Rediscovering Home

Beam Us... Down?

Ash's POV

*Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeee...*

"Ugh..." I shook my head trying to get the ringing in my ears to stop when I noticed my staff was in my hand and not in its armband form and the ground under my hands looked more like my namesake than dirt or sand.

"-is! Ash!" Through the ringing, I could hear someone calling my name and I dazedly looked up to see JJ pulling me up before the ringing finally cleared for me to hear her ask,

"-re you good?"

"I think?" I groaned as she pulled me to my feet but I had to use my staff to prop myself up since I was still feeling lightheaded as I asked,

"Where's-?"

"Girls!" I heard someone yell out and I looked up to see-

"Dad!"

He ran over and hugged me with his good arm and I dropped my staff to hug him back tightly before he pushed me back to scold,

"I thought we agreed not to use that move if we could help it..."

"I know but-"

"But nothing!" He snapped before taking a deep breath and exhaling through his nose patiently to say, "You could've hurt yourself and the others."

"I kept them on this time." I held up my wrists to show that my Kimoyo bracelets were still on while adding, "So no radiation exposure."

"Alright... I'm just glad you're OK..." He pulled me close again and I hugged him again.

"How come you're not that mushy with us?" I heard JJ tease her dad with Groot made kissy noises before he muttered,

"Oh shut it..."

"OK anyone know where exactly we landed?" Dylan questioned as he looked around at the lack of... anything but ashy ground and small piles of rocks all around us.

"It appears we're on one of Chrysinthea's moons." Zaruk spoke up as they were looking up into the sky and they all followed their gaze to see said lifeless planet in the distance with other different-sized moons surrounding the planet in distant orbits.

"'One of?'" JJ questioned before remembering, "Oh right there's 9 of'em... Which one are we on now?"

"I'd say we're on...Chaandai."

"Heh 'Chaand' actually means 'moon' in Hindi." Dad noted amused but it went unnoticed by everyone else as Rocket questioned,

"OK so we're on the planet's moon but don' we need to be on the actual planet?" He emphasized while motioning impatiently with both arms to the planet.

"Don't worry, there should be a beam platform in the observation outpost that can teleport us directly to the planet's surface."

"You've got one of those on a moon?"

"There's one on each moon so we would get alerted on the ground if an invader was coming close." Zaruk explained before Xay asked,

"And where would that be?"

"I'd say in this direction." JJ spoke up.

"What makes you say that?" I asked, looking over to her and saw that she was holding my staff and the gem on the end was glowing in the direction she was pointing it in.

"Call it a hunch." She stated plainly before she handed it back to me and it dimmed back down when I pointed it in the opposite direction before returning it to the previous direction and it glowed again, confirming her hunch.