WSP034

Round Trip

A small tent had been erected around the Moonshot’s shell to protect it from the elements, and its main door was generally left wide open. As such, Jeh had found her new favorite place to just… sit. The interior was no longer empty—it held lots of notebooks, schematics, and had several things drawn on the interior shell where new features needed to be cut so storage could be accessed, and some of the furniture that needed to be screwed to the walls were already there, including the couch. They needed at least one comfortable place to sit, right?

However, half of these things needed to go on the ceiling and final decisions about placement hadn’t quite been made yet, so there was just a pile of things in the center, and this was where Jeh liked to sit, looking out one of the many windows at the world outside. It was perhaps the exact opposite of her usual spots up high in trees, the domain of nature; here everything was wholly artificial save for the potted plant awkwardly stacked near her current position on top of a wooden chair.

“You sure like to just—”

“—sit around a lot,” the Sourdough twins observed, both of them sitting on the couch at a level slightly below her own.

Jeh smiled. “It was all there really was to do in the forest.” Jeh held her hand out at a beam of sunlight coming through one of the windows. “I still like it.” After a moment, she looked down at the twins. “Are you two bored? We could go do something, I could take you on a hunt…”

“We don’t mind,” they both said at once.

“Sure?” Jeh asked.

“We were only making an observation.”

The other took a bite of her biscuit and tried to say something with her mouth full.

Her sister rolled her eyes. “An observation about how the enjoyment of sitting and doing nothing does not fit your personality.”

“Is that… good?” Jeh asked.

“We think it makes you neat,” the hungry twin said. Her sister tried to swipe the biscuit from her before she took another bite, but she dodged out of the way. “Most kids can’t just stop and listen.”

“Guess I’m mature for my age,” Jeh said with a short laugh. “Just like you two!”

“Are you though?” one of them asked.

“We’ve grown since you left, you haven’t,” the other supplanted.

Jeh paused. “I mean… I guess not…”

“You could be hundreds of years old for all we know.”

Jeh looked down at her hands, currently covered in the bear mitts. “…How long was I in that forest?”

“How many winters can you remember freezing through?”

“It’s… all a real blur,” Jeh said, shaking her head. “The forest always… was. Nothing… ever changed.” She narrowed her eyes. “It… feels long, but not dense. There weren’t many things worth remembering, unlike since I was found by Blue and Vaughan.” She paused. “I knew Desc, or had at some point.”

“Desc?” the twins asked.

“Envila’s language. Form the… other side of Ikyu. I… dug it up after hearing it.” She scratched her chin. “Even though Envila knew so many languages already, she still took a lot longer to figure out Karli than I did to figure out Desc, and it was supposedly my second language.”

“A kid in the forest can’t have learned a second language from the other side of Ikyu,” one of the twins said.

“Obviously,” Jeh said. “I… have to be at least old enough to have learned it and then forgotten it. Which… that’s pretty old, isn’t it?”

The sourdough twins both nodded. They remained silent while Jeh thought about this for a while.

At long last, Jeh simply shrugged. “So I’m probably a hundred years old or something, does that really matter? Far as I’m concerned my life began when Blue found me. So. Yeah.”

“Still, who knows what sorts of—”

“—things you experienced in the past?”

Jeh chuckled. “Maybe I was a legendary singer!” Jeh stood up and tried to sing a tune.

The twins listened and tilted their heads to the side.

“Well?”

“You aren’t bad, exactly—”

“—just not really good either.”

Jeh chuckled. “Well, guess I wasn’t a singer then. Shame.”

“But we can use this to figure out things about your past, perhaps,” one of the twins said.

“Yeah!” the other added. “If you keep trying new things, we can see if we awaken latent memories.”

The first continued. “You ‘remembered’ language, and how to use magic, but as I recall you didn’t ‘remember’ how to fly a spaceship.”

Jeh blinked. “You’re right, we can figure things out.” She looked down at the twins. “I wonder if I know how to bake.”

“Let’s go see!” the twins said, jumping up. “Our oven is your oven!”

“All right!” The three of them quickly scrambled out of the Moonshot’s shell and ran to the bakery.

~~~

Vaughan made sure to go out at least once a week and look at the stars through the telescope. Since their return from Axiom, he had gotten a better one, one he couldn’t just hold in his hand and actually had to mount it on a stand. This, it turned out, was a great help in keeping it stable and examining everything, especially outdoors. The moon was by far the most impressive thing. Currently, it was a crescent, which was perfect since that allowed the light of the sun to highlight the features on the moon even better. Shadows played off round pocks in the surface strongest when it was like this, giving him some sense of the topography of the object they were hoping to visit.

“I do wonder what causes those circular mountain ranges…” Vaughan commented to himself. “…For that matter, what causes mountain ranges here on Ikyu? They tend to form lines, not circles…” He chuckled, realizing that going to the moon likely wasn’t going to answer that question either. Nobody knew how mountains formed nor why they existed, but they were regular enough to suggest some kind of process. Lines and circles…

He stepped back and looked at the arrangement of stars. Strange. It was about time for the satellite to come up…

He waited for it. And waited.

But nothing came.

A sinking feeling came to his stomach. He made sure to sit there an entire hour, but no spark drifted across the sky.

Frowning, he packed up the telescope and headed inside, intending to just go to bed. However, as he passed through his cabin, he noticed the light was still on in Blue’s lab. He gingerly opened the door. “Blue?”

Blue was glaring at a paper covered in mathematical scrawlings like it was the bane of her existence. “Yes?”

“It’s late.”

“I know. This problem needs slaying.”

“…The satellite’s gone.”

Blue’s fury immediately vanished and she looked up from her problem. “We… we knew its orbit was getting smaller, it wasn’t going to stay up there forever.”

Vaughan only looked at her, unsure of what to say.

Blue hung her head. “…I feel it too. We sent it up there and now it’s… gone. That’s…” she twirled her hoof around in the air, looking for the right things to say and not finding it. “I don’t know.”

Vaughan pulled up a chair and sat down, folding his hands together. “So… atmospheric drag stopped it enough so it started falling down, and then ignited in the thick atmosphere.”

“Probably.”

“Burned to a crisp somewhere.”

“Wherever it went down it probably looked like a really big shooting star and then vanished.”

“…We should have seen it.”

Blue shook her head. “There was no way to predict when it was going to come down. It might have come down over Descent for all we know, and it wouldn’t even be something all that impressive. Just a slightly larger than average shooting star.” Blue absent-mindedly adjusted her hat. “Just… a speck.”

“I wonder what everyone across the world thought of the new ‘planet’ that rapidly whizzed across the sky.”

Blue chucked. “You know, I wonder that too.”

~~~

Envila looked up from her campfire, sad to see that the satellite had fallen at last. She said a quick prayer, that Jeh and her family—for that was clearly what they were even if they never said it—would not be hit too hard by the “death” of their work. They were reaching for the stars… they would make new things to replace it. Grander things.

She added to the prayer that they not become arrogant for what they were about to accomplish.

~~~

“An omen indeed,” a man spoke from atop a tower close to the Wall of the Tempest. “First it appears, remains for so long we think it is a new permanent fixture, and then it vanishes. The question is, what does it mean?”

“The prophets are hesitant to say.”

“How many of them are false, then? What of those whose words are true?”

“They seem to think it is an omen of change. Which kind, they do not know. It appears to frustrate them.”

~~~

A large ship held aloft by propellers set out across the ocean. The human navigator looked at her star chart and frowned. She sighed. “Looks like I went through all that trouble of charting its course for nothing..”

“You can still navigate, right?” a creature that looked like a bouncing cat head asked.

“Of course, the stars themselves are fixed. Still… it took a lot of effort to figure out when it was going to show up and exactly for how long!”

~~~

“My Emperor, the new light in the sky has vanished,” a humanoid in thick gray armor with red and orange highlights said, dropping to a knee.

“You fools never found out anything about it.”

“No, my lord.”

The Emperor growled. “There are too many unsolved mysteries. Even one so benign remains beyond our grasp…”

“We should tread carefully, My Emperor.”

~~~

A bushy dryad with false cat ears on her head looked up at the sky, expecting to see the satellite.

It never came.

“…I hope you can put even more up there, despite it all.”

~~~

“The unidentified object circles Ikyu no more,” a blimp said to another, both of them floating far above the city of Descent.

“Curious. Such a strange regular phenomenon. Shame we were unable to get up there in time.”

“The researchers already believe they know how to replicate such an object.”

“I am aware. But the energy and control required to do so…”

“Perhaps there is a more efficient method.”

“The real question is, who put it up there in the first place?”

~~~

“My Lord, Eyda’s power be upon you…”

The dark entity narrowed his yellow eyes. “What is your question?”

“What does it mean that the new star has vanished?”

“The new star…” he closed his eyes thinking. “Hmm… that information is very distant. It… was made by mortals, and launched into the sky…”

“How could such a thing be possible?”

“It has died, has it not? As do all mortal endeavors.”

~~~

“Why do you come up here, Srijan?” a fire elemental asked his friend.

His friend stood atop the dormant volcano, looking up at the darkness. “I had hoped to understand our place, connected to our brethren in the sky.”

“What have you learned?”

“That even they can die.”

~~~

A leviathan rose to the surface of the ocean, daring only to expose his eye to the air above. The stars twinkled. But his new companion was there no longer.

He let out a deep, undulating wail that resonated throughout the entire ocean.

A friend from above, lost.

How could he have ever thought the surface had something to offer?

~~~

“Why do we care about that speck in the sky?” an Eastern Ch’eni’tho asked. “It has nothing to do with our land.”

“If the skies can change, threats to our way can come from above.”

“Then we shall defy it as we always have.”

“…That such a thing can appear, remain for so long, and then vanish…”

~~~

“The morning star is gone,” a nine-tailed kitsune said from atop the tribe’s watchtower.

Her husband looked at her. “What does it mean?”

“It is an omen, to be sure. The tribe should be on guard. The skies have changed much these days, heaven itself is in unrest.”

“I will inform them.”

~~~

The next night Vaughan went to go out with the telescope again. He just… felt like it. He caught himself instinctively looking for the satellite… but he knew it would not be there. It was best… to just continue his observations of the moon.

With a hint of sadness in his heart, he returned to work. A work that brought him great joy, to be sure, trying to work out the features of the moon to great precision… but that little hint in the back of his heart remained, tugging on him.

He would have to let many things like this go in his time. One success could not carry him onward forever, there would have to be others.

To the moon.

~~~

Wizard Space Program meetings were usually chaotic in every conceivable way with lots of yelling, shouting, laughing, and rants about the nature of science and how annoying all the math was. This was usually Blue doing the last one, but Vaughan and Krays got into it every now and then.

Today, though, everyone was a little awkward since they had a visitor.

“Don’t mind me,” Agent Keller said. “I’m just here t’ learn about what I’m protectin’, here. Ya lot do yer space stuff, I’ll keep an ear out.”

“Well…” Suro coughed. “The food hasn’t arrived yet, so uh, we haven’t actually started…”

“Do ya always eat durin’ meetin’s?”

Lila shook her head. “Not anything more than snacks, but today is a slight bit special, Agent Keller. Though naturally if you were not present we would be filling the time with idle chatter and Blue would no doubt launch into some revelation about math before we even start.”

“Hey!” Blue blurted. “I don’t… okay, yeah, I do. But it’s fun, right?”

“Sometimes,” Seskii said.

“Other times it’s like being dipped in fruit juice and thrown on an anthill,” Krays added.

Blue huffed. “I don’t cause you physical pain.”

“Enough mental anguish is extracted that I let out groans. That’s pain.”

“You groan for dramatic effect.”

“Takes one to know one.”

Big G coughed. “Perhaps we should not leave such an impression on our guest?”

“Why not?” Krays asked. “Isn’t honesty the best policy?”

“There are… other concerns.”

“You worried about him reporting us as a bunch of unprofessionals?” Margaret asked. She was currently painting on a small canvas a picture of the moon close up based on Vaughan’s observations. “Pretty sure the Crown already knows about that. Also, man’s not here to rat us out even if that were the case.”

“Glad t’ see I’ve at least made an impression on one of ya,” Keller said, tipping his hat in Margaret’s direction.

“You do have to forgive us,” Lila said, “you will take some getting used to.”

“They eventually got used to me,” Alexandrite added. “Don’t worry.”

“I’m not worried in the slightest,” Keller said. “I just wanna hear ‘bout them there spaceship yer workin’ on.”

“Well, it should be soon…”

“WHATEVER WE’RE CALLING THIS MEAL, IT IS SERVED!” Jeh declared, running out of the kitchen with a cart covered in pots and pans, Mary trailing along behind her. “Behold, food!”

The dishes on the cart looked absolutely amazing. There were happy peach slabs grilled and laid on top of each other with a special red sauce, extremely oats with bits of fruit chopped up in them, whole grilled fish that smelled absolutely heavenly, and bread folded to resemble a lobster tail.

Blue’s jaw dropped. “This… this is a feast! What in… when you said you figured out you knew how to cook I wasn’t expecting…”

“I am a culinary mastermind, as it turns out!” Jeh declared, lifting her mitted hand into the air. “Let your taste buds explode in delight!”

“She really is something,” Mary said. “I can’t believe she only started cooking in earnest a few weeks ago…”

Jeh winked at her. “Being immortal has some bonus perks, it turns out! Who knows what else I can do? I don’t, and that’s kinda fun!” She clapped her hands. “Now, everyone, dig in!”

The food truly was spectacular. Flavors were blended in such a way that they just flowed over the tongue in a wave of satisfaction, and no two dishes were the same. It was clearly designed for animalian races, but as gari technically weren’t plasts they still got their share. Even Keller was forced to admit, it was quite delicious.

The tension in the room was gone virtually immediately as everyone kept complimenting Jeh on her skills and wondering what sorts of other things she could do.

“Maybe she’s an expert farmer too,” Suro said.

Mary frowned. “It would take way too long to figure that out… I don’t think she wants to spend years trying to examine one skill.”

“Nope!” Jeh said, tearing a piece off her lobster-tail bread. “Man, the twins had a good recipe for this…”

“They are the bakers, after all!”

“I wonder if I could try to teach you math,” Blue said.

“Wouldn’t that be a skill she couldn’t have learned in the past?” Alexandrite asked. “Modern mathematical notation is a rather recent invention.”

“Well… yeah, good point.”

“I wonder more if she’s a musician,” Margaret asked.

“I apparently don’t sing very well,” Jeh said.

“Means nothing, many instrumentalists don’t have a good singing voice. The question is, which instrument would you know?”

“Depending on how old I actually am, could be almost all of them!”

Blue chuckled. “I still can’t see you as anything other than a kid, Jeh.”

“Well, I am, obviously,” Jeh said, leaning back and kicking her feet on the table. “I mean, look at me!”

“I believe your mind should still be able to develop and mature,” Vaughan said. “Though it does lead to the question of why all your memories are gone.”

“I think it’s because my memory is just terrible,” Jeh said with a chuckle. “I rack my brain and try to count how many winters I froze through. Can’t do it. Five, at the very least. Feels like more than that.” She knocked herself on the head. “But hey, that means I have all sorts of secrets to find out!”

“Ahem,” Big G said, clearing his throat. “I wish to remind everyone that this is supposed to be an actual meeting where we talk about what we are doing in regards to the mission?”

“Oh, right,” Vaughan cleared his throat. “So, we’re starting to receive more parts for the Moonshot, and the drive scaffolding has come in. We need to install it—Krays, we need you to sweet talk your husband into helping us again.”

“He still makes us pay,” Krays said. “The traitor.”

“Pretty sure he gives us a discount.”

“Oh, he does, but that’s just ammunition to use against me for later.” She smiled mischievously. “What a perfect man…”

“…Moving on, it’s time to actually begin installation of these various pieces and finalize everything we need. It’s going to be a hectic mess over the next few weeks, especially when we install the airlock. All the furniture needs to be bolted down, all the storage areas need to be filled, and we have to make sure Jeh can lift the thing.”

“If it gets too heavy all three of us can use our magic,” Jeh said. “That’ll get it up.”

“And be harder to control, we’d spin all over the place,” Vaughan said. “Though, since we are a sphere and don’t care which direction is down anymore… that might not be an issue.”

Keller chuckled, though as always there was no smile. “Seems t’ me ya want to not spin all over the place, wanna keep yer lunch, don’t’cha?”

“Good point,” Vaughan said, scratching his beard, barely registering that it was Keller who had made the observation. “We’ll need to practice if Jeh can’t do it.”

“Oh, I’ll be able to do it,” Jeh said, grinning. “I may be small, but I’ve got a big will!”

“Which does not correlate to brain size,” Krays added.

“Um. Well, yes, of course not, it… hey!”

And the shouting, laughter, and rants continued.

Agent Keller nodded in approval as he observed. This was good. Simply by being here, they were getting less and less afraid of him, it would make it so much easier to do his job. He had been a little concerned that his plans weren’t going to pan out properly, but everything was on track now.

Though when Blue started talking about the actual science behind the mission, he had to admit he was completely out of his depth. No matter, he understood what the Moonshot did and why it was so important. The more he learned, the more he realized how necessary he was.

There could be untold riches up there in space, and all this research gave Kroan a notable edge in many areas, most of all espionage. With the political situation, it likely wasn’t going to be very popular. Which was exactly why he was here.

Nobody was going to get past him.

~~~

“Steady…. Steady!”

“Please stop telling me to be steady,” Darmosil told his wife as he used his special Red arcane device to meld the metal of the fist-sized airlock to the hole he had cut into the Moonshot’s shell. “The more you tell me to be steady the less I am.”

Krays put her hands on her hips. “…Well, if you insist.” She left it at that, walking away from him and to the others. As he needed complete stability to make sure there was no air getting through the connection he was making, no one else was able to work on the Moonshot right now. Which meant all the components that were ready for installation were just lying outside on the yard.

Jeh ran her hands across a plast tank large enough to hold a very large human. “Huh, what’s this for?”

Blue blushed and coughed. “That’s for holding, uh, excrement. And these bags over here are for… going. Into.” Blue shuffled her hooves awkwardly.

“You’re going to have to get over that,” Jeh said. “We’re all going to be sharing what little space is in there.”

Blue folded her ears back. “The things I do for this program…”

“I’d be more worried about the ship exploding than someone seeing you, honestly.”

“If the ship explodes I won’t feel the searing heat of embarrassment!”

Jeh shrugged, jumping into the plast tank. “Wow, roomy in here.”

“I’ve given us extra space just in case we’re up there a while.”

“Why don’t we just eject it all into space?”

“I don’t know where it will end up and we want to avoid opening the airlock as much as possible,” Vaughan said, walking over. “It’s possible to break the seal or get it jammed if we overdo it. There’s a reason the only airlock is the small thing Darmosil is installing. The door we enter will not be opened until we return.”

“The bags seal, the smell shouldn’t be a problem,” Blue said.

“Hey, question!” Margaret called, waving to the three of them. “What are these things?” She asked, gesturing at a bunch of cylindrical metal containers with valves on the top of them.

“Extra air,” Blue said, tapping the edge of the canister with her hoof. “In case the air restorer has a problem long-term, we have the option to get more fresh air. A lot more, actually, the air in here is highly pressurized. Turns out you can stuff a lot of air into one container if you try hard enough.”

“Hmm…”

“Just thought of a problem with that,” Krays said. “That would raise the air pressure inside the Moonshot, not great.”

Vaughan sighed. “We can open the airlock if we need to refresh the air for some reason. We really shouldn’t, this is just in case of emergencies.”

Jeh kicked the canister lightly, deciding she liked the loud echoing sound it made. She giggled.

Nearby, Suro was examining one of the metal scaffoldings that would house the multi-cored drive. With a frown, he poked his head into the interior. “I could almost fit in here.”

Seskii smirked. “Shouldn’t the designer know how big his drive is?”

“Well, yes, I knew how big it was, I’m just struck by the physical casing now. I’ve ordered the components to what is essentially a cat-sized arcane device. Most things that size are not mostly solid crystal, this is something else.” He used his tool to pull the two halves of the casing apart. “Need to be careful with the Yellow exterior, it can’t break but it needs to interface properly with the metal gyroscope…” He started muttering to himself about fine-tuning that part of the device.

Mary arrived at that point and dropped a backpack onto the ground. She pulled out a cube of whitish material. “Here you are, dried hover clover. Tastes like a brick but will satisfy virtually all your nutrient needs.”

Blue levitated it into the air and took a bite. It cracked in her mouth, but crumbled easily. It did feel somewhat like chewing a very soft and powdery rock, but in terms of flavor it tasted like a very mild radish. “Well. I sure hope we have enough space to store more food than this…”

“We do,” Seskii said, pulling a diagram of the Moonshot out of nowhere. “See, the area between the two shells can actually hold quite a bit, we haven’t declared what everything will be yet. Air canisters and the excrement tank take up the most individual space, followed by the windows. The rest of the stuff we have will just be extra crystals, food, arcane devices, stuff for basic cleaning, water… …actually, come to think of it, a water tank might be a good idea.” She scribbled a note down to record that idea. “So yeah, we actually have a significant amount of storage space, I think we can even store replacement parts for the drive.”

Krays raised an eyebrow. “Should I be concerned that half of the things we seem to talk about are only to be used in case something goes wrong?”

“Never hurts to be careful,” Blue said. “…Unless we make it so heavy we can’t lift it.”

Jeh rolled her eyes. “I told you, we’re fine with that. I got this.” She threw her hands wide and hit one of the air canisters, knocking it over. It hit a rock, busting a hole on one of its edges. Immediately, air rushed out with a loud whistling sound and the canister shot sharply to the left, hitting a nearby tree so hard it fell over. The canister, though, still wasn’t out of air, and spun around on the ground for several seconds before clattering to a stop.

“Uh… ehe…” Jeh put her hands behind her back. “Oops…?”

“That’s a safety hazard right there,” Big G said.

“No, really…” Blue muttered. “Somebody tie down those air canisters.”

“On it!” Seskii declared, producing a rope and setting to work.

“What if that happens from one of those small rocks up there?” Mary asked. “It punches through the outer wall, hits a canister…”

“We have a sort of armor for that,” Blue explained. “See, Krays…”

“Did a lot of experiments with projectiles!” Krays jumped in, pushing Blue rudely to the side. “The outer shell of the Moonshot is actually in two layers, so any projectiles that come into contact with the first layer spread out and will generally be stopped by the second. And even if it isn’t, there’s another layer of air before the air canister gets hit. So we’re all good!”

“If the two layers are broken though… there might be a leak, depending on where it got through.” Blue said, glaring at Krays.

“You’ll be able to hear the hissing.”

“The exterior wall and interior wall are separated by quite a bit, maybe not. Not every opening on the interior wall to the storage area is sealed.”

“Get better ears.”

Vaughan looked down at the air canisters and put his fist in his hand. “I’ve got it. Air pressure.”

“Eh?” Blue said.

“The same concept that makes those thermometers work can be used to detect air pressure. It’s not precise, but we’ll be able to tell we’ve sprung a leak long before we run out of air if we do that.”

“But then how will we find the leak?”

Vaughan grinned. “You noticed the air canister fly off from that small hole, right?’

“Yes…?”

“Well, if for some reason we can’t hear it, we could hold the ship still and see if it starts rotating or accelerating in any direction. There’s no air pressure in space, right? The entire Moonshot would become like that air canister, no matter how small the hole was!”

“That… might work,” Blue said, frowning. “I can’t really think of a way to safely test that without actually… doing it, though.”

“Well, we should only need to if something hits us and breaks through both layers, which is unlikely, from what we know.”

“You three are going to die up there,” Krays deadpanned. “Wait, no, two of you are going to die up there, the third is going to be adrift in the void for eternity.”

“To be welcomed into such an embrace…” Margaret said, wistfully.

Krays raised an eyebrow. “You’re about as festive as a funeral, aren’t you?”

“When I die, I want it to be in space, among the darkness.”

“Where did you guys find this girl?”

“In the forest,” Jeh said.

“So we just adopt girls from the forest now. Sure. That checks out.” She threw her hands in the air in mock exasperation.

“You are a little morbid,” Jeh pointed out to Margaret.

“I am simply being honest. I am… drawn to the void that surrounds Ikyu.” Margaret smiled. “I want to see as much of it as I can.”

“Sadly, you’re not coming with us to the moon, at least not this time,” Vaughan said. “We need you here to pilot the Skyseed in case… you know.”

“I know.” She shook her head. “Why are you so hesitant to openly discuss the possibilities of your deaths? It is a very real danger, and it is not a slight one. Furthermore, why do you fear? Do you not believe Dia has your souls?”

“Er… well…”

Blue coughed. “We have this thing called a self-preservation instinct?”

“Surely such an instinct would desire to figure out how to avoid such a problem by tackling it head-on.”

“I don’t fear death!” Jeh piped up.

“Well. Yes. Obviously. Do you fear being trapped in space forever?”

“I’ll eventually crash back down. There’s not no air up there, just progressively less and less. The satellite crashed, I will too. …Eventually. So no, not afraid.”

“The moon doesn’t fall down.”

“Something about large objects behaves differently,” Blue said. “The moon is not going the speed we will be going when we orbit up there. This presumably applies to the planets as well and…” Blue gasped. “Vaughan. I might be able to predict how far away the planets are from Ikyu based on how long it takes them to go around.”

“Can you explain retrograde motion with that?” Vaughan asked.

Blue blinked. “…Forgot about that. Agh.” She shook her head. “Never mind, we’re going to the moon, not the planets, one problem at a time.”

“Didn’t you take a huge tangent to invent new math?” Seskii asked.

“Well, yes, but… uh… okay look I don’t need to have a million different things I’m working on at once okay?”

“Just saying, you’ve followed tangents before…”

“Yes. Well. Right now I’m getting us to the moon, planets come after. Probably much later. Though…” she turned to the Moonshot. “There’s no reason this can’t go out there as well, we just need to know how far we need to go. Which I will work on. Later.”

Seskii held her hands up in mock surrender. “All right, got it.”

“Anyway, how’s Big G doing with the crystal storage device…? Some powder might be nice in case…”

~~~

Wyett stood on top of one of the taller towers in the palace, looking out the North-facing window. He glared. Somewhere out that way was Shimvale.

“Wyett, you’re stressed,” Hyrii said, starting to rub his shoulders. “Staring out the window isn’t going to help.”

“Dad isn’t doing anything,” Wyett said, scowl deepening. “He just trusts that they aren’t coming for us.”

“You know that’s not true.”

“Then why aren’t we attacking directly?”

“Espionage?” Hyrii said. “Look, we have an in on the Council, and our reports say that things have stabilized.”

“Kaykayzee is going to try something. That entire nation… Benefactor was declared an enemy of the state! We…”

“Wyett, Wyett…” She pulled him away from the window and kissed him. “You… you really need to stop this.”

Wyett slumped down in a chair, looking old and tired. “All we’re doing is waiting, Hyrii. Waiting at the Shinelands. Waiting on Shimvale. Waiting for C-R’s people to try something.”

“You’re exaggerating and you know it.”

“Not by much. Not… by much.” He curled his hands into fists. “Something has to happen.”

“Does it really? Can’t you just… leave it?” Hyrii asked. “Trust your dad?”

“…Dad’s policies are what got us into this mess. We’ve been too trusting…”

“Tenrayce was able to use that trust to get us Benefactor.”

“Is it a good thing that we have Benefactor?” Wyett asked. “She has made us a target. She needs us to protect her. That seems… backward. Enemies on all sides…”

“Not on the ocean, the Mikarol Empire is still our ally.”

“And how far away are they? Should something go wrong, their military could not make it here. None of the island nations can offer any help, and the Tempest’s power is restricted to the Tempest. They aren’t exactly allies either. And don’t you go mentioning Mom’s tribe, they’d help, but they’re just a Wild Kingdom.”

Hyrii frowned. “Well, since you seem determined to think about this, what would you do if you were king?”

“Vaporize the Shimvale Council and re-instate their monarchy, producing infighting that would prevent them from being a danger to us. Might even be able to get the Council to collapse under its own weight, they really don’t agree on much.”

“I don’t think your dad wants to launch them into a civil war if he can help it.”

“…Yes, well, that’s because he’s not willing to make the necessary sacrifices. And I…” Wyett noticed his hand was trembling. “I…”

“Oh, you poor thing…” Hyrii held Wyett’s hand in her own, steadying it. “You really work yourself up over everything… you don’t have to, you know.”

“How… how do you do it?”

“Haven’t the foggiest idea! I felt like I was going to die several times up in Shimvale, but it all worked out somehow!” She let out a nervous laugh. “Maybe I’m just gifted.”

“…Hyrii, I… I don’t think I could do this without you.”

“…Wyett…”

“I have a song in my head, Hyrii. That can make me do things. I… I can’t entirely trust myself. I… need you to be here to stop me.”

“Can’t you trust your family to do that?’

“I can’t open up with them about this. They… would decry me. They don’t understand. Both Dad and Tenrayce are so set in their ways they can’t see what’s happening to us. But I… I can’t see what’s happening to me.”

Hyrii smiled softly. “You know I don’t agree with you on the plan, right?”

“And you tell me that without a dismissal, without treating it like it’s so obvious and it’s what we’re doing.” He pulled Hyrii closer. “You… you listen to me.”

“Your family listens to you too, you know.”

“Not like you.”

“Well… okay, yeah, you have that right.” Hyrii giggled.

“Hyrii, I want you at my side.”

“And you’ll have me, don’t worry.”

“Hyrii. I want you at my side.”

Hyrii was confused for a second. Then she let out a short gasp that quickly turned into a hiccup. “Wh-what? R-really, Wyett, I—hic—I mean of course I’ve been waiting for you to ask but—hic—are you sure now is the—hic—best time, with all that’s going on?”

“I can only see it getting worse from here, Hyrii…” He broke into a smile. “You’re cute when you’re flustered.”

“These hic—hic—hiccups are not cute they are very—hic—annoying and I wish this didn’t happen!” She fumed. Then she pulled Wyett into a lip lock. “But of course the answer is yes.” After a pause, there was another hiccup. “You don’t even—hic—have a circlet, do you?”

“Well… no.”

“You weren’t even planning on asking until just now.”

“Er…”

“Wyett, we need to work on your planning—hic—skills. Now.” She grabbed him by the hand. “Let’s forget all the boring politics and tell everyone the—hic—good news. I—hic—for the love of my face I will murder you diaphragm! …Good, now th—hic—FOR THE LOVE OF—”

Still hiccupping like mad, Hyrii took Wyett down the tower… and they ran into Riikaz on the way down.

Riikaz grinned wildly. “Oh my, let’s see… Wyett looking satisfied, Hyrii hiccupping like mad, and holding hands without a care in the world… lemme guess. No circlet, though. Did Wyett pop the question without thinking it through?”

“Yes—hic—he did,” Hyrii said.

“So cute!” Riikaz grabbed Wyett by the cheeks and shook him side to side before slapping him on the back with enough force to knock him over. To her credit, Hyrii did try to catch him, but she was pulled down as well. “So, when I was a girl I always thought my kids would have the craziest weddings ever, but when I was a kid I lived in a forest and hunted monsters for a living. So rubbing animal blood all over our bodies probably isn’t an option… Hyrii, did you ever plan out your wedding?”

“Not really?”

“Well, clearly you and I need to have a brainstorming session. Later, though. We have to tell everyone! I’ll send word to your father, ask him to come to the palace. Not going to explain why but I think he’s smart enough to figure it out…”

~~~

Jeh took the Skyseed IV into space. She had no experiments to run this time, that place was taken up by extra food and a bunch of plast bags. She was going to be up here for a long time, might as well test out the system they were going to have on the Moonshot.

Today’s goal was simple, but also monumental.

Follow the sun around Ikyu, get pictures of the whole world.

A full twenty-four-hour trip, give or take since she could probably come down to Willow Hollow in the morning and still complete the mission.

She cracked her knuckles. “All right… let’s go… West.”

And so she did. She was not orbiting Ikyu so much as brute-force moving in a circle around it. A round trip would have taken about ninety minutes if she’d gone the orbit route, but everyone wanted daylight to be able to see the landmasses. There was an annoying amount of clouds blocking a lot of features, but she could still make out the continents and various islands. Her strategy for going around Ikyu at the rate of the sun’s travel was basically to go up at an angle for a while and then let herself drop for a few minutes before repeating, creating a sort of sawblade pattern around the world.

The continent Kroan was on was quite large, and was attached to a second one to the far south that no one had ever been to, as far as Jeh knew. Then there was the Ocean, or the “Western Ocean” as it was starting to be called as knowledge of the Ocean on the East Coast was becoming more common. The Western Ocean held the Tempest and a handful of islands.

It took several hours for the sheer size of the Ocean to dawn on Jeh. It made the continents look pathetic! So much water that Ikyu looked almost completely blue from her vantage point. The Tempest’s whirling white was the only large feature on this scale aside from the ocean itself.

However, she eventually reached the edge of the ocean, arriving at new continents. Maps had been made of this side of the world because this was where Vraskal and the Mikarol Empire were. She pulled out one of the maps and noted their declared borders. After that, there was just what Mikarol and Vraskal traders had said was “wasteland.” From this high up Jeh couldn’t exactly discredit them, but she was unsure what the dull brownish-gray land meant. It wasn’t the metal of the Shinelands, that was for sure, but there was a distinct lack of green without having the yellowish tone of a desert.

Beyond the Wasteland, there were some patches of unusual color. A smaller streak of gray, like the Shinelands. Some purple biome of some kind. An area that seemed to be actively shifting color before her eyes…

With time, more features came over the horizon, including what she could easily identify as a ton of mountains all bunched together in one place. From the vague maps Envila had drawn, Jeh believed this was where Descent was. There were currently storm clouds nearby making quite an impressive lightning storm. It was so strange, seeing lightning flash from this high up—no sound at all.

Beyond the immense mountain range was more continent. Jeh made the observation that this continent or collection of continents was significantly larger than the one Kroan was on. It just looked denser. There were deserts, forests, mountains, and numerous other biomes of strange colors Jeh couldn’t even identify. There was even something solid black at a spot that looked like it would almost divide the landmass in two but didn’t quite.

The way the blackness stretched across the land like roots unnerved Jeh. Maybe that was one of those big plants, like in Mary’s story about the forest, and Envila had said lived deep beneath Descent. Perhaps some of the other unusually colored areas had been those things? Who knew, not Jeh, but at this point the mysteries were just tantalizing her. She had seen no sign of large Crystalline Ones, though, and was beginning to think Benefactor was truly unique.

Then she came to the fiery lands. Envila had described them as volcanic and crawling with fire elementals. Jeh could see the lava pools, even from this high up. And in the center was some kind of island in the midst of the lava, which clearly had a large Red Crystalline One. She was smaller than Benefactor by quite a bit, but still clearly Red.

Jeh did a quick calculation in her head. Even if the Red One could see her, which was unlikely as it was the middle of the day, she was well outside her range and couldn’t be heated, and there was very little even a Red Crystalline One could do to transfer heat all the way up here. She was probably safe. Plus, even Benefactor didn’t notice the first few times she went up.

Still. It was important to know the Red One was there.

After this, she came to another Ocean, the “Eastern Ocean,” the one Envila had crossed. It was smaller than the Western one, but it was still big. It didn’t have many islands, though it did have some that were arranged in a perfect circle. Odd, yes, but not exactly the oddest thing she’d seen while up here.

With that, she returned to the continent Kroan was on and was back to areas she had seen multiple times while up in space.

“Well, mission accomplished! They’re going to go nuts over these images…” Jeh chuckled. “Ah, that was fun.” She glanced at the disgustingly full plast bags. “…I can see why we want a tank for these…”

And just like that Jeh, rather unceremoniously, became the first recorded person to go all the way around the world. Clearly, some dragons had probably done it before, but no one recorded their trips as far as Kroan knew, so Jeh cemented her place in the history books even more than she had already done.

Not that she thought about this. She just thought that the trip had been cool.

~~~

Construction on the Laboratory concluded in a timeframe that surprised most of the townsfolk. This was largely because the progress had seemed unbearably slow for the first few weeks of work, since there were only a handful of workers present to clear and survey the land. Their job could not be accelerated by greater manpower. However, once the basic scaffold of the Laboratory had been erected, more people could be called in and some of Big G’s boys hired for heavy labor, prompting the project to reach a conclusion far quicker than anticipated. It still took over a month to complete, but at the end, it stood tall and proud.

The building was two stories tall and shaped like a C. The interior section was labeled the “courtyard” but everyone knew it was to be used for outdoor tests, including the designers, who had put pavement rather than plants in the center, though along the edges of the C there were various decorative shrubs. Vaughan suspected they would be burned to a crisp within a month of any actual testing.

The structure itself was made almost entirely out of wood since that was the primary building material available in Willow Hollow, but it had been coated with a special kind of white paint designed to make it less likely to light on fire. The roof was sloped in such a way that all rain would slide off the outer edge of the Laboratory, avoiding massive runoff into the courtyard. The roof was also white, in fact aside from the greenery everything was white. Vaughan thought it made it look somewhat boring.

Lila was, naturally, giving a speech about how all the annoying construction noises had been leading to this moment, describing the Laboratory’s benefits, and what sorts of things it would be doing. For once, Vaughan and Blue were not in the crowd listening to her—they’d heard it all before. Rather, they were poking around the Laboratory, investigating all its rooms.

The interior was as white as the exterior, though only the floor, walls, and ceiling—the furniture hadn’t been painted and thus stood out from the background kind of awkwardly. Nowhere was this more apparent than the library, which had dozens of dark-wood bookshelves arranged like a maze among the whiteness. The books themselves were copies of many important scientific manuscripts, textbooks, and information catalogs. Some of them had a lot of diagrams in them, others were just walls of text and mathematics.

Vaughan pulled out a book about the sky and flipped it open. He grinned. “Hey Blue.”

“Hmm?”

“Take a look at this.” He showed her the diagram of the moon that took up a full page. At the bottom of the diagram was a citation. Constructed from observations of Wizard Vaughan.

“That’s great!” Blue said, beaming at him. “Our work is important enough to get in the big books within weeks.*”

*Textbook publishing in Kroan is a little different than what we would be used to. The printing press does not exist, but Purple Crystals do allow for some speeding up of the process. The consequence of this is that every copy of a book must be made by hand. Scientific literature and research, being in constant flux, hires a lot of permanent scribes to continually make more and more books. A side effect of this is that it is really easy to go to a scribe and request that a page or two be changed to reflect new information. Most major scientific publications in Kroan have hundreds of editions because of this.

Vaughan flipped through a few more pages. “There’s even a section in here about ‘theoretical space travel.’ “

“Oooh, do they get it completely wrong?”

“It’s only a page and an image of a circular orbit.” Vaughan frowned. “You aren’t credited…”

“Not surprising, nobody likes me,” Blue said with a chuckle. “I’ll cement myself in the history books regardless, they can dismiss me all they want for now, they won’t be able to for long.”

“If you say so.” Vaughan put the book back on its shelf and they continued on. There was a dining area with somehow less space than Vaughan’s and yet more tables. Beyond this were the labs—most of the labs were just empty rooms on either side of a hallway, ready to be filled with whatever arcane devices anyone might need or want. One room that already had its device also doubled as the heating system for the building, the Red device would churn heat through ventilation systems as well as provide powerful and carefully applied spells to those who might need such things in experiments.

Blue claimed one of the empty labs as her own, one of the ones at the far end.

Beyond this, there was storage, which was filled with paper, writing implements, and various materials for possible testing in shapes that ranged from cubes to spheres to plates. Many of the materials were rare ones, such as a few diamonds and other gemstones with unusual properties, not to mention quite a few rare alloys of metals. There were naturally containers for Colored Crystal dust, though they were mostly empty and would likely be filled off of Vaughan’s supply shortly.

Then there was the danger cabinet. Filled with chemicals that could explode, burn through flesh, or kill people in seconds. Some of it was definitely unnecessary, but they wanted a full chemistry lab available, so they had gotten the materials for it.

“Who wants to make some sulfuric acid?” Vaughan asked.

“Can we really be trusted with all this?”

“All of us? No. Some of us? Yes. Naturally, we should only let the people with a head on their shoulders access this room. Which means not Jeh.”

“Will she listen to us?”

“Hmm. …If we have a good long talk with her, probably. She’s not in danger, but if those chemicals stick to her and get on someone else…”

“Yeah a—oh my gosh Vaughan are those plast solutions?” Blue pressed her face to a pane of glass separating her from a shelf of brightly colored liquids. “We can make our own containers of any shape…”

“Krays will love that.”

Blue read the labels. “Gari plast solution…?” Blue tilted her head. “How did they…”

“Presumably dead bodies.”

Blue shuddered. “Ah…”

“It’s useful stuff, don’t turn it down!” Seskii called as she passed through storage with a cart of scrap metal. “One of the harder plasts on offer, and the heat-treating property is very useful!”

“You do realize your people have been hunted for this in the past?” Vaughan asked.

Seskii stopped pushing the cart and put her hands on her hips. “Just because there are gari in the world hunted for their plast does not mean we shouldn’t use it, no matter what anyone might tell you. Plus, dead bodies are probably not the primary source, gari can sell their hair clippings. Some of us, like me, like keeping it short.”

Blue glared at Vaughan. “You really let me think we harvest corpses?”

Vaughan coughed. “Well, we do, but it’s a legal process and the death has to have already occurred… I think.”

“It’s where most dragon scale stuff comes from too,” Seskii offered, gesturing at a rack of dragon scale plating they had nearby. “Such as that.”

Blue blinked. “We rely a lot on dead things, don’t we?”

“Part of the circle of life!” Seskii said. “Just be careful in other countries, Kroan doesn’t care too much about the sanctity of bodies, but other places do. Anyway…” She dumped her scrap metal onto the ground. “I’ve got more things to move!” She scrambled back out of the Laboratory.

Blue and Vaughan were silent for a moment.

“Well, what else is there in here?” Blue asked, leaving storage. “There are more rooms…”

The rooms at the far end of the building were split between living quarters and the lounge which also served as a display area. Currently, it was empty, but it had very nice lighting from the big windows and various pedestals on which to showcase whatever the Wizard Space Program might want too. Right now, the only thing on display was a very large map of Ikyu on the walls. Naturally, it only showed half of Ikyu, but the mapmakers would eventually make a new one based off Jeh’s observations from above, though the other half of Ikyu would naturally not be as detailed due to so many clouds getting in the way.

Blue poked around the living quarters, finding the rooms to be basically the same as the labs but already filled with beds, desks, a wardrobe, and other such things. The beds varied in size seemingly randomly. “Ah, where our busy little bees get to stay.”

“Indeed,” Tenrayce said, scaring both Vaughan and Blue so much they jumped.

“Tenrayce!?” Blue blurted. “What are you doing here!?”

“Came to see the Laboratory on opening day.” Tenrayce turned another page. “And I came with the Minor Wizards assigned to work under you. Yes, they have been instructed to listen to your every command.”

Blue brightened up considerably. “How many are we getting?”

“Four. Two Orange specialties, one Purple, and one Magenta. None of them are particularly of note save for the Magenta one, who is a fairy.”

Vaughan perked up. “Those are rather rare around here.”

“He is not the best at his attribute, but he is quite skilled with Magenta.” She produced a scroll with very short files on the four Minor Wizards. Two humans, brother and sister, who studied Purple and Orange respectively, a male gari specializing in Orange, and naturally the fairy. “They are yours to do with as you please.”

“Excellent, I shall try not to torment them too much,” Blue said with a chuckle.

“They will want to see the facilities later, but I wanted to be gone by that time so as to not make them feel oppressed by my presence.” Tenrayce tilted her hat. “I mainly wanted to see how things were progressing, Blue. I’ve seen the Moonshot, it’s looking good.”

Blue nodded. “It’s going excellently. We’re on track to launch… well, after winter.”

“As expected.”

“Would you like to go get something to eat? Maybe with me and Seskii?”

“I would love that,” Tenrayce said. “Though aside from having Mary cook for us or going to the bar, where would we go here?”

“Well, it just so happens that we have a new chef…”

“Oh, do tell.”

“You’re going to love this.”

~~~

Agent Keller threw his report on Lila’s desk. “There ya go, a catalog of anythin’ even vaguely suspicious in Willow Hollow.”

Lila looked at the book-sized stack of papers. “It’s thinner than I imagined.”

“Your town may be very unique, but it’s not all that suspicious. Most of that book is filled with stuff on the Red Seekers ya probably already know ‘bout. Surprisin’ly, not much on your two Gonal. Girl’s a good kid, the old man’s just tired and broken.” He paused. “You sure ya wanna let him keep that sigil?”

Lila nodded. “It is of great religious significance to both of them, and the ‘demon’ within is rather amiable from what I’ve been told.”

“That’s how they getcha, though.”

“…The moment you believe Kirkkok is a threat to the town, you may remove the sigil.”

Keller let out a long breath. “It’s hard for me t’ tell. I haven’t met many o’ them demons, but they’re never pleasant. Some don’t want ya dead, but they want somethin’ bad.”

Lila frowned. “I find myself wondering if it is a mistake to extend the olive branch as such, but I have no experience with the ‘servants of Eyda.’ All I hear are the rumors and gossip, which always paints them as evil brutes with no ability to feel remorse. We live in a society that wants to kill not only them on sight, but a good chunk of their followers. And yet, as you said, Margaret is a ‘good kid,’ though she is a bit old for that moniker.”

“She’s younger than me.”

“Fair.” Lila flicked her tail. “Your job, Agent Keller, is to protect us. If you think Kirkkok is a threat, I give you the authority to take action. You can destroy the sigil. But I ask that you not judge without good cause.”

“And ya trust me to know when that is?”

“I trust you more than myself in this matter.”

Keller nodded. “Good. I’ll keep an eye on ‘em, but otherwise there doesn’t seem to be a problem.”

“Anything else of note?”

“Am I allowed to know what Vaughan’s hidin’ in his basement?”

Lila blinked. “Well… you are certainly good at your job.”

“Heh.” He scratched his chin. “I just know there’s somethin’ down there.”

“I suppose since you’ve been so open and accommodating to us… we do not really know what it is, it is a mysterious black cube that the previous mayor instructed us to find a way to destroy. We don’t know what it is, we just know that we shouldn’t touch it. Our current plan is to wait until the space program has developed enough to launch it into the sun.”

Agent Keller frowned, thinking.

“Do you know anything about it?”

“Afraid not. But if ya can’t find a way to destroy it with all your resources, it’s suddenly a lot more concernin’ than anything else in this town.”

“Well, we intend to destroy it, so…”

“That does take some worry off my chest, but not all o’ it.” He tapped his foot. “But if it sits there and does nothin’, I suppose we’re good.”

“You really are quite understanding, Agent Keller, I applaud you.”

“Heh.” He weaved his fingers together. “Just learned it’s the best way t’ do my job.”

“Anything else?”

“Aside from all that, the most mysterious thing in town is Seskii. Girl has no history, far as I can tell, and is decidedly strange.”

Lila smirked. “That’s Seskii for you.”

“Yes… there’s somethin’ up with her.”

“Oh, yes, quite, everyone here knows she’s unusual in some way, but asking questions generally goes nowhere.”

“Gives me a headache, though.” Agent Keller folded his arms behind his back. “That said, she’s very earnest and carin’, so whatever her deal is, it ain’t t’ harm ya.”

“The thought never crossed my mind. I am surprised it crossed yours.”

“It’s my job, miss Mayor. Gotta check even the most innocent looking.”

“Well, thank you for being thorough, then. And Agent Keller?”

“Yes?”

“I am glad they sent you, they could easily have sent someone more…”

“More likely to use the authority to kill whoever was undesirable?”

“Er… well, not that specific, but yes.”

“There certainly are Agents like that. Each of us has our own set of skills and places we work best. Crown tries t’ send us t’ the best-fit locations. I think they did well this time, personally.” He tipped his hat to her. “G’day, miss Mayor.”

“Good day to you too.”

Keller walked out of Lila’s office and outside. The wind was chill, indicating the coming of winter.

“You know, I do really try not to be noticed that much,” Seskii said from her “fruit juice” selling stand. Several of them were sparkling with decidedly unnatural colors.

“I’d be hard-pressed to do a job as good as you,” Keller said, taking out a cylinder, lighting it on fire, and starting to smoke it. “You’ve got the skills of an Agent on you.”

“Why, thanks!” Seskii grinned.

“Am I pokin’ where I shouldn’t?”

“Absolutely, but I’m not going to fault you for that, you’re just doing your job.” Seskii put her feet up on her stand and leaned back. “Clearly, though, we’re going to have to come to some kind of understanding here.”

“Heh. Usin’ my own strategy on me, are you?”

Seskii waved her hand in the air. “Eh, I don’t like to think in those terms. I’m not against you, I’m really glad you’re here to protect the town. You’re going to be a great help.”

“Except I might be a little redundant, isn’t that right?”

Seskii winked at him. “I don’t see any point in denying that.”

“They haven’t the foggiest idea what you do for them.”

“It kind of has to be that way.”

Keller let out a puff of smoke. “I won’t pry into yer secrets, somethin’ tells me ya can’t tell me anyway.”

“Eh… depends.”

“Still won’t pry. I will say this, though.” He tapped out some ashes. “Let’s see who can catch the first spy.”

Seskii grinned. “You’re on.”

~~~

SCIENCE SEGMENT

Air pressure!

Air pressure is something we all just kind of know about from experience. Blow up a balloon, the air makes it expand. Open a door and air will start flowing from the side with high pressure to low pressure even if there’s no wind outside. A fair amount of wind and weather currents are determined by gradual differences in air pressure.

But what exactly is air pressure?

Well, the phenomenon arises from the basic properties of gas molecules. Imagine, if you will, a box. with a bunch of air in it. Gas molecules are more or less independent of each other and are generally moving at fast speeds, so they hit the edges of the box all the time. Every time one of the molecules hits the edge of the box, it exerts a force on said box. If there were only one molecule in the box, every time it hit the edge it would make the box move slightly. (Ignoring concerns like friction.)

However, there are a lot of molecules in any given amount of gas. When there are a lot of them, at any given time there are an equal amount of gas molecules hitting one edge of the box as another edge, so the amount of force the gas exerts on the container is perfectly balanced out. However, it’s not like the force isn’t applied, it still is, it’s just applied equally on both sides by millions of gas molecules at once. If there are enough gas molecules with high enough energies within a box, they will apply so much force that they tear the box apart.

This force is what forces balloons to get larger when more air is pumped into them, and also what makes them explode if they get over-inflated.

Now, since lots of air can be stored in containers simply by pumping more in, it is most efficient to store it (and other gasses) in a pressurized form, packing more and more of it into solid containers that can withstand the force of billions of molecules trying to tear it apart from the inside. However, when a hole forms, the air shoots out with extreme force, often enough to make the container itself go flying. Why is this?

Well, return to our box. Now make a hole in one of the sides of the box. The system is no longer symmetric: there is no longer the same amount of area on one side of the container as the other. The side with the hole feels less force than the opposing side, so the imbalance can cause motion. However, this only occurs if the air pressure outside the box is lower than the air pressure inside. This is because while air from inside the box flows out through the hole, any outside air can flow in through the hole as well. If the pressure in the box is higher, more air flows out than in, and the imbalance allows force to be applied in one direction.

If the air pressures were equal, an equal amount of air would flow in and out, making the forces balance once more.

If the air pressure outside were stronger, more air would flow in. Our box would not only take in a ton of air, it would also move toward the hole. We can visualize the forces by realizing that the exterior air pressure is pushing on the opposite wall from outside with more force than the pressure that is allowing some of itself to come through the hole, thus we get motion. This is also how some vacuum machines work, pulling air in very quickly to drag other things with it.

The curious thing is that any individual gas molecule feels very little influence from any other gas molecules until the pressures get really high, at which point you can forcibly compress gas into a liquid no matter the temperature. Each gas molecule is generally moving around completely randomly smacking into things haphazardly, the consequence of pressure only arises when you have a lot of things doing entirely random maneuvers, and out of that an organized phenomenon—pressure—arises.