Insomnia Wake #Wattys2016

Chapter 18 - Always Take Up Offers For Free Transportation

"Hm. Guess that he's not coming after all," said Juno in a disappointed tone.

I think that I would find it weirder if he did show up in such a remote place.

"Well alright, time to go to Celestia then."

I shifted my weight in the snow. "How exactly are we getting there anyways?"

She looked at me like I had asked a stupid question. "Jumping of course."

Jumping?!

"Here, I'll carry you." She walked over and picked me up with one arm as if I weighed nothing.

How humiliating... I could feel my face turn red.

"Let's go," she said. She leapt, no, soared through the air with enough acceleration to make me think that I was on space shuttle.

The skin of my cheeks flapped in the sudden strong wind, and so I clenched my mouth just to the best of my ability. We went higher and higher, almost like we would never stop. This was on an entirely different scale than when I leapt off of that tree.

I looked back, only to find that the place that we had just been was now nowhere in sight. I now looked down and saw that the trees below us had faded into a sea of green from the sheer height of the jump, and we were still going up. I was terrified.

It was then I noticed that we had already moved out of the icy tundra climate. Instead, we were racing above completely green forests. I couldn't see a trace of ice anywhere behind me.

Just how fast are we going?!

Finally, we reached the top of our arc, and we started to make the descend. The feeling of freefall overtook me and it quickly became as an even more terrifying experience. I knew that we were going to hit the ground at the same speed that we lifted off. That same mind boggling speed was to be our impact speed. I braced for the worst.

"Hold on," Juno shouted at me.

We flew right over... Was that a city? It went by so fast that it seemed almost small. Now we were really about to hit the ground. I cringed and closed my eyes, preparing for the worst. Instead of crashing to the ground though, Juno sprung off of it as soon as she hit it, doing several flips this way to distribute her deceleration. I spun and tumbled around like I was in a clothes drier.

At last, we came to a stop. I lost all the rest of my momentum, and it made Juno's arm feel like a bar coming to run into me. I about collapsed. It was then that I noticed that her grip had been unbelievably too tight during the entire ordeal, and I was being unintentionally crushed.

"Oh sorry about that," she said. She let go and let me fall to the ground. "I sometimes forget how strong I am." She looked at the city that we just passed over. The buildings shot way higher into the sky than the last city that I had visited, and it was a wonder that we went right over it. "Drat, I overshot. Here, let me carry you again."

"Actually, can we just a walk?" I asked, still on the ground.

"Oh, okay. Sure." She looked at me and seemed to understand.

I picked myself off the ground and brushed myself off. We then walked the remainder of the distance to the magnificent city. Its skyscrapers were far more organized than the ones in Selenium City, as they all seemed to be made out of the same semi-reflective black substance. The monoliths of the other, shorter buildings also seemed to be made of a similar substance for the most part.

We kept walking through the city, gathering strange looks all the way there, until we reached the tallest building of all.

"This is the Squadron Headquarters," she explained, pressing the door opened with a delicate touch. Just like the building in Selenium, this one seemed to have a sort of waiting room on the first floor, and had a clerk manning the front desk. "I need to go see Helen."