When I went on my first huge and unexpected trip into the void, a rescue mission to get Kalei out after she was taken by Ovie's clique, I barely processed anything that was going on. I technically heard Jeans' voice before, and saw a glimpse of her in some castle she was in, I was too busy freaking out to really notice.

Before I could go into the void, I had to watch these safety lessons about what would happen if we were in serious danger, like genuinely life-threatening levels. One of the videos showed a guy who was a mascot for most Cani training videos somehow, a surfer looking type named Thadley. leading a group around in the void. Some of the kids in his group (in spite of Cani fangs generally coming in during the teen years everyone else in the group were kids) split away, going somewhere they shouldn't in the void. It was filmed on a set that looked like something someone slapped together in five minutes on a budget of three dollars, but the story of it still got me.

"If you're in the void, and you wander off, you put yourself in like, deluxe super bad danger, dude," Thadley said, looking right at the camera as the group of kids wandered toward a "cliff," which was just a poorly done green screen effect. "In fact, any time you go into the void there's like, danger. So follow your teachers and only go on approved void quests! Cuz if you don't..."

The leader of the rebellious group of kids pointed at the faux cliff. "Let's try climbing up this!" I assumed at some point in the development process they were to be climbing a mountain, but it was changed to a cliff. They still reached upward at nothing, then fell forward. "Whoaaaaaaaaaaaa!"

The effect was laughable, but after a freeze frame, the video switched to real footage of an office with hundreds of workers hunched over computer. Everyone looked so serious and tense.

"One of the worlds numerous Cani rescue facilities has graciously offered to let us film there, which is like, so super sick, dude," Thadley said in a voice over on the footage. "At Cani rescue facilities, hundreds of thousands of void situations are analyzed at once. If someone on an expedition in the void, say a student at a Cani school, gets into a life-threatening situation, the staff pulls them to safety. They have an impeccable success rate, but that doesn't mean you can just do, like whatever you want. You could be pulled away from a situation like Clydeler here, and you'll be protected, but still like, bad things can happen."

Someone in my class watching the training videos asked if the Cani void facilities were too invasive, something I thought about as well. The teacher, a guy who looked like maybe two years older than the students, sounded very confident in his answer.

"It's less that they're watching everyone and more that they can analyze data to an incredible degree," he said. "It isn't like they're watching video footage of everyone in the void, their computer programs just look like code, data analyzing everything in certain sectors of the void, scanned in by the wristbands. They see code that doesn't look right, and they activate an emergency measure to pull whoever's there back home."

I wasn't sure if I bought that, it did still seem like it would be some kind of invasion of privacy. But with their success rate in saving lives, what did I know?

The video then showed Clydeler resting in a bed, probably back on the three dollar set, but then they showed some footage that showed just enough of real life Cani that ended up in an emergency facility like that, and even without really showing anything, my imagination filled in the rest past the intense looking medical machinery with hints of blood around almost each clip.

That was what was on my mind when I first encountered Jeans, and I thought of it once again getting more formally introduced. Maybe my mind was just activating a defense mechanism, letting me know that this girl was danger much like wandering off a cliff in the void would be. One might think I'd have that anxious, nervous feeling about going into the void in general, and it did hit me sometimes, but not as much as seeing this girl project herself out from Aira.

"I'm Jeanette Dusk, but you can call me Jeans," she said, smiling warmly. "I got in a bit of a mess here, but maybe we can help each other out."

"You don't have to do the whole nice act with us, we know your real deal," Kalei said. "I dunno if you ever got my name while we were fighting, but Kalei here. And this is Marms, Roux, Syval. I'm sure you know Aira by now at least."

Jeans looked a bit taken aback by the directness, but she still smiled.

"Maybe you can tell them how you ended up like this?" Aira asked. "And me too, because you haven't said that yet." She laughed. "I honestly haven't talked to her too much so far."

"I'm sure it's hard to get a hold of someone like magically cosmically fused to your soul or whatever when it's someone like Jeans," Kalei said.

"I was seriously injured while in the void, and my companion and I had each found an Atrian crystal, so that's that," Jeans said.

"That's that?" I squinted. "That doesn't even make sense, though. Wouldn't a rescue facility pull you in if you were hurt?"

"Nope," Jeans answered. "It's different for me. It might be hard for you to understand, so sorry if I skip over some details."

"Marms isn't stupid, and neither are the rest of us, so don't act like you're so far above us that you can skip explaining things," Kalei said. "Last time we saw you it was in your stupid castle. I don't care how you got a stupid castle, but we should probably know like the gist of you ending up in a magic crystal and why you're oh so special that you don't get pulled to the emergency zone when you get hurt in the void."

Once again, Jeans didn't seem prepared for someone as blunt as direct as Kalei.

"Fine then," Jeans said. "I'll tell you everything. That is, if you can show you're worth telling this to."