Hana and Gwen's Inceptional Adventure

## 3:48 PM, August 15th, 2020 - Philosotea

Hana picked up her order from the counter, a strawberry milk tea with mango jellies and pudding, but in a dark cup. Couldn’t let anyone see how girly and sweet she liked her drinks. She popped the straw through the lid and headed to a table outside. The girl was dressed in shorts with low top sneakers, a Lake Winnemuck tank top, and of course a loose jacket. Sitting down, she pulled out her phone. Things had been pretty quiet recently, which pissed her off. More time for her to think about her problems. Practicing drums, trying to work out alternative power sources for a robot suit, and using her supercomputer to look up details on her maybe father, international super powered arrests, and ‘how super strength works’ only took up so much time.

She blinked a few times, seeing a name in her phone she rarely used. Gwen, the bassist and singer from Flex Girls. Well, sometimes, when she wasn’t in Quebec or wherever the heck else she went. Hana wished she’d stick around longer, it was fun having her around, even if she’d barely talked to her much aside from stuff about the band. There’s an idea on how to pass the time. If she’d even want to. Hana started typing and sent a message to her.

*`Hey, Gwen, it’s Hana. The girl with super strength from the band. Wait, we all have super strength, that’s our thing. The drummer! I drum. Yeah. Uh, sorry if this is weird. Uh, if you’re still in town, would you like, wanna hang out or something? I feel weird with us not really knowing each other but we’re in the band together and I’m playing your songs and they’re super good and like, you know, wanted to see if you wanted to hang out but not all Flex Girls focused. This ended up way longer than I thought it would. Let me know if you wanna hang!`*

Hana sighed after sending it, annoyed at her ability to motormouth even in text form.

…

The clanking noise of hammer on metal resounded through the dark, flame-lit internal structure of Gwen’s workshop. The steamy sizzle of something hot being thrust into a cold bath of water followed. Gwendolyn du Lac put down the piece of metal she was working with and stepped away from her workbench with a deep, satisfied breath. On a small table, further away from the heat, her phone buzzed. She took off her thick gloves and reached for it. “Praise be that I somehow can receive messages here,” she said to herself. She saw it was a text from Hana. “Huh.”

She read through it. They hadn’t exchanged many texts before. Indeed, Hana was the member of the Flex Girls that Gwen had played the least with, on account of Hana joining after Gwen had gone travelling for a while. The Battle of the Bands at Lake Winnemuck had been their first time on a stage together, beyond just practice. As superheroes, their only real interaction had been when Hana--as Shade--had come to her rescue in the Quebec wilderness when Gwen had gotten tangled up in faerie legal business. That’s why you don’t promise to take on someone else’s debts without knowing the details, kids.

She took off her apron and grabbed her smith’s hammer and blinked out of the workshop.

Gwen reappeared in the gardens of Shady Glen Manor. She hooked her hammer into her tool belt and sent a text back to Hana.

*‘Hey Hana! Sure, that sounds dope. We can hang, get to know each other better. What’s a good place to learn about you, huh?’*

…

Hana sipped at the drink, watching people and cars go by. If Gwen didn’t text back or said no, she’d have to figure out something else to do. Was there a place you could pay to just break stuff? Would a junkyard let her just smash some cars for a while? Maybe? Luckily she didn’t have to answer those questions as her phone went off with the response from Gwen. She picked it up and looked to it, a small smile forming on her face.

*`Cool, awesome, sounds good! Uh, I’m at the Philosotea by Big Team Base right now, but I can go wherever, if you don’t like tea or whatever. I live under the community center or I could come to your place, it’s that big mansion, right?`*

…

“Philosotea?” Gwen smiled, remembering how Philosotea was the first place that Olivia had taken her to with their Big Team friends, after Gwen had gotten used to being free from GREY. “Guess the new teammates hold up our old hangout traditions huh.”

*‘Philosotea sounds good. Do you skate? We can go yeet rocks at Canada.’*

While texting with one hand, she stuck out her other hand. A distant thrum resounded before a sword flew out of the manor and into her hand. As it slammed into her grip, its form distorted and it formed instead into a gauntlet around her lower arm. Energy crackled and a pair of wings of light sprouted from Gwen’s back. They beat down and the girl leapt up sky-high, flying off towards Halcyon City.

…

Hana glanced back at her phone, sipping from her drink. She paused to enjoy the bit of pudding and jellies that she slurped up, then typed a response.

*`Cool, cool! Uh, maybe? What kinda skating? Like, wheels or blades? I don’t think I’ve tried ice skating, but like, roller blades or skates or whatever I can handle. I think. Yeeting rocks sounds awesome! Want to meet me here?`*

Gwen sounded awesome! Hana had a grin on her face as she waited, deciding to fill out the customer service survey thing on her phone and giving Faith five stars. She was still in Australia, but hey, why not?

…

The flight to Halcyon City did not take long. It was easy to just go fast and do nothing else if you knew exactly where you were going. You meandered a lot less and instead the flight path ended up looking more like a sub-sonic giant leap from Shady Glen Manor to Philosotea. Gwen slowed down before landing, but still crashed into the pavement with an audible crack.

She straightened herself up and rolled her shoulders, stretching a little. She’d put her hair up in a ponytail before working the furnace and it had been helpful during her flight too. Her cat-like ears flicked around freely, unrestrained by her typical beanie hat--it would’ve flown off in the flight anyway--and for the rest she wore a loose Deep Cuts Records-branded tank top and short-shorts with her tool belt and smith’s hammer. Her gauntlet shifted and turned back into a sword, then the blade retracted and disappeared and she hung the empty hilt on the other hip for easy drawing. Gwen took a look around, spotted Philosotea on the other side of the street and crossed after making sure no traffic was coming.

## Philosotea

Gwen stood outside the store, overlooking the outdoor seating area and peering through the windows inside. She didn’t want to admit it, but she’d seen Hana mostly just as Shade, and as Hana she had confused her for Ellen too often. She hoped Hana would just pop up and save her the embarrassment of searching for her right in front of her.

Hana figured she had a bit before Gwen would show up, so she sat and sipped her tea lazily, flipping through her phone, seeing what drama Chitter had today. Suddenly then was the point a loud crack sounded across the street, causing Hana to fumble as her chair fell back onto all four legs. She looked over and saw Gwen, wings disappearing and gauntlet thing shifting as she put it away. Her eyes were wide as she just kind of watched in surprise as the girl crossed the street and headed over to look through the window.

After a few moments, Hana shook her head and came back to herself, standing up from the table. “H-hey, uh, Gwen, what’s up?” she said, walking from her table to the window next to her. “That was...that was super freaking cool, I didn’t know you could fly, or had a weird changing sword glove thingie. That’s awesome”

Gwen was peering through the window when Hana came up to her from her spot sitting outside. She looked up and seemed almost surprised to see her. “Oh! Hi!” Gwen said a split second late, as if needing the time to take in who it was that came up to her. “Uh, thanks! Yeah, just the tools of the trade, really.”

Gwen patted the sword hilt hanging on her left hip at the same time as she patted her smith’s hammer on her right. “By the time you come up on two years in the hero business, you gather up a few… upgrades.” She chuckled. “But I’m sure you’ve gotten some yourself! It’s good to see you.” She stepped in closer for a hug.

Hana nodded. “Makes sense, yeah” she says, a small smile forming on her face as Gwen motioned to hug her, which she leaned in to return. “Yeah, you too! Uh, I’m excited to do something with you that’s not just about the band or whatever” Hana squeezes the hug, one of the rare times she doesn’t have to hold back her strength when hugging someone.

When the hug released, she stepped back with a grin. “You wanna grab something to drink? I’m having a- um, uh, green tea, with…” she paused, trying to think of the most mature sounding fruit. “Papaya? And...regular boba. Yeah.”

“Sounds like a good mix. I could go for a black-and-blackberries. I like things strong and fruity.” Gwen comments as she walks to the front door of the Philosotea. “I’ll join you in a bit then, save me a seat!”

Gwen went inside the shop and didn’t spend long waiting in line before she could order. A large black tea, with freshly juiced blackberries, and black boba. She strolled back outside, taking a sip before she sat down opposite from Hana in the shadow of a table parasol. “Ah, my favourite. Both the drink and the shop. Well, I could improve the drink. Not the shop, though. I love it here.”

Hana grins and nods. “You got it” she said, hurrying back to the table and taking her seat. Cool, she bought it that Hana was drinking a cool, mature drink. Or, wait, should she just tell her she was drinking something goofy and sweet? She was trying to crime less. Was lying to someone about your drink a crime? This was too hard.

She startled slightly when Gwen came and sat down, having been lost in her crime thoughts. “Oh! Yeah! It’s a great place” She paused for a moment. “I’m not drinking green tea with papaya and normal boba I’m drinking strawberry milk tea with mango jellies and pudding. I thought if I said that you wouldn’t think I was cool but then I was like ‘oh hey lying about something like your drink isn’t cool either you goofus’ so uh...yeah. What, uh, what would you improve about your drink?” She asked, her cheeks now flushed with embarrassment.

Gwen sat with a frozen expression on her face, midway between neutral and surprise, while she drank through her straw. When Hana stopped talking, she let go and shook her head. “Kerrigan, I already thought you were cool. Why do you think you’re in the band? You wouldn’t be in the band if I didn’t think you were cool.” She sat up and smiled comfortingly. “Plus, I’d already recognized your drink. Strawberry milk is pretty tasty, goofus.”

Gwen leaned back again and stirred the tapioca balls in her drink with the straw, making a thoughtful face. “Depending on the time of day, I’d probably put a shot of Irish whiskey in there. Or Avalonian mead. Different flavours, but the mead is hard to come by around here. Plus,” her voice dropped to a near-whisper, “I can’t buy either in the States without a false ID.”

Hana blinked a few times, then looked down and nodded. She chuckled, shaking her head at her own antics. “Heh, uh, thanks, yeah, sorry. I’m glad you think I’m cool and stuff, you’re super cool, I think that’s why I got all weird, but yeah, being honest is gonna be better, like, usually I get in trouble when I just go off on something else that’s not true” She nods, then looks back up. “Oh, yeah? You need one? I could probably hack one up for you. Wait, that might be a crime and I’m trying to crime less. Eh, it’s a shitty law anyways, I’d do that and I’m sure it’ll be fine.”

Gwen laughs softly at Hana. “It’s definitely a crime, but that doesn’t keep people from doing it.” She gives her a knowing look, as if to imply she’d readily do it too. “But even with a false ID you need to work to pull it off, y’know? It’s the same as with your drink. If you’re confident about it, you’ll come across as cool either way. If you act as if something is entirely normal, others are less likely to be weird about it. That both goes for strawberry milk and acting like you’re definitely-21-or-older.”

Hana chuckles and nods. “Yeah, yeah. Definitely need that, like, confidence to do it. I can pull that off sometimes, but like, I’m really bad at not blabbing to people I know. Much better at lying to people I’m never gonna see again” she nods, taking a sip. “You’re right, gotta be more confident in my drink, it’s freaking amazing. What did you mean earlier when you recognized it already? Like, you smelled the strawberry or whatever?”

“Oh, yeah,” Gwen nods back. “The smell, the colour… the ones with strawberry milk are some of my girlfriend’s favourites. She introduced me to this place.” She smiles at the memory.

“So!” Gwen kicked her feet up onto the table and leaned back. “What have you got planned for today? Are we just gonna yeet rocks at Canada? Are we gonna do crimes? Solve crimes? Do crimes and then solve them?”

“Jeez, must be good at finding stuff then if you like, picked all that up” she said, nodding and sipping. She gave a small smile in return, glad the place had a happy memory for her. Hana would have felt real crappy if she’d picked somewhere with a bad memory. Not that she could have known, but hey, brains didn’t care about logic.

“Uhhh, if we’re talking like, big rocks, that would be dope. I’m, uhhh, I’m trying to hold back on the like, directly committing crimes stuff. Sledge and some friends are wanting me to like, not just blatantly do stuff like that. Unless I have to, you know, but like, yeah, not just as a first reaction to stuff. So, uh, like, yeeting rocks sounds fun, or just hanging, or, uh, I dunno if there’s any crimes to solve but that could be fun if we get to beat up a supervillain. Uh, what sounds good to you?”

Gwen knowingly taps the side of her head with a smile. “Hm, yeah, let’s go for yeeting big rocks then. The St. Lawrence River is wide enough that we’ll probably not hit the buildings on the other side, but we can also pick a spot where there aren’t any. Sounds good!”

She swings her legs back off the table and gets up. “And I’m excellent at finding stuff. Good senses and a liiittle bit of retrocognition means that even a dumbass like me can be a primo detective. Makes solving crimes easy! Gets to the action fast, too.”

“Aweeeesoooome!” Hana says, jumping up to her feet with a grin. She finishes her tea and tosses it into a trash can nearby. “Yeah probably wanna avoid hitting buildings, I guess. We can just throw em good and not hit them, easy” she says, nodding.

At her explanation, Hana tilted her head. “Uhh, retrocognition? Whassat? Like you can tell if something is retro or not?” Wait, that didn’t make sense. That would be a weird power. “Uhhhh, like, you can...see the past?” she changed her guess, trying to put together what she thought the parts of the word meant.

“Oh yeah, totally,” Gwen pointed at Hana’s sneakers. “Those are totally retro.” She pointed at Hana’s jacket. “That’s not retro, but it looks kinda vintage? Looks cool.” She pointed at her toolbelt. “This is neither, but it is second-hand.” She laughed at herself as they walked away from Philosotea. “Nah, but yeah, I can see the past. Gotta touch an object or a person for it. I don’t see memories, but actually the past--important distinction. Someone’s powers can make it a little wonky, like if they are possessed by something. I can also bring other people with me in the experience. That’s been very useful in some investigations we’ve had.”

Hana chuckled as Gwen used her “retrocognition” on her to see which of her clothes were indeed retro. She followed, shoving her hands into her pockets. “Gotcha, gotcha. That’s like, a super freaking cool power! So like, you can take someone with you? Like do you go somewhere or is it like a brain head thing? Can you show someone their own past? How far back can you go? Like if you touch a rock from like, a ruin or something could you go back to ancient Greece or something?” she asked excitedly, eyes wide as they walked.

Gwen looked thoughtful, wobbling back and forth on the edge of the sidewalk. “It’s more like a brain head thing? It kind of happens in an instant for someone looking from the outside, but for me I kind of am there, living through their experiences. If I do it on a place, I can bring others along and we kind of can walk around in a past version of a room? I haven’t done that very often. I don’t understand all the ins-and-outs of my own powers yet, so I still discover new ways even now.” She gives a nervous laugh. “But yeah, you’re right, it is super freaking cool. Can tell you more when we’re not in public, maybe. How did you get here? I can fly us both out to wherever if you don’t want to take public transportation.”

Hana nods as she explains it some. It was amazingly cool. Hana loved her strength, most of the time, but it was kind of a one trick power, she was pretty envious of the others that had all these awesome big cool abilities sometimes. “Coooool. That’s such a useful power! Like so much crap you can do with that” she says excitedly, her hands coming out of her pockets to wave around just as excitedly. She blinked a few times at Gwen’s question, then turned back the direction they’d come from.

“Oh! Yeah, right! Uh, I rode my bike here, and I was totally about to forget it if you hadn’t said something” she said, chuckling and rubbing the back of her head bashfully. “Uh, we can ride together or you can fly or we can fly or whatever, but I guess if you flew you’d have to carry me or something...uh...don’t have to if that would be weird or anything, or we can be on the bike, and you could hold on, or whatever. Uh, which sounds better to you?”

Gwen shrugged. “I can carry you no problem, if you wanna try flying. Bike’s cool too. If I’d known, I coulda brought my own and we coulda done a mini biker gang thing. Oh shoot, no, my bike is still in Brazil. But yeah, if you’re cool leaving your bike behind we can fly, otherwise let’s ride!”

“Uhhh, riding is fine, they’d probably be cool with my bike being there, flying does sound pretty cool...uh, if you’re cool with carrying me or whatever, don’t want it to be weird or anything…” she says, trying to hide the bit of red on her cheeks. “Wait, Brazil? What’s it doing there?”

As soon as Hana confirmed that she thought flying was cool, Gwen unhooked her blade from her tool belt and it shifted and clicked around her arm as it turned into a bracer. It glowed for a second and a pair of wings made of multi-coloured light sprang to life behind her. “Oh, it needed some repairs after it got stuck in the mud in the Amazon. Tried dragging it all the way to Rio, but my father said that wouldn’t be smart. Did you know that Brazil is huge? Anyway, you ready?” Gwen put one arm around Hana and waited for her confirmation.

Hana’s eyes got wide at Gwen’s bracer reforming and the wings shooting out behind her. That was too cool. “Wha? Oh! Ready! Right, yeah, um” she said, looking and trying to figure out where her own arms should go. She settled for a sort of side hug, then nodded. It wouldn’t be her first time flying, though it was her first time not in some kind of vehicle. “Yeah, I’m good, let’s uh, let’s fly”

## Into The Sky

“Giddyup.” Gwen bent down and scooped Hana up off the ground. She adjusted for a few seconds, gave her bandmate another nod and then with a leap they flew off into the sky.

The fast wind rushing around them didn’t bother Gwen, as much as she was used to it. They flew high enough to not be struck by small bugs and leaves like they might’ve been if they’d gone by bike. The sensation of dangling between control and falling forever headfirst towards their destination made her feel alive and only slightly afraid--but nobody would ever know. Not with the smirk of delight plastered on her face while they flew.

Hana gripped tightly as they lifted off into the sky, shooting up above Halcyon. She’d been in the air like this a few times now, namely when Boon’s mom threw her through the air. It was fun, but still pretty new to her, so there was an initial moment of ‘oh crap oh crap oh crap’ Once that initial moment was past, she looked back at Halcyon leaving behind them, and got a grin on her face. With the wind whipping past them she figured Gwen wouldn’t be able to hear her, so she just enjoyed the flight as they headed toward somewhere with big rocks that could be thrown without worrying about them hitting buildings.

As they were leaving the bounds of Halcyon City proper, Gwen slowed down and swerved with a wide curve, before coming to a halt and floating still. She stared out over Halcyon City. “It’s been a while since I’ve taken the time to enjoy the view. Are you holding up okay? A first time flying like this can be rough, especially right after boba.”

Hana holds on tighter, like hovering meant she might fall easier or something. As they stopped she looked out over the city to take it in, then glanced to Gwen with a grin. “Yeah! This is so cool! I’ve like, flown before but I’ve never flown before! Boba’s fine, no worries. Can you do a flip? Or like, a barrel roll or whatever?” she asked, lots of excitement in her voice.

Gwen grinned back. “I sure can try.” She said, as if she wasn’t certain, but her tone filled with confidence. She began to move again, picking up speed and flying into a curve upwards, making a big loop, then a smaller one as she flipped, then went forwards with a burst of speed and twisted in the air in a wide swirling loop forwards--a barrel roll.

After the roll, Gwen slowed down enough that they could talk, but kept flying towards their destination. “Good?” She snickered. “I can also pull off an aileron roll, in case you want to experience the difference with a barrel roll. Otherwise you can ask Eclipse’s sister for the video she took of me last time I babysat her.”

Hana did a fist pump, or the equivalent of one she could manage while holding on to Gwen. “Yesssssss” she said excitedly, then gripped tighter as Gwen started flying faster and pulling off the tricks. She shouted like one would on a roller coaster, whooping as they flew down and around.

“Holy shit that was the coolest! What’s an all aaron roll? Is that like a reverse barrel roll? Or three barrel rolls? Oh one sec!” Hana puts her strength to the test as she pulled out her phone and managed to keep hold of it in the wind as she snaps a picture of Halcyon from above and speeding away from them, then slips the phone back into her pocket. “This is so freaking cool!”

Gwen chuckled, amused by her bandmate’s excitement. “I’m glad you’re enjoying yourself! Okay, so… are you familiar with the ‘do a barrel roll’ memes? Like that stuff from that old Star Fox game? The maneuvers they do in that game is actually an aileron roll, where you keep flying in a straight line, but the plane itself turns 360 degrees around its axis. A barrel roll has you do a kind of a loop-de-loop, but also while going forward still, so it’s like… like you’re literally going around the outside of a big invisible barrel. Definitely good for a quick avoidance maneuver! I almost smacked into a bald eagle once, but I rolled out of the way.”

She talked about it excitedly, happy to share the information. She continued to chat about the specifics of flight mechanics for a while, admitting that even though much of it didn’t matter for her--thank you, fae magic--she was still interested in it a lot. “I’m also trying to figure out if I can make something like… more aerodynamic weapons and armour with my smithing. I forged a spear for Boon a while back, but now I’m thinking I could make a better one that could maintain its flight for longer, so that even someone without super strength could strike true to a faraway target.”

“Ohhhhh, those aren’t actually barrel rolls? Well what the heck? I feel betrayed!” she cried out angrily, but laughs. “Oh crap you probably would have taken it out!” she added, grinning as Gwen went on. Hana could appreciate a good geek out about something you were passionate about. She nods, watching the ground go by as she talks.

“Oh, you made her spear?! That’s so freaking cool! You must make awesome stuff then. That would be so cool! I should show you my robot suit sometime! It’s probably not as cool or fancy as the stuff you make but I’m pretty happy with how it’s all put together. Well, aside from the whole ‘needs another power source so for now it drains the users life energy to function’ bit. That’s not fun. Do you make, like, all kinds of stuff or focus on weapons?”

“I mostly have forged weapons, they can take a bit longer than other things,” Gwen said. “But I make other things too. As long as it’s made of metal and doesn’t require machinery or electronics, there’s a chance I might be able to make it and enchant it with some magic. Specific things can get more difficult. Some guy asked me for a ring of invisibility. I got no idea how to go about that. I’d need to learn the process first. Maybe some elvish magic? I don’t know any elves though. It’s easier to just make things strong or tough or go fast or make it look pretty.”

“Speaking of which…” Gwen motioned downwards with her head as she began a slow descent. “We’re almost there.”

“That’s so freaking cool” she said, grinning widely. She kept saying that, but really felt it, making stuff like that was really impressive to her, like baking or art, forging was taking a bunch of stuff and turning it into something cool and amazing. “Heck, the fact that you can like, put magic into a thing is awesome, even if it’s not like, a ring of being invisible or whatever. You do anything with instruments, like your bass or whatever?” she asked, then looked down as they started descending. “Sweet! Can’t wait to chuck some boulders at stuff!”

“Instruments are a bit complex, unless it’s just like… a tambourine or triangle. But I’ve made some special picks for our bandmates. Got inspired by a film once about a rock-off with Satan. Anyway,” Gwen cut herself short as she landed, coming down with a short run and skidding to a halt, before she put Hana down. “There we go!”

Hana nodded a bunch. “Yeah that makes sense, guitars and stuff are like, a lot of things going on. Picks are cool! Maybe even like strings or something, ooohhhh could you make me some drumsticks? That would be so cool and a lot cheaper if I had ones that didn’t break so often” she said, giving an embarrassed chuckle. She grinned as she was set down onto the earth, looking all around them.

## By The Water

They were on the shore of the bay, a little bit down the New York coast. Part of where the bay was at its longest, so there wasn’t much worry of hitting Canada or Montreal or anything. It was a sort of overlook at the edge of a woods, having a shoreline but not quite being a beach. No worries of swimmers here with all the rocks and stuff, but it fit their activities perfectly. Lots of pine and oak trees dotted the woods behind them, a few walking trails could be seen cutting around through the trees. Mainly important was the few big rocks dotting the coastline.

“Heck yeah, let’s do this” Hana said, grinning and hurrying over to a rock about a meter wide, lifting it and tossing it up and down a few times.

Gwen watched as Hana ran off to get busy yeeting rocks, smiling in amusement. She made a mental note to make Hana some drumsticks for her birthday--once she’d find out when that was--or Christmas, if that came sooner. She could probably ask Mini what she’d done to make Seth’s drumsticks for Rescue; The Girls.

Her bracer shifted back to a hilt that she hung back on her toolbelt and she walked on over to Hana, putting her hands in her jacket pockets. “Go ahead then,” Gwen encouraged her. “Toss it, tosser. Show me what you’re made of.”

Hana had a big grin on her face, then nodded. “You got it!” she said, doing a half turn, then going the other way to build some momentum and lifting her arms up rapidly, yeeting the rock out into the bay. She followed through some, stumbling over as she watched it fly through the air, going pretty far, and landing in the water with a big, loud plunk!

She laughed, then put her hands on her hips. “Hahaha, that was so cool! Your go! Think you can get it farther? Without flying!”

Gwen gave an approving nod. “Impressive. Alright!” She walked over to a similarly-sized rock, this one more irregularly-shaped and angular. She spat in her hands, rubbed them together, and lifted it up over her head. She walked closer to the water, put the rock onto her shoulder, and changed her positioning. “It’s not all about strength,” she said, tumbling the rock and holding one hand at the front, in the direction she was aiming. She bent her legs and released all at once, her dominant hand thrusting out to give it momentum as she put her whole body into it. The rock sailed through the air and landed with a similarly loud plunk! A bit further in the water. She gave Shade a thumbs up. “Gotta learn good yeeting technique! Now you go again!”

Hana watches with earnest, eyes wide as she studied her bandmate’s technique. She nodded. Not all about strength. Right right right. She watched the rock fly, ‘ooh’ing and ‘aah’ing as it went out and finally fell into the water beyond where hers did. “Oh dang, nice! Hm, hm, okay okay, let’s do this” she said, nodding and looking around for another rock.

It takes her a minute but she comes back holding another large rock, similar to the size of the others, but weirdly round. She hurries over and does some squats as she plans her throw. “Okay so like, you did like a bend and lift and throw and like, push thing? Hmmm, like, okay so” she said as she moved a bunch, trying to lift it to get a feel of the weight. She tosses it up once, then tries to match the form Gwen had on her throw, trying to follow through better and give more push onto the rock as she lets it go. It goes a bit farther than her last one, but not quite as far as Gwen’s.

“Oh heck yeah! I got it farther!” she said, grinning ear to ear as she looks over to Gwen.

“Good job!” Gwen applauded for Hana. “See? You’re a natural. You’d probably be great at basketball.” She grinned. “That’s my secret. Sports is great training for superheroics. Teamwork and physical training and technique.”

Gwen picked up a smaller rock--flatter, but rounded and three times the size of her fist. She weighed it in her hand, gripped it, then curved her arm as she set a step closer to the water and whipped her hand forwards. She let the rock go at the end of her arc and it zipped over the water, bouncing with a crisp splashing noise once, twice, several times. It got further than their other throws, before sinking into the water nearer to the Canadian side than their own.

“Well, of course you gotta also have a bit of super strength in the first place to get this far. Unless you acquire it later on in some, hopefully not traumatizing way.”

Hana nodded, thinking to herself about it. “Huh. Yeah I guess that is a good point. I dunno if I’d be good at basketball, I’m so short, but like, yeah, maybe doing something like that with some Big Team people could be fun” she said, grinning. She watched Gwen grab a different rock, a flat one, and her eyes got wide as she assumed what was going to be attempted. Gwen threw it, and it skipped way past their other throws, Hana grinned and laughed as it finally came to a stop with a sploosh close to the other side.

“Holy crap! That was so freaking cool! This reminds me of when I’d accidentally put holes in our walls cause I’d be playing with a ball or whatever and send it through cause I didn’t hold back” she said, laughing. “My mom got so pissed. I mean, that’s like her default state, but like way more when I’d do stuff like that” she added. The girl started walking around, collecting flatter rocks they could try to skip, getting them into a pile nearby.

“Huh. I don’t think about it a lot but I guess I don’t really know where I got my powers. Like, I kinda just was strong one day. I got yelled at cause I picked up the couch trying to find one of my toys. My mom’s an insurance broker so like she got all ‘blah blah do you know how much our premium is gonna go up with a superpowered kid’ blah blah blah” she thought out loud, recounting it to Gwen while collecting some throwing rocks for them both.

Gwen snorted. “That sounds like a parent alright. I guess I’m lucky my parents had powers too, and that we lived in Avalon first. Halcyon was a big change compared to that, but at least I had my father with me to navigate this confusing world together.”

She flexed her arm. “I don’t know why exactly I have super strength too, but my father has it, so it made sense. But… also, everyone who escaped out of GREY had it too. And I had Nimue’s spirit with me for a long time. And I guess I did lose my strength briefly after losing her, though that might just have been…” She fell silent for a few moments, staring out over the water. “Anyway, strength can come from a lot of places, I guess.”

Hana nodded. Yeah. Sounded like a parent. That was pretty much all her mom sounded like. She glanced over as Gwen reminisced about her own origins, with much more fantastical things happening than Hana’s. “Heh, yeah, lotta places. Your other stuff comes from the Avalon background, like the wings and the forging and the retrocognitizing?” she asked. Her arms held a big collection of rocks that she dropped into the pile, then picked one up and took aim, before trying to do as Gwen had before and whip it out, release close to the end, get it moving with enough force to skip. It went a while, farther than their first ones, but not quite to how far Gwen’s had near the Canadian shore.

Gwen’s jaw dropped and she looked incredulously at Hana dropping a huge pile of rocks. Her expression faded into a big grin. She snickered at the girl’s clear enjoyment of their rock-throwing activities. “The other stuff has origins there too, mostly. I got the wings from Nimue originally. When she abandoned me, I found I could still attempt a momentary bond with other magical items, leeching energy from them to form the same wings. Maybe I always had that power and Nimue had just served as a funnel for it, making it easier. The forging kind of came out of that too. It’s a skill I ended up developing when I was… when I was all alone.”

She took a deep breath and yote another rock over the water. “Nimue was with me during GREY, and with me while I planned to rescue my father from Ferinon, the hell-prison, and with me when my cousin was stuck in the Zodiac Tree that she made while my robot girlfriend was also in pieces and in need of fixing. Then as soon as that was all solved, when we had our new base, I got eaten by a dragon and I… died.”

Hana grabbed some smaller rocks, about the size of her fist and a half, and tried to yeet two at once while she listened to Gwen. It didn’t go super well, both of them going kinda far only because of her strength and not any good technique. She paused her yeetery and glanced over, giving a small frown. “Oh, dang. That’s a lot. Sorry ya had to deal with like...all of that. Uh, like, at least you undied? And you’re here now, and that’s good and stuff” she said, giving a nod to her.

Gwen managed a small smile. “Yeah. It was a bit more complex than that, but… that was a long and weird adventure that I’d rather not relive. I have a hard rule on retrocognizing myself. Only broken that rule once. But yeah, after that I only could get wings from draining magic from an object, and my retrocognition. That’s when I started studying smithing. I wanted back what I had lost, but without going back to Nimue. I wanted to out-do her. So, I’ve been learning about doing that ever since. The retrocognition is the only thing I don’t know the origins of. Maybe that’s for the best.” She yote another rock, smaller than the others, and stared after it as it seemed to reach the other end of the water.

Hana nodded. “That is like, super fair. Looking back on your own past but like in that kinda way and not just thinking about stuff, like, yeah, seems like that would be bad” she said, grabbing a big, wide, flat rock that she spun around a few times and yeeted, making a few bounces and big waves before landing and sinking. “That’s pretty cool though. Learning the smithing and putting magic into stuff so you can like, do stuff on your own. That’s kinda why I learned hacking and tech stuff, aside from just like, kinda having a knack for it, it was a way to let me do stuff I couldn’t before. Well, uh, I guess it’s different cause you could do the stuff before but like, you know, kinda similar” she said, giving a shrug, then chuckled. “How, uh, how far can the retrocognification go back? Like could you see a whole person’s past, or is it just like a lil bit? Uh, if it’s cool to ask about, of course. You’d said maybe could chat about that stuff more in private and this seems pretty private. Just us and the rocks”

Gwen looked around at the rocky beach around them. “Just us and the rocks, huh…” She motioned to a spot in the shade by some trees. “Sure, we can talk about it. Imma sit down for a bit though. Lil’ tired.”

She sat down on--what else, a rock--in the shadow of a large tree and stretched herself out. “So, retrocognition. I can go pretty far back with it, if I have more time I can take for it. I’ve never had to go very far for my purposes, usually a day or a week at most. I have done it up to one or two years though. I don’t know if there’s a hard limit. It’d be weird to experience being a baby.” Gwen grimaced.

“It takes a while to take in what is happening, so if I ignore most things I can skip through them faster. It makes it easier to hone in on specific clues.”

Hana nodded and followed her, putting her hands into the pockets of her jacket. She goes into the shade, then leans against a tree, looking up at the sky through the branches. When Gwen starts, her gaze moves back over to her, nodding as she talks about it. Her face shared the grimace at potentially experiencing being a baby. No thanks.

“Gotcha. Huh. So you can kinda fast forward or whatever if you know what you’re looking for? That’s pretty cool then. It seems like such a weird, different thing, hard to think about what it would be like. Like, looking at the past of a thing...yeah. Huh. And you don’t know where that one came from? Just like, kinda had it?” she asked, looking over.

“I forget when exactly I first realized I had it,” Gwen answered. “I’m not sure I had it before I was kidnapped by GREY, but… Either way, it was there that I learned the details of it. It was handy for my breakout attempts, but it’s also been a problem for the times I use it on accident. I’ve gotten it under control now though. Lotta training. Therapy. Self-reflection. Good old-fashioned stubbornness.” She taps the side of her head. “I’m ready to be a private detective now, if I’d wanted to be one.”

“Ugh, yeah, those shitholes” Hana said, shaking her head. As a Big Teamer she hadn’t dealt with them, but remembered the stuff they’d done around the city in the previous years. “Oh crap, you’d be super good as a detective. Like, if you wanted to be. Find stuff with the retrocogstitation, then beat up the asshole that did whatever the thing was. Boom, easy.” she said, grinning, then gave a chuckle.

“So you can like, bring people along with you? Is it like, hard or painful for you or anything?” Hana asked, starting to get more curious about what it might be like to experience it.

“Oh! Yeah, I’ve brought people along before. It’s easier if we do that with an object or location. The one time I did it while targeting a person we ended up in a kind of… mindscape. Like we were walking through scenes from their past. Retrocognition by itself isn’t hard or painful. I have felt pain during it, but that was because someone dunked me into the sun. Oh, and I’ve woken up from night terrors before and accidentally used my powers and run into literal monsters and the corpse of my father from a past event at the place I was sleeping at.”

“Uhhhh, shit, that’s, that’s pretty heavy. Sorry. Uh, are you, like, okay to talk about this stuff? We don’t gotta if it’s, like a lot. Guess I shoulda figured a power that lets you look into the past would be like, something that might bring up some crappy stuff. But like, sounds like it’s been pretty helpful too, so that’s something. I’m super curious what it would be like to see that and experience it, but like, I don’t wanna make you if it could hurt or be weird like that. Uh, heh, yeah. With strength all I gotta worry about is not breaking things I’m not supposed to break. Even then I mess up” Hana said, having picked up a long stick to poke and draw in the dirt as they talked.

Gwen scratched behind one of her ears. “Yeah, I’m… I’m okay. I’ve had time to process it. We don’t need to talk more about it though. I did kind of drop it on you, which isn’t entirely fair.”

She looked at Hana and her eyes narrowed a little, looking curious, but not suspicious. “What kind of stuff would you like to experience?”

Hana nods. “Oh, yeah, you’re good, I’m asking about it and like, it coming up is fair. Just wanna make sure you’re like, all good and stuff, and yeah, we don’t gotta dwell” she said, ending up doing a poor drawing of her motorcycle with the stick. “Like, just whatever, to see what it’s like. There’s stuff I might wanna learn but it’s gonna be pretty far in my past, like when I was real little. Well...no, that wouldn’t be...I...ugh. Don’t want you to have to like, use your power just cause I wanna see stuff. Uh, if there’s something you wanna use it on I’d come just to watch it” she said, turning to glance at her.

Gwen tilted her head and her cat-like ears twitched a little. “When you say there’s stuff you want to learn that is far in your past… are we talking tweens-far, toddler-far, or baby-far? Because if I use this power on you, and you’d experience it like I do if I do it to a person, you’d feel like an adult crammed into a baby’s body. Maybe. I don’t even know how that would go exactly. But it might be like us two appearing in your mindscape and seeing things? And we might not get to choose what or when we see things.”

She picked up a small rock by her feet, weighed it in her hand, and held it up. “I could also just briefly show you what it’s like with just one of these things. It’ll probably be super mundane though. Or we might end up facing a kaiju that attacked Halcyon in the past and it stepping on this rock.” She tossed the rock, it clattered against another rock next to the water, before it bounced into the water. “Your choice.”

Hana sighed. “So, like, a couple weeks back I learned some stuff and I might know who my dad is, but I’m not sure, and I can’t really find anybody that knows him yet. All I know is he had some kinda doctorate and he helped make GAIA, enough that GAIA considers him like a father. So, like, yeah. I wanna know about that, and I wanna know where my powers came from. My mom doesn’t know or at least she never told me, same with my dad, she would never talk about him when I asked. Just, I’m tired of not knowing, if that makes sense. Would, would you be comfortable trying that? I don’t wanna ask if you wouldn’t be…” she sighed, then looked up to the sky.

“But like, I dunno. Sledge said I should try to lean on my friends more and get help if I need it, and accept that people want to help. So, like, I guess I figured I’d ask before I just decide that you don’t wanna help without actually seeing how you feel. We don’t have to at all, I’m just a dummy that’s curious about your cool powers cause I just punch stuff. Heh” she said, giving a shrug before picking up a small rock and throwing it, trying to just send it fast as she could as it splashed against the water.

Gwen looked at Hana for a few long moments after she finished speaking, letting the sound of the river and the soft summer breeze be the only ones for a while. She looked away for a moment, and then rose up from the rock she sat on. She walked towards Hana and put a hand on her shoulder, gripping her tightly. She stared her in the eyes for a second, before breaking the silence. “I know how that feels.” Then Gwen pulled Hana in close and hugged her.

“I’ve had trouble with admitting I need to ask others for help too.” Gwen admitted. “And I’ve been plenty curious about other people’s cool powers, too. You’re not a dummy, Hana. You’re just a girl in turmoil. It’s okay.”

Hana kept her gaze out on the water, but turned when she felt Gwen’s hand on her shoulder. She looked up at her with some confusion and sadness in her eyes, which got wide as Gwen suddenly hugged her. She blinked a few times, but smiled lightly and put her arms around her friend, returning the hug.

She sighed, nodding at her words. “Yeah, it’s, like, I dunno, I’m not used to people wanting to help and now Big Team is all nice and stuff. It’s weird” she said, closing her eyes and appreciating the affirmation she got, and the hug. “Heh, turmoil is strong but...accurate I guess, like, just got a lotta stuff on my mind. My dad, my powers, my girlf-I mean date person girl I went on a date with and either ghosted me or had something happen to her, yeah. I dunno.”

Gwen gently patted Hana’s back a few times before letting go of the hug. She cleared her throat. “Right, a lot of stuff on your mind. At those times the best you can do is tackle the problems as hard as you can! Um, but, like… one at a time. Compartmentalize. Focus. Prioritize. Can’t spread yourself too thin. Otherwise you end up like a Graham cracker with not enough jam. Nobody likes those.” She gave an awkward look and a nod, as if that made sense to her, but acknowledging that it came out awkwardly. “Well then, Kerrigan. Which of your problems do you want me to help you tackle?”

Hana nods. Focus and do what she could, don’t spread too thin. She chuckled at the simile, nodding. “Right. Don’t wanna be a graham cracker with too little jam. Wanna be a smore, all stacked up good with stuff inside all taken care off and fitting together” she said, chuckling some more as she thought. “Uh, well, I dunno if anything can be done about the third one, it’s kind of just like, a matter of finding her...maybe the first one? Finding out more about my dad might lead into finding out more about my powers, so like, yeah. Uh, if you’re okay with it, of course” she said, unable to help herself from offering another out, but at least pointing to one thing she wanted to see.

Gwen stretched and cracked her knuckles. “I’ve done this often enough with strangers from other planets that I am not about to deny a bandmate. We’ve fought ghosts together, you saved me from Canada and most importantly: we shared boba at Philosotea. That makes us friends.”

She did a few more stretching exercises and then sat down against the tree. She held up one hand. “Best to make sure we don’t fall over from anything shocking once we’re back out. Do you want to do this now? Then grab my hand.”

Hana giggled, then nodded. “Yeah. Shared boba, the unbreakable bond” she said, a warm smile on her face. She sat and leaned against the tree next to Gwen, taking a deep breath. Getting into as comfortable a position as she could, she nodded. “Yeah, yeah. Let’s do this, then” she said, looking over to her. “Thanks, Gwen” she said, then took her hand and squeezed.

## Into The Hana-Verse

The whooshing sensation was familiar to Gwen by now. It started off feeling like she fell off a tall building, then slowed down again quickly after reaching maximum falling speed, and falling horizontally into scenes from the past, from a first-person perspective. But that was the usual way in which it happened. That was not what happened when she pulled someone else along into their own past. The falling sensation was there, but instead the endpoint of the rush turned out to have a third-person perspective. There they were: Gwen and Hana, holding hands, as they zipped into a construction of Hana’s past.

Gwen blinked as she looked around, trying to orient herself. “Alright, first things first. You need to figure out where and when we are. From there, we can figure out where and when we need to go.”

Hana took a deep breath like she was diving underwater as they were pulled by Gwen’s power. She felt like she was falling, then floating, then nothing, then an eerie calm, before some kind of feeling returned and she opened her eyes. She caught a glimpse of them sitting against the tree before her vision faded and they emerged into a wide space.

Things were blurry, then started to come back into focus. There was a table, then a desk, then an elevator door...slowly the interior of Hana’s base came into view. She looked around, recognizing it finally. “Oh, hey, we’re home. Well, my home. Uh, okay, so that’s ‘where’ we are, like...when are we though? Can I like interact with stuff?” she asked, looking to Gwen, then motioning with her head to the computer. “I could check there?”

Gwen stood next to Hana and scratched the back of her head. “I’ve never been able to interact with stuff when using it on people, but that was when I was on my own. When I use it on places, you can interact with stuff, but only in that spot. So… probably? I don’t think you could, like, access the internet though.”

She looked around the base interior, making note of the motorcycle and the door to Hana’s room. “I’ve never been here before, so I can’t help on the ‘when’. If this place looked like this before you became Sledge’s protege, it might be before then even. Oh! Oh that’s why you want to check the computer. Right.” She smacked her forehead. “Just goes to show you even with a great toolbelt, you need to be smart to be a detective.”

“Gotcha, yeah, not being able to do Internet stuff makes sense” Hana said, nodding. She looked around as Gwen mentioned what it had looked like before, taking a moment to think about that, back a couple years ago when she’d first come under Sledge’s mentorship. “Uhhhh, not really? I don’t think so. I mean, like, the rooms were there but I’m pretty sure the motorcycle wasn’t, got that a little bit into me living here. Hmm, lemme check something” she said, then started walking over to the supercomputer.

Moving through it felt odd to Hana at first, kind of like walking through a dream, needing to be very deliberate with her actions, slowly getting used to it. She sat down and shrugged, then started to interact with the device. The multiple screens lit up and started to boot up like it normally does in the real world. The content of them was different though, as the screens changed they showed dates, times, like a giant table of them, with people’s names and tags on the content and descriptions of events. One of the screens was still blank, with some others set up differently than usual, turned vertical and almost looking like a door. Hana blinked a few times, then started going through the database in front of her, typing quickly. She found one labeled ‘Lake Winnemuck Battle of the Bands 2020’, then pushed a play button. The blank screen lit with a video playing from Hana’s perspective, their concert that day at the battle after they’d figured out the whole ghost thing.

“Oh shit, these are like, memories and stuff” she said, looking back to Gwen with an excited grin. “I’m gonna hack myself!”

Following Hana around to her supercomputer, Gwen stood behind the chair as Hana worked and looked through the times and files that appeared on the screens. She looked around, impressed at the large setup. She nodded approvingly, thinking to herself that this would be an excellent computer to play Dark Souls on. She kept the comment to herself, as to not distract Hana from her goal.

Gwen nodded and couldn’t help but laugh a little at Hana’s ‘hack myself’ comment. “Yeah, it looks like when I go into someone’s past with someone else, we get to see memories. But you gotta keep in mind that how you remember something and how it really happened can be a bit different. You might find that a friend you were angry with for saying something bad actually didn’t say that bad thing at all and it was just a misunderstanding. Or there are details about a person you’re hanging out with that you never really noticed. This way of using my powers is kind of new to me, so I can’t tell you yet which of those two it is that we’ll encounter.”

She put her hands on Hana’s shoulders, giving her an encouraging squeeze. “But yas, gurl, go hack yourself!”

Hana paused her typing, looking down in thought. “Yeah, I didn’t think about that. Huh. Well, I mean, like, long as I figure out what the truth even is, I can deal with like, me remembering it wrong or not knowing something. I dunno. But, like, yeah. Thanks for the tip” she said, looking back and giving a smile. She chuckled as Gwen squeezed her shoulders and encouraged her, nodding a bunch. “Heck yeah! Let’s do this” she said, turning back and starting to type away.

She dug through the lines and lines of dates and memories, realizing quickly that there were too many to just look through them. She pulled up another window, while it obviously wasn’t a regular computer, it seemed to work as one as she wrote a small program to start parsing things and search faster. “I guess I gotta dig through like, a while ago. If we’re gonna try to find stuff about my dad, or, the dude I think is my dad, he died when I was three. That’s like, a lot” she said, tilting her head as she thought. “You think that would be too far?” she asked, glancing back to Gwen.

Gwen admired Hana’s fast and clever work as she wrote up a quick program to search her own memories. She wondered if something like that would work for herself too, or if that’s what it worked like for Olivia. Maybe memories just fundamentally worked differently for different people?

“When you were three?” She responded to Hana’s question. “It might not be. That’s about the age people start forming more long-term memories, I think? My siblings were about that age when my father and I left Avalon. It’s worth a shot, I think.”

“Hmm. Okay, if you’re sure. I didn’t wanna like, push it too hard going back so far with your powers or whatever” Hana said, nodding. She typed, filtering it down to the year 2005 and poking through to see what was there. Like Gwen said, it was the start of long term memories, and not a lot was there from this time. There was one memory that had something playable, apparently, with a very short description. “This Is Home Now”

## August 14th, 2005 - Lewis and Anna Kerrigan’s Apartment

The screens all merged into one, showing a single image of a front door. The view was short, from about knee high of an adult. A first person view from young Hana. As the door opened, she hurried inside, a small apartment coming into view.

Current Hana frowned, confused. This wasn’t the apartment she grew up in.

“Wow!” she said, hurrying around the apartment. “Coooool!” she said. The man at the door cringed and came inside, shutting and locking the door. “Hey, Hana, settle down, I haven’t tol-” he said, being interrupted.

“Lewis? What is this?” a shrill woman’s voice called from the doorway to another room. He winced and turned. Anna came out into the living room, standing with her arms crossed. Lewis moved over to her, Hana on his heels.

“Listen, I, I know I didn’t tell you beforehand. This was kind of an emergency. She’s...from work. I, it, that is...we have to take care of her now.” he said, his words a bit sputtered out.

“Are you serious? You’re serious? Bringing in a kid?” she said, eyes narrowing and glaring at him.

“Yes. She’s from the thing I told you about. Project Gauss. It didn’t work, and they abandoned her.” he said, moving closer as he got quieter, so Hana wouldn’t hear him. It didn’t quite work, as Anna was still being loud, and Hana just walked closer, staring up at them both.

In the present, Gwen mouthed the words along, ‘Project Gauss’. That sounded significant, albeit not familiar. Could be something she learned in school, or from her time in GREY. She made a mental note to check later, in case it didn’t come up more in Hana’s memories.

“Okay? And? I don’t want a kid. I’ve told you this.” Anna said, giving Hana a look, then back to Lewis.

“I know! I know. Listen. I can’t talk about it yet. I’ll tell you more later. Just...she needs to stay here. Okay? I got a guy doing the paperwork. She’ll be Hana Kerrigan. Gauss is dead, but some of the other projects are still going, the AI one is still in the works, and they just abandoned everything. I couldn’t leave her or let Ms Yamato take her wherever she was going to go. I’m not a good person, but I’m not...I’m not that.”

At the mention of Yamato, Gwen’s fingers dug into Hana’s shoulders. She stared at the screen, transfixed.

Anna groaned and walked away from him. “You always do shit like this! Just decide what we ‘have’ to do!” she said, turning back with a sneer. “This is too much. I can’t just take care of some brat. I’m out”

Lewis stepped closer and gave her a serious look. “He asked us to,” he said calmly, with emphasis on the word ‘he’. Anna gave a deep sigh.

“I hate him. I hate him so much, Lewis. Fine. You’re going to tell me everything, got it?” she said, staring at him, seeming to have calmed down some. He chuckled and nodded.

“Of course. You should meet her, we have the other bedroom, set her up in there, I’ll be back soon. Got it?” he said, nodding to her. She sighed and nodded.

“Fine” she said. He turned back to Hana and crouched down to look at her.

“Hey kiddo. I gotta head out for a while, but you’re gonna get to meet Anna, she’s your mommy! Daddy will be back in a little while. You’re gonna get a whole room to yourself, and toys and all that. Okay?” he said, ruffling her hair.

“Okay, daddy!” she said, leaning close and hugging him. She seemed to not be holding back, and he wasn’t crying in pain. Her powers must not be present yet.

“Okay. Sounds good. I hope you like it here, cause this is home now” he said, and the memory started to glitch a bit, getting blurry before the screen turned off.

Gwen was quiet for a few moments after that, then let out a shuddering breath. On the one hand, they’d found the man who had become little Hana’s father, which made her remember the long time she’d been separated from her own family too with a sense of sadness. On the other hand, the mention of secret projects and the involvement of Yamato made her recall her own trauma, which at once paralyzed and enraged her. “Did… did that help?” She spoke softly to Hana.

Hana watched it through, her eyes just wide through the whole thing, keeping quiet. As it finished, the image fizzling out, she still kept quiet. She fell back into the chair, just staring at the now blank screen. She just tried to process, to try to even start understanding what she’d just seen, what that was, what it meant. “No, that’s...no. No. That, no. No. My memory must just be messed up. You said memories and what actually happened don’t always match, right? Like, it’s not real. That’s not true. As shitty as she is, Anna’s my mom. That’s, no, how, that, no.” her voice was shaky, sputtering out words as she motormouthed through her denial, like she did in plenty of other situations learning a harsh truth. Hana held her head in her hands and sniffled, trying to hold it together.

Gwen was in turmoil herself over what they’d seen, but looking down at Hana sitting in front of her, she realized she couldn’t focus on what she felt herself. She’d done this to help Hana, and now she’d made it worse. All those times before with teammates, her powers had proven a blessing to either them or herself. Now? Now it was just a curse. She needed to make things right somehow. That’s what heroes did.

She leaned forward and wrapped her arms around Hana, hugging her. “There, there.” She said. “You’re right. Things might be messed up. This is not what we came here for, did we? We came for answers to questions, not for more questions. This is just… just my powers playing tricks on us. A very crappy practical joke. Anna is still your mom. Shitty as she is, she is still your mom. I don’t have the best family either, but they’re still my family. Family is what you make of it. Okay? We don’t have to go further for now. We can take a break or stop. Do you want to take a break?”

Hana leans into her friend’s arms, sniffling and giving some light sobs. Even in her denial and Gwen’s backing up that it wasn’t true, she did know. It was like when she learned Hayeli had betrayed them. She didn’t want to face that, wanted it to be a lie, but really, even as she shouted and told her friends to knock it off, she knew it was true. Just like now. Her hand gripped into a fist as she clenched, taking a deep breath. She turned her head slightly, pulling away from Gwen just a bit to look her in the eyes.

“I...It’s not, huh. Unless like, something really really weird was happening, this is real. Th-they aren’t actually my parents” she said, her voice wavering some. She gave a disheartened chuckle. “I guess that explains why she was such a bitch my whole life. Never wanted me in the first place. Least I don’t have to call her anymore. And Lewis isn’t my dad, either. Cool. Now I just gotta figure out who I actually am. That’s fine. Great. Yeah.”

Gwen felt conflicted. If Anna had been a good mom to Hana, at least she could’ve told her ‘no! She’s your family, because family is more than whose genes you’ve got’. But all in all, Anna had been the least possible kind of family she could be to Hana. Being so utterly rejected by someone you thought was supposed to love you? She couldn’t…

“I actually can relate to that.” She said, stunned at the realization. Gwen had never truly processed Nimue’s abandonment, not outwardly at least. She’d wallowed in it herself and she’d talked about it in therapy, but she had been tight-lipped about it to her friends. “I know what it feels like to have someone you consider family abandon you. I’ve had that happen to me too. So… I want you to know that you’re not alone in this. I didn’t open up to anyone about it when it happened to me and it sucked. It sucked so bad. I won’t let things get that shitty for you, okay? If you want to continue, we’ll find out who your birth parents are. On God. Cross my heart and hope to die. And if you don’t want to continue? That’s fine too. Anna may be a bitch to you, but there are people who love you. That’s a family too. A family can be… like… a knight dad, a mirror clone, two robot datefriends and a rock star. Okay? You’re not fine right now, and that’s okay. This is heavy shit. But you will be. We’ll make sure of it.”

Hana blinked, eyes widening a bit even as they were a bit red and puffy from rubbing the welled tears. She nodded, taking in everything she said, breathing deeply. Her words actually did help. Knowing that Gwen had felt like this too, and gotten through it to be as awesome as she was, it gave her some hope. “I...yeah. You’re right. I got friends and Sledge and Temperance and...other people I really wish I could see right now. I feel like I should talk to her one more time, just to be like, hey, I know, you can stop trying to pretend like you care, or whatever. Just...really really hurts right now. I don’t even know where the heck I’m from now. What even am I? Like, I’m cool if I’m a robot or a, I dunno, an alien or something else or whatever, I just wanna know, and I hate that it’s all hidden and locked away like I’m not allowed to know about myself. What does that mean for my transition and stuff?” she motormouthed, eventually sighing and leaning back in for another hug.

“I, thank you for helping me, Gwen. This is a lot of shit and I, like, I’m sorry you gotta see it and deal with that and get reminded of shit you’ve had to deal with before. I wanna keep going, but if you don’t we don’t gotta”

Gwen thought about that for a moment, then shook her head. “Yeah, I got plenty of reasons why I might not want to continue. There’s just one problem though: I’m hella stubborn. I might have told you before that I kinda have a habit of jumping at the biggest problem I can find and smash it until it’s solved? Well, this may not be a universe-threatening problem, but it is a friend-threatening problem. I’m here to help you smash it. Besides, maybe this will help me too, to finally deal with my own shit. It’s not the main goal, but it would be a nice bonus!”

She gave Hana a smile and raised a hand to give her a gentle punch-tap against the chin. “Can you gimme a confident Flex Girl smile? Then we’ll continue.”

Hana laughed at her explanation to keep going. “I knew I liked you, we both just wanna beat up stuff until it’s fixed. It’s best way to solve things, I dunno why more people don’t get it!” she said, nodding and looking at her. She gave a grin, mostly back to herself, the drive fired back up in her with Gwen’s help. “Yeah. Let’s do it. If we can figure out something for your stuff that would be awesome! But either way, let’s figure out whatever we can while we’re in this mess” she said, pointing to her own head as she said ‘mess’.

She looked back to the computer and hit a key, the list of memories and her program coming up again. “What should we look for now? I couldn’t find any other memories from when I was that young, is there something else we could do? Is there something we could try to just see my past and not the stuff my brain actually kept?”

Gwen nodded along with Hana’s returning confidence, smiling at her bandmate. “Yeah! So, if we can’t find other memories, then we’ll have to look for something else. Can you find other stuff on this computer? Maybe under deleted files somehow? If we can’t find anything else on the computer, we’ll have to look--quite literally--outside the box.” She stood up straight and looked around the room, then through the door. She wondered what would happen if she punched a hole through a wall here, or if they took the elevator up. “Like, this computer is a part of your brain, there’s memories in your brain, so maybe we just need to search other parts of your brain? Or outside of your brain entirely. Wherever that is.”

“Huh, that’s a good idea. How would I do this if this was like, something I was hacking, and not my brain? Uh...I’d try to find any vulnerabilities, then how to exploit them, gather information about the target...Not all hacks are totally computer based, it might be a good idea for us to explore my brain space for clues, like you said. Just because the computer is here with my memories, doesn’t mean my brain didn’t do something shady and hide them elsewhere too. Hehe, shady. Hehe” she said, giggling at the accidental pun.

“Uh, I wonder if we can leave? Like, go outside or up into the community center? Like, what if I found my mom-uh, well, the apartment I grew up in? Is that how this works? Can we do that?” she said, turning in the chair to look at Gwen with a curious gaze.

Gwen shrugged with a puzzled look on her face. “Hey, this is your brain, pal. You know more about it than I do. Either way, it’s worth a shot. Worst comes to worst, we just get zapped back out of here, snapping back to reality. Unless you’ve kept something hidden from me, I don’t think we’ll end up getting dunked into the sun, meeting your alternate demon-possessed self, or getting shredded by reality itself. Then again…” She shrugged again with a half-hearted laugh. “You never know with Big Team. That’s the fun of it. Even though this whole trip might be far from fun for you.”

“Hmmm, gotcha. Yeah, I don’t think I got any of those things in my head. I can’t be totally sure though” Hana said, nodding. She stood up, feeling like the computer had given them what it could. She looks around her home, or, well, her brain home. “Okay, so, uh, yeah. Let’s see. Where would something super duper secret and hidden be in my brain space home thingie…” she taps her chin in thought for a while, pacing around the space.

## The Safe

After a while she looks at Gwen with a surprised look. “Oh, I’m a dummy. In here” she said, heading for the area that was her actual apartment with her bedroom. She came into the room, over to her bed. Super strength was a gift as she leaned down and pulled the bed away with ease. Underneath was a few random bits of tech, some more femme clothes she seemed to have cast away, and a black square in the floor in the center. Hana kneeled down and placed her hand on the top. A light moved as it scanned her palm. “Sledge showed me some of the other security features this place had a little while ago, including this safe. Think my head woulda put stuff in here. That make any sense?”

Gwen followed Hana with a frown, curious about where she was going, but it was clear she had a lead. That was good. She figured that as long as they had forward momentum, she needn’t worry too much about her friend. They could act.

“Oh!” She said upon seeing the safe in the floor. “That is very clever. That does make sense! You need to keep secrets locked away safely, after all.” Gwen picked up one of the more feminine articles among the scattered clothes on the floor. “Although these are not the kinds of secrets I expected us to find here. I think this might be my size… or Olivia’s, when she’s not stretching.”

She folded it over one arm and looked to the floor-safe that Hana was opening up. “So, I know that you might prefer to not tell me, but just in case it also ends up being in there, but… what do you usually store in that safe under your bed? You don’t have to say what it is exactly, but if it’s dangerous it would be good to be prepared.”

Hana nodded, but turned very red when Gwen picked up the piece of clothing. “Wuh-I, that, it’s, like, I usually just wear jeans and shorts and not very femme stuff and like, I dunno, I got some things like dresses and stuff to see how I liked them, and uggh” she said, sliding anything left back under the bed. She sighed and moved back to the safe.

“Stuff I’ve kept over the years, personal stuff, an emergency go bag, back up meds, stuff like that, mostly. Like...yeah...just really personal stuff. The few things I actually kept from...from Anna, other gifts, things like that” she said, nodding. Hana glanced to Gwen, a frown on her face. “You think my memories would like, attack us or something?”

“Are you embarrassed about these clothes?” Gwen raised an eyebrow. “You’re tough as heck, you don’t gotta worry about how you look. You’ll always be badass. I actually like wearing short shorts and tank tops most of all myself, but I used to wear a lot of dresses. Nowadays I only do for special occasions, really, like crashing high school prom.”

Hana looked down and shook her head. “Embarrassed isn’t the right word, like, I dunno. I just feel like they don’t work for me or something, even if I want them too? Like I don’t think I look good in them. Part of the whole trans thing I guess. I dunno. I really like my jackets and shorts or pants and stuff, but yeah, guess I just haven’t like, moved out of those kinds of things yet” she said, shrugging.

Gwen nodded as she picked up more of the clothes, as if she was tidying up Hana’s brain-space. “That’s valid, yeah. I’ve never been very self-conscious about being trans since my father is genderfluid and we have gender-affirming magic in Avalon, so it made things comparatively easy for me. I know I’m super privileged in that regard. I did wear dresses more when I was little, when I wasn’t playing outside, but I just feel most comfortable in short-shorts and other sporty clothes. Big Jock Energy, right here! I do like the feminine stuff for more formal things though. Suits are also cool. Uh. Stop me if fashion talk bores you.”

Hana looked over to her at the admission, her eyes getting wide. “I, huh, I didn’t know you were trans, that’s, that’s awesome!” she said, getting excited as she grinned. “No, no, talking about it isn’t boring at all. I feel the same way! Like comfy in shorts or pants or whatever, stuff that’s easy to move in. But skirts and dresses and stuff look pretty and I like them, just haven’t, like, been able to wear them myself” she said, having looked away to the pieces of clothing strewn about. She shrugs, then glances back to Gwen.

“That’s, that’s like, so freaking cool that they have that kinda stuff in Avalon. One of the few good things my mom did was let me get on blockers and hormone stuff from a young age, so that’s been pretty good. I...It’s awesome to know I got some more trans friends. Thanks for telling me, Gwen” she said with a smile on her face.

“Guess we gotta find skirts or dresses you find easy to move in then, but hey, also, thinking liking something and liking something for yourself are two different things. There’s things I love seeing Olivia wear that I wouldn’t like on me.” Gwen gives a hesitant smile. “Yeah, uh, no problem. You’re the first teammate outside of my family I’ve told. I don’t like being public about it. I figured, since you’re trans too…” She scratched the back of her neck. “I used to be close with another trans teammate, but we never talked about that stuff, and then we had a falling out. I figured it would be nice if at least one person in the band knew?”

She took a deep breath, briefly closing her eyes. When she opened them, she looked less nervous. “Yeah, it’s cool. And it’s good that your mom did that. I guess your mom knows what the good things to do are, but is just absolute shit at executing most of those actions. Good at the big things, shit at the little things.”

Hana turned, sitting gayily with one leg underneath the other. “Oh, wow, really? Gosh, uh, thanks for telling me. I appreciate it. It hasn’t really come up for me to bring up either, but I’m not like, not open about it? I guess? If that makes sense. But like, I won’t tell anybody if you don’t want that, I’d be like, the shittiest trans friend if I outed another trans person” she said, laughing at the notion. Then she remembered how bad she was with secrets. No, no, this was important. Like, really really important. She wouldn’t.

“I guess she kinda did. Like, I dunno, I’m alive, I got to be me, but like, we barely had any actual conversations, I couldn’t really go to her for anything I wanted to talk about or needed help with. Especially knowing now I’m not even hers and she was just forced into it, I...ugh. I don’t even know why she bothered or tries to pretend still. Probably sees me as an investment or something” she said, staring at the floor. Her hand fiddled with the zipper on her jacket so it had something to do.

“Ugh, yeah that’s the worst. Fuck. I’m sorry.” Gwen slowly reached over to Hana and gave her an awkward pat on the back. “I can’t really help with that part. Like, if you needed a new place to stay, there’s a lot I could do for you, but it seems you’re good here? Unless you, like, wanted a different family. Mine is a little messed up too, but in a very different way. Father might be classified as a serial killer. Plus if Elle ever marries GAIA that will make my relationship with the whole Big Team a little weird, maybe. Either way, thank you for keeping my secret.” She smiled, extending one hand with an outstretched pinkie finger. “You’re a good trans friend.”

Hana laughed and nodded, extending her hand to lock pinkies with Gwen. “Guess we got that in common, now that I know how messed up mine is too. Oh, hey, with GAIA being like, my kinda sorta sibling, still figuring that out, if that happens we’d be like, uh...half cousins? Twice removed? I don’t know how that works. But uh, yeah. I appreciate the offer. I’m pretty good here, helping out Sledge and Temperance and stuff. I’m glad we get to be trans friends” she said, smiling a warm, genuine smile, then her eyes caught sight of the safe again, gaze moving over to it.

## The Safe Opens

“Anyway,” Gwen crouched down next to Hana and the floor-safe, choosing for her sanity to for now ignore Hana’s comment about their family relations through GAIA. “I think the chances of your memories attacking us is small, but there is a chance. I’ve been attacked by mine more times than I can count. Besides, this isn’t your usual kind of space or your regular kind of memories. This is deep stuff. This is your dark web and it may contain darker powers. I’m just saying: Be prepared.”

Hana nodded a bunch when Gwen said this was her dark web. She understood that reference! “Okay, okay. Gotcha. Just gotta be ready just in case. Makes sense. Okay. Uh, I guess we can just open it, then? We got this” she said. She sighed lightly, then leaned over and pressed a button. A handle popped up out of the flat surface. After a couple moments, Hana grabbed it and pulled the safe open.

She covered her face, expecting some kind of explosion or demon or something, and nothing happened. Hana parted her fingers slightly to peek, and the safe was just open. She leaned over, seeing some of the regular things she kept in there: her go bag, a small glass statue that looked like Hana but with tentacles, a picture of her and Sledge that Temperance had taken, among other things. Was anything different? Her eyes widened as she spotted something: a flash drive. She leaned down and picked it up, looking to Gwen. “Uh, this...isn’t real? Like, uh, this isn’t in the safe in the real world, I mean. Uh, so, it’s just in my mind brain memory safe? Uh...what does that mean?”

Gwen put the clothes aside on the bed and moved closer to look at the flash drive. “Huh. Yeah, that makes sense? Imean, a flash drive holds data. Plus, you are a hacker. I guess this makes about the same kind of sense that having a computer to view memories does.” She gazed inside of the safe to check the other items briefly. Practical emergency things and sentimental items, it looked like. She made note of them as things that Hana knew were there in the actual real safe, then turned her attention back to the flash drive. “Maybe it’s, like, encrypted, holding locked away memories. Literally.”

“Yeah. It being encrypted would make sense, as much as any of this makes sense” she said, holding it between her fingers close to her face to stare at it. She glanced back, to the door, out toward the supercomputer. “You think I could like, plug it in and try to hack it? Break the encryption? Like...I don’t know who the heck locked this in my head, could I have done that? Like, brain trying to protect itself until I was ready to remember it? That’s...ugh, this is weird” she said, sitting back and giving a frustrated groan. “Can’t brains just be easy?”

“If there’s one thing I’ve learned about brains, it’s that they’re never easy. No matter the person,” Gwen gave an empathetic, frustrated smile. “I should ask Dr. Harrison about that sometime, actually. See what she’d think of this sort of thing.” She rose up from her crouch and stretched, then rolled her arms as if she was winding up to punch something. “Anyway, yeah, let’s try plugging it in. We’ve got a flash drive, we’ve got a computer, you can do your thing, right? We’ve come this far. We can punch through a little further! Get us through this weirdness and into whatever the fuck makes sense after all of this!”

Hana chuckled as she stood up. “Sure, yeah. Let’s do it. Dunno if it’s gonna help anything make sense, but it might answer some of these questions we got now” she said, nodding and heading out to the main area. The computer awaited, still showing a list of memories as they walked. Hana sat in the chair and slid over to plug the flash drive in.

The screens all shifted as different loading screens came up, the computer attempting to break through. Hana brought up a terminal in another window and started analyzing it, similar to how she’d wrote the small script to help sift through her memories. Since it wasn’t real, just something her mind had created, it wasn’t acting like an actual encrypted drive, it was more like, Hana just had to keep going, to will it open. The harder bits of digging through data were her mind trying to keep it suppressed, but she worked for a while, pushing on.

“Uh, sorry this is taking a while” she said, glancing back to Gwen. “I, I think I’m getting it? Like, I feel like I’m working through it. The more I go the more it’s making sense to me” she went on, looking back and continuing.

Gwen followed after Hana, back to the computer. She stared at the screens as Hana worked at the encrypted flash drive. It all looked like magic to her. Techno-magic. And Hana was the techno-wizard. Gwen? She was completely out of her depth here, purely there for support. She gave Hana a thumbs up almost as a reflex. “Hey, it’s cool. Stuff takes time sometimes, especially when you’re figuring yourself out. I guess that’s what we’re doing, in a way. Anything you’re getting that seems important? If you wanna share. This is deeply personal shit.” She pointed with her thumb over her shoulder at the motorcycle in the mindscape-base. “If you need time to process it, I could just go take your baby for a spin, if that’s cool.” She joked.

Hana leaned back, crossing her arms. “It, like, not yet? All of this stuff surrounding it is just junk data, like I’m trying to shovel a bunch of snow just to get what’s under it. It, like, it feels like it wants me to prove myself? I dunno if that even makes sense. It’s coming together, there’s just nothing real yet. Like, I feel like I’m getting there, but it’s trying to make sure I actually want it. It’s weird as heck, cause like, it’s not how a regular computer works, but it’s coming together. Think I’m gonna get there soon” she said, leaning back to the keyboard and continuing on.

After a while longer of typing and talking her way through it, Hana fired off another chunk of code that caused lots of movement on the screen. It was a flash of characters, and then the screen just said ‘Press Enter’ like it was a video or something waiting to be played. Hana gave a confused look back to Gwen, shrugged, then reached forward and hit the ‘Enter’ key.

Hana cringed, as the screen started to show something that looked like a thesis, or at least lots of complicated words put together like one. There was mention of ‘quantum mechanics’ and ‘entanglement modifiers’ and ‘energy dispersal’ and lots of things to that effect that Hana did not understand in the slightest. “Uhhhhh. Do you know what any of these words mean?”

Gwen watched along with Hana, her face turned into a frown. She shook her head. “I’ve heard the terms before, but I’m no expert on their underlying theory. That’s more Olivia’s thing, or any of the Big Brainy people on the Team. Quantum mechanics is like… things that exist and don’t exist at the same time, right? Entanglement modifiers… that’s a Ruins & Revenants thing. Energy dispersal, oh, I know that one! That’s when you gotta spread it out to prevent it from doing major damage. Sometimes that can be a bad thing, if you need it to be concentrated instead. I think? Ugh. I wish I could selectively retrocognize myself right now to see where I’ve heard those things before.”

Hana nods, still just as confused. “Uhhhh, I don’t know. This is stuff Whiz might know about but it’s all over my head. There’s a couple things in here like ‘network latency’ and stuff that are computer related and I kinda know but like, yeah, it’s super confusing to me” she said, leaning back and groaning. “This is the thing? Seriously?! Ugh, what even is this, how was this in a flash drive in my memory safe? Why? Gosh my brain sucks, just keeps having weird shit that make me more confused” she said, rubbing her hands up her face in frustration. “I, sorry. I really really appreciate you letting me even do this in the first place, I wouldn’t have any of this if it wasn’t for you, Gwen. Just, I wish the crap in my head would stop being so cryptic about it all”

Gwen makes a face. “Yep. That’s just how brains be sometimes. They suck. They’re just a fleshy sponge full of badly organized information. This stuff you got on your screens is like a bad trip or a weird dream. Still though, you’ve gotten a lead of some sort, even if it’s a really cryptic one. No need to apologize for that. I wish my powers could’ve helped you better there, but they’re just wonky. Just all sorts of massive wonk.”

## The Brainship Couch

Gwen walks on over to the couch and plops down on it. She scratches her head. “Ugh. I don’t really have a good idea for the next step here either. You? Want to call it a day?”

Hana turns her chair around and stands up from it, jamming her hands into the pockets of her jacket. She followed Gwen over to the couch, falling onto it with a sigh. “Yeah brains suck. Just be better, like, it’s not hard, jeez” she said, shaking her head. The girl leaned back, head staring up at the dream ceiling. “Yeah, sure, that sounds good. We got something, and that’s, like, something. I think I got that stuff in my brain now, like, easier to access and crap. At least some of the words I remember. So, yeah, it’s a lead” she said, then turned her head to look at Gwen.

“And I got a trans friend, so that’s pretty awesome. Good trip. Thanks, Gwen” she said, holding her fist up for a fist bump.

Gwen smiled and raised a fist, returning the fist bump with a strong punch--but not a super strong one. “Always better than a bad one. You’re welcome, my trans friend. My trans sister. Transistor.”

She looked in thought for a moment, plucking at one of her cat-like ears. “Hey, I guess that makes me kinda like your senpai now, just like with Aman. Huh.” She grins and moves closer on the couch, putting an arm around Hana and bringing it down into a headlock. She ruffled Hana’s hair with the other hand briefly, before letting her go again and laughing it off. “You’re cool, Kerrigan.”

Hana grinned, chuckling at the word. “Hehe, awesome, cause transistors are like...uh...something to do with power, right?” she said, tilting her head in thought. It then caught her by surprise as Gwen tackled her and brought her head under her arm. She grinned and laughed, pulling at the girl’s arm. Both of them having super strength, it looked like two normal girls playing around. “Gah, okay fine you’re my senpai, jeeez” she said, pulling away as she was let go. She laughed once more, just leaving her hair messed with as she grinned back at Gwen. “You are too. Gotta thank Boon for letting me into the band again, since we got to meet and all.”

“Yeah, gotta!” Gwen responded with a laugh, just happy to be messing around with a friend and having no worries about breaking them. Hana was tough and their surroundings were imaginary anyway. Though she hoped destroying anything by accident here didn’t mean any negative consequences for Hana’s brain. “Wait, again? Did she kick you out before? I swear, I missed way too much band stuff while I was touring around. Sure, there was a hell of a lot of cool stuff out there, but still.”

Hana laughed, shaking her head. “Oh, no, I meant like, thank her again, cause I already thanked her but I should do it again” she leaned back on the couch, arms resting up on the back of it. “Yeah, sounds like you’ve been doing some big wild stuff, like that weird Canadian fey crap. Uh, hope that’s been going well. Are you gonna be taking off again soon? We should, like, uh, keep in touch and stuff. Uh, if that’s cool, or whatever”

Gwen nodded her head. “Yeah, that’s cool. The Canadian fey stuff is over, it was just me taking over a deal from some idiot fourteen-year-old ‘hero’. He knows better now. Let me know if something pops up that makes sense of this or makes it worse? Also let me know if you have, like, any medical or psychological side-effects? I haven’t heard of that happening before, but can’t be too careful.” She rose up from the couch, and as she did their surroundings began to fade as they fell back to Earth in their real bodies.

“Sure thing, yeah, I’ll definitely let you know. Now that you’re like, in on it and everything,” she said, chuckling. Hana closed her eyes as she felt the odd sensation of coming back into her body, then when they opened, she saw the trees, the bay, where they’d sat down. She lets go of Gwen’s hand and gives her a smile. “Uh, thanks again for that. I know that was kinda rough and you didn’t have to, so, uh, like, I appreciate it and stuff. It was hard to learn all that but I’m glad I had you there. How does time work when you do that, did the same amount pass or is it like, hours later?”

Gwen smiles back at Hana. “Don’t worry, not much time passes, if at all. It’s still 2019.”