The stars blurred into streaks of white and gold as Chris tore through the void.
He had left Viltrum with no ship, no navigation computer, no star maps to guide him — only instinct, the memories of what he'd learned in their archives, and the pull of home buried deep in his chest.
Viltrumites could make the journey in weeks. He could feel it in his body, in the way the golden shimmer of his aura offset the drag of physics itself. Faster. Harder. Stronger. He pushed, building speed until galaxies warped into blurs, until light itself bent behind him in a trail of gold.
For days he didn't stop. He passed burning stars, fractured moons, nebulae that stretched like oceans of fire. He tore through asteroid fields, scattering rocks like dust in his wake. The void screamed past him, silent and endless, but he never faltered.
Once or twice he slowed, recalibrating against constellations he recognized from Viltrumite records. Then he was off again, accelerating until even the memory of distance broke.
A week into the journey, the familiar light of Sol burned on the horizon.
Chris slowed at the edge of the system, drifting for a moment in silence. The sun glowed warm and golden before him, the planets wheeling in their ancient orbits. And there — small, blue, fragile, shining like a jewel in the dark — was Earth.
Home.
His fists clenched. His jaw tightened. He wasn't the boy who had left in fire and accident. He wasn't the student who had once dreamed of saving the world with ideas alone.
He was something more.
With a final breath, Chris streaked forward, a golden trail blazing across the void as he returned to the world that had birthed him.