If this was her homeworld, Iapetus thought with a sniff, she was not impressed. Sure, she’d kind of expected to find things in a state of disrepair, but the level of ruin was staggering. Also depressing. Still. She’d done her best to keep an open mind and remind herself that it had been several centuries if not longer since anyone had been here. Or she assumed centuries given how crumbly everything seemed.

The weirdly purple stormclouds off in the distance were new though. She’d spent a good twenty minutes just sitting against a ruined pillar and watching the far off storm rage. Which was highly weird in and of itself because she’d never heard of any storm strong enough to be viewed in space. But it was pretty, so she’d pulled out her phone to snap a couple of quick shots.

Except, her phone kept wigging out. She’d gotten maybe one or two decent pics before the phone’s screen started to do that weird, glitchy static-y thing that old TVs sometimes did. Now, that was odd. Everything she’d ever been told about cat tech had given her the idea that this stuff was so solid that nothing could make it act up. Of course, it was to the cats’ benefit to let everyone think that, so maybe she should have taken such claims with a grain of salt. Regardless, she’d finally put her phone down after a while, tired of trying to get it to work properly.

Instead, she turned her eyes back to the storm in the distance and watched. It looked pretty big from where she was, which meant that up close, it would have to be a monster of a mother of a storm. All things considered, she was kind of happy it wasn’t any closer. She would have remained lost in the thought, if it hadn’t been for the weird slippery sort of tingle in her brain that made it feel like her magic get up was trying to sputter out on her. The feeling had been gradual, but now it felt like she was holding on to her power up by the skin of her teeth. It was, frankly, exhausting.

Maybe that was her sign that it was time to head home. She knew roughly what to do. Hit the right button on her phone and she’d be whisked back to Earth. Simple. Easy.

Except that it wasn’t doing any of that.

She tried again. Again. <******** again. And still nothing. And she could feel her control over herself faltering. Great. Wonderful. Just ******** grand! She was goddamn going to die out in space and end up a withered mummy floating out amongst the cosmos!

After what felt like ages, Iapetus tried one more time, and felt something click internally. The trip back was as quick as she could have wished. The moment her feet touched the carpeting of her room, she sank to her knees, letting go of her magical costume and feeling a wave of exhaustion hit. Not even bothering to crawl into her bed, she rolled over on the plush carpet and closed her eyes. As soon as she felt less like warmed over death, she was going to hunt down a cat and have them give her phone a looksy. But first. Sleep.


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