***KELLY***

What's so wrong with me that I want to leave Hell, follow Alex through Heaven, and save his ass from certain doom?

What's so wrong with me that I actually asked Monique to set me and Ty up with plane tickets to follow him?

What's so wrong with me that I let her buy a third ticket as well, just so she could quote-unquote "keep an eye on her little sibs?"

Or maybe it's not that there's anything wrong with me. Maybe I'm just finally outgrowing my usual risk aversion. Hadn't I outgrown that before, though? Or maybe my and Ty's experiences helping Fionna get that Black Mirror back made all my usual fears rise back up tenfold when Alex told me he was about to head out into the multiverse again. Ty, he'd tell you he was never afraid, and still isn't, but sometimes, I hear him crying in his room late at night. I'll let him come to me if he wants to talk, but if it's less positive than a job offer as a Marvel Studios stunt driver, he never wants to talk about it. Except maybe to a therapist. I know he's been seeing one for the last year or so, though the Black Mirror mission didn't kickstart him going there.

But one thing's for sure - neither he nor I have been as high in the air since that mission as we are today.

"If you wanna rest your head on my shoulder," he tells me after we've left behind the airport in Sacramento, Heaven, "feel free. Mo couldn't let you do that even if she offered."

"Boy, wash those lies out your mouth!" Monique grumbles to my left.

Is it because I'm the youngest that I'm saddled with the middle seat? Well, at least Monique's mostly trying to sleep, and Ty's pretty good about not manspreading. I guess growing up with two sisters, ready to cut his balls off at a moment's notice if he left them too vulnerable, taught him right. So I do spend a little time resting my head on Ty's shoulder, but only for an hour or so. Then he has to get up and hit the head. With his apologies because he hits my head by mistake, forgetting that it's there.

"What can I say?" he asks with his arms spread out as he walks away. "It's a comforting weight."

"You saying I got a heavy head?"

"I ain't saying nothing that can be used against me in family court, sis!"

As he saunters off, I take out my phone and check all my messages on all my apps. I've made it clear to everyone I know that I'm going to be away for a while, and right now the only new messages are from those stragglers who didn't get the message until two hours ago or whatever.

There's nothing in there from Alex, though. I mean, he largely stopped using most apps for a while after that one time we sexted on Snap and he got scared someone was going to sell our nudes on the dark web. Still, I'm starting to worry again. Just how incognito is he right now? Out of reception on this planet, or out of this universe, period?

I so wish I could check his phone, but that'd make me too much of a worrier. Does his mom worry this much about him? She must, but from what I've heard of her, she's a strong woman. How could she not be, raising a good man like him? Two good men, even.

Which reminds me of just how much I miss Gabe too. He used to be such a great friend to me and Fionna, a frequent fixture in our room at Castledown if one or both of us was having a hard time coping with some shit or another. Something he had in common with Alex, I found out only later.

Why must my personal life be so full of death and voids?

I crane my neck so I can look out the window on Monique's other side, trying to figure out where we are right now. Probably approaching the Oregon border at this point. I learned about great circles in geography class freshman year, but the flight to Alaska isn't really one that would need one. Hell, I think it's already part of a great circle, one that would take us all the way to Tokyo if we so wanted.

That reminds me, if you're on this particular flight, don't eat the sushi. That poor white guy sitting across the aisle from me and my fam, he's finding that out the hard way. Ty, you better not be jerking off in that bathroom, I swear to God-

"Holy shit, Zendaya? Is that you?"

I look up, surprised, at the owner of that voice. I think she's Latina, a heavy younger woman with brown skin and wavy black hair. "I'm almost glad I'm not," I tell her, "'cause I'd hate to be the celebrity you cuss at when you actually meet them." Then I lose my serious face and offer her my hand - so strange for me, but I ain't in Hell anymore, so, well, when in Rome and all that good stuff. "I'm Kelly, actually. Kelly Jackson."

"Aura. Aura Ramirez." She grins as she shakes my hand. "I like to tell people they left off the 'L' on my birth certificate, but nope. That's my official, legal name and ima keep it." She looks past me and Monique and sees that one of the bathrooms has opened up - the one that Ty just used. "Excuse me," she says. "Maybe I'll come back and chat later?"

"Good luck," I say. "A smelly boy is gonna take this seat any second now."

"Oh yeah?" She gets a good look at Ty approaching, and blinks several times as she makes the connection between us. She also flushes just a bit, liking what she's seeing. Doesn't everyone, though? We Jackson sibs have such good genes, I gotta admit. Aura acts super flustered, though, when she meets Ty, but at least she doesn't try to run past him without talking to him.

"Made a new friend already?" Ty asks me as he sits down. "Wish I could say the same."

"You didn't meet nobody in the bathroom?" I ask.

"For what? Entry in the Mile-High Club?" He smirks. "None of these people attract me, so they gotta come to me when I'm horny-"

He shuts up as I slug him in the arm, deadening it. "I ain't gotta know that shit, bro."

"You asked me what I was doing in the bathroom," Ty reminds me. "I just wanted to make you regret it."

I lean back in my seat, as far as it'll go without seriously impinging on the space of they who sit behind us. "Well, at least I did make a friend," I say. "In case some bad shit happens and this plane goes down on Mt. St. Helens."

"Not like it's gonna erupt."

I shake my head. "It did in this dimension. Inspired one of the Snow Bros' favorite movies."

"Oh yeah? Which one?"

I knead my forehead, trying to remember, but I can't. Those boys and their combined near-encyclopedic movie knowledge, how can anyone compete? Though there are those who try, even though Yoda would insist you shouldn't. And they say only the Sith deal in absolutes.

So I change the subject. "You think we'll be able to track them down easily? Monique got mo' money, but that can only get us so far."

"You sure about that?" Ty asks. "They take the same dinero we do."

"Not exactly." I pat my pocket, where I have a money clip containing a few of my own bills, but they're all Hellish. We'd gone over the Bridge in such a rush that we hadn't had time to really do a currency exchange. It's okay in places like Coldfire Creek - all of California, for that matter, especially in Hell. We don't care what dimension your dollars come from, as long as they're legal tender in one of them. Though we tend to side-eye dollars from Heaven or Earth from the back half of the tens because of certain ridiculous happenings in their governments - the Treasury Secretary whose signature started appearing on those bills was a bloody Hollywood producer, for God's sake.

"You think they'll really call it counterfeit in Alaska?" Ty asks.

"Since they still have Andrew Jackson on Heavenly twenties? Probably."

Ty rolls his eyes and scoffs. "I mean, I knew angels were racist fuckers, but..." He stops, eyeballing everyone he can, but nobody's looking at us funny in any way. Hell, most people are too deeply engrossed in whatever screened device they've got active.

So I'm thinking they're not listening when there's a gentle chime on the speakers over our heads and the voice of a man whom I'm picturing to resemble Chris Evans. "Folks, this is your captain speaking. We're about halfway to our destination, but it appears we have some inclement weather in our path. We'll be diverting over the eastern side of the Cascades so we can avoid this storm system over Seattle and Vancouver, and it may add some time to our journey. I estimate forty-five minutes, but I failed physics in college twice, so..." He chuckles to himself. "We'll try and minimize the turbulence, but some of it will just be unavoidable. Everyone stay secure in the cabin and we'll get every soul on board to Anchorage as soon as possible. Thank you for flying with us today, and whenever you return to California, I hope to personally fly you on that trip too. If I'm not on my way back from Da Nang by then, that is."

Ty reaches for his seat belt and fastens it, nodding at me until I follow suit. Why, I'm not sure, but I'm seeing a couple of other people do the same. Including, now that I know where to spot her, Aura. "This guy," Ty says, jerking his thumb at the intercom speaker closest to us, "must be like one of those old-fashioned classic pilots. Always going around the world, favorite gin joint in every town, someone he's got some history with..." He sighs wistfully, as if imagining himself in such shoes. Well, maybe not with the "history." Or the gin joint, because he rarely drinks, even socially. The world travel, though? That's what he'd love the most on that list. Me too, I'll be honest.

I nudge Monique and make her wake up. "Augh!" she cries as she prepares to karate-chop me where I sit, then remembers who's her seatmate. "The fuck, Kelly? Shit!"

"Seat belt," I say tersely.

"You could've let me wake up," she grumbles.

"Would you have done it on your own?"

She shakes her head. "Yeah, probably not." With all the slowness of a thousand snails, she puts her seat belt on just as the plane starts to tremble gently. I guess the captain was right - we couldn't quite completely avoid the turbulence zone after all. "Ugh," Monique says as the clouds outside the plane grow increasingly thick and gray. "Am I really that old that I need my youngers to take care of me?"

"I'm not your child."

"You're the closest I've got right now, until I got my own kids."

I roll my eyes up to the ceiling, then focus my gaze ahead. Isn't that what they say, face forward if you don't want to get carsick? Or, uh, airsick in this case. We demons are prone to that, I hear, because we don't get to fly naturally like the angels do. But let's be honest, who wouldn't get a tad bit nauseous from being sealed up in a horizontal tin can for hours at a time with nothing to do but watch cable-edited movies and breathe recycled, pressurized air?

Teleportation would come in so much more handy for the people of all the dimensions right about now.

But looking ahead, there's a guy not listening to the captain's suggestion that we belt our seats. He's tall and glamorous, looking like a cross between Jason Momoa and a sculpture of some Roman-era figure I saw on my college tour earlier this year. Hannibal, maybe? The point being, that sculpture was beautiful and ripped, and under this guy's nice black vest with blue pinstripes and matching tie, I can tell he's just the same.

Discreetly, I give myself a light slap in the face so I can stop staring at this dude. If only we could shut off our sexualities when we're in a good, strong, healthy relationship. But God and Satan conspiring to tempt us all, it's a dangerous force.

Which one of them sent this dude, though? I couldn't tell you.

As the plane trembles a little more strongly, this dude keeps on walking this way. Heading for the bathroom, maybe? He doesn't look all that green around the gills, though.

Wait a second.

Looking at him allows me to see something that...is it a trick of the light? There's no way I'm seeing that right. It looks like he has these fluttering flaps of skin on the sides of his neck. Flaps a few shades of brown lighter than the rest of him. Not quite white, but next to his natural skin tone, they really stand out.

I haven't known a lot of angels in my life, but I'm pretty sure that even water elementals - like Alex - don't normally have gills.

I avert my eyes as the dude passes by so he doesn't notice me staring. But then, as he goes on his way, I turn around and crane my neck over the back of my seat as best I can. Don't stare at his ass, Kel, don't stare at his ass...okay, got it. His back. His shoulders. Does that tight suit jacket and vest of his have the outline of wings underneath?

"Kel?" Ty nudges me. "You all right?"

I turn around and shake my head. "I think I saw someone else who's not from around here."

"Like how we ain't?"

I look over at Monique again and see that she's already gone back to sleep. Turning back to Ty, I say, "They let us in as we are. This guy, I think he might've used a fake ID or two."

"What makes you say that?" I keep on staring at Ty for a while, then he snaps his fingers in my face. "Hey! Spit it out, sis!"

I keep it telepathic in case anyone is listening around us, so I can lean in close to my brother and "spit it out" in purely metaphorical terms. That dude who just walked past us has gills.

Well, duh, Ty says with a snicker. He's fuckin' Aquaman, isn't he?

Maybe he is, but if so, what the hell is he doing up in the sky? Last time he did that, as I remember, he was only up there just to jump back out again once he and Mera were over the desert. Without a parachute. Atlanteans or not, that was some fool-ass move.

The plane rumbles a little more, and I find myself gripping my armrests a little more tightly than I'd like. I don't scare easily. Really, I don't. But I'm in an angelic plane. What if they have to evacuate before the plane crashes? Will all the angels just open the door, jump out, spread their wings, and fly away? Let the plane crash into the nearest mountain? Trigger a volcanic eruption powerful enough to drown everything within a hundred miles in ash? Goodbye Seattle, I never knew ye!

Shit. I have to stop panicking so hard.

Especially when I look out the window and see the clouds fading away with surprising speed, giving way to an unbroken view of the Cascades and the Pacific Ocean way out to the west.

Monique gives a great big sniff and says, "Sis, did y'all forget deodorant? I ain't smell enough peppermint!"

I almost smack her, I'm so shocked and on edge. But focusing on the clear skies keeps me sane long enough to lean back into my seat and say, "I thought you were asleep."

"Yeah?" She peers out the window. "And I thought there was a storm ahead. Guess that pretty-ass captain was fuckin' with us."

"How you know he pretty?"

"He sound like Bucky Barnes, don't he?"

I still say he sounded like Captain America, but I'm not about to argue that point with my sister. "Point being," I say, "where's that storm he told us about?"

Monique shrugs. "Beats me, but good thing it's gone."

Hmm. Okay. So there's been a storm that makes this plane have to divert, and now that storm is gone. Right after I see that Aquaman-looking dude get out of his seat. Coincidence? I'm thinking no, enough so that as I look out the window again, I really do expect to see him flying down to the ground, casting some elemental shit to steer away the bad weather.

Wait, wouldn't power over weather be more of an air elemental thing? Water elementals may do well with rain, but they have to be extra strong to actually control it.

I don't know. There's so much shit I'm seeing that it can't all possibly be there.

Though there's been no message from the captain that it's safe to get up, I do so anyway, following that Aquaman dude down the length of the plane. I feel foolish to the nth degree about it - what if, like pretty much everyone else who's gone by my fam in the last few minutes, he's just making tracks for the bathroom? In that case, though, all I have to do is knock on the door, pretending for a moment that I've got some kind of explosive diarrhea. Damn those cheap-ass airline buffalo wings! Of course, he'd see through that lie right away - they don't serve buffalo wings on this flight. Probably because they know they'd be bad enough as it is even without a healthy amount of spice. White angels, especially, are terrible at spice in general. Alex has told me so a couple of times, though I've been slowly working to cure him of that particular affliction.

I catch a few stares as I walk, and I'm hoping that it's more people noticing me for how pretty I am than how determined I am to catch up to this dude. Not to be too self-centered about it. But I can't afford to stop in my pursuit. This must be that "need for closure" bug that has an alarming tendency to bite Alex. I guess that bug decided my blood was just as sweet. I knew I was going to regret that fancy cane-sugared cola I bought at the airport in Sacramento.

There's the bathroom door. And there's my fist knocking on it like it's got a mind of its own. "Hey! What's your damage? I gotta tell you, mine is..."

My voice trails off as I hear two sounds through the door. More accurately, one sound fading away and another replacing it. The first of these is a rock song, an older one - Alex would know for sure, but I'm going to guess Pearl Jam. The second is cussing in some language that I don't recognize, though I'm sure it's cussing because of how angry the tone is. Is it Italian? Greek? Something Mediterranean-sounding, which I guess would explain the towering temper pretty well.

The door opens, and...yep, Aquaman gets right in my face. Instead of whatever language that was he was just speaking, though, he confronts me in English. American accent, mostly, with a certain Mediterranean tinge. "Whatever your damage is," he says, "it's about to get a hell of a lot worse."

"Huh?"

He pulls the door completely open and gestures with both hands, angrily, at the sink, where a small amount of shiny blue liquid spirals down the drain. More of that blue liquid has spilled all over the top of the sink, spilled from a small bottle lying on its side on the floor. "Well," he grumbles, "I was trying to keep us all safe. Now look! You made me drop all this shit!"

I have no time for this shit, I really don't. "Okay," I say as I turn on my heel and get ready to leave. "I'm sorry I caught you about to snort all this distilled Vaporeon piss-"

"I'm not on drugs!"

"Well, then stop protesting too much and explain yourself!"

He shakes his head a couple of times before finally answering. "You might not believe me," he says, "but I'm Poseidon."

And to think I was on my way back to my seat already. "And what the hell were you doing?"

"Keeping us out of the path of that storm."

I turn around, finding the nearest window, and see that he's right. The storm that we've been trying to avoid, it's coming back with a vengeance. The ground is completely invisible below us, and the clouds are building higher and higher, soon to completely overwhelm our plane.

"You were trying to stop that storm?" I ask.

"And now that I'm all out of usable spring water, there's no more 'trying' I can do!"