Zack stood next to his sister and Tessa, each of them clutching a bear tightly in their arms. The gift they had each received from Gaia was firmly on their wrist. They had been given strict instructions to not activate them until they reached home, otherwise, they might not work.

The teasing world spirit hadn’t even been willing to tell them what it was, not that it mattered. They had already gained far more from this trip than they had ever imagined they would.

Charles allowed them a minute to take in the sight before coughing to get their attention. They were each tightly clutching one of the bears when they turned to face him.

They were all in the observatory, giving the teens a quick look down at the planet before they left for home.

He stepped away from the window. “Alright then, Testarosa, Zackary, Zariah, are you ready to go home?”

“We are,” Zack answered hesitantly, a troubled look crossing his face.

There was something wrong with how Charles had just addressed him, he just couldn’t place what it was at that moment.

“Give me just a moment, and I’ll open the doorway for you back to your home, then.” Charles looked inside to where the threads that connected him to people were and found the ones for Zack and Zara. It only took him a second to find a pair of strong threads that connected to the both of them and choose them as the destination.

A dimensional tear opened beside him and formed a neat doorway in a blink of an eye.

“There you go. Home is just on the other side, somewhere. Hurry up, I can’t hold this open for long.” Charles told them, a light sheen of fresh sweat already beginning to drip from his forehead. “Forgive me, if my targeting was a little off. I’ve never tried to target a location in this manner before.”

It was harder to target something across dimensions and through someone else’s thread. There was simply too much going on at that point for him to accurately target something on his first try. He just hoped they didn’t end up appearing in the middle of the ocean. That would suck for them.

Tessa decided to go first, her excitement at finally seeing her parents again getting the better of her. “Thanks for everything,” She said before hurrying through the portal with George in her arms.

“Yeah, thanks.” Zara muttered shyly. “It was nice meeting you and the others.” She dug the toe of her boot into the floor as she looked down. “And thanks for whatever it is you did while we were unconscious. It helped give the bears a nice boost once they adjusted to it.”

“Did it? That’s… interesting.” Charles said after a moment. “I wasn’t sure how us doing that would help the two of you. We only knew that it would prove beneficial in the long run.”

He handed her a giant bag of unwrapped candy and pushed her on through with a twinkle in his eye and a grin. “Good luck.”

“You knew all of our full names. How?” Zack demanded, stopping just in front of the doorway. “Do you know what our last name is?”

“Magic kid, and of course I do. Now go on.” Charles pushed him through. Holding a dimensional doorway open was far harder than a normal one. He could already feel the strain building and it had only been around thirty seconds.

He closed the doorway once he was sure they were through with a sigh of relief. Finally, that was all over. Now it was up to Gaia to take things from here.

“The kids are gone?” Kory asked as he wandered out of the hallway connecting from the town system room.

“Yeah, I just barely sent them home.”

“That’s too bad. I didn’t get to say goodbye. I guess this means Gaia will get to work on upgrading everything soon then.”

“Yup, grandma and grandpa, it feels weird calling them that, already went down to Dungeonville in order to ‘guide’ Gaia through the process. Mom will be the one acting as our transport today if anything happens. Since they promised to be good, mom decided she doesn’t need to watch them all day now.”

“Well, let’s hope nothing does.” You could tell from his voice that Kory didn’t believe that was going to happen. “Just keep Kira and Alli safe, Krystal and I’ll watch over everyone here while you’re gone.”

“Always.”

Kate had wanted to participate with Beth and Inara, but had quickly been voted down by everyone else. They were staying on the space station where it would hopefully be safe.

“Did you make any more changes to the station while I was away?” Charles asked as they made their way back to the dorm apartments. They may have been improved, but no matter how you looked at them, they were still cramped dorms more than they were actual apartments.

“Not really. We’ve mainly just been absorbing more debris from the area around us. Old satellites, drifting meteors, and small particulates can account for a lot over such a large area. And trust me, there are way more satellites up here than most people ever knew about.”

“Well, at least the space station will have plenty of ready material for the next time we need to expand it. Not to mention whatever they used as thrusters, for orbital corrections, will be useful.” The town system would be able to make them better, for a price.

The space station was getting closer to what Gaia wanted it to be. Soon it wouldn’t be constrained to the orbit above Earth any longer but would leave to explore the solar system. Gaia had been wanting to wake up her siblings from their long slumber ever since she herself woke up.

The space station would be the focusing antenna through which she accomplished that task. Assuming they wanted to awaken in the first place.

Charles walked into the small apartment he shared with Kira and the girls and stopped. Myriam was currently in the kitchen making a mess with Silvi. Both were obviously trying their best to make breakfast but failing at it and were near tears.

“What’s this about?” He asked, trying not to laugh, as he wiped egg yolk off Myri’s face and plucked pieces of onion from Silvi’s hair.

“We wanted to thank you for the presents yesterday. I can see my parents again, thank you.” Myri ran her finger over her mother’s face on the bracelet. Her parents had always been busy providing for her, and were rarely home, but she had still loved them.

He cleaned them and the kitchen with a spell before putting both girls on the counter. “I’m glad the gift means so much to you, Myri, but you didn’t have to make breakfast for us in return. That goes for you too, Silvi. You don’t need to go along with everything she suggests. You’re the older sister, you should act like it occasionally.”

Charles picked up the pan and the remaining eggs. “Now it looks like you made some good headway on the onions. What do you say we finish making these omelets before Kira wakes up? I’ll be in charge this time, and you two can help. Deal?”

They nodded enthusiastically.

When Kira came out a little while later, breakfast was almost ready.

Myri began to giggle after looking at her.

“I didn’t realize you had already decided to change your hair,” Charles commented, flipping over the last of the omelets with Silvi’s help.

Kira’s hair had taken on a rather spiky, punk rock quality sometime during the night.

“Ugh, I need a shower. What do we have going on today?”

“So far, nothing. I’ve already sent off Zack, Zara, and Tessa. Now we’re just waiting to see if everyone is right about Dantanian or if we get a day of relaxation.”

“Can we play the game?” Myriam asked, her cheeks already full of food making her resemble a cute little chipmunk.

“I don’t know. I seem to remember you all in the middle of playing that when I returned. I’m pretty sure my character is far behind yours by now.” Charles winked at Kira.

“Noooo,” Myri whined. “We kept him in the party. Silvi and Kira made sure he survived and everything.”

“I was just playing around, Myri. Calm down. Do you enjoy playing the game that much?”

“The game is fun, but everyone is there when we play. They aren’t off doing their own thing. You know?”

The little girl just wanted to spend time with her new family, it seemed. The game was simply an excuse for her to accomplish that. What a sneaky little thing.

“I guess we can at least play until Gaia starts doing her upgrades, assuming we even notice when she starts.” Charles patted her on the head and then glanced at his spiky haired fiancé. “Come on, eat while everything is still hot Kira. You can take a shower afterward.”

The morning passed slowly, with nothing of note happening. Everyone had gathered together in the observatory, playing the game while waiting for word of Dantanian.

In the end, nothing happened that day or the next.

Conor and Clara stayed down with Gaia the entire time. By that point, everyone in the group had already figured out that the upgrades she was making were requiring more concentration than normal. These weren’t the simple patches she had been trying to use from before, but a total and complete system overhaul.

Then on the third day, the system everyone had grown accustomed to using for everything went offline, and chaos erupted.

Regular people that had no idea something was going to happen suddenly found themselves unable to access or use anything. Their status pages wouldn’t appear when called and inventories had suddenly vanished. Abilities that required using a menu to activate could no longer be used, and even the town system menu was inaccessible.

It was the perfect time for Dantanian to mount his offensive, and he took full advantage of it. All around the world rogue fallen gods and monsters he had pulled into his little war attacked the protected towns.

It didn’t matter if they belonged to Charles’ network or one of the god’s burgeoning kingdoms. It was open season on all of them. The goal was maximum chaos, and that is exactly what he got.

Unfortunately, with the town system, and the system as a whole down for the moment. Charles was unable to use the telescope in the observatory, or his inventory. Everything was locked away for the time being. They could see the attacks happening in a few locations from the last time they had used the space station’s telescope. However, they could no longer adjust it at all. It was locked in its current position.