-Destination: New York City-

Jessica Ruiz was starting to get annoyed by the sound of her own shoes clomping on the steel floor, but she couldn't stop pacing. She didn't even really need to look where she was going anymore; she knew the corridors of the spaceship completely by heart. They had always reminded her of the hospital, so white and sterile and metallic.

Right now, pacing was all she could do. None of the usual ways she had killed time travelling through space these past three years would cut it now: she'd beaten every console game, she'd read all her Mighty Bright Knight comics a zillion times, she could harmonize every single stray note from all of the musicals and albums she'd brought, and both the gym and the dining area were closed during atmosphere re-entry. As little as she enjoyed just pacing around, it was all she could bring herself to do.

She glanced up to see a Skeleckian attendant walking past her back down the corridor. She cleared her throat. "Excuse me, uh…"

The attendant gestured to his nametag, which said "Alan Pufferduffsikon".

"…Alan, right, do you know how long it will be until we land on Earth?"

"About an hour, ma'am. And by the time we arrive, it will be dawn in New York City, so we will have a sunrise to greet us!"

Jessica grinned. "That's nice!" Alan grinned back and continued on his way down the corridor.

After he'd left, Jess's grin turned to a frustrated grimace. An hour! After three years, Earth was so close she could taste it, and she had to wait an hour!

She remembered when she first left, that strange combination of sadness and exhilaration as this very ship had taken off from the new spaceport in New York City, taking Jessica to the Darlef Nebula and away from everything that defined her entire life. Ever since then, for three years she had been travelling between the nebula's planets, assisting, in her capacity as an ambassador from Earth, the people of Skelecki in their ongoing attempts to make peace and establish trade between the systems.

Going on that extended mission would never have been an easy decision, but circumstances seemed to conspire to make it as hard as it possibly could be. For a long time, Jessica had resigned from being an Earth-Skeleckian ambassador after the incident at the Eldrimk Intergalactic Assembly station. She, along with the rest of the Electric Company as guests, had gone to assist the Skeleckians in negotiations between them and a neighboring planet, Curtanza. After a harrowing incident, it came out that some of the Skeleckians had a device which could control the Company's powers if they thought necessary, which the Curtanzil President had taken and used. They'd stopped him and everyone had been alright, but the damage was done.

The Company, especially Jessica, had seen a side of Skelecki that they could never unsee again. Even though no Skeleckians she knew personally had been involved in the device scheme, she still had come to think of the whole planet as like a family of close neighbors. It had still felt like a betrayal by a close friend.

Jess thought it was a serious possibility that she would have never gone back to being an ambassador if it weren't for her Skeleckian friends on Earth; being there for her and the others, their same old friendly and good-hearted selves, serving as a reminder that, whatever had been done, there were still Skeleckians who were honest and kind and would never betray those whose trust they had earned. Even so, it still took a couple years for Jessica to let herself be notably involved with the new Skeleckian regime, which had quickly swooped in to replace the old one after the Eldrimk scandal.

But the past was all it was. She had eventually agreed to go on this extended series of diplomatic missions, for the good the galaxy, and it had gone as well as it could have. Three years of adventure, three years of exploration, three years of negotiation, three years of mind-numbing boredom, three years of excitement, three years of danger, three years of loneliness, three years of meeting new friends, three years of yearning for her old ones. Even after so long a time doing it, traveling through space from planet to planet didn't feel like her true, actual "life". New York City, the Electric Company, her family, that was her life, and even the three years across the galaxy hadn't made it feel any less vivid or close to her. The only connection she'd had to back home was the ability to infrequently send and receive video messages to Hector and the others at the diner, but due to the nature of space travel none of the messages, coming or going, were in real time. It was basically video versions of snail mail, but it was all she had, and she treasured watching each one and whichever friends were able to appear in it.

Her restless mind envisioned everyone who she would see when the ship landed. She saw Hector smiling and wrapping her in a bear hug. There was a twang of guilt with the image, because when Jessica thought of her family, Hector always came to mind before her parents. It wasn't comfortable, but it was a fact. And now she was thinking of her father's bushy, lively eyebrows and her mother's dimpled smile, and how good it would feel to squeeze them both as tight as Hector would squeeze her.

Her thoughts drifted to visions of her friends. Lisa would probably make a beeline to hug Jess as soon as she saw her, most likely bumping into someone or knocking something over in the process. Marcus would probably grin as wide as the moon and let out some gleeful incoherent yelling, and she would yell right back, and then grab him and give him some noogies. She didn't have a younger brother, but Marcus was reasonably close to one, particularly after their escapades on Prankster Planet. And Shock wouldn't say a whole lot, not as much as the others anyways, but his smile would say everything needed.

And Keith… Keith. Only now did her mind go to Keith, as if it had deliberately saved him for last for dramatic purposes. What could she think about Keith now? What would she say to him? What would he say to her?

On Earth, they had been friends for a long time. Then they had been closer, for a while. And then, the offer to go on the Darlef mission, and Jess had thought she should take it, even though it would take years. They had talked about it, they had fought, they had apologized, they had made promises to each other, and they had said "see you later". It had hurt, it had hurt like anything, but it had been clean. Now, "later" was fast approaching, and Jessica had no idea what it would hold. The longing to see Keith and the dread of seeing him were unbearably intermingled.

"Jessica?"

She was knocked out of her thoughts by Olivesk Scratoriallenfishensnach, peering around the hallway corner. His smile was shy and yet somehow a bit too fake.

Jessica brushed her hair out of her face. "Hmm? Oh, hi Olivesk. Did you want something?"

"We're passing something near the Earth's atmosphere I though you might like to see."

Jess turned to follow him. "Okay, thanks."

They walked down the corridor, Olivesk whistling too loudly and too jauntily. Jessica had mixed feelings about him. He had been the Company's guide on Eldrimk, and it turned out afterwards that he had been looking the other way in regards to what his higher-ups had been doing. He did seem to be genuinely regretful, and seemed to trying to make up for it, but Jessica was still wary and a little bit resentful, even if she didn't like it. This made things horribly awkward when they were together on the ship.

They reached one of the spaceship's outer walls, with several large, round windows contrasting the blackness of space with the wall's whiteness. Olivesk pointed out of one. "I remember this place from some of your stories, I thought you might be interested in seeing it again."

Jessica peered out the window and chuckled softly. Outside the spaceship floated what looked like a giant chunk of land, as if it had been ripped right off the earth, covered in trees, mountains, and buildings, just floating serenely through the void.

"Prankster Planet." Jessica shook her head. It had been long time since she'd seen this place. Not since the Pranksters had concocted their most ambitious scheme yet. Francine had begged her mother to buy her a SpaceSpot (a recent trend where debris in space was gathered up and made into little orbiting pieces of land with artificial atmosphere, to cut down space pollution) for her birthday, and because the Carruthers seemingly had a whole orchard of trees growing money in their backyard, she'd gotten one.

The Pranksters then had a whole new base of resources to cause chaos with, and eventually Jessica and Marcus ended up having to catch the nearest space shuttle up there to rein them in. It took a while, but eventually the Pranksters got bored took their mischief back to Earth, leaving Francine's SpaceSpot seemingly abandoned.

It had been a frustrating adventure at the time, but looking back on it brought up the nostalgia for Jess. She could even see a few of the spots she and Marcus had been, though they were much farther away this time. As Prankster Planet began to pass out of sight, she noticed movement among the dilapidated buildings. No doubt a few of the robots Manny had built to inhabit the place and assist the Pranksters were still running, doing whatever it is robots do on a lifeless, ever-drifting span of land. An oddly melancholy thought.

She turned back to Olivesk. "You're right, it was neat seeing that place again." Olivesk beamed at her, nodded, and then walked away. Jessica wondered what the Pranksters were doing now? Had they matured and mellowed out some? She hoped so. As little as she would have wanted to admit it, part of her was looking forward to seeing them almost as much as her family and friends. Nostalgia is a cruel mistress.

The captain's voice came over the ship's intercom. "Attention, everyone! We are now entering the Earth's atmosphere. We will momentarily connect with a tractor beam that will begin pulling us down to the spaceport in New York City, USA. I would advise you all to make sure all your belongings are packed while we wait in Earth's incoming traffic, which should take about half an Earthly hour. Thank you."

Jessica's heart jumped up into her throat. She ran down the corridors back to her room to make sure all her things were packed, a giddy spring in her step all the while.

A little later, Jessica, with all her bags, was gazing out the central viewport alongside the ship's other eager passengers. She had said all her good-byes to her friend's among the ship's crew, and now all that was left to do was watch as they slowly descended to the ground far below. The viewports showed that it was indeed dawn, as the sun creeped over the horizon.

Looking down, Jess saw, as if in answer to the sun, the spires of New York City rising up below them. The Empire State Building, the Statue of Liberty, the Bank of America tower, they were all coming up to meet the ship, or rather the ship was going down to meet them. Home was right there. Home was in view.

Something started building up inside Jessica. It got bigger and bigger. Part of her didn't want to do it right here, and make a scene in front of everyone. The other part said Go on, go on, you've been gone for three years, you earned this. Jessica's voice seemed to side with the latter, as before she could stop herself her mouth opened and out came a resounding

"HEY YOU GUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUYYYYYSSSSSSS!"

Something woke Marcus Barnes up. He yelped and rolled out of his bed, landing on all his stuff scattered haphazardly on the apartment floor. Moaning, he rubbed his head. What had that been?"

Something woke Lisa Heffenbacher up. Her head flew up from the open book it had been resting on (and slightly drooled on) and immediately banged on the wall behind her. Rubbing her bruised scalp, she felt a slight embarrassment at having fallen asleep reading again. She wondered what had woken her up.

Keith Watson blinked several times and lifted his head slightly from his sleeping bag on the cold, hard floor. He hadn't gotten much sleep last night, but up until just now he had been in that strange, half-awake half-asleep trance sort of area. But something had woken him up, something loud and familiar and very, very important. What had it been?

Sitting at a table in the spaceport, looking up at the incoming ships against the muted sky, Hector Ruiz smiled. He knew exactly what he had just heard.