Kiro resisted the urge to vomit and pressed the button on his insulin band. He really hated jumping between worlds - his insides always felt like they’d taken a ride in a blender. Hana and Kai materialized a little ways away and he took a little satisfaction from the fact that neither of them stuck the landing quite like he had. It was all the satisfaction he was getting today.  

“You know, I really thought we had her that time,” Hana said.  

“We would have gotten anyone else,” Kiro replied. “But this was Malik. I should have anticipated that she’d consider jumping off the bridge. I won't make that mistake again.”

"I'm sure our fearless leader here is glad we didn't get Malik," Kai said. "Gotta keep that rivetting rivalry alive now don't we? Maybe he'd prefer offing her in single combat? Oh wait, she'd wipe the floor wth him." He draped an arm around Hana's shoulders, a self-satisfied grin on his face.

Hana pushed him away immediately, making sure to hit where she knew he had bruises left from their encounter with that world's Pi. "Tough talk coming from someone who was bested by a little girl."

"Hey! She was a teenager and I didn't know she knew self-defense!" Kai shot back, wincing and rubbing his arm where Hana had pushed at his bruises. The Pi had managed to break his grip by pushing at his weak spots and damned if he wasn't still sore.

Hana shrugged. "I'd hardly call that self-defense. It didn't defend her from me." 

Kiro rubbed his temples, he felt a headache coming. This wasn't a rarity with the company he kept. Kai had a way of getting on everyone's nerves and it didn't help that the world they'd set up their safe camp in was damned humid. They'd been able to find a valley with a cave network far removed from this world's civilization, but it also came with a dampness that crept into your bones and an annoying amount of mosquitoes. 

"I'll get the next one you just wait," Kai whined, a little too loud of comfort.

"Will you shut up before the intern overhears?" Kiro hissed, his eyes narrowing dangerously, and for once Kai shut it. 

Kiro pushed aside the flap of the big tent that served as their improvised command center. In the center was a table with a built in touch screen, several physical maps were draped over it and desks with laptops were in the corner. Kiro took care not to trip over the wires that were taped to the floor and ran all the way outside to where a solar panel was collecting power from the sun. The maps on the table were from the world they had just come from and showed the geography and landmarks. It wasn't easy searching for a single person in an unfamiliar world but thankfully this one hadn't been big. 

Myungjun was in the corner playing a little handheld game and jumped as soon as he saw Kiro come in. He quickly hid the game and jumped for his laptop pretending to be hard at work. Kiro sighed. Well at least he hadn't overheard Kai and Hana talking outside, that much was clear. "Did you complete the mapping of World 903TY?" Myungjun asked, a little too hurried, he flushed with embarassment.

"We did," Kiro said and walked towards the table. The screen on the table itself showed a map of an entirely different kind, it was more of a chart. It showed the different worlds that they had visited and the distance between them alongside coordinates and any safe zones they had created. Kiro drew a big 'X' besides World 903TY. "All business on 903TY has been concluded."

"So should I start looking for the next world?" Myungjun asked, his face regaining his normal colour. He joined Kiro at the table and peered over the display, zooming out to show a larger part of the chart. "Should we look for a new place to set up a safe zone? The jumps are getting long for this one."

Kiro looked at Myungjun a moment. He seemed completely oblivious to what was actually on. Myungjun had definitely not been Kiro's choice to take along, but their last QuSEF agent's ExtraUniversal Quantum Shift Generator had malfunctioned and he ended up in pieces. The guy's intern had been the only one around who had enough working knowledge of Quantum Shift Energy Fields as well as the EUQSGs they used to shift between worlds to be able to replace him. The kid would have to do for now, but that didn't mean he had to know the full extend of their missions.

Kiro shook his head. "No I'll have to report to Zhu first, she'll want to hear of our progress. Then we can figure out where to go next."

"Do you need me to input the coordinates?" Myungjun asked.

"No I got it." Kiro pulled up his EUQSG, also known as a shifter, a nondescript black box so much more important than it looked, and entered the coordinates for the home world. They were far from the home world and It would be a long shift. God he hated shifting. 

He took a deep breath, pressed the button, and the world around him disappeared.

author's note

And here's a teaser from Kiro's POV! The way I write every chapter will have a single character's point of view. And here we have a little insight into the QuSEF initiative agents and one of our main antagonists: Kiro! Lils and I have been working really hard to create the setting of the story and I've already got a rough outline and now it's just waiting for the characters that will fill it in~

Shoutout to Lils who has been amazing about figuring the science behind all of this. She's brilliant and amazing and I would not be able to do this without her <3