saw a woman beside the bed she was laying on, her red hair caught in a shy little ponytail, holding her hand as if it would shatter if she ever let it go.

“Mom?”

Hearing the whisper, Polina turned to her daughter and all the despair creeping around her dissipated under a light of joy.

“Yana!”

With newfound energy she held her tight, almost tearing up from the relief, and muttered how glad she was, knowing she was okay. Yana hugged her back, while her conscious fully set back in place, unburdened of the world she had left behind in her sleep.

When they managed to separate the two of them, two medics made a full exam on Yana’s overall condition to try and determine why she had suddenly woken up without setting off any of the alarms first, and later asked her a couple of questions. Since she said the only thing she felt was a little bit tired, and that she didn’t remember how she had passed out in the first place, they ultimately decided to keep her under surveillance for the night and release her the next day if nothing else came up. Agreeing to such terms, Polina added that she would stay by her daughter’s side, and although she claimed her mother was overreacting and should get some rest in a proper place, Yana couldn’t stop feeling happy that she would be watched over.

While the doctors hauled Polina outside to give her their preliminary conclusions, which amounted to almost nothing, Sara’s mother called to bring her daughter and her friend back to the hospital so that they could all go home, and Sofia and Ricardo’s mother called their housekeeper to check how the afternoon had gone by for them.

“No, Mrs, they didn’t shout today, they stayed downstairs watching a movie, and now they’re on Sofia’s bedroom, playing with the two English boys.”

“Two? Wasn’t there only one?” asked Helena.

“No, Mrs, there are two of them, a short one, a little bit fat, and a taller, blond one.”

“Oh. Did he arrive in the middle of the movie?”

“I’m not sure, Mrs, but he came from downstairs with the kids when they came up, so they probably opened the door for him.”

“I see. I’ll need to ask you to stay a little bit longer, Tania. We’ll be home in about an hour.”

“Alright, I can stay.”

“Thank you. Goodbye.”

Still holding the phone after she had hung up, without being able to take her employer’s reaction from her head, Tania knocked on the bedroom and opened it just enough to stick her head inside and see what they were doing. Sofia, Ricardo, the chubby boy and the strange-faced boy all stared back at her, waiting for her to state her business.

“Está tudo bem, meninos?” the Portuguese nodded, and she turned to the English. “Okay?” she asked sticking out her thumb.

“Yeah, everything’s okay,” answered David while Jack nodded like the siblings had done. With another good look around the room, Tania decided it was best to leave them alone while the mistress didn’t get home and closed the door behind her.

“She knows something’s not right,” Jack said while Linvios popped up from its invisibility perched on his shoulder, and carefully analysed his lightly pointed ear.

“There isn’t much she can do about it,” David replied.

Once Lissandra touched Yana’s forehead the television screen turned black and the Nightstar’s consistent humming stopped. In the next moment Jack blinked into the room and landed on his back at the top of the coffee table. Grunting, he took his hand to his forehead, feeling more drained than he had ever felt before, before looking up and checking where did the three distinct signatures in front of him belonged to. His gut had told him they were not threatening, and it had been right; only a fat boy and two kids were there, staring at him as if he was some kind of alien. And, if everything Yana had said about being from another planet was true, that was certainly the case.

“Where am I?” he asked. “Where’s Yana?”

“You’re in our house,” answered Sofia, looking much too happily at him.

“You managed to get away from your world…” David thought aloud.

“How do you know about that?”

“We were watching everything,” David said pointing at the dead screen behind him. “I was the one talking to Yana back in that clearing, when you were caught by Steel.”

“Where is she?”

“She’s in the hospital, she’s been there this whole time. I’m not sure if she’s woken up yet or not, give me a couple of minutes…”

Taking care not to tumble the table, Jack climbed down and took a better look at what surrounded him. Although it was nothing like the places he had lived in, the worn, spaced-out furniture and dominant smell of old made it feel like something out of a storybook instead of what he had pictured to be a normal home. Many smells came to him, all of them different, yet similar to the things he had left behind, but most of the sounds, coming from with either outside or up the stairs, were easy enough to identify. A television, an open faucet, several wheeled vehicles, and footsteps on the pavement outside belonging to a couple talking about their plans for the evening.

“What’s wrong?” asked the girl, watching him focused on what was going on outside.

“Don’t you have hover cars?” he asked, unable to hear one in the midst of all the old engines, while David started talking to the screen pressed against his ear.

“I don’t think so. I think they’re all in the swamps, right?” she asked turning to her brother, who nodded vigorously at her.

“What year is this?”

“1255 after Sid.”

“After Sid?” he repeated, taking another look at the room and considering the possibility that he had travelled back in time instead of going to a different world altogether.

“Do you still have that cool scythe of yours?” Ricardo asked. “Can I see it?”

Jack reached into his pocket, as he wasn’t too sure whether or not he had brought them along and exhaled in relief to find he would not be venturing into that strange world on his own.

“Brought them along?

“He came on his own? Not with Lissandra’s help?

“Well, she did help, but ultimately she said it was up to him.”

“What does that even mean?”

“Do I have to say it now? It will ruin everything.”

“You know everything, then?” he asked the siblings. Both of them nodded, and although the last one kept on the phone, it seemed somewhat impossible that he didn’t.

“Well, mostly. We don’t know about the stuff you didn’t tell Yana,” Sofia said.

“Who else does?”

“No one, it’s just us, and Yana,” Sofia answered.

“Let me see your scythe,” insisted Ricardo. “Please.”

“I’m not unlocking it.”

“Why not?”

“It’s dangerous,” David replied, hanging up the phone after another petty argument with his sister. “What are we going to tell your housekeeper if she sees us with something like that?”

“That it’s a prop,” Ricardo said, being promptly ignored as David turned to Jack.

“My sister says that she doesn’t know about Yana yet, but they’re going back to the hospital at the moment.”

“Do you have hidan here?” Jack asked cutting David short. Something came to his nose all too familiar to be a coincidence.

“No, all we have is animals, they have nothing in common,” David answered a bit puzzled by the sudden change of subject.

“There’s a hidan in this house,” Jack muttered, moving, guided by the smell, towards the stairs. After a quick exchange of glances, the three humans jumped from their seats and followed him upstairs, only stopping by Sofia’s desk.

“There’s something there,” Jack said pointing at the invisible creature lying on the small jewel box, padded with handkerchiefs she had stolen from her mother’s closet, making it move just enough for him to confirm that his nose wasn’t playing any tricks.

“But there’s nothing there,” Ricardo wondered while Sofia felt a drop of sweat forming on her forehead. She had brought Linvios back to his box while Yana was unconscious, and used the chance to fetch more cookies, but she could not have foreseen that outcome.

However, she didn’t have to do anything else. A white snake with two blue stripes running along most of its body materialized inside the box, its small red eyes staring as intently at Jack as it did to Sofia. Withholding his amazement, Jack cautiously put an arm next to the hidan and proceeded to pretend it wasn’t there, letting the snake sniff him without feeling intimidated.

The siblings immediately started bickering with each other, one demanding more information from the other, who closed herself and refused to elaborate more than what she knew, and the snake shifted its attention to them while Jack rubbed his ear.

“Hey!” he shouted, making them both stop and face him. “How did you find him?”

“I was trying to explain, he showed up on my backpack a couple of months ago,” Sofia answered. “It only made itself visible to me, I don’t know why.”

“Do you know what it is?” David asked.

“It’s an ice glider,” answered Jack. “It’s extremely rare, they’ve almost all been hunted because they are the only hidan that can teleport.”

“Teleport?” Sofia repeated.

“He disappears every now and then, doesn’t he?”

“Yeah, he does, but I had no idea he could teleport.”

“That is so cool,” Ricardo said, watching as the small serpent coiled around Jack’s wrist, who still pretended he wasn’t paying attention to it.

“People have been trying to figure out how they teleport for years, but they just end up killing them.”

“Maybe you’re from the future,” Ricardo said. “Maybe this is going to be Jack’s world in like, a million years or something.”

“It doesn’t work that way,” his sister quickly replied.

“Why not?”

While they argued with fifth grade science logic, David’s phone demanded attention. After a short dialogue he handed over the screen to Jack, claiming that it was for him. He would look silly, but he took it to his ear nonetheless.

“Yes?”

“Jack?” called Yana’s voice on the other side. “You made it?”

“Apparently,” he answered, feeling slight relief knowing she was there as well.

“How did you do it? Did they take you? How?”

“Easy on the questions, you might pass out again.”

“Hmph, as if,” she said with a slight tone of desdain in her voice. “First and last time I ever pass out.”

“I heard you were in a hospital.”

“It was serious. But how did you get here?”

“I’m not much of a sharing kind of guy, if you haven’t noticed yet.”

“Allright, fine. What exactly are you going to do now? You have nowhere to go, right?”

“I’ll work something out.”

“That doesn’t work in this world. Oh, I know, talk to David, he’ll be able to help. He’s cool and his sister is, like, the biggest name in music right now. You can trust them. He helped me out just now.”

“How?”

“He was… you know what, you should ask him, he can tell you what he did better than me. The doctors want to keep me in observation for the night, they have no idea what happened to me. I should be discharged tomorrow morning.”

“All you have to do is not yell at them. It can’t be that hard.”

“I have no reason to yell at them, it’s your own damn fault I have to yell at you. Oh, my mom just came back. I’ll keep in touch.”

With a quick bye the phone started beeping and Jack returned it to its owner.

“How were you talking to Yana while she was in my world?”

David quickly surmised how he was using his phone to talk to her whenever she was alone, continuing to answer Jack’s questions about his sister and the rest of his family, while the Fonseca siblings hovered about like curious magpies in search for a shilling, tired of their scientific bickering and ready to explore far more interesting things, occasionally wondering if they should poke him until they found it or just ask again.

However, Jack’s pockets were well away from amateur thieves, and Ricardo asked for the weapon.

“You won’t be able to open it,” he said getting just a little bit upset with their stubbornness.

“Why not?”

“They only open for hidanna, not for you.”

“You’re not really a hidanna though.”

“I’m more than you are,” Jack answered, unfazed by the comment. “But here, if you want to try it that bad,” he said handing both white spheres to the siblings.

As he had predicted, Ricardo’s instant command amounted to nothing, but, by Sofia’s half-dreamy whisper, the sphere he had lent her stretched into a blue scimitar with a transparent blade, a jewel at the top of the handle and an adorned chain linking the tip of the blade with the tip of the handle.

As soon as the transformation was done something brute-forced its way into her mind, making her dizzy and forcing her to sit down on the floor. Then, just as fast as they had come, they were repelled away, as if something inside of her had awoken just to defend it from the intruders.

Next thing she knew the scimitar was no longer in her hands and Jack was standing in front of her face, holding her by her shoulders.

“Look at me,” he demanded. She did as she was told. “Are you alright?”

Sofia nodded back, still confused about the whole experience. Jack picked up the scimitar from the floor and held it up in front of her.

“How did you open this?”

“I don’t know-“

“There are six hidan inside of this weapon. No one can control more than two without very specific training. How did you open it?”

“B-but I don’t know what I did, I said “form change” and it just...” Sofia said trying to defend herself.

“I can’t open my weapon,” Ricardo said after trying again several times. “Why did you open yours?”

All three of them turned towards Jack, who, scratching the back of his neck, ended up shaking his head.

“I have no idea.”