Abroad New Horizons

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Edited by RedPandaChick

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"Blostars is going to perform on Furenoora."

Expecting the room to burst into excitement, I was received by the complete opposite. The room had fallen silent, though I noticed a couple of jaws dropping until Astra finally jumped up from her chair.

"Are you serious?!" she burst.

Although I expected most of GIMA to react the way she did, it wasn't surprising to realize that they didn't know much about other planets.

"I am," I replied.

Her grin couldn't get any wider as she glanced at everyone else.

"Why aren't you jumping in excitement? We're going to another planet!"

Sanae's eyes opened wide.

"Wait, what?!"

"I didn't know there was a planet called Furonera," said Umi, who still sounded excited despite trying to keep her cool.

Aya corrected her, "Furenoora."

Their eyes met for a second, but they quickly looked away from each other. Even though they weren't on bad terms, the awkwardness was going to take a while to disappear. Fortunately, Astra continued grinning.

"There is! And its inhabitants look like cute, little teddy bears."

"Astra, I know you don't mean anything bad," I said, "but please don't call them that. They might find it offensive."

"Ah, I'm very sorry!"

"Don't worry."

She sat down after bowing.

"Are we really going to another planet?" asked Risa. "Does that mean we're finally going to become…?"

I completed the sentence, "Galactical."

As soon as I said that, Sanae covered her eyes with the palms of her hands. Risa wrapped her arm around her and then hugged her.

I continued talking, "That's right, we're about to become galactical, and I'm sure you have a lot of questions. First, let me tell you that yes, we can afford to travel to another planet, but we're still going to save as much money as we can. So, the only people that are going to Furenoora this time are the girls, obviously, Butcher, Miki, and me."

A few people glanced down at the table or their smiles weakened slightly.

"I know many of you would've loved this opportunity, but I assure you that it'll come again sooner or later. In the meantime, we still have work to do. Aya and Tomokazu, research everything you can about Furenoora; it wouldn't be good if we ruined this opportunity because we didn't know about their culture."

"Got it," replied Aya.

"We should also try and make some merchandise for them, although I know that's going to be more complicated."

"Leave it to me, dear friend," replied Tomokazu.

"Thank you. Miki, find out how much we can do for the performance, technologically speaking."

"Sure thing, boss," replied Miki.

"It'll take place in a bar, so we can't do a show with a lot of production."

"Understood," replied the live event producer.

"Lastly, I want to tell you the reason behind this decision. Aside from thinking this is the right moment to do it, I believe this is the last push we need to make the third album. So, let's not waste this opportunity. And more importantly, let's get inspired."

The preparations went well over the next few weeks.

Both Aya and Tomokazu found a lot of crucial information about Furenoora and Furenoos—the planet's inhabitants. Together with Jun, they managed to create some merchandise to see how plausible it was to sell on a bigger scale since we could only bring as much stuff as we could fit on our backpacks and suitcases.

Meanwhile, Miki was confident we were going to be able to perform without issues. Although Furenoora had electricity, we would need to buy adapters for the outlets, but even if that failed, we could always use the emergency batteries we were going to take with us.

In the blink of an eye, the day arrived. We headed to the same spaceport as last time and went through the same process. However, we were taking a bigger ship this time. A lot bigger.

This ship had four pillars and crossing rings, necessary for the Warp Drive to function and make intergalactic travel possible.

Instead of being filled with rows of seats, the inside was filled with rooms, also making it an intergalactic hotel. That was where we were going to sleep for the next five days.

Aki and I stepped into our room, which was similar in size to the apartments we had during university. We unpacked our stuff and then headed to one of the bars on the ship to meet with the rest of the team.

We ate and chatted until it was almost time for takeoff. We all returned to our rooms and sat down on the seats attached to the wall that functioned exactly like the seats from the previous ships. Despite there being artificial gravity, it was a safety measure, and the ship wouldn't take off until all of the passengers were in their seats.

Finally, our seatbelts fastened automatically, and before we realized it, we had taken off. Although the entire process was identical, the g-forces felt quite a bit stronger than last time.

We were able to stand up after a couple of minutes. Nothing felt off until we looked out the window. Only the dark void could be seen, aside from a tiny portion of Earth, since it was beneath the ship, and it continued to grow smaller as we flew away.

Once far enough from Earth, several minutes later, we received a notification on our glasses which was also announced through the speakers. It was time for the main show.

Aki and I sat on the bed and stared out the window. Then, a purple electromagnetic field that looked like lightning started looping around the ship, accompanied by the purest white I had ever seen, which wasn't harmful to the eye.

Both colors moved faster and faster until they seemed to turn static. A few seconds later, the coolest and deepest sound resounded throughout the ship. At the same time, the white field disintegrated, leaving only the purple field, which allowed us to see what was going on outside.

We were already going faster than the speed of light, and the only thing we could see were nebulae, intergalactic clouds formed by several gasses and cosmic dust, giving them beautiful colors.

We could also see tiny particles, which apparently were planets and stars, but they became harder and harder to see as we sped up.

It only took half an hour for the ship to reach the target Warp Level of fifty—or fifty thousand times the speed of light—which was projected on the wall of the room.

The last thing I expected after seeing the nebulae again after four years was realizing how much I had missed being in space. It was a special moment to share with Aki and the rest of the team.

We spent the next few hours chatting, trying most of the sports and arcade games on the ship, or merely relaxing in our rooms.

One hour before arriving at Furenoora, an announcement was made to put on the IAMS given to each passenger.

The IAMS—Intelligent Artificial-Mass Suit—was a skin-tight suit you needed to put under all your clothes. It also covered the entire head, making it suffocating at first during the short calibration period. Then, it used HoloForm to camouflage itself while also letting your hair stick out. Luckily, it was meant to be worn with a pair of glasses, so it wasn't uncomfortable at all to wear them over the suit.

Even though the face section of the suit wasn't breathable, the oxygen provided by the suit made it feel like you were breathing normally. Luckily, Furenoos also breathed oxygen, and the suit only had to separate it from another gas that could be toxic to the human body after being exposed to it for long periods of time.

It was over-engineered because of the many unknown hazards to the human body that could be on other planets. In the case of Furenoora, the temperature was always low, and the IAMS kept you warm.

The other crucial reason to wear an IAMS was the artificial-mass part of the name. It would create artificial gravity around the person wearing it by pulling dark matter from the surrounding space to condense it around the suit in a controlled manner, effectively creating an artificial mass that would be affected by gravity just as normal mass would.

That was how the ship's artificial gravity worked as well, the main difference being that dark matter was being pulled into a large area, removing the need to wear an IAMS.

You were obligated to comply with this rule. If you didn't, you weren't allowed to leave the ship.

Fortunately, there were no problems as we left the ship through one of the eight gates. Since both the atmosphere and the gravity were just slightly weaker than on Earth, the ship had landed vertically so that it could take off without problems.

Finally, we set foot on Furenoora, and the girls couldn't take their eyes off the comically big buildings made mostly out of brown and yellow materials. They also couldn't take their eyes off the Furenoos as they walked past. It was safe to assume that they were shocked by the fact that they were a lot bigger than us. The pictures on the QNet were deceiving since you could only compare them against their buildings.

"Let's get going," I smiled.