Going Home as Heroes!

Uncle and I were proud to say that we were the heroes of Elysium!

Thanks to our hard work, all the mana that was being stolen by the hijacked pylon network was returning, which let nature heal back to the way I remembered.

No more creepy shadow squirrels in the desert! Yay!

It was all great that we managed to help out there, but because of the major compromise in security, Uncle took me straight home and The Hive was put under a 24-7 lockdown, so I was stuck inside without much to do. Which, don’t get me wrong, it was nice to get some rest, but I couldn’t even go and tell all the hobgoblins the good news!

“I'm bored,” I said, rolling around the floor of my room. “I wanna go save the world again.”

“Ssss?” Samael hissed.

“No, I ‘did not’ forget that we almost died,” I rolled my eyes. “It’s not the dangerous part that I’m excited about. It feels like that was the closest I’ve ever been to actually helping people.”

My prime detective was to protect humanity and keep them safe from darkness. I mean, prime directive. The more I avoided it, the antsier I got.

“Ssss?”

“You mean, you’re worried that I won’t be able to protect humanity if I can’t even protect myself?”

“Sss,” he replied.

He brought up a good point. I was helpless back there against that hornet bee, and if it weren’t for Uncle and Janus swooping in when they did, I would have been toast. And everyone knows what I think of toast.

“I need to train,” I concluded, standing up and power posing. “If I have to fight darkness, then I need to get all big and strong, like Uncle!”

“Sss,” he hissed. “Ssss…?”

Samael had another good point there. If I wanted to be like Uncle, I needed to learn from him too!

Daddy always said that imitation was the best form of battery. So I needed to charge up those batteries and imitate Uncle!

Darn it! I meant flattery! I suck at words! Now the whole analogy just sounded stupid. Come to think of it, did it even apply here in the first place? Heck if I knew.

Oh well. Time to go find Uncle!

~☆☆☆~

Uncle was busy in the control center checking out the Elysium pylon grid and making sure there weren’t any other problems he needed to fix.

“Hey, Uncle?” I poked him. “Can you teach me to be big and strong like you?”

His bee head turned down toward me and he floated low.

“That’s the first time you’ve actually asked to train,” he commented. “Had a change of heart, have we?”

“Well, I saw what we were up against before, and if I want to protect this world, I need to get a lot cooler, like you.”

It only made sense that a threat like that would push me. Like, it was super scary. But I wanted to be as cool as Uncle so that I could be even scarier to bad guys.

“Alright,” his bee head nodded and a little thumbs up emoji appeared over his mouth. “But it’ll be a lot harder going forward. You’ll need to be ready to push yourself.”

“Oh yeah!” I pumped my fist in the air. “I’m so ready that they call me Ready Betty!” There wasn’t any more being ready then that! Unless you were a sponge, then you were always ready.

“Good to hear you’re motivated.” Uncle’s little bee arm patted me on the head. “We can train a bit later, if that’s alright. Right now I have to finish this security business.” He didn’t sound too enthusiastic about that part.

“Awww…” I whined. “I wanna’ train now.”

“Patience. Let that be your first lesson,” Uncle laughed. “How about this? You need to learn more about stardust. There’s a book in the library I want you to read.”

“A book?” My head tilted.

I never imagined that training to beat demon's would start with a book, but I guess stardust was the best way to stop them. And if this book could teach me more about it, who was I to question its wisdom?

The book Uncle wanted me to find was called, The Electromagnetic Spectrum: a guide of all the lights that brighten our day.

“What a fancy title. Am I right, Sammy?”

“Ss…” he agreed.

To find this book, I had to make my way to dad's personal library. That was a nice and quiet place with thousands of books, nothing fun like comics or manga, but still very interesting stuff a scientist would love to sift through all day.

Daddy and I used to spend hours in here and he’d read science books to help me fall asleep. I always considered it a cozy place, personally.

The book I wanted was on the very top of one of the shelves, I was too short to reach it, so I dragged over a wooden chair for height. Dust trailed along as I pulled the book out.

*Cough cough!*

This thing was super dusty. We're talking layers caked on. I almost couldn't see the cover until I cleaned it off. After that, I started to read.

-...-

So, this book was about the electromagnetic spectrum, obviously, and it explained that there were several different forms of radiation.

Radiation might sound dangerous, but that was probably just a stigma. Some of the things on the list were completely harmless.

Let me explain that a little; The spectrum starts at radio waves, which is what makes up radio signals and TV. Then goes to microwaves, which is what heats up food...that one can be dangerous, I guess. Then it goes to infrared, which is pretty much like a red heat. Then we get to visible light, which is what we see during a rainbow, or what lets us see anything at all.

Still with me? We're half-way done.

Then we get to ultraviolet, which is basically super purple. Then X-rays, which are used to see your bones...if you're organic. Then finally gamma rays, which is what we all think of when we talk about really dangerous radiation.

Pheew! That was a lot. Glad we got through it!

So, imagine that the spectrum was like a ripple of water after you throw a rock in. The closer each ripple is, you'll get a different form of radiation. When ripples are far away, they're radio waves. When they’re close, they’re gamma rays. And of course there’s plenty of things in-between.

With a name like stardust, things were starting to fall into place.

According to a book I'd forgotten to put away a few weeks ago... opps... stars, including the sun, emit all forms of radiation across the electromagnetic spectrum.

"Eureka!"

That was exciting! I started to understand exactly what was going on then. So, stardust really was crystalized radiation from the sun. It wasn't just light, but also radio waves and whatever else a big celestial ball of power could produce.

I excitedly spawned stardust in my hands. It came out like glitter confetti.

For fun, I tossed it around the room. The little pieces shined brightly and lit the library up like a disco ball. I turned off all the lights to get an even prettier sight.

"Oh wow!"

The room was simply bathed in colour. I kept throwing out more and more until the whole floor was ripe with bits of crystal. It was a sparkly mess of wonder!

All the fun made me want to dance, so I popped out my antenna to tap into The Hive for some music and…

*CrrcCCrrrzZZEeCzzEE!!!*

I immediately got hit with static like you wouldn't believe!

“Yikes…” I said as my antenna retracted back into my head. “Well, I guess that was radio interference from all the stardust around…”

It was helpful to know that was going to be an issue, otherwise it could really mess up radios and stuff.

Instead of playing music, I just started making noises with my mouth and running around.

♪ Beep beep boop, beep! ♪