"This is it, huh," Anza regarded the three teenagers. Just like they had a week ago, they were outside the main doors of Cliffwatch, preparing to leave.

  "Only for a few years. I'm sure we'll meet again," Mikayla assured her. Was that the right thing to say? It felt right.

  "I don't doubt it," Anza grinned. "Good luck down there. Don't do anything I wouldn't do," She tilted her head. "And maybe don't do the things I did do, either,"

  "I suppose we'll have to uncover your sordid past on our own," Mikayla teased.

  Their guardian waved the accusation off. "It's been years, I'm sure they fixed all the scorch marks by now,"

  Keldryn, who had been ignoring the conversation, paused. "You focus on earth Techniques, what were you doing that made scorch marks?"

  "Wouldn't you like to know?" Anza teased. "Get going already! You've got places to be!"

  "It was great meeting you! Stay safe!" Asika waved goodbye as Kagura-no-Shibu formed up around her and her passengers, lifting off into the air.

  Anza watched them go, smiling fondly. "They're good kids . . hope they stay on the right path,"

  <=====}—o

  It had taken all week, but Seres had finally managed to get herself mobile again.

  After her disastrous encounter with the Spinosaurus, she'd been stuck. Alone. Immobile. Watching the laboriously slow process of her nanomachines piecing herself body back together and thanking the blue box, her former captain, her makers and anyone else she could think of that the Spinosaurus had decided it was unable to eat her.

  But that was in the past. She could move. She could finally cross the last few kilometres and reunite with Captain Mummy Mikayla and First Mate Daddy Keldryn! She could see the Quest Marker on her Map that indicated their location. They were so close. They were only an hour away.

  They were moving.

  They were going up into the air. They were coming towards her. Had they seen her? Did they know about her? Were they coming to meet her?!

  Something big and blue flew overhead without even noticing Seres, hidden as she was by the canopies of the trees, and swept away to the south.

  It took her Quest Markers with it.

  Seres stalled out.

  They had passed her. They had ignored her. They were leaving her again.

  Again.

  Mummy and Daddy didn't know about her. That was it, right? That was all? Surely? It wasn't that they didn't care. It wasn't that they were intentionally avoiding her. She could have caught up if the spiky dinosaur hadn't hurt her so badly. If they were intentionally avoiding her then they would have moved on before her original time of arrival.

  Unless they were watching her.

  Seres would have noticed if they were surveilling her somehow, wouldn't she?

  It was counterproductive to speculate. She needed to change direction. Continue on after them.

  The blue box made her stronger when she killed things. Maybe if she killed enough things, it would make her stronger in a way that also made her faster?

  Regardless. She would catch up. No matter how long it took.

  <=====}—o

  Days passed in a blur of boredom as Kagura-no-Shibu flew south. Mikayla and Keldryn had been endlessly fascinated by the view from the sky for the first ten minutes, but after that the endless tundra blurred together.

  They passed lakes and distant mountains, and eventually the birch trees thinned out and were replaced with open plains. Vibrancy returned to the land, and Mikayla didn't realise how far they'd come until they were camped out on top of a hill, waiting for Asika to recover her Mana, and suddenly Mikayla noticed that she couldn't see a single birch tree.

  Ar one point, she looked up through the translucent roof of Kagura-no-Shibu and remarked, inanely, "Hey. The sky is blue,"

  "Huh? Of course it is," Keldryn was giving her the 'you're-an-idiot' look again. "Is it a different colour where you're from?"

  "No, just. This is the first time since I came to this world that the cloud cover's cleared up enough for me to see the sky,"

  It was a couple of days later that she finally saw the Cloudfingers, the mountains she'd heard so much about. The site of the battle against the First Monster King.

  The first thing she noticed was that its bones were still there.

  The mountains had a natural gap between them, one that had been plugged up with a wall worthy of being a dam that bristled with terraces and artillery emplacements. Smaller towers, walls and other defences pockmarked the mountains, and she could see more defences stretching beyond the mountain range. It all overlooked an impossibly huge skull and ribcage, with a spine that stretched for kilometres. At a guess, she thought the First Monster King had been something similar enough to a crocodile or drake, based on the shape of its head. She could just barely pick out people on the walls, and they looked like ants compared to the ribcage.

  With a flex of Mana, the Black Knight appeared around her body, letting her lend her sight to Nocturnus. "You fought that thing?" Mikayla asked, awed.

  "Ah, the Cloudfingers. We've finally returned. I see they never bothered to clean up," the ghost jested. "The First Kaiju King was our greatest triumph. The five of us; Nicholas, Astralia, Carter, Yevgenia, and myself," he continued, voice turning melancholic. "For one shining moment, I thought the five of us, standing together, could do anything. Even save the world," He sighed. "And maybe we could have,"

  A somber silence filled the cockpit of Kagura-no-Shibu at that.

  This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.

  "Well!" Asika cut through the melancholy with a chipper tone. "World's not destroyed yet, and let's keep it that way!"

  "Just as long as you're not putting all that on me," Mikayla weakly joked. "It's bad enough that I'm living in a portal fantasy, dunno if I could take being the Chosen One or Last Hope or whatever,"

  Asika giggled. "Don't worry, things would have to get really bad before anyone asks you to save the world. You'll be fine!"

  A few moments later, they were flying over the peaks of the Cloudfingers, and Mikayla was awed again by what lay beyond.

  When she'd heard about Cloudscraper Academy, she couldn't help but picture the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. It was the magic school, after all.

  But Cloudscraper was nothing like that. It was a sprawling complex formed from a mishmash of architectural styles, predominantly towers of various designs and colours, arranged in a rough grid. These were connected by thoroughfares that formed dozens of variously sized open areas, each plenty large enough for Goliaths to do battle with one another. Different terrains abounded, some grassy, some rocky, there were a few filled with water and at least one that was somehow coated in snow.

  All three teenagers and one melancholy ghost peered down at the campus, easily large enough to be called a city on its own merits.

  "It's huge," Keldryn, who'd lived his entire life in small villages and underground enclosures, was overwhelmed by the sheer scale of this new world.

  "It's exotic," There were European castles with flying buttresses, obelisks that ended in pyramid tips, what seemed to be a whole pirate ship dragged ashore and rebuilt - Mikayla could barely believe the diversity that she was seeing.

  "It's glorious," Nocturnus could only lament that he hadn't stayed, two hundred years ago, to help build this place with his friends.

  "It's not giving me any hints on where to land!" Asika complained. "I'm supposed to take you to the main administrative building, but Sun Archiver knows which one that is?!"

  "Back there. The large stone building, near the base of the Cloudfingers," Nocturnus interjected. "I remember that place. It was the command centre we built to coordinate the defence against the Monster King. It already had everything needed for administration, so I'd be very surprised if it doesn't still serve that purpose,"

  Asika obligingly brought them down in the courtyard closest to the administrative centre, and as she did Mikayla witnessed another impossible detail. There were train tracks passing along one side of the courtyard, leading to what was unmistakably a train station. As soon as Kagura-no-Shibu had been dismissed, she rushed across the courtyard to inspect the railway.

  "I know I shouldn't be surprised at this point, but we've got trains?"

  Keldryn joined her, brow furrowed. "I, um, suppose we do. What's a train?"

  Mikayla stifled a chuckle. "I'll tell you about them later,"

  "Hey, someone's coming to meet you," Asika piped up, drawing their attention to a woman who had left her administrative building to approach them.

  "You're not staying?" Keldryn quirked an eyebrow.

  "Eh, yeah, heh. I shouldn't stick around, there's already a new mission with my name on it in the Cosmic Isles. And the report for all this is gonna be a total bear to sort out. Wish me luck," Asika's smile tightened.

  "I see. Well. Thank you, for everything," Keldryn murmured.

  Mikayla hugged her. "Yeah. I . . I'm happy to have been your first mortal friend, and I'm sure you'll make lots more, okay? You're way too sweet for people to not like you,"

  Asika squeezed, resting her head on Mikayla's shoulder, her metallic hair falling across Mikayla's exposed arm. "Aw, thanks. It's definitely been a hell of a first mission. And don't worry, I'll keep in touch, and I haven't forgotten the promise I made you about the Divine Techniques, and -"

  "Hey, hey. You don't owe me anything, okay? Don't stress about any of that," Mikayla assured her. It hadn't escaped her notice that the faerie had been fussy over her since failing to get the rift open, and she couldn't help but suspect that Asika felt like she owed Mikayla something to make up for that failure. Even though it hadn't been her fault at all.

  "Alright. But still. Heh!" Asika focused on Keldryn, peering over Mikayla's shoulder. "And you'll do great, Keldie, don't worry about anything. You won't be anywhere near the only young prodigy from the Kaiju Coast, you'll find your people,"

  Keldryn's brow furrowed. "Um. Thanks,"

  Had Keldryn been nursing concerns like that? Mikayla winced, guilt creeping into her thoughts. She'd been so wrapped up in her own problems that she hadn't considered what it was like for Keldryn to be dragged along from the middle of nowhere to the big city. She'd have to talk to him about that later.

  Asika finally pulled away, grinning at them both. "It's been great. And I'll come visit when I can. And DM you - what was the word in your language? Text? I'll do that!"

  "Bye, Asika. See you next time," Mikayla nodded, returning the smile.

  "Yep, yep, bye Asika - that's your line, not mine. Ehe. Bye-bye!" With that, Asika finally convinced herself to turn and run back towards the middle of the field, with Kagura-no-Shibu already unfolding from her Core Controller.

  "I'm gonna miss her," Mikayla sighed, and Keldryn nodded agreement.

  They turned to face the secretary rushing towards them, and Mikayla opened her mouth to greet the woman.

  Before she could get a word out, the woman shouted, "Move! You're about to get hit by a train!"