After a lot of fiddling around with the screen, Oza was finally able to pull up a 3D map of their surroundings and look for a suitable place to land. The KiloNova simply wasn't powerful enough to last for too much longer. She scanned every possibility, weighing the pros and cons for each. Finally, she seemed to find one that fit her standards and leaned over to talk to a napping Hazel.

"Hey, I found a place to land, if you don't mind waking up for a bit," she said softly in Hazel's ear.

Hazel threw her head forward, disoriented, and looked around to find the source of the voice.

"Sorry, I felt like that deserved some shut-eye. What'd you find?" she asked a bit sleepily, ready to get instructions.

"Let's keep going this way and downwards, maybe about sixty degrees. We should run into an inhabited star system in a few hours."

"I'm guessing you'll let me know if anything is changed."

"You bet."

Hazel reclaimed her position as pilot and aimed the ship in the right direction. All sorts of dials wavered and then stabilized in response to the sudden change in altitude. She clumsily grabbed her Halo with her hands and shoved it onto the steering wheel to keep it still as she reclined her seat to relax for a bit. She opened a compartment on the leftmost part of the dashboard and sifted through a bunch of magazine-type things until she found one that appeared relatively interesting and opened it up. To her relief, it was like the ones on Earth. No technology, just ink on paper. She grinned and read an article on some conspiracy theory.

As she scanned the text, something caught her attention. Somewhere, it talked about the Intravoidal Science Station. She read on.

Though most will regard it as a minimal threat, it is rumored that the infamous Doctor Dymo Terinaz may own the Station. However, this must not be taken with a grain of salt. The place has direct ties to Vasion. An inside report confirms that Vasion has sent their fastest ship, a HyperNova, to collect an Exan from Universe 1 for experimenting with its mind. This is completely immoral.

Secondly, a once-supporter of the Ex-Naf has leaked that there may be some sort of plan to destroy something huge. There is not much known about this, since the man interviewed was barely able to recall his own past.

Hazel passed the magazine to a dozed-off Nredoza, her eyes nearly popping out of her skull. Could it be true, or was this just some made-up story for attention? She assumed it was the latter, but something was stopping her from believing it. From what she had seen from Dymo, he was certainly capable of thinking in that sort of way. Though that was true, his lack of ability to successfully close a door made him seem unable to create a functioning weapon without fatal errors. She glanced over at Oza. She seemed to care about her at least a little bit. She didn't even like her job all that much when she was at the Science Station. Hazel decided to trust her, but to be sure to keep an eye out.

"Hold on, Hazel, are you sure this is credible? I know Dymo is kind of mad, but he wouldn't destroy anything larger than a solar system, not even for the sake of intelligence."

"I don't know, but I'd keep that in the back of my mind," Hazel said, putting the magazine back in the compartment and giving it a pat, "just in case, you know."

~~~

A galaxy of a thousand shades of magenta and blue glimmered from the distance. It had been the first one she'd seen since her last science class, but it was so much more stunning to see one in person. It looked young, as all of its stars were very bright and a blazing quasar shone from its center. It had many arms, all swirling around in slow motion.

It came closer and closer as the ship traveled. Looking around, Hazel saw that the galaxy they were moving towards was the only one they could see. Not even a speck of light could be seen around the galaxy. She found this strange, since even from Earth she could always find the Andromeda Galaxy, which presented itself as a star.

Hazel returned her focus on aligning the ship to the coordinates of the landing space. She glared at the organized mess of stars and dust in front of her, the galaxy seeming to grow larger and larger with every light year the Valoria came closer. Stars flew by in streaks of light, bending around the ship. It was at that moment that Hazel realized that the speeds they travelled at were so fast, their vehicle simply phased through any obstacles. As the thought came into her mind, Hazel frantically slowed down the ship to half the speed of light. Noticing this in the rather unpleasant way of being thrown against the windshield, Nredoza grimaced and took a deep breath.

"What in the name of Aphos' astral eyes was that for?" she interrogated.

"We were going through stars, and all sorts of things!" Hazel pleaded.

"Hazel, you do understand that that's the only way we could have gone through the protective barrier between U7 and the Void, right? How else do you think that happened?"

Hazel took her hands off the steering wheel and clasped them together in her lap, grunting annoyedly in acknowledgement.

Oza cleared her throat before moving on.

"I would say that I want to drive, but I trust you with that more than I do, especially when we're so close to our destination."

"Thanks," Hazel mumbled grumpily.

While the young girl accelerated the ship, she kept her mind attached on the thought of finally stepping on some real ground. The speck of light that was supposed to be the star around which their target orbited glowed brighter and larger as they approached. Nredoza practically screamed for Hazel to start slowing down sooner rather than later, pushing a button on the arm of her chair to let a small protective bubble inflate around her.

The idea to decrease speed slowly was, of course, a very good idea. By the time they were at a thousand kilometers per hour, the planet they needed to land on looked to be the size of a baseball. Hazel lounged in her seat, her heart filling with warmth at the thought that she had successfully piloted a super-high-speed ship to the correct destination. She was extremely proud of herself. Sure, the ship's map helped more than she cared to admit, but Hazel secretly hoped to fly again and improve her skills. Perhaps she could even try to learn more about her ancestry. However, the first priority would be to attempt to land the ship. Though they were travelling extremely slow in comparison to the KiloNova's cruise speed, the ship was still moving extremely fast. As it came closer and closer to the atmosphere, Hazel slowed the ship down even faster to a "mere" five hundred kilometers per hour. It still wasn't as slow as she should have gone.

Bordering on going out of control, the ship hurled itself as a ball of flaming metal towards the ground. Nredoza panicked, searching for some sort of emergency parachute lever. Luckily, she found it after about ten seconds, since it was in bright yellow lettering. With all of her might, she pulled down the lever. It was only a few moments before the parachute caught the air, but those moments each felt dragged out to be centuries. With a quick sigh of relief, Hazel found the button to bring up her protective bubble and pressed it as fast as she could.

In the end, the parachute did do well for the ship's inhabitants. Though this was the case, it was not enough. At over one hundred kilometers per hour, the once-pristine Sonar Valoria crashed into the rocky ground of the new planet, destroyed, the Halo nowhere to be found. However, the airlock keeping the two of them safe in the deadly void lay untouched.

Nredoza jogged to the back of the ship, returning with a mask and container of air. Hazel looked at her concernedly, wondering why she did not come with two. As if she knew what Hazel was thinking, she answered the implied question.

"You will be fine, remember? I still need to breathe, and this planet doesn't have any atmosphere," she said, strapping on the mask and putting the tank by her side.

Hazel nodded awkwardly and opened the airlock on the ship. With a loud hiss, the first door opened. They stepped through, now facing a second door. Making sure the last was completely closed, Nredoza pushed a large red button, and the process began once more.

The ground stood still, unmoved, thousands of footprints forming a pathway that would inevitably lead to somewhere with others. Endless light brown and stone made up the world, no plant life anywhere to be found. Nredoza shivered. Though the planet was relatively warm compared to what it could be, the lack of an atmosphere did not allow any heat to be trapped. Hazel, on the other hand, did not notice. Of course, heat and cold could not affect her, so it wasn't necessarily something to pay much attention to.

The two blindly followed the tracks of others, hoping that there may be a civilization if they trekked far enough. There was no air, and therefore no sound. The world was more silent than they could imagine. Where there should have been a crunch of pebbles beneath boots there was nothing, as if deafness had taken over both of their ears.

While there were no hills where they walked, the earth on their sides grew higher as they moved forwards down the now deepening slope, eventually becoming steep cliffs. The only light came from the small gap between the peaks where three suns shone. They could not look up for fear of going blind, since there was nothing to dilute the brightness coming from the trio of stars.

Hours of endless travelling came to no avail, and Hazel attempted to give a performance of charades to attempt to speak her discomfort. Oza looked at her confusedly, for it looked as if she was screaming at the sky. Hazel furiously grabbed a rock and drew a message into the path. I hope we're close. Oza snatched the stone out of Hazel's hand. We can't stop now. This time, Hazel really did look up and scream silently at the sky, immediately shielding her eyes from the painful light. Oza simply shook her head and kept walking, to which Hazel had to run to catch up.

In the distance, now deep underground, completely covered and shrouded by darkness, the two found themselves staring into a new light, literally at the end of the tunnel. There looked to be an airlock of sorts as well. As they approached, the pulsing light grew brighter, its yellowish hue becoming more and more apparent. A universal symbol of danger, dull amber and black stripes, lined what appeared to be a doorway. It was both ominous and a relief. An airlock would guarantee that sound waves would be able to travel on the inside and they could actually begin to plan how to get out of the rather dooming situation they had found themselves stuck in, but it gave off a strange feeling that neither Hazel nor Nredoza could place.