“Hi Cat,” I said sheepishly.

“WHERE THE HELL HAVE YOU BEEN?!” she yelled.

I turned to Spits and mouthed, ‘And here we go.’

“You’re not gonna believe what happened to me these last two days.”

“AND YOU’RE NOT GONNA WANT TO LIVE TO SEE THE NEXT TWO DAYS! I’VE BEEN CALLING YOU AND TRYING TO FIND YOU FOR THE PAST TWO DAYS! I WAS JUST ABOUT TO CALL DAD WHEN YOU CALLED! WHERE ARE YOU?!”

“Cat,” I said, “Calm down and I’ll explain everything.”

“You better or I’ll have your head on a platter!”

“Ok first off,” I began, “That jump went to shit.”

“Don’t need to tell me that, I was there remember?”

“Yes. But where did you land?”

“Fifth Avenue, New York City,” she muttered, “You?”

“The Brazilian Rainforest,” I said, “Right now I’m in the Hotel Olympus in Natal.”

“Tell me exactly what happened starting from when the jump went bad,” Cat said. She was a bit calmer now.

“Well we happened to bail just above Texas. When I jumped I guess my orbital momentum carried me south. I reentered the atmosphere just south of Rio. I’m guessing the others ended up all over the North and South American continents.”

“Yeah, the agency called and had accounted for all the jumpers accept for you. The others landed everywhere from Montana to Miami but at least their alive.”

“Did they learn what happened to the plane?”

“Still being investigated. Reports say that after we bailed it continued as a fire ball before impacting Antarctica. They still haven’t found the wreckage yet.”

“Didn’t expect them to. Oh and there has been a bit of an interesting development here in Rio.”

“What? You didn’t get malaria again did you?”

I frowned, “No Cat I did not get malaria, or the shingles, or hemophilia, or AIDS. Anyway I landed in the middle of the Brazilian Rainforest and well I kinda made a bit of a discovery. You’re gonna have to trust me on this.”

“Ok. So where are we going to meet?”

“Well there is a spaceport here along with an orbital Elevator so getting into orbit shouldn’t be a problem.”

“I could always get to JFK spaceport and into orbit from there. Heading back to Ganymede?”

“That’s what I was planning.”

“Wanna meet on Luna? Tycho city sound good? Meet there tomorrow?” Cat asked.

“Sure,” I said, “Oh and I kinda used some of money from Mom and Dad’s emergency accounts.”

“How much?” Cat asked cautiously.

“So far? Well with the new clothes we bought and the hotel room I’d say uh about 15000? Rough estimate?”

“15000?!” Cat practically screamed, “Jett! You know that’s only for emergencies!”

“So a skydiving accident that leaves me stranded in Rio doesn’t qualify? We needed new clothes and a place to stay. Figured I’d indulge a bit. Besides, Mom can buy Mars if she wants and Dad gets paid the big bucks by the Government considering he’s acting Fleet Admiral.”

“I guess. But’s what’s with this ‘we’ stuff?”

“I’ll explain later, right now you have a flight to book and I need to by two tickets to the moon so if you’ll excuse me, I’ll be going now.”

“Yeah. Call me before you board your flight.”

“Alright. Bye.”

“Bye.” The screen went black. I let out a sigh of relief as the screen disappeared back into the table. I flopped back on the couch and removed my hat and sunglasses.

“Hey,” Spitfire said, “Look who didn’t get totally roasted by his sister.”

“Might as well have. After the jump she probably spent the last two days without sleep looking for me,” I said.

“What’s this ‘jump’ thing you keep talking about?”

“Oh that. Well I do a sport called skydiving. Do you know what that is?”

“Jumping out an airplane with a parachute?”

“Yeah but I do orbital skydiving. We jump from a plane in a high orbit and reenter the atmosphere before pulling the chute.”

“Sounds like fun,” Spits grinned.

“Oh it is,” I smiled, “Accept when the plane has an engine blowout and begins disintegrating around you and you have to bail and you and your team gets scattered across the planet.”

“That what happened with you?” she asked concerned.

“Oh yeah,” I said, “In fact, that bad jump is how I managed to find you. Funny how stuff like that works.”

“I guess I was just lucky enough to be found by a friendly face.”

I touched the table and pulled up a flight book. I quickly searched for the fastest flight to Tycho.

“What’re you doing?”

“Booking our flight to the moon.”

“The moon? The only thing we use the moon for in Equestria is for a prison and to add to the aesthetics of the night sky.”

“Well here we live on it.”

“Like permanently live on it?”

“Well a lot of people are natural born Lunans and I guess chose to make their home on the rock.”

“Where were you born?” Spits asked.

“Me?” that was a tough one. Could be answered in many different ways. But my actual ‘birth’?

“I’d have to say I’m a Jovian. I was born in orbit around Jupiter and now live on Ganymede, one of Jupiter’s moons. Though I did live on Earth for a time but that’s a story for later.”

I finished typing and tapped my card to the screen. Two tickets to the moon 1000 credits, suite in South American City 5000 credits, new clothes 10000 credits, not getting murdered by my sister? Priceless.

“Well, I have officially booked our flight to the moon and hopefully from there I can convince Cat to take a little space cruise to Ganymede instead of that direct flight. We can waste a few weeks. Our plane leaves at 12:00 and its two hour flight from here to the moon.”

“So what do you want to do until then? Cause I was thinking we could go swimming. This hotel has a pool doesn’t it?” Spitfire asked.

“Yes, but even if we bought bathing suits your wings would still be visible.”

Her face fell. Curse this, “Look, maybe we can work something out. For now though let’s get set up in our rooms and work out finding a map.”

“Ok.” We walked up the stairs to the balcony and into our rooms. I walked up into a huge open room with a king size bed in the center.

“Weird,” I smiled, “but not unappreciated.” I grabbed my bag and tossed it onto the bed. There were a few dressers in the room but I didn’t feel like using them. In the corner was a door that led to a full bathroom. There was even a soaker for a bathtub. And it had jets.

“Money well spent.” I walked up the window and stared out. The city was bustling with activity. I looked up towards the sky. Ships and planes flew by high above.

“There. Settled in.”

I stepped out of the room and returned to the living area. I walked into the kitchen and checked the fridge. Fully stocked with enough food to survive a zombie apocalypse. I checked the cabinets, canned vegetables, spices and seasonings, dressings, and other cooking ingredients.

I returned to the fridge and began removing all the meats. I quickly found a garbage bag and tossed it all in. As soon as it was filled I tied it in a knot and found a garbage chute. I shoved the bag and watched it sail down to the building’s recyclers.

I closed the fridge just as Spitfire exited her room, “Wow, this place has everything,” she said.

“Oh yeah,” I grinned, “Money well spent.”

“What’re you doing in the kitchen?”

“Just getting rid of some undesirables. You’re a vegetarian right?”

“Yeah. Why?”

“Because I just removed all the meat products from the fridge and tossed them to the recycler.”

“You didn’t have to do that. While most people in Equestria are vegetarians a lot of restaurants feature a griffon menu for the more… carnivorous of us.”

“Well my people are omnivores so we can eat both but we can also survive just fine on a strictly vegetarian diet.”

“Cool.”

“Now I just have to re learn how to cook. A little rusty on some things.”

“You know I know my way around a kitchen pretty well too,” Spitfire said.

“Yeah but you are kind of an alien in this world and I’m not sure what similarities exist between our worlds and which ones don’t. So for cooking we’ll have to be careful but I guess you can help if you want.”

“Cool. So you wanna go get a map now?”

“Sure. I think they have them in the lobby.”

We walked out of the room and down to the elevator. I needed to think about getting a phone while I was here. My phone I had left on Ganymede and I needed a way to keep in contact with Cat.

We emerged in the lobby.

“Back already?” The woman at the desk said again.

“No we just need a map of the city,” I said. I was beginning to get irritated with this lady.

“Ah,” she said, “Here, I have one here.” She reached under the desk and pulled out a small object the size of a flash drive. A small touch button was on the side.

“You can change the language to English of you want.”

“Thanks.” I grabbed the small rod and tapped the button. A box of light 50cm by 50cm appeared, emanating from the rod.

We walked towards a couch that sat nearby and sat down.

“So where are we relative to the spaceport?” Spitfire asked.

“Let’s find out. Spaceport,” I commanded. A picture of the city appeared in the box and began to zoom in on the spaceport. A small box appeared next to it with information on it.

“Ah, so here’s the Rio Spaceport. Directions from Current location.”

A green line appeared from the spaceport and weaved its way through the streets to the hotel.

“Hmm,” I said, “I’m not trying to walk all of this.”

“We could always fly,” Spitfire smirked.

“Not all of us have wings,” I retorted.

“Kill joy.”

“Just doing my job.”

“Well since we can’t fly why not take a train?”

“Hell no. Not that trains here aren’t nice but most of them are underground and I personally want to see the aesthetics of the city before I never step foot on this continent again for as long as I live.”

“Seems a bit extreme not to come back here ever doesn’t it?”

“Not really. Kinda hate Earth now. My last trip here didn’t end well.”

“How ‘well’ did it end?”

“Well enough for me to not want to come back.”

“Well then. If not a train then what will we take? I certainly hope you don’t call a taxi.”

“How ‘bout a bus?”

“A bus?”

“Yeah. A nice big double decker bus with an open top. We can see the city and still get a ride to the spaceport.”

“Well then, why not?”

“Let’s see. Tour buses that go to the spaceport.”

Several blue dots lit up. A few of them were pretty close to the hotel. I tapped one of them.

Elusive Tour Buses.

“Think this’ll work?” I asked.

“Don’t you know? You’re the one who’s from this place.”

“I guess this is the one. Pick-ups are at 9:00, 10:00, 11:00 and 12:00 tomorrow. Which one do you want?”

“How ‘bout the 10:00 one? We can have a nice breakfast and still make it in time to catch the bus. Does that work for the flight?”

“Yeah that sounds great. The plane doesn’t leave until 12:00 so we’ll have time to kill until then.”

“Great! So what’d ya want to do until tomorrow?”

“Hmm, I have an idea,” I smirked, a plan already circulating in my head, “Come on, let’s go put this stuff back in the room.”

***

“You sure about this?” Spitfire asked.

“We did this trick to my principal at my school last year. It’s hilarious!” I grinned deviously.

“And all it took was dry ice and a bottle of water?”

“Well a little bit more than that but for the most part,” I smiled. In my hands I held a plastic cylinder of the powdered, frozen carbon. Spitfire held the piping water bottle in her gloved hands. I carefully dumped the contents of the bag into the bottle and resealed the cap.

“Now we’ll only have about a minute or two before this thing goes and we’ll wanna be far away before she comes to her senses.”

We both peaked around the corner and stared at the desk. The desk was facing away from us along with the clerk. I crept into the hallway rolled the bottle down the hall towards the desk. It veered to the left and stopped under a coffee table, right next to the desk.

“Now this is gonna make a big boom so cover your ears.”

“What happened when you pranked your principal?” Spits asked as we knelt down in front of the elevator.

“Well there we used glass and remodeled the principal’s office after school. And that was just for fun. Yeah we did some demented stuff at school.”

“Please,” Spitfire sighed, “At flight camp we nearly burned the camp office down after we tapped all the furniture to the ceiling, including the fireplace. Don’t even ask how we managed to do that. But needless to say the living room caught fire,” She giggled at the last part.

“So you’re a pyro?”

“What? No! That was an accident.”

“Sorry,” I said.

“It’s alright,” she smiled and playfully punched my shoulder, “You didn’t mean it.”

“So how long did you say it would take for this thing to go off?” she asked.

“I don’t know. It should have gone off by now. Maybe we ad-”

BOOM.

The sound ripped down the hallway, causing Spitfire to jump. A scream followed instantly after.

“Time to dip,” I said and got up and ran followed by Spits. We ran down the hallway of the hotel dodging other guests before finding and open door and hiding inside the room.

As soon as we were in we crouched down and burst out laughing. I clenched my gut and rolled onto the floor.

“Oh my gosh!” Spitfire laughed, “I just wish we could’ve caught the look on her face! That was absolutely hilarious!”

“Thank god there aren’t any cameras in this hotel,” I managed to gasp; “Else we wouldn’t have been able to pull that one off!”

“I absolutely love pulling pranks!”

“I just hope we didn’t scare the hell outta her too much,” I grinned.

Spitfire wiped a tear from her eye, “That was fun.”

I scooted over next to her, “What room did we hide in?”

Our eyes scanned our new surroundings. The air was warm and humid. We were in a large pool room. There was a large ovular shaped pool in the center of the room. It got deeper the farther down the pool you went.

There were two Jacuzzis in one end of the room with changing rooms in the other. One of the walls was glass and gave a view of an exercise gym. A door linked the two. There were several pool lounge chairs all along the edges of the pool. There was a container with inflatable tubes and other water toys. On a table sat a pile of towels.

“So this is where the pool is,” I said. I looked at the time; it was 1:00 so everyone was probably out and about right now. I turned around; Spitfire had a devious grin on her face.

“Uh, Spits?”

“Yes?” she asked as angelically as possible. Underneath that façade was the mind of a devious little Wonderbolt.

She removed her leather jacket and tossed it onto a chair. She began to walk forward like a cat stalking its prey.

“Spitfire? What are you doing,” I asked growing more terrified.

“Well you said I couldn’t wear a bathing suit so I’m working something out,” She grinned.

Oh boy. Another socially awkward situation on your 6 Jett! Pull up! Pull up!

“What do you mean by working something out?”

“This.” She reached out and tapped my head. Off balance I stepped back and into the pool. I felt my gut head into my throat as I fell into the water. Water quickly soaked my clothes. I surfaced and gasped for air. I retrieved my Fedora as it floated by and tossed at Spits’ jacket.

Spitfire herself was laughing. She giggled as she stepped to the pools edge.

I smiled, “Having fun with ourselves are we?”

She laughed again before nodding yes.

“Oh, ok then,” I grinned and reached up and pulled her in with me. She let out a yelp before disappearing under the water.

She popped up and gasped for air. Her hair was soaked and fell over her face. She pushed her hair back with a huge grin on her face.

“I hope you know this means war right,” she smiled.

“Kinda already figured that one out,” I said.

She whipped her arm a wave of water splashed me across the face.

“Oh I see how it is.” I pushed my arm forward and splashed her back.

I saw her hair get pushed back by the water. She had a bewildered look on her face that was comical in appearance. I closed my eyes and laughed, enjoying the comedy of the moment. I opened my eyes to be tackled by Spitfire and found myself being dunked underwater. I emerged to find Spitfire laughing away.

I wiped the water away from my eyes, “Ok, ok, you win.”

“I always do,” she smirked.

“We’ll see about that one,” I said pulling myself out of the pool.

“Aw. Fun over already?”

“For now. A hotel though is not the place to I’d like to be caught in a socially awkward situation.”

“This is socially awkward?”

“Well… I don’t know. I uh, oh no, well um,” I stuttered, “Well not as awkward as what happened in Macy’s. And I don’t want to be caught in that type of situation again.”

Spits blushed, “What about here? We were just having a little fun.”

“Again, can be… Misinterpreted. You saw what that lady thought of us when we first walked in?”

“Yeah I guess you’re right,” she sighed.

I walked up to her and elbowed her side, “Hey, don’t feel bad. That prank we pulled earlier was pretty hilarious wasn’t it?”

Spitfire giggled, “Yeah that was pretty funny.”

I grabbed two towels from the table and tossed one to Spits. She snatched it out of the air and rubbed her hair dry.

“Come on,” I said, “Let’s go change. Then we can hit the town.”

***

I stepped into the bathroom and wrung my shirt out in the bathtub. I placed it on the towel rack along with my pants and socks. I stepped into my room and removed a fresh pair of shorts, undershirt, and Hawaiian the and pulled them on.

I walked out of the bedroom and onto the balcony in the living room. I placed my shoes in the sun to dry along with my Fedora. I stepped into the kitchen and pulled a bottle of soda out of the fridge. Root beer, my favorite.

I unscrewed the cap and the soda sprayed fizz and soda all over the kitchen.

“Shit,” I ran the sink and safely let out the pressure.

I grabbed a dish cloth and knelt down wiped up the mess.

“hmm hmm hm hmm hmm hmm hmmm, lets finish our holiday cheer,” Spitfire hummed to herself.

I stood up and tossed the cloth into a laundry bin. I stood up and grabbed my soda from the sink and listened to Spits’ humming. I flopped down on the couch and opened my eyes just as I took a sip of my drink.

Spit takes look funny in the movies but when a carbonated drink comes out of your nose it’s not very hilarious and kind of hurts a bit.

Spitfire was tossing her shirt over the fire place. But that wasn’t what made lose my drink and cover my eyes. Being brought up in a military house from age 1 to 13 kind of made you want to avoid situations like this. Dad while being a twisted jokester was a Navy man at heart and drilled military values into my head since birth practically.

Spitfire wasn’t wearing a shirt nor… any other piece of clothing suited for the upper body. She stretched her wings out as wide as they would go.

“Ah,” she moaned spreading her large orange wings as wide as they would go. She rotated the joints making a sound similar to knuckles cracking.

“Ah, right there,” she sighed. My soda flew across the room and hit one of the armchairs as I jumped up and screamed and fell on my ass behind the couch, my legs still hanging over the edge.

The bottle came down and spilled all over my head.

Spitfire yelped, “What was that?”

“Me!” I yelled, “Falling behind the couch! Why are you Topless?!”

“I thought you were in your room!”

“I thought you were in your room! Why are you topless?!”

“Well you said I could only stretch my wings out when we were inside so I thought changing would be the perfect opportunity to do so.”

I was still on my back on the floor. I sighed and rubbed my nose.

“Yeah, but you could wear something to cover up or you could do that in your room!”

“Why are you making a big deal out of this?” she asked genuinely bewildered, “In the Wonderbolts we don’t really care about stuff like this.”

“Well I’m not a Wonderbolt! Nor have I known you very long. We only meant two days ago!”

“That’s not all of it,” she said.

“My dad drilled it into my head to respect women and girls and stuff like this kinda goes against what he said. That and it’s just plain awkward!”

“How? I really don’t care that much. I mean, we are living together so stuff like this is bound to happen eventually!”

“Well for me it’s awkward! I mean, how would you react if you stepped out of you room one day and Soarin’ walked by naked?”

“Wouldn’t care too much. In the Wonderbolts it’s kinda like we’re one big family. We’ve all seen each other in the locker rooms before so it’s not that awkward.”

“You’re impossible! These have been the craziest two days of my life! And it’s not every day I walk out around the house and see a beautiful, topless, angel girl standing in front of the fireplace! I mean-oh shit what did I just fucking say?”

“Wait, what?” Spits asked, “You think I’m beautiful?”

“And now I revoke my talking privileges. Why do I do this to myself?” I whispered, “Stupid fucking mouth. God damn it.” I smashed my head on floor with a loud thud.

“Hey, you alright?” I heard her take a step towards me.

“No no, no no no no no no no no no no. I’m staying on this floor until you put something on. Fuck, this is what I get for letting Cat talk me into coming back to Earth again. I was fine with Mars but NO. We have to go Earth, she said, it’ll be fun, she said, we have to skydive like the pioneers of the sport, she said, what could go WRONG? She said. This is what I get! Stuck on Earth, again, in the middle of a foreign country!”

My vision suddenly had black flashes before returning to normal. More of those again, great.

“Here,” Spitfire said, “Does this work?”

I opened my eyes. Spitfire was standing over me offering a hand. She had wrapped her wings around herself. She offered a wry smile.

I smiled back and took her hand and pulled myself to my feet. My hair was slicked back from the soda and I looked like a mess.

“You’re all sticky,” Spitfire laughed, “You couldn’t have done that to yourself all cause of little old me?”

“Hey, I’m not good in situations like this,” I said clearly missing the pun and walking to the sink and rinsing my head. I popped my head out and rubbed it dry with a towel.

“Why not?”

“I… I-uh, I don’t do well in social situations; parties, dinners, large conversations I don’t do well in.”

“Why?”

“I never developed the skills I guess. When I should have been going out and doing things with others I was learning as much as I could. And with my father drilling values like modesty, respect, honor, the whole shebang, I don’t know how to react to things like… well that.”

“Oh come on,” Spits giggled, “I’d say you dealt with that pretty well.”

“No I didn’t. Stop patronizing me!”

“You’re funny when you get worked up like that,” she held a hand up to her mouth and stifled a laugh.

“No I’m not- would you please put a shirt on?! I can’t talk to you like this! God if cat could see this she’d be dying!”

“Jeez, don’t get all worked up about a shirt!” she laughed, “Fine.”

She walked up the stairs and disappeared into her room. I sighed and rubbed my head. Shit, headache.

I ran to the freezer and pulled out a container of ice cream. I scooped it into a bowl and smashed a spoon into it. I sat down on the couch and began stuffing my face. I felt my headache beginning to wane before going out completely.

Spitfire opened the door. She was pulling a shirt over her flame like hair. Her wings were again hidden under the cloth.

She walked down the stairs, “What’s that?”

“Ice cream.”

“Didn’t get me any?” she fake pouted.

“Hey, I had a headache and eating ice cream helps it out. If you want any I can get you some.”

“Nah, I’m fine,” she said flopping down on the couch next to me.

I tapped the table and the TV turned on. News from various parts of the Solar System went across the screen. Prison Riot on Euros. The Mafia’s drug war on Ceres. All stuff that meant little to me.

“Listen Jett,” she began, “Sorry for making you feel so awkward earlier. And I don’t just mean what happened just now. I guess I’m forgetting I’m not with the Wonderbolts right now and am still using the same habits as I would when I was with them.”

She sighed, “I guess I thought you would be as casual about everything as myself. I didn’t think and take your feelings into consideration. I’m sorry.”

Great. Now you made her feel bad. Smooth move again Jackass. Stupid stupid stupid stupid. How do you fix this? Come on.

“Oh, come on now. Don’t be sorry. Listen, I guess I’m being a little uptight about the whole situation. I guess I could be more relaxed and chill about things. God knows I need to relax. I guess I’m not used to someone so… out going as you. I’ve never really seen someone quite like you.”

“You really mean that?”

I smiled slyly and looked towards the balcony, “Well yeah. Growing up in a military family things sometimes get a little uptight, leaving little room for… well a bubbly personality like you.”

“That’s one of the nicest things someone’s ever said to me,” she grinned, “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.”

A long awkward silence followed. I stared at the TV while Spits stared at her feet. Well then. Bullet dodged there.

“Wanna go get something to eat?” I asked.

“Sure, where do you wanna go?”

“Well we have a map, let’s find a restaurant.”

I got up and offered a hand. Spits smiled and took it. We walked to the elevators and out of the hotel.