A/N: 'Alright, last chapter was huuuge, I'm sure this one will be back around the 3.5k words the rest have averaged...'
*5.3k words*
...Well, I got the numbers right, at least! Juuust the wrong order. More content is never a bad thing though, eh? Let's go!
Ah, Lake Oblongata. Frazie's recent yet most feared enemy.
And now she was minutes away from diving right into it.
At least she'd have Lili by her side, but that quite frankly didn't do much to calm her nerves. Her spunky friend was tough, but Frazie didn't think she'd be much help if Galochio got her and refused to let go. All she could do was pray that this bathysphere thing would do a good job keeping her dry.
Frazie was admittedly a bit ashamed that she briefly considered making some excuse to run off and let Lili go by herself. She shook that thought from her head, replacing it with more encouraging ones. Come on! She'd escaped exploding buildings, dodged bullets, and beaten King Kong! Surely she could handle a terrifying family curse that assured she'd die a slow and agonizing death if she went too deep into water.
Alright, maybe she could've worded that better.
"Frazie? Hey. Earth to Frazie. Come in, circus girl."
Frazie shook herself out of her thoughts. By her side, Lili peered up at her with concern as they made their way down the bridge to the beach. "You alright? You're looking kinda spaced out."
"Never better," Frazie lied blatantly through her teeth. She just had to keep telling herself everything would be alright, even if heading down into the lake went against every survival instinct she'd learned since she was young. "Where's this bath sphere thing, anyway?"
"Bathysphere. Bath-e-sphere. It's over there." Lili wavered her finger out towards the farthest part of the docks once they'd reached the sand - if Frazie squinted, she could barely make out some weird metal contraption under the roof at the very end of the pier. Old, rusty... yeah, Frazie totally trusted this thing with her life. And that was just the stuff she could notice at a distance.
She was more than a little scared of how crappy it'd actually look up close. She'd find out soon enough, given how quickly Lili was leading the way. "This way!" the younger girl called, heading off to a hut at the side of the shore that stood between the beach and the farther docks. "We've gotta go through here."
Frazie reluctantly followed after. Ford was in the little shack, because of course he was. The man had swapped back into his beachside get-up, his life jacket clinging around his shoulders as he lovingly wiped down one of his boats with a dampened rag.
...Hold on a second. She and Ford were working together now. Which meant now was a great time to tell him what they'd learned.
Leaning to the side, Frazie gave her friend a little nudge. "You go on ahead, I'll catch up. Alright?"
"Eh? Why?"
Thinking quickly, Frazie tipped her head towards the old admiral. "Just gonna make sure we don't have him on our butts for taking this thing for a spin."
"Ooooh, good call." Accepting her excuse, Lili picked up the pace and jogged out onto the planks extending across the water. "Don't take too long!"
"I won't," Frazie promised. But she certainly wasn't going to rush, either.
Once she was alone with the man, she cleared her throat loudly, drawing his attention.
"Eh?" Cruller turned away from his precious canoe, taking the opportunity to apply some more polish to his cloth. "Well now, if it isn't lil' miss too-good-for-my-canoe-lessons."
"Ford!" Frazie brushed off his odd greeting, meeting him face to face. "We found Maloof and got what we needed. He didn't make it easy, so we had to go in and take it, but I think everything worked out pretty well in the end."
To her surprise, his brow furrowed in disapproval. "You took something from the Canola kid? I'd give it back if I were you. Poor sprout's dealt with enough."
Frazie blinked. Was... that a joke? "...Ehehe," she finally chuckled dryly, offering a pity laugh. "Don't worry, he's fine."
She expected him to drop his charade any second, congratulate her on a job well done, maybe theorize on what they'd learned. Instead, the awkward silence continued until she finally made herself break it. "Annnnyway... there's something in the lake!"
Ford snorted. "Yeah, they're called fish. Clams and crayfish, if you're so inclined."
Not even an uncomfortable giggle that time. Frazie's face scrunched up in confusion instead. "...Allllright? Uh... Lili and I are gonna go check it out now."
"Well, good luck with that," Ford muttered off-handedly as he went back to waxing his boat. "Just put on a life jacket if you're hitting the water, unless you want me to hit ya with my oar instead."
He returned to his all-important boat worship, leaving Frazie to stare at the back of his head in befuddlement. Ford was acting weird. Well, weirder than normal, which was already really freakin' weird. She understood that he was a master of disguise, but there was a point where refusing to break character was reeeeally unnerving. Just when she thought he couldn't get any more bizarre, he defied expectations yet again.
Well, she'd filled him in, and that's what mattered. She'd also put off her lake expedition as long as she could.
It was time to go join Lili.
Leaving Ford to his strange devices, Frazie gave him one last perplexed look before running off down the docks to catch up with her ally.
She'd expected to find Lili preparing their diving vehicle for departure... but the girl hadn't even made it to the bathysphere. Frazie slowed to a stop when she spotted Lili halfway down the pier, arguing with a couple campers Frazie wasn't exactly thrilled to be seeing again.
Bobby and Benny. Great.
"Come on, Bobby!" Lili snapped as Frazie arrived. "Could you do this some other time? Really, any other time. We have serious business to get to."
Bobby just snorted, a cruel sneer on his lips. "Yeah? Me too! Like how I'm seriously keeping you dweebs from having fun! Haw!"
"Grrrr...! We're not here for fun," Lili hissed, frustration blatant. "We're here on Psychonauts business. So I'm gonna tell you nicely one more time... get out of the way, or we're going to throw you in the lake."
"I'd love to see you try!" Bobby laughed, elbowing his accomplice. His purple lackey joined in on the guffawing.
"Yeah! We're not afraid of you! Bobby could take you both with one hand tied behind his back. I make it overkill!"
"Wanna bet?" Frazie already had her fingers to her forehead, waggling telekinetic fingers threateningly. "Do you really think you can stop us?"
For a moment, Bobby looked slightly less cocky. Then, he smirked again, reaching into his pocket. "Chyeah. But if you dorkettes somehow managed to get by... this might stop you."
He fished out a small metal stick, its iron shaft bent and jagged. Judging from the way Lili's mouth hung open... that wasn't good.
"You broke the lever off?!" she snarled.
Bobby cackled, waving the little rod back and forth in her face. When she tried to swipe for it, he jerked it back and stuffed it into his pocket. "Heck yeah, I did. You'll never get that piece of junk to work without this doodad I took from it to keep dweebs like you out!"
"I thought you broke it by accident when you were trying to take it for a joyride?" Benny questioned.
All the wind emptied from Bobby's sails as he gave his partner in crime a blank look. "Benny, how can your ears be so big when your mouth is even bigger? There's not gonna be any room left on your stupid head!"
"M-my ears aren't big!"
Alright... Frazie had already had enough of their shtick. She bent down, meeting Bobby eye to eye. "And what's stopping us from just taking it from you?"
"Because you couldn't! And also because you don't know how to repair the bathysphere."
"Do you?" Lili asked sharply.
"Psssh, no," Bobby replied. "But I at least know what it looked like beforehand!"
For a moment, the four of them glared at each other - Frazie made hers as nasty as she could, shooting daggers with her eyes, but neither boy would budge. Finally, she threw her hands up with a groan. "Fine! We'll figure something else out. Let's get out of here, Lil."
The two of them turned to go - though not before Lili made a threatening gesture - all while Bobby's mocking laughter rang out over the lake. "Haw! Chalk another one up for the Zilch!"
Frazie huffed as they marched away... but deep down, she was a bit relieved they could put off their dive a little longer. Emphasis on a little. This was a reprieve, but she couldn't let her phobia hold them back. They just needed a bit of time to figure out how to put Bobby in his place...
But as they stomped away, a small voice suddenly reached her. Not her ears - it reverberated directly in her mind.
"Frazie?"
She glanced down at Lili, but the girl was too busy fuming to herself. Who'd said that, then?
"Frazie, can you hear me? Behind you."
Surprised, Frazie looked back to see Benny standing as firm and cross-armed as before - but the brief glance he sent her way gave away where his focus was. He was speaking directly into her mind, a trick she hadn't tried since she was a little girl herself. Her father's scolding had put a stop to that right quick.
How did it go again? Trying to play it cool, she turned back forward again, but slowed her pace while she tried to remember. It was just like thinking normally... except you took those thoughts and pushed them outward, redirecting them into someone else's mind. It took a couple tries, but she finally felt her psyche link up with the boy's.
"What do you want?" she thought, sending it behind her.
"I just wanted to thank you for earlier... you know, keeping our heads intact, getting us through an exploding building, being all awesome and junk..."
She hadn't expected anything like praise to come from either of the two goons. She appreciated it... but that didn't quite make up for halting them in their tracks. "Thankful enough to get Bobby to stop being a weenie?"
"He's not a weenie!" Benny whined in her head. "He just... goes a bit hard sometimes." A pause. "I don't think I could get him to help you... but maybe I know someone who might."
Now that got her attention. "I'm listening."
"Yeah! You ever seen that girl with the space helmet? Chloe? Bobby talks about her a lot, and always tries to sit with her at lunch. She's usually busy, though, always talking about trying to contact aliens or something. Maybe she'd be able to convince him?"
Hmmmm. Yeah, she'd seen Chloe - it was pretty hard to ignore a kid wearing such a noteworthy get-up. They'd never really interacted, but if she had any kind of sway on Bobby, Frazie might just have to. Hopefully the kid's huge headwear meant she'd be pretty easy to track down. "You know, you can be pretty cool when you want to be, Benny. Why do you hang with that guy?"
"Bobby's cool!" he protested.
"Agree to disagree. For what it's worth, though... thanks."
"Don't mention it! I just thought, you know, since we made such a great team and all... I just thought maybe you'd appreciate it, and..."
"Whoops, getting out of range... gotta go, bye!" Frazie promptly severed their connection before it got weird. She could acknowledge Benny was a decent kid who kept bad company, and that was about it.
Smirking to herself, Frazie picked up the pace again, drawing a curious glance from Lili when they fell in step again. "What are you so happy about?"
"I might just have an idea how to get past Bobby."
"Oh?" Lili looked up at her with intrigue, a gleam in her eyes. "Don't keep me in suspense."
Frazie quickly filled her in on her little mental chit-chat with the bully's second-in-command. "Huh." Lili put a hand to her chin as they reached the beach, pondering. "Bobby has a crush? I didn't think he could feel anything except aggression and misplaced superiority."
"Yeah, same here. But if there's a chance it'll work..."
"Then we've gotta take it!" Turning towards camp, Lili directed Frazie's attention to a little cave off to the side. "She likes to hang out in the forest, trying to contact outer space or whatever. If we're lucky, that tunnel should take us right to her! If we hurry, we can-"
Splash.
Both girls jumped as a loud, wet slosh echoed from the water. Slowly, they turned with gradually growing horror to see what'd made the sound. "Not another one..." Frazie breathed.
A boy awkwardly hobbled up from the depths, some seaweed sticking to his face and his blank eyes seeing nothing. "TV, my dudes..."
Oh, no. Frazie recognized that scarf, that face, always up on stage alongside Phoebe.
Quentin.
Phoebe was not going to be happy about her bandmate going brainless. Of course, Frazie hoped the little firestarter was still okay herself. The boy tried to wobble past them, and Frazie put a finger to his head to hold him in place. "We should hurry," she murmured. "They're going after the other campers."
Lili had no complaints. "I'll go put him with the others," she decided, grabbing his shoulder. "You go find Chloe. We'll meet back here once you've got her, alright?"
"On it." With a parting nod, the girls split up, Lili escorting the debrained DJ back up to the lodge, and Frazie heading off to the side path her friend had pointed out.
Her eyes trailed up and down it. Dark, spooky... but a shortcut. Wordlessly, Frazie stepped inside, trusting that Lili's word was genuine.
She'd take eerie caves over the lake, anyway.
The great outdoors was slowly becoming anything but now that Frazie knew something monstrous might be lurking behind every tree.
If there was a lake beast here, though, it still had a lot of work to do. The area felt emptier, but kids still flitted to and fro blissfully unaware they were being hunted. Dogen was holding a very heated conversation with a (thankfully intact) squirrel. The blonde girl and the afro kid were locked in a spirited argument, Frazie catching the latter asking where J.T. was. The former accused him of hiding J.T. from her. Clem wandered amongst the trees, calling out for Crystal with increasing concern. Frazie really hoped she'd just wandered off.
She also hoped Chloe was still around, or this whole trip would've been for nothing.
Things were looking dire. If Frazie couldn't spot that big helmet clashing against the forest greenery, the odds were getting slimmer and slimmer. After a quick search, the acrobat sighed, ready to wander off and pray the girl could be found elsewhere.
Then she looked up, the gleam of sunlight on glass drawing her eye.
There she was. Chloe had managed to climb high up on a boulder, the kid fiddling with something in her hands. Breathing a sigh of relief, Frazie promptly hopped on her levitation ball and bounced up to meet her.
"Chloe!" She settled down on the rock, snapping her sphere with a pop. "There you are."
"Mm?" The little astronaut eyed her through her helmet pane with brief interest before going back to toying with the little paper airplane in her hands. "Greetings. This is restricted airspace, so I'd appreciate it if you made it quick."
"I will. I need a favor." Frazie jerked a thumb over her shoulder, back towards the tunnel. "Bobby's made a mess of things down at the docks and a little birdie told me you might be able to talk some sense into him."
Chloe kept her head down, a disinterested hum escaping her as she worked at taping an antenna to her little paper spacecraft. "Nothing new there. But unfortunately, I'm busy. I'm not Bobby's keeper, anyway."
"I didn't mean to imply you were, it's just..." Frazie sighed, rubbing the back of her head. "Look. I'd really appreciate it if you could come see him, just for a minute. It's really important."
Chloe shrugged. "You have my sympathies. Still, I have no desire to involve myself in the affairs of earthlings."
Frazie raised a brow. "Uh... you're an 'earthling', too. Come on... pleeeeease?"
For the first time, Chloe looked fully up at her, annoyance plain on her face. "You come up to my runway and insult me? I'm on the verge of a breakthrough here! The last thing I need is to bother with some earth monkeys."
The glare she got was so heated that Frazie found herself holding her hands out to defend herself. Clearly, now wasn't the time to pick at her shtick. "Sorry! Look, I'll help you with your project if you'll just lend me a quick hand, alright?"
Chloe relaxed a bit, but finally went back to putting the finishing touches on her plane. "No thank you. I don't trust earthlings with my sensitive equipment."
Frazie gave her a deadpan look. Sensitive like paper and plastic? Still, the girl wasn't budging. And frankly, with Bobby involved, Frazie couldn't blame her.
Still, she needed her help... but Chloe was too invested in her outer space aspirations to even consider it.
Frazie put a hand to her chin, thinking hard. She really didn't want to do this... Chloe was just being stubborn, but with more kids popping out of the lake without a brain, it was clear they didn't have any time to fool around.
Frazie reached down to trace the outline of the Psy Portal in her pocket. If Chloe's head was stuck in the stars... maybe there was a way to change her mind, even if only briefly.
Tugging the door from her skirt, Frazie shifted just slightly, keeping the device out of Chloe's narrow field of view as she held it behind her. Gently, she pressed it against the back of her helmet.
Clunk.
Frazie waited for the familiar sound of a door opening, the glow of a new mental world opening before her.
It never came.
Puzzled, she swiftly hid the portal behind her back when Chloe turned to her, suspicious. "What was that?"
Eyes darting back and forth, Frazie finally glanced up and pointed to the branches above. "I think a squirrel dropped an acorn on you?"
She held her breath as Chloe considered it, sighing silently with relief as the girl shrugged and returned to her engineering. "Irritating earth rodents."
It didn't take Frazie long to piece together the problem. Chloe's helmet was huge and thick, easily twice the size of her head. The perfect protection against a potential psychic probing. Frazie's little door had no way to connect with her brain so long as that thing stood in the way.
Crap. Frazie knew there was no chance she'd take it off, either. There had to be another way.
Crouching down a tad, Frazie pretended to study Chloe's little project alongside her, her eyes occasionally darting over to eye the girl. And there, hidden beneath the helmet, was the solution.
The hat was so big, a sizable gap rested between the helmet's rear and Chloe's neck. If Frazie could just get the right angle, it'd be a breeze to slide the doorway right up there and touch it to the back of her head.
She just needed the opportunity. And she had a hunch how to create it.
Handing off her door to her mental grip, Frazie levitated it behind Chloe's back and held it there as she pointed out her little plane. By now, the space cadet had finished attaching the antenna to it, perfecting her masterpiece. "So... what're you playing with, anyway?"
"I'm not playing. I'm working," Chloe scoffed. "I'm testing a new low-orbit space plane design. If this one passes inspection, I should be able to craft a working space vessel in as little as a couple months."
Somehow, Frazie doubted airplane folding translated that well to alien vehicle construction. Still, she'd developed a knack for playing along with childish antics thanks to her younger siblings. Reaching out, she pointed at the back edge of the little paper jet. "Are you sure? It looks pretty wide. Don't you need a thinner spaceship to cut through the atmosphere or something?"
Chloe tutted, shaking her head back and forth. "Please, Frazie, leave the designing to the experts. Besides, if I cut down on it, there wouldn't be any room for a hyperspace thruster."
"Oh." It made tooootal sense. Still, Frazie directed Chloe's attention to the sides next. "But what if you put a smaller thruster on each wing instead? Same boost, and you could change the shape to be more aerodynamic."
"Hmmmmm." Intrigued, Chloe craned her head forward, staring intensely where Frazie was pointing. "You know... you may be onto something."
Pretty smart for a dumb earth monkey, huh? But the small sense of satisfaction was nothing compared to the real prize. As Chloe tilted her head further and further forward, the gap at the back of her head opened up juuuust enough to...
There. Frazie promptly thrust the Psy Portal up into her helmet, and this time, it attached firmly to her noggin.
Chloe's collar started to illuminate with a soft glow as the door's light leaked out of her headgear, her analytical chatter dying down as she slipped into a trance.
Her airplane started to slip from her grasp, and Frazie carefully adjusted it so the girl had a firm grip on it. Satisfied, she shut her eyes and let her consciousness slip away. First down, then up, sliding under the barrier around her skull and finally slipping into the door she'd hidden away.
Hopefully, this world would be less dangerous than the last one.
Now entering:
Chloe's Cosmic Charter
Frazie had never seen anything so beautiful before.
Billions upon trillions of stars, twinkling, glowing against the vast background of space. Planets of all sizes hung among them, the crimson miasma of a distant galaxy spreading out behind it all.
Sure, Frazie had spent plenty of nights atop the family caravan just staring up at the stars and thinking, but this was something else. It was like she was among the stars themselves, and if she just reached out, she could touch them.
So she tried. She took a step forward, reaching out a tentative hand...
...And hit glass.
Too good to be true. Still, to no one's surprise, one thing was obvious: she was in space.
But where in space? What had her fingers hit? While she tried to figure it out, a low electronic voice pierced her thoughts.
"Ma'am, please keep your hands off the window."
She backed off as a little white box flew into view, a pixelated face on its screen and a spray bottle clasped in its tiny claw arms. Before her eyes, it spritzed the smudge she'd left, gave her a look, and flew back off. "Errr... sorry?" Frazie called to it. Were you supposed to apologize to robots?
As her eyes followed it, she turned, finally figuring out where she was. Aside from the view out into the cosmos, everything was metal. Robots of all types moved to and fro, some flying, some rolling around on treads, each attending to their own personal tasks. Screens flittered around above a wide console, a huge hologram of various stars and planets glowing up above it. All sorts of control panels dotted the area... it was like Ford's lair on a grander scale.
It was a spaceship. At least what Frazie imagined the inside of one looked like, anyway.
And every ship must have its captain.
Seated at the main console, Chloe's fingers were a blur as she typed in various commands to her onboard computer. She was the only living being in this giant metal craft. A small living being, too, as the transparent celestials floating above dwarfed her in size.
Cautiously, Frazie approached her, stepping around little robots flitting all across the bridge as she made her way up to her fellow camper-turned-commander. "Chloe?"
The kid looked up from her work, eying her curiously through her helmet, and then nodded. "Ah... you must be the new recruit."
"I... guess I am?" Frazie played along. She swung her arms out over the ship, knowing her chances of processing all this on her own were somewhere around zero. "Soooo, what're we doing here?"
Chloe gave a disappointed click of her tongue. "Didn't you read the mission briefing before you teleported up here? No matter. I'll fill you in, greenhorn."
With a few clacks of her keyboard, an image of waves rippling across space displayed over her console. "I've picked up a strange signal from somewhere far, far out there in the cosmos. It's reaching out to me... but it's faint. I need to know what's sending it, but to find it, we're going to have to charter a path. That's where you come in." Another few clicks, and a strange looking satellite popped up - except instead of a radio dish, a giant eye sat blinking on its bottom. "I've deployed a beacon that you should be able to connect to, seeing what it sees, and we can use that knowledge to guide us through the stars."
Frazie understood approximately 30% of all that. "Coooould yoooou put that in layman's terms?"
Chloe sighed. "Form a mental link with the satellite I put outside, use it to find the planet where the signal is coming from, and point me to it."
That, Frazie could do. Probably. Maybe. "...What do you mean by mental link, exactly?"
"Clairvoyance. Look through its eye, and it'll amplify your gaze throughout the quadrant."
Clairvoyance? "I... don't really know how to do that, yet."
Chloe glanced her way, then sighed again. "This truly is rookie hour. But no matter, it's not hard to learn. You can astral project, yes?"
If only Chloe knew that was what she was doing right now. "Yeeeeees?"
"Then you can use clairvoyance. It's sort of the same thing, except instead of pushing into their minds, try and push into their eyes." Chloe swiveled her seat to face her, resting her hands on her lap. "Try it on me until you get it. It shouldn't take long."
Frazie took a breath, nodding. Alright... she'd jumped into people's heads, what, six times already? Give or take. Directing her energy into someone else was easy peasy by now. The hard part was trying to guide her focus somewhere beyond the brain.
Her brow furrowed, feeling a connection build between their two minds. A soft pressure flittered on her frontal lobe, a small sign of encouragement from Chloe. Concentrating, Frazie swept her focus all over Chloe's brain, making the girl giggle as she sought a path to her eyes. "That tickles."
At last, she found a route. The optic nerves. Pushing her projection along them, Frazie found herself surprised as her vision suddenly leapt into Chloe's eyes.
She could see the world from Chloe's point of view. Not all that different, really... except Frazie was aghast to see that for some reason, Chloe viewed her as some sort of maroon alien, her wide tufts of hair looking more like the wings of a butterfly while antennas poked out above them from the top of her head.
Frazie promptly cut the link, pouting. "I don't have a butterfly head!"
"Subjective."
"Well... I'm definitely not from outer space!"
"Don't take it so literally, Frazie," Chloe said. "Of course you're just another earthling. But you're... different from the rest. Not everyone would come here and help me find the way to my brethren."
Frazie crossed her arms, but so long as people didn't actually see her as a slimy space creature, she'd be fine. "Alright. Am I ready to get this show on the road, at least?"
"Affirmative." Chloe returned to her console, fingers flying once again. "Allow me to pull the satellite into view."
While Chloe tapped away, Frazie glanced around, watching the robotic crew do their medley of tasks. They worked quickly and efficiently, but the place still felt awful empty with only the occasional sounds of their beeping and whirring filling it. Finally, her eyes swept back over to the front window, a shudder rolling over her as the satellite she'd seen finally floated into view. It was a lot bigger than the hologram led her to believe... and also, it blinked. Bleugh.
"So you want me to look through the eyes of... that thing?" It gave Frazie the creeps, but finally, she relented and focused her attention on it. "Alright. Here goes nothing."
She shut her eyes. Now that she knew the path to seek, it wasn't hard to get clairvoyance working again. The dark canvas behind her lids quickly lit up from the machine's point of view.
And she could see... everything.
It was as if the satellite amplified her vision a hundredfold. She could see every rivet, every facet of the ship - it looked a lot like Chloe's helmet, honestly. As the satellite slowly swiveled to face away from the vehicle, she could see stars and spheres trillions of miles away as if they were up close. It was a bit... overwhelming, to say the least.
While her body steadied itself with deep breathing, Frazie's mind started scouring the endless void. The first thing she noticed was that she could see things she wasn't able to see normally - far, far in the distance, a steady stream of radio waves pulsed outwards from a lone planetoid. To her surprise, it looked oddly... hospitable. Despite being covered in greenery and water, it definitely wasn't Earth. That was all she could make out from this far away.
"I think I've got it," Frazie finally spoke.
"Coordinates?" Chloe asked curtly.
"Uhhhhh... a gajillion yards away and slightly to the left?"
"The numbers, Frazie. You should be able to get a reading from the satellite."
Perplexed, Frazie squinted at the planet even harder... and suddenly, the sides of her vision were full of all sorts of numbers and letters. Section CL0 Triple E Hector... it was all meaningless technobabble to her, but she read it off to the best of her ability.
When she'd finished and pulled back to her own body, Chloe was typing away even faster, looking pleased. "Yes, yes, that's it...!" she exclaimed, pressing one final button.
A new hologram popped up, this one a replica of what Frazie had seen. "Is that what you were looking for?" Frazie asked.
"Only one way to find out." Chloe stood up from her seat, waving her arms and barking orders to her crewmates. "The coordinates have been locked! Prepare the interstellar hyperdrive and engage all thrusters. Let's go!"
She plopped back into her seat, giving Frazie a cautious glance. "You might want to grab onto something."
Frazie promptly gripped the back of Chloe's seat tightly. All around them, robots buzzed back and forth as they prepared for... whatever the heck Chloe had been talking about. While Frazie looked over it all, she couldn't help but notice the captain drumming her fingers along her armrests, impatient, excited. "What do you think this signal's going to lead us to, anyway?" Frazie finally asked.
Chloe thought a moment before responding. "Cygnus A. My home planet."
"Home? But..." Frazie cut herself off. Best to just play along for now and see where this went. Instead, she just nodded, tightening her grip as the ship began to hum to life.
A low whirr grew to a loud buzz as a subtle vibration ran through the metal around them. The satellite drifted out of the way, clearing their path, and that was their cue to take off. Frazie flinched and held the seat tighter as a loud boom reverberated around them, the stars outside suddenly becoming a blur as they cruised forward at speeds never seen by man before.
They were off. Sailing through the cosmos, in search of worlds unknown.
Thanks again to DiLithiumDragon and SandrC! They were a lot of help with this one since sci-fi isn't my forte. Despite that, I'm pumped for the scale and creative potential of this whimsical world.
Also, clairvoyance is here, the power everyone loves! I'm not gonna have Frazie running around using it on everyone, sorry to say, but I did come up with some ways people see her off the top of my head. I thought y'all might like to see some of the more interesting ones!
Dogen: A cartoony version of her holding onto his tinfoil cap for him and giving an encouraging thumbs up
Clem and Crystal: A savior figure, sort of how Sheegor sees Raz
Maloof: Frazie offering him a helping hand up, trying to pull him back to viewing people in a healthier way (Sandr's idea, I had trouble with him)
Lili: Varies. Sometimes sees her as a teacher, sometimes as someone really cool (skateboarder Frazie anyone), and occasionally, as a big sister.
Sasha: Also varies. Sometimes a student, sometimes an experiment, and very rarely, he sees her as a criminal as he ponders about what exactly her strange mental world could mean.
Milla: A dancer, believing she'd have some sick moves after seeing her graceful levitation performance.
Nils: Don't ask.
Bonfear: Firefighter Frazie
Phoebe/Freezie: A Frazie made entirely of fire
Clem's Dad: 'Not Clem', up until she's actually fighting him, after which it might be her carrying a shield as Clem's defender
Mikhail's Representation: A teeny robber
