After the two girls dry-heaved for a while, their emotions gradually settled. Once they had left the atmosphere, the scenery around them had improved.
Not far away stood the S.W.O.R.D. space station, while behind them was Earth shrouded in azure fluorescence. Looking out through the ship's portholes, everything was breathtakingly beautiful.
Of course, after briefly admiring the view, the travelers still had to set off. Countless ships nearby entered warp and flew toward unknown destinations, leaving behind only streaks of light from their accelerating engines.
The densely packed afterimages of their fiery exhaust trails looked like a blackboard covered in gleaming silver tadpoles, or like a giant dandelion scattering its seeds on the wind.
It was time to get down to business. Their ship was currently occupying a near-Earth route, and the station's traffic controllers had already started urging them along.
"So, my plan is for us to follow the Avengers' ship. Wherever they go, we go."
Jessica stared fixedly out at the scenery, but that did not stop her little mouth from laying out the plan. She took a deep drag from her cigarette and, with the air of a seasoned streetwise girl, flicked ash at the cleaning robot.
"Like how pilot fish cling to sharks in the deep sea and wait for scraps of food to fall from them."
Peter was a top student, so he understood what Jessica meant. Doreen was a little slow on the uptake, but she was still a bona fide female squirrel college student, so her biology was not bad either.
Both of them understood.
Fierce-tempered sharks were famous killers of the sea. They could swallow several small fish in one bite, and could even bite to death and eat fish or other animals larger than themselves.
But there was one kind of