"So, can you get me out of here?" Yuuji asked. He was standing beside Lala on his own flying surfboard, one she had given him herself.
"Huh? You believe me?" Lala quickly understood what he meant, surprised that a Yuuji who seemed completely unaware of the supernatural believed her.
"The situation I'm in is already pretty strange, besides, I regained control right when you appeared in my previous memory.
Most importantly..." Yuuji pointed at the flying surfboards they were standing on. "You seem capable of doing something like what you said."
"Hehe, of course. I'm a genius after all" Lala smiled proudly.
"Wait, you made these?" Yuuji asked in surprise.
"That's right" Lala nodded, proudly patting her chest.
"Amazing! I thought they were just some kind of futuristic technology you got somewhere.
By the way, can they move like the Silver Surfer's?"
"Umm... who's that?" Lala tilted her head in confusion.
"You don't know him? He's a superhero who travels through space using a surfboard." Yuuji, surprised that someone with a device identical to the one the Silver Surfer used didn't know one of the most classic antiheroes from the Fantastic Four, explained who he was.
On the other hand, after hearing him, Lala opened her eyes in surprise before nodding confidently.
"Of course. Why would I make a flying surfboard if it wasn't to travel through space at incredible speed?" she asked as if it were obvious.
As she answered, she stood on the board and easily balanced herself, angling it toward the sky before shooting upward at tremendous speed.
Yuuji watched her and tried to do the same, managing it easily because, to his surprise, it wasn't very difficult. The board seemed to respond to his intentions to move or stop, so all he had to do was adjust its angle with his legs to steer before thinking about moving forward.
He quickly got the hang of it and happily spun around his position a few times.
Finally, he stopped the board in midair and looked up at the sky with a smile.
After adjusting his position, he chased after Lala, who had already reached the plane's altitude and was flying past it.
Seeing Yuuji behind her, Lala didn't stop. Instead, she slightly raised her right leg while using her left to redirect the board until it pointed almost vertically toward the sky.
"Hey, Yuuji, let's race!
Don't worry, the board completely protects you from outer space!" she shouted before accelerating upward toward the limits of the heavens.
Yuuji hesitated for a second, causing the board to stop on its own as it obeyed his intentions.
"She may be a genius, but judging by her appearance and personality, she doesn't seem very reliable" Yuuji muttered, unsure whether flying into space would really be safe.
"Ah... alright. This is just a memory anyway." Yuuji shook his head as he convinced himself before copying Lala and following after her.
"Hey, wait for me!"
At full speed, Yuuji reached the edge of the sky within seconds, where the heavens began losing their blue and white colors and gradually grew darker.
Yuuji hesitated for another second, but ultimately just closed his eyes and increased his speed with almost no confidence.
Soon everything started feeling strange. The board moved far too easily, as if no force at all could affect it.
Yuuji finally opened his eyes and was greeted by a breathtaking sight. Without realizing it, traveling at incredible speed and with no resistance, he had already moved far away from Earth.
Everything around him was black, an empty space that was nevertheless filled with stars, and a moon far larger and whiter than he had ever seen before.
Of course, that wasn't the best part.
The greatest sight was the planet itself, almost entirely covered in water, visible in its entirety from his current position. A massive green and blue sphere floating through the darkness of space, looking completely out of place among everything around it.
"Beautiful, isn't it?"
"Yeah."
"All planets are like that. They always seem out of place in the emptiness of space.
Life really is a miracle of nature. It doesn't matter what planet or what species, they're all equally incredible. The fact that they emerged from nothing and evolved into what they are today is amazing."
"I'd like to see it someday."
"You can. I'll take you if you want."
"I'd... wait!" Yuuji suddenly remembered something. "What am I doing traveling through space on a surfboard?
You created whatever sent me here, so you should be able to get me out, right?"
"Well, if we're talking in the most literal sense of the word, then yes, I can, but..."
"But what?"
"Well, I can't in the sense that I don't have permission to" Lala explained with an embarrassed smile.
"I think I should have control over whether I leave my own memories or not, right?"
"Exactly!" Lala smiled as if Yuuji had just guessed the correct answer on a quiz.
Yuuji blinked in confusion for a second before realizing something.
"But shouldn't the present me have priority over the past me?"
"Exactly!"
"...But to you, I'm the past Yuuji, and he's the future one" Yuuji guessed after seeing Lala's affirmative reaction. "Alright then, what do I have to do to get out of here?"
"Just have fun" Lala answered.
"Have fun?"
"That's right. Yuuji told me you wanted to overcome your fears, no, that you needed to. So you'd relive your memories until you had fun, and I..." Lala pointed at herself with a confident smile. "I'm here to make sure you do."
"That... doesn't sound very difficult."
"Doesn't it?" Lala asked, equally confused. "Maybe Yuuji forgot to take something into account? He thought it would be really hard."
"Well, this is the fourth memory, and in the two where you've been here they've both been fun, so it really doesn't seem difficult."
"Huh? Are you sure? It shouldn't be this easy. Could it be that because you don't remember the first time, you don't feel the boredom that comes from repetition?" Lala reasoned.
"No. I remember the first time. But ever since you had me bouncing around with my parents during the bungee jump, and now flying around on these technological surfboards, I've been having a lot of fun" Yuuji explained.
Lala stared at Yuuji in complete silence with a complicated expression for a second before speaking.
"Yuuji, are you stupid?"
"What? Why are you insulting me out of nowhere?"
"No! You always told me you got bored doing things because everything felt like a repetition of something you'd already done with only tiny differences!" Lala protested. "But now you're saying that just by adding those differences you're having fun?
There are only two possible answers. Either you're stupid or you lied to me. And Yuuji would never lie to me!"
Lala snapped while looking at Yuuji with a hurt expression, feeling betrayed. Despite what she said aloud, she clearly doubted whether Yuuji had actually lied to her.
Seeing her like that, Yuuji immediately felt the urge to make her feel better, even though he didn't know why. Even though he'd only known her for a few minutes, he was already certain that a smile suited her face better than any other expression.
"Wait, wait, I didn't lie to you. Things that are just variations of other things really do bore me.
It's just... ah, damn it, I don't know. I honestly don't know why I had fun. Let's just move on to the next memory and help me have fun again, alright?" Yuuji panicked upon seeing her like that and did his best to explain himself.
Somehow, it worked.
"...Alright. But if you're lying to me, I'll be mad at you" Lala said with a small indignant pout.
"I'm not" Yuuji smiled, already resigned to her personality.
...
"So this is the highest point on Earth" Lala murmured while looking around with interest.
"Yeah, although normally it'd be much colder" Yuuji nodded while admiring the clothes Lala had given him earlier. They protected him perfectly from the cold, even in the areas they didn't physically cover. "So how are you going to make this more fun, by the way?"
"Hehe, I did some research before coming here. Earth's legends talk about the existence of Yetis, giant bipedal monsters that control and live in the extreme cold of the mountains" Lala declared confidently.
"Yetis aren't real" Yuuji shook his head.
"Eeeh? You're lying" Lala reacted with obvious disappointment.
"That kind of supernatural stuff doesn't exist. They're just legends. You're the strangest thing I've ever seen in my life, and I've already traveled all around the world" Yuuji explained.
"Really? None at all?" Lala asked doubtfully. "Then what about the dinosaurs you encountered in the Guiana Highlands?"
"Dinosaurs?" Yuuji raised an eyebrow in confusion. "Dinosaurs are extinct. The only ones I've ever seen were fossils in a museum, and there was nothing in the Guiana Highlands except trees and wild animals."
"Huh?" Lala looked at him in confusion for a second before simply letting it go.
"Never mind then" she muttered, shaking her head before revealing a mischievous smile. "Hehe, since we don't have to worry about anyone inside a memory..."
The alien princess suddenly pulled a yellow wool warhead out of her phone, wrapped one end around her index finger, and threw the other end as if it were a baseball.
With overwhelming force, the warhead flew almost horizontally until it disappeared into the frozen mist.
"What are you doing?" Yuuji asked curiously.
"You'll see" Lala replied without elaborating.
Out of sight of the currently powerless Yuuji, the warhead, which should have landed nearby given its size, continued flying almost horizontally for over ten kilometers before beginning to descend, finally stopping a little over five kilometers after it had started falling.
The moment the entire thread touched the ground, it began growing at incredible speed, becoming a hollow tube more than twenty kilometers long. As it expanded, the wool slowly transformed into crystal while losing its color until it became so transparent it was almost invisible.
Meanwhile, at the summit, the pink haired girl spread her arms proudly as she turned toward Yuuji.
"Yuuji, welcome to the tallest slide with the best view on the entire planet Earth."
Yuuji walked over and tapped the slide's material with interest.
"This is insane. What kind of genius are you? And why do you spend your time doing things like this instead of conquering the world?"
"Pff, I'm the princess of the galaxy. If I want a world, I just have to wait until I get married.
As for what kind of genius I am? The second greatest in the entire universe. Only behind the Golden Inventor" Lala said, not the slightest bit embarrassed to rank below such a legendary figure. On the contrary, she sounded completely proud.
"...And who is that?" Yuuji wanted to ask about her position as princess of the galaxy and all the implications behind it, but realizing that would probably be too much to process, he shifted his attention to the other part of her statement.
"The mother and creator of your little sister."
"..."
'Mother and creator? Mother? If she says it like that instead of mentioning Clara, then it's not her. Does that mean my parents got divorced? No, then why does she also say creator? I mean, all mothers are technically the creators of their daughters, right? Unless my little sister is a robot or something? Or maybe she's an alien who is born differently?'
"Yeah, I'd better not think about that" Yuuji decided, realizing he probably should've asked about her being the princess instead.
Adjusting his mindset, he walked over to the slide and sat down on the edge, ready to go. A fall of several kilometers down Mount Everest sounded perfect for clearing his head.
"Wait!"
But before he could, Lala suddenly stopped him.
Without saying anything, she sat down between his legs and placed Yuuji's hands around her waist.
Finally, she leaned back against his chest and looked up at him.
"Now we're ready" Lala smiled, her face only centimeters away from Yuuji's.
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+15 chapters in advance on Patreon.
p-atreon.com/IAMME26
(just delete the hyphen)
80 power stones = 1 extra chapter (cumulative)