(Full overhaul, here. I realized I just couldn't make this story work until I decided which version of the series I was writing about. It was really Orube that made the decision for me. It was just too easy to put her in Luba's place. So now, this is based on the comic book. That also means the removal of numerous characters, which I will be grateful for. It was too hard to keep track of all of them, and I had a bunch of people who just weren't moving the story.)

Falling…

Falling for an instant…

Falling for an eternity…

Falling through the Infinite Void…

All of his plans had come to ruin, yet while he fell, his strength grew. In the Infinite Void was infinite energy. For a time, he forgot his name, but he never forgot them…five girls…Will, Irma, Taranee, Cornelia, and Hay Lin. It was his hatred of them that gave him the strength to remember himself. He was Phobos, and he wanted eternity! His spells that had been so carefully designed to rescue him from the Infinite Void should he ever enter had all failed him. His hatred for the Guardians gave him the strength he needed, and through sheer force of will, he moved through the void. It could not be infinite in all directions.

He felt a kindred spirit, a soul like his that desired order. There she was before him, and he was finally free of the void. She was barely alive, her dress so soaked with blood that its true color could scarcely be seen as blue. It was easy to see that the blood was hers as large chunks of flesh had been torn by her, seemingly from some wild animal. As Phobos turned the strange woman over, he noted a pendant of magnificent power hanging around her neck. Phobos knew not what world it was from, but he knew it was a Cosmic Heart. Every world had a Heart, and some spirits were Hearts of incredible power.

Phobos turned the woman over, carefully moving the pendant so that she did not lie upon it. She lived still, but there was little life left in her. A spike was rammed into her chest, blood oozing around it, and one of her eye sockets was empty, except for blood. The Heart vanished as Phobos reached for it. "Heal me," she said, her voice quavering, though it was still strong, "and you may have it. Otherwise, when I die, none will find it again."

Phobos said, "You would give it to me?"

"Look at me. It's brought me naught but misery."

"As you wish." Phobos was not the charitable type. One may think that he relished doing evil but was repulsed by acts of good, but that was not the case. His evil was the sort by which he had no feeling for the consequences of any of his actions. So long as they brought him power, so be it, and why keep a deal when it requires less energy to just lie and cheat? Still, this woman meant what she said. Phobos would not have that jewel unless she was certain of her survival.

He started with the bleeding, sealing all of the wounds so she would stop loosing blood. He also worked to replenish the blood she had lost. This was harder as she had clearly lost more than she could survive without and this required Phobos to make it from nothing, an act that required a tremendous amount of magical energy. The spike worked its way from her chest, exiting with a sickening squelch, but the wound closed itself. Phobos was too weak from replenishing her blood to reconstruct the eye. When he finished, only scars remained where the large chunks of flesh had been torn, and the lacerations were gone without a trace. One eye and one empty socket looked into Phobos' face.

"Thank you," she said. "You did more than I hoped." She stood uneasily. "You could have restored my eye." She took in her surroundings. She poured strength from the Heart into Phobos. "Would you do so now? Please?"

Newly revitalized, Phobos did as he was asked, and soon, the mysterious woman had both eyes intact.

"As promised." The Heart dangled on a chain before Phobos. He took it without hesitation and regarded the gifter with interest.

"You give up this treasure so easily."

"It was passed down in my family for generations. We are the rulers of Ulnra. Our people became disillusioned with my mother's rule. She used that Heart to squeeze the people for everything they were worth. They rebelled and killed her. I took the Heart and tried to restore order, and make my mother's killers pay. They would not have it. They were not interested in an inherited throne. They killed my family, and as you saw, they nearly killed me."

Phobos looked at the Heart of Ulnra. "Then you cannot remain here."

"No," the mysterious woman finally said, "Whoever you are, you saved my life, even if you didn't want to. I'll do whatever you ask until the end of my days."

Phobos smiled. Already, he had a new servant. "What is your name, then?"

"I am Davira."

"Then know, Davira, you have sworn yourself to Prince Phobos, rightful ruler of all of Metamoor and his grand city of Meridian. My throne was usurped by my younger sister and her sympathetic cohorts, the Guardians of the Infinite Realms."

Davira's eyes widened. "My Lord, if it is within my power, I will help to restore your throne and put the brat and her co-conspirators in their places." A look of disgust crossed Davira's face. "I suppose they lulled the people with nonsensical promises of freedom and a new law. Only traitors dare to question their holy sovereign."

Phobos examined the Heart of Ulnra once more. The Heart of Metamoor, the Heart of Ulnra, and the Heart of Kandrakar; perhaps Nerissa's quest for multiple Hearts had certain merits. Drawing on the power of the Heart of Ulnra, pulling Davira along with her, he gated to the courtyard of Elyon's castle, Phobos' former home. Davira called out in surprise. "Phobos! You know more about the uses of the Heart than even I dreamed."

Phobos observed Davira skeptically. "You mean that you do not know how to gate between worlds?"

"You must understand, we were never really taught how to use it. It was simply given to us as our symbol of office when we assumed the throne."

"You poor, uneducated thing."

Finally, one bleary-eyed guard, clearly hung over from the previous night's revels, seemed to realize who had appeared in the castle's courtyard. "Lord Phobos! How dare you come here?" He lowered a pikestaff and advanced, but froze in place when Davira imperiously extended her hand.

She looked at her hand. "I could never do that before without the Heart."

Phobos smiled knowingly. "When you possess a Heart of the Cosmos, you receive some of its powers. They become a part of you, so that even if you should lose the Heart, you will always possess some power. It's the nature of the worlds we inhabit."

Davira smiled wickedly and stretched her hands out. Every guard in the courtyard met the same fate as the first. The two warlords marched through the corridors of the castle unconcerned with the advancing guards. They were all frozen in time. They found a locked throne room, which Phobos easily blasted open, throwing guards on the other side backwards. A young man brandishing a sword seemed to evade Davira's spell, and Phobos' energy bolts.

"Ah," said Phobos, "if it isn't the great General Caleb. I have a special fate planned for you." With a swift motion, Phobos came under the sword and struck Caleb at the base of the skull, knocking him unconscious. At that moment, a massive blast of raw energy struck Phobos squarely in the chest, knocking him backwards. "And my baby sister! This day just gets better and better."

Queen Elyon channeled her power into whatever vulnerable point on Phobos she could hit. She had had four years of practice and became a formidable sorceress, but Phobos was older and more powerful. Why his parents had this brat girl so late in life, Phobos could not understand. They had given her the throne instead of him, he who was first born and who was the rightful heir. The brat would have been dead at birth had his disloyal subjects not hidden her on Earth.

He did not dodge or deflect the power, but took it into himself, and soon the Light of Meridian yielded. With the last bit of magic available to her, Elyon called out for help across the realms. She was weakened though, and the call wouldn't go far. He drew the force of her power into the Crown of Light, and absorbed it into the Heart of Ulnra. Now, he had two Hearts with which to face the power of Kandrakar and the Guardians. Soon, he would possess the Heart of Kandrakar. Little did he know, the fortuitous circumstance that promised to bring him the Heart of Kandrakar, would happen in mere hours.

Sheffield Institute

Madam Kurtz stood at her whiteboard, writing out examples of French junctions and conjunctions. This was the only class in their junior year that Will, Irma, Taranee, Cornelia, and Hay Lin had together. In the past, it was generally Taranee that would be paying rapt attention in class, while Cornelia twirled her pencil, thoroughly bored, while the other three were either sleeping or wearing vacant expressions. French class was unique in this case. This was the third year Taranee struggled to get a good enough grade to make it to the next year. Cornelia absorbed every bit of the language, though it was no surprise that the fashionista fascista of Sheffield Academy would take an interest in the language spoken in the capital of fashion. Hay Lin, with her abstract way of viewing the world, always had a vacant expression no matter what she was doing. She could have been an A student, and there would be no way to tell, though her best grades were generally in art and music. Irma was hopelessly inept in the nuances of the French language. It was a mystery she had even gotten this far. Will was the real surprise. Will was, sadly, a terrible student in all areas. She struggled to achieve a passing grade in nearly every subject except science, at which she did rather well...and French, at which she was the head of the class.

In the third year of French all students were expected to communicate in French. Oh, excuse moi...en Francais. Madam Kurtz turned to the class and said, "Sil vous plait, J'ai une liste de fruits sur le bord. Comment pouvez-vous commander des fruits au magasin?"

Hay Lin whispered, "We should have taken Spanish."

Will whispered, "I have Spanish next block."

"You're learning French and Spanish?"

"And I'm learning Latin during my free period. The new biology teacher, Professor Phillips is teaching me."

Taranee couldn't quite understand that. The Will who couldn't answer 2 plus x equals 4 was taking three languages and excelling? "How could you possibly be learning three languages at once?"

Will seemed to actually think about that. "I don't know. It just comes easy to me."

Hay Lin said, "We should have taken Spanish."

Cornelia said, "Shush. We all agreed to take French together. You can't back out in our third year."

Taranee said, "Well, I've got a year longer than anyone else. Okay, I'm still trying to decipher what she said. 'Sil vous plait' is obviously 'please,' but all I heard of the next lines was, 'I have a list of really bored Fritos. How would you smell if you got Fritos at the store?'"

Cornelia went into hysterics and laughed uncontrollably.

Will, barely able to contain herself, said, "Fruits, Taranee. She has a list of fruit on the board. She's asking you how you'd order them at the store."

"Cornelia?" Madam Kurtz called.

Cornelia sat up straight, forced herself to stop laughing, and said, "Sil vous plait, ou pourrais-je trouver les pomme?"

"Très formelle, mais très, très, très excellente! Will?"

Will said, "Sil vous plait, Je voudrais acheter un melon ."

"Ah, informelle, bien, bien. Hay Lin?"

Hay Lin perked up and said, "Por favor, yo quiero una frase!"

The class roared with laughter while Madam Kurtz stood passively. She never, ever got angry. She never, ever punished anyone. She was the nicest teacher at the academy, and the strictest grader in the state. She was the type of teacher who understood that clowning in class only earned an F, and that was the only punishment she felt anyone needed. "Ah, très bien...en Espagne. C'est le Français! En Français, sil vous plait."

Hay Lin thought for a moment and said, "Umm...je-j'ai veux un...lemon?"

"Citron," Madam Kurtz corrected. "Bien," she said, but her disappointed tone of voice suggested that Hay Lin hadn't done so well. Kurtz passed over Irma. "Taranee?"

Taranee said, "Okay, I mean, bien. Umm...quand est-ce que les olives?"

"Tres bien. Tres bien. C'est moment, ordre." Madam Kurtz gave Taranee an encouraging look. She knew Taranee could do it.

Taranee looked helpless for a moment and said, "Je vuex acheter des olives."

"Magnifique!" Madam Kurtz, checked to see what Irma was reading, nodded approvingly when she saw it was the day's French lesson, then turned and went to another group of students.

Cornelia turned to Hay Lin and said, "You've earned a dope slap."

After school they went to a corner bistro and got some ice cream. They liked to sit at the back, where they were unlikely to be overheard. Their topics of conversation tended be unusual. Currently, they were talking about the ordinary things, but that would change. It always did.

Cornelia said, "I've been hoping to go to Paris and learn fashion designing from the best. I mean, now that I know French, that helps."

Taranee said, "Actually, I've been thinking about medical school, and then going into genetic research."

"That wasn't your mom's idea, right?"

"Oh, mom totally wants me to go to law school. She's got this whole idea of me being a big prosecutor and then becoming a judge like her. It's cool though because she likes the whole genetic research idea."

Hay Lin was trying to spin her spoon like a top. "You guys tell me how you like it. When I get out of school, I'll still be serving egg foo yung. Dad wants me to go to this chef school."

Irma said, "Nothing wrong with that. You and Grandma Lin both make a mean mushu chicken."

"You know what? Some people my art professor introduced me to are interested in some of my paintings!" Hay Lin clapped as she spoke.

Will, who was engrossed in whatever she was reading on her laptop, absentmindedly said, "I always liked your Xanadu one. That was my favorite."

"Thank you!"

"What do you want to do?" Taranee asked Will.

"I don't know. My mom just wants me to get better grades. I'm so good with languages, she thinks I should be a translator or a transcriber. I'm not even sure I'm going to stay on Earth."

Cornelia raised an eyebrow. "You mean as in, permanent relocation to Meridian?"

"I mean, let's face it. What use am I here?"

Taranee looked down at her sundae and back to Will and said, "You know, Will. Good grades aren't the key to a good future. There are plenty of successful people in the world that couldn't manage to finish school."

Will said, "Name one."

"Bill Gates, who spent nearly a decade as the richest man in the world. Albert Einstein, who was lousy at math, FYI." Taranee raised her hand to count fingers off.

"Alright, I get it! Taranee, those people were geniuses."

"And how do you know you're not? Like Hay Lin, talking nonsense half the time, but look at her paintings."

Hay Lin, rather indignant, said, "Hey!"

Irma said, "Will, if you flunk high school, I don't think the solution is leaving the planet. I'm sorry, and what about your mother? You're the only family she has."

Will shrugged. "She has Professor Collins. They're getting married, remember? I can bring her with me. She can barely make ends meet, hates having to live in an apartment, and it's not like she's providing an indispensable service to the world. She's an office executive."

Cornelia said, "What about Matt?" When Will didn't answer, Cornelia went on. "Will, I'd love to be able to just pick a world and say, 'Who needs the other place,' but there are people here that I can't take with me and there is no way I am leaving them behind. You're not going to just leave your father behind, no matter how many problems you have with him. You're not going to leave your boyfriend. Do you know why? Because you love them."

Hay Lin said, "Besides, that would mean telling your mother about our secret."

Will had to admit defeat. They were right. She couldn't just leave her friends and family behind. Human Will was needed just as much as Guardian Will was. *Taranee, are you inside my head?*

*Sorry, you're making me nervous with talk about leaving. I was wondering what you were thinking. I couldn't help myself.*

Will nodded. "Sometimes I wish my mother did know. I mean, I don't want her to know. It's just, there are times, she says something, or she just starts doing something, and you can tell she just feels helpless, and I know what she's thinking. She's thinking she doesn't know what to do with me and that she's going to let me down because she can't figure out what to do. What we do. That's the one thing...if she knew what I did, she'd know everything was going to be alright. That I'm not going to grow up to be a criminal or some kind of deadbeat."

Irma said, "We understand. We totally get it. You've got this whole Clark Kent thing happening. Sometimes you feel like throwing in all of your cards and telling Lois you're Superman."

Will laughed. "Well, I think I need to use my super speed to get to the bathroom."

As Will left, Cornelia said, "God, you know, I think we totally need psychiatrists to deal with this whole Guardian thing."

Hay Lin said, "True identity versus secret identity is what's known as duality." Cornelia, Irma, and Taranee all gave her bemused looks. "What?"

Will saw to her needs in the bathroom and found herself staring at herself in the mirror. Magic, sorcery, being a Guardian and defending Kandrakar was all that she knew. One day, she simply wouldn't be a Guardian. She had no idea how she could go to a normal life after all of that. How had Yan Lin done it? How had any of them? She pictured Nerissa, who was one that couldn't let go, and suddenly she was terrified. That was the kind of thinking that led to Nerissa's downfall.

Will looked towards the door. She had heard a voice call for help. As she moved towards it, the call for help came again. She looked around, startled. The voice had definitely come from behind her, from a great distance, much further than the bathroom wall. Then, the void between realms tore before her and she found herself falling down a slope and into a mud pit. It wasn't a very good landing, but then again, she was usually in control of where she was going between realms. She stood up and climbed out of the mud pit and took a look at herself. Her school uniform would take an hour to scrub the stains out of.

She looked at her surroundings. She was in a familiar field dotted with trees, a village just visible, and a castle prominent behind it. What had dragged her to Metamoor? Whatever had happened, the circumstance was strange, to say the least. Will was no fool. She held out her hand and drew the Heart of Kandrakar from the ether. She intended to collect Irma, Taranee, Cornelia, and Hay Lin, and return with full Guardian power. Unfortunately, something had other ideas. The Heart refused to open the rift. "Okay, no reinforcements then. Nice."

It was an hour walk to the castle. She would have stopped in the city but being alone and unable to send for help instilled in her a sense of urgency. Frightened eyes watched her from behind windows as she passed, turning to glances of hope. Yes, something was definitely wrong, here. Reaching the castle gate, she met a horrible sight. The gate guards were frozen in time. They were distorted as if made of gypsum. Passing swiftly through the gate, Will found that the rest of the castle was the same. Guards everywhere were frozen in various poses of surprise or attack. She held the Heart of Kandrakar and transformed into her Guardian form.

Will made her way to the throne room. Caleb was nowhere to be seen. Elyon, on the other hand, was suspended from the ceiling in an iron cage. Will flew up to the cage and tried to find where it opened. When Elyon saw Will, she cried out, "Will, it's a trap!" It was too late. A bolt of energy struck Will in the back of the head, burning off some of her hair, and some of her scalp. She recoiled, hitting her head on the cage and falling to the floor. She wasn't unconscious, and her head was racked with pain, the bump from the cage and the excruciating pain from the burn combining to generate one mother of a headache.

A horribly familiar voice said, "Excellent, Davira. Let's see how much damage you did." A hand unmercifully gripped her hair and pulled her head forward. The other hand probed the back her head. "How delightful. You've exposed bone."

Will, forced her eyes open and looked into the face of her nemesis, Phobos. "I don't suppose you'd be considerate enough to get me a doctor?"

"Nonsense, Wilhelmina. You're injuries aren't permanent."

Will said, "Yeah, I was just hoping for some aspirin...or Thorazine."

Phobos smiled congenially. "Miss Vandem, you can have anything you want in exchange for the Heart of Kandrakar."

"Nah, you wouldn't want it. Performance issues. It doesn't open up all of your powers at once. It divides your obligations. Seriously."

"Well, I'm certain I can look into those issues once you hand it over. Give me the Heart."

"I'm sorry, the product you are trying to acquire is currently not available. Try again when Hell freezes over."

Phobos' smile became disturbingly sinister. "My dear Wilhelmina. I assure you, Hell has frozen over."

The woman called Davira said, "Why not just kill her and take it?"

"The Heart of Kandrakar is a special case. It cannot be taken by such crude means. It has to be gifted. If you kill her, the Heart will serve nobody until it has chosen another keeper. That means we have to break her. It shall be my deepest pleasure."

Will didn't know how she would escape this. If the Heart would not open the rift, and the Veil was lifted, the other Guardians were stranded on Earth. With that cheerful thought, she lost consciousness.

When she regained consciousness, she thought she was dreaming. She was on the trash strewn beach where she and her friends experimented with their powers for the first time. She reached to feel the back of her head. The tissue was tender and felt obviously disfigured, but there was hair growing from it. Add that to the list of scars she had collected as a Guardian, but she couldn't understand. It was completely healed and with a burn like that, how long would it take before hair even started to grow again? This hair was nearly an inch long, though it still had quite a ways to go to catch up to the rest of her, admittedly, short bob, but it was still more than a few days could account for.

Had she been in a coma? Had Phobos found a way to take the Heart and discarded the now powerless Guardian on Earth? Will raised her hand, reached into the ether, and the Heart of the Kandrakar dropped from the nothingness and dangled against her arm. She breathed a sigh of relief. So what had happened? Had she escaped, saved the day, and suffered from some kind of amnesia? Somehow, she didn't think so. "No," she said to the air, "I clearly have all of my memory." She stood and began to walk, feeling a burning soreness in her back. "Je m'appelle Wilma. J'ai vieux pour une fraise. I still know French."

Will walked through Heatherfield, hoping to find her way to the Silver Dragon without being seen. She would tell the girls what happened, but when she made it to the Silver Dragon, she found a mess of people and paper. She walked in and found her mother, father, and Professor Collins, clearly distressed talking with Matt, Irma, Taranee, Cornelia, Hay Lin, and some of their parents, including, Irma's father, and-Will realized with a jolt-other police.

Cornelia noticed Will first, and attached herself to her, catching her in a tight hug. "Oh my God! Where have you been?"

Will, still trapped by Cornelia's hug, couldn't hold her ears, so she clenched her teeth. "Cornelia, you're screaming in my ear!"

More quietly, Cornelia said, "Oh, I'm sorry. Do you have any idea how worried we've been?"

Will didn't know how long she had been gone for, but she suspected that it was awhile. Still, all she remembered was an hour after the bathroom. She wasn't sure she wanted to know how long it had been. She opened her eyes and found that everyone had crowded around her, but they made way for her mother. Pulling Cornelia back, her mother drew Will into tight hug and started sobbing. Her voice was barely above a whisper. "I didn't think we'd ever find you again."

Will laughed, though it was painful. She was feeling muscle aches she couldn't explain. "I can't have been gone that long."

Taranee said, "Will, you've been gone for two months."

Will jolted back, her surprised mother releasing her. "What?"

Irma said, "Will, look around you. The Silver Dragon has become the Help Find Wilma Vandom headquarters." Will saw stacks of fliers with her picture on them, "Have you seen this girl," emblazoned on them. "Even the feds have gotten involved. There's a nationwide search."

Taranee said, "Will, look at yourself. Look in a mirror."

Will turned to the mirror wall she was startled by what she saw. Along with her own look of shear disbelief, were cuts and bruises, clearly from having been beaten. Dried blood, her own, and dirt covered her torn and abused shirt. "But we were only just having ice cream at..."

"Will," said Hay Lin, "that's the last place we saw you."

One of the policemen gently asked, "Can you tell us what happened?"

Will shook her head, still in shocked disbelief. "I can't remember."