Your Geography Teacher Must Have Been the Gym Teacher (Revised)

Coulson and Melinda exchanged a glance, feeling the situation was taking a strange turn, slipping beyond what the two of them could handle on their own.

They had only been sent by the Director to make contact with a little girl who might be a mutant, assess her threat level, and maybe extract some useful intel. Finally, depending on the specifics, they were to either lure her away or knock her out and pack her up, lock her in a special facility, and then figure out how to notify her parents—a perfect end to the operation.

As for everyone else, they'd be silenced or sworn to secrecy; S.H.I.E.L.D. had specialists for that. The agents had plenty of experience handling such matters. The frozen prison held plenty of special humans, and this little girl wouldn't be the first or the last.

But now, with the conversation reaching this point and the intel gleaned from the girl's words, Coulson felt that following the usual procedure would be a disaster. Catch the kid, and the adults come out. Who knew what kind of force S.H.I.E.L.D. would be up against? So he thought it best to tread more carefully.

"So, uh... Valoran? Did I spell that right? Where is this place called Valoran? How big is it?"

Coulson organized his words, feeling the spelling of "Valoran" was a bit obscure—definitely not in the dictionary. But asking a little girl such a question made him feel foolish. A kid who looked a few years old probably wouldn't have an answer, right? Coulson swore he had never heard of the continent of Valoran! Sure, he'd daydreamed through geography class, but the teacher definitely wasn't a gym coach!

"You don't know? Well, fine! This is Valoran! Look!"

Annie didn't care what he was thinking. She stretched out her tender little finger and tapped an empty ice cream cup on the table. A ripple of magical energy spread out, and the cup floated above the table, melting into a hollow, transparent sphere the size of a twenty-centimeter-diameter globe. On the surface of the glassy orb, clear textures revealed a continent and several islands.

This was the planet where Valoran lay. The spell was an advanced application of the Mage's Hand, only usable by powerful mages with strong talent and high magical prowess! It could reshape certain materials into any form and suspend them in the air, with no extra attack power. Annie had learned it when she was three! She usually used it to make toys, but after getting Tibbers to play with, she rarely used it anymore.

"This is what Valoran looks like!"

Annie pointed at the globe she had just conjured. She remembered accidentally breaking one of her mother's astrological models while playing, and that mean mommy had made her use magic to make a hundred identical ones! A whole hundred!!

Shadow Witch Amoline had even called it "training her dear daughter's spellcasting ability!" Thinking back, Annie still felt her mom was really, really annoying back then!

"Th-this!! What is this?! How did you do that? Your superpower?"

Coulson and Melinda stood up in shock, not even noticing their chairs tipping over. They stared wide-eyed at the crystal ball floating above the table, genuinely taken aback.

"This is magic! I don't have superpowers!"

Annie didn't understand why they were reacting so strongly. This was totally normal in Valoran, right? As for superpowers? She remembered her dad mentioning that some people outside the Voodoo Lands had them? But Annie knew she definitely didn't. This was magic, not some stupid superpower!

"Magic?! Alright."

Coulson figured he shouldn't be so surprised. Mutants had all kinds of abilities; a little trick from a girl shouldn't shock him that much.

"So, this is Valoran?" Pointing at the floating crystal ball, Coulson felt this was the most valuable intel he'd gathered today. He quickly signaled Melinda to record the scene with her device. "Where's your home?"

Annie blinked her pretty big eyes, reached out, and drew a small circle on the globe with the cream from her ice cream-stained finger, right in the middle-lower part of Valoran.

"Right here! This is the Voodoo Lands! My home is here!"

"Hmm..." Coulson studied the globe carefully, pondering. Beside him, Melinda was filming with her camera. The globe showed clear geography—mountains, swamps, lakes, deserts—all visible at a glance, exquisitely detailed. Definitely not something a little girl could fabricate.

He was now about ninety-nine point nine nine nine percent sure this girl was an alien. Looking at the small area Annie had circled with ice cream—the Voodoo Lands—Coulson thought for a moment, then pointed to a spot above the Voodoo Lands marked with a castle icon.

"So, what's this place?"

"Oh, that's Noxus."

Annie didn't like Noxus. Her parents really hated Noxus, so Annie didn't like it either.

"Noxus? A country? What kind of place is it?" Coulson couldn't read the script on the globe, so he could only guess.

"Dad says the people in Noxus are all crazy, always fighting wars." Annie remembered her father's assessment of Noxus. Apparently, they had crossed the Great Barrier and moved to the Voodoo Lands back then because they didn't want to keep fighting.

"Fighting? War maniacs?" Coulson pictured the Germans from World War II. Well, Hitler was taking a stray bullet.

"And here? Another country? What's it like?"

He pointed to another area on the map, directly opposite Noxus on the left, marked with a city model. Based on the unrecognizable script, Coulson guessed it was another nation.

"That's Demacia!"

"Demacia? What do they do? What kind of country is it?"

"They get beaten up by Noxus all the time!"

"..."

Coulson then pointed out a large area, piecing together the basics of this continent called Valoran. Though the details from little Annie weren't too thorough, he still learned a lot about the local customs.

For instance, the northernmost Freljord—it was cold there, with snowmen. Annie said she always wanted to catch one to play with, but her parents wouldn't let her. To the right of Freljord were Piltover and Zaun, where the people were all bio-maniacs and chemical crazies! They messed with potions without proper knowledge!

Then there was the Shurima Desert in the middle of the continent. According to Annie, a dog-headed creature claiming to be the Death God lived there, sucking the souls of all desert life. One of its attacks could shatter a mountain! Her mom strictly forbade her from playing in the desert!

Finally, southeast of the Voodoo Lands, past the Sable Stone Mountains, was Bandle City. Annie had gone there once with her mom. There was a group of furry people called Yordles—they were really short! Like a bunch of little mice... Well, that was Annie's exact words. But these Yordles could build robots and something called airplanes that flew around in the sky. Coulson figured the Yordles' tech level must be pretty impressive.