Author's idiotisms: Headcanon explanations pre-story: no Sburb, the story is about human explorers on Alternia, the flashlight is the main characteristic of the mystery girl (henceforth Flashlight Girl).

A flashlight briefly flashed through the empty streets of Alternia. The scene in an otherwise dull environment was slightly exciting. It was as if a new sun had shone in the place. But it was a sun no one else had ever seen. Trolls had grown accustomed to living in the dark, and as such, if any troll was there, he would regard the brief spark of light as obscene and alien.

And alien it was, as a shadow, knowing the direction from the brief flash, confidently walked across the street. The shadow didn't appear to have any horns, strangely. Of course, the scene would once again be strange only to trolls.

The shadow then flashed her flashlight again, though this time for a longer time. From the reflecting light, you could now easily tell that she was, in fact, a pale-skinned girl, with a gray coat and a black skirt. Now, one could definitely tell she was not a native of the land, but rather an explorer from a distant planet.

With that, one could easily draw a conclusion that she was, in fact, not alone. One doesn't just embark on a distant journey like this without any sort of company. Some relationships and stereoscopic observations were practically key to this girl's mission. The speculations were quickly confirmed, as the girl, still holding her flashlight with one hand, pulled out a Walkie-Talkie, used for communication when no global services were available, and spoke something to her friends.

Her friends - there were three of them, in fact - were presumably disinterested. They gave much less thought to the alien planet, instead wondering when a party in space will happen. It was only this girl who cared to figure out precisely what Alternia is.

At this point, you might be wondering many things. Who is this girl? Who are her friends? Why and how did they get to Alternia? Obviously, these questions won't be answered immediately, much like much of the trivia about Alternia. Narration, it should be mentioned at this point, is different from observation. Observation leads to figuring out facts one by one and only then piecing them to a coherent story, and narration tells the story in digested chunks, so it is easier to build an entire world out of it.

And as such, the story must inevitably call for a prologue. It will try to be brief, but it has to be sufficient so you know who the mysterious girl with the flashlight is and where she stands in her own society.

Kate Parker was, to say the least, completely disinterested with her life.

For a girl her age, she was quite knowledgeable. Her room added on to this: her bookcases were full of books, there were many tables with famous experiments of physics reproduced, and when she opened her computer, the websites she visited, like Wikipedia and Answers. com, were so much unlike the interests of her friends, which were to continuously browse Tumblr and Facebook in search of friends and the purpose of life without acutely understanding what life consists of.

As such, she had much difficulty talking to her friends. She didn't have that many friends over the Internet - only three, as emphasized by her Tumblr follower count and Pesterchum contact count, easily countable - one, two, three - and out of all of them she felt like an outcast.

Thus, not giving much thought to this, she switched off both her computer and her phone and turned to her backyard, where she was completing her newest experiment: a personal spaceship.

Space travel always fascinated humans. While the first epoch of space travel, lasting from 1957 to 1972, only was fueled by a greater competition between the United States and the Soviet Union, the second epoch, officially beginning with a revisit of the moon in 2023, was much more friendlier, with spaceships becoming open-source technology for everyone to create, and instead of countries, individuals competed.

Kate Parker, the hero of our story, was no exception.

For a girl her age, her interest combination seemed a little strange. Other girls her age were completely corrupted by anime and other fandoms, but Kate seemed like she was born in the golden epoch of 1990s. After the time, all the people born were immediately corrupted by the fandoms, but before this time, women were too afraid to speak up, and so this epoch best matched Kate's interests.

As she pondered the very last thoughts, and felt very distantly connected to the humanity, she screwed in the last wires of the spaceship, almost readying it for flight, were it not for one major setback:

She completely lacked fuel.

Thus, she plugged the spaceship into a hydrogen generator and returned to the computer to finally talk to her friends about completely irrelevant stuff. On Pesterchum, only one other friend was online and so it was the immediate choice of who Kate would pester.

- severedSovereign [SS] began pestering knightlySoldier [KS] -

SS: Well, and what would you be up to?
KS: oh noooooooooo
KS: were SO not havin this conversation alright
SS: Why not?
KS: ur just gonna introduce more smart bull shit 2 me
KS: getit introduce
KS: thats a fairly smart word
SS: And once again, I am reminded that I am from the wrong decade.
KS: er
KS: sorry
KS: i totes accept people of all intelligences
SS: Levels of intelligence.
KS: NO
KS: i mean
KS: whatever
KS: what do u want
SS: The relationship between us two and my other two friends is always so dysfunctional.
KS: and
KS: who are those other 2
KS: i kno u keep mentionin those other 2 but how do i kno
KS: their not ur imaginary friends
SS: I am pretty confident of such things.
SS: At any rate, I thought we four should do something together.
KS: we 4
KS: its not we 4
KS: its we 2 an the other 2
SS: Well, then it is about time I introduced you to those other 2.
KS: NO
KS: i already follow like 9000 or so pplz on tumblr
SS: But you never talk to them?
KS: i so do
SS: Besides me, do you keep any stable relationships with anyone?
KS: well
KS: u misunderstand
KS: 4 a smartypants u still dont understand that
KS: tumblr is a single organism
KS: a hive mind
SS: Hmm.
SS: But that didn't answer my question.
KS: lessee
KS: theres this guy w/ whom i once did an art collab yesterday
KS: theres this girl w/ whom i rped 3 days ago
SS: You can stop now.
SS: I already see that your scope is only days long.
KS: an what r u goin 2 tell me now
KS: arms race of US an USSR
SS: Nah, no historical metaphors this time.
SS: Just so I understand.
SS: I'm your only definite contact on Pesterchum, right?
KS: no
KS: ur still gettin it wrong
KS: jus lemme see theres like 100 contacts
KS: bu somma those r 1 day guys/girls so imma delete those
SS: Waiting.

While Kate was waiting for a response, she picked up her Rubik's Revenge, scrambled it and began solving it. However, about ten minutes into peaceful solving, her friend finally spoke up again.

KS: !
KS: omg
KS: omg omg omg ur rite
KS: jus when i think ur full of bullshit ur rite
KS: ur the only one i remember from maybs
KS: a month ago
SS: Well, then I suppose it is time I introduced you to the others.

And thus, Kate, as little as she had contact with people on the Internet, was confident that she wasn't a complete outcast of the system after all.